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ARE YOU HITTING ON me, Hacker?” Jean asked me as I refilled her wine glass. We were sitting in a dark corner of the main dining room of the Bohicket Country Club. I had slipped the maitre’d a few bucks to get us a table away from everyone else. Light from the flickering candle in the middle of the table caught the sparkle in Jean’s eyes. She was wearing a clinging red dress that managed very well to accentuate her positives without making her look cheap or tawdry, which a red dress can do.
“I hadn’t actually planned on it, no,” I admitted sheepishly. “But I can always change my plans.” I smiled with what I hoped was boyish charm across the table.
She laughed and reached across the table to grasp my hand tenderly. “Another time, another place,” she said, smiling at me.
“Sure,” I said. “That’s kinda what I thought, too.”
“How are you feeling?” she asked. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks, darling,” I said, laughing. “I feel like it, too.” It was the truth. My aches and pains had intensified, despite the amounts of beer I had downed, or the pain pills I had been popping like candy. My knee throbbed, my head was killing me and I couldn’t feel anything in my right arm. The pain pills weren’t kicking in, and I suspected the doctors had substituted placebos as revenge for my leaving the hospital. But despite the pain, I needed this. Dinner. Candlelight. A pretty girl. Life.
She sipped her wine. “So, have you figured out who killed Johnny yet?” she asked. “And is it the same guy who yanked his caddie’s chain?”
“The police don’t know for sure,” I told her. “It looks like two different killers. There’s one guy who could have done both, but not for any real compelling reason. And the cops don’t think that guy has the killer instincts anyway. So, to answer your question, they haven’t got the foggiest.”
“Did Bert Lewis really have anything to do with it?” she asked.
“Well, I think he’s involved in it somehow, but no, I don’t think he’s a killer. No matter what the police say, there’s not enough good motive there for him to have killed Johnny.”
“Lots of irony, there,” Jean said.
“How’s that?”
“Johnny once told me that he went to the University of Texas just so he could play with Bert,” she told me. “Lewis had been one of his heroes. He’d known him since they were kids on the junior circuit and he’d always admired Bert’s game. Then he found out he could beat him. Johnny told me that’s when he knew he could be a professional. If he could beat Bert Lewis, he could beat anybody. Then he always felt bad because Lewis never won on Tour.”
“It’s always tough when you find out that the people you hold in great esteem turn out to have feet of clay,” I mused. “Sometimes ... most times ... it happens when you realize your godlike parents are just folks. Or your spouse disappoints. Or your pastor runs off with the choir director. Can really screw up the emotional gyroscope.”
“Well, Bert’s gyro-thingie wasn’t in the best of shape any- way,” Jean observed, sipping her wine.
“Understandable,” I said. “He was usurped. Big man on campus. Number one on the golf team. Lots of pressure from dear old dad. Then this young whippersnapper he’d always beaten comes along and cleans his clock and he drops down the chart. Probably his first major setback in life and he just didn’t have the inner mechanisms in place to deal with it. Instead, his failure festered and grew and got bigger and bigger. Took him over. Sad.”
She stared at me across the table with those huge, wild- animal eyes of hers. Tonight they stared at me with a layer of admiration and trust. Somehow, I had managed to lure the beast from her thicket where she had been hunkered down just a few days ago. Now, she was walking out in the sunshine again, nuzzling softly up against me, hunting, perhaps, for a morsel of sugar I might be hiding in my hand. And, I suddenly was aware, I held in that hand a dangerous power. I could extend my hand with the piece of sugar she wanted, and the angels would sing, birds would chirp and the rainbow would appear on the horizon. Or, I could reach out with that same hand and snap her neck in two, neatly and cleanly and efficiently. She had no defenses, this one.
I dislike having that power, No human should be able to choose for another life or death, sugar or the knife. For it to work, things have to be more equal. That’s why I hadn’t planned on a seduction. Not with this one. Not now.
The waitress brought out the Caesar salad I had ordered and dished it up for the two of us. Then she added a few twists of fresh-ground pepper.
I filled Jean in on what I had learned about the God Squad, Brother Ed Durkee and Turnbull’s finances. She nodded wisely.
“There’s all kinds of leeches around here,” she said. “And there’s hundreds of ways to separate these guys from their money. Johnny knew all that, and if he didn’t, his wife certainly did.”
I looked at her. Mentioning Becky Turnbull was strange from the woman who had tried to pry Becky’s husband away. Jean noticed my expression.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s all pretty strange. I’m thinking of moving out to California. Becky has offered to help me find a job.”
“What?” I was dumbfounded.
She laughed aloud, her mouth full of salad. Her deep laughter and hearty eating made me realize again that this was a woman of full appetites. I had to take stock of all that her red dress was revealing across the table. Yes, she was indeed all woman.
“Yeah,” Jean said, grinning as she jabbed her fork into her salad. “Becky knew all about Johnny and me. Johnny was not a secret-keeper and besides, like I said, we never did anything. She called me yesterday and said she knew I must be down, having lost such a good friend, and would I like to come and talk?” Jean’s eyes filled with tears suddenly. “Why can’t I ever be perfect like that?”
I reached over and with my napkin dabbed away a drop of dressing from the corner of her mouth. “You’re already perfect like that,” I told her.
Jean MacGarrity actually blushed. Maybe it was the sudden intimacy of my action, or the rush of the realization that we were comfortable together, or my soft and well-meant words. But our eyes locked and deep messages of a frank and beautiful nature suddenly passed between us. It was one of those moments of stomach-churning, heart-stopping, skin-flushing importance that are so rare and wonderful. In the next instant I thought again of her vulnerabilities balanced out against our shared need. I reached across the table again and gently stroked her cheek, soft and pretty in the candlelight.
“Another time, another place,” I said softly. She gazed back at me with what I think was understanding and something that spoke of relief, and then smiled happily at me. Then she popped a red cherry tomato into her mouth.
We finished our dinner talking quietly of other things and of each other. Afterward, we shared a drink in the Out of Bounds lounge, and then I walked her home in the dark and humid evening. With me limping and moaning, and her laughing aloud at my pain, it was not the most romantic walk in the history of love. Still, our goodnight kiss was brief and warm and heartfelt. Another time, another place.