Deep Rough - A Thriller in Augusta

by Blewitt, Chris; Blewitt, Chris

  DEEP ROUGH

  A Novel

  Chris Blewitt

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © by Chris Blewitt 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced either mechanically or electronically. Independently published & printed in the United States of America.

  Cover Designed By Joseph Mindak

  Bekitt Publishing 2010

  First Edition

  For Mom & Dad

  Thanks for teaching me the love of the written word.

  Chapter 1

  He watched the row houses through the intermittent windshield wipers as a light mist gradually fell on his BMW. Hank once more checked the address on the handwritten note in front of him and confirmed the house number on the rusty mailbox. He turned the wipers off first, then the ignition, and then he opened the car door. The drizzle pelted his ruddy face as he reached into the backseat to grab his briefcase. He closed the door and walked briskly up the concrete steps. The steps were crumbling on the corners. Under the protection of the porch, he tugged on both sides of his jacket and knocked on the door at 417 Evanston Corner.

  Turning, he looked at the dilapidated houses on both sides of the street. Wooden boards instead of siding, screen doors hanging by one hinge, even broken out windows. Hank couldn’t imagine living in these conditions.

  A little boy came to the door, appearing to be only six years of age. Dark eyes looked out at him, and he hesitated to open the screen door and allow this stranger in his home. Hank heard a voice call out from inside the house. “Boy, whatchu doin’ openin’ that door?” It was a female’s voice, probably his mother, Hank thought.

  “You here for Ty?” the kid asked.

  Hank looked at the kid and replied, “Is that your brother?”

  “Yeah. You gonna make him rich?”

  A woman came to the door and pulled the little boy away. “Get back in there and do your homework.” She turned to Hank and asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Hi, I’m Hank Fredericks. I called earlier to speak with Tyrone Hill. Do I have the right house?”

  “Yes, I’m his mother, Katrina. Come on in.” She opened the door for him, and Hank walked into the house. The inside did not look much better than the outside. He followed Katrina through the living room and over orange carpet that had seen better days. He had to walk over clothes, diapers, and at least three footballs, by his count. One was leather, like a professional football; one was small and plastic; and the other was a Nerf ball, badly chewed up on one end. They got to the kitchen, and she cleared the table of dirty bowls and plates.

  “I’m not sorry about the mess, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Before Hank could protest, she continued. “I’m a single mother who works nights so I can take care of my four kids. Youngest is Angel—she just turned one—and Tyrone is my oldest at eighteen. I also have twins, Byron and Micali. I’d rather this house be dirty and their minds clean.”

  Hank held up his hands and said, “Ma’am, I’m not here to critique your living habits. I understand you’re taking care of your kids and that’s great.”

  “Don’t call me ma’am and you don’t understand. I see that BMW out there. Know what we drive? We don’t; we take the bus. Now what are you here for?”

  Hank calmly replied, “I’m hoping I can change all that, Katrina. Is Tyrone home?”

  “Byron, go on upstairs and get your brother.” Byron threw down his pencil and ran out of the room. “How you gonna change all that?”

  There was a loud cascade of footsteps that bounded down the steps and came into the kitchen. Hank turned in his chair to see a behemoth of a man standing behind him. Tyrone Hill was the largest football player at this age Hank had ever seen, and not fat either. His stat sheet listed him as six foot six inches and two hundred and eighty-five pounds. Hank got up out of his chair and thrust his hand toward Tyrone. Tyrone swallowed his hand like a shark eating a minnow.

  “Mr. Fredericks, good to see you again,” Tyrone said.

  “You too, Tyrone. I was just telling your mom here that hopefully we’re going to change a few things around here.”

  “How you gonna do that, Mr. Fredericks?”

  “Have a seat, Tyrone,” Hank said.

  Tyrone looked at his mother, who nodded at him, and he took his seat. He was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. He was also cradling what must have been the fourth football in the house. This one a classic college ball with white stripes on both ends.

  “We’re gonna get you in school, Tyrone.”

  “Yeah, I know; I’m going to Community next fall. I’ll spend a year there, get my grades up, and then hopefully transfer.”

  “I was thinking of something bigger, Tyrone: a state school.”

  “He doesn’t have the grades for that,” Katrina chimed in. Tyrone was her first child and she made the mistake of not making education his first priority growing up. She was not going to make that mistake with her other children.

  Hank reached into his briefcase and pulled out a few sheets of paper. “He does now.”

  Katrina reached over and grabbed the papers. “What is this? SAT scores? Twelve hundred!? He’s taken them two times and hasn’t gotten over six-fifty.”

  “Well, he’s taken them again,” Hank replied.

  “What? Fake scores? You can’t be serious! I raise my kids to be honest adults when they grow up. I will not have him cheat his way through school.”

  “Ms. Hill, this is your ticket out of here,” Hank said while looking around the dank home. “He plays two years at Mississippi State and he’ll be taken in the first two rounds of the NFL draft. That means a multi-million dollar contract.”

  “Get out of my house!” she said, pointing towards the front door.

  Hank closed his briefcase and stood from the table. “Just think about it,” he said. He walked out the door and stopped to look at Tyrone, who was looking down at the fake SAT scores. He knew Tyrone was thinking about this. As he reached his car and opened the door, he heard the screen door open and saw Tyrone trotting down the steps. The rain had picked up, and both men had to squint through the drops to look at each other.

  “Let’s do this,” Tyrone said.

  “What about your mother?”

  “I’m eighteen and I can make my own decisions. She won’t care when I’m in the NFL in two years.”

  “Wise decision, Tyrone.” He was about to stick out his hand but thought twice about it and instead patted him on the shoulder. “Stop by my office tomorrow and we’ll draw up the contracts.” He handed Tyrone his business card and got inside the car.

  Hank checked himself in the rearview mirror. Brushing the drops of rain from his forehead, he caught himself smiling. He didn’t give a damn what was right and what was wrong. He also didn’t care that he just broke every rule of being a sports agent, and even broke a few laws. He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a flask. Imagining he was toasting someone else, he raised the flask and said, “That’s how it’s done, you son of a bitch.”

  <><><><><>

  Everything is about money, even the smallest things. It was only an eight-footer, but it was worth three thousand dollars. The following Saturday, Hank Fredericks felt beads of sweat form on his forehead. He stood on the putting green and realized that he had already lost five thousand dollars today. In hindsight, he wished he lost the money in the stock market or at th
e roulette table in Atlantic City. Furthest from the list of people he wanted to lose money to was his good friend, Archie Armour.

  Hank and Archie were on the eighteenth green at Del Val Country Club, about ten miles south of Philadelphia. The weather was just starting to break, and the frozen ground gave way to mushy, spring grass. There were only a few other golfers in sight on this crisp Saturday afternoon as the temperature crept over fifty-five degrees for the first time this spring. In their minds, it was just warm enough to strap the bag over your shoulders and walk eighteen holes.

  Normally the two men would not wager so much on the first golf outing of the year. Yes, they were compulsive gamblers and had the money to be so, but who knew how they were going to play or how bad of shape the course was in. Hank had been practicing in his basement all winter long and knew he was going to beat Archie this year, even though he had gone the entire summer last year without beating him once. He installed a practice net to take full swings into and also a miniature green in his backyard to practice putting. Archie knew this but didn’t seem to care. Even though Hank was the tall athlete and Archie the short stocky nerd, Archie was arguably the better golfer, and they both knew this.

  The path to the four-inch cup was not smooth like it would be in the summer. The grass was thick and brown, and it was difficult to determine speed. The putt Hank had to make would break from his right to his left and needed to go slightly uphill. He really needed to drain this. He made a few practice strokes, took one last look at the hole, pulled the putter back, and smacked it three feet past the hole. Like a scene out of Caddyshack, Hank spun to his left and was about to throw his putter at the clubhouse until the last second when he turned and heaved it down the fairway. Archie could only watch and laugh.

  After they gave their bags to the locker room attendant, they went inside the clubhouse and were sitting at the bar when the head professional, Dick Mackey, approached Hank.

  “Hank, what happened on eighteen? A few members said you were throwing clubs all over the place.”

  Hank was a large man with broad shoulders and large biceps that he used to intimidate almost everyone he ever met. “Nah, Dick, just my putter. I missed an easy one on those shitty greens of yours.”

  “What do you expect this time of year?” Mackey said, grinning. “PebbleBeach greens?”

  Hank just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Don’t let it happen again, okay? You could kill someone out there.”

  “You got it, Dick,” Hank said, humoring him.

  They watched Mackey walk away and Hank muttered something that resembled a curse word under his breath. The clubhouse at Del Val was built in the early 1920s and had barely changed in the past century. Huge oak doors separated the dining room from the ballrooms that were used to host weddings and other large functions. The restaurant held almost one hundred people, and the outdoor patio could hold fifty more. The female bartender approached and took their lunch order while serving them their second beer of the day.

  “Don’t get yourself kicked outta here, Hank,” Archie began, “because I’m not leaving if you do.”

  “Relax,” Hank said. “He’s just trying to scare me. If the board ever kicked me out, Dick knows that all it would take is some cash and he’d get me right back in.”

  “You’re worse with your money than I am,” Archie pointed out.

  “I am not. I just choose to spend it differently.” Hank leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You like to invest, save for the future. The future is now, Archie. We’re not married, we have no kids, and we have plenty of money!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Archie whispered. “Last thing I want are these old-timers asking me for money.”

  “I’m just saying, let loose once in a while. I’m surprised you bet as much as you did today.”

  Archie smiled, “That was a sure thing.”

  “We’ll see. I have all summer long to get that money back.”

  Archie leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “Three thousand dollars.”

  Hank grabbed his beer in disgust and guzzled it down.

  <><><><><>

  Masters champion Sam Snead once said, “If you asked golfers what tournament they would rather win over all the others, I think every one of them to a man would say the Masters.” The youngest of the four majors in professional golf, Augusta National hosted its first tournament in 1934. In the beginning, it was called the Augusta National Invitational Tournament. It was not until 1939 that it was given its current name, the Masters.

  Designed by Alistair Mackenzie, Augusta National was the pride of the South. Famous golf courses like Merion, Oakmont, Winged Foot, Baltusrol, and PineValley dominated the Northeast. In fact, until 1933, the United States Golf Association had never hosted their two biggest tournaments, the US Open and the US Amateur, farther south than Illinois. The USGA would always deny a request from the famous courses of the South, saying that it was too hot and that the golfers and the courses could not stand up to the heat.

  Augusta National founders Clifford Roberts and Robert “Bobby” Jones used this excuse as fuel for their tournament, and it became an invitational. A professional golfer could not play in the Masters unless the club itself invited him. For years the tournament was usually held the first, if not the second, week of April. This, deemed the members, was when the golf course was at its peak. The bent grass was thick, green, and lush. The magnolia trees had small buds and flowers on them. The azaleas were in full bloom, showing their red, pink, and white petals.

  All sorts of rumors surrounding the conditions of Augusta National floated about. Some reported that if Georgia had a bad winter and the grass was not perfect, they would paint the fairways green to make them look better on television. They would also bring in heat lamps for the azaleas so they wouldn’t freeze at night. Augusta National was the pride of the South, and it would stay that way.

  Six weeks before the Masters started, “Red” Maitland was sitting in the corner of the men’s card room listening to a few old men play their daily game of rummy. The television was on and the screen showed PGA golfer Chet Walker leading the tournament at Pebble Beach by three strokes. One of the oldest members of Augusta, Red had been there for forty-two years. When he finished his Marlboro and crushed it out in the ashtray, he muttered under his breath, “This is the year I need to do something about this.” None of the members even looked in his direction, pretending not to hear anything. They respected and feared him. Rumor had it that once he took a caddy to the pond in front of the twelfth green and dunked his head underwater for more than a minute when the caddy handed him the wrong club for his tee shot.

  Red picked up his glass of scotch, neat, and took a long sip. No one actually knew if he was nicknamed Red because he smoked Marlboro Reds or because he drank Johnny Walker, Red Label. Some even joked that that it was because his nose had that dark, purplish complexion of a man who enjoyed his spirits too much. He had just gotten off the phone with someone in his office and had come down to the card room to get a drink and think about his next plan of action. The person on the other end of the line had just given him an interesting proposition regarding the Masters, just six weeks away.

  Chapter 2

  The Coldridge Group was one of the smaller sports management firms in the United States. Their headquarters was located in Philadelphia, and they had just two satellite offices in the South. Craig Waltrip accepted a job there as an intern right after graduation from SyracuseUniversity. He really didn’t know what he wanted to do, but being a huge sports fan, it sounded like a great opportunity with an up and coming company. His father recommended it, had friends that worked there, and basically got him the job. As with most recent graduates, Craig started at the bottom as an assistant for the more experienced consultants. He quickly moved up the food chain and was now an assistant to the big man, his boss, Hank Fredericks.

  Hank was not so much the boss, but his father’s son. Jake Fredericks had founded Cold
ridge in the late 1970s, naming it after the street he grew up on, and retired five years ago, leaving the reigns to his son, Hank.

  “What’s on the agenda next week, Craig?” Hank began.

  Craig was sitting in Hank’s office on the 45th floor of the Wachovia building. The view of center city Philadelphia was spectacular.

  “Well, Tuesday we’re meeting the parents of Joshua Barclay, the kid from Florida,” Craig responded.

  “Yeah, tennis, huh?” Hank pondered the thought and leaned back in his leather chair. All around his office were framed jerseys, photographs, balls, bats, most of which were autographed. “What’s your take on tennis, Craig?”

  “The kids just don’t play it anymore,” Craig said. He was surprised that his boss would even ask him a question like that. “No one even watches it on TV unless it’s Wimbledon or the US Open.”

  “Yeah, I know, but we can’t let this kid out of our hands. He’s only sixteen, but the experts say he could win more titles than Sampras or Agassi. Fine; what else?” Hank asked.

  Craig looked down at his notes. “Wednesday is media day for our baseball players starting their spring training games; Thursday is nothing major; and Friday is the contract talks with our new hoops man, Antoine Domingo.”

  “Okay, that should be good,” responded Hank. “Let me get some paperwork done here, and let’s meet back tomorrow morning around eight to go over the Barclay meeting.”

  Craig started to get up from his chair when Hank said, “Oh and Craig, tell Miss Tiernan to reserve the conference room for me from eleven to one. I have someone coming in from Augusta.”

  “Augusta? Really?” Craig was thrilled at the mere mention of the famed golf course.