Missing links, p.19
Missing Links, page 19
“Sure,” I said. “You gotta be the world’s leading expert on Uncle Joe, seeing as how you didn’t even see him the last five years of his life. You didn’t even come to the goddamn funeral.”
“Do I regret that, Raymond?” he said, his voice rising a little. “Of course I do. But did I feel the urgent business I had warranted missing it? Yes.”
“That must have been some urgent business to last five years,”
I said, my voice getting a little high. “What were you doing, foreclosing on Central America? You never even called him when he was in the hospital, for God’s sake.”
“Can we get back to the issue?”
“Let’s. The issue is how there was only one life that was the model of living and that was yours. Doesn’t matter what it was, nobody did it right enough for you. Nobody did it your way. Like the way you’d make me mow the lawn two and three times because you didn’t think the lines matched up.”
“I was only trying to teach you …”
“And then when Travis’s lines didn’t match up …”
“Don’t you dare, Raymond …”
“Didn’t quite match up right, when you thought he’d become an eyesore in the neighborhood, to your friends, like some fucking lawn …”
“That’s not true …”
“You had to do it your way. You couldn’t let us work it out. You couldn’t let him go when he was ready! Thank God you came riding in to save the day! Well, how’s the fucking day going now that you saved it, huh, Father? I guess he had more ‘want to’ than you that day, huh, Father? Do you see what it takes to win with you?”
“I was the father!” he bellowed. “I was the one who was responsible! Have you ever taken responsibility? Have you ever been the provider? Do you know anything about it? Look at you! If it weren’t for self-pity, you wouldn’t do anything well. You’ve got no wife, no family. You don’t belong at Charles River. I checked. What have you ever had to provide for?”
“Oh, my mistake. I didn’t realize providing takes three-fifths of Canadian Club a night?”
“And I see you don’t drink now in protest.”
“You taught me that at least.”
“Can we just get back to business?”
“Oh, absolutely! Let’s get back to business! The business here is that you invited me out here to play golf all these times just so you could smooth me out of a golf club. You didn’t give a shit about me. You didn’t give a shit about getting to know me again after, what is it, six years? No, no, no. Hell, make that thirty years. Tell you what, have your five millionth CC, lifetime, and call me when they find a real person inside you.”
I was in full meltdown. I was up out of my chair and walking halfway out when he said, “You’re right, Raymond. What I’ve done here is lousy …”
I slowed down.
“… compared to you using me to win a bet.” Silence.
“I’m not stupid, Raymond.” Longer silence.
“I’ll give you $18,000,” he said. “That’s my final offer.”
I walked over and slugged down the end of my drink. “That’s good,” I said. “Because this is my final offer. If you ever so much as look up my phone number to call me again, I’ll come down to your office or Republican National Headquarters or whatever you call it and floss your teeth with my 7-iron.”
I started to walk out.
“Raymond, there’s no need to get emotional,” he yelled after me.
I went back to my apartment. I was humiliated and torqued off and hurt all at the same time, but mostly torqued off was winning big, so the first thing I did when I got inside was pick up a bottle of Glen Fiddich. Only it started to smell like Canadian Club, so I heaved it against the wall. The way the liquor smashed against the wall sounded so pleasing I decided to go triple OJ. I took every mug out of my cupboard and smashed them in the sink. What the mugs had to do with my fucked-up childhood is unclear. One of them took a very nice cut out of my right eye.
Then I went into my bedroom and started punching the bejesus out of whatever I could, the walls and the roof and the drapes, which got me back by digging one of their damn curtain hooks into my left ring finger.
Then I started beating on my water bed with both fists. Luckily, I broke before it did. The tears just started pouring out of me. I cried like Miss America. All that rage came first and then all that hurt. It was the strangest thing, but then I started talking like an eight-year-old kid, crying and saying, “It’s not fair” over and over. I don’t know how long I went on like that—five minutes or forty—but when it was done, I felt like whatever kid was inside of me finally got to beat up his father, which is a very nice feeling if you’ve been waiting thirty years for it.
Not that there was any reason to get emotional.
Two Down’s problems weren’t affecting him that much, other than the fact that he wasn’t sleeping, couldn’t work and kept laughing loudly into the toilet after every meal.
He stopped going to the Mayflower. His only hope was Thud. So the instant Thud called Two Down to tell him he had the pictures ready, Two called me and I might have accidentally mentioned it to a few guys and next thing you know it was a Chops convention at Don’s Mixed Drinks, hungry for the floor show. It was the most eagerly awaited event since Crowbar premiered his edited reel of the Movies’ Inadvertently Revealed Famous Nipples.
Thud walked in with a manila envelope and handed it to Two Down. Two Down played it out for drama, inching the print out slowly, painstakingly, with all of us huddling around him. At last, the two figures in the picture could be made out. And that is when he and I and a few others yelled in unison:
“Browning!”
For there he was, engaged in quite a number of non-Vatican-approved positions, up to and including what Dannie used to call the Baked Chicken, in which she would put her ankles behind her ears for convenience.
We were all mildly stunned. The love of Dannie’s life, Mr. Tan-and-Teeth, the man she was going to marry, was delivering some serious room service to that snake Concorde.
We all agreed that the first guy that told Dannie about these pictures got their long irons bent and their bag slashed. Thud took the negatives.
Now that he had Two Down’s approval, Thud called the Copley Plaza and checked a reservation for Stone Concorde. When they said, “Yessir, Mr. Concorde. We have you down for a half day for this afternoon,” Thud simply put a set of prints in an envelope and left them at the front desk under Concorde’s name. Along with the pictures, Thud attached a note, which he wrote with his left hand to avoid any detective work, that read:
Dear Mr. Concorde,
Kindly forget about Mr. Bingsley Colchester’s little IOU, otherwise your wife and friends will get to enjoy these Kodak moments, too.
Signed,
Management
And this whole plan would’ve worked, too, if, within two days, Two Down hadn’t felt good enough to go back to the Mayflower and play a little golf, unbothered by nettlesome little annoyances like death threats and losing houses. Equipped with a new lease on golf, he made a tee time for the following morning, hoping to continue uninterrupted on his mission to fleece most of Mayflower’s industrial bankers of their fortunes, with maybe a soybean trader or two thrown in for variety.
And so it happened that at 8:42 one morning the started yelled out, “The Bingsley Colchester foursome.” And Two Down happily and proudly walked up to the first tee with his group, much to the annoyance of Stone Concorde, who was hitting balls on the practice range. Stone Concorde did not do a whole lot of losing in this life and it was not sitting well with him.
“What did that man just say?”
The question was asked by a fortyish-looking woman hitting 5-irons next to Concorde, a certain Mim Smythe who had been around the club for years.
“What?” said Concorde, distracted.
“Did that man just say the Bingsley Colchester foursome is up next?”
“Yeah,” said Concorde sullenly.
Mim Smythe looked surprised and puzzled.
“That’s amazing!” she said.
Concorde was starting to get annoyed. Damn women. He stopped hitting drivers. “Why?”
“Because that was my name!” she said. “Of course, that was, gosh, I hate to say, seventeen years ago. But I always thought it was, you know, a unique name.” She even went on to say that she couldn’t remember ever hearing anyone else have that name in all her years at the Mayflower.
Concorde got very intrigued.
“I thought your name was Mim Smythe,” he said.
“It’s actually Bingsley Smythe,” she explained. “Colchester was my maiden name. Well, I always hated the Bingsley—people called me Binky—so I started going by my middle name.”
Concorde looked like he had just discovered electricity.
“Bingsley M. Colchester!” Concorde yelled.
“Exactly, Stone!” she said, a little flattered at his sudden interest. “That was my name!”
“You weren’t a member here before you were married, were you?”
“Oh, I’ve always been a member, before and after. In fact, I was the first woman member of the Mayflower. My father was a member and so, as a legacy, I couldn’t be denied membership. But when I married Chase, he was already a member, so we just got rid of my membership and I became part of his.”
“Maybe not,” Concorde said.
“Excuse me?” she said.
But by then, Concorde was off on a sprint to the clubhouse. All we can figure is he went to the general manager’s office and checked on Bingsley Colchester. Somebody up there must’ve told him the truth. There was only one Bingsley Colchester, a female. Turns out that for the last twenty years the club has kept a few female members on the roster—at no charge—in case some feminist state legislator busybody starts coming around asking questions like how many women members the club has.
Grinning, Concorde set up at a table overlooking the 18th hole and waited for whoever this was pretending to be Mrs. Miriam Smythe.
When I finally got up off of that water bed, I believe I felt like a full-grown adult for the first time in my life. There were two people I wanted to call right away. The first was Madeline. I got a very depressing answering machine and it wasn’t hers. It was New England Bell’s.
“The number you have dialed, 555-4687, has been … disconnected.”
So I sat there, thinking a while, sort of numb. I thought about what finally standing up to my father had felt like, and I don’t know why, but I decided to call Charlie. Maybe because Charlie reminded me so much of my uncle or maybe because I liked him so much or maybe because for the first time I had room in my complicated little brain to worry about somebody else for once. I was connected to his room at St. Luke’s.
“Yes?” said a voice, a youngish female’s, kind of familiar, maybe not.
“Yes, speak to Charlie, please?”
There was a silence.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said the voice. “He passed away two hours ago.”
WHAT WE FIGURED Stone Concorde did was pay somebody to shadow Two Down as he walked home from the Mayflower that afternoon, fresh with 400 zops in his pocket from his first real kill at his new Ashworth hunting grounds.
We figured that’s what happened, because at about nine that night the doorbell rang at his little pale yellow house on Waldeck Avenue with the golf-ball mailbox, the golf-ball doorknobs, and the golf-ball-shaped floor mat.
Jane, his long-suffering wife, looked through the flagstick-shaped door window, turned the putter-head door handle and found a man with a magnificently tanned face, perfectly combed hair, broad shoulders and a Steinway smile. Next to him was a very large Slavic-looking man in an Armani suit.
“Is your husband home?” he said.
“Sure,” she said, and went and got him.
When he arrived, Two Down started to step back, thinking Concorde might crack his kneecaps for him, but the large Slavic in the nice suit already had hold of his left arm and gently flicked him outside onto the porch. Concorde closed the door behind them.
“Hello, Bingsley,” said Concorde.
“Hello, Stone,” said Two Down, white-faced. “You lost?”
“No,” said Concorde. “No, actually, I think I just won.”
Pause.
“Ohhhh,” said Two Down. “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. Well, this is business. You know, some of these middle-class people want to sell some of their old heirloom gems and, uh, you and I aren’t above slumming it to turn a dollar now and then, are we, Stoney?”
“In your slippers?” asked Concorde.
Two Down looked down at his head-cover-shaped slippers with the little flagsticks coming off each big toe.
“Very hospitable folks out here in Dorchest …”
The Slavic man brought a very mean knee into Two Down’s midsection. While Two was bent over, gasping for breath, Concorde whispered the following sweet somethings into his ear:
“Listen to me, Leonard Petrovitz. If I don’t get my money in forty-eight hours, I’m going to make three calls. The first is to a buddy of mine. A Mr. Walker Singleton. You know him? President of New England Bell? Your boss? I think he’d love to hear what you’ve been up to, working as a cook at the club on company time. The second is to my lawyer. I want to ask him to break the current standing record for ways a lawyer can pencil-fuck a tiny little schmoe like you the rest of his life. Forgery, fraud, wire fraud, maybe a little tax evasion. The third is to a friend of mine at First Boston Bank. He owes me a favor. I’m going to ask him to call your loan. Would that be an inconvenience for you at this time, Leonard Petrovitz?”
Two Down didn’t feel much like answering, as he was busy spitting blood. In the last two weeks, Two Down had seen more blood than the movie council.
“Ten thousand. Cash. Forty-eight hours. Deliver it in a wrapped box to the guard at the front gate of the club.”
Concorde started to walk off, then turned around. “And if I EVER see those photos again, that lovely wife of yours will have a very hard time identifying the body down at county morgue. OK?”
The Slav kicked Two Down forward so that he was able to do a face plant on the concrete step of his front stoop.
That’s about when Jane came out and shrieked in horror at her bleeding, scarred and doubled-over husband.
“Damn,” Two Down groaned. “Those Watchtower people get pushier every day.”
When the luscious you love has either left town or hidden and your father has once again treated you like a piece of smelt and one of your best friends had the nerve to go and die without any consideration of your feelings, there is only one thing to do besides hide the razor blades and the rope.
Go to the library.
I found a book on golf antiques and looked up my MacGregor 693 and read this:
This may be the finest modern driver in existence, though there were only 250 made. Depending on condition, a MacGregor with a rosewood finish and a red center can be worth up to $17,000.
The most valuable, though, may never be found again. Jack Nicklaus used his MacGregor 693 to defeat Arnold Palmer at the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont, the victory that is generally considered the turning point in Nicklaus replacing Palmer as the King of Golf. Unfortunately, Nicklaus, only twenty-two at the time and euphoric, turned over that club to a small Pittsburgh charity immediately after the win. Its whereabouts are unknown. It is estimated that if the club were ever found, it would be worth twice the usual amount.
This was not really exciting news to me, other than it meant I could go back on tour.
All I’d have to do is sell that club and I knew I’d be back out there. I had gotten my game back. Qualifying for the Nike Tour would be easy as Go Fish. My first reaction was to go tell Dannie all about it, but Dannie had blown me off like lint. Still, I could take Madeline with me. She wouldn’t be a bad caddie, would she?Sure as hell would look better than Squeaky. The question was, could I sell it?
As I walked to the checkout desk, I remembered what my father had said. It’s not as valuable as you may think. Weasel.
I told Miss Big Hair behind the desk a small lie.
“You wouldn’t believe what I found in that,” I said. “A fifty-dollar bill.”
“Like, seriously?” she said, snapping her Bubble Yum.
“Yeah,” I said. “I wonder if you could call up the name of the last renter of that book so that I could send it to him.”
“Guuuuuyyyy, you’re soooooo nice!” she said.
She started punching keys until she seemed to find something.
“It’s a William Davenport Hart,” she said. “You want me to write down the address?”
“No,” I said. “I know him.”
“That’s sooooooo lucky!”
“Isn’t it?” I said.
Madeline quit.
That’s what they told me the next day at the Mayflower gate. Nobody knew what had become of her. Nobody answered her apartment door. Nobody knew a forwarding address.
There was a very large black hole in my stomach, which I filled up with grog in the Ponky clubhouse. Dannie was behind the pro shop counter. At least the person who used to be Dannie. Now what was back there was some kind of Junior League Social Committee Chairwoman from Hell. She had on white pearls, a high-collar turtleneck with a business jacket over it and Chanel you could smell even through Blu’s fried bologna and Cheez Whiz sandwiches, three of which were stacked in front of Thud. Nobody else was in there except Crowbar, and he was reading News of the World.
I missed Chunkin’ Charlie already.
I had some time to think. My life was coming down to this: Either (a) Forget Madeline, sell my driver and go after the Nike Tour or (b) …
“You know what I’d like to see?”
“Oh, Christ,” I said. “Not now, Crowbar. Please not now!”
“I’m just sayin’,” he said, “you wanna know what I’d like to see?”
