Vincent cut his speed and rolled in quietly, watching the guy at the tee line up his shot. He brought the club head back a few inches and then in close again, stamped his feet lightly to get his weight right, rolled his shoulders around under his shirt. Attention drilling down into the ball, and the three others captivated, too. Then finally he swung: club head rising and then whipping back around, striking the ball with a clean ting, and the guy finished his stroke with the club shaft vertical and his trailing leg up on tiptoe.

One guy said, ‘Yeah, that’s good. You’ve sliced it a little, but the dog-leg’s helping—you can see it coming around.’ Walking backward across the tee area with his arm out like a traffic warden, pointing out the drop of the ball.

Vincent rolled closer, and now Sly looked over. ‘Oh, for … this fucking guy. Pal, give me a break.’

Vincent said, ‘I just want to talk to you.’

Sly looked at him, seemed to realise that Vincent wasn’t going anywhere. He shook his head and said something under his breath. Then he tossed his driver into one of the carts and climbed in behind it, headed off up the fairway.

Vincent followed, the three others just watching, and he wondered if this was business as usual for them—standard interruption when you play eighteen holes with big Sly.

The carts were evenly matched, so the gap held steady at about twenty feet. Sly tracked the edge of the fairway, keeping off the fringe where the longer grass would slow him down. He had his golf bag upright beside him, and Vincent watched as he leaned down for something from the base pocket. The course hooked around to the right, and as they rounded the bend and moved out of sight of the tee-off area at the sixteenth, it was just the two of them on the green terrain.

Vincent stopped. He knew where this was heading.

Sly glanced back a second later and halted with a skid, and Vincent sat behind the wheel of the cart and waited as the big man came over to him livid, a Colt .38 hanging in one hand. Vincent raised his own hands slowly, taking care to not look like a threat, and Sly came right up to him, put the gun in his face.

‘Are you and I gonna have a problem? I really hope not.’

Voice sugar-sweet, face right up at kiss-range.