"Fine. Keep it." To the Mexican girclass="underline" "Pick up the bag."
Trey stormed off. The girl struggled to lift the heavy golf bag, then tried to catch up to Trey, but not before turning back and waving to her friends outside the ropes, as if she had just won the bachelor. Goose stood alone on the wide fairway with the camera in his face; his expression was that of a fired auto worker. He put the big cigar in his mouth, sucked hard, and blew out another smoke cloud. He then turned slowly to the camera and made a quick movement; the picture was suddenly of the blue sky.
"What happened?"
"Goose decked the cameraman."
"No. To Goose and Trey."
"Oh. Tour fined them both, but it only aired on a few cable outlets, got posted on YouTube, but golf sponsors aren't exactly the YouTube demographics. So no big PR problem."
"What's Goose doing now?"
"He's a good caddie, got picked up by another player. Pete Puckett."
"What'd Trey do without Goose? Who caddied for him?"
"He tried to bring that Mexican gal up, but she couldn't get a visa. Fucking Homeland Security. He only played three tournaments after Mexico, so he picked up local caddies. I was trying to get one lined up before the Open next week."
"So if Goose hired on with another player, why was he mad at Trey?"
"Because Trey won that tournament and a million bucks. He never paid Goose his ten percent."
"Caddies get ten percent?"
"For a win. Seven percent for a top ten finish, five below that. Tiger's caddie makes a million a year."
"That's a lot of money. Might be a motive for murder."
"I don't think he'd kill Tiger."
"For Goose to kill Trey. The hundred thousand."
"Oh. Well, Goose sure as hell wanted to strangle Trey that day."
"Where can I find him? Goose."
Nick clicked off the TV. "Let's go."
"Where?"
"To the tournament."
FIFTEEN
Nick Madden drove a BMW convertible, and he drove it fast. They were on a highway heading north out of downtown in the fourth-largest city in America. Only two hundred fifty miles apart, Dallas and Houston couldn't be more different. Dallas was plains land, Houston swamp land. Dallas was white collar, Houston blue collar. Dallas was the Cowboys, Highland Park, and Neiman Marcus; Houston was Urban Cowboy, Enron, and a rocket ship to the moon. The only thing the two Texas cities had in common was that each claimed an ex-president named Bush as a resident.
Nick yelled over the wind noise. "You were a star football player in college?"
Scott nodded.
"Why didn't you go pro?"
"Wasn't big enough."
"You never heard of steroids?" Nick laughed. "Tour started testing golfers for steroids, like those pudgy bastards wearing stretch-waist Dockers are juiced. Hell, they should be testing them for cholesterol, number of Big Macs they put away. Course, steroids wouldn't help those fat boys anyway-they hate to work out. More wives in the fitness trailer than players. Like your wife."
"Ex-wife."
Nick veered off the highway without slowing and screeched to a stop at a red light. Scott turned to Nick.
"Were they happy together?"
"Who?"
"Rebecca and Trey."
Nick shrugged. "Traveling first-class around the world, staying in five-star hotels, buying everything they saw-what's not to be happy about?"
"Did Trey love her?"
"That's a hard question when it comes to pro athletes. Their one true love is the guy in the mirror. But, yeah, I think he did." He gave Scott a sympathetic glance. "Gotta be tough to hear that."
"I'm a big boy. Was he going to marry her?"
"Never mentioned it to me." Nick cut a glance at Scott. "Seems odd, you defending her when she dumped you for Trey."
"It's called loyalty."
Nick snorted. "You wouldn't last long as a sports agent. You learn pretty quick that athletes got the loyalty of a pit bull. They cheat on their agents, their wives, and their taxes. So you take care of number one."
"Agents have a fiduciary duty, Nick. The law says you've got to put your clients' best interests ahead of your commissions."
Nick laughed. "The law never represented a pro athlete."
Nick steered the Beemer into a high-end suburban community in far north Houston featuring tall brick walls and a waterfall on either side of the entrance, one of the many "gated golf-course communities" that had sprung up across the nation during the easy money years, places promising private country clubs and security guards patrolling the streets 24/7 and the new American Dream: a home in a neighborhood sealed off from the rest of America, like the Green Zone in Iraq. They drove down wide paved streets of brand-new ten-thousand-square-foot homes shaded by tall pine trees and sporting foreign cars in the circle drives; it wasn't River Oaks where the old money of Houston resided, but neither was it the Fifth Ward where no money resided. This was where the new money of Houston called home.
Nick wheeled the Beemer through the open gates of a country club with a big banner that read "Houston Classic." Nick stopped at a barricade manned by two rent-a-cops. He flashed his credentials like an FBI agent, and he got the same respect; the guards scrambled to remove the barricade. Nick accelerated across the parking lot and turned into a vacant space. The lot looked like a Cadillac showroom.
"Courtesy cars," Nick said. "Players fly into town on private jets, get a free Caddy for the week, free hotel, free food, free everything. Nice life, long as you can stay on tour. But there's always a younger hotshot wanting to take your place in the Caddy."
Or Ferrari.
They got out and walked toward the entrance gate.
"Back in the days of Arnie and Jack," Nick said, "celebrities sponsored pro golf tournaments. You had the Bob Hope, the Bing Crosby, the Frank Sinatra, the Andy Williams… then the tour went corporate. Now you've got the Mercedes-Benz, the Sony, the BMW, the Barclays, the Deutsche Bank, the Stanford St. Jude…"
He chuckled.
"Tour had to drop Stanford from the tournament name when the Feds indicted him for running a seven-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Allen Stanford, he lives here in Houston-actually, he's living in jail until his trial-he bought himself a knighthood on some Caribbean island, calls himself 'Sir Allen.' Guy went to college in Waco, now he thinks he's a fucking Knight of the Round Table. Can't you see him in federal prison, demanding the other inmates call him Sir Allen? Those bad boys gonna show him To Sir with Love. That was an old movie I saw on cable."
Nick again showed his credentials at the entrance gate, and they entered the tournament grounds. The world might be mired in the worst recession since the Great Depression and Texas in the worst drought in half a century-lakes were drying up, water was rationed and cost more than gasoline, the land was so parched and brittle that one cigarette tossed out of an automobile could torch the entire state-but the recession had apparently exempted pro golf and the drought this golf course. It looked like an oasis in the Texas desert with tall pine trees lining lush green fairways and a blue lake sparkling in the distance. A plantation-style clubhouse that harkened back to the Old South stood off to one side and massive white tents to the other. A red blimp hovered overhead in the blue sky, colorful neon signs adorned the tents, loud cheers erupted every few minutes, and the air smelled of popcorn and cotton candy, all of which gave the place a circus-like atmosphere. Nick abruptly stopped and spread his arms, his face that of a kid who had just spotted the clowns.
"What do you see, Scott?"
Scott glanced around. "Golfers, caddies, fans…"
Nick was shaking his head. "You see WM squared."
"WM squared? What's that?"
"W-M-W-M. W hite m en w ith m oney. Affluent middle-aged white men, thirty-five to sixty-five, the target demographic for sports advertising. That's where your sports dollars are today, Scott, and that means pro golf. No other sport can offer advertisers WM squared. I made that up myself."