Farris yelled, then immediately looked around to make sure no one had heard him. Lowering his voice he said, ‘You won by one friggin’ stroke and I still think you moved your ball on the tenth hole.’
‘Pure bullshit,’ Mahoney said. ‘Now get your skinny butt up there and tee off.’
Jesus, DeMarco was thinking. And these guys actually run the damn country.
Farris’s drive found the left side of the fairway two hundred and forty yards from the tee. Mahoney’s tee shot was slightly longer, also ending up on the left edge of the fairway. Hathaway, who didn’t have the bulk of the other two men, hit his shot a respectable two ten and it landed square in the middle of the fairway, as if the Titleist was a wire-guided missile.
This wasn’t good.
DeMarco took a couple of practice swings with the driver he’d selected from Hathaway’s bag. The grip on the club didn’t feel right; it was too small for his hand, or something. ‘Uh, you know, I haven’t played in a couple of months,’ DeMarco said.
‘Yeah, yeah, come on, come on, take your shot,’ Mahoney said.
Mahoney was rushing the game and DeMarco suspected that this was a tactic to defeat Farris. Mahoney was never in a hurry. Ever. He did whatever he was doing at a pace that suited him. At his level, the next meeting didn’t start until he got there.
DeMarco swung. He made good contact. It felt good. It sounded good. And the ball sliced so far to the right that it ended up on the adjacent fairway.
‘Christ, Joe,’ Mahoney said. ‘You play that way, we’ll be here all day.’
As Hathaway drove the golf cart over to find DeMarco’s ball, he said, ‘It’s my nephew, my sister’s kid. He’s an engineer and he works at this navy shipyard. The thing is, he thinks some guys out there are committing fraud.’
‘What kind of fraud?’
‘I’m not too clear on that,’ Hathaway said. ‘Something to do with some kind of bogus study and the people doing it overcharging the government. Dave, my nephew, he tried to tell his bosses what was going on, but according to my sister, they blew him off. Which is why she called me, all pissed, demanding I do something. Where the hell’d your ball go, Joe? I know it’s in these trees somewhere.’
DeMarco topped the ball on his next shot and it went about twenty yards. It was Hathaway’s midget-sized irons, that’s what the problem was. He hit a third shot and he was finally on the fairway – the right fairway.
‘So anyway,’ Hathaway said, when they were back in the cart, ‘I’d just like you to check the kid’s story out and tell me if he’s really onto something. John says you’ve done stuff like this before and I wouldn’t think this would be all that hard.’
‘I’ve been involved with whistle-blowers before but, well …’
‘Yes, Joe?’
‘Well, why don’t you just call up somebody who works for you and ask them to look into it?’
Before Hathaway could respond there was a commotion across the fairway. Farris was yelling at Mahoney, pointing a long finger at something on the ground at Mahoney’s feet. Mahoney had probably claimed that his ball was on the concrete cart path and the rules allowed him to move it. Whether his ball had actually been on the cart path was most likely Farris’s issue.
‘Jesus,’ Hathaway said, shaking his head. ‘Those guys are so damn competitive they take the fun out of the game. And Mahoney, well, I think he does bend the rules a bit.’
No shit, DeMarco thought.
‘You were asking why I didn’t have somebody in my chain of command investigate this thing,’ Hathaway said. ‘The problem is, I’m the Secretary of the Navy, Joe. If I told my people to look into it, even if I told them to be discreet, in two hours there’d be twenty NCIS agents running around that shipyard questioning every swinging dick who works there. I don’t want to cause that kind of ruckus based on a phone call from my sister. And, well, to tell you the truth, there’s something else.’ Hathaway turned and looked away for a moment as if telling the truth bothered him. ‘You see, both my sister and her kid – it must be genetic – they both tend to be a little, ah, dramatic.’
Now this was starting to make sense. Hathaway didn’t trust his nephew and if he launched an official investigation based on a tip from a relative and the relative turned out to be wrong, Hathaway would be doubly embarrassed.
‘I see,’ DeMarco said.
‘So just check this out quietly. Okay?’ Hathaway said. ‘Go talk to my nephew and see what he says. Interview these guys he’s complaining about. If it turns out that there’s something to what he’s saying, I’ll have facts from an independent source – Congress – and then I’ll have it officially investigated.’
‘Okay,’ DeMarco said, not that he really had a choice.
On the sixth hole, Mahoney’s and DeMarco’s balls were both in the rough, approximately twenty yards apart. Farris was on the other side of the fairway looking for his ball and Hathaway, as usual, was in the center of the fairway.
Mahoney looked down at his ball – it was behind a small tree – then he looked over to where Farris was standing. ‘C’mere a minute,’ Mahoney said to DeMarco. DeMarco figured Mahoney wanted to know what he and Hathaway had been talking about.
As DeMarco approached Mahoney, he heard Farris yell, ‘Hey, Mahoney! What the hell are you doing over there, Mahoney?’
DeMarco looked over at Farris, and when he turned back toward Mahoney, Mahoney’s ball was no longer behind the tree. Mahoney had used DeMarco to block Farris’s view.
On the putting green, Farris said, ‘DeMarco, what did Mahoney do back there? Did he kick his ball out?’
‘No, sir,’ DeMarco said.
‘Don’t you dare lie to me, DeMarco. I’m a United States senator and that fat son of a bitch is only a congressman. Now tell me the truth, son. Did he move his ball?’
‘Come on, come on, let’s get goin’ here,’ Mahoney said. ‘And as usual, you’re away, Farris.’
Farris’s ball was about six feet from the cup. As Farris took his putter from his bag, Mahoney said to Hathaway, ‘Frank, I’ll betcha a beer Farris two-putts this hole. Just like when he choked on that free throw in the playoffs in Chicago.’
DeMarco saw the senator’s face flush crimson but he didn’t say anything. Farris took his position over his ball, adjusted his feet, took in a breath, and stroked the ball. He hit the ball on line, but too hard, and it hit the back of the cup, popped up, and came to rest two feet from the hole. Farris’s lips moved in a silent curse and he glared at Mahoney. Mahoney smiled and cleaned off the head of his putter with a grass-stained towel.
When they arrived at the clubhouse after the ninth hole, DeMarco took his rumpled suit jacket out of the golf cart basket. His shirt was soaked through with sweat, there were grass stains on the cuffs of his pants, and his new shoes were scuffed and filled with sand.
‘I’ll give you a call as soon as I know something, Mr Secretary,’ DeMarco said to Hathaway as he tried to smooth the wrinkles out of his jacket.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Hathaway said. He wasn’t listening; he was adding up his score. DeMarco could tell that Hathaway wasn’t really all that concerned about fraudulent activities taking place at some shipyard. What he had wanted was a way to get his sister off his back, and now, thanks to Mahoney, he had one: Joe DeMarco, hotshot investigator from Congress.
Mahoney, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, was also adding up his and Farris’s score on the front nine. ‘You shot a forty-one, Farris,’ Mahoney said. He paused a minute then said, ‘I got forty.’
‘You lemme see that damn card, Mahoney,’