An Open Case of Death

by James Y. Bartlett

  Strauss hung up his phone and motioned for me to follow. For a split second, I thought about grabbing hold of one of the beige columns framing the front entrance and making him drag me, but I decided to act like an adult instead. Besides, I was actually looking forward to going to San Francisco and talking to Harold Meyer. He was the last of the surviving Amigos I had yet to meet.

  Instead, I grabbed a to-go cup of coffee from the urn placed on a cart near the front desk, and I was fiddling with the lid when I climbed into the back seat of the limo. Strauss gave me that impatient, where the hell have you been look, but he was already on another call. I smiled at him and settled back into the plush leather.

  Strauss stayed on the phone almost all the way up to San Francisco. I ignored him and leafed through the magazines tucked into the seat divider. The driver picked up the 101 north of Salinas and followed it through San Jose and up through Palo Alto and San Mateo into the city. We skirted the Mission District and followed the signs to the Golden Gate, but turned off near the Presidio and climbed one of San Francisco’s many steep hills. I saw a street sign at an intersection that said we were on Vallejo.

  At the crest of the hill, the limo swung into a narrow entrance, sliding through some wrought iron gates that had magically opened for us, and stopped at the front door. I got out and looked up at a massive gray stuccoed mansion. It was three stories tall, featured lots of ornate molding at the roof line and stained glass windows in the front. It looked just like the kind of place where one of the richest men in the world would live.

  We walked up the marble steps with the curved brass railing and the front door silently swung open. A uniformed butler—black pants, narrow tie and one of those little white coats nipped in tightly at the waist—ushered us into the inner sanctum. The marble foyer was bedecked in mirrors and brass and the ceiling extended all the way to the roof, three stories up. But an elegant brass chandelier dropped down two of those stories. There were banks of fresh flowers, all in white, stuffed into brass urns on all the tabletops. A flight of white marble stairs rose at the back of the space and spiraled its way upwards to the other floors.

  “Mister Meyer is on the sundeck,” the butler announced. His voice sounded a bit more Hispanic than Jeeves, but it was still authoritative. He gestured toward the gold-paneled elevator doors to the right of the great hall.

  “Shall we walk?” I said. “I could use the exercise after sitting in the car.”

  “Shut up,” Strauss snapped, and we took the elevator.

  The sundeck on the roof of the mansion was almost totally enclosed in glass, save for one wall which contained a wood-burning fireplace and a floor-to-ceiling stonework mantle. There was a huge, U-shaped white sofa arrayed in front of the fireplace, and several other tables and seating groups scattered across the rest of the space. At the far end, the glass roof had been pulled back for some 20 feet on a system of chains and pulleys, and the sunshine and cool fresh air filled the room. As we gazed out at the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge rose above the greenery of the Presidio forest to the left, the low-slung cellblocks of Alcatraz clung to their rocks directly across from us, and the impressive skyscrapers of downtown San Francisco towered off to the right. You could say this house had a million-dollar view, but that would be shorting the price. By a lot.

  Over in the sunny, open area a solitary figure was sitting in a plush wicker chair. Harold Meyer was a tiny little man, with an impressive shock of snow-white hair. He was wearing a gold paisley smoking jacket of some kind—the fabric was shiny—and a pair of black slacks, with black loafers. His tiny face was mostly obscured by a pair of large-rimmed glasses with darkened lenses. On the table in front of him sat a silver tray with a large pitcher of what looked like iced tea, an ice bucket and two tall empty glasses. He had already poured himself a glass.

  As we approached, he didn’t get up—the sign of the alpha dog—but motioned us to sit down.

  “Hullo, Jacob,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep and resolute. “Have some tea. It’s an herbal blend. Supposed to be good for the prostate.”

  He looked at me.

  “And whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?” he said.

  “This is Hacker,” Strauss said, sitting down and pouring himself a glass. He looked at me.

  “Sure, I’ll have some,” I said. “Can’t be too proactive about the ole prostate.”

  “You joke, Mister Hacker,” the old man said. “But for some of us, prostate problems are very real. I myself have battled with prostate cancer for years. I had a tiny radioactive seed implanted in mine two years ago. In Thailand. Cutting edge therapy.”

  “And is the old block and tackle doing OK?” I said. I heard Jake Strauss make a choking sound that he quickly modified into a cough as he took a sip of his herbal tea.

  “Quite well, thank you for asking,” Meyer said.

  He looked at Strauss.

  “What is the purpose of your visit with me today, Jacob?” he asked.

  “I have some papers prepared for you,” Strauss said, burrowing down into the depths of a leather briefcase he had brought with him. “I think everything is in order. And I wanted you to meet Mr. Hacker, here, who is writing the book on the history of Open courses for us.”

  He passed the sheaf of legal documents over to the old man, who glanced at them and tossed them down on the table in front of him. He looked at me through the lenses of those thick, darkened glasses.

  “You are a writer, then, Mr. Hacker,” he said. “Is that right?”

  “I sure hope so,” I said. “Otherwise the 50,000 words I’ve already got down on paper are gonna disappoint the hell out of someone.”

  He didn’t react.

  “How can I be of service for your work?”

  I took a sip of my herbal tea, felt it washing me all the way down to my prostate. I felt like a homeless bum, in ragged clothes and smelling of alley, dropped against his will at a fancy soiree where everyone else is in black tie and tiaras. But then, I’ve felt that way most of my life.

  “I was hoping to draw a parallel between Samuel F.B. Morse and the current ownership,” I said, making it all up on the fly. “Explore the connection between Morse’s desire to repurpose the Monterey Peninsula for recreation and real estate, and your current business plan, which is to …”

  I had hoped that my unspooling bullshit would end at some appropriate place, but I ran out of concepts I could pair with ‘business plan.’ Luckily, Meyer jumped in.

  “Our business plan is to maximize return while providing our guests with the utmost in a luxury resort experience,” he said.

  “Exactly,” I agreed, nodding my head with vehemence. “Maximizing the experience.” Which is not what he said, of course. But I think they teach you in business school to just repeat back the words that your target says, so they think they’re brilliant. And then, feeling brilliant, they’ll buy whatever bull you are slinging.

  “Of course,” he said, “I have no idea what concept Samuel Morse had for the property.”

  “Making lots of money,” I said. “As much as humanly possible.”

  He paused and looked at me to see if I was perhaps trolling him. I was, but I gazed back with my head cocked, as if I was hanging on his every word.

  “Well, that goes without saying,” he said.

  “Naturally,” I said, nodding in agreement. “Of course. Absolutely”

  Meyer turned to Strauss.

  “Have you made any progress on that letter?” he asked. “Do we know if it’s real or not?”

  “Nothing to report yet, I’m afraid,” Strauss said. “Hacker here is looking into that as well.”

  “Is he now?” Meyer smiled at me. “A little investigative work, eh?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Just like when I was at the newspaper, digging up stories. It’s second nature to all of us journos, digging into people’s private lives, finding all their dirty secrets.”

  “And have you h
ad any success to date?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve got a few leads I’m following,” I said. “But nothing definitive as yet. I’m still not sure I understand why it makes a difference if J.J. Udall had a secret son.”

  “Quite simple,” Meyer said. “Under the partnership agreement, Udall’s interests in the Pebble Beach Company close out upon his death. His estate will be paid the current value of his investment. The transaction will be simple and clean. But if it turns out he has an heir, which nobody who ever knew J.J. had an inkling of … well, then the potential is there for litigation that could conceivably drag out for years to come.”

  “And that would screw up your plans to reorganize the company with you as the sole owner,” I said.

  Meyer paused for a moment or two, then broke out in a soft chuckle.

  “I can see that you have excellent analytical skills, Mr. Hacker,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps when you are finished with your current assignment, you would consider joining the Meyer Companies. We’re always in need of good thinkers, people who grasp complicated concepts with ease.”

  “How very kind,” I said. “I will take your offer under advisement.”

  “What offer?” Jake sputtered next to me. “Hacker is a former reporter with skills of being a pain in the ass and occasionally ferreting out some hidden facts. Which is hardly the same as business analysis.”

  This time, Meyer turned his whole head and upper body to look directly at Strauss.

  “Come, come, Jacob,” he said disapprovingly. “I would have thought all those years at Baruch Brothers would have better sharpened your skills at personnel assessment. I think your Hacker here would be excellent. Most excellent, in fact.”

  I gave Strauss a knowing glance, even though I wanted to say neener neener to him.

  “Tell me something,” I said to Meyer. “How did this partnership work, internally? I’m asking for the book. You had four wildly different personalities. Two of you were business guys, each with his own expertise and resources. Two of you were celebrities, and again, each from a different world. How did all four of you agree on anything?”

  Meyer smiled at me, showing off his twin rows of tiny, pointed teeth. They were not the dangerous choppers of a predator, designed to quickly tear, open and kill, but rather they looked like teeth designed to nip, chew and destroy, to make the victim scream in pain as his life slowly ebbed away.

  “It was often quite difficult,” Meyer said. “I depended on J.J. Udall to back me up on the important questions. The other two would fall into line if we two agreed.”

  “And did he agree with you most of the time?”

  “No,” Meyer said, shaking his head. “J.J. could be very difficult. Hard headed. Impulsive. He was good at certain things, but he thought he knew more than he really did. His own success was based more on luck and good timing than on any innate abilities, in my opinion. So I did have to spend quite a bit of time making sure I got Udall on my side.”

  “Do you think he trusted you?” I asked.

  Meyer shrugged. “I have no way of knowing that, one way or the other,” he said. “I never entirely trusted him. But one never enters a deal or makes a decision based only on trust. You’ve got to have hard numbers, or something concrete, to back it up.”

  I turned to Jake Strauss. “Why did you set up the management this way?” I asked. “It seems like it was designed to fail. Four very different personalities, each with his own priorities. Seems to me that in the long run, it was going to fall apart eventually.”

  “But it didn’t, did it?” Strauss said, smiling. “Somehow, they found a way to work together. And the company has done better with every passing year.”

  “Until now,” I said.

  “The company is still doing big business,” he countered. “It was the sudden death of J.J. that created this crisis, if you can call it that. It’s really just a simple problem of evolving leadership. Every company would have to face something like this if a principal member of ownership passed away.”

  “Have you had a chance to speak with Will Becker yet?” Meyer asked. “It’s important that we handle that matter well.”

  “I’ve called him a couple times this week,” Strauss said. “His wife said he’s too ill to come to the phone. She’s lying, of course…he is avoiding me.”

  “Keep after him, Jacob,” Meyer said. “If the public thinks we’re throwing a former PGA great over the side, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “But you are,” I said. They looked at me. “You are throwing Will Becker over the side. You know it. He knows it. And what about Jack Harwood? He knows something is up, too.”

  “Harwood is my concern,” Meyer said. “He’s dealt with Hollywood moguls for years. He knows the score. You fight when you can, and you take the money and walk away when you can’t. He won’t be a problem.”

  “If this were the movies, he’d drop down onto your roof from a helicopter, blow us all away and escape with the girl,” I said.

  “This isn’t the movies,” Harold Meyer said. “And there isn’t any girl. I can handle Jack Harwood.”

  He sounded like he believed that. I didn’t.

  “Is it your goal in life, when you wake up every morning, to see how many people you can piss off before the day is done?” Strauss seemed a little unhappy. We had gotten back into the big limo, driven down to Palo Alto and parked outside an upscale Mexican restaurant for lunch. We went in, sat down at the bar, ordered food and Coronas, and sat there looking at the high-techies at the tables around us, most of whom were staring blankly at their laptops. Strauss had been mostly silent, although I could tell he was upset.

  I turned in my seat and looked at him. But didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, Harold Meyer is a very powerful and important man,” Strauss said, waving his hands in the air for extra emphasis. “You don’t smart off to someone like that.”

  “I didn’t smart off,” I said. “I thought we had a nice conversation.”

  “About his prostate?”

  I shrugged. “He brought that up, I didn’t,” I said. “I just went with the flow, so to speak.”

  Strauss blew out a breath in frustration. “You are a very stupid man, Hacker,” he said.

  “Maybe so,” I said. “But my heart is pure. And he may own half the real estate in San Francisco and he may soon own the entire Lodge at Pebble Beach, but he doesn’t own me.”

  “He could if he wanted to,” Jake said. “And he could hire an army or two of goons to make you do what he wanted. With a snap of his fingers.”

  “So I’m supposed to just roll over and say ‘yes, Master’ just because he has a lot of money? Or because he could have me beaten up?” I shook my head. “Nope. I don’t work that way.”

  “You have a contract…”

  I cut him off. “My contract is with the United States Golf Association,” I said. “The name Harold G. Meyer does not appear on it, anywhere. So, like I said, I don’t work for him.”

  He shook his head, folded his arms across his chest and went silent again. And stayed that way when our food arrived. We ate in silence, which was fine with me. My fish tacos were pretty darn good.

  “When do you think you’ll know something about Mike Newell?” Strauss asked me after a while. I guess he got tired of giving me the silent treatment.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve got someone to talk to tomorrow. Should know a little more after that.”

  “Well, let me know as soon as you can,” he said. “It’s important.”

  “What can you tell me about Huckleberry Hills?” I said.

  He was getting ready to lift a corner of a taco to his lips. After my question, he seemed to slip and the taco seemed to crumble, and he had to do a quick move to keep his food from flying all over the table. He managed to get it mostly into his mouth, but needed a napkin to mop up.

  “Why the hell are you asking me about that?” he said when he c
ould talk again.

  “Because I learned about it doing some research, and I’d like to know what you know about it,” I said.

  “It’s a real estate development project that the Pebble Beach Company first proposed more than ten years ago,” he said. “It has gone before the California Coastal Commission for permit approvals, and they sent it back with some suggested changes. Pebble Beach has put the plans on the shelf for the time being, but may seek to reopen them at some point in the future.”

  “What are the changes the CCC asked for?”

  “They thought we needed to lower the density of the project,” he said.

  “How big a project are we talking about?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Ten years ago, it was around four to five hundred million,” he said. “I don’t know what it would be today.”

  I whistled. “That’s a lot of money,” I said.

  “In California?” Strauss smiled. “On the Monterey Peninsula? That’s petty cash money.”

  “Why does Pebble want to get into the real estate business?” I asked. “Isn’t that a business fraught with risks?”

  This time he laughed, unusual for Jacob Strauss. “Risk?” he said. “For an upscale, luxury condo development? In California? On the Monterey Peninsula? Overlooking Pebble Beach and Carmel Bay? You’ve got to be kidding. Whatever it costs, it will pay for itself quickly and make a profit. And why Pebble Beach? Why not? How many golf resorts around the country sell real estate? Many of them do.”

  “Then why is it on hold?”

  “Partly for solid business reasons,” he said. “To do Huckleberry Hills will take a lot of capital.”

  “Four hundred million,” I said.

  “At least,” he agreed, nodding. “Probably more. So we are waiting until the time comes when we have the capital resources we need to do the job. But there’s also a strategic component. The timing has to be right, too.”