Chapter Two: A Bad Day For Golf

I had learned about the Honorable P. William Gourd’s nine am Saturday morning golfing habit from an article about him on the Internet. The whole world was becoming an open book. You could read a blog from a rice farmer in northeast China about his battle with acne, if you wanted.

Today was the third time I had driven all the way down the California road map from Sonoma County, where I lived, to Oakland, where he did, trying to get the asshole kidnapped so I could, I guess, sort of, kill him. It was about an hour and a half journey.

I’d park my trusty old 1986 Nissan truck at the Oakland airport, take the airport shuttle to the Bart train station, ride it to the Rockridge exit, and hike to the Claremont Country Club. There was no way to trace my movements. No cabs, phone calls, nothing. I was a clever little boy. I had thought this all out. More or less. Over a six pack one night, actually.

I’d even bought some golfing togs to blend in at the golf course while I lurked around waiting for Gourd’s black Cadillac to show up. A white polo shirt with a tiny alligator over the pocket. Tan slacks. A visor with Arnold Palmer written on the band over the bill. White shoes, even. Only the pistol in the leg holster was not standard golf tog attire. To my knowledge.

It was a beautiful course, no doubt about it. Too beautiful. It was the kind of cathedral type joint where they’d send in the marines if you forgot to rake the sand trap properly after you’d flogged your ball out of it.

But as soon as Gourd would show up, so would two or three other morons who would park right next to him. By the time I got back home, a whole day had been wasted and I was in a crappy mood. It was the unglamorous side of being a bad guy.

Today, finally, he parked off by himself and nobody was around.

I extracted my pistol and walked over to his car while he climbed laboriously out of it. He had to grab the top of the door frame to help lift himself up from the driver’s seat.

He closed the door and turned around. He had not seen me come up behind him and was startled to find me suddenly there in his way. Perhaps the pistol pointing at his nose contributed to his surprise.

Perhaps not. He recovered his poise and said, “What do you have there, son. Is that a toy gun?”

He thought this was a prank. He was smiling with an old man’s benign world weariness. His gray hair was thinned out to strands, combed ridiculously from one ear to the other. His red-hued face was round and puffy with hanging jowls that flopped around when he moved his head. His nose was a swollen blob. His eyes were watery and a deadened gray.

“This ain’t no toy old man,” I said.

He thought that was funny and laughed at me. Shit. What did I have to do? Blow his ear off to convince him?

I punched him with the jargon. “This a Kel-Tec P-32 semi-automatic with a seven round magazine. It’ll make permanent holes in your head quick as a blink.”

His face sobered up immediately, going from mirth to concern to confusion.

“What’s this all about?”

“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

He looked around for help. There was none. He tried bluster.

“What if I say no? Go to hell. You must be crazy to think you can shoot me here.”

“Like I said, this is a quiet gun. Nobody will hear a thing. I won’t get what I want, but you’ll be dead on the asphalt.”

“You didn’t say it was quiet.”

“I didn’t?”

“No.”

“Okay. It is. Now turn around.”

He saw a ray of hope. That I wanted something other than just killing him. He couldn’t resist giving me a disdainful look, but he turned around anyway and put his hands behind his back.

I took the car keys he was still holding and cuffed his hands together with some three dollar handcuffs I’d bought at Toys R Us. He had a cell phone hooked on his belt and I took that, too. Then I marched him around to the back of the car and opened the trunk.

“Get in,” I said. “Face down.”

“I can’t. My hands are tied.”

“They’re cuffed.”

I put my hand on his back and shoved him in. It knocked his face on the floor and he whimpered, slobbering the carpet fibers with DNA drool.

His top half was in, but his belly was on the bumper and his legs were dangling out. Too much lobster for lunch. I put the gun in my pocket and wrestled him inside. He didn’t fit lengthwise and I had to curl him on his side. I pulled a strip of duct tape off my wrist, where I’d stored it earlier, and pasted it over his mouth.

I gave him a warning. “You make any noise, and I’ll douse you with gasoline and toss in a match.”

Another lie. They were all over the place once you started telling them. I didn’t have a match. All I had was a lighter. There’s no way I would waste a lighter on him. I didn’t have any gas, either. Except in my intestines. But that was for humor, not fires. My kind of humor, anyway. Some people didn’t see any humor in intestine gas. Just the opposite. I could never figure out why.

I slammed the trunk closed, got in the Caddie, and drove out of the parking lot. No one had noticed a thing. The weakest part of my plot had succeeded. The rest would be easy.

Nice car. It felt like floating a boat across a calm lake. Automatic everything. Lush interior. A half empty bottle of Perrier in the coffee cup holder. Vacuum streaks on the seats. No dust on the windshield. Glove compartment with a car manual, a registration certificate, and a wallet. What a laugh. He’d purposefully left his wallet behind so he could stiff somebody for drinks at the nineteenth hole. Typical rich guy trick.

And the car manual. Give me a break. Gourd wouldn’t even open the hood and look at the engine without a 911 call. He was definitely a peek over the mechanic’s shoulder type of guy. If that.

The ash tray was in pristine condition. I couldn’t help myself. A feeling of naughty little brat invaded me and I lit a cigarette so it would stink up the upholstery and I could grind it out in the ashtray when I was done. I couldn’t leave the butt there, of course. They’d do forensic work on it. All they’d know was a smoker had done it. That was safe, wasn’t it? Was there a database of known smokers out there hidden in an FBI basement? The FBI sure must have some huge basements. Someday a whole state would collapse because a basement got too big and the roof fell in.

I got on the freeway and drove north up Interstate 80, past Berkeley and Richmond and the light years of culture that separated these two cities, the ivory tower and the mean streets, side by side.

It was always that way in cities. They never gradually went from one level of status down to the next and on out to the bottom status. It didn’t work. The high status had to steal from the low status and the low status had to steal back from the high status. They needed to be neighbors or nothing would work. You had to be able to view the other side to point out sarcastic value judgments.

It was Saturday morning and the traffic was light. All the weekend vacationers had left on Friday night and the commuters were recovering from hangovers. I threw the big baby into Cruise Control and set it for the speed limit.

Past Richmond and on up across the Carquinez Bridge through Vacaville and east to Sacramento and then the long climb up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Donner Pass, before descending into Reno.

East of Reno, I filled up the gas tank and took Highway 447 north to my destination, deep in the middle of total desert nowhere.

To be continued . . .