An Open Case of Death

by James Y. Bartlett

  “Does my badge work here?” I wondered.

  “Not to worry,” Harwood said. “Remember, I own this place.”

  It’s good to be the king, and Harwood quickly arranged for Chin and I to gain access to this premium area, designed to give the hoi polloi a place to escape from the unwashed masses, eat and drink in style, and pee someplace other than a Port-A-Johnie. Once inside, I noticed that Jack kept his floppy hat and sunglasses on. I guess he didn’t want to be bothered by the hoi polloi types either.

  Inside the tent, the floor was carpeted, seating groups and dining tables were scattered everywhere and there were probably two dozen big screen TVs running the Fox Sports feed from the tournament. Two large stand-alone bars were placed at either end, and the entire back wall was covered with booths from vendors offering a wide variety of food. Mr. Chin made a bee-line towards a sushi station, while I saw another booth down a ways from a famous steakhouse chain, offering sliders and fries.

  “Yum,” I said. “Much better than hot dogs.”

  We all went and ordered food and carried our trays over to one of the table-clothed dining tables. Harwood caught the eye of a waitress and ordered beers for everyone.

  The TV told us that Phil and Tiger were struggling at a couple over par, and that a young kid from Kansas, Freddie Hollister, was now the leader at five under par. But it was only Thursday, and as the man says, there was a lotta golf left.

  “So, you’re in the movie business?” I said to Mr. Chin as we ate our lunch.

  He nodded.

  “Have you ever acted? Or are you just the money bags?”

  Harwood laughed.

  “There’s about a thousand different jobs in the movies,” he said. “It’s not just actors and executive producers.”

  “No, no,” Chin said, somewhat in protest. “It is a good question. I have never acted. I have been an extra before. But it is something I would love to do if I were good at it. I’m afraid I am not.”

  “But he is good at making money,” Harwood chimed in. “Lots of it.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “I could use a good Asian actor.”

  Harwood laughed again.

  “You producing, too?” he said. “Hell, everyone wants to be in the movie business.”

  “Naw,” I said. “I’m not making a movie. I’m trying to catch Harold Meyer in a sting.”

  Harwood took off his wide brimmed hat, removed his humongous amber specs and sat back.

  “You have officially captured my attention,” he said. “Do go on.”

  So I told him. All about Huckleberry Hills and the EB-5 visas and my suspicions that Meyer was running an investment scam. Halfway through my dissertation, Harwood signaled the waitress for another round. Mr. Chin sat there listening, too. Inscrutably.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Harwood said when I was finished. “No wonder they want me and Will Becker out of the way. They know that we’d never approve anything like that. How long has this been going on?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “In fact, I don’t even know if they’re really doing this. But it all makes sense.”

  “And you think one of them, or someone hired by them, pushed that poor kid over the cliff?”

  “I do,” I said. “And I suspect—although I can’t prove it—that someone might have fiddled with J.J. Udall’s medications when he was in the hospital. My friend is trying to track down any security tapes that might exist.”

  “Holy crap,” Harwood said. “Are you sure we shouldn’t be calling in the cops, or the FBI or someone? This sounds pretty goddam serious.”

  “If we called in the authorities now,” I said, “I don’t think they could find any kind of evidence that would seal the deal. But if I can get someone on the inside, someone they think is ready to invest a lot of money in the deal in return for a green card, then we would have some hard evidence of what they’re up to. Then the cops can be called in, start applying the thumb screws and wrap the whole thing up.”

  “I’ll do it,” Mr. Chin said.

  “Now wait a second, Chin,” Harwood said. “Before you agree to do what this crazyman is asking, you need to think about it. It could be dangerous. If what Hacker here believes is actually true, these guys have already killed one, and maybe two people already. I couldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

  “I’ll do it,” Chin repeated. “Danger is my middle name.”

  “This isn’t a fucking movie, Chin,” Harwood said. “I can’t yell ‘cut’ and have everything stop. You gotta think about this, my friend.”

  “Jack … Jack,” Chin said, smiling. “Life is an adventure. Isn’t that what you tell me all the time? Live to the fullest, you say. Seize the moment. I have a chance to do something important here. Help you and Mr. Hacker to find out what is going on. If these others are doing bad things, I want to help make them stop. Yes?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  Harwood was frowning and looked like he wanted to say something more. But a woman walked up to our table.

  “Omigod!” she gushed. “Aren’t you Jack Harwood? Omigod! I’m your biggest fan! Would you sign my program?”

  “No!” he snapped.

  The woman’s face fell and her shoulders slumped. It looked like she might begin weeping.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, “Gimme.” He reached out for the program, scribbled his name and handed it back.

  “Oh, thank you, Jack,” she said. “Thank, you, thank you, thank you!” She floated away on the wings of happiness.

  Harwood turned back to his friend.

  “Now listen, Chin…” he started in again, finger raised.

  “No, my friend,” Chin said. “I will do it. It will be fun. And maybe you can get something from it to put in our movie!”

  Harwood turned and leveled that famous glare at me. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “If anything happens …”

  “It’ll be OK, Jack,” I said. “Mr. Chin will tell them he’s looking for a place to park some money. They’ll respond however they respond. Obviously, they’ll know he doesn’t have a million bucks on him, so there will be a need for another meeting so they can have him checked out. He’ll be fine.”

  Mr. Chin nodded. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Chill out, Jack.”

  For some reason, that made me laugh.

  The next morning, Sharky and I drove down 17 Mile Drive from the Pacific Grove end and Sharky took some back roads up into the hills above Pebble Beach to Jack Harwood’s hacienda. When Mary Jane found out where we were going, she almost stopped talking to me.

  “So you can drag me through the wilds of Scotland where it’s rainy and cold and I almost get killed by Russian agents, but you won’t take me to Jack Harwood’s house?” she said. “You are not a nice man.”

  “I promise I’ll introduce you to him when this is all over,” I said. “But we’ve got things to discuss today.”

  She was somewhat mollified by her plans for the day. Sharky’s girlfriend Agatha had volunteered to take the girls up to San Francisco. They planned to lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf, do a little shopping, ride a cable car up a hill—the San Francisco treat!—and maybe ride the ferry over to Alcatraz.

  “Why do I want to go visit a prison?” Victoria asked. Nobody had a good answer to that. Mary Jane suggested maybe they’d substitute a ride up the elevator on the Transamerica pyramid building instead. Or a visit to Ghirardelli Square to eat some of their chocolate treats.

  “OK,” Vickie said, “Chocolate is good.”

  When we arrived at the House of Harwood, we were escorted into his huge dining room. Jack and Mr. Chin were there, along with another gentleman I didn’t know.

  Harwood waved us in.

  “Hacker, this is Charles Bentley, senior counsel for the California Coastal Commission,” he said. “I asked him to stop by this morning to talk about Huckleberry Hills.”

  Bentley stood up and shoo
k my hand. He was tall and patrician looking, dressed in tan slacks and an immaculate silk sweater that looked like it had been knitted directly on his body. A pair of those little half-pane bifocals perched on the end of his nose, and his graying hair was finely combed and held in place with some glistening substance.

  “Hacker,” I said. “And this is Sharky Duvall.”

  “Mr. Harwood and I were just discussing what appears to be a slight discrepancy in understanding about the project under discussion,” he said. He had deep lawyerly tones, every word sounding like a pearl drop. I wondered if they taught that in lawyer school.

  “What’s the slight discrepancy?” I asked.

  “The California Coastal Commission reached a memorandum of understanding with the Pebble Beach Company about the property known as the Huckleberry Hills condominium project more than seven years ago,” Bentley said. “The memorandum was quite clear, at least from our perspective. The CCC had determined that no future development in the Monterey Forest would be approved, including this project. That decision was deemed to be final.”

  “Why?”

  He removed his half-glasses, tilted his head back and stared at the wooden beams in Harwood’s ceiling. “The Monterey pine, Latin Pinus radiata, is an endangered species,” he said. “In addition to this peninsula, Pinus radiata can be found in only three other places on the earth. Because of a troublesome canker that first appeared in the late 1960s, the extant population of these trees has been steadily declining, both here and elsewhere.”

  He stopped looking at the ceiling and looked at Sharky and me.

  “Think of it as like the Dutch elm disease that practically wiped out all of the once abundant elm trees in the eastern United States,” he continued. “The disease is irreversible. Once it affects a tree, that tree will soon die. In order to prolong the life cycle of Pinus radiata the Coastal Commission has voted to halt all further development of any kind anywhere in the Monterey forest on the Monterey Peninsula. In short, gentlemen, there is no way that a project like the Huckleberry Hills condos would be approved.” He looked at Harwood. “None, whatsoever. I’m afraid that is final.”

  Jack Harwood’s lips tightened.

  “The board of the Pebble Beach Company have been told that Huckleberry is just on hiatus,” he said. “We were told that in a few years, when the economic conditions are ripe, we could begin development.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked.

  “Harold Meyer,” Harwood said grimly. “Backed up, early on, by Jacob Strauss, acting as our financial advisor. Of course, he left Baruch Brothers five years ago to go work with the U.S. Golf Association. But neither Will Becker nor me was ever told that the CCC had nixed the deal. They kinda kept that an official secret.”

  “Is that actionable, by the CCC?” Sharky chimed in.

  Charles Bentley thought about that for a bit, chewing on the end of his glasses frame.

  “In and of itself, no, I don’t think so,” he said finally. “As long as the Pebble Beach Company does not take any action that could be deemed as active development on the property in question …such as building a road or clearing any underbrush … I do not believe that the CCC could bring any formal legal action.”

  “What if we were selling lots for future development?” Harwood asked. “Is that OK?”

  “That sounds more like a fraudulent transaction,” he said. “That would be a matter for the state investment authority or someone in law enforcement. I do not believe that constitutes a matter for the CCC to adjudicate.”

  “That’s fucking great,” Harwood said. “I’m apparently a party to an investment fraud.” He shook his head sadly.

  “Alleged fraud,” Bentley the lawyer said, holding up a forefinger. “So far, I have heard only speculation and innuendo. But there must be evidence.”

  Harwood stood up and put his hand out towards the lawyer.

  “Thanks, Charlie,” he said. “Thanks for stopping by. Are you heading down to the golf course?”

  “Indeed I am,” the lawyer said. “I think Tiger tees off in forty minutes.”

  “Sounds like the Hollister kid might be more fun to watch,” I said. Indeed, the Kansas Flash, as the press were calling him after his excellent first round, where he had finished at six-under. Of course, there’s almost always an unexpected flash-in-the-pan in the early rounds of a major. When they start to realize what they’re doing—leading the worldwide field of seasoned, experienced golfers—they tend to blow up fast on the weekend.

  Harwood walked Bentley out to his car. I poured myself a cup of coffee from the sideboard. When Harwood came back in, he was steaming.

  “Those fuckers had no right to get me involved in this,” he said, his voice tight with anger. “I’m gonna nail them to the wall.”

  He picked up his phone and dialed a number. He waited until someone answered.

  “Jake?” he said. “Jack here. Yes, I’m fine. Look, the reason I’m calling … I’ve got a business associate in town for the tournament this weekend. Great guy. Mr. Chin from Taiwan. We might be working together on a movie soon. Yeah, yeah…but listen, reason I’m calling …Chin has told me he wants to move some funds into the States. Yeah, things can get dicey over there. Nobody knows what those fucking Chinese will do next, right? Anyway, I told him he ought to talk to you. I know, I know …you’re not in that business anymore. But would you sit down with him for half an hour, have a drink and hear him out? Maybe give him a few off-the-cuff ideas? As a favor to me?”

  He paused, listening.

  “That would be great, Jake,” he said. “Four o’clock in the lobby bar at the Lodge. I’ll bring him down myself, let you guys talk in private, OK? Fine, fine. Thanks a lot, Jake, I appreciate everything you do….”

  He rang off and looked at us.

  “Game on,” he said.

  Harwood’s plan was pretty simple. He would escort Mr. Chin into the lobby at The Lodge, find Jacob Strauss, introduce Chin to him, then leave the two alone for thirty minutes or so before circling back to pick Mr. Chin up.

  “It’s a public place,” he said. “And it’ll be just a half hour. There’s nothing bad that can happen to him in that place and timeframe.”

  “Sharky and I will be in the crowd out on the balcony,” I said. “We’ll keep an eye on him, too.”

  “I will be fine,” Mr. Chin said, smiling at us. “Please not to worry.”

  Despite his bravado, we were all secretly worried. Big crowd of people milling about, golf tournament in the background, a very public place, might provide some kind of guarantee of safety. But it could also provide an opening for unseen chaos. Anything could happen, and none of us were smart enough to think of all the possibilities. That was dangerous.

  At three, Sharky and I left the House of Harwood, drove down the hill and parked in the volunteer’s lot up above the practice range. We walked down past the range, through the retail section, around the practice putting green and into The Lodge. The lobby was humming with life. People milled about everywhere, moving from the lobby down through the Terrace Lounge and out to the open-air deck in the back and back again. The small intimate lounge in the lobby was busy, and a larger temporary station out on the balcony was also three-deep.

  We found a place along the marble railing that offered a reasonably clear sight line back inside. There were tables and chairs outside, most with wood-and-canvas umbrellas providing shade. We could see the bartender at the Terrace Bar inside and about half of the bar itself.

  It was about a quarter to four when I saw Jacob Strauss walk into the lobby. He was accompanied by an older woman who seemed familiar to me. I couldn’t place her, couldn’t come up with her name. She just looked like someone I’d seen before.

  Sharky nudged me.

  “Look,” he said. “Mister Big just got here too.”

  We watched as Harold Meyer strolled in. He was by himself, dressed in an immaculate double-breasted white suit that wo
uld have made Tom Wolfe envious, shiny two-toned oxford shoes and a jaunty straw boater. He held an ebony shafted cane in one hand, which he used to limp up to Jake Strauss. Through the window pane, we watched them shake hands. Strauss found one of the upholstered seating groups in front of the bar and helped Meyer sit down in one of the loveseats. He then turned back to the bar and stood behind a couple waiting to order some drinks.

  The woman stayed by Strauss’ side. He was wearing the standard USGA uniform: blue blazer, white button down with a striped rep tie and gray slacks. She wore a patterned summer dress, strappy sandals and had her hair up in a bun pinned to the back of her head. She looked to be in her fifties, maybe a bit older.

  “Is that his wife?” Sharky asked, standing next to me.

  “Dunno,” I said. “I’ve seen her somewhere, but I can’t remember where.”

  There was a loud roar from the crowd around the 18th green, just fifty yards away. Someone had apparently drained a nice putt for an eagle on the last. The sound made all of us on the balcony turn our heads to look. It was Phil Mickelson, who was high-fiving his caddie. The electronic scoreboard off to one side told me that he was now one-under. That would get him into the weekend, but with a long, long hill to climb.

  Sharky nudged me again.

  “It’s showtime,” he said, whispering.

  Through the pane glass, we watched as Jack Harwood and Mr. Chin approached Harold Meyer’s sofa. Chin was dressed formally in a suit, while Jack was wearing an unstructured sport coat over a polo shirt and a pair of black slacks. He wasn’t wearing his floppy hat and sunglasses disguise today. Jake Strauss, having placed his drink order, sidled back over to the group, leaving the woman to collect and pay for the drinks. There were handshakes all around, Mr. Chin bowing and smiling.

  Jack said something, then turned and walked away. The woman brought the drinks over and passed them around. Mr. Chin sat down across from Meyer. Strauss and Meyer turned to each other and began speaking, Strauss nodding. He got up and walked away.

  “Where’s he going?” Sharky said.