Barbara Stokes
Swing Town U. S. A.
CHAPTER ONE
A black Porsche sped up the driveway which led to the Bayou Country Club. The long white lines of the columns fronting the club were almost imperceptible through the lush vegetation. As the Porsche neared the parking lot, the grounds broke into an explosion of color. Clumps of azaleas bordered the parking lot as well as the walkways leading to and from the club.
Kenneth "Catch" Callahan climbed out of the Porsche and stretched his six foot, two-inch frame. He blinked his eyes against the onslaught of the harsh Texas sun. He reached inside the pocket of his safari jacket and put on a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. Suddenly there was a nearby explosion and the ground shook beneath his feet. The windows of the country club rattled and several magnolia blossoms fell from the trees to the ground.
"Sonofabitch!"
He turned to his left and looked across the golf course to the hills beyond. The sides of the hills were already eroded from the explosives and the giant teeth of the bulldozers. The site just beyond the boundaries of the Bayou Country Club had been sold to the Land Development Corporation and was being turned into a housing development for middle to upper middle class residents.
"It's going to ruin the view," Catch muttered, and shook his head. "Just imagine golf balls crashing through the windows, bopping blue-haired matrons on the head."
Catch Callahan was a striking looking man, tall, muscularly built with steel-gray hair and an infectious smile. He looked more like Paul Newman's younger brother than a corporation "troubleshooter." His eyes, blue-gray and startling, seemed cold and calculating. His great hands, with their long tapered fingers seemed incapable of a caress. His full lips set in an eternal conventioneer's smile seemed incapable of true laughter.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Underneath his business-like exterior, Catch Callahan was a loving, gentle, imaginative and humorous man, but in his line of business, he preferred to adopt a certain image… one of strength and power.
He stubbed out the cigarette he had been smoking in the gravel and made his way up the concrete walk to the country club.
The Bayou Country Club was located just outside of Houston on a large tract of land at the edge of a bayou. It was designed along the lines of a southern plantation with tall majestic columns surrounding all four sides of the main building and similar southern colonial architecture in the smaller out-buildings.
It was constructed in 1917 by a wealthy southerner named Colonel Jarvis Jefferson. Jefferson was a notorious drinker. His wife was a bit of a tart and his children immensely unruly. This caused him and his family to be denied entrance to other country clubs in the area. Unperturbed by this slight to his dignity, Jefferson built his own country club and made it grander than all the others combined. People clamored for admission, even those who had kept Jefferson out of their clubs and then it was his turn to do the blackballing.