Indulgence in Death (In Death #31)(75)

“Walk and talk,” he interrupted. “I’ve put myself in the mood for that pizza now.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” She grabbed the bag, shut down her computer. “You’ve never played golf with them before?”

“And never will again,” he vowed as they started out. “Though we did end up beating them by three strokes, which didn’t put either of them in a cheery mood. Masked it well enough,” he added and with resignation squeezed into an elevator with Eve and a dozen cops.

“They don’t like to lose.”

“I’d say winning is a kind of religion for them. They cheat.”

“Seriously?” She narrowed her eyes. “Not surprising really. You mean they work together—team cheating?”

“They do. I can’t say how they compete with each other, one-on-one, but with others, they have a system.”

The elevator doors opened. Two cops crowbarred out, three more muscled in. Summer sweat clogged the air like cooking oil.

“How do you cheat at golf?”

One of the cops, obviously a golfer, snorted. “Sister, it ain’t that tough.”

She spared a glance over her shoulder. “Lieutenant Sister.”

“Sir.”

“They use signals, code words.”

Roarke got a wise nod from the uniform. “Bribe a caddy, he’ll maybe shave a couple strokes off. I played a guy who carried balls in his pocket. Dropped them down his pants legs. Asshole.”

“They were a bit more high-tech.” Roarke spoke directly to the uniform now. “They used doctored balls programmed to pocket directional devices.”

“Fuckers. A man who’ll cheat at golf will scam his own mother outta the rent money.”

“At the least,” Roarke agreed, amused enough to tolerate the rest of the ride down to the garage.

“They know the course,” he continued as they walked to her car. “Have obviously mapped out each hole, programmed various lies. They signal each other as they study their positions, the angles and so on. One takes his turn; the other engages the device. They’re smooth about it. I’ll drive since you have a headache.”

“I don’t have a headache. Exactly.” When he cocked his brow at her, she dropped into the passenger seat. “I have an eye ache. That’s different.”

He walked around the hood, slid behind the wheel. “They’re careful not to play so well it causes undo attention. Solid players, is what they come off as. And having a very good game today, a few strokes under their handicap. Until the tenth hole.”

“I don’t know what that means and don’t want to.”

“Neither do I, particularly.”

“Successful businesspeople are supposed to like golf. It’s some sort of rule.”

“Well, by your rules I’m an abysmal failure.” He said it cheerfully, with a definite tenor of pride. “In any case, we started closing the gap on the tenth.”

“How did you beat them?”

“David’s a superior player, and you can say I got into the spirit of the thing, put myself into it more.”

“They were cheating. It takes more than having a good game to beat a cheat.”

“They’re not the only ones who know how to manipulate a game. I screwed up their devices with one of my own. Every time they used one, they sliced or hooked.”

“What, like a fish?”

“I adore you. I do.” Unable to resist, he leaned over and kissed her cheek. Noisily. “You make me feel like a duffer.”

“Okay. If you want.”

“Actually, not at all.” He streamed through traffic. “I’d send their ball far right or left, into a trap or the rough, which added strokes or points to their scores. In golf you want the lowest.”

“I know that much.”

“In any case, by the thirteenth hole, bad luck for them, we were even, and they couldn’t risk using the devices. So we played it straight.”

“Really?”

He turned his head to smile at her. “I was tempted to add an edge, just to rub their faces in it. But I had brought David in for the entertainment, and he got more pleasure out of beating them without it.” He paused a moment, nipped through an intersection. “And the truth of it, so did I.”

“How’d they react to losing?”

“Oh, they were well and truly pissed, masked under hearty laughter and gracious congratulations. Even bought us a round at the nineteenth hole. Dudley’s hands shook, and that was rage. He had to keep them in his pockets until he’d controlled it. And I believe he controlled it with whatever he snorted or swallowed on a trip to the loo.”

“Yeah, I’m betting he snorts, swallows, or smokes a lot. But I meant losing to you in particular.”

Nothing got by his cop, he thought. “I’d say they’ve gone from disdain to loathing, which is also satisfying. If I were the sensitive type, I’d have scraped off their loathing with a putty knife, as it was thick and sticky, but the fact is I enjoyed it quite a lot.”

“That’s because by drinking on their dime and joining their hearty laughter you were actually giving them the finger.”

“And with a modest, just-had-a-run-of-luck smile.”