Death at the Member Guest

by James Y. Bartlett

  He stopped and looked up at me with suddenly teary eyes. “Hell of a thing,” he said, his voice catching a bit. “Hell of a goddam thing. I’ve known Vitus Papageorge for, oh, twenty years or more. Did a lot of business with him. Played a lot of golf with him. Went out to dinner with his wife and him. Intense little guy, but he was a good friend. It’s a hell of a thing.”

  We stood there in silence for a moment. There was nothing much else to say. Finally, he shook his head and sighed aloud. We shook hands. He walked off slowly towards the parking lot.

  Hell of a damn thing.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Upstairs, Jack and his pals were still engrossed in their poker game. I went down to the telephone closet and called my home machine. There was a message from Tony Zec at the B.C. Open, saying he had just sent over the day’s stories to my email address, and one from Mary Jane Cappaletti.

  “Hi, Hacker,” her cheerful voice said on the tape. “I know you’re worried sick, so I thought I’d let you know that Ducky is doing just fine. He’s used the kitty box three times now, so he’s back in my good graces. We took him on a walk to the park this morning. Everyone said he looked great in the earmuffs. Call us when you get home, or give us a call if you get bored with all the drinking and golf and such! Ha ha ha. Victoria says hi! Later.”

  I smiled. Mister Shit was getting more attention in two days than I had given him in the last six months. Then I dialed the Journal’s city room and asked to speak to Branson Tucker, one of our regular columnists and our longtime Mob reporter. Tucker’s knowledge of the various New England and East Coast familias was legendary, and he had sat through all of the trials, reported on all the gangland shootings, and knew where most of the bodies were buried. He probably knew enough secrets to get himself buried, or dumped in the harbor wearing his cement galoshes, but the Mob seemed to tolerate Branson Tucker, figuring if they needed a mouthpiece for their side of the story, he was the go-to guy.

  “Tuck?” I said when he picked up, “Hacker. Got a second?”

  “For you, Mister Hacker, I can spare all of five minutes,” Tucker said in his broad Yankee Brahmin accent. “Then I have to finish tomorrow’s work of genius.”

  “Right,” I said. “I won’t hold you up. I’ve come across a name up here in Lowell that’s been nagging at me. Whaddya know about Herbert Incavaglia?”

  “Herbie the Vig?” Tucker sounded delighted. “I haven’t heard his name in a couple of years. The man is a financial genius. Started as a street collector for Carmine Spoleto years ago – hence his name – then worked his way up the ladder. He knew fifty ways to hide, launder, reinvest and otherwise increase ill-gotten gains, and that was before breakfast! I swear, if he had gone to Wall Street, he would have been a zillionaire. Maybe he is anyway, who knows?”

  “Yeah, well, this zillionaire has been working as the general manager for a country club up here in Lowell,” I told him.

  “Really?” Tucker was flabbergasted. “Herbie the Vig waiting tables? I find that hard to believe. Wait a moment…” I could hear his fingers drumming on his desk as he thought. “Yes, I do recall someone telling me a year or so ago that Herbie had moved up to Lowell. Said he was now working for Rene the Lip.”

  “And that would be?” I prompted. Keeping up with the Mob monikers was a full-time job, and mine was keeping track of 18-year-olds from Texas who could hit a golf ball 350 yards.

  “Rene Lemere, dear boy,” Tucker said. “He runs Lowell and Lawrence. And with all the Cambodian and Vietnamese gangs moving in, he’s had his hands full keeping order. But if he’s got Herbie Incavaglia working for him, he must be moving funds around somewhere. That’s Herbie’s specialty…taking dirty money and turning it into pristine, spendable hard cash.”

  “At a country club?” I asked. “How do you do that?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Tucker said. “All I can tell you is that Herbie has an angle going somewhere, somehow. He’s a genius, I told you.”

  I thanked him for his time and rang off. I sat there for a while, thinking. Little pieces of the puzzle seemed to be falling into place, but not quite connecting. Vitus Papageorge, a known mover and shaker with a somewhat murky past, had wormed his way into the Shuttlecock Club where he hired, as general manager, one of the Boston Mob’s most talented money men. That was interesting, all by itself. Now, poor old Vitus had ended up dead, in the definitive, not-coming-down-for-breakfast kind of dead. That made it even more interesting. Plus, I had seen Vitus’ lovely wife playing tongue tag with somebody, not her husband, but presumably a member of the club. That was interesting in its own way, Andrea Murphy’s objections notwithstanding, but I wasn’t sure if the two events were twined.

  And I still didn’t know what Herbie the Vig’s gambit was. According to Tucker, the man could practically spin gold out of straw. But how, short of blackmailing the ten richest members of the Shuttlecock Club, was Incavaglia skimming money?

  I went back upstairs in search of my erstwhile partner, thinking two heads might be better than one. But I forgot that Jack had been boozing and card playing for the last couple hours. His head wasn’t in the same space as mine.

  “Hack-Man!” Jack greeted me, a fat cigar clenched in his teeth. “Ronnie and his partner Joey here are bored and they’ve challenged us to a little match. Whaddya say? Up for a little golf? Get outside into the fresh air and chase away the cobwebs?” He struck a match and started puffing away at his cigar.

  “Cobwebs are one thing,” I said dryly, “But what about the alcoholic fumes you’re about to set afire?”

  The card players laughed, and Jackie waved away the clouds of smoke he had emitted. “C’mon,” he said cheerfully. “Let’s get it on. McDaggert said we can go tee off on 10 so we don’t get the cops all discombobulated. I’m feeling steady as a rock...look at this...”

  He tried to put his cigar down in the big ashtray to one side and then hold his hands out to show us all how steady he was, but his hand knocked his glass of bourbon flying across the floor. The room convulsed in laughter, and I had to join in. Jack looked crestfallen at his fallen soldier leaking alcohol on the floor, then added his own deep guffaws to the laughter ringing in the room.

  “Jeez,” I said, “I hope to God we’re not playing for money.”

  We arranged with Ronnie and his partner to meet them on the 10th tee in ten minutes and went back to Jack’s locker to change shoes. He was still laughing as we sat down on the bench.

  “Think they bought that?” he chuckled as he pulled on his spikes.

  I looked at him closely for a moment. He seemed perfectly sober.

  “I think you’ve been hanging around the late Vitus for too long,” I said. “You’ve picked up some of his bad habits. Shame on you!”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Shame on me. Let’s go kick some golfing butt.”

  In the cart riding out to the distant 10th tee, I filled Jackie in on what I had learned about the identity of the club’s general manager. He was astounded.

  “Herbert is a mob guy?” he said, incredulous. “He’s so quiet, so mister behind-the-scenes, so don’t-rock-the-boat.”

  “He’s not a leg-breaker,” I said. “He takes dirty money and makes it clean. Like an accountant, only he tries to break the law instead of follow it.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, smirking, “Just like the accountants do.”

  “What do you know about this Rene Lemere guy?” I asked.

  “I see him around town some,” Jack said. “He runs a legit business, grading and foundations for construction. But everyone knows he’s the go-to guy for Spoleto and the Boston interests. He’s tied in tight with the unions, obviously. Lotta the local politicians go to him. It’s not like he’s hiding from the law, or anything. People expect him to keep the city peaceful, and he mostly does.”

  “Tucker said the Asian gangs were trying to move in,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s a big problem in Lowell and downriver in Lawrence
, too. A lot of Cambodian and Vietnamese families have moved in over the last 20 years, and now they have a generation of young men who don’t know anything but the gang life. And they can be brutal. And dirty. Lemere cut his teeth bringing in illegal booze and tax-free cigarettes down from Canada, and running the usual numbers and loan-shark rackets in town. But that’s small potatoes, and not a very violent business usually. These triad gangs are importing heroin from Thailand by the boatload. That’s an altogether different industry. “

  “And one that can get you killed pretty quick if you get on the wrong side,” I observed.

  “Well, as I understand it, Rene has carved out a territory for the Asians and leaves them alone. They’re supposed to do the same for him,” Jack said. “Except for an occasional shooting here and there – usually in the summer when tempers get hot – they manage to get along fairly well.”

  “Lotta demand for heroin here in the placid Merrimack valley?” I wondered.

  “Lotta demand for heroin everywhere, pards,” Jack said.

  We arrived at the tee, where Ronnie and Joey were waiting. Ronnie, the Shuttlecock member, was about fifty and had a beer gut on him the size of a prize-winning watermelon. I always wonder where guys like that buy their clothes. His partner, Joey, was short and barrel-chested, with short, stocky legs. Watching him loosen up, I noticed his baseball-bat grip and flat swing with little body rotation – it was all hands and arms. We arranged our wager, shook hands and let ‘em rip. It felt good to get outside, in the warm fall sunshine, and forget about everything but golf.

  Jack and I dispatched our opponents with surgical precision. Something got into my partner – I think it’s called sobriety – and he played amazingly steady and good golf. Which was lucky, since my driver began to go disturbingly awry. My gentle draw deserted me and my shots began drifting ever further to the right. It seemed I spent the entire afternoon playing either from the woods or the rough.

  Jack saved us, time and again. I could tell it was going to be one of those days for him, one of those glorious, can’t-do-anything-wrong kind of days, on the eleventh, our second hole. Jack had a 35-footer that he needed to get down in two to halve the hole.

  Jack Connolly is an adherent of the Fuzzy Zoeller school of putting. He strolls around the green nonchalantly for a minute, eyeing the putt out of the corner of his eye (Fuzzy usually whistles tunelessly to himself while he does this part). Then, without further ado, he steps up to the ball and hits the putt. No plumb bobbing, no crouching, no endless practice swings, no asking anyone for a second read. Just look, step up, and boom.

  Anyway, on the eleventh Jack did his minimalist routine with his long, across-the-green putt, and the instant he hit the ball he said “Boink.”

  “What do you mean, ‘boink?’” I asked as the ball rolled across the smooth green grass.

  “I mean ‘boink,’” he said. “It’s in.”

  I was about to say “you sure?” when the ball rolled straight into the dead solid perfect heart of the cup and disappeared from view with a definitive rattle.

  “Told you,” Jack said and he turned and strolled casually off towards our cart. I smiled and retrieved the ball for my partner. Our opponents, now down a hole, looked crestfallen as I replaced the flagstick.

  “What are you guys, bunch’ a comedians?” one of them asked.

  I just smiled and shrugged. But that’s when I knew that this was Jackie’s day. And it was. He made another monster birdie putt to win the 13th, and on the par-three 14th, he had a ticklish, downhill, curving 12-footer. This time, I was watching from the side when he hit the putt, and this time, I was the one who said “boink” as soon as he hit it. It was obvious that the damn thing was going in, and it did. Dead center.

  We were five-up after the first nine, and while we cooled down some on the second nine, the result was the same. I was still spraying my driver all over the map, but I made some good escapes and some better up-and-downs from the fringe, and contributed a bit to the team effort. Jack continued to play solid golf, contending on every hole, and with his handicap shots, we did well. He only made one “boinker” in the afternoon, but we closed them out easily.

  A half hour later, we were back in the grille, nursing beers. Inside, it was strangely quiet for a weekend afternoon, as most of the contestants in the tournament had gone home. There were perhaps a dozen others who had decided to play, and a few stragglers from the morning’s excitement were still there, looking pretty much the worse for wear. The Lowell cops and their fancy crime scene machine had departed, leaving behind only the yellow crime-scene tape draped across the front of the cart barn. I wondered how Ted McDaggert was going to get his carts charged up for the morning, when the tournament would resume in a one-day free-for-all.

  But I forgot all that as my friends and I relaxed and replayed the highs and lows of the day’s round. Jack took a lot of well-deserved ribbing for his Brer Drunk act, and a lot of well-deserved praise for his magnificent putting. After a long day on the golf course, there is almost nothing so delicious as a cold beer. I have never understood those who come off the 18th and immediately jump into a Scotch on the rocks. They have obviously forgotten the cold, frothy and slightly bitter taste that speaks to a man’s soul. That first sip always takes me back to my first beer, stolen from a cooler at a family picnic when no one was looking, hidden under my flapping tee-shirt, cold against my belly flesh. I had run into the woods, hoping no one had seen me, and finally, safe in isolation, taken the prize out, twisted off the cap and tipped the bottle up.

  For some reason, a cold beer after a long, hot day of golf always brings me back to that first stolen, teenage pleasure. I wish I could remember my first love with the same detail.

  Outside, the twilight began to deepen. I noticed a steady stream of cars begin to pass down the long drive that bisected the first fairway. I yawned. My stomach growled. I remembered that I had forgotten to eat anything all day.

  “What manner of debauchery have you got planned for the evening, Jack-off?” I asked, draining the last of my third, or maybe fourth, long-neck. “And I hope it involves food.”

  “You guys going to the luau?” Ronnie asked.

  “Luau?” I echoed, looking at my partner, who was sitting back, sunburned face beaming happily.

  “Well,” he said, “Some of the guys had been talking about making a run down to Foxwoods,” he said, mentioning the nearest Native American gambling reservation down in Connecticut. “But that probably got called off when Vitus got himself killed. I suppose the club decided to go ahead with the luau since they probably had already bought all the food and everyone made reservations. It might be kinda fun to see how everyone’s taking the news.”

  “They gonna have a spit-roasted pig and everything at this luau?” I asked.

  “Oh, hell, yes,” Ronnie said. “They do it up…roast pig, poo-poo platters, tiki torches, mai-tais…everything!” He made it sound like it was the dining extravaganza of the year.

  “Well then,” I said, pushing back, “You can go have fun eavesdropping. I’m gonna go eat half that pig.”

  The tiki lamps that flickered along the walkways in front of the clubhouse set a festive tone for the evening’s event, but once the sun went down, the September night turned frosty, and most of the guests attending the Shuttlecock Invitational’s annual luau party headed inside for the warmth of the ballroom. The roasting pig rotated morosely on a spit set up on the broad lawn in front of the main entrance, but the buffet tables holding the rest of the feast had been moved inside, set up in what was normally the main dining room.

  Still, the ballroom had been festooned with enough palm fronds to make one believe that Jesus could come riding in on his donkey any time, to the hosannas of the crowd. Tables had been set up with fringed straw hats as the centerpieces, and the wait staff wore flowered Hawaiian shirts and red bandanas, cinched at the neck. They managed not to look too displeased at being made spectacles.

/>   Somehow, the party organizers had found, in this decidedly non-Caribbean region of New England, an actual steel-pan band that had set up in one corner, and the glistening black faces of the players were expressionless as they clanged out their rendition of “Yellow Bird.” Nobody was dancing. But I could tell that a conga line snaking around the tables was going to be part of the evening’s entertainment.

  Jack headed for the bar, of course, while I split off and went for the buffet line. I was famished, and I loaded my plate high with juicy chunks of pork that had been sawed off the unfortunate beast outside and brought inside to be kept warm on a Sterno-heated tray. I ladled on the tangy barbecue sauce, added some spicy rice-and-beans, fried plantains, corn fritters and a mound of cole slaw. I passed on the ubiquitous New England clam chowder, which I don’t think they have in the islands, mon.

  When I finally staggered back into luau central, I nodded at Jack, who was surrounded by a gaggle of buddies at the bar, and found myself a mostly empty table at the corner of the room farthest away from the steel pan band. It’s not that I don’t like music that comes from rejiggered fifty-five-gallon drums whacked with sticks, but after a few minutes of Bob Marley’s greatest hits, my head begins to throb.

  There were two couples sitting at the table, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves and the music. I nodded and smiled at them politely and we all silently agreed to ignore each other. Which suited me just fine, as I tucked into my heaping plate of food.

  I was about halfway through the process of shoveling it in when my cell beeped at me from my blazer pocket. Without breaking stride with my fork, I pulled it out, flipped it open and barked into the receiver.

  “Emphth-o?”

  “Hacker? Is that you? Are your batteries low?” The voice was female.

  I swallowed, stopped eating and tried again.