Beyond, the mountain crags were desert-indigo against the lush fakery of Coachella Valley. Swimming pools and golf courses catered for the rich and retired, restaurants, malls and clubhouses for the idle and fat. A nice place to be, a nice place in which to be pampered. Los Angeles and its problems were to the west, a coastal junkyard whose stench and unpleasantness never travelled this way or this far. Only the right sort blew in, transported by the gulfstream and Learjet, only the high-earners and high-rollers stayed. They dwelt in their low-rise, strato-cost villas nestling in exclusive reserves or dotting the sides of the spectacular fairways. Pay-for-view, and they had paid multimillions. The well-watered drives and courses had yet to be browned by the summer heat; the skin of the residents stayed over-taut and perma-tanned all year.
Bell drifted the cart to a halt on the track, climbed out slowly to savour his partner’s bunker woes and lend passive psychological discouragement. The captain ignored him, played out from the steep face with a sand iron and lifted the ball high to safety. His next shot delivered it to the green with a dramatic 3 wood drive for the flag. Classic swing, excellent balance and body turn, decent follow-through. He was fighting back.
‘I’m impressed, Jack. Truly.’ Nope, he was pissed. Truly. The police officer rotated the club in his hand, honour restored, contentment quotient paralleling Bell’s rising irritation. They moved across. The real estate tycoon was pacing, concentrating, deciding tactics. ‘It’ll have to be a 4 iron. Slight left to right breeze, so I’ve gotta draw this one back in from starboard. I’ll make it low.’
‘If you say so.’
The shot was poor – fat – kicking up the turf and leaving the ball some sixty yards short of the green. A shrug of contrived nonchalance, followed by the obligatory excuse. ‘Knew it was a 3 iron job. Came to me at the top of the backswing. Shouldn’t have taken it.’ Rage appeared in the colour of his knuckles.
They made their way on in silence, itinerary and conversation stalled as Bell focused on more pressing concerns, a simple pitch to the green. The captain was grateful for the respite. Decision time. Bell would not be hurried. It was a choice between a high wedge with backspin to sit it down beside the pin, or a lower-trajectory run-up with a punch from a 7 or 8 iron. He was bound to go for the lofted shot. Parkland players always did. Selection made.
Not bad, not bad at all. Advantage Bell, yet again. He would reach the hole in a single putt; the captain was looking at two. The mood relaxed. It was best to concede, to allow Bell his match-play victories early on.
‘What’s the British situation?’ the officer asked.
‘Need to know. But I can tell you it’s fluid, developing fast. They’ve had their own fatalities.’
‘Azania?’
‘Steeped in it. He’s over there soon to sponsor more trouble, declare the second front open.’
‘Sounds as though his Tigers are doing it for him.’
‘They play their part, exploit the fault-lines. As do we.’
‘Spread a little happiness.’
‘And a whole lot of confusion. See, Jack, it’s a snowball. It gathers speed, gets bigger, uncontrolled, picks up dirt and ice, attracts new layers, becomes an avalanche. Everyone’s caught up, carried away.’
‘And no one remembers the original source, that rogue snowball.’
‘Too busy digging out the wreckage, defrosting their tits.’
They reached the green. The captain took his putt. Bell smiled, crouching for a line-of-sight assessment. An easy play. Race war was coming, he a chief instrument, yet he would make time, create space, to worship on the fairways. Here, he was safe, on hallowed ground, could receive briefings and hand down commands; here, he could commune. The pumice-smoothed grass and sculpted shrubs had an order to them, reason, a pattern to inspire and challenge, with which to restore and transport the mind. Wilderness tamed. He admired the architects, valued their vision. The sky was blue and limitless, the future cloudless and unbounded. He too had vision and design, he too would carve a new nation from the wastelands. Perfectly judged. A sharp tap, the ball travelled and dropped in. He saluted his own success. One day, many would salute him, hail his achievement. There would be smiling white teeth set in smiling white faces, broad avenues, marching bands, monumental edifices and chiselled topiary, and strange fruit hanging black and abundant from the branches of poplar trees. His harvest, his Forresters to tend it.
‘So, you’ve made it.’ The man leant against his cart, trim in pale lemon Ralph Lauren and Footjoy golf shoes.
Bell rested the putter on a shoulder, unsurprised at the intervention, and squinted. ‘You prepared to join our game?’
‘Depends on the odds.’
‘Improving by the day.’
‘Then consider me in, gentlemen,’ Professor Duncan Pitt replied.
* * *
Third interview, third prisoner. The man was escorted in by four guards, his hands and feet manacled, and was forced to sit. Not a word was spoken. It was routine for inmates and officers. Maximum security, San Quentin-style. Krista affected aloofness, kept her eyes remote but engaged – the best way to counter attitude, to meet a multiple rapist and third millennium fascist. She would not back down. Odd how some people sucked the light from a room. His head was carried high, its angle defiant, eyes black, hair shaved close to the scalp, expression the penal hybrid mix of aggression and fear. Fear of losing face, of losing more than face, fear of painful death and a wasted life. Offence was the surest form of defence. He had committed many. Scar tissue would lie hidden far behind the combative stare.
Directed energy. The guards had retreated, leaving the two alone together. He was locked in place, irons attaching him to the embedded chair, his gaze travelling, assessing. Temporary silence and an interview table lay between them, two lifestyle choices represented by a distance of a few feet. Whatever their record or reputation, however odious the crime, in her experience inmates came without exception or variation in the single category marked Inadequate. Fiction would have it otherwise, film sought to lionize, but she had yet to find the yearning souls, genius poets, tortured and misunderstood artists hidden among the shuffling herds migrating through the US penal code. Stripped of excuse and legal jargon, shorn of mitigation, most were merely unpleasant dumb-asses – sad, colourless, cerebrally sterile dumb-asses – who had been caught. The coming race. She hoped not.
‘Don’t often get visitors without an army standing close by,’ he said eventually.
‘Took a lot of paperwork.’ She showed her ID and flipped a packet of Winstons across. ‘Smoke?’
He eased out a cigarette, lit it with a match from the strip she pushed over. ‘My favourite brand. Nicotine that comes with a nice little pink hole.’
‘Prisoner that comes with a shrivelled, insignificant little penis. That’s my type.’
He blinked, reappraising, his thought-processes transparent. Second attempt. ‘You want to get out your titties for me, lady?’
‘I’d rather put my face in the way of a nine-millimetre parabellum round.’
‘If we was on the outside, I’d arrange both.’
‘Then it’s lucky you won’t be seeing trailer-parks again for at least three more decades.’ She pulled up her own chair and sat. ‘So save your domination bullshit for the sisters in here. You’re in no position to lay it on me.’
‘And you’re in no position to speak without my lawyer present.’
‘We’re not dealing with legalities, we’re dealing with your survival.’
A long drag on the cigarette. ‘Thought so.’
‘Your Aryan friends getting erased in the mass cull. Must leave you feeling kind of insecure.’
‘Are you threatening me or making an offer?’
‘Making conversation.’
