Otto incinerated a battalion of worms and ravished a bunch of bugs before finishing the first hole. In fact, when he landed in the trap on the right side he had his worst moment. Sidney Blackpool and Archie Rosenkrantz both dumped their third shots into the trap on the left, making it three on the beach and everyone moaning.
Archie blasted his out nicely and it landed twenty-five feet past the pin while Otto stared at his own sand shot and felt his sphincter tighten.
“Nice out,” Otto said enviously.
Sidney Blackpool took a bit too much sand but got away with it and his ball landed on the green and took a good roll thirty feet short of the flag. Otto felt his sphincter get tighter.
“Nice out,” Otto said enviously.
Then it was his turn. Otto lowered that wedge until it just brushed the sand two inches behind that ball and tried to ignore Renfield’s demented cackle.
Otto made a solemn vow that he was going to let his entire body relax no matter what happened to the sand shot. And he succeeded. He let his entire body go utterly limp and loose. He was sooo slow. He was sooo loose that he farted.
“Nice out,” Archie Rosenkrantz said enviously.
All in all it wasn’t a bad day. Otto started to get better after checking in with a slick seven on the four-par third hole.
After five holes Archie said, “You got a full house, Otto: three nines and a pair a sevens.”
On the four-par number six Otto actually sank his second putt for a bogey five. “Fever!” Otto cried. “Gimme a fever!”
“Five for Otto!” Archie said, writing his score on the steering-wheel card holder. “Now you’re cooking, kiddo. You finally stopped looking like Gary Gilmore with a target pinned to his shirt.”
“I got a five,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“No blood,” Archie said. “We tied on that one.”
“Otto, let’s give you the honors.”
Otto Stringer was so stoked from his bogey that he let it fly, but got under the ball. It was a 200-yard tee shot. Straight up.
“Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” Otto wanted to know.
“Fair catch,” Archie Rosenkrantz said. “No run back on that one.”
By the time they reached the sixteenth hole, Otto had transferred his clubs onto the golf cart driven by Archie Rosenkrantz. Archie had told them that he was the father of two psychiatrists and Otto figured he might be able to help his golf swing.
“See, Archie,” Otto said while they waited for a twosome who were lost in the eucalyptus trees. “It’s like I got no muscle memory. My golfing muscles’re forty years old and they already got Alzheimer’s disease.”
“It’s the muscle in your head’s the problem, Otto,” Archie said, lighting a fresh Havana since the old one looked like spinach. “The toughest six inches in golf is between your ears, right? You take it too serious. I wanna see you loosey goosey up there on the eighteenth tee.”
“It could be my basal ganglia,” Otto offered. “That’s what allows you to ride a bike or swing a golf club without thinking.”
“L.T.F.F., Otto.”
The eighteenth was a beauty, 522 yards looking right at the new clubhouse, which was framed by San Jacinto Peak. The fairway was lined by trees: pepper, palm, pine, willow, olive and rows of eucalyptus. There was flowing oleander on the right, which made Otto tense. He didn’t want to fade into the bushes.
“I slice into that stuff I may as well eat some and die,” Otto said to Archie.
“Now you ain’t gonna slice, Otto,” Archie said soothingly. “Straight back and through and easy.”
“And look at all that eucalyptus!” Otto said. “Enough to feed every koala in Australia.”
“Now stop those negative thoughts, Otto,” Archie said, while Sidney Blackpool sat with his feet up on the empty seat in his golf cart, looking at a smear of sunlight on the side of the mountain.
“I sure wanna finish strong,” Otto said. “But what if I duck hook like I did on number three? Sometimes I lose my banana slice and find a duck hook. I might duck hook right into that house on the left.”
Then Otto looked curiously at the fenced property beside the fairway. It was totally enclosed, with security lights all the way around. There was a sign on one gate that said: “Never mind the dog. Beware of the owner.” There was an American flag flying to indicate that the owner was in residence.
Otto made the mistake of asking who lived there, after which his golf swing was doomed.
Sidney Blackpool was startled when Otto ran to his golf cart and shook him by the shoulder.
“Sidney!” Otto cried. “Do you know who lives over there? Him! Him!”
“Whom? Whom?”
“The Boss!”
“Bruce Springsteen?”
“The boss of bosses!”
“Don Corleone?”
“The chairman of the board!”
“Armand Hammer or Lee Iacocca?”
“Don’t be stupid. Ol’ blue eyes himself!”
“Yeah?” Even Sidney Blackpool looked a bit impressed. “I thought his house might be a little more grand.”
“Whaddaya want? The guy’s from Hoboken.”
“Well, he’s not gonna ask us in,” Sidney Blackpool said. “So let’s tee er up and get to the nineteenth where we can all kick our golf anxiety.”
Archie Rosenkrantz, who was studying Otto’s now bulging eyeballs, whispered sadly, “Otto’s gonna kick anxiety about when Hugh Hefner kicks silk pajamas.”
Otto turned toward the house three times even before he stuck a tee in the ground. He could almost hear a voice singing, “ ‘Strangers in the niiiight!’ ”
“There ain’t nobody watching you!” Archie said nervously.
“Ol’ blue eyes don’t scare me!” Otto said courageously.
“Scoobie doobie doo, you putz!” Renfield said merrily.
Otto Stringer jerked the Top-Flite dead left. It caromed off Sidney Blackpool’s golf cart and ricocheted back into the shin of Archie Rosenkrantz who couldn’t duck as fast as the younger men.
“Oh, my God!” Otto wailed. “I’m as useless as Ronald Reagan’s right ear!”
Archie Rosenkrantz limped it off for a moment before saying, “Tell you what, Otto. Let’s go to the bar and shmooz. I ain’t never been much for blood sports.”
After they changed shoes, Otto headed back to the lobby to check the membership roster for celebrities. When he found Archie and Sidney Blackpool in the bar, he said, “Does Gregory Peck come here?”
“Naw,” Archie said. “He might’ve when the club was new. No more.”
“Saw the chairman’s name,” Otto said.
“He don’t play golf,” said Archie. “Maybe eats in the dining room once in a while. I think he got mad cause someone told him not to bring Spiro Agnew around no more.”
“So who else you got here?” Otto asked. “Lots a people whose names begin with R-O-S-E-N and G-O-L-D,” Archie said. “Let’s get you a drink.”
They put away the first cocktail before the bartender had time to ring up the check for Archie to sign. “Hey, kid,” he said to the bartender, “only one ice cube. Whaddaya think this is, a club for the goyim? You wanna work Thunderbird or Eldorado maybe?”
The bartender grinned and dumped two ice cubes, pouring more bourbon.
“Less ice than this scuttled the Titanic,” said Archie.
“This a Jewish club?” Otto asked.
“Whaddaya think, kid?” said Archie. “Do I look like Henry Cabot Lodge? This club was built by Jews when they wouldn’t let em in Thunderbird. I heard they even turned down Jack Benny. Nowadays they might keep a few Jews but they ain’t allowed to drop kippers on the greens and they gotta tie building blocks to their foreskins till they stretch. Gotta drop their drawers before they even get on the driving range, I hear.”
“I thought if you just had enough dough, you were like the big monkey, go anywhere you want.”
“You got a lot to learn, kid. Where do you guys belong anyway?”
“Well, we don’t actually belong to a club exactly.”
“We’re cops from L.A.P.D.,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“Yeah?” Archie said. “I played a few games with two a your deputy chiefs one time. Over at Hillcrest.”