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CHAPTER TWELVE

Polly calls off the surveillance on the estate in Connecticut. What would be the point? She grabs a downtown C train to her town house in the Village. Marty calls and tells me he has some info from the FBI on the Victoria Belmond kidnapping.

“For one thing,” he says, “it’s never been solved.”

“You have the file?”

“A lot of it.”

“Where is it?”

“My place.”

He gives me the address. I tell him I’m on my way. Golfer Gary offers me a ride uptown, and I accept. Gary drives a high-end Range Rover.

We head north toward the park. I’m sitting in the front passenger seat next to him. I watch his profile. I’m guessing Gary is in his early fifties. He’s got a classic dad-bod beer belly, skinny arms, hunched shoulders. When I was twelve years old, my father taught me a lesson I try to live with every day. We were walking through Washington Square Park on an early-summer Saturday. If you’ve been there, you know that the park is a microcosm of the entire globe jammed into fewer than ten acres. You will see every variety of human in just a few short minutes.

“Hopes and dreams,” my father said with a wide smile, spreading his hands like he was preparing for a hug.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He bent down so he could look me in the eye. “Good rule of thumb: Whenever you see a person—rich, poor, young, old, tall, short, whatever—remember one thing: That person has hopes and dreams.”

My father didn’t elaborate any further. I think that was intentional on his part because it is still something that provides endless curiosity. I still do it every time I look at someone. I think my father wanted to teach me about empathy. You pass a man on the street. Maybe he’s angry and seems mean and he’s lashing out. Or someone is ugly or stupid or whatever. Somewhere, my father wanted me to remember, underneath all that excess, there is a human being with hopes and dreams. It’s a simple thought. Hopes and dreams. And maybe this person with the unremarkable exterior has had their hopes and dreams crushed along the way. Doesn’t matter. Hopes and dreams never fully die. They remain somewhere, dormant perhaps, but never totally gone.

Honor that.

“Gary?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s your deal?” I ask.

“Deal?”

Everyone has hopes and dreams, I thought, which also means that everyone has a backstory. Every human you meet is a novel different from every other.

“Where do you live?” I ask. “What do you do? What led you to take my class?”

“Do you always take a personal interest in your students?”

“Sure,” I say. “Especially the ones driving me in a high-end Range Rover and wearing golf shirts from fancy golf courses.”

He smiles, steering now with his wrists. “Do you play golf?”

“Never.”

“So how do you know the logos on my shirts are from fancy courses?”

“Google.”

He nods.

“I assume you play, Gary?”

His grip on the wheel tightens. “Used to.”

“Not anymore?”

“Not anymore,” he repeats.

“Look,” I say, “if you don’t want to say anything—”

“No, I get it,” he says. “It’s weird—me taking your class. I don’t fit the profile, though judging by some of your other students, there isn’t much of a profile for this class, is there?”

“It’s an eclectic bunch,” I agree.

“Can I ask you something?”

I spread my hands. “I’m an open book.”

“Are you married?”

“I am.”

“Kids?”

“A son. He’s a year old.”

“Nice,” Gary says.

“Yeah.”

“I googled you before I joined the class.”

“Yeah,” I say. “You mentioned that before.”

“They say you were fired for breaking rules. You endangered a witness by chasing him onto a rooftop—”

“PJ Dawson.”

“—and you also acted in an illegal manner that led to a death.”

“There a question coming here, Gary?” I ask. “Never mind. Let me save you the trouble. Yes, it’s true.”

“Many believe you should have been prosecuted.”

“They might be right,” I say. “In the end, I cut a deal. Resign. Lose my entire pension. In exchange I don’t get prosecuted.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I messed up big-time,” I say. And when I do, he adjusts himself in his seat, eyes fixed on the road. I decide to try a gentle push. “So what’s your deal, Gary? Wife, kids, any of that?”

“Divorced,” Gary says, and again I see something cross his face. “Two daughters. Ellie is nineteen. She’s a freshman at Clemson. Tanya is a senior in high school.”

“Do you see them a lot?”

Gary shrugs. “Not as often as I’d like. They live with their mother in Short Hills. You know it?”

Short Hills is a tony enclave in New Jersey. Big-money town. “I do.”

“Wendy and I raised our girls there. They went to the Pingry School.”

“Expensive,” I say.

“I had my own hedge fund back then. We had a five-bedroom house on Dorset Lane. Wendy and I were married twenty-four years.” He glances at me, then back on the road. “Does your wife love you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“I don’t think Wendy ever did. But maybe I’m being unfair. I destroyed her life. That’s the truth of it. I thought we could get past it. But she couldn’t. That’s why I’m alone now. No job. Wendy is dating an old friend of mine. The girls are embarrassed to be seen with me. Well, Tanya is. Ellie is better about it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He smiles. “I messed up big-time.”

“Want to tell me how?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I did.”

“I’m a pretty good listener,” I say. “Nonjudgmental too.”

“You don’t golf though.”

I hold up my hands in mock surrender. “Don’t hold that against me. And to be fair, it is a dumb sport that takes up too much real estate and time.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he says. “Ever heard of Vine Ridge?”

I think about it. “It isn’t completely unfamiliar.”

“It’s an exclusive golf club. It’s also hosted several PGA tournaments, including the US Open twelve years ago.”

“Okay, yeah, I think I watched that on TV.”

“Vine Ridge is up there with Augusta or Pine Valley or Merion or Winged Foot.”

“Okay,” I say again, though these words mean nothing to me.

“Wendy and I were both longtime members. In Wendy’s case, third-generation members. Well, sort of. Women can’t join. Her grandfather and father were members. So it’s the same thing, really. Me, I was a really good amateur golfer. Was on the team at Amherst College. That’s how Wendy and I met. So when we got married and joined as junior members, I was technically the member. Because only men can be members. You know what I’m saying?”

“I think so. A bit sexist.”

“Very sexist,” he says. “But Wendy didn’t care. She loved Vine Ridge. She grew up there, really. From the time she was a little girl, she spent summers there with her parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts, and you get the idea.”

“I do,” I say.

“Wendy and I, we’d have dinner at the club three or four times a week. Always with friends. Tables of six or eight. Lots of laughs and drinks. Wendy played in the women’s nine-hole group every Tuesday and tennis on Wednesdays. I was one of the best male players in the club. We knew everyone.”

Gary takes a breath now, makes a very labored left turn, hand over hand.

“Three years ago, I was playing for the club championship against Richard Belthoff. This was the first time I had reached the finals. I lost two years in a row in the semis, once to Richard on a pretty controversial call. He hit his ball behind a tree and got a free drop because he claimed his ball was resting in a gopher hole. Can you believe that?”

I say, “No,” even though I’m not fully following.

Gary shakes it off. “Anyway, we were friends, Richard and me, but we were also super competitive. I’ll try to make this quick because it’s hard to talk about and you probably aren’t interested.”

“Oh, but I am.”

Gary smiles and shakes his head. “We are playing for the club championship. We reach the eighteenth hole. That’s the final hole. And we were tied. See, this was match play. You win, lose, or tie holes. I’d won four, he’d won four, and we tied the other nine. So it all came down to this final hole, a par three over the trees. It’s a signature hole because you can’t see the green from the tee.

“Anyway, here’s what it came down to. I teed off first. I hit what I thought was a great shot. But the trees hadn’t been trimmed because of a recent storm. So there was a branch still in the way. We heard my ball hit it solidly. I couldn’t believe it. I remember Richard trying not to smile. My heart sank, but then, when I thought about it, I still had hope. The ball could have still bounced into play, maybe landed in the sand trap or something. So we hurry down there. Richard’s ball had landed on the edge of the green, but it was still a hard two-putt. If I could find my ball and hit a decent chip, I’d be okay. Except I couldn’t find it. We all figure that it hit off the stupid branch, the one that shouldn’t have still been there, and bounced deep in the woods. If we didn’t find the ball within five minutes, I’d get a penalty stroke and the match would for all purposes be over. Richard Belthoff would have won. Looking back on it… I mean, who cares? You get your name on a wooden plaque in the Men’s Grill. Big deal. But, I don’t know, I just wanted to win so badly. Who knows why. I was still fuming about how last year Richard had cheated with the gopher hole story. So I figured this would even out the score. It wouldn’t make me the winner. If I got lucky, we’d still be tied after eighteen. Then we’d go to a sudden-death extra hole, and that would be fair, and I wouldn’t lose because of some flukey branch.”

“What did you do, Gary?”

“My golf ball is a Titleist Pro V with my initials GG written in red ink. I always do that. Write my initials in red. So you know it’s my ball. And of course, all golfers carry an extra ball or two in our pocket. So you don’t have to go back and hunt through your bag if you snap-hook one into the woods or lose one in the water.”

“Okay.”

“So when no one was looking, I took my extra ball out of my pocket and let it drop out of my hand behind the sand trap on the right.”

I nod. “And then, what, you said you found it?”

He smiles. “Oh no, that would look suspicious. I walked away, searched in the woods, pretending I’m a class act, being the gracious guy who suffered the bad luck of a bad bounce. Yep, that was me. The gracious guy. Everyone in the club liked me. So I moved away and hoped someone else would find my ball. And sure enough, Belthoff’s caddy, Manny, suddenly yells out, ‘Hey I found it.’ I actually closed my eyes when Manny calls that out. I almost hoped that no one would see it. I could still go back and change everything. But once I dropped the ball there…”

“So what happened next?”

“I act all surprised and relieved. Then I grab my sixty-degree, take two practice swings, and chip the ball onto the green. Not to brag, but I hit the chip of a lifetime. The shot leaves me with only a three-footer for par. By now everyone in the club is coming down from the overlook deck to watch the last hole. They have drinks in their hands. Wendy is there. Her father. Her uncle. I’d say forty or fifty of our friends. And now it’s Richard’s turn. He lines up his putt. Manny helps him with the read. If he makes it, he wins, but I mean, come on, he’s like thirty feet away. Chances are he will two-putt. That means I need to make my three-footer to force the playoff, a clean slate. We would then keep playing until a fair winner emerged. So Richard hits his long putt. It’s a really good stroke. The ball is tracking right to the hole but—whew—it stops inches short of rolling in. Like only three inches. The spectators do that golf groan and then politely clap for him. Then all eyes turn to me. I’m getting ready. I need to make this three-footer putt. Richard walks over to his ball to tap in his three-incher—”

He stops. Tears rush to his eyes.

“Gary?”

He shakes me off.

“What happened?”

He blinks hard. He looks as though he’s going to burst into sobs.

“It’s okay,” I say. “We can—”

“No,” he says a little too loudly. “I’ve never told this story to anyone. I need to get through it.”

I wait.

Gary swallows, his jowls shaking, and pushes out a hard breath. “So Richard goes to tap his three-incher into the hole,” he says, starting up again. “And that’s when he sees it.”

“Sees what?” I say.

“There’s a ball in the cup already.”

He turns and looks at me. I feel my heart sink for him.

“My first ball,” he says, though I guessed that already. “My original ball I hit off the tee. The one that hit the tree. It did indeed take a fluke bounce, I guess, but not into the woods. It rolled onto the green and into the cup. I’d hit a hole in one.”

I say nothing.

“Richard slowly reaches down and picks the ball up. My initials are on it, clear as day. Everyone is silent. They all know now. I’d hit a hole in one—and outed myself as a cheater.”

Gary grows silent now. I fear that I am going to say something stupid or patronizing, something like “one momentary lapse” or “hey, we all have our moments” or “it’s not really a big deal.” But I get it. Even before he continues to explain: The cheating destroyed the life he knew. Gary became an immediate social pariah. We love building people up. We love tearing them down even more. No one wanted to play with him anymore. The dinner invitations dried up. The local online newspaper, the Short Hills Patch , got wind of the story and published it. Their friends fled. Gary suggested they move, start fresh. They had a place already on Old Marsh Golf Club in Florida. They could move down there permanently. But the members at Old Marsh had heard the story too. And Wendy loved this life. She didn’t want to give it up. Yet there was no escape. So Wendy did what she could to survive: She divorced him, “cutting out the cancer so she could survive,” Gary said. Now she’d taken up with one of Gary’s friends—Richard Belthoff’s cousin, ironically, who had recently become a widower. Then the leftover cancer spread. A lot of Greg’s clients had been members of the club. They pulled their money out of his hedge fund.

In the end, Gary lost everything.

“I lost my membership, of course,” Gary says. “I don’t play anymore. But for some reason I still wear the clothes. A reminder maybe. Punishment. My own personal scarlet letter, albeit in bad golf fashion.”

Again I just want to say, “You got caught up in the moment, you made one little mistake,” and again I know not to insult him with something like that. Do you want the hard truth? Life isn’t about the big mistakes. It’s about the little ones. Think about the line between in play and out of play at a soccer pitch or in any game. The costliest mistakes are made right near that line, right when someone has laid down the line and you trudge back and forth across it and that line gets messy and now you see the ball go just over the line but maybe you can grab it in time, kick it back into play before anyone sees. Those are the mistakes that stay with you. Those, the small ones, the ones you didn’t have to make—those are the ones that haunt you and change your life.

So I don’t offer Gary words of comfort. He looks shattered. There are some shrinks I know who would say Gary did it on purpose. This country-club life was suffocating him and so he found the only way out through an act of self-destruction. I doubt that was the case, but why not embrace it.

“Gary,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you’re in my class.”

He smiles. “Me too, man. Me too.”