The Pariot GAme Read online

  FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EBOOK EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2012

  Copyright © 1982 by George V. Higgins

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published Great Britain by Robinson Publishing, London, in 1985.

  Vintage Crime is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Cardon Phillip Webb

  eISBN: 978-0-345-80465-5

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1_r1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  The Patriot Game

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  GEORGE V. HIGGINS

  George V. Higgins was the author of more than twenty novels, including the bestsellers The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Cogan’s Trade, The Rat on Fire, and The Digger’s Game. He was a reporter for the Providence Journal and the Associated Press before obtaining a law degree from Boston College Law School in 1967. He was an Assistant Attorney General and then an Assistant United States Attorney in Boston from 1969 to 1973. He later taught Creative Writing at Boston University. He died in 1999.

  ALSO BY GEORGE V. HIGGINS

  The Friends of Eddie Coule

  Cogaris Trade

  A City on a Hill

  The Friends of Richard Nixon

  The Judgment of Deke Hunter

  Dreamland

  A Year or So with Edgar

  Kennedy for the Defense

  The Rat on Fire

  The Patriot Game

  A Choice of Enemies

  Style Versus Substance

  Penance for Jerry Kennedy

  Imposters

  Outlaws

  The Sins of the Fathers

  Wonderful Years, Wonderful Years

  The Progress of the Seasons

  Trust

  On Writing

  Victories

  The Mandeville Talent

  Defending Billy Ryan

  Bomber’s Law

  Swan Boats at Four

  Sandra Nichols Found Dead

  A Change of Gravity

  The Agent

  At End of Day

  THE PATRIOT GAME

  Come all you young rebels and list while I sing,

  For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing.

  It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,

  And it makes us all part of the Patriot Game.

  My name is O’Hanlon and I’m just gone sixteen,

  My home is in Monaghan where I was weaned.

  I have learned all my life cruel England to blame,

  And so I’m part of the Patriot Game.

  It’s barely two years since I wandered away,

  With a local battalion of the bold I.R.A.

  I’ve read of our heros and wanted the same,

  To play my own part in the Patriot Game.

  This island of ours has for long been half-free,

  Six counties are under John Bull’s tyranny,

  So I give up my boyhood to drill and to train,

  To play my own part in the Patriot Game.

  And now as I lie here my body all holes,

  I think of those traitors who bargained and sold,

  I wish that my rifle had given the same,

  To those quislings who sold out the Patriot Game.

  Irish Folk Song

  THREE CADDIES sat on the steps under the portico at the front entrance of the Nipmunk Country Club in Weston, Massachusetts, and watched the long, curving driveway bake in the late morning sun. There were fairways on both sides of the drive. Two women played on the fairway to the west and three women played on the fairway to the east. There were three Cadillac Sevilles—maroon, beige, black—in the parking lot adequate for two hundred cars in front of the brick steps and the pillared portico, and two Volvo station wagons, both green, next to them.

  One of the caddies, thirteen years old, dug a crushproof box of Winstons, crushed, out of his right jeans pocket and lighted a badly bent cigarette with a Bic lighter. He was still in the process of learning to smoke, and did everything very elaborately. He released the first drag of smoke through his nose.

  The caddie in the middle wore a Boston Red Sox cap and a bored expression. “Junior,” he said to the caddie who was smoking, “you’re an asshole.” The third caddie received this information thoughtfully, remaining silent under his Caterpillar Tractor hat. He seemed to be thinking about it.

  “I have an asshole,” Junior said. “That’s why I’m not full of shit like you, pugpuller.” The third caddie accepted that information silently as well. He moved his feet up from the second step to the top step on the entrance and rested his forearms on his knees.

  “You couldn’t pull it if you wanted to, Junior,” the caddie in the middle said. “It’s so little that you couldn’t get a grip on it.”

  “You got it all mixed up, Howard,” the caddie said between drags and ostentatious expulsions of smoke. “The way it works is, you either got a big prick or a big mouth. We all know what you got, Howard. We can hear you all the time.”

  “You’re the one that’s got it all mixed up,” Howard said. “I got brains enough, I don’t smoke. You ever hear of lung cancer or something?”

  “Yeah,” Junior said, “I heard of it. I also heard about a guy that was caddying for Mrs. Blake on Monday, and she thought he was in the woods looking for her ball and she went looking for him because he was gone a long time and he was in the bushes looking for his balls and playing with himself. I heard she said something to Walter down the pro shop when she came in, and Walter hadda tell the kid he couldn’t beat his meat when he was supposed to be working for Mrs. Blake. You hear that, Cody?” He leaned away from the pillar to look at the third caddie.

  “No,” the third caddie said. “I wasn’t here this week.” He did not shift his gaze.

  “No,” Junior said. “Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t see you.”

  “I was visiting my father,” Cody said.

  “Howard did it,” Junior said. “Mrs. Blake caught him jerking off Monday and she told Walter. He tried to pretend it wasn’t her or Howard, but it was just something he wanted to tell us about. We all knew it was Howard though. Right, Howard? We all knew it was you.”

  “Shut up, Junior,” Howard said.

  “Mrs. Blake,” Junior said with relish, “Mrs. Blake was so pissed off about it she was still mad when she got in the clubhouse and she told Mrs. Tobin, and then Bishop Doherty comes in for lunch and Mrs. Tobin was having lunch with him and she told Bishop Doherty.”

  “I told you, Junior, shut up,” Howard said.

  “And Bishop Doherty got this look on his face like he does when he’s out onna course with her or Mister Tobin
or Father Clancy and somebody says fuck and then gets all embarrassed like he didn’t know what the word means, and Bishop Doherty starts laughing and pretty soon Mrs. Tobin was, too, and Mrs. Blake heard them from where she was having her lemonade out on the patio and she knew what they were laughing about and she got all mad again and came in and started reading out Mrs. Tobin, and Bishop Doherty told her to shut up, there was no need to make a big deal out of a small matter. Which is how everybody knows, Howard, that you got a small one, because Mrs. Blake started laughing too and she said if it was what she thought it was, it wasn’t big enough to do any damage with anyway.”

  Cody started laughing, very quietly.

  “You shut up too, Cody,” Howard said. His face was red. “I can beat up Junior and I can beat you up too if I have to.”

  “No,” Cody said, looking at him and grinning, “no, you can’t. You used to be able to beat me up, but I’m bigger now. And besides, you can’t beat anybody up now, can you? Because if somebody gets mad at you now, Howard, all they got to do is say something about Mrs. Blake and you’ll get all embarrassed like you are now.”

  “My parents aren’t divorced,” Howard said.

  A light green Ford sedan entered the driveway and started toward the clubhouse. Junior raked the coal of the cigarette against the brick steps and threw the butt into the shrubbery.

  “Mine,” he said. “Saw it first.”

  “I know,” Cody said to Howard. “Mine are, though.”

  “You didn’t see it first,” Howard said.

  “I said it first,” Junior said.

  “Come on, you guys,” Cody said, “Walter’s got the list. He decides.”

  The Ford pulled into the parking lot and stopped next to the maroon Seville. All the windows were closed in the car.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Howard said. “Cheap car. He’ll have a cart. Too hot to play anyway.”

  The door opened on the Ford and the driver got out. He weighed about two hundred and forty pounds and there was no noticeable fat on him. He was about six feet four inches tall. He had black hair which was long, greasy and cut unevenly. He had thick black sideburns and an ill-kept Zapata mustache. He wore a tan twill shirt with epaulets and flapped pockets; it had long sleeves and he had rolled them back at the cuffs, exposing a stainless steel Rolex Submariner watch on his left wrist and a broad white scar that began on the back of his right hand and disappeared under the shirt midway up his forearm. He wore oversized Ray-Ban sunglasses. His pants were gray twill, held up with heavy green suspenders and a heavy brown belt. He wore Survivor boots, tan, with lug soles. On the left side of his body there was a holster snapped onto the belt. It carried, in the cross-draw position, a .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver. He reached into the car and brought out a gray Harris tweed jacket. He put it on and closed the door, locking it. He started toward the steps.

  “Jesus,” Junior said. “Did you see that thing?”

  “Yeah,” Howard said.

  “This guy,” Cody said thoughtfully, “didn’t come out here for no golf, is what I think.”

  The driver walked with a slight lameness of his right knee, which required him to swivel his foot away from his body when he took a step. He reached the bottom of the steps where the boys sat and swung the right foot onto the first step. He got his left foot onto the step, planted it, and swung the right foot again. There was sweat running down his face and he needed a shave.

  “Caddie, mister?” Junior said, somewhat insolently.

  The driver looked at him from behind the sunglasses. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I got it out of bed this morning, into and out of the shower. I think I can make it up the stairs here, things work right.”

  “Club’s private,” Junior said.

  “So what?” the driver said.

  “Members only,” Junior said. “Just members.”

  “And their guests,” Cody said, a trifle anxiously. “Guests can play too.”

  “I didn’t come to play,” the driver said.

  PETE RIORDAN, still wearing his sunglasses, walked through the foyer and down the main hall of the Nipmunk Country Club toward the French doors that opened onto the eighteenth green. He took a right at the doors and went into the bar, which was empty. He walked through the bar to the sliding glass doors that opened onto the patio shaded in part by the green-and-white-striped awning over the white, circular metal tables. Beyond the shade there were women in golf clothes drinking iced tea and iced coffee. They wore pink Lacoste shirts and Lily Pulitzer flowered skirts in lemon and lime colors. They wore lime Lacoste shirts and yellow divided skirts. They wore white sun visors with green plastic inserts over the eyes, and under those they wore blue sunglasses. Beyond them were low green boxes containing low green hedge plants, and beyond the boxes was the swimming pool where seven or eight children were pretending to have diving skills that they had not mastered. The children shouted a lot and jumped off the diving board feet first. They swam furiously for a while before getting out to stand at the edge of the pool and blow their noses with their fingers. Now and then a lucky one would catch one of the others clearing his nasal passages and elbow him into the pool. The women ignored all of this.

  Pete Riordan sat down at a table near the sliding doors, under the awning, and folded his hands in his lap.

  After several minutes, a young man in a white jacket and black trousers, carrying an oval aluminum tray, came through the glass doors. As he left the bar area he picked up a folding table and carried it in his right hand, balancing the tray aloft on his left. He went to the table farthest from Riordan and set up the tray table with one hand. He put the tray on it and started serving salads to the four ladies who were talking at the table. Riordan could not hear what they were saying, but they laughed a lot and he could hear that.

  The waiter completed serving the women and started back toward the bar, leaving the table behind but carrying the tray in his left hand, like a discus. He saw Riordan when he got out of the sun. He stopped in his tracks. “Sir?” he said.

  Riordan nodded.

  “Can I help you with something, sir?” the waiter said.

  “Screwdriver,” Riordan said.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the waiter said.

  “Screwdriver,” Riordan said pleasantly. “I’d like a screwdriver. On the rocks.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” the waiter said. “Are you a member here?”

  “No,” Riordan said.

  “Because,” the waiter explained, “I’ve never seen you before.” Riordan did not say anything. “I thought maybe you might’ve just joined,” the waiter said.

  “No,” Riordan said.

  The waiter cleared his throat. “Well, ah, you see, ah, sir, unless you’re a member or a guest of a member, I can’t serve you.”

  “I’m a guest of a member,” Riordan said.

  The waiter shifted his weight and held the oval aluminum tray with both hands in front of him like a large metal fig leaf. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, firmly, “but I have to have the name of the guest.”

  “I’m the guest,” Pete Riordan said. “You don’t need my name. I’m right here.”

  “I mean the member,” the waiter said, shifting his weight again and slapping the tray against his knees.

  “Don’t do that,” Riordan said.

  “What?” the waiter said.

  “I’m sorry,” Riordan said. “Please don’t do that with the tray. I’ve got a headache.”

  “Oh,” the waiter said. He stopped banging the tray.

  “Doherty,” Riordan said.

  “Yessir,” the waiter said. “See, that’s just our rule here, Mister Doherty. They make us ask. Who’s the member, please?”

  “Look,” Riordan said, “I had a bad night. You ever had a bad night, son? I had one. You want a bad night some time, you just call me up. You can have my next one, no charge. A screwdriver is a simple thing, right? It is some vodka and some orange juice and some ice cubes. A baby could make one. I could
make one myself, probably, even in this condition, if it wasn’t for the clanking of the ice cubes and I don’t know where they are in this place anyway.

  “Now,” Riordan said, “I am not Doherty. I am the guest. Doherty is the member. I am meeting Doherty here. He doesn’t know I’m meeting him here, but I’m meeting him here.”

  “Doherty,” the waiter said, thinking.

  “Paul Doherty?” Riordan said. “That ring a bell, maybe?”

  The waiter shook his head and looked puzzled. “No, sir,” he said, “and I’ve been here almost three years now. I think I know all the members.”

  “He’s a priest,” Riordan said.

  “Ohh,” the waiter said. “You mean Bishop Doherty?”

  “Yeah,” Riordan said. “Him. Paul Doherty. That’s the guy. I’m meeting him here and he doesn’t know it.”

  “Are you sure?” the waiter said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Riordan said, “I’m sure. I mean, I never saw the papers or anything, but he’s a truth-telling man. Known him for years, never led me astray once. Told me himself, right to my face. Told me the Pope made him a bishop. I’m a skeptical sort of fellow, myself, but Paul Doherty’s a trustworthy man. He says he’s a bishop, you can bank on it. Why, it would’ve insulted him, I’d’ve said to him, ‘Ah, come on, Paul, you aren’t no bishop. You’re just funnin’ with me, huh? Tryin’, bamboozle me?’ Nah, Paul wouldn’t do a thing like that, lie to an old friend like me.”

  “No,” the waiter said, “it’s not that. It’s … you’re not the sort of … Bishop Doherty meets lots of people here, but I never saw … I know he’s a bishop and everything, but what I mean is …”

  “Aw right,” Riordan said. He unclasped his hands and put them on the arms of the chair. He extended his right leg straight out in front of him until there was a muffled grinding sound and a louder click. After the click he stood up, keeping the knee locked. He unbuttoned the Harris tweed sports coat, exposing the butt of the magnum.

  “Jesus,” the waiter said.

  “Sand wedge,” Riordan said, resting his weight on his left leg. “Very useful when you get yourself in a trap.” He used his right hand to fish in his left inside jacket pocket. He brought out several airline ticket folders and slapped the collection down on the table. Keeping his right leg straight, he bent at the waist and shuffled through it until he found a black morocco credential case. He swept all the airline ticket folders into a pile and, using the stiff right leg as a pivot, spun to face the waiter. He flipped open the credential case as he did so. On the lower half there was a seal embossed in gold; pinned next to it there was a small gold badge with blue lettering. In the upper half there was a picture of a clean-shaven man with a short haircut and no expression on his face, glued to a card that gave his name and department. “Justice,” Riordan said. “Inspector General. Riordan. Okay?” He snapped the case shut.