Thank God they weren’t lugging their own clubs.
Speaking of clubs, C.C. had asked the pro at his country club to outfit him with the most expensive clubs the store carried. He dropped a load of money on Pings in hopes Floyd Moye would notice. If he had noticed, he hadn’t mentioned it…yet. C.C. made a point to swing with great flourish and flash the Ping markings whenever he could.
Somehow, though, C.C. managed to keep up with Floyd Moye, the two walking side by side, casually crushing beneath cleated soles the prized Bermuda grass that was somebody’s life’s work.
C.C. noticed little of his surroundings. Not the grass, the heat, the botanical beauty around them, not even his shrieking calf muscles. He just kept walking, listening, enthralled as Eugene laid it all out for him, describing the inner workings of the State party machinery and how it would all play out. C.C. was mesmerized.
The rest was all details as far as C.C. was concerned. He’d been to the mountaintop and he could see the Promised Land.
With each approaching tee, Eugene spun a gubernatorial web around C.C. He touched on power bases here, weaknesses of possible opponents there, and solutions as to how the party could work it all to their advantage.
“We want a winner. Come next January,” Eugene said, just before teeing off at the eighteenth hole, “Governor Carter will run the State Capitol. What do you think about that?”
C.C.’s hand was burning not to whip out his flask and have a congratulatory shot of bourbon. It seemed wrong not to.
“I…I’m ecstatic,” he finally managed to say.
After the eighteenth hole, the two headed back to the clubhouse.
“Let’s have a drink and celebrate, Judge. What’ll you have? Another Maker’s Mark?”
“You know it, and the drinks are on me.”
It was the least he could do. All that walking and talking, Eugene laying it all out for him, and the man had never once asked a thing in return.
“Don’t be silly, you’re my guest. Lewis!” He waved at the waiter.
A real class act, Floyd Moye Eugene. Peculiar, but classy.
“My associate here will have another Maker’s, two rocks,” Eugene told Lewis, and C.C. glowed.
“I’ll have ice water with lime, Lewis.”
“I thought we were celebrating,” C.C. protested, dismayed at Eugene’s teetotaling.
“We are. You go ahead and enjoy your drink, and I’ll enjoy my ice water.”
C.C., who didn’t have to be asked twice, knocked back another drink, and then one more, as Eugene drank water and added up a majority of Georgia counties they could count on.
“I have to say, you’ve got me feeling mighty optimistic, Floyd,” C.C. said as they walked to his car.
“Good, good. You should.”
The valet already had the Caddy waiting, with the AC and radio on high for him. It had been tuned to an Allman Brothers CD, as C.C. recalled, upon his arrival. Not anymore.
Now Motown was on the radio. Diana Ross belting out “I’m Comin’ Up.”
It was a sign. The stars were aligned.
He got behind the wheel and reached for the electric adjuster to move the seat back. It’d be one hell of a joy ride back.
Eugene stood between the car door and the seat, still talking.
“Thanks again, Floyd Moye, for golf, the drinks, the fine conversation, and-”
“One last thing, Judge.” C.C. looked up, and Floyd Eugene’s expression gave him pause.
A tiny bit of the effusive warmth seemed to have dribbled away.
“Anything, Floyd Moye.”
“Before we begin working the campaign seriously, there’s one matter I need cleared up. It ought to be routine for a man of your standing.”
“Sure, Floyd.”
Routine…Eugene probably wanted a spot in the new regime. Completely understandable.
“What can I do for you?”
“I have a friend, a very dear friend indeed, who has a concern about the legality of a conviction of a young man, a talented man by the name of Cruise.”
“Oh…?”
“We both think, my friend and I, that there is a very strong possibility this young man was wrongly convicted. We certainly wouldn’t want that type of thing clouding your candidacy.”
“Oh, no, Floyd, absolutely not,” C.C. was quick to agree. “Not at this, let me say, critical juncture.”
“Exactly. The poor soul is facing death row on something to do with some hookers in Atlanta a couple years back. It’s a real mess. Anyone could have committed the crime-God only knows who those women had been with. You know they’ll do anything for a hit of crack.”
“Don’t I know it,” C.C. murmured, briefly glancing away from Floyd and toward his steering wheel, then caught himself. “Not that I know anything about hookers personally…but my work…You know, I’ve read about it…”
“No, no, of course you wouldn’t. Anyway, Judge, it’s just terrible…and just a hell of a mess for an innocent young man to be trapped like that. Don’t you think so?”
“I surely do.”
“A reversal should do the trick.” C.C. sat there like a lump, not getting it.
Did he say reversal?
Eugene went on. “Justice can be so blind. Thank God there are men like you, C.C., to rise up and do the right thing.”
Mistaking his lack of grasp on the situation for squeamishness, Floyd Moye forged ahead. “It was all a damn setup…Some angry as hell gal behind it all…One of those liberated female prosecutors had it in for him… You know what I mean, Judge.”
C.C. wasn’t sure that he did. He was trying to take it all in, but he just couldn’t. What the hell was Eugene talking about? Who had talent and was wrongfully convicted? Who got liberated?
“It was all a setup from the start,” Eugene went on. “She was probably just trying to advance her own career… You know the type…right, Judge?”
“Oh, yeah…I know the type all right… But I don’t get it. Where do I fit in?” C.C. asked at last, not wanting to appear stupid, but finally breaking down. He knew that whatever Eugene was talking about, the most C.C. had done was read about it over a cup of coffee.
“As I said, he goes free, and chances are, he’s innocent. He could go on and cure cancer, for all we know.”
“He’s a doctor?”
“A chef. He’s a chef, Judge.” Eugene was starting to look impatient. “That’s not the point. The point is, he needs to go live his life. Do some good in the world. He’s an innocent man.”
C.C. tried to digest it all…A chef that might have the cure for cancer?
Eugene leaned in, his arm resting on the top of the open door.
“After all, they were just hookers. Nobody’ll miss them. Now, isn’t that right, Judge? They were hookers, every last one of them, and the city’s better off without a used-up fleet of hookers. Am I right about that, Judge?”
Eugene was so close to C.C.’s face he could feel the heat of his body and smell the lime on his breath.
C.C. was still in the dark and couldn’t figure out quite what to say or exactly what it was that Floyd wanted him to do.
“Well, the city is a mess…That part is true, Floyd.”
Floyd continued on, his voice lowered. “I mean, if you look at it realistically, why waste the State’s money keeping him up on death row for ten…more like twenty years of appeals? It’s the taxpayers’ money. We’ve got to keep their best interests in mind, too. Especially come re-election time…right, Judge?”
All at once, it dawned on him.
C.C. went pale. It was all coming up…up his throat. He could taste Kentucky bourbon and the Monte Cristo sandwich he’d had back on the ninth hole at the back of his throat.
He couldn’t puke right here. Not in front of Floyd Moye Eugene. Not at Augusta National.