Straight Pool

by JJ Partridge

  Flanaghan stopped, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and continued. “It took a year or so to clean up the golf course and then another year to finish the clubhouse—a huge thing from the photos I’ve seen—and build a beach pavilion. By the summer of ’38, his idea took off. Waiting lists for membership. New courses in Florida and Virginia. American Golf ran a tour where you went from course to course by train all summer and into the fall, then down to Florida for the winter. The stock kept going up when nothing else was. People flocked here that summer, filling the hotels in Misquamicut and Watch Hill and for the first time in years, things looked a little brighter.”

  We had now reached the corral. Flanaghan stopped, put his hands on the top rail of the fence. He was winded and when he continued, his voice lowered in a coolness I didn’t expect.

  “The Great Hurricane of ’38 did him in. One afternoon, he had a successful business. In Westerly, a beautiful new clubhouse over Wynomet Pond, a beach pavilion, a golf course with a waiting list, and two hours later, he was finished. Caught the head of a massive tidal wave, smashing the clubhouse, wrenching it off its pilings into the pond where it broke up. The pavilion was smashed. The golf course was ruined, scorched by salt water.” He shook his head. “You probably never heard how terrible it was in Westerly. Over a hundred people died. All the houses on Napatree Point were destroyed, most of the big ones in Watch Hill and Weekapaug were damaged, and cottages all along the beach here were gone. Three employees at the clubhouse, including … a kid, drowned. The manager, who barely survived, got nailed later for manslaughter because he kept them at the clubhouse until it was too late.”

  We were now at the barn and I couldn’t help but notice the perspiration on Flanaghan’s face, the spot of dampness on the back of his shirt. “That was the end of Windmere Country Club and American Golf. Mayo’s other places were also damaged or destroyed. And guess what?”

  “Not enough insurance to rebuild…?”

  “That too, but much worse. Mayo had cooked the books, robbing Peter to pay Paul. The cash was gone. Couldn’t reopen. Faced with disaster, Mayo takes off, eventually gets arrested in Florida for stock fraud as he’s leaving for Cuba, and that put him away for a good long time. Windmere Country Club gets foreclosed on and that’s when Charlie’s grandfather bought the land and built his house. After a few years, the way things grow down here, you never would have known that the land back there was once fairways and greens and sand traps. But I’ve heard every once in awhile at very low tide, a few pilings from the original clubhouse stick out of the pond.”

  We continued past the house to the rocky shoreline not far from the boathouse. The sparkling length of Wynomet Pond was marked with boat moorings and lobster pots, and beyond the greenish grass and brush of barrier beach, Block Island was a sliver of green on the horizon. A set of bobbing orange cones seem to warn boaters of something to avoid, maybe those errant pilings. A light breeze ruffled the waters as a Boston Whaler skimmed by, scattering a flock of cormorants drying feathers on a jumble of rocks; near the breachway to the Sound, quahoggers in waders pulled clam rakes on tidal flats. On a day as tranquil as this, I found it difficult to conjure up a massive clubhouse as described by Flanaghan or pavilion on the barrier beach, never mind a tidal wave. Flanaghan shook his head and said, “Haversham Golf Club is the third attempt to have a golf course on this land. Hard to believe.”

  I didn’t say what I thought. First, the Masons, then Windmere Country Club, and now Haversham Golf Club? Was there a jinx on the land? Maybe because it once belonged to the Quonnies…?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Ollie Randall never had a chance…,” I said.

  “Well, he set it off, didn’t he,” Charlie replied.

  We were well into a lunch of ham rollup sandwiches and fruit salad in a spacious country kitchen at the rear of the house. Charlie had asked for wine but like us settled for iced tea.

  Flanaghan wondered, “How …, why …, would you set a fire in a building full of fireworks and stay inside? Was he a smoker? Drops a butt and…?”

  “Had to be drunk,” Charlie said without pity. “Randalls are all drunks. You should see how they lived. Falling down house, lean-tos, chicken coops, rusted out truck bodies, all jumbled together. Lay abouts and drunks!”

  Flanaghan’s usual friendly demeanor dissolved at Charlie’s comments and I had no idea what kind of signals I was giving off, but it was enough for Dani to leave the table and return with a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies. Then, without my asking, Charlie seemed compelled to give us his recollection of the night of the fire.

  He had been home, alone, he said, watching a DVD. Dani had taken their two daughters to check out a summer camp on Martha’s Vineyard where they would be counselors. Dani nodded firmly in agreement. The night was clear, with a full moon and a blustery wind off the Sound, the kind that would ‘blow off Grandma’s bloomers,’ he said oddly. About ten, he heard the first siren and then several more. Curious, he got into his car, reached Route 1, as a Dunn’s Corner ladder truck roared by and he followed it to the clubhouse. “By then, flames were shooting out of the windows on the second floor, the roof was on fire, with the wind blowing debris everywhere in showers of sparks. I mean showers. It took forever for fire trucks to hook up to the hydrants and start hosing it. Then, there’s a tre-mendous explosion. Positively shook the ground! Blew the roof of the maintenance building right off. Right about then, the new manager shows up and admits there were fireworks stored overnight. The chief pulled his crew away because there’s more explosions every few seconds, the whole sky lit up with rockets screaming overhead.” He stood and his palms went upward. “End of the clubhouse!” And without a change in tone, “Algy, how about a quick game of pool…?”

  That was enough for Flanaghan. He left the table, went upstairs and returned with a briefcase and a typed list of questions for me to consider. “The softballs,” he muttered.

  Reluctantly, I agreed to Charlie’s request for a ‘quick game.’ How typical of Charlie to postpone something unpleasant. We left the kitchen for a spacious family room on the other side of the house, complete with a customized home theater and a new eight foot Brunswick table with heavy legs and maroon cloth. A rack was set and eight ball was the game. Charlie gave me a cue and asked me to break, which I did, sending balls to all sides of the table and pocketing two solid colors. I pocketed another ball and then obliged my host by missing an easy shot.

  As I suspected he would, Charlie began to make his plaintive case. “Algy, you can see how absurd all of this is.” His tone intimated that I, of all people, should understand that he was getting the shaft. As he spoke, he set up for a cross table shot.

  I had to ask, “When you granted the option for your land, you didn’t have any idea it was to go to Calibrese?”

  His wobbly shot got a striped ball in a side pocket and with a grin of satisfaction, he stood to face me. “None! No idea at all! This … Silverman said his principal wanted the land because he was going to develop a very exclusive subdivision, only eight houses, on part of Randall’s property which he had under agreement. Maybe I should have pressed him but right then, after the Newport … problem …, before I really got established here, the option money came in handy.”

  Charlie, although obviously a careless player, pocketed two more balls and smiled. One of the great things about pool is that anyone who doesn’t rip up the felt experiences a rush after pocketing in a few balls. He missed the next shot with an expletive and within seconds, four of my solid balls disappeared off the table. I could have run out the string but didn’t, leaving the eight ball in play.

  “I found out about Calibrese the same time as everyone else,” he continued. “The whole town was in a panic. Everyone thought Calibrese was going to stick a casino right in my backyard, and then along came the Watch Hill folks and I thought of Calibrese’s land and matched them up. Algy, I saved Westerly from a casino! Back then, people would stop me in the street and thank me
!”

  There was no pretense in his voice; he believed that he had been a hero.

  He resumed play while he described meetings of the Building Committee. Every major decision or purchase had a name attached to it: Fred Giles, the vice chair of the Board, insisted on the lap pools; Josh Crotty was addicted to mahogany; Howard Kittery insisted the Club use the fellow who built his wine cellar in Palm Beach; James Slocum had a thing for the ‘right’ look in the Players Grille; Missy Wheatcroft was an expert on window decor. The Committee meetings revolved around what members saw at other clubs, or read in golf magazines, or had whispered in their ears by spouses or architects or designers, meeting after meeting, with checks flowing under Charlie’s signature as Club Secretary.

  Charlie won and insisted that he would give me a chance to ‘get even.’ I agreed because he was into the Club’s leadership and membership. One thing I discerned during Charlie’s ramblings was that while the founders of the Club, the Board, and the members of the Building Committee were mostly Watch Hill ‘old money’ as Charlie described them, the bulk of the membership was ‘new money,’ Goldman-Sachs bankers, hedge fund geniuses, venture capitalists, the Wall Street gurus who were buying up Watch Hill and Weekapaug ‘gray ladies’ and remodeling them beyond recognition or tearing them down to the foundation and beginning again. These groups seemed to have reached an accommodation such that the ‘old money’ would be the face of Haversham Golf Club, while the ‘new money’ would supply the bulk of the membership and provide the cash. That arrangement seemed to be an acknowledgement by newcomers that a huge second home, beach club privileges, or a forty foot boat didn’t equal acceptance in a tight-knit summer colony. I suspected that the ‘old money,’ as it always had, would allow ‘new money’ to supply the necessary cash, and would play its role of heritage, prestige and authenticity, unless and until the game became too costly, or worse, embarrassing. Then, watch out!

  Eventually, we went up to Charlie’s office. Flanaghan’s twenty-odd ‘softballs’ were short and so were the answers. ‘Who approved purchases? The Committee approved every one.’ Nota bene, I scribbled; Charlie, if necessary, should name Committee members so the blame gets spread around. ‘Can the purchases be traced? We are confident that we can, despite the loss of records. The architects and interior designers approved the purchases too? Yes, every one. The hiring of the manager? Not our committee.’ And they continued. Charlie was clearly weakest on insurance issues and the insurance claim process. I suggested that he leave these issues to others and, generally, tried to tamp down his optimism about how he would perform by pleading with him to practice his responses. As for the rumor, Flanaghan had written out his defense—it boiled down to ‘no way’—and I insisted he respond according to the script. After ninety minutes of coaching, I left, assuring an uncertain Dani that Charlie would do ‘just fine,’ wondering if he would.

  * * *

  “Developments,” Flanaghan said importantly.

  I was in the loft, dressing in formal wear for tonight’s premier Commencement Week event, the Honoree Dinner when he called.

  “Tom Junior came up with a pretty good lead on the source of the rumors about Charlie. I had him checking land records on all of the purchases by Calibrese and the Club, to get it in chronological order, and see if Charlie’s option fit in, like he told us. There are transfer tax stamps that represent a percentage of the sales price on each of the deeds so a little math and we can figure out selling prices. Charlie’s ‘little finger of land’ went for six hundred grand! Seems like a lot of money for a landlocked six acres.”

  “That’s public information, right. That’s how it would have been reported in the newspaper?”

  “The price for the property when it was sold would be in the newspaper but not the purchase price under the option. For an option, all that’s recorded is a memorandum that says the land is subject to option and for how long, without tax stamps or a recital of a sale price. In other words, nobody but Calibrese and Charlie would know what price the option agreement actually stipulated.”

  Meaning, I thought, the option price could have been a dollar or six hundred thousand or anything in between! And with Charlie’s known predilection for misleading even friends…? “We need to see Charlie’s copy of the option agreement.”

  “I did. He gave it to me. Says six hundred thousand. He didn’t get a penny more, at least from the closing.”

  “So …”

  “Westerly’s Registry of Deeds is next to the Clerk’s Office in Town Hall. Seems Calibrese’s local lawyer, Dino Sinese, a good guy but a talker, has been spending a lot of time there the past few weeks doing abstracts of all of the property owned by the Randalls, Calibrese’s remaining acres, the Club properties, and surrounding parcels. And property up near the Indian Swamp. Tom is bumping into him everyday and finally sees what he’s up to. I mean, he’s not just going back in the records sixty years, he’s going back forever and taking his time about it, having coffee with clerks, making remarks about how Charlie’s option memorandum didn’t state the sales price, how much Charlie’s land went for, ‘seems like a lot of money for six landlocked acres, ….’ Drop a few nuggets like that, a few shrugs, and the next day, it’s gossip at the coffee shops in town, eventually reaching the ears of those concerned.”

  “Why?”

  “Not sure. But it’s Calibrese’s doings. How did Charlie do with you?”

  I replied that while Charlie promised to get the answers down pat, I gave it a fifty-fifty chance he’d pull it off.

  “And here’s another thing that makes the gossip sound plausible. Before the closing of the golf course land, Charlie didn’t seem to have a pot to piss in, had mortgaged the family’s house up to the hilt, and in Westerly, if you’re a Fessenden, that’s news. The six acre sale paid off a lot of debt, plus some. And the sale to the Club made real estate prices in that area jump! Just in time for Charlie to become a big time realtor with an inside track to the Club membership. Poor bastard had it made and he could thank Calibrese for that. Now, he can blame Calibrese for whatever happens. The old bastard giveth and he taketh away!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Honoree Dinner is the best ticket during Commencement Week.

  At the black tie affair in Grafton Hall, a three story, Romanesque building set back from The Green, guests are escorted up a grand staircase to an oblong, oak paneled dining room that could have been in Windsor Castle. At each of the ten tables with ten seats, there would be an honorary degree recipient or one of the eclectic Commencement speakers chosen by the graduating class and the graduate schools, along with Trustees, donors, politicians, senior staff, and faculty. This year’s honorees were the Secretary General of the United Nations who would have his say about world poverty and the wealth of nations tomorrow on The Green, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, a Supreme Court justice of a decidedly liberal bent, an alumnus who ran the world’s third largest bank from the U.K., a former president of Mexico, and a Pulitzer prize winning historian. The Commencement speakers, a little more colorful, were the president of Doctors Without Borders, a best-selling graphic novelist, an environmental architectural activist—famous for the grass on the roof of his headquarters and building designs that reminded me of crumpled paper balls—and the founder of Phoenix House, a drug rehab program. I noted that in addition to being prestigious, the group was ethnically diverse and included three women.

  At seven-thirty, in black tie, having braved a crowd of media, clusters of video cameras, the just curious, chanting Students for a Democratic Society, the Young Socialist League, Young Republicans, Greenpeace, and others born for placard waving, as well as a phalange of security guards checking I.D.’s, I entered a room resplendent with gleaming china, sparkling crystal ware, silver candelabras, and glorious long-stemmed flowers in elegant vases that permitted guests at the round tables to see one another. Each place setting had been prepared with infinite precision; delicately shaped napkins imitating Japanese origami fa
ced one of the University’s collection of priceless, Georgian period Seddon chairs. Elegantly garbed guests were being served champagne flutes from silver trays by a waitstaff in formal clothes.

  The invitation and seating were matters of campus and corporate politics since they were in the discretion of the President and the Provost. I was anxious to see if my seating request—at the same table as a movie mogul alumnus who was a huge giver and rumored to be famously witty and profane—had been honored. I was in transit around the tables when the Provost beckoned to me.

  “Your truce has been fractured,” he muttered darkly. “The manager of the Faculty Club just called me. Somebody from there printed out Sonny’s bills and sent it anonymously to the Journal. With all the late notices and the dunning letters! Sonny will be ballistic.”

  “Ugh!” Sonny Russo’s membership in the Faculty Club was a source of frequent concern to College Hall. At any one time, he would be overdue more than any other member, using his membership to impress his gang of limo-riding sycophants as he put our face in the merde during boozy parties in the Club’s private rooms. Over time, gracious reminders from the Club’s management had gotten progressively tougher and eventually I drafted one or two zingers that were more demanding. Ironically, Sonny was a member only because the Club’s bylaws stipulated that whomever occupied the office of mayor of the City of Providence was an ex officio member of the Club, which meant any occupant of that office, at any time. Unfortunately, the bylaws didn’t cover the issue of what to do with a mayor who didn’t pay his bills. If it had been up to me, the Club would have kicked him out early on and risked the publicity but the Club’s board, fearful of reprisals like increased real estate taxes or limits on the full liquor license the Club enjoyed, demurred.

  “He’ll assume we did it to embarrass him,” the Provost continued.