Clandestine

about, and what I learned. I described her body and our lovemaking. Then I went to bed and slept long into the afternoon.

2

'Getting laid, Freddy?'

Wacky and I were pulling into the parking lot at Rancho Park Municipal Golf Course very early the following Saturday morning. I was hungry for golf, not masculine banter, and Wacky's question felt like a knife in the side. I ignored it until Wacky cleared his throat and started to speak in verse:

'Whither thou, O pussy-hound, O tireless fiend for Venus Mounds, O noble cop, you'll never stop . . .'

I set the hand brake and stared at Wacky.

'You haven't answered my question,' he said.

I sighed: 'The answer is yes.'

'Great. What's it costing you?'

'Very little. I go to bars only as a last resort.' I hauled my clubs out of the backseat and motioned Wacky to follow me. As I slung my golf bag over my shoulder and locked the car, Wacky gave me one of his rare cold sober looks.

'That wasn't what I meant, Fred.'

'What did you mean, Wacky? I came here to hit golf balls, not write my sexual memoirs.'

Wacky clapped me on the back and waggled his eyebrows. 'Are you still planning on being chief of police someday?' he asked.

'Of course.'

'Then I hope you realize that the commission will never appoint a bachelor pussy-fiend as chief. You know that they're going to get to you, don't you?'

I sighed again, this time angrily. 'Exactly what are you talking about?'

'Price, Freddy. The dames are going to start to get to you. You're going to get tired of one-nighters and go loony romantic and start searching for some tomato you screwed back in '48. The woman, who'll never be able to compete with the thrill of one-nighters. You'll be screwed both ways. You make me damn glad I'm not big and handsome and charming. You make me damn glad I'm just a poet and a cop.'

'And a drunk.' I regretted saying it immediately and fished around for something to make it right.

Wacky preempted me: 'Yeah, and a drunk.'

'Then you watch the price, Wack. When I'm chief of police and you're my chief of detectives I don't want you croaking of cirrhosis of the liver.'

'I'll never make it, Fred.'

'You'll make it.'

'Shit. Haven't you heard the rumors? Captain Larson is retiring in June. Beckworth is going to be the new top dog at Wilshire, and I'm going to Seventy-seventh Street—Niggerland, U.S.A. And you, Beckworth's golf avatar and fair-haired boy, are going to Vice, a nice assignment for a cunt-hound. I have this on very good authority, Freddy.'

I couldn't meet Wacky's eyes. I had heard the rumors, and credited them. I started thinking of stratagems I could use to keep Beckworth from transferring Wacky, then suddenly realized I was supposed to meet Beckworth at seven o'clock that morning at Fox Hills for a lesson. I dropped my bag to the ground in disgust. 'Wacky?' I said.

'Yes, Fred?'

'Sometimes you make me wish that I were the drunk and the fuck-up in this partnership.'

'Will you elaborate on that?'

'No.'

*     *     *

The driving range was deserted. Wacky and I dug our stash of shag balls out of their hiding place in a hollowed-out tree trunk and settled in to practice. Wacky warmed up by chugalugging a half pint of bourbon, while I did deep knee bends and jumping jacks. I started out hitting 7 irons—one seventy with a slight fade. Not good. I shifted my stance, corrected the fade and gained an additional ten yards in the process. I was working toward my optimum when Wacky grabbed my elbow and hissed at me: 'Freddy, psst, Freddy!'

I slammed the head of my club into the dirt at my feet and pulled loose from Wacky. 'What the fuck is wrong now?'

Wacky pointed to a man and woman arguing nearby on the putting green. The man was tall and fat, with a stomach like an avocado. He had wild reddish-brown hair and a nose as long as my arm. There was an appealing ethnic roguishness to him, broad laughter lines around his mouth, his whole face spelling out fifty-five years of good-natured conniving. The woman was about thirty, and obese—probably close to two-seventy-five. She bore the man's long nose and reddish hair, then did him one better by sporting a distinct downy mustache. I groaned. Wacky was only nominally interested in women, and fat ones were the only kind that aroused him. He pulled a fresh half pint from his back pocket and took a long pull, then pointed to the couple and said, 'Do you know who that is, Freddy?'

'Yeah. It's a fat woman.'

'Not the tomato, Freddy. The old guy. It's Big Sid Weinberg. He's the guy who produced Bride of the Sea Monster, remember? We saw it at the Westlake. You went bananas for that blond with the big tits?'

'Yeah. And?'

'And I'm gonna get his autograph, then I'm gonna sell him 'Constituency of the Dead' for his next picture.'

I groaned again. Wacky was a horror-movie fanatic, and 'Constituency of the Dead' was his attempt to capture Hollywood's monster madness in prose. In his poem, there was a world of the dead, existing concurrent with the real world, but invisible to us. The inhabitants of this world were all wonder addicts, because they had all been murdered. I considered it one of his poorer efforts.

Wacky waggled his eyebrows at me. 'One thing, partner,' he said, 'one thing I promise.'

'What's that?'

'When I'm a big-time Hollywood screenwriter I'll never highhat you.'

I laughed: 'Watch out, Wack. Hollywood producers are notorious shit-heels. Go for the daughter instead. Maybe you can marry into the family.' Wacky laughed, and trotted away, while I returned to the blessed solitude of golf.

I was at it for over an hour, savoring the mystical union that takes place when you know that you're a gifted practitioner of something much greater than yourself. I was crunching three-hundred-yard drives with fluid regularity when I gradually became aware of eyes boring into my back. I stopped in mid-swing and turned around to face my intruder. It was Big Sid Weinberg. He was lumbering toward me almost feverishly, right hand extended. Taken aback, I extended mine reflexively, and we exchanged names in a mutual bone-crusher. 'Sid Weinberg,' he said.

'Fred Underhill,' I said.

Still grasping my hand, Weinberg eyed me up and down like a choice piece of meat. 'You're a six, but you can't putt, right?'

'Wrong.'

'Okay, you're a four, and you can hit the shit out of the ball, but your short game stinks. Right?'

'Wrong.'

Weinberg dropped my hand. 'So you're—'

I interrupted: 'I'm a hard scratch, I can drive three hundred yards, I've got a demon short game, I can putt better than Ben Hogan and I'm handsome, charming, and intelligent. What do you want, Mr. Weinberg?'