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in there and it looks as though you re tied up securely, but you get loose
and
Keller was shaking his head.
Okay, this is better yet, Taggert said. I go over to see him, I make up
some story, doesn t matter what. And you re in the trunk.
I m in the trunk?
The trunk of my car. I park the car, Mr. Wheeler and I go in the house, and
when the time s right you open the trunk
From the inside?
They got a way to do that now, to save kidnap victims. Or small children who
crawl in car trunks when they can t find an abandoned refrigerator to play in.
So that s what you do, you pop out of the trunk and go to work.
Mowing the lawn?
You do what you came to do. They ll be off guard, all you got to worry about
is the dogs.
Those Rhodesian ridgebacks.
I grant you they re vicious, Taggert said, but do you think they re gonna
bother with a parked car?
They might take an interest, Dot said, what with everybody else standing
there with guns in their hands, waiting for the trunk to open. You re driving
and he s in the trunk? I don t think so.
You don t trust me, Taggert said. He sounded hurt.
I don t even trust you to drive, she said. How are you going to work the
gas pedal with that leg?
I could use my other foot.
And the brake?
Same thing. I mean, it s not as if I d have a clutch pedal to contend with.
The Cadillac s got automatic transmission.
You re kidding. What ll they think of next?
Keller said, I like cutting the power line. It seems to me you don t run an
auxiliary generator all the time, you just switch it on when the lights go
out. So you do it in the daytime, and the only thing that goes out is the
fence.
And the TV, Dot said, and the air conditioner, and everything else with a
plug and a switch.
Still, it s better than at night.
Then what you want is a rainy day, Taggert said. So you ll have a decent
shot of finding him at home. Day like today, Mr. Wheeler s gonna be playing
golf. What? Did I say something?
Benjamin Wheeler belonged to three country clubs, and when he played a round
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of golf the drill was always the same. Two of his aides would accompany him,
while the other two remained at the house. One man, the driver, would stay
with the car; the other, more of an all-purpose bodyguard, would walk to the
first tee with Wheeler, then wait at the clubhouse while Wheeler and his
playmates buzzed around in their golf carts for eighteen holes.
Rose Hill, according to Taggert, was Wheeler s most likely choice, so that was
the first place Dot called. Posing as the secretary of one of Wheeler s fellow
golfers, she said she wanted to confirm the foursome s tee time. It was
scheduled for 11:15, said a young woman with a snooty English accent, and
would there be four? Because she had Mr. Wheeler down as a party of three.
Yes, three, Dot said. That s quite right, because Mr. Podston won t be able
to make it after all.
She hung up and Keller said, Mr. Podston?
What I almost said, she said, was Pond Scum. Podston was the best I could
do. Eleven-fifteen, that s when they re teeing off, so there s not a lot of
time to waste.
You had to pass a gate attendant and assorted other functionaries at the
entrance to Rose Hill Country Club, and then a valet would turn up to park
your car. Keller drove right past the entrance and followed the map from the
club s website. Dot had printed out a copy, and he studied it again and
decided the best bet was the seventh hole, a 465-yard par four with a dogleg
to the left and woods on the right. A slice would put Wheeler in the woods,
and that was where Keller decided to wait for him.
And there was a place forty or fifty yards from the fairway where he could
park. He had a feeling it wasn t entirely legal to park there, but any cop who
felt compelled to do something about a nice big Cadillac with Oregon plates
parked where it wasn t in anybody s way, well, the worst result would be a
ticket, not a tow.
The only problem was that the parking spot was on the wrong side of the
fairway. To get to the woods you had to cross the fairway, easy enough for
Keller, but not so easy for a man with a broken leg. Keller could put an arm
around Taggert and take most of his weight, but what would the two of them
look like to anybody playing the hole? And you couldn t just wait until a
foursome played through, not with the amount of time it would take to get
Taggert across the fairway; by the time they were halfway across, the next
group of golfers would be at the tee.
One man trotting across a fairway, that was nothing remarkable. Two men, one
unable to walk, the other struggling to assist him even someone as
singleminded as a golfer would zoom over on his cart to see what was wrong,
and what he could do to help.
And could Taggert make it across, even with support? His entire lower leg,
including the knee joint, was swollen and inflamed. They d removed his shoe
earlier, when Taggert complained that his foot had grown too large for it, and
now it was larger still, twice the size of the other one.
No, the man couldn t go anywhere.
You re going to have to wait here, Keller told him. In the trunk.
The trunk!
It won t be that uncomfortable, and you won t be in there that long. As soon
as my work s done, I ll run you to a hospital and you can get that taken care
of.
But what if
If I don t come back?
I didn t want to say that.
Well, it s possible. But there s a latch, remember? You re the one who told
me about it. For kids playing refrigerator.
How am I supposed to reach it with my hands tied behind my back?
That s a point, Keller conceded, and clipped the wire on Taggert s wrists.
It still was no easy matter getting him into the trunk, and throughout it
Taggert reeled off a litany of complaints his leg was killing him, he could
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barely move his fingers, his shoulders felt dislocated, di dah di dah di dah.
It won t be long, Keller said. He put the shotgun on the floor of the trunk,
near Taggert s swollen foot, and checked to make sure that the revolver was
fully loaded.
You re leaving me the gun?
The shotgun? I don t want to carry it around on the golf course. Too easy for
somebody to spot it.
So you re leaving it with me?
Although I suppose they d just mistake it for a four wood. But it s bulky, I
don t want to carry it.
There was a car coming. Keller turned so his face wouldn t show, waited for
the car to pass. Meanwhile, Taggert said he was glad Keller trusted him enough
to leave the shotgun with him.
It s not exactly a matter of trust, Keller said.
40
When four golfers played a round together, you called it a foursome. Benjamin
Wheeler was grouped with two other men, so it stood to reason that you d call
them a threesome, but you couldn t use that word nowadays without imagining
all three of them in bed, twisted into some unlikely position. Keller figured
there ought to be a way around it, but he wasn t sure what it might be. A
trio? Maybe.
He stood in the woods halfway up the fairway of the seventh hole. He d left
his jacket in the car, and was dressed in a pair of dark slacks and a polo [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
