An Open Case of Death

by James Y. Bartlett

  “True that,” he said, draining the last of his coffee. “Holds true for this job, too. You never know who you might meet on a given day that can be helpful to you some day. I try to keep my eyes and ears open. You meet as many people as you can and try to treat everyone nicely. You never know.”

  “Say,” I said, “You ever meet a guy name of Newell? Mike Newell?”

  He jumped out of the cart like someone had goosed him, walked over to the bin and dunked his trash in like he was Stephen Curry of the Warriors. With some violence. When he came back, his face had gone white. He didn’t look at me, but climbed in behind the wheel and slammed his foot down on the pedal. The cart jerked forward, snapping our heads back, as he drove down the curving path towards the thirteenth tee.

  “I take it that’s a ‘no,’” I said.

  “W-w-what?” he said, his voice a little thin and shaky. “What did you say?”

  “Newell,” I said. “First name Michael. I wondered if you knew him.”

  “No,” he said. “Why should I?”

  That was a bit of a weird non-answer, I thought, but I let it lie. He had the honor, so he stepped up on the tee of the par-four that ran up a gentle hill all the way to the green, with the ocean off to the left, across the fairway of the ninth hole. He teed his ball, took a hurried practice swing, then stepped up and belted it. The ball started down the right side and then began curving even more to the right. Eventually, it disappeared into the back yard of one of the marble and concrete mansions that sat regally along the fairway. O.B. Gonzo.

  “Shitfuck,” he said, and pounded his driver in anger on the tee. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  I got out of the cart, stretched, and took my time getting out my driver, rooting around for a new ball, trying to delay as long as possible to let Charlie get his composure back. He stood on the back of the tee, waiting, his hands clenched tightly at the top of his driver, staring down the fairway. At nothing.

  I played my drive, which fetched up safely down the left just past a fairway bunker, snatched up my tee and stood back. He re-teed, took another nervous practice swing, then made another pass. This one went even farther right than the first. I clenched my shoulders together, waiting to hear the tinkling crash of a Titleist plowing through window glass. But we heard nothing.

  “Goddamit to hell!” Charley shouted and reared back and tossed his driver down the fairway. Almost immediately, however, he got control of his anger. He took a couple of steps down the fairway after his helicoptering driver, then stopped and turned to me.

  “I’m very sorry, Mister Hacker,” he said, his face beginning to redden with embarrassment. “I apologize for my behavior. Those were two of the worst swings I think I’ve made since I’ve been working here. “But that’s no excuse for losing my composure like that. I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Forget about it, kid,” I said, and I meant it. “Happens to all of us, one time or another. This game can sneak up and kick you in the shorts when you least expect it. I’d say I won this hole. Let’s just play on.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and went after his driver.

  We finished the round without any other incident. But something had definitely changed. Charley was quieter, withdrawn into himself. His golf game didn’t change—he played steady golf the rest of the way and easily held me off to win our little match. But he wasn’t the same person. I tried talking about different things, trying to jolly him out of his funk, but he responded mostly in monosyllables, didn’t laugh much at my jokes or stories, and just seemed preoccupied. I tried not to read too much into it. Maybe he had been shooting his best score ever, and the two out-of-bounds shots had ruined what he thought was going to be a great card. Maybe he had screwed up that hole before, and was berating himself for falling victim to the mental heebie-geebies that lurked there.

  Or maybe, I thought, my question about Michael Newell had come at him out of left field, completely unexpectedly, and had smashed his mental equilibrium into a zillion pieces, right there on the thirteenth tee at Pebble Beach. That would be interesting, I thought.

  I stopped hitting shots sideways, which was good, but lost all touch on the greens, and three-putted three times coming in. At the end of the round, I gave Charlie forty bucks and thanked him for the game.

  “Any time, Mr. Hacker,” he said. He managed a half smile, but couldn’t look me in the eyes. We shook hands.

  The big Rolex clock on the putting green said it was half-past noon, so I headed for the Tap Room.

  The Tap Room is one of the great clubhouse bars in all the world. Dark, wood-paneled, bedecked with black-and-white photos of Hollywood stars and PGA Tour pros enjoying the hell out of the once-enjoyable pro-am weekend known as the Crosby Clambake, the place feels like it should be smoke-filled, except if you dared light one up today, alarms would sound, lights would flash and seven kinds of law enforcement would descend on the place to haul you off to the hoosegow. Other than that, the place reeks of atmosphere. Of course, a glass of beer will set you back around twelve bucks, and a cheeseburger starts at around twenty-five, but the surviving Amigos have to make a profit somewhere, and that somewhere is The Tap Room.

  Dottie van Dyke was waiting for me at a table towards the back of the room. She had her laptop open and humming, and had made the server leave an entire pot of coffee on the table so she could do her own refills. She saw me come in and waved me over.

  Everything about Dorothy van Dyke shouted “career woman.” She was tall and stocky in her build, impeccably dressed as always, today in a maroon business suit. Her hair, cut in a slightly mannish style, was that shade of grey-blonde that gave away her age. She had spangly bracelets around both wrists, eyeglasses hanging from a chain around her neck, and just enough makeup to set off her high cheekbones. She looked businesslike, her aura was corporate and, as a man, my initial impression was that what she most wanted was to relieve me of all my money. There was absolutely no sexual electricity. None. With Dottie, there was no “me woman, you man,” but simply “let’s make a deal.”

  She held out her hand for me to shake as I came to the table. “Hacker,” she said coolly. “Good to see you again.”

  “Hi, Dottie,” I said. “Been waiting long?”

  “Ten minutes,” she said. “I had someone call me when you reached the 18th tee.”

  “How efficient,” I said.

  She leveled her eyes at me, in a neutral look that said of course I’m efficient. This is what I do. For the record, her eyes were pale blue. They were also cold, calculating and a bit scary.

  I ordered a cup of artichoke soup—they are grown all around Monterey, and mine were said to come from Castroville—and the only cheeseburger I could find on the menu. Made with Kobe beef and some warm melted brie, it was priced at a cool $31. Dottie ordered a salad. When my beer arrived, price unknown, I lifted it in silent thanks to Jacob Strauss, who was paying for it.

  “In addition to the stuff I left in your room, I brought along a few more historic records,” Dottie said, pushing some leather-bound books and an inch or two of files across the table towards me.

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. “I guess I know what I’m doing this afternoon.”

  “Unless you want me to book you a massage at Casa Palmero,” she said.

  “Thanks, but no,” I said, as my soup arrived. “I do need to start digging in.”

  “Is there anyone you’d like to talk to while you’re here?” she asked. “I can make a call, help set it up.”

  “How about Harold Meyer, Jack Harwood and Will Becker?” I said. “That would work. For a start.”

  Her eyes widened. “Geez Louise,” she said. “Why don’t you ask me to get you an appointment with the governor? Why do you want to speak with the ownership team?”

  “I just thought it might be interesting to talk with them about what it was like buying this famous property, how the experience has been over the years, and what they intend to do now, without J.J.
Udall.” I was making this up on the fly, as usual, but someone once advised me, when doing an interview, to ask for the moon first, and then whittle down the request to something more manageable.

  Dottie was shaking her head. “I dunno, Hacker,” she said. “I can ask, but I can’t guarantee what they might say. Meyer’s up in San Francisco, hardly ever comes down here. Jack might be off shooting a movie in Indonesia, for all I know. Becker’s usually around—he lives just over the hills from here—but I’d have to see what his schedule is like.”

  “Well, do the best you can,” I said. “I’ll study up with this stuff in the meantime.” I waved a hand at the books and files she had brought with her.

  “I hear you’re married now,” she said with a smile.

  “Yeah, sorry,” I said. “I realize I’ve broken the hearts of many thousands of women.”

  She snorted. “Not hardly,” she said. “It was kind of surprising to hear, though. We all had you pegged as a lifelong bachelor.”

  “We?”

  “The many thousands of female Hacker fans,” she said.

  I laughed. I told her a little about Mary Jane. I did not bring out my wallet and show her pictures. Which reminded me that I ought to put some pictures of my family in my wallet, so I could bring them out and show people.

  Our lunches arrived and we ate in silence for a while. Even though I’d had a hot dog and a beer just a couple of hours earlier, I was hungry. Must have been all the hacking on the back nine and the sunny day.

  “When is this book going to be published?” she asked, after we’d done some damage to our plates.

  “Jacob hopes to launch it at the Open in June,” I said. “He’s thinking a captive audience will jump start sales.”

  “Well, let us know if there’s anything we can do,” she said. “We’ll certainly carry it in the pro shop.”

  “Thanks,” I said. There was another coffee cup next to Dottie’s pot of coffee, so I poured myself some.

  “I’ll let you know,” I said. “Listen, what’s the current status of this condo project up in Huckleberry Hill? I just heard about that.”

  She dumped some sugar and a dollop of milk into her coffee and slowly stirred it with her spoon. As an experienced reporter, I could tell she was delaying her answer, probably until she could come up with something other than the truth.

  “To tell you the truth, Hacker, I have no idea,” she said finally. It sounded like she was being honest. “I mean, I know about the project, but I haven’t heard anything about it for more than a year. The application has been before the CCC for about five years now, and they tend to move pretty damn slowly.”

  “So it’s still on the to-do list,” I said.

  She squirmed a little. “Well, yes and no, I guess,” she said. “I mean, yes, it’s still a project that we want to do at some point in the future, but that depends on getting all the approvals from the Coastal Commission, and we know how hard that can be. Believe me, we know. We’ve danced with that group before, many times.”

  “So you don’t have the bulldozers all gassed up and ready to go,” I said.

  She smiled. “Oh, hell no,” she said. “My guess is at least five years out. More like ten. Why do you ask? That project doesn’t have much to do with the history of Pebble Beach and the Open, does it?”

  She looked at me, challenging me to defend sticking my nose into something she obviously didn’t want to talk about.”

  “Oh, just from my research,” I said. “I saw a reference to Huckleberry Hill and asked someone about it.”

  “That someone wasn’t Jake Strauss, was it?” she asked, frowning. “He should know better.”

  I laughed. “You know we writers never divulge our sources, Dottie,” I said. “But no, it wasn’t Jake.”

  She sipped some coffee and ate a bite or two or her salad.

  “Of course, you would protect him if he was the source,” she said. “You reporters are all alike. Sneaky.”

  “Only because corporate bastards like you are secretive,” I said.

  “’Corporate bastard’?” she said with a sniff. “Well that’s a new one. Been called just about everything else in the book.”

  I laughed. I knew she wouldn’t take it seriously. Dottie van Dyke has been around the block a few times.

  “What else can I help with?” she said.

  “What’s going on with the corporate leadership?” I asked. “I understand that with Udall dead and buried, there may be some changes coming.”

  She nodded, as if she had been expecting this line of questioning.

  “Yes, I suppose that is to be expected,” she said. “But we’ve all been told that the management structure will remain the same. The remaining three principal owners will continue in their roles. I believe the next annual meeting of the corporation is scheduled for July, a few weeks after the Open, so any announcements of any tweaks to the corporate structure will happen then.”

  “What is the difference between a tweak and a change?”

  She paused, looked at me with what appeared to be a stern expression.

  “Are you being an asshole?” she said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, smiling my best winning smile at her.

  “Then let me try again,” she said. “I’ve been told that nothing is going to change. But if something does change, then it will be announced at the annual meeting of the corporation in July. OK?”

  “Got it,” I said. “Nice bit of tap dancing.”

  “Bite me,” she said.

  “Last question,” I said. “Do you know someone named Michael Newell?”

  She paused, thinking. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Am I supposed to? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m supposed to find him.”

  She got up, closed her laptop and pushed her chair back in.

  “Well, Hacker, there are only about 40 million of us living here in the Golden State,” she said. “Good luck to you.”

  “And the Red Sox,” I said softly. But she had already left.

  I went back to my room and added the pile of new stuff Dottie had brought to the pile of old stuff she had delivered yesterday. My fruit basket was still there, untouched and beginning to smell like well-ripened fruit. I ate a strawberry, just so no one could accuse me of being ungrateful.

  My reading and research pile now contained three books and at least two inches of paper. I looked at all that, then looked at my comfortable king-sized bed, draped with fine linens of Egyptian cotton with a thread count even a Pharaoh could love. I had been up since 4:30, played eighteen holes, and had consumed a couple of beers and a rich hamburger. And artichoke soup. My eyes suddenly felt heavy and I knew that trying to read anything right now would last for exactly one paragraph before I fell asleep. So I skipped the part of opening a file folder or a book cover and just stretched out on the bed, turned on the TV and dialed up the cable news channel for background noise and fell fast and deeply asleep.

  When I woke up a few hours later, the December twilight was coming up fast and the ocean out my window was colored a deep shade of gold by the setting sun. The idiots on the box were telling me the same news they had been telling me a couple hours earlier, trying hard to make me believe it was still “breaking news.” I shut it off, got up and stretched, looked at the pile of reading and thought about taking a long hot shower and ordering some coffee. The phone rang.

  “Mister Hacker,” said a deep and somewhat familiar voice when I answered. “This is Jack Harwood. Am I interrupting you?”

  When he told me his name, I put that voice with the famous face it belonged to. Deep, intelligent but with a menacing undertone, that voice had been entertaining people for decades. Starting with those early spaghetti Westerns, where the dirt-streaked, sweaty Jack Harwood had survived attacks from both the Indian savages and the white double-dealers in the dusty desolate towns to win the love of the girl at the end of Ac
t 3; through the popular police dramas of the ‘80s and ‘90’s, when his recurring cop character, Bad Barry, had patrolled the dark and dangerous Big City streets, getting shot at by bad guys and undermined by corrupt bosses; and on into his later years, when he directed and acted in all kinds of dramas and romances and comedies … through all of that, the voice of Jack Harwood had remained indelibly the same. And now, improbably, it was talking to me.

  “Not at all, Mr. Harwood,” I said.

  “Call me Jack,” he said. “I wonder if you are free to join me for a little dinner tonight? Maybe around seven? I was going to grill a couple of steaks. I know you’re staying in the finest resort in the world, but I’d appreciate it if you could make your way over here to my place. I don’t like to go out after dark any more. My eyes aren’t quite what they used to be.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “I’d be glad to come over.”

  “Wonderful,” he said. He gave me the address and some directions. “We’ll look for you around seven. Ta-ta.”

  I called Mary Jane. It was a little after eight back on the Right Coast.

  “Hi, honey,” she said when she answered. “We’re just finishing dinner. We had fish sticks.”

  “Yum,” I said. “I just got invited to dinner at Jack’s.”

  “Jack who? Nicklaus??”

  “Jack Harwood,” I said. As nonchalantly as I could.

  “Get out of town!” she exclaimed. I heard Victoria in the background say “What, Mommy?”

  “It’s true,” I said. “He just called and invited me over. Around seven.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “What are you going to wear?”

  I laughed. “Clothes, I think,” I said. “I’ll wait until I get there for the nightly movie star orgy to get started before I strip down.”

  “Shut up,” she ordered. “That is so exciting. Why does he want you to come over? Did he say?”

  “No, actually, he didn’t,” I said. “But I suspect it has something to do with the book. I asked Dottie van Dyke at lunch today to get me interviews with all the ownership. Hell, he knows more about the history of this place than anybody. He used to play in the Crosby.”