Death in a Green Jacket

by James Y. Bartlett

  I got off the highway, eased onto Boulevard—that’s the name of the street—and turned left at the first light. The cemetery appeared off to our right, and I could see what Conn meant. Looming over the low brick wall that surrounded the park, I could see granite monuments piercing the Atlanta sky. Some were obelisks that resembled small versions of the Washington monument. Others looked like pint-sized chapels.

  We saw the entrance a half block ahead. Conn pointed across the street from the arched entry to the cemetery. “There,” he said. “Perfect.”

  He was pointing at a small storefront restaurant. The sign above the door, framed by two Coca-Cola logos, read “Six Feet Under.”

  “You gotta have a sense of humor if you open a restaurant across the street from a graveyard,” Conn said. “I’ll go in there, and keep my eyes open.”

  I pulled over to the curb and Conn got out. He was halfway out of the seat when he leaned back in. “Good luck,” he said. “Don’t do anything stupid. You gotta be calm.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t speak. My heartbeat was approaching liftoff speed. Mach 1. I turned into the cemetery, passing under the red-brick arch. It was full of mature trees shading the many fanciful sculptures and mausoleums. Off to the right, a large cherry tree, in full impressive bloom of pink and white, spread its limbs next to a structure that looked like a magnificent European cathedral with stained-glass windows, gargoyles and a slate roof, built in 1:25 scale.

  The narrow road came to a circle and I followed it around to the right as it climbed a hill. The impressive glass-and-steel structures of Atlanta’s downtown loomed in the near distance, poking up into a darkening sky. Dimly, in a back corner of my brain. I noted the irony of the bustle and hustle of this modern commercial center within sight of the quiet, shaded and elaborate resting places of the dead. On the far side of the hill, the road descended and split apart again at another circle. As I drove slowly along, I saw a small green-lettered sign with an arrow pointing the way to Margaret Mitchell’s grave. On the left, I caught sight of a massive granite lion, draped in a battle flag, eyes shut in either pain or death. The plinth was carved with the words “Our Unknown Dead.” The brutality with which the Civil War had been fought must have resulted in thousands of grey-clad soldiers left in death without any distinguishing characteristics.

  Following Rico’s instructions, I turned off on a narrow sand road and crept along it to where it ended at the brick boundary wall, about five feet high. I cut the engine and looked around. The place was empty, save for the rows of headstones, many decorated with weeping angels, soldiers in battle dress and other stonework representations of grief and death.

  I got out of the car. The only sound was the faint humming of the cars on the nearby interstate, and a few birds singing mournfully in the trees as twilight deepened.

  “Hola, Senor Hacker.” The voice from the phone came from behind me. I turned around and saw a man, about five-six and slender, walking towards me. One of his hands was holding the arm of Mary Jane. She was bound and blindfolded with a kerchief that covered her face. In his other hand, he held a stubby black pistol, pointed at me. I held my hands up and watched as they approached. His hair was jet black and his features contained elements of a mestizo: an oval dark face, broad flat nose, and a thick mustache.

  They eased around me so Rico was standing with his back to the brick wall. He wanted to keep an eye on the park behind me.

  “I take it you are alone?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. Mary Jane’s head moved, once, when she heard my voice.

  “You have been asking about me,” he said. “Maria Sanchez. Lester Johnson. Now, here I am. You can ask me what you want to know.”

  “Let Mary Jane go,” I said. “This doesn’t concern her.”

  “No.” he shook his head sadly. “That I cannot do. She is my ticket to freedom. You will be driving me from this place. I need to go back to Augusta tonight. There is still unfinished business there.”

  “What kind of unfinished business?” I asked. “More people to kill?”

  He smiled. “You tell me what kind of business. You seem to have learned a great deal.”

  “I believe you killed John Judge,” I said. “Somehow, you managed to breach the club’s security system and bury him in the bunker. I believe it was a warning to Charlie Grosvenor, but a warning for what, I don’t know. Then, you tried to kill Travis Kitchen at the Palmetto club, but you missed. I know Juan Carlos Obrador has come to Augusta, and I know he has met with Grosvenor. I know you work for the Obrador family. I know Grosvenor is pretty dirty. I think this whole thing is because of some arrangement between Charlie and Juan Carlos that went wrong. How’m I doing?”

  “I would say you were almost entirely wrong,” he said. “To begin, I did not kill that young man.”

  “Liar,” I said.

  Lithe as a cat, he stepped behind Mary Jane in a fluid motion and brought his gun up to the base of her skull.

  “I would suggest, Senor, that you be very careful about your words. I do not lie.”

  I held out my hands in supplication. “Don’t,” I said, my voice rising. “She is not involved in any of this.”

  “She is your woman,” he said. “That makes her involved.” But he lowered his gun and stepped away from Mary Jane again.

  “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “As I have said, you will drive me back to Augusta. The woman, too. When my business is finished, I will let you go. Her as well.”

  “How do I know that?” I asked. “How do I know that you won’t kill both of us when your business is done?”

  He smiled again, showing his teeth. “You must have trust, Senor Hacker.”

  “I’m supposed to trust you? You’re a hired gun, an assassin. That is not the most trustworthy type of person I can think of.”

  He shrugged. “Then don’t trust me,” he said. “And life will happen as fate decrees. Your fate may be good, or it may be bad. We will find out which one together.”

  There was a sudden noise to our left as something crashed loudly high in the branches of a tree. Rico pushed Mary Jane to the ground, crouched in a shooter’s position and pointed his gun in the direction of the sound. We heard something heavy hit the ground. At almost the same moment, someone leaped over the brick wall. It was Conn, wielding an aluminum baseball bat.

  He turned towards Conn, gun raised. I took two leaping steps and grabbed for Rico’s gun hand, forcing it up into the air. I managed to knock him slightly off balance, and Conn, taking advantage of the element of surprise, was able to land a hard blow across Rico’s back with his bat. It made a hollow sound, and I felt the reverberations as it hit. Rico arched backwards in pain. But he wrenched his arm free from mine, shoved me away with his other hand and jumped backwards and to the side in front of a waist-high granite headstone. Again, he moved with the stealth of a cat. Conn had his bat raised for another strike, but de la Paz had regained the upper hand and was bringing the gun down to the firing position.

  Until he stumbled on something underfoot. His feet seemed to spin out from under him, he gave out a startled cry and both his arms went up in the air as he tried to regain his balance. Conn stepped forward and took a full swing, the bat landing on the back of Rico’s head with an awful sound, like a cantaloupe dropping on the sidewalk. Rico groaned in pain, took a half-step, lost his footing again, and fell. He dropped the gun and I quickly kicked it away. But Rico was not moving. I jumped over to Mary Jane, who had stayed on the ground when Rico pushed her down. I yanked the kerchief off her face, pulled her to her feet and wrapped her in my arms. She began to sob quietly, her body racked with heaving breaths. Conn stood over the prostrate figure, bat held high to strike again if Rico moved.

  In the next instant, the cemetery seemed to explode. We were suddenly enveloped in bright flood lights from about four different directions. What seemed like an entire division of soldiers materialized out of the ether,
all dressed in black jumpsuits and helmets with black faceguards, and all carrying impressive-looking automatic rifles, with barrel-mounted flashlights and laser-aimers. Five more men suddenly rappelled down out of the trees on black ropes that dropped silently. One of the men reached up and pulled his helmet off. It was Wilcox. He had a tiny bud stuck in one ear and a wrap-around microphone. And he was grinning.

  “Nice work, Hacker,” he said. “I told you we were good at this.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said. I nodded at Conn, who had lowered his bat while several of the black suits grabbed the prostrate Rico off the ground and frog-marched him off to a black SUV that screeched up.

  “Yeah,” Wilcox said to Conn. “You’ll never know how close you came to getting wasted. Luckily, there was enough light left for me to see your face, and I aborted the open-fire order. Still, I gotta give you credit for guts. Stupid, maybe, but gutsy.”

  One of the other members of Wilcox’ team was shining his light at the base of the headstone where Rico had lost his footing. He bent over and picked something up.

  “Yo, Whiskey-One,” he called over to Wilcox. “Look at this.” He held up his hand. It was a golf ball.

  “What the hell?” I went over to look at it, still holding on tight to Mary Jane. It was a brand-new Titleist. I looked down at the ground. There were dozens of balls lying there; new ones, old ones, yellow and pink ones. Plus a few tees, scorecards and even a golf visor.

  I brought my eyes up and read the inscription on the headstone. And began to laugh, a slightly hysterical laugh that was right on the edge of madness. The others came over to look.

  ROBERT TYRE JONES JR. March 17, 1902 December 18, 1971

  MARY MALONE JONES July 24, 1902 May 23, 1975

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Wilcox insisted that we take Mary Jane to the hospital and loaded her, Conn and me into another black SUV. The driver stuck a flashing blue light on top of the car and sped off towards downtown. Mary Jane was still sobbing, but she seemed to be in one piece. I held her close, stroking her back and arm.

  “How cool was that?” Wilcox said to no one in particular. “Saved by the great Bobby Jones. I’ll have to put this in my memoirs.”

  “I didn’t know he was buried in Oaklawn,” Conn said. “But I’m sure as hell glad he was.”

  “Remind me to bring back a dozen Pro V-1s and a bottle of his favorite bourbon,” I said.

  “Dunno, Hack,” Conn said. “You do that and he might lose his amateur status.”

  “What, exactly, was your plan there?” Wilcox asked Conn.

  He shrugged. “I was going to introduce the element surprise,” he said. I figured you and your goons needed some kind of incident that would throw Enrico off guard for a split-second. I was hoping you had snipers or something ready to go. I tossed an old brick up into the trees to get his attention and jumped the fence.”

  “You almost hit one of my guys. What if it hadn’t worked?” Wilcox asked, shaking his head.

  “Then he would have shot me,” Conn said, shrugging. “And that would have given your guys time to pounce.”

  “Gutsy,” he said. “But stupid. You’re a lucky man.”

  “Where did you get the bat?” I wanted to know.

  Conn grinned. “As I was walking around to the back of the cemetery, following your car outside the wall, I came across this kid going home from playing some ball. I bought it from him.”

  “How much?”

  He laughed. “I offered him twenty bucks, and he asked for fifty. He settled for forty. Kid has a future in business.”

  Still wrapped at my side, I felt Mary Jane stir. She put her head up and mumbled something.

  “Mary Jane wants to know what happened to Beatrice Samper?” I said. “Geez, I hope she’s all right.”

  Wilcox turned around. “She’s OK, darlin’” he said to Mary Jane. “She flew out of here this afternoon on her way to Miami.”

  “You mean she was part of this?” I was stunned.

  “Oh, yeah,” Wilcox said, chuckling to himself. “In fact, next time you see Grosvenor, ask him how his sister-in-law is. That poor sumbitch got ‘em coming and going in his family.”

  The SUV pulled up to the emergency entrance at the Crawford Long Hospital. An attendant came out with a wheelchair and whisked Mary Jane inside. We got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk for a minute. The twilight had deepened into evening, with just a faint glow of blue left in the sky.

  “Where is Enrico going?” I asked.

  Wilcox shrugged. “Secret location,” he said. “He’ll get treatment for his aching head and then we’ll start debriefing him.”

  “Guantanamo?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Nah, that’s another division,” he said. “We’ve got our own. It’s still secret. For God’s sake, don’t tell the New York Times. Those bastards like to run our state secrets just for the hell of it.”

  “What about Grosvenor?” I said. “Are you gonna bust him?”

  “We’re still looking at that,” he said. “Right now, we’ve got mostly supposition and not that much in hard evidence. But we will certainly be asking him and his wife a few questions before too long.”

  I left him and Conn outside and went in to stay with Mary Jane. It didn’t take long, probably thanks to the influence of Wilcox’ alphabet agency. One of the docs came into her emergency-room cubicle and did a quick examination. He shined a pin light in her eyes, listened to her heart, took her blood pressure, quickly felt for any broken bones, palpated her abdomen for internal injuries. She was quiet and teary eyed during the examination, holding my hand tightly the entire time. The doc motioned at me, so I pried her hand away, smiled at her and followed him out into the corridor.

  “I think she’s OK,” he said, making some notes on a chart. “No apparent injuries. I’ve called our resident OB-GYN to come down and examine her carefully. But I don’t think she’s been sexually assaulted. I’m going to give you something that will help calm her nerves, probably put her to sleep for a while. I recommend you get her some counseling. These kinds of stressful situations can be traumatic. It’s like battle fatigue…the feelings and emotions can come back and probably will. Keep her quiet and resting for a few days. That will help.”

  He went away for a minute or two, and then came back with a pill bottle. I thanked him and shook his hand. I went back in and sat there with Mary Jane until the OB-GYN came in. She shooed me out of the room. After fifteen minutes, she came back out and gave me a thumbs up. I went back in the room and gave Mary Jane her pill and a cup of water. She took it without any questions. She still had a faraway look in her eyes. I sat there with her, holding her hand. We didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure what to say, and decided that I’d let her talk about it when she was ready. In a few minutes, I felt her body begin to relax. Her eyes closed and she slept.

  I went back outside and found Conn and Wilcox still talking on the sidewalk outside the emergency entrance. My car was parked there.

  “She’s asleep,” I said. “The doctor knocked her out. But she’s fine, health wise. Nothing injured. No assault. Said she needs rest for a few days. I guess we should go back to Augusta, if that’s OK with you, Conn.”

  He nodded. “Of course,” he said. “But I’m driving. You’ve had enough stress for one day. Hell, you’ve had enough for a couple of years.”

  I was beginning to feel the aftershock setting in. My limbs were suddenly heavy and my face felt flushed. But my heart had returned to a normal rate. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to forget the last couple of hours. I wanted to go back to reporting on golf, telling the world who won and who lost and how.

  “Where are you going?” I asked Wilcox.

  “I’m heading over to the Varsity,” he said. “Get some of their sliders and onion rings. Best greasy food in the world. Perfect after an adventure like this.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I owe you.”

  He waved me away. “N
ah,” he said. “Your friendly government servant, ready at all times to serve and protect. Just doing my job. Besides, your friend here did most of the work.”

  “I know,” I said, my voice breaking down a little. “I owe him, too. Big time.”

  Conn grabbed my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Awww,” he said. “Don’t let’s get all mushy. Saw a chance to help, and luckily no one got hurt. C’mon, let’s go home.”

  We went back inside, put Mary Jane on a stretcher and wheeled her out to the car. We lifted her gently into the back seat, borrowing a pillow and blanket from the hospital. I promised to make a big donation to their next fund-raising program. I got into the front passenger seat and Conn took the wheel. As we pulled away, Wilcox gave us a mock salute.

  The ride back to Augusta was quiet. Conn put a classical station on his stereo system, and I soon fell asleep, head lolling back on the headrest. My sleep was deep and dreamless and lasted all the way back to Augusta and Conn’s house.

  Chapter Thirty

  Most of us golf writers don’t show up on Sunday much before noon. Most of us, of course, are usually battling monster hangovers from the last night of carousing on Saturday. But few of us are really concerned with whether or not Robert Allenby finishes T-35 or solo 40th. And as any Masters Kool-Aid drinker can tell you, “the Masters really doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday.” Except for Allenby, of course, whose Masters really ended Saturday afternoon.

  A quick glance at the morning paper told us that O’Shea had finally wilted…a little. He was now two back of Tiger, but playing in the last group. Ernie Els had carded another fine round to get to three behind and was in the next-to-last pairing. Padraig Harrington, Jim Furyk and Tim “Lumpy” Herron were all within shouting distance. The day promised to deliver another barn-burner of a final round.

  Mary Jane slept until about 11 in the morning, brushed her teeth and immediately took another pill. She sat on Conn’s leather couch staring at nothing in particular and then fell asleep again. I hoped all the rest was going to help. I knew we’d have to talk about it sooner or later.