Death in a Green Jacket

by James Y. Bartlett

  The two men chuckled. Conn introduced me and I shook William’s large hand, which was warm and solid and strong. He looked at me, eyebrows raised in question.

  “Yore name shore nuff Hacker?” he asked. I nodded. He broke out in a soft chuckle. “Well, Mister Hacker, you have done come to the right place today. This be the world capital of hacker today.” He shouldered our two golf bags and walked off, chuckling softly to himself.

  Conn led me into the whitewashed building, which had been built in a shallow V shape. “This building was designed by Stanford White, the New York architect,” he said. “That was before he was shot for fooling around with someone else’s wife. I think he also designed the clubhouse at Shinnecock. This one is a whole lot less fancy.”

  Indeed it was. To the left of entry, there was a large function room, mostly empty of furniture. To the right was the locker room—men only—which featured a few rows of antique wooden lockers, some stuffed chairs, and a huge open hearth in which a bright fire was crackling. Beyond the lockers was a smallish bathroom area done in white hexagonal tiles with huge old sinks and lavatories with pull chain flushers. I felt like saying “Twenty-three skidoo” or something.

  “Place doesn’t even have a kitchen,” Conn said with a hint of pride. “They bring in a caterer if they have an event here. If you’re hungry, though, Tommy has a hot dog steamer in the back of his shop.” He nodded out the window at the old clapboard shack. There was a wraparound porch on the far side of the building, which overlooked the last hole and had a dozen or so wooden rocking chairs. “Pretty cool, huh? This is your basic old-fashioned golf club,” Conn said. “No pool, no tennis, no dining room. They do let women in, but they have to fend for themselves. It’s pretty much drive in and tee it up. Just like it was back in 1892.”

  The place was beginning to fill up with golfers in pre-tournament mode. A long line of carts snaked away from the pro shop, and golfers were milling about, greeting one another in genial hubbub. I told Conn I was going to hit some balls for the first time in a week or two, and after finding my clubs, I grabbed a few and headed over to the nearby practice range. It was a shortish range, tucked in the bend of one of the fairways, with a tall wire fence to protect players from energetic practice shots. A sign asked that we not hit driver which was fine with me: I just wanted to swing a few irons and try to find a semblance of a rhythm.

  I was happily whacking away when I heard a cough behind me. Someone said “Nice swing.”

  I turned. Travis Kitchen, the recently retired homicide cop was standing there, dressed in golf clothes, holding a handful of clubs, and wearing a Cheshire-cat grin. Even in a polo shirt and casual slacks, he looked neat and proper.

  “Thanks,” I said, grinning back at him. “Guess you retired codgers have nothing better to do than play golf, huh?”

  “That’s the plan,” Kitchen said. “Beats the hell out of getting shot at.”

  “I would think so,” I said. “I wonder what the rules are about former police officers talking to the press about cases they once managed if they’re now retired.”

  “Well,” Kitchen said, “While it would be both illegal and unethical to discuss any investigations that are still ongoing, if you want to buy me a beer after the round, maybe we can swap a few tidbits of information. I understand you’ve been busy, too.”

  I shrugged. “Just doing my job,” I said.

  He looked at me with a wry smile. “I think that’s my line,” he said.

  He went to hit a few balls. I headed back up to the clubhouse to find Conn. People had begun to gather around the line of golf carts in anticipation of the shotgun start. Conn was sitting in the driver’s seat of our cart, chatting with two guys in the next one. He grinned at me when I sat down next to him.

  “We’re going off the first,” he said. “Had to slip Tommy a few bucks. But I thought you should see the course from beginning to end, like it was designed.”

  “Still gotta play them all,” I said.

  “Yeah, but a golf course, at least a good golf course like this one, has a rhythm to it,” he said. “Start in the middle and it all gets out of whack.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  A small man with a shaggy-dog mustache and round glasses mounted the three steps in front of the golf shop carrying a bullhorn. He pushed a button to make a high screeching sound that caused everyone standing around to turn and look.

  “Howdy y’all,” he said in the tinny amplified sound. “My name is Tom Bowen, and as the head professional, I want to welcome y’all to the fifty-third playing of the Devereaux Milburn Memorial.”

  There was scattered applause.

  “There are rules sheets on every cart. Just to summarize, since I figure y’all can read, we’re playing best-ball of two-man teams. We’re also playing ‘em down today, fellas.” Scattered boos rang out. Tom ignored them. “We got a full house here, so let’s try and keep play moving along. If you’re out of a hole, pick the damn ball up. Any questions?” No one said anything. “Okay, then. Let’s get started and good luck to everyone.”

  There followed the usual mad rush to the golf carts, as the golfers began to drive out to their assigned holes for the shotgun start. With a foursome beginning on each hole, and two assigned to the par-five holes, the entire field would begin and complete play roughly at the same time.

  While the contestants scattered, I corralled Bowen. “I’ve been told to find a guy named Skipper Evans,” I said. “Graham Dodd told me he’s got some good stories.”

  Bowen smiled. “He does indeed,” he said. “These days, he can’t play anymore so he’s in charge of getting lunch ready. I expect he’ll get here a bit later. I’ll make sure you two meet after the tournament.”

  I thanked him, grabbed my putter and strolled over to the practice green to get a feel for the speed of the greens.

  Conn pulled our golf cart around next to the first tee, which occupied a flat space at the crest of a long and steep hill. The fairway began well below us and climbed away in the distance. I met the two fellows who’d be playing with us, and Tom the golf pro came out with an over-under shotgun and shot a couple of blanks into the air.

  “I reckon that means we can start,” said one of the other guys. At least, I think that’s what he said—my ears were still ringing. We all launched our tee shots off the hill and down onto the fairway far below. There were two long thin bunkers bracketing each side of the fairway, so I aimed for the left one and tried to play a little cut back to the middle. I cut it a little too much, but it managed to stop before rolling into the right-side bunker. Conn pulled his a little into the left rough, and the other two guys were right down the middle.

  I could immediately sense the old-fashioned appeal of the course at Palmetto. The first fairway, once we descended the long hill from the tee, sloped steadily upwards towards a green cut into the side of a hill, surrounded by sand and mounded hillocks. The second hole was similar, with a relatively easy tee shot through a stand of tall pines to another plateau green that dropped away steeply in front. Like many old courses that date from the 19th century, the golf holes seemed to fit the land, yet they demanded precise shots, especially coming into the greens. My pulse level rose a few beats. This was going to be fun.

  We had to wait a while on the third tee while the fairway ahead of us cleared. “Hogan used to say that these next three holes were the strongest par-fours in a row he’d ever seen,” said Conn.

  “Yeah, but what did he know?” I said. Everyone chuckled.

  As it turns out, Hogan was probably correct. The third was a monster hole of almost 470 yards, which meant that even after a good drive, we all had 200-plus yards to get to the green. And it was a small green, raised in front and terraced. I think my scrambling bogey was low score. The next hole wasn’t much shorter, and called for a long carry over some rough, bush- and sand-filled terrain to a steeply sloping fairway. That left a long iron shot to a narrow plateau green that fell a
way on the right. Conn’s bogey was our best score when I left my approach under the lip of the front bunker and couldn’t get it out.

  Then there was the fifth, yet another long, long par-four, with thick piney woods on both sides of a narrow fairway, with yet another multi-tiered, raised green at the end. I made a good up-and-down from in front and salvaged a par. But Hogan’s three toughest holes had eaten my lunch, and I knew it.

  Conn and I were playing fairly well, but neither one of us was grinding very hard. It was a gorgeous day, the golf course was in good nick and the company was fun. One of the other players in our foursome, Bennie McDougall, filled me in on some of the background of the tournament. “From right after World War II until the late 50’s, all the pros came down the week before the Masters to play in the Milburn,” he said. “With all the money around here, the betting got pretty heavy.”

  Bennie hit a shot and continued. “It was quite the scene,” he said. “It was a pro-am, three-day event, and there were parties every night. Sam Snead used to stay up until three in the morning, dancing with all the girls. He loved to dance, Sam did.” He went on talking about the history of the course. The rich polo players who founded the place back in 1892 had just laid out four holes, and soon called in Herbert Leeds, who had recently built the Myopia Hunt Club north of Boston, to bring the course first to nine holes, then 18 in 1895. Leeds had installed the hard-pack sand greens that were used throughout most of the South in the old days. When Alister Mackenzie was in Augusta to work on the National in 1932, he had been hired to come over to Aiken and see what he could do about the Palmetto course. He added some length and showed the locals how to install grass greens, and sent over the construction superintendent and some material from the National to help. More recently, the club members had hired Rees Jones, the famed “Open Doctor” to tweak the layout a bit, modernizing it where necessary. He hadn’t done much to change the course, Bennie told me, but the infrastructure he added had helped conditions improve.

  But it was mostly the Mackenzie influences I noticed as we played our way around the old course. Like many courses from his era, the holes were not overpoweringly long, but all had tricky green complexes that punished a wayward shot. A couple holes were built around redans, or diametrically slanting mounds and bunkers that created a kind of risk-reward situation.

  We made the loop of the old holes that wrapped around the clubhouse and finally came to the last tee, tucked back in the woods. There was a bit of a backup on the tee, as one unfortunate foursome had suffered the indignity of four awful tee shots: two out-of-bounds to the left, and two more lost in the woods to the right. By the time they had finished looking for the lost balls and returned to play again from the tee, two foursomes had backed up.

  I saw that one of the players waiting to play off the last was Travis Kitchen. I sidled up to him.

  “How’re you playing?” I asked.

  “Not too bad,” he said. “My partner has come through with some great putts. He’s made about everything he’s looked at all day.”

  The fairway finally cleared and Kitchen’s group prepared to tee off. The tee box for the 18th at Palmetto is tucked back on a platform at the edge of the woods, falling away steeply at the rear to a wetlands area far below. The hills and dense woods rose up in the distance beyond the little pond. The hole itself wasn’t one of the more daunting ones, except for the low cedar fence marking out-of-bounds down the left side, and the woods lurking on the right. But if you could knock a three-wood relatively straight, the fairway was open and the approach would be a simple flip of a wedge.

  Most of us were standing off to the left of the narrow tee when Kitchen bent over to tee his ball. He took a step or two behind the ball and lined up his shot. He stood there for a moment, looking down the fairway, visualizing the flight he wanted the ball to take. Then he walked forward and took his address position. Just as he was about to swing, someone on the nearby seventeenth green made a long putt and all the golfers in that foursome began yelling in excitement. The sudden noise startled all of us, and Kitchen broke from his address posture and took a step back away from the ball.

  There was a sudden zipping sound followed immediately by a dullish thud. I thought I saw a tuft of dirt fly up into the air. I also saw Travis Kitchen’s shoulders flinch defensively. He knew exactly what had happened. Someone had just fired a rifle at him. Instinctively, he took two running steps and threw himself off the tee to the right, down the slight embankment and into the bushy growth. There was another zip sound when he was in the air, and I heard him grunt moments before he hit the brush and rolled behind a medium-size oak. There was a third zip and a chunk of bark flew off the tree.

  “Everyone get down!” I shouted, and nobody had to be told twice. The whole thing had taken maybe four or five seconds. Everyone either flattened themselves on the ground, or ducked behind one of the golf carts parked next to the tee. Three guys had whipped out their cell phones and were dialing 9-1-1.

  I took a chance that whoever had fired the shots was by now getting the hell away, and, after taking one deep breath, made a dash across the tee and down into the brush after Kitchen. I rolled behind the same small tree. There were no more zips.

  He was lying on his back, his face pale and sweaty. But his eyes were open and he was breathing in short, throaty gasps. “I think he got me in the leg,” he said, his voice thin with pain. I bent down and pushed him over on his side to see. He groaned and said a few dirty words.

  “No,” I said. “I can confidently report that he got you in the ass,” I said. “But I think you’re gonna live.” I could see that the bullet that had hit Kitchen in mid-dive had caught him in one buttock. But it looked like just a flesh wound that had grazed him. “He’s OK!” I yelled over to the other guys. Already, dimly in the background, I could hear the wail of sirens approaching.

  “I think you’d better tell my partner it’s his hole,” Kitchen said through clenched teeth.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Many hours later, as the sun began to sink behind the woods—the same woods from whence the shots had been fired—I sat myself down wearily in one of the old rocking chairs on the porch of the Palmetto Club. Needless to say, the attempted murder of Travis Kitchen had thrown something of a damper on the end of the tournament. Not to mention the peace and quiet of a perfectly nice day.

  The Aiken PD had been the first to arrive, followed by several ambulances and fire trucks. Then the South Carolina Staties were there, in their impressive Gestapo-like uniforms with polished calf-high boots and Smokey Bear hats. There were some guys running around with SWAT jackets and blue jeans who came from I don’t know where. Helicopters buzzed around the woods all afternoon, looking for the rifleman or men. The sound of police radios punctuated the afternoon air, with squelch squeaks, monotone female voices droning on about this and that, the usual traffic of official conversations that always to me sound fuzzy and indistinct.

  I had taken a gaggle of police types back to the 18th tee and shown them where everyone had been and what had happened. Then we had all gone back to Stanford White’s elegant little cottage and I had recounted the events over and over and over. Every time some new police jurisdiction had arrived, I had to tell the story again. By the end of the afternoon, I was starting to get hoarse.

  The other golfers had come trundling in from the course after finishing their last hole to find the clubhouse area bristling with cops, EMTs and firemen. A catered lunch had been waiting in the one function room of the clubhouse, the wing opposite the locker rooms, and finally Tom Bowen the pro had asked for permission to have the food brought outside and placed on long tables so the golfers could get something to eat. Everyone made themselves a plate and grabbed a beer and stood around talking about the shooting of Travis Kitchen, recently retired homicide chief of Richmond County.

  I never had time to eat anything. Conn Thackerey brought me a soft drink at one point in the afternoon, but that was about all I ha
d during my endless repetitions of the story. So by the time I finally sank down into the rocking chair, I was hungry and totally exhausted. I closed my eyes and thought—once again—of the sequence of events. Kitchen’s sudden move away from his tee shot had caused the shooter to miss the first shot, and his quick reflexes after that had saved his life. The guy who had made that long, cross-country putt on the 17th was hailed as the hero of the day, since it was the yelling and cheering from that event that had distracted Kitchen and made him step away from his ball.

  I sensed someone come out on the porch and opened my eyes. Standing next to me was an older man, well into his 80s, with a round body, bright pink head with thinning white hair, and small narrow glasses perched on the end of a bulbous nose. He was smiling and carrying a plastic plate heaped with food. My stomach growled loud enough to be heard back in Augusta.

  “Thought you might be a mite hungry,” he drawled in a voice that cut like an axe through the air, a sharp baritone tinged with a Dixie drawl. “You ain’t had time to think much the last few hours, have ya?”

  I nodded my appreciation, too tired to come up with any kind of rejoinder, and gratefully took the plate and began wolfing down the food.

  He pulled up a rocking chair and sat down next to me. “I’m Skipper Evans,” he said. “Heard ole Graham told you to look me up.” I nodded, my mouth too full to answer. “Yessir,” he said, looking out on the golf course as the shadows began to lengthen across the last fairway. “This is a day that’ll be talked about as long as they play golf here. That’s for dead certain.”

  I swallowed and made myself stop shoveling long enough to thank the man. I asked how long he had been a member.

  “Me?” he said, smiling. “I guess you could call me what that writer feller said…I’m the ‘Oldest Member!’ Hell, I been here so long I sign my chits in Roman numerals!”