Death at the Member Guest

by James Y. Bartlett

So, while I could still feel those competitive little flames inside, I didn’t try to fan them, or stoke them either. I concentrated only on working on my putting stroke, and trying to get a feel for the fast Shuttlecock greens. And I stopped to feel the warm fall sunshine on my face and enjoy the feeling. I putted for about five minutes, and then picked up my practice balls.

  Vitus Papageorge, who apparently had been watching, stared at me in disbelief. His face was shiny with sweaty exertion, and his whole body seemed strained with effort. “That’s all?” he said to me. “You’ve only been practicing for a few minutes.”

  “Vitus,” I said nonchalantly, “When you’re a world-class athlete like me, you don’t need a lot of practice.”

  I couldn’t help one final look back as I strolled off the putting green. He was staring at me, his thick, dark eyebrows knitted together in envy and fury.

  He was an odd, odd man.

  I went back upstairs and collected my partner. Together, in our matching outfits, wide-brimmed white Panama hats and wraparound shades, we made quite a stir as we walked together down the stairs, through the members’ grill and out onto the first tee. There were wolf whistles, catcalls, and loud laughter all around. I think the psyche job was working.

  Our first opponents were a local furniture-store owner and his brother-in-law from Cleveland. First-hole tournament nerves were in evidence as we teed off and my partner had to make a tough up-and-down from the front bunker to halve the hole after I sculled a sand wedge over the green and made a bogey.

  As we waited to tee off on the second, Jack reached behind the seat of our cart and flipped open a cooler he had stashed there. He pulled out a cold beer, hissed it open and took a deep draught as I just looked at him. He plunked it down in the cup holder.

  “Jack,” I said, “Do you really need that?”

  “Hell,” he said. “I won the first hole. How much more do I gotta do?”

  I had to laugh.

  It was a good close match. The member was a friendly, gregarious sort who had been a member at Shuttlecock for years. He told me of the pre-war days when the club had made most of its money from the slot machines in the clubhouse, and of the big flood of 1936 when the river had covered most of the island and threatened to wash away the entire city of Lowell. I was giving away strokes to everybody, of course, and they played us tough for the whole match. I finally managed a birdie on the long seventh to get our team to one-up, and Jack and I held them off on the last two holes to win.

  We shook hands all around and enjoyed a cold beer and a thick, juicy hot dog on the picnic tables set out underneath the trees behind the ninth green snack shack. The other teams in our flight were coming up behind us.

  Vitus Papageorge and his partner Fred were in the foursome that came up the ninth behind us. As he had the day before, Vitus sprayed his drive to the right, into the rough. Fred and one of their opponents were in the valley down below the green, while the other fellow caught one of the bunkers next to the green. Vitus chipped on to about eight feet and the others followed suit, none closer than 20 feet from the hole. All three missed their attempts for par, leaving the green to Vitus.

  The little man stalked his putt, walking around the green looking at the break from every possible angle. Then, he asked both Fred and his caddie for a read. One of his opponents, who had been standing on the back edge of the green while all this was going on, finally turned and walked away.

  “Fuckin’ asshole,” he muttered under his breath.

  “How do you guys stand?” asked the furniture store owner.

  “Oh, they’re one up. They’ve got the match,” he said.

  “Vitus get a stroke here?” I asked.

  “Oh, hell yes,” the guy said, shaking his head. “I don’t know why he’s taking so long. All he’s gotta do is lag it up and we’ll give it to him, for Chrissakes.”

  “He’ll make it,” I said. “He likes the dramatic effect.”

  “Asswipe,” the guy said and went inside the shack for a beer.

  Vitus, of course, drained the putt. When the ball rolled over the lip and disappeared from view, he let out a victorious shout, jumped into the air and pumped his fist to the sky, like Tiger Woods winning another major. When he landed, his spikes gouged out some marks in the surface of the green. But Vitus, naturally, didn’t notice. He continued to jump around in a self-congratulatory dance.

  Fred shook the hands of the opponent standing next to him and they walked off the green together. Finally, Vitus noticed he was celebrating all by himself and stopped. He motioned to his caddie to return the pin to the hole, handed him the putter and strode off, his shoulders pulled back and his head held high in a patrician pose.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As it turned out, the team of Vitus and Fred were our next opponents. They barely had time to order a beer and hot dog before one of the older club members who was serving as tournament marshal for the weekend came running over from the tenth tee. “Papageorge versus Connolly,” the geezer called out, looking down at his clipboard. “On the tee please, gentlemen.”

  Vitus pulled his driver out of his golf bag and headed down the path towards the tee. His partner followed while their caddie, struggling under the weight of the two bags, trudged off in the other direction down the fairway to stand at the corner of the slight dogleg to watch for shots that might drift into the woods.

  My partner loaded up his cooler with a fresh supply of beer and ice, stored it securely in the back of our cart and drove us down to the tee. The back tee of the tenth was a raised affair in a sunny clearing in the thick surrounding woods. The course superintendent had planted low-growing evergreens and some colorful annuals in beds on the side of the raised tee.

  “The Connolly team has the honor,” the starter intoned in a deep baritone that reverberated through the clearing. “Please keep the pace of play moving, gentlemen. The field has backed up a bit.”

  Jack and I shook hands with our opponents and wished them good luck. Fred smiled and said “play well,” but Vitus, naturally, said nothing. “Go ahead, pards,” I said to Jack. “Show us the way.”

  Jack hit a beautiful pull hook that started down the left side, just missed the first big overhanging pine, and then ducked hard left into the woods. The caddie, who had dropped the two bags at his feet, ran a few steps to his left and then bent at the waist to watch the ball as it ricocheted among the trees. The kid looked back at us and raised his hands as if to say “I dunno.”

  “Damn,” Jackie said, pounding his driver on the tee. He turned and gave me one of his patented Connolly grins. “Play hard, Hack-Man!”

  I sighed. I had my three-wood – getting the ball into the fairway here was much more important than banging it a mile – and laid into it. The ball started down the right side, well away from the overhanging trees, and drew back nicely into the middle of the fairway, running to a stop just past the corner. I’d have about 155 yards left. “You da man!” yelled my partner.

  Fred led off for Team Papageorge. He hit a nice drive that faded just a bit at the end, but stayed in the short grass on the right side. Vitus was next, and I saw him take a quick look at my three-wood. He was holding his driver. He teed his ball, swished the club back and forth a few times, staring down the fairway. He stopped, looked over at me again and then began waving.

  “Boy! Bring me the bag!”

  A simultaneous groan broke from the rest of us on the tee as the kid bent over, picked up Vitus’ bag and began trotting back toward us.

  “Isn’t there a five-minute rule on tee shots?” Jackie asked facetiously.

  “Vitus,” the starter protested. “We’re already running behind. Why don’t you hit the club you got?”

  Papageorge spun on his heel and glared at us. “I have the right to select the proper club,” he snapped. “It’s not my fault the boy was standing way down there. It can’t be helped.”

  He stood there, arms crossed defiantly, until the
breathless, sweating caddie ran gasping up the hill onto the tee and plunked the bag down next to Vitus. Papageorge replaced his driver and pulled out his three-wood. As usual, he was clubbing off me. I thought for a moment about calling him on it, especially with a witness at hand, but decided to keep quiet. The whole thing smacked of gamesmanship anyway – Vitus was undoubtedly trying to get us riled up before we’d even started.

  “Don’t forget to start it down the right side,” I called out. Jackie burst out laughing. Vitus threw a dark glance over his shoulder.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said darkly.

  “Nothing, Vitus,” I said, motioning for him to play away.

  He should have stuck with the driver. He swung at the ball with his three-wood and sent a high pop-up weakly down the fairway. It carried just 150 yards and bounced around in the rough short of the fairway before finally coming to rest.

  “Finally,” the starter said with a sigh. “Get the hell out of here, would ya?”

  Jack and I headed for our cart while our opponents began walking off the front of the tee. As they walked, I heard Vitus berating his caddie for poor positioning. I sighed. Some people are born to make life difficult for the rest of us.

  Our nine-hole rematch was as closely contested as our practice-round competition had been. Every time Vitus had a stroke on a hole, and I was giving him four, he either won or halved the hole. I upheld the honor of our team three times, and on the par-3 17th, my partner knocked it on the green and then sank a roller-coaster of a 30-footer for a birdie and the win. Seventeen seemed to be his hole.

  Again, we went to the last hole all even. But this time, the match ended differently. I put a tad too much draw on my tee ball, and it landed on the left side of the fairway, where I was blocked by trees from getting my next shot all the way around the corner of the dogleg. I had to chip to the top of the hill and had a three-iron to get home. I hit it well, but it came up short and right of the green.

  Vitus, meanwhile, with a stroke in hand, played the hole in regulation: straight drive, iron over the crest of the hill and an easy wedge into the middle of the green. He didn’t look into my bag for club advice, this time.

  Jack and Fred were out of it, having had various adventures of the chopping kind. Figuring I had to make my chip for a birdie to tie Vitus’ sure par-net-bird, I hit the ball firmly and watched as it just missed the flagstick and rolled some ten feet past.

  Vitus had about 25 feet for his birdie. He looked at it from every angle, and then hit a miserable putt, leaving the ball a good five feet short. He began cursing and stomping around, but I ignored him. I suddenly had new life. If I could make my ten-footer for a par, and if Vitus missed his knee-knocker, we could escape the match with a half-point.

  I gave it my best shot, but the greens at Shuttlecock are renowned for their subtle shadings, and my putt just skimmed past the left edge of the hole. Bogey. I turned to Vitus and stuck out my hand. “Yours is good,” I said. “Nice match. You guys played well today.”

  He was shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I’m going to make this putt.” And he began to study the line of his five-footer. I was nonplussed. I had just given the jerk the putt and the match, and he had turned me down. That had never happened to me before and I really didn’t know quite what to do. I was pretty certain that once an opponent concedes a putt, a hole or the match, that’s it … game over. I looked over at Jack, who was standing watching on the edge of the green, and he just shrugged his shoulders.

  I recalled the scene on the ninth green a couple hours earlier. Vitus’ victory dance. The great white hunter celebrating his kill, daubing the blood of his victims on his body in ceremonial fashion for all to see. Except, of course, no one else was paying attention to this little victory except Vitus.

  I picked up the flagstick and watched quietly as Vitus stalked his putt from every angle. I watched as he crouched behind his ball, held up his putter between thumb and forefinger to plumb-bob the line, and finally approached his ball. I watched while he swooshed the putter back and forth carefully down the line, then carefully wiped the putter blade on his pants leg. I watched as he went into his crouch over the ball, setting the putter down carefully, adjusting it minutely, taking his last look at the hole, and then back at his ball. I watched as he took the putter back slowly and then smoothly accelerated into the ball.

  The ball ran straight for the back of the cup. Until it ran into the side of my foot. I took a quick step forward, kicked his ball away and jammed the flagstick back into the hole.

  “Wha—?” Vitus cried out, amazed. “Hey!”

  I turned and looked him in the eyes.

  “I gave you that putt, you insufferable showboating bastard,” I said to him in a quiet undertone that only he could hear. “According to the rules of golf, the hole and the match are yours. You don’t get to rub it in. And let me tell you something else. I will give this game up before I ever play another round of golf with you.”

  I turned and stalked off the green. I could feel the anger making my face a dangerous shade of red. Vitus could do nothing but stand there sputtering. I shook Fred’s hand and Jackie took one look at my face and said “OK, pards, it’s time for some serious inebriation.”

  We went upstairs to the men’s locker bar and joined the coterie of sunburned yet happy men who had gathered there to swap tales of disaster and triumph, putts that stayed out and those that fell in, drives that bonked off trees and ended up in the middle of the fairway, chips that scurried into the hole and two-footers inexplicably left one-foot short. All part and parcel of what makes golf such a damnable yet intriguing game.

  Jack made the effortless switch from beer to bourbon, and after a couple of quick ones, I gave up on trying to keep up with him. At one point, he pulled me into the corner and asked what I had said to his honor, the club president.

  “I told him he was an insufferable bastard and that I would never play his sorry ass again,” I said.

  Jackie looked into my eyes and nodded. “You shoulda kneed him in the ‘nads,” he said. “Or something that woulda left a mark.”

  He went back to drinking and talking while I went to take a long, hot shower. It felt magnificent. The hot spray washed away the lingering sweat of the day as well as the last traces of anger at Vitus Papageorge. That match was over and in the books. If there was a God, and He enjoyed hitting one on the screws as much as the rest of us, I’d never have to speak to that insufferable bastard for the rest of the weekend.

  I dressed, and rather than try to interrupt my partner and drag him off to dinner before he was quite ready, I went downstairs and outside to the big scoreboard that had been set up near the putting green. The results of the day’s matches had been posted, flight by flight. I pushed out the screen door and almost flattened a woman who was coming in at the same time. Our bodies squashed together before we could stop, and then we leapt apart, laughing and apologizing simultaneously. The first thing I noticed was her long blond hair, spilling prettily down onto her shoulders. Then her bright blue eyes and deep red lips, and a soft scent of perfume. I was too much of a gentleman to do a full-scale scope of the bod, but I could tell it was nice. Male peripheral vision.

  “Whoa,” I said, “Excuse me, I’m sure! Don’t know why I’m in such a hurry to read the scoreboard. Nothing but bad news up there!”

  She trilled her own embarrassed laughter and her hands made a couple of quick passes to straighten out her clothes. It was a movement that registered as strangely familiar.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, “No harm done. But if we ever meet again like that, we might have to elope!”

  She gave me the once-over, so I did the same. She was in her late thirties, I guessed. Her face had a sharp profile, with thin lips, a pointed nose, high, sharp cheekbones and a smallish chin. There were some telltale lines beginning at the corners of her eyes, and in addition to her red lips, she wore a lot of mascara and blush. She was wearing a simple white slee
veless blouse, a thin gold chain around her neck and a pair of red-and-white striped shorts. A few large twinkling things on her fingers.

  I felt her doing the top-to-bottom scan on me too, and watched as her eyes widened slightly and a smile played at the corner of her lips.

  “Maybe I should go look at the scoreboard, too,” she said. “I guess I should find out how my husband did today.”

  I motioned for her to proceed and fell into step as we walked over to the putting green.

  “And who is your husband?” I asked politely.

  “Vitus Papageorge,” she said. “Have you met him yet?”

  I laughed. My laughter helped cover my sudden flush of recognition. Now I knew where I had seen that smoothing gesture before. In the dark out by the pool the night before. Vitus’ lovely bride, smooching with a stranger.

  “I should say so,” I said. “He beat us on the last hole today.”

  “Oh, dear, I am sorry,” she said, putting her hand lightly on my arm. “If you want to say bad things about him, go right ahead. I’ve heard them all.”

  I laughed again, and she joined in, a high trilling that was anything but unpleasant. We studied the day’s scores, side by side.

  “Oh, you must be Jack Connolly’s partner,” she said, her eyes darting across the score sheets. I introduced myself and she said “I’m Leta. Leta Papageorge.” We shook hands. She let her soft hand linger for an instant longer than normal in my hand. “What a lovely man Jack is,” she said. “So uninhibited, so alive! Of course, having all that money helps.”

  “As you should know,” I said.

  She trilled her laugh again. And reached over and touched my arm again. She was a touchy-feely one.

  “I like you, Hacker,” she said. “I like a man who says what he thinks.” She moved closer to me, bumping me with her shapely hip. “How’d you like to buy me a drink? Tell me some more unvarnished truths?”

  I was a bit taken aback. A little flirting is one thing, but Leta had shifted rapidly into seduction overdrive. And there was already someone else who had gotten up close and personal with the club president’s wife the night before. My male ego was flattered, of course, but I had enough common sense left to know that this one was trouble.