by Bill Scheft
“It looks like ‘Going My Way,’ but there’s a tee with a ‘l’ and an ‘f’ on it trying to squeeze in there,” Bing gushed. Mort was not completely uninterested in the project, and wouldn’t let himself be until he and Bing had finished the round, and three more in the Grille Room bar. Then it would be time to humbly apologize and even more humbly give Bing a list of a dozen writers who’d work for less. And while he was turning things down, Mort would also refuse to accept the forty dollars Bing owed him for unsuccessfully pressing his bet on the back nine.
“You won’t take my money, then we’ll just have to invest it,” Bing Crosby said. An hour later, they were in his private box at Santa Anita, two minutes before the start of the third race. Morton Martin Spell, whose entire method of handicapping consisted of picking horses whose names when scanned contained at least two dactyls and no trochees, had winners in four out of the six remaining races and was up $280. Bing had coattailed for the last three and was five thousand dollars to the good.
Mort did not mention Bing’s windfall at the track in “Bing Crosby: Sportsman.” Nor did he go into great detail about the booze, reefer, and call girls on the night charter they took to Chicago. Nor did he see any reason to involve the local police, who were kind enough to help everyone out of the Pump Room at 4:30 A.M. so Bing and his guests could be sure to get seven and a half hours of sleep and still arrive at Wrigley Field in time for the Cubs-Pirates doubleheader. Bing owned a piece of the Pirates and saw his boys whenever they were in Chicago, New York, or Brooklyn. Rarely in Pittsburgh. “You go to fuckin’ Pittsburgh,” was how he explained it to Mort. And how Morton Martin Spell wouldn’t explain it in his piece.
The whole thing was written as a hectic, dignified paean. There are no men like this. There are no days like this. Anymore. But perhaps you’d like to meet such a man and have such a day. That was Mort Spell’s premise. He excavated his recall and found every nuance of the Palm Springs course layout, every saddle cloth cover of the winners at Santa Anita, every song the sound of a post-war eastbound airplane engine reminded him of, every idiosyncratic twitch in the way Pirate star Ralph Kiner mimed his swing while standing in the outfield. He found all of this, and left behind the man he had outgolfed, outhandicapped, outdrunk, outfucked, and outbailed-out.
“Did the kid come by and take my shoes?”
“What shoes?”
“My golf shoes. I left them out for him to shine.”
“Mr. Spell, nobody has been here except me. You have the one pair of shoes that you checked in with. And they’re in the closet.”
“Have people told you what a nice job you’re doing filling in for the regular clubhouse attendant?”
Morton Martin Spell wrote it all so adroitly, nobody missed the Bing Crosby that “Bing Crosby: Sportsman” replaced. In fact, “adroit” was one of the epithets Mort used more than once. Spread out over five thousand words, it made a nice touchstone. Bing Crosby “rescued par at the 8th with an adroit chip” and was “ever-adroit as he marked his scorecard with an asterisk to remind himself of the great play in the field by the Cubs’ otherwise-maligned shortstop Lenny Merullo.”
When he wasn’t being adroit, Bing was being deft. And when Bing wasn’t being deft, he was being jaunty. And when Bing stopped being affable, which was never, he started being sagacious, which was always. Quite a man. Generous, classy, prudent. Just like Mort Spell’s version thirty-six years later. Thirty hours in five thousand words. Mort reined the whirlwind just long enough to flick out all bets, belts, cops, and blowjobs. But it was still a whirlwind. Eighteen holes at Palm Springs to seven races at Santa Anita to a split at Wrigley in just over a day met the legal requirement for whirlwind in 1947. And still did in 1983.
Little problem, though. By the time in 1983 Mort had handed in the piece to the Atlantic, people didn’t want to hear about Bing Crosby: Sportsman. They were too busy reading about Bing Crosby: Dad with a Right Hook. Earlier that year, Bing’s oldest son, actor-by-nepotism Gary Crosby, had published a tell-all, welt-all account of his childhood that included everything except statistics for punches thrown/punches landed. The Atlantic gave Mort a more than generous kill fee and got his word in writing that he would not try to sell the piece for six years. Mort waited seven years, then gave it to the tournament organizers at the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am to use in their 1990 program. For free. By then, the public had forgotten Gary Crosby with the same disinterested verve that greeted one of his guest shots on Police Story.
When “Bing Crosby: Sportsman” finally surfaced in print, it was a scrawny 2,400 words. Some guy whose editorial background must have consisted entirely of ransom notes, autopsied the thing beyond recognition. Five times, Mort leafed through the program, wondering if pages had fallen out. Six races at Santa Anita were scratched. And the flight to Chicago, the Pump Room wisdom, and the doubleheader were reduced to Bing lighting his pipe and telling Cubs owner Phil Wrigley, “Maybe you should stop paying your boys in gum.” The correct line was “Maybe Phil should stop paying his boys in gum,” and was delivered to Mort, but this yahoo with a knife and blue pen later justified the switch by saying, “Hey, Mort, Bing’s been talking to you the whole article. I thought we’d change it up at the end.” Morton Martin Spell was not one to use the words “fucking” and “idiot” in any combination, so he excused himself and his eviscerater. “Too bad,” he said to the phone after he hung up, “you could have saved another half-inch by cutting my byline.”
Three months later, the Bertram Hargan Cup people called. Guess who the late Bertram Hargan’s favorite singer/actor/child beater was? (Buzz) Time’s up….
Right. Time was up. Time for Morton Martin Spell, the only guy who still wore a hat in the press box, to let himself be honored.
“Would you hand me my typewriter? I have to finish the front of my piece on placekickers.”
“Your what?”
“My typewriter. Over there.”
“You mean the bedpan?”
“Right.”
The trip to Los Angeles had been needlessly frill-free. The Award Committee had sent Mort two first-class tickets, which he immediately exchanged for one coach ticket. When the girl, some angelic volunteer, met him at LAX to help him with his bags and to the limo, Mort handed her a check for $2,860 and said, “Be sure to thank your boss for confusing me with someone important.” He then helped her into the limo and hailed himself a cab to the Beverly Hilton. Which was fine, except the Award People had him at the Beverly Wilshire. The girl in the limo followed him and used the time to rehearse this tender lie: “Oh, Mr. Spell, I am so embarrassed. Nobody ever called to tell you we switched your reservation to the Beverly Wilshire. First, the mixup with the airline ticket, now this. I hope you can forgive me.”
The only thing Morton Martin Spell liked more than being apologized to was being apologized to by a girl in her midtwenties. “They’re damn lucky to have you,” he said. And he let himself get into the limo.
This girl, Kristin, no Kirsten, that’s right, Kirsten, was really something. When they thrice doubled back to the Beverly Hilton, first to get his glasses, then to get his hat, then to get his other glasses, which he was wearing, she said nothing. Oh, she talked, but she said nothing about what they were doing. She pushed her hair behind her ears and off the shoulders of her pink lizard-skin vest and acted as if perfecting this 1.8-mile loop on Santa Monica Boulevard at the height of rush hour were indeed her plans for the day. She knew little of Morton Martin Spell or his work, but was smart enough to ask him, “When was the last time you were in Los Angeles?” She sat back, smiled, pushed her hair behind her ears and listened to him reconstruct an old polo pitch in Bel Air while patting his pockets for whatever they would have to go back and get next. Three times, one for each loop, he looked past her and said to the limo driver, “How about our good fortune that Kirsten could make it today?” Between the $2,800 check, the limo and all the gratuitous praise, you would have thought this little girl in the pink lizard su
it was getting the Bertram Hargan Cup. And that would have been fine with Mort Spell.
What little was left of Mort to debilitate was achieved by the flight out. Airline travel played havoc with his ears, and it was a regime no consulship of Valium and vodka could topple. Thanks to a shrink with a heart in triplicate, Mort took enough Valium to make absolutely no difference if he took two more. So much, he used the Latin neuter plural when describing his dosage. It was not fifty milligrams of Valium a day. It was “five valia.” Five blue valia. Check that. Five periwinkle valia. Or ten canary valia.
The valia wordplay was one of those rare occasions when Mort would entertain himself. It was the third generation of a joke Alistair Cooke told him one night at P. J. Moriarty’s. Julius Caesar walks into a bar. Tells the bartender, “I’ll have a martinus.” Bartender says, “Don’t you mean a martini?” And Caesar says, “If I wanted a double, I’d ask for it!” A week later, Mort had Alistair banging the table and wiping his eyes with P. J. Moriarty’s starchiest linen when he asked the waiter for a “vodkum” on the rocks. “Don’t you mean a vodka, Mr. Spell?” You already know the rest. And it only got funnier the next III or IV rounds. Later, as they struggled with their coats outside, Alistair Cooke told Mort Spell it was the first time he’d been shushed since boarding school. They parted laughing, and Mort walked three blocks north, then three blocks south to retrieve his hat and glasses.
The pill his regular doctor had prescribed for his inflight ears did not work. And the Valium and vodka had made it not work faster. Somewhere over Cleveland, Mort complained to the stewardess and she returned with a piece of gum. Ten minutes later, she was back and said the other passengers in coach were wondering if he could possibly keep the gum and his dentures in his mouth at the same time. “No, but thanks for stopping by,” he said. “I’ll trade the gum for another vodka.” Mort almost said “ga,” but remembered he had only one piece in his mouth.
“Who was that nice man I played with this morning?”
“Dr. Banks?”
“No, the other one. Stockier fellow.”
“Enrique the orderly?”
“Yes! That’s the man. Get him back in here!”
“Did you wet your bed?”
“I owe him ten dollars. I gave myself a four on the 13th. Should have been a five.”
“What 13th?”
“You’re right. It was the 12th. Thank you for clearing that up.”
He let Kirsten check him in at the Beverly Wilshire while he sat down in the lobby. That was the first time Mort Spell thought he might be dizzy. The bellman took his bags upstairs while Kirsten ran to the closest place to buy masking tape. This was some girl. She even offered to tape up the air conditioning vents in his room. Mort thanked her and said he was an old pro at taping up ducts. He might have said something like, “It’s duct taping season.” But he couldn’t remember. That was the first time he couldn’t remember what he’d said or where he was. The second time was after he swooned and fell off a chair in mid-duct tape. Which was also the second time Mort Spell thought he might be dizzy.
If you count the fifteen seconds he spent on the floor, Mort got in two naps before the annual Bertram Hargan Cup reception. Though the actual award was coughed over with the frequency of presidential inaugurations, cocktails and cold lobster were handed out every May 27 at Lakeside Country Club. Mort welcomed the reception. It would be drinks and lobster and a lot of “You’re looking awfully well.” His acceptance speech would be the following night, in the big ballroom at the Beverly Wilshire. He didn’t have to speak at the reception, other than “You’re looking awfully well.” This he could handle. To this he could look forward.
Mort had been working on his speech for two months, or since the day after he was notified about winning the Bertram Hargan Cup. Before he left for the reception at Lakeside, he flipped through his forty single-spaced index cards for the first time. And it hit him, harder than the hotel floor after his fall. There was no mention of Bertram Hargan, no mention of Bing Crosby, no mention of Morton Martin Spell. It was forty-five minutes on Alistair Cooke’s first apartment in New York and a trip his sister Dottie took to Scotland in 1969. It was not an acceptance speech. It was a living will.
To his credit, Mort decided not to panic. He still had a day. He would call up one of his ready supply of “great man” quotes and attach it to Bertram Hargan. Then he’d talk about Bing’s kid (Nathaniel, not Gary. God, not Gary) winning the U.S. Amateur in 1981. Ten minutes. That would be plenty. He’d panic when he got back to New York. Okay, he’d panic when his ears started hurting on the return flight. Okay, he’d panic after he got back from the reception.
At seven-thirty, Mort remembered the thing he liked best about coming to California. The time change. Suddenly, it was 4:31 and he had another hour, twenty-nine minutes to drink gin. Mort had strict rules about this. No drinking before four-thirty P.M., except on Sunday. No vodka before six P.M., except on Sunday. No gin after six, except on Saturday. No alcohol with lunch, unless the waiter asked him if he would like a drink. No drinking during “Double Jeopardy,” because the questions were tougher. And no drinking of any kind during the taping of air conditioning vents. Of course, none of these rules applied on days he was flying. Or on an airplane.
Things last went well right about a quarter to six. Kirsten, who had changed from the pink lizard suit to a silk blouse/black slacks combo that tragically hid her legs, accompanied Mort through the lobby and to the limo before she said good-bye and got into a much smaller car headed somewhere else. She promised to see Mort the next night, at the Award Dinner. And she promised to wear her legs.
“Hey, Morty! Let’s go, buddy. The cold lobster’s getting warm.”
Morton Martin Spell, who hadn’t been “Morty” since he’d helped liberate France, saw the back seat of the stretch filled with the kind of man who usually sat in the booth behind him at P. J. Moriarty’s. Until the waiter moved him to another booth.
“Do I know you?” Mort asked.
“You better. I paid for your goddamn ticket. Chuck Hargan. Bert Hargan was my grandpa.”
“Oh.”
“Come on. Get in.” Mort looked around for someone to move him to another booth. “You like Kirsten? She’ll give you head for a hundred dollars, but you gotta pay for that. Don’t go charging it to your room. Aw, Christ, I’ll tell you what. You cashed in your ticket for coach, the hummer’s on me.”
Mort got in hoping Chuck Hargan would lower his voice. The driver was about to close the door.
“You got your speech, Morty?”
“No.”
“Well, you better get it.”
“My speech isn’t until tomorrow night.”
“Who told you that?”
“I just assumed I would give my acceptance speech on the night I accepted the award. I’m funny that way.” Mort Spell had been stunned into sarcasm.
“Hey, Morty, we changed things four years ago,” Chuck Hargan said while snapping his fingers at the driver to get the door. “My grandma went on forever about the old man at the big dinner. We couldn’t get her off. It was embarrassing. We had a big show planned. Kenny Rogers almost didn’t come out. I had to beg the guy. ‘Kenny, Kenny,’ I said. ‘Give me a break. She’s my fucking grandmother. So you don’t do “Lucille.” You do forty minutes. Cost me an extra ten thousand dollars to get that bearded country prick to stay. Finally, my grandma finishes, and I couldn’t yell at her. Her husband died, it was a big night, and she’s my fucking grandmother. So, I decided then and there that we give the award at the cocktail party, and we don’t fuck up the big dinner. I got Frankie Valli and a comic this year. Stewie Somebody. You think anybody wants to sit around after dessert and hear a speech? I’m thinking of you here, Morty. I’m a big fan. I read you every month in the New Yorker.”
“Well, I haven’t quite finished working on my remarks.”
“Oh,” Chuck Hargan said to give himself the half second he needed. “Well, fine. Screw it,
you got nothing to prove to these Lakeside assholes anyway. You don’t know them, they don’t know you. Scotch is scotch. Lobster is lobster. And you’re getting your dick sucked on me when you get back. What’s bad?”
“The point is—”
“And Frankie Valli tomorrow night! Come on. I hear you old literary fucks from New York can really party.” The limo had already pulled well out onto Santa Monica Boulevard.
“My glasses!”
“Whar?”
“I left my glasses back at the hotel.”
“Do you really need them, Morty?” Morton Martin Spell gave the kid the kind of look he probably got from Kenny Rogers four years ago when he asked The Gambler if he wouldn’t mind waiting around. “Shit. Jesse, turn this thing around. Shit.”
It took ten minutes for them to double back to the Beverly Wilshire, ten minutes for Chuck Hargan to pretend to wait patiently before sending Jesse upstairs to get Mort, eight minutes for the paramedics to show up. By the time Chuck Hargan power-walked into the big function room at Lakeside, all that remained was cocktail sauce, half a dozen Carr’s water biscuits, and well whisky.
“What size shoe do you wear?”
“8 1⁄2. Why?”
“Because I found a footprint in the bunker at the 11th. You know the one behind the green?”
“No.”
“Right. I’m thinking of the 10th. Thank you again. You’re especially sharp today.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, this footprint couldn’t have been a women’s size 8. More like a men’s 10. A 10 Charlie.”