Mysteries Unlimited Ltd.
(The May Day Massacre)
A Novel
By
Donald P. Ladew
Mysteries Unlimited Ltd.
Copyright © 2011 Donald P. Ladew
All rights reserved. No part of this book
May be reproduced or transmitted in any
Form or by any means without written
Permission of the author.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0318-2
| This book is dedicated to John & Carol Robbins whose help I will not forget |
Chapter 1
The Pebble Beach Golf Club, known to cognoscenti all over the world as, “The Pebble”, lies south of San Francisco on the best part of the Monterey Peninsula. Like other difficult courses, it has been called more colorful names over the years.
Golfers come to play for a variety of reasons, the chief one being that they can then say, with un-warranted assurance, things like: “when I played ‘Pebble’ the weather was foul”, the implication being they have played the course in all kinds of weather, which is, of course, so much chicken dirt. Most people play the course once, after which they go back to their country clubs where the fairways are as wide as an airport, the greens flat, and the sand bunkers as tame as Santa Monica Beach.
Others, less interested in golf snobbery, might say: “Well, what the hell, it’s a nice course, but four hundred and fifty bucks a pop is grand theft sport.”
Such comments are usually accompanied by uncomplimentary ethnic slurs against the Japanese owners—Americans now, I’ve been told. About damned time. Most people wouldn’t care, or want to know that the Japanese own most of our hotels and golf courses.
But, when our Asian business partners start screwing with such hallowed institutions as the Pebble Beach Country Club, they go way beyond freedom and decency and deserve every low comment over-charged aficionados can imagine.
On this particular day, five men in rainbow-hued golf shirts with emblems of insects and exotic animals on the pockets sat on the terrace of the Pebble Beach Golf Hotel enjoying the view across the eighteenth green to the Pacific Ocean beyond. It is a spectacular view worth seeing whether one plays golf or not.
They finished their round an hour earlier, and though humbled in body and spirit, had sufficient energy to enjoy what golfers call the nineteenth hole⎯booze and snacks.
One of the men, sunburned face peeling, and whose stomach protruded beyond his belt like a misplaced boulder, was still bitching about the cost. The fact that he could have played twice a day for the rest of his natural life, didn’t matter.
“It’s crap, Harrison! Four hundred and fifty dollars; goddamned highway robbery. Damn Nips have gone too far.”
His hard Texas twang crackled through the evening air causing the après golf crowd to turn and stare nervously. The fact was, he only said what others were thinking but hadn’t the cojones or bad manners to say aloud.
“Sheeit, for this much money we shoulda had fourteen-year old blonde virgins for caddies, or maybe the golf carts shoulda been Rolls Royce’s.”
Harrison Culhane stared at the Texan with disgust. Culhane was a lean man with advanced male-pattern baldness, who looked a lot like ex-President Bush with a mustache,
“You’re just pissed because you lost a hundred and twenty bucks and put three balls in the ocean on the eighteenth, George,” Harrison snickered meanly.
George’s reply was short and to the point, each word separately articulated.
“Screw you, Harrison. The way you were chunking balls in there I figured you owned the retrieval concession.”
George drank an inch of his Wild Turkey and went off into one of his oblique stories.
“I met one of those guys who go around collecting balls from ponds a while back. He uses a powerful lamp and one of those snorkel things. Man traveled to golf courses all over California, said he made a pretty good living selling them back to the courses. Guy told me he found two dead Hispanics in a lake down in Palm Springs one morning, stiffer’n a mackerel.
“Poor bastard, scared him half to death; said he had to give it up. Whoever zapped them couldn’t have been a golfer or he’d have known they’d be found.”
Arthur Patterson, a tough, watchful man in his late forties, ran his hands through brush cut graying hair and ordered another drink from a passing waiter.
“How the hell do you putt, George? I know damn well you can’t see the ball past that dead whale in your gut.”
The fourth man didn’t join the bickering. He was tall, excessively neat, wore expensive gold-rimmed glasses, and was given to pursing his thin lips. When he spoke the other three shut up.
“That’s enough,” Elleston said, “Keep it down. This isn’t golf, this is business.”
“When does the Nip arrive,” George asked, his voice a little lower.
“George, you’re supposed to be a politician. Haven’t you learned, ethnic slurs are counter productive? You let one slip out at the wrong time and your political career is history, then you won’t be of any use to this group, and I wouldn’t like that at all.”
He paused; making sure George understood his meaning clearly.
“We are meeting with a Japanese business man in a half hour. He’s bringing us ninety million dollars. We are the dry cleaner. And like all dry cleaners we will take his dirty laundry and loose it. Then we will make restitution in nice clean dollars. We, very sensibly will keep his dirty laundry which will magically become minty fresh.”
He smiled at his little witticism. The others did not laugh but they were keenly interested.
“He gets ninety million and we get ninety million. Pay attention gentlemen. That’s ninety million the IRS doesn’t know about, your wives don’t know about; what the government calls discretionary funds. Do you understand?”
Their responses covered the full range of avarice and greed.
“The bank, your bank,” he looked at each man in turn, “is going to have a health problem. It will become ill, then, with the help of the depositors and certain insurance companies, it will get well. For this to occur a great many things must happen at exactly the right time and in exactly the right place.”
The man with the gold-rimmed glasses poured what was left of a bottle of designer water into his glass. He drank from the glass carefully,
