P.G.A. Spells Death

by James Y. Bartlett

  I picked up that section of the paper and scanned the page. Bart Concannon’s column that morning was full of short and pithy takes on the world of sports news. And midway down his column I read this:

  MAKING TV GOLF FUN AGAIN

  Did you watch the golf tournament this weekend? It started off sadly when former Tour player turned IBS broadcaster Parker Long died suddenly in his booth on Thursday afternoon. But IBS brought in a couple of ringers: Billy Joe Bosworth, a.k.a. ‘the Boz,’ and Boston’s own Pete Hacker, longtime golf writer for the Journal. Assigned to Long’s former station on the sixteenth hole, these two were hilarious, betting on putts, talking trash about the players they were watching and generally keeping the audience in stitches. I’m told longtime executive producer and director Ben Oswald wanted to sack the funny pair … until the overnight ratings came in and showed that the watching fans loved this new and decidedly ungolf-like style. I agree. It’s long past time that staid old golf tournaments got a little shot of fun, and Boz and Hacker might be just the way to go.

  I read the piece twice. Mary Jane noticed the frown that creased my forehead.

  “What?” she said. “He liked you. He really liked you.”

  I managed a weak smile in her direction.

  “Might not have been the best idea to go completely wild on my first run out of the box,” I said. “Oswald was barely talking to either one of us by Sunday. I’m half expecting a call today telling me my services are no longer needed.”

  “But I thought Concannon said the ratings were good,” she said, shifting DJ from one breast to the next. He went at the new one with gusto, but I could tell he was moments from falling asleep.

  “If the Assassin doesn’t like you, I don’t think it matters too much what the ratings say,” I said. “He’s kinda the main man around IBS.”

  “Well,” she said, “He’d be crazy to let you go. I don’t know anything about golf and even I was laughing on Sunday. You guys were hilarious.”

  “There will be blowback,” I said. “There are a lot of sticks in the mud in golf. Did I ever tell you the story about Bill Murray?”

  “The ghostbusters guy?” she said, pushing DJ into the center of the bed between us, where he stayed, his little eyes closed, and soft little baby snores highlighted his exhalations. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, a bunch of years ago he played in the Pro-Am at Pebble Beach,” I said. “And he was a big hit—he joked around with people in the gallery, mugged for the cameras, did his usual funny stuff. And on the last hole, he dragged a woman out of the gallery, brought her into a bunker and danced her around until she fell down in the sand.”

  “Oh, my,” she said. “I’ll bet the PGA Tour wasn’t happy about that.”

  “Good guess,” I said. “Well, a couple of days later I was down in Florida playing in some corporate event and one of the guys in my foursome was one of the lead dogs on the PGA Tour board of directors, some big muckety muck CEO type. And he was telling everyone how he had gotten on the phone to the commissioner and told him to get that sonofabitch off the air and never let him back on. Ever.”

  “Not a Bill Murray fan, I guess,” Mary Jane said.

  “Not a fan of humor,” I said. “It runs deep in the PGA Tour family. The next time someone in that organization laughs out loud will be the first.”

  My cell phone buzzed from the bedside table. I answered it. It was an old friend from ESPN. He told me ESPN wanted to interview me and the Boz on SportsCenter that night. To talk about the new wave of golf broadcasters. I told my friend I’d get back to him.

  “What?” Mary Jane wanted to know. I held up a hand. Then I called IBS in New York and eventually got through to someone in the promotions department.

  “I just had a call from ESPN,” I said. “They want to interview Bosworth and me about covering golf in the New Age or something.”

  “I know,” the woman said. “They called us, too. I’m trying to get Boz a flight to New York. What’s your schedule look like? Can you get down to Bristol?”

  “My schedule?” I looked over at Mary Jane.

  “We’re having dinner tonight at PawPaw’s” she said.

  “I can’t do it tonight,” I told the IBS woman. “I’ve got a dinner date with the leading mobster in New England. But any other time is fine, unless I end up at the bottom of the Charles River wearing cement overshoes.”

  “Ha ha,” she said, “You are such a kidder. No wonder people like your schtick.”

  “Schtick’s are for kids,” I said and rang off.

  I looked at Mary Jane. “I guess they did like me,” I said.

  “You betcha,” she said. She got out of bed and dropped her robe to the floor. “If you can get DJ into his crib without waking him up, I believe I can demonstrate how much I like you, too.”

  We drove out to Milton, about fifteen miles south of Boston, later that night, to have dinner at the palatial estate of my sorta-kinda father-in-law. Carmine Spoleto was of that indeterminate age known as “over eighty,” but he still controlled the operations of the Boston Mob with what I imagined was an iron, if slightly liver-spotted, fist.

  Mary Jane was not his daughter, but had been his daughter-in-law until that dark morning when Carmine’s son had been ambushed in a Charlestown tenement by some rivals. He had not come out alive. Carmine had stepped up to help Mary Jane and her infant daughter Victoria survive. And a few years later, when I came along, he had accepted me as part of his family. If not his Family. Which was fine with me, since I am somewhat allergic to Charlestown tenement buildings anyway.

  PawPaw, as Victoria had called him since she was small, doted on his granddaughter, and I hoped he was happy with his new grandson as well. Mary Jane did not let him spoil Vickie, but Carmine had told me that her college tuition was taken care of. And the wider Spoleto family, consisting of Carmine’s six daughters, had welcomed Mary Jane, the kids and I into the fold for all holidays and special events. Which were frequent: it seemed like one of the extended Spoletos were having a christening or a confirmation almost every week.

  Tonight, it was just the four of us, Carmine, and the five or six tough guys who served as his bodyguards at the big estate overlooking a broad tidal marsh that extended out to the east where it joined up with Boston harbor.

  Tiny Tony, one of Carmine’s goombahs, was busy in the kitchen. There was a huge pot of tomato sauce—otherwise known as ‘gravy’—bubbling away on a back burner. Tiny, wearing a starched white apron stretched around his prodigious girth, the source of his ironic name, was grilling some sausages with red and green peppers, and watching over another big pot of boiling pasta.

  “Buona serata, Hacker,” Tony said when we came in, giving the sauce a stir. “Howsa that little ragazzo coming along? Sleepin’ through the night yet?”

  “Antonio,” I nodded at him. “Not quite yet, I’m afraid. Still likes his three a.m. feeding.”

  “Don’t blame him a bit,” Tiny said with a big smile. “He’s still a growing boy.”

  Mary Jane came in with the ragazzo on her hip, and a tote bag filled with diapers, chewable toys, changes of clothing and a few jars of baby food. Tiny Tony went over and chucked him under the chin and made little woo-woo noises. DJ rewarded him with a big grin.

  “I think he likes me,” Tiny said. “Wait until he tastes my cooking. He might ask me to take over as his daddy!”

  I took the spoon out of the gravy, blew on it and tasted it. It was heavenly.

  “Hell,” I said, “I might have you move in as my daddy if you’d cook like this every day.”

  “Hey,” Mary Jane said with a frown. “I heard that.”

  The old man came tottering in to the kitchen. He had that uncertain gait that most elderly have, like his knees were going to collapse inwards with his next step, but Carmine had a tough inner core, developed over the decades of rubbing out his enemies and breaking the legs of malcontents. His thick glasses hung delicatel
y on his large hooked nose, and the few wisps of stringy white hair he had left were draped hopefully across his pink bald skull.

  Mary Jane had plopped DJ into a high chair and fed him some crackers, which he was gumming into submission. The old man walked over and chucked him under the chin.

  “Bello, bello,” he cooed.

  DJ grinned back at him, crumbs clinging to his chin.

  Tiny Tony opened a bottle of wine and poured us each a glass. He put out a tray of antipasto, some nice slices of salami, pepperoncini, chunks of cheese, artichoke hearts, green peppers, and a selection of olives.

  “Where’s Victoria?” I asked as I sipped some of the wine and nibbled on the munchies.

  “She’s out front trying to talk the guys into showing her their guns,” Mary Jane said. “She’s at that age.”

  “You want I should talk to them?” Tiny Tony said.

  “She’s fine,” I said. “Let her be.”

  Carmine pulled himself up to sit in one of the bar chairs set against the pass-through counter at the end of the kitchen. Tony put some of the antipasto on a plate and placed it in front of him, along with a glass of wine.

  “How you doing?” Carmine said to me. “Still talking on the television?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Did my first tournament last weekend.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “How did it go?”

  “He was great,” Mary Jane said. “The people loved him.”

  “Buono,” Carmine said. “I guess that means you’ll keep doing it, right?”

  “Hope so,” I said.

  “Well at least all those unfortunate events of the past, the murders and the mysteries, the Russians and the bad business out in California … all that is behind you now,” Carmine said.

  Mary Jane snorted. Softly, but a snort nonetheless.

  Carmine heard it. And turned to look at her.

  “What?” he said. “Has there been another killing in Hacker’s world?”

  I stepped in.

  “Well, one of my television colleagues unfortunately passed away last week,” I said. “I don’t know if he was killed, or if he died from natural causes. The police are still investigating.”

  “I see,” Carmine said. He frowned. “What happened?”

  I told him. He listened without giving away anything.

  “Perhaps he had the heart attack, no?” Carmine said when I finished. “Or something else medical in nature?”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “You do not think so?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “Not enough information yet.”

  Victoria came bounding into the room, ponytail flying and cheeks alight.

  “Richie’s gun is sooo cool,” she announced, climbing up on a barstool next to Carmine. “He keeps it under his arm in a holster thing.”

  “You shouldn’t bother Richie, or any of the guys,” her mother said. “They’ve got a job to do.”

  “Yeah,” Vickie said. “Shootin’ people!”

  “Ricardo has a weapon so he doesn’t have to shoot people,” Carmine said, frowning at his granddaughter. “It’s a serious thing, not a toy.”

  “Whatever,” Victoria said. But she smiled up at her grandfather, and he smiled back at her. They had a bond, those two.

  “If Hacker’s job gets extended, we might be able to find a bigger house,” Mary Jane told her semi-father-in-law. “This little guy isn’t going to be little forever, and we’re gonna need another bedroom in a few months.”

  Carmine sipped some wine, closing his eyes as he savored the taste.

  He turned to look at me. “I told your wife that if you need some help, you just need to ask,” he said.

  “Thank you, Carmine,” I said, and I meant it. “But you’ve done so much already for my family. I can’t ask you for a house loan, too. I think this job will work out. Time will tell.”

  He looked at me through his rheumy eyes, taking my measure, not for the first time in my life. Then he nodded.

  “Si,” he said, “Capisco. I understand. A man must make his own way in life. Provide for his family. But I am happy to help if I can. A man like me must also take care of his famiglia. And you are part of my family, so I am duty-bound to help you in any way I can. And I will.”

  “Grazie mille,” I said. “Let us talk about this again later. See what happens.”

  Carmine Spoleto looked at Victoria, trying a small bite of the salami to see if she liked it. He looked at DJ, still gumming and humming at his cracker. And at Mary Jane and I. He smiled, and nodded.

  “Very well,” he said. “We shall see what happens. And now, let us mangiare.”

  14

  It was the Tuesday after the Masters—which had been won by Donal O’Leary, the Irish Flash from Cashel, an outcome that had reduced the worldwide stocks of Guinness by roughly half—when I joined the rest of the talent from IBS to play Conrad Gold’s Hudson Links course up in Dutchess County, New York.

  It was a sunny day, but there was a brisk and chilly wind out of the west. Winter was over, but it here in mid-April, it wasn’t gone and while the grass was green, mostly, and the trees were just beginning to bud out, it was a day that required a few layers.

  I don’t know if any of the other guys on the crew took a helicopter from Manhattan up the Hudson River, but I drove over in a rented car from Boston. I took the Mass Pike out to the New York border, then turned south, past Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, staying on the eastern side of the river, until I hit the little burgh of Cumberland, where Conrad Gold had espied the land along the river, backed by some high rocky bluffs, where he built his club.

  His Scottish architect, Clyde Stewart, had carved out his holes from the rocky shale and thick woods, adding in some revetted bunkers and finishing the course with three closing holes along the river’s bank: a par-four, a par-three and a beast of a par-five closer, with water in play on every shot. I believe Stewart was trying for something dramatic.

  Back from the river’s edge a ways, but built atop a high bluff, Gold had constructed a Gothic-like series of towers in reddish granite for his clubhouse. There were several wings in this monstrous edifice, one which contained the dining room, one the exercise facility, and one, in the back, for the club’s offices. The second and third floors were filled with overnight accommodations for members who got too loaded to drive the hour back to New York and needed a place to sleep it off.

  I left Boston early enough to get there by about ten in the morning, leaving a couple of hours before our scheduled tee time of around noon. At a private club like the Gold Hudson Links, you don’t need a formal tee time. Members just show up and play. It’s good to be rich.

  So I had enough time, once I’d arrived, to grab something to eat, change my shoes in the lavish clubhouse locker room, thickly carpeted, decked in heavy wooden lockers, a cheerful fire burning in the fireplace against the last of the morning’s chill, and exchange looks with the twelve-point buck’s head mounted above the mantel. He never blinked.

  Van Collins and Jimmy Williams were kicking back in the locker room when I arrived, drinking coffee, reading the Times and not listening to the cable news on the four or five flat screen TVs hanging at various places around the room.

  Oh, looky here,” Jimmy chirped at me when I walked in. “It’s the Robin fuckin’ Williams of golf. Got any good jokes for us today, Hack?”

  “Besides the one I’m looking at, you mean?” I said.

  “Oooo,” Van Collins said, looking at both of us over the top of the sports page he held in his hands. “Isn’t it a little early in the day for a death match?”

  “Awww, I’m just pulling his chain a little,” Jimmy said.

  “Though you do have a bit of a green hue, Williams” said a voice from the back of the locker room. I turned to see Kelsey Jenkins brushing her hair at one of the sinks back there. “A little jealous, maybe? New boy makes good?”

  “Isn’t t
his the men’s locker?” Jimmy called out. “Who let the girl in?”

  “Kiss my ass,” Kelsey said. “What century do you live in?”

  “The wrong one, apparently,” Jimmy said with a chuckle.

  Ken Craig, the Swing Doctor, Billy Fairfield and Greg Cunningham wandered in and began changing their shoes.

  “Is the Boz going to be here today?” I asked.

  “Why, you need his moral support now?”Jimmy said. “Can’t make the funnies without a straight man?”

  “Wait,” I said, “I thought I was the straight man.”

  “I think you’re both retarded,” Jimmy said.

  “We call them developmentally challenged now, you fucking oaf,” Kelsey said. “Geezus.”

  Collins shook out his newspaper. “Boz isn’t coming,” he said. “Management decided buying him a ticket to come preview the course for the PGA Championship was an unwarranted expense.”

  “So he can just sit in his little booth and make shit up with Hacker,” Jimmy said. “Perfect.”

  “Man,” Ken Craig said, “Somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

  “Oswald coming up?” I asked next.

  “Don’t think so,” Van said. “Got some meetings with the suits to take care of. He might get here for dinner tonight.”

  “I need to go hit some balls,” I said. “Been a couple months since I’ve had a club in my hands. Anyone else?”

  “Yeah, I’ll go with you,” Kelsey said, zipping up her wind jacket.

  The range at Hudson Links was located just behind the main clubhouse. The hitting stations made a long semi-circle beyond a broad sidewalk, and the crew had set up our bags on white wooden frames every ten feet or so. A lovely pyramid of new white Titleists waited for us to come start belting them down the long grassy sward of the range, which was dotted with round putting-green targets and colored flagsticks.