Death at the Member Guest

by James Y. Bartlett

  “Took less than six months,” Bainbridge said. “Vitus kicked the initiation fee up another ten thousand and the new members were begging to pay.”

  “And where did all that new money go?” I wondered.

  Dr. Bainbridge nodded at me sagely over his spectacles. “Excellent question,” he said. “The annual report says there is a new long-term capital improvement fund, with a current balance of $2.5 million. But nobody knows what the long-term improvements are. There have been rumors about new tennis courts, an enlarged pool and a major remodel of this building to add a health club and meeting space.”

  “And they say we need to replace the steel bridge over the river between four and fourteen,” Stansfield chimed in.

  “I have also heard that the main bridge, where you drove in today, has been surveyed by the city and the rumor is they are going to condemn it as unsafe. That would quickly eat up the capital fund and then some.”

  “Well,” I said, “Isn’t it lucky that your club president runs a big bank?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Bainbridge said. “Isn’t it?”

  I paused a minute before asking my next question. “Do you think there’s a cause-and-effect?”

  Walter Bainbridge looked at me over his spectacles again. “Are you asking me that question as a reporter for the Boston Journal?” he said.

  I laughed and held up my hand in protest. “No, no, not at all,” I said. “I’m just a lowly sportswriter, and I’m here for fun, not on business. This is all strictly off the record. Unless you’ve got proof that the guy is a crook. In which case, dish.”

  Everyone at the table laughed.

  Bainbridge sipped more coffee and fell silent again, his fingers tapping softly on the tabletop. He seemed to be having an internal debate, and finally decided.

  “Your question is not outside the bounds of reason,” he said. “Papageorge has cut a wide swath here in the Merrimac Valley and has earned a reputation as both a hardnosed dealer and someone just a bit shady. His banking empire, for instance, was reported to be under investigation during the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, but no suits were ever filed and nothing was ever said in public.”

  “Yeah, and the guy Papageorge was supporting was elected to the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire,” Stansfield said. “I’m sure that didn’t hurt.”

  Bainbridge nodded, his lips pursed. “There is nothing illegal, of course, with donating money to a candidate for elective office and receiving some aid and assistance from that candidate once he is elected to public office. That’s how the game is played, isn’t it? Still, once his bank was safe, Papageorge really began building his little empire in southern New Hampshire. Again, there were whispers that the bank foreclosed on certain properties that later ended up in Vitus’ personal portfolio. Or that competing banks and credit unions that suddenly found themselves in hot water with regulatory agencies, leaving the path open for Vitus’ bank to step in and take over. But again, no charges have ever been filed and no one has ever accused Papageorge of doing anything illegal.”

  “But what kind of scam could he run here?” I wondered out loud. “I can’t imagine this place generates enough cash to make it worthwhile to steal.”

  Walter Bainbridge winced. “Please, Mr. Hacker,” he said. “I have not implied in any way that Vitus Papageorge has stolen any funds from the Shuttlecock Club. Even though most members here find his personality, er, somewhat challenging, I don’t think anyone for a moment considers that he might be a common criminal.”

  “I apologize,” I said. “I leaped to conclusions. But it seemed as though you were headed in that direction.”

  “Not at all,” Bainbridge said. “There is simply no way for Vitus Papageorge or anyone else to cook the books.”

  “That’s what they said about Enron,” I said dryly.

  Jack Connolly staggered back to the table and demanded I come with him to have a drink. I shook hands all around the table and joined him. He introduced me to more of his pals, and for the next hour, we stood around the bar and talked about golf. They were interested to hear some of my stories from covering the PGA Tour, the little weekly dramas of victory and defeat that I got to witness close up. We talked about new courses we’d played, vacation spots in Florida, whether or not Phil Mickelson had replaced Greg Norman as the greatest choking dog of all time, considered the question as to Colin Montgomerie’s needing to wear a brassiere, and invented some very creative ways to torture the members of Augusta National into resigning en masse and letting real people run that tournament. In other words, we had ourselves a boozy, brawling good time of standing around and letting the testosteroned good times roll.

  I tried not to drink too much, knowing I would regret it in the morning. But boys will be boys, and after an hour or so, the call of nature and a desire to remove myself from the smoky atmosphere of the Shuttlecock’s main bar drew me away from the crowd. I found a men’s room down the hall and while I stood at the urinal and offloaded, I studied the framed print of a turn-of-the-century English gentleman preparing to whack a golf ball. The pictured golfer wore a heavy tweed jacket that seemed to be much too tight to allow a free-swinging motion of his arms, a necktie that must have been most uncomfortable in a hot midsummer sun, plus-fours with woolen knee socks that must have itched, and he had the club wrapped around his head in an odd, broken-elbow backswing that I imagined would have led him to miss the ball completely seven times out of ten.

  Coming out the men’s room, I decided a bit of fresh air was important to my future health and well-being. I stumbled down the hallway and pushed out a door that led to the back patio. Pillars of square, rough-edged granite held up the roof of the porch that overlooked the swimming pool terrace and the dark river beyond. It was a deliciously clear night with that tang of autumn, that first forewarning of the coming winter. The sharp bite of cool air quickly cleared my fuzzy head. The sky was filled with stars and lights from the homes along the river were reflected in shimmering bands. I could smell apples ripening on the trees, the sweet decay of crops gathered in, the end of summer.

  I took in several deep draughts of cold air, watching my breath in a cloud of vapor. I wandered down to the far end of the porch, where delicate scents from the nearby garden wafted in the air. There were no lights on the pool terrace, save for some dim illumination that came faintly through the windows of the dining room inside. I could see the shadowy shapes of the pool furniture and heard a faint gurgling from the pool’s water filtration machinery.

  Just below the porch was a narrow strip of lawn bordered by a high wall. As my eyes grew used to the darkness, I became aware that someone was standing there. Two someones, in fact. A male and a female. Locked in embrace. Passionate. What the younger people ineloquently call “sucking face.”

  Without knowing exactly why, I stepped back behind one of the broad stone pillars as the couple broke apart with a soft gasp. Moving my head forward I could still see them, but only in the shadows.

  “Oh, babe, you don’t know what you do to me,” the man said softly. I glimpsed his hands moving softly over her body and then pulling her into another tight embrace. The woman reached up and pulled his head down to her lips, her hands a ghostly white in the darkness. I caught a glimpse of long, blond hair before the man’s head moved as they clinched in another long, soulful kiss. I heard soft little moans and mews and rustlings as they explored various erogenous zones together.

  I was caught somewhere between embarrassment and prurient interest. I didn’t mean to be a Peeping Tom to the happy couple, but I also didn’t want to move away suddenly and get caught eavesdropping. Then again, they didn’t know me, I didn’t know them, so what the hell.

  A car’s horn suddenly split the night air with an insistent bleep. The kissing couple leapt apart at the sound. The man stood there while the woman did some quick, squirming adjustments of hair and dress. The horn sounded again.

  “Leta?” A voice rasped in the night air. It
sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. My brain, despite the refreshment of the cool air, was still fuzzed. “Leta? Where are you?”

  “I gotta go,” the woman below me whispered. “How do I look?”

  “Like a zillion bucks,” the man whispered back. “When can I see you again?”

  “I’ll call you, doll-baby,” she said, and reached up for a final soft kiss.

  Honk. Honk. “Leta?”

  She ducked down to her left, behind the wall, dashed across the concrete apron by the pool and trotted up the stairs through a gate that led out to the parking lot. Her swain and I watched her go. Then, he turned quickly and melted into the darkness, heading around behind the clubhouse. He was either going to walk all the way around the back, past the kitchen, or maybe use a rear entrance I didn’t know about.

  “Where the hell have you been?” rasped an angry male voice from the parking lot. I suddenly recognized the voice. “I have a goddam golf tournament in the morning! I need to get some sleep!”

  I stepped quietly back down the length of the porch and peered around the corner. A big white limousine chugged softly at idle in a pool of light thrown off by a floodlight. The blond woman was bending over, getting into the car. From behind, I could only see a shapely body sheathed in a blue knit dress, trimmed at the waist and hemmed with black stripes. Long legs, shimmery white stockings, low slung black heels. Her posterior, as it disappeared into the limo, was nicely rounded.

  Vitus Papageorge climbed in behind her and the door slammed angrily. The engine revved up and the car moved off slowly out of the pool of light and into the darkness.

  Now I did feel like a Peeping Tom. Sordid. Soiled. “Country club life,” I thought as I turned to go back inside. The John Cheever special. Grown-ups acting like hormonal kids. Too much booze, too much money, not enough sense. Bob boinking Carol boinking Ted boinking Alice. Stolen kisses under the stars on cold autumn nights, dreams lost in crystalline bottles of gin, innocence and integrity kicked away like undergarments for a few cheap thrills.

  And somebody was putting the horns on Vitus Papageorge. As despicable as he was, I managed to feel just a tad sorry for him. Just a tad.

  “I think this calls for a drink,” I said out loud, to no one. And I went inside the clubhouse to find one.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The tournament began Friday morning. Our flight wasn’t scheduled to tee off until late morning. Ted McDaggert had utilized a computer to schedule all the matches – ten flights, eight teams in each flight – and while some flights had three matches scheduled the first day, our group was in a 2-3-2 schedule over the three day weekend. That gave me time to sleep late at Jack’s house, pour some extra strong coffee down to offset the alcohol consumption of the previous evening, and make a few phone calls.

  I called Suzy Chapman at the PGA Tour’s press room in Endicott and got a report on my intern. Tony Zec had checked in, been assigned a workspace in the press tent and had managed to avoid getting mugged, rolled by the caddies in cards, arrested for drunk driving or sneezing in anybody’s backswing. In fact, he was sitting there at this early hour watching the scoreboard as the has-beens and never-weres of the PGA Tour were dew sweeping in search of the paltry thousands available at the B.C. Open. Suzy punched me through to him.

  “How’s it going, kid?” I asked.

  “Great!” came his enthusiastic reply. “Harrison Frazer is three-under after six.”

  “Stop the presses,” I said. “What else ya got for me?”

  “Well, I covered the caddie tournament on Tuesday,” he said. “I wrote up the piece.”

  “How long is it?” I asked.

  “Four thousand words, give or take,” he said.

  I groaned silently to myself. If any newspaper anywhere in the country were to consider running such a piece — which they wouldn’t, especially during football season— it would run maybe five graphs, max. Two hundred words. But I didn’t want to burst this kid’s bubble. He seemed to be having a great time, and he was providing me with some cover for the weekend.

  “OK,” I sighed into the phone. “Here’s my email address…cut it down to a thousand words, send it in and I’ll take a looksee. In the meantime, I want you to file a daily update on the tournament. Try to keep it to maybe five hundred words. Eliminate all the flowery b.s. and just give us the facts, OK?”

  “Right,” he said. I could hear him taking notes. No bullshit. Just facts. Ah, to be young and impressionable.

  “And keep your ears open for some interesting tidbits. There’s always somebody complaining about something, or changing club sponsors, or planning to play in the next three tournaments to try and make the 125 money-winning list. Read the local paper – it’s usually a good source of leads. Capisce?”

  “Got it,” Zec said, scribbling furiously.

  “Send me your stuff every night by 7 p.m.” I finished. “I’ll look it over and try to get it into the paper. Can’t guarantee there’ll be room – it’s football season and my fuckwit boss seems to think that the report on the Holy Cross game is more important than whether or not Harrison Frazer is gonna win the B.C. Open."

  “Got it, Hacker,” he said. I laughed to myself. Kid’s on the job for one day and we’re buddies and pals.

  I called home and got Mary Jane.

  “How’s Mister Shit?” I asked. “He miss me at all?”

  “Ducky is fine,” she reported. “But he crapped in the corner of the dining room, which puts him on the endangered species list around here. Hasn’t he ever been introduced to the concept of a litter box?”

  “How,” I asked, “Do you think he got his name?”

  “Oh, great,” she groaned. “When are you coming back?”

  I laughed. “Think of it as an opportunity to teach Victoria that having pets is a responsibility,” I suggested.

  “I’m thinking of it as a weekend spent picking up cat feces,” she snapped. “You’d better be home on time Sunday night or I’m feeding Mister Doo-Doo something extra-spicy and putting him back in your apartment.”

  “Right,” I said. “Love to Victoria.”

  “Bite me,” she said and hung up.

  I took a long, hot shower, thinking about the Shuttlecock Club and the tournament ahead. Jackie eventually rolled out of bed, looking disheveled and refused to speak until he’d had three cups of coffee. Eventually, he came back to the land of the living, and we got to the club at about eleven, and changed into our Blues Brothers uniform for the day. Or, at least I did. Jack sat in front of his locker and moaned a little, so I went to hit some balls to loosen up. After twenty minutes or so, I went back up to the locker room to find my partner. He was sitting slumped in front of his locker, dressed only in underwear and socks, looking a bit pale. “Mornin’ pards,” I said cheerfully. “Ready to kick some major butt?”

  He looked up at me with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Gimme a Bloody Mary,” he groaned. “My head’s killin’ me.”

  I looked at him sadly, shaking my head. “Do I hear you saying ‘Play hard, pard?’” I asked.

  He nodded, holding his head in his hands.

  “Well, screw that,” I said sternly. “I’m not gonna carry your sorry ass around this course all by myself. Go take a shower and I’ll find some hot coffee.”

  He moaned again, but he did what I told him. When he got back from his shower, his skin flushed to a more healthy shade of pink, I handed him a steaming mug. I stood there until he drank it.

  “Wow,” he said. “I can feel my toes again. I think I’m gonna live!”

  Jack was back. The man had amazing recuperative powers. Knowing he would now be halfway contributive to the team effort, I left him to get dressed and went out to the practice green to hit some putts. Vitus Papageorge was there, lecturing poor old Fred about how to read a putting green. I ignored them and worked on feel and speed. I could feel the licks of competitive fire begin to alight somewhere deep inside. It had been a whil
e. I play a lot of golf every year, charity events, media days, occasional friendly rounds with friends. But those are just outings, relaxing days when the results really don’t mean anything important.

  But a tournament – even just a fun event like the Shuttlecock Invitational – is different. As a professional, playing on the Tour, I learned how to get myself “up” for every round. How to block out the distractions. How to make my body relax and focus on the task at hand. How to visualize every shot before I hit it. How to make every shot count. How to make myself believe that every shot I faced could be made flawlessly, with the result I wanted. On the Tour, I made myself think and do. And it worked enough that I came to believe I could do that every single time, with every single shot, whether a 290-yard booming drive, or a tricky three-footer for par.

  But that had been years ago. I couldn’t do that now. Didn’t really want to, in fact. Because to get to that higher level of concentration and confidence requires total devotion to the game. It requires months of practice, and endless repetition. That’s what the professional game demands. But I was no longer a professional golfer. I was a journalist. When I left the Tour, I had to reprogram myself, once I started playing the game again, to enjoy golf as just a game, a pastime, a recreational event. I had to learn how to play for fun and relaxation, for the fellowship of my friends, for the fresh air and the birdsong, and for the occasional pleasure of hitting a ball squarely on the screws and having it obey my command.

  Did I want to win my flight in the Shuttlecock Invitational? Sure – winning is always more fun than losing. But my main goal for the weekend was just to have a good time. Enjoy the experience that was Jack Connolly, one of my oldest and dearest friends. Meet some nice folks. Have a few laughs. Quaff a few brews. Try to make some difficult shots when I had to, sink a few putts. Play the game with something on the line. That’s what I wanted. Winning some silver-plated little trophy was secondary.