Water Hazard

Chapter One The breeze from the Pacific was for the first time that day barely discernable, the kind that whispers into your hair and nudges the leaves like a nurse idly rocking a cradle. It was warm but not hot, and carried with it the moist, briny memories of my youth, much of which was spent on a surfboard.\ And that’s what distracted me for that one instant. I shifted my gaze from the tee box on the number seventeen at Waialae Country Club to the ocean a few dozen feet away, when the short little round man who’d just straightened up from placing his ball on a tee let out a small cry and crumpled to the ground.\ It took all of us a beat to react, mainly because it’s not something you see happen every day on a golf course. And, frankly, the man now lying partially on his side on the Bermuda grass, Sing Ten Wong, was something of a jokester, having kept us in stitches most of the day with his faux Chinese sayings and wacky observations. We weren’t a hundred percent sure he wasn’t kidding around even then.\ The first to reach him was his son, Rick, who was a law-school buddy of mine and, to be honest, the only reason I was in Hawaii at all. It was Rick who’d talked his dad into giving me a sponsor’s exemption to play in the Sony Open that next week. Considering it was the beginning of the pro golf season, and considering I’d lost my full status on the PGA Tour again last year by managing to make only a handful of cuts and a single top-twenty finish, it was a very kind gesture by Rick’s old man.\ We were out this day playing a friendly round to get a feel for the course before we teamed up for the Pro-Am tournament coming up next Wednesday. Rick’s dad was to be my partner.\ Sing Ten Wong was CEO of the Bank of the Pacific Islands, BOPI for short.\ Sing Ten Wong was a very important man.\ Sing Ten Wong wasn’t looking so good.\ Pop! Pop! Talk to me!\ As Rick held his father’s face in his hands, I and the fourth guy in our group, Sam Ching, the bank’s VP of public relations, eased him the rest of the way onto his back, taking care to straighten out a leg that was twisted underneath him. I felt for a pulse in his wrist. Nothing. His neck. Nothing. His face was very pale, but it was naturally very pale so that didn’t tell me much. One eye was partially open, though, and it had that no-fire-in-the-furnace vacancy that made my stomach seize up. That’s when I noticed the caddies and another foursome crowding around us.\ Somebody call nine-one-one! And give us some space! Rick, you know CPR?\ Yes . . .\ You breathe, I’ll do the chest.\ We worked on him for ten minutes until the EMT guys arrived. They drove the ambulance right up the cart path and parked next to the little footbridge that crossed the drainage canal. They took over the CPR, using one of those squeezer bags with a rubber mask over Wong’s face rather than mouth-to-mouth, lifted him onto a gurney and wheeled him back across the bridge. When I stooped to pick up the car keys that had fallen out of Sing Ten’s pocket, I noticed a dark circle of blood on the grass, about the size of a half-dollar, and wondered if he’d hit his head on his driver or landed on his golf tee or something on the way down. With everything that was going on the thought came and went like a smoke ring in a stiff breeze.\ Rick, Sam and I followed the ambulance to Queen’s Hospital in my tournament courtesy car, still wearing our soft spikes and golf gloves. We had to park the Toyota Camry in an adjacent lot so we didn’t see Mr. Wong go into the emergency room, but by the time we ran inside the lady at the desk said he was already in surgery.\ Rick blinked hard a few times.\ Surgery? Surgery for what? What’s wrong with him?\ I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know. Please have a seat over there and I’m sure the doctor will be out to tell you everything just as soon as they can.\ We shuffled over to the vinyl chairs in a fog.\ There is without a doubt no more miserable place on earth than an emergency room waiting area, even one as clean and bright and nicely furnished as Queen’s. Because no one’s there for a good reason. Everyone is either in pain, or scared, or both.\ My friend, Rick, was both.\ We didn’t say a word to each other. We sat, looking at the seascape prints on the wall, or the tree in the corner, or the pattern in the carpet. We certainly didn’t meet the eyes of the other miserable wretches in that place. That would have broken the unwritten rule of waiting room conduct.\ Twenty minutes after we arrived, twenty agonizing minutes of counting every single tick of the clock, three men came through the double-doors and walked up to us. One wore a suit, the other two surgical scrubs. The suit spoke first.\ Mr. Wong? Richard Wong?\ Rick nodded.\ Mr. Wong, I’m Joseph Wagner, chief information Officer for the medical center. Could you please come this way?\ We all three stood but Wagner held up his hands.\ I’m sorry. Just Mr. Wong.\ It’s Rick, and I’d like my friends to come with me.\ Certainly.\ We followed them through the doors and into what appeared to be a doctor’s lounge. There was a small kitchen area and couches scattered about, a few low tables with magazines and newspapers. No one else was there. Rick looked confused.\ I’d like to see my father.\ Wagner ignored the request.\ Mr. Wong . . . I’m sorry, Rick . . . this is Dr. Luo and Dr. Anderson. Dr. Anderson is chief of surgery.\ Hands were extended and shook. Sam and I introduced ourselves. Then Dr. Anderson took a deep breath.\ I’m very sorry, Rick. Your father didn’t make it. We did everything we could, but I’m afraid he was already gone by the time he got here. In fact, I’m almost certain he died instantly. The autopsy will determine that.\ Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Rick physically recoil from the news. I put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. His voice came out strangled.\ What do you mean, instantly? Was it a, was it a heart attack, stroke, or what?\ The two doctors both raised their eyebrows in surprise at the same instant. They looked at each other. They looked at Wagner. And Wagner spoke.\ I . . . we . . . assumed you saw what happened. After all, you were there.\ He . . . just . . .\ Rick was having trouble finishing the sentence so I cut in.\ Mr. Wong just collapsed. That’s all we saw. One minute he’s teeing up his ball, the next he collapses onto the ground and doesn’t move.\ You didn’t hear anything?\ Like what?\ All three men looked at each other again. Rick, understandably agitated, repeated my question.\ Like what?!\ Like . . . a gunshot.\ Not one of us could manage more than a blink. Wagner clarified.\ Rick, your father was shot.\ That’s when Rick’s knees gave way. I managed to get him under one arm and ease him back onto a couch. Drs. Luo and Anderson pushed me aside and made sure there wasn’t a second Wong casualty that day. While they checked him over, I pulled Wagner to the side.\ He was shot? Shot where?\ I’m told the bullet entered his back.\ That doesn’t make any sense. We would’ve heard it. There’d be blood.\ Flash on the half-dollar’s worth in the grass. Not enough for a gunshot wound. Not nearly enough. I know. I’ve seen way too many of them.\ I don’t understand it either . . . Mr. . . . Doyle, you said? But the facts are the facts. Mr. Wong was shot dead. Dr. Luo and Dr. Anderson found an entry wound from a rather large bullet. The police are on their way, as is the medical examiner.\ I want to see him.\ That was from Rick, who was being helped up by the two doctors.\ I want to see Pop. I need to see him.\ Anderson looked at Wagner and nodded.\ Of course. I’ll take you to him.\ They left the room. Luo and Wagner followed. Sam felt around his chest for a cell phone that was not, of course, there, considering he was still wearing his company’s orange BOPI logo golf shirt and no jacket, and cell phones are verboten on club grounds.\ I have to make a call. I have to make a hundred calls. What a nightmare. I can’t believe this.\ He asked for the keys and went out to the car to use my phone.\ I sat back down on the couch, trying to replay those moments before Wong collapsed, and I couldn’t remember hearing anything that would even remotely sound like a gunshot. It had been perfectly quiet, unusually calm, with just the shushing of water lapping against the beach and the twittering of colorful birds as the soundtrack to that paradise.\ The number seventeen was a par three, 189 yards, which ran along Maunalua Bay, with the green lying somewhat in the shadow of the large Kahala resort hotel. One oddity of the Sony Open was that Waialae flipped the out and back for those two weeks only, making the number ten the tournament’s number-one hole, and thus the number seventeen was normally the number eight. Get it? Me neither. Anyway, on the second to last hole, Sing Ten Wong had pulled out a fairway metal, teed up his Nike One and was about to take a few practice swings when someone apparently punched a neat little hole in his shirt and ended what up until that very second had been an extraordinary life.\ A high-powered rifle and a silencer maybe? On one of those hotel balconies?\ I caught myself thinking aloud.\ That would explain the lack of gunshot. Except for one thing: Rick’s dad was right-handed. His back was to the ocean.\ And, while daydreaming about surfing, I’d been looking right at the place where the bullet had to have come from.\ And didn’t see a goddamn thing.\ Excerpted from Water Hazard by .\ Copyright © 2010 by Don Dahler.\ Published in March 2010 by St. Martin’s Press.\ All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.

\ From the PublisherAdvance Praise for Water Hazard\ "Dahler has done it again. PGA tour pro and danger-magnet sleuth, Huck Doyle, once again finds trouble at every turn, both on the golf course and off. This mystery is more captivating than each new hole of a sudden death playoff."\ —-Michael Balkind, author of Sudden Death, and Dead Ball\ “If you like mystery, action, golf or Hawaii (that includes just about everyone, doesn’t it?) you’ll enjoy Water Hazard. Don Dahler hits it long, straight and suspenseful.”\ —-Mary Jane Clark, author of Dying for Mercy\ Praise for A Tight Lie\ “A terrific hard-boiled LA story—-with a bonus peek into the world of pro sports.”\ —-Lee Child,  New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to Lose\ “An absolute thriller! Once I started reading it, I could not and did not put it down!”\ —-Bill Evans, author of Category 7\ “Many will enjoy the company of the garrulous Huck with his passion for golf and eye for the telling social or cultural detail.”\ —-Publishers Weekly\ “A Tight Lie isn’t some mystery about golf. It’s a sharp, funny, well-crafted thriller about a private investigator who just happens to make pretty good with the sticks. In L.A. talk: Think Chinatown meets Tin Cup. Dahler had me hooked with his in depth meditations on sports psychology, Pamela Anderson’s breasts, and fine Scotch. Pour yourself a single malt, kick back, and enjoy this notable debut.”\ —-Ace Atkins, author of White Shadow and Wicked City\ “The action, which moves as briskly as the beverage cart on a July day, careers from mansions to freeways to strip clubs. But there’s also plenty of time on the links. . . .  It’s realistic—-remarkably so.”\ —-Golf.com\ “Dahler manages to weave golf into a dark tale of Los Angeles vice and crime…. Best of all, we find out exactly what the hardest stroke in all of golf really is—and the answer will bring a murderer down.”\ —-Mystery Scene\ “A promising debut whose hero, tough and literate as Spenser and cool as Freddie Couples, will appeal to golfers and hard-boiled fans alike.”\ —-Kirkus Reviews\ “A can’t-put-it-down thriller filled with many twists and turns. The game of golf has its own set of highs and lows—-but never like this! Wow—-get ready for the wildest ride of your life!” —-Jim Nantz, CBS Sports\ \ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsGolf fans and mystery mavens will rejoice at Dahler's second appearance on the tour. PGA golfer, lawyer and private eye Huck Doyle (A Tight Lie, 2009) has a sponsor's exemption to the Sony Open that could jump-start his career. When his law-school friend Rick Wong's father, the man who got Huck the exemption, is shot dead on the 17th tee of the Waialae Country Club, Huck is sucked into danger. Certain that an upcoming secret bank merger is the reason for his father's death, Rick begs Huck to investigate. Because he'd promised his father that he'd never pry into his private life, he hands over his father's computer to Huck. Suddenly Huck is harried by some mysterious tough guys whose behavior escalates from annoying to violent. Huck's paraplegic brother, a former FBI agent, helps him crack encrypted computer files that unmask Mr. Wong as a pedophile who'd been making money from a disgusting business and implicate both his partner, a former Chinese general, and agents of the Chinese government as suspects in his death. Huck, who's found his golf game, is trying to keep up the good work after winning the Pro-Am. Making the cut and emerging as the 36-hole leader, he merely has to stay alive long enough to solve the puzzle and try to win the tournament. A hole in one full of can't-put-it-down adventure, stroke-by-stroke descriptions of the play and a clever solution.\ \ \ Publishers WeeklyReaders should be prepared for lengthy golf descriptions in Dahler’s slightly better follow-up to 2009’s A Tight Lie, which introduced pro golfer Huck Doyle, a nonpracticing lawyer who works as a PI in Los Angeles. Sing Ten Wong, the wealthy banker father of Rick, an old law school buddy of Huck’s, has secured him a place in the Sony Open in Hawaii, an opportunity for the struggling Huck to regain his lost status on the PGA Tour. Before the start of the tournament, during a practice round at Waialae Country Club, someone shoots the senior Wong in the back, apparently with a high-powered rifle, from the direction of the ocean. Rick asks his friend to investigate, suspecting that the killing may be connected with a huge bank merger his father was working on. Huck’s digging soon triggers a hostile response from some bad guys, who ransack his hotel room and attempt to warn him off. The solution may disappoint mystery fans. (Mar.)\ \