He shook his head. “No,” he sighed. “There’s another bad apple out there somewhere and I’m damned if I know where.”
“What about our favorite tavern-keeper, Mr. Hill?” I suggested. “Jocko and Lewis killed Turnbull to keep him quiet about Jocko’s business. Hill gets nervous about Jocko talking about his connection. After all, Jocko was not one of the world’s most dependable people. So Hill has Jocko killed and takes a powder himself until the storm dies down. Lewis takes the fall for Turnbull, and ...”
“And all we got to do is pick up Rudy for icing Jocko,” Ravenel concluded. “First of all, that’s too stupid even for Rudy Hill. It’s like him hanging a sign around his neck that says ‘Yo—arrest me.’ Second of all, this whole thing is way over Rudy’s head. I’m telling you, the guy’s a small-timer. His idea of crime has been to knock over parking meters. I can’t even believe the guy has gotten into dope. Fencing class rings...that’s always been his speed.”
Ravenel sighed again. “I don’t know, hacker,” he said. “We’ll find Rudy and bring him in. Assuming he’s still alive. But I still think there’s a missing piece somewhere.”
“Well,” I said, “I have to go back to work. My editor is holding a piece of the front page for tomorrow. Good luck to you and the Red Sox,” and I climbed out of the cool interior of his car.
“Hey, Hacker!” Doak called to me from the shed. I turned around.
“I don’t think I can make dinner tonight,” he said. “Too much work to do. Can you tell Trevino for me?”
I turned back around fast so he couldn’t see me laughing, and waved a hand at him in acknowledgement.
Chapter 22
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when I got back to the press room, every bone and muscle in my body crying out in pain. Nobody appeared to have missed me, which did a lot for my feelings of self-worth. But I didn’t have time to sit and suffer. I had a story to file. Page One stuff on murder at a golf tournament.
Tom Kite was sitting over in the interview room, holding forth on his round. I listened to his recitation for a while. He told us that his five-iron approach on number six was “kinda pured” which meant it stopped six inches from the hole; and that his putt on seventeen was a “whoa momma,” which meant if the forty-footer hadn’t dropped solidly into the middle of the cup, it might have rolled all the way off the green.
I only listened with half an ear. I had to write something for the front page. Suzy Chapman walked by with a sheaf of papers in her hand and put one down in front of me without speaking.
I almost ignored it – the PGA Tour media staff produces page after page of meaningless statistics and daily news tidbits that most of us simply ignore, and I thought that was what she had dropped off. Then I glanced at it.
James L. (Jocko) Moore, the caddie of PGA Tour professional Billy Winocur, was found dead this morning in his room. Charleston police have begun an investigation into the death and have indicated that foul play may be involved. Moore has been an occasional caddie on Tour for the last three years.
That was it. The tour machine had packaged another body up neatly and hurled it into a dark corner where they hoped it would stay. I got a charge out of the part where they said foul play “may” be involved. Like maybe that sawed-off golf shaft had somehow fallen accidently through Jocko’s throat. Or maybe Jocko had elected to bid farewell to this cruel world and decided the best way to die would be to sever his own jugular in such a nice, clean way.
I was beginning to steam. I started to boil when my fellow reporters began to file back into the pressroom after being spoon-fed quotes in the interview room. I noticed that most of them picked up the one-page notice about Jocko’s death, harrumphed once or twice, and ash-canned it. The sound of computers clicking away filled the room as the golf writers bent to the task of chronicling the day’s sporting event. What the hell did I expect, a hue and cry?
Woody Johnson came over to his workspace at the table behind me, heaved his considerable bulk down in his chair with a groan, hissed open his can of beer and glanced at the news release. “R.I.P.,” he said and crumpled it up.
“That’s it?” I said to Woody, “R.I.P.? Whatever happened to who, what, when, where and how? The reporter’s creed?”
He peered at me over the tops of his bifocals. “Excuse me, Mister Woodward and Bernstein,” he snapped. “I must have missed something here. Did this Jocko guy ever win the U.S. Amateur? Or is there another reason why I should get my drawers in a wad over some druggie checking out with too much cocaine in his nose?”
“Don’t you think its halfway interesting or newsworthy that two guys have met a somewhat untimely death here this week?” I asked, incredulous.
“Nope,” Woody said flatly. “I mean, it’s too bad that John Turnbull died. But that was an accident, right? Jocko? That was gonna happen sooner or later. I mean, with all the news about steroids and such, a bit about a lowlife like Jocko doesn’t even register. My readers want to know about who’s winning, how many birdies they made, who shanked one into the woods or gagged on a three-footer, and maybe get the vital stats on Freddie Couples’ wife. Man, is she a looker. I followed her around all day!”
My editor in Boston felt the same way, after I had transmit- ted my story up to him an hour later.
“Death Stalks the Fairways?” he told me when I called. “C’mon, Hacker. This is the Boston Journal, not the Sunday edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.”
“It’s an important story,” I said.
“No, Hacker, it ain’t,” he retorted with finality. “Now if you reported that Jack Nicklaus is running around offing people, that’s a story. The Bert Lewis is under investigation thing was a story, but that was yesterday. It sounds like he’s off the hook now, and the buzz is off. Sorry, Hacker, but the Patriots just signed a new quarterback and that’s more important than some caddie getting iced. I’ll run it, but it’s an inside piece. And my watch says you still have thirty-eight minutes to file a piece on today’s round. We pay you to report on golf. You remember golf, don’t ya, Hacker?”
I called him a few unprintable names and slammed the phone down. What can you expect from someone who was born with but one testicle?
I had by now passed beyond the states of pissed and was entering the realm of surly. And the pain of my aching body did not make things easier. Surly is unusual for me, even-tempered and generally genial as I am. It took about four beers before I could begin to reason rationally once again. I figured I had become too involved in the seamy side of life. Over the last few days I had crossed the line between the calm and comfortable and rule-bound world of professional golf and entered the dark and chaotic world of humanity unbound. I had witnessed jealousies and bitterness and green and venality. Drugs and lust and anger and hate. And I had come nose to jowl with death. Death was nothing new to me. I have seen it before, frequently, on the city streets and in vile tenements. But there, I had been a dispassionate observer, one step removed from reality and screened from full emotional involvement by the nature of my job as reporter.
Here, that world has intruded where it usually doesn’t. Not only had my own life been threatened, but the ugly side of life had come into this place from which it was usually banished, or at least well covered up. And it had reached out to affect people I knew and liked. That was scary and disconcerting. I suddenly felt vulnerable, and I didn’t like that feeling at all.
On my fifth beer, I realized that what I needed was some human contact, some reassurance that there was still a good side out there, something alive and lush and growing. Something with a future, unlike death, struggling to keep the flickering light alive. I usually wax poetic like that after I’ve had five beers.
I still had a slip of paper with Jean MacGarrity’s number on it. I called it. She answered.
“Drinks?” I asked.
“Dinner?” she said.
“Done,” I said.
Chapter 23
ARE YOU HITTING ON me, Hacker?” Jean asked
me as I refilled her wine glass. We were sitting in a dark corner of the main dining room of the Bohicket Country Club. I had slipped the maitre’d a few bucks to get us a table away from everyone else. Light from the flickering candle in the middle of the table caught the sparkle in Jean’s eyes. She was wearing a clinging red dress that managed very well to accentuate her positives without making her look cheap or tawdry, which a red dress can do.
“I hadn’t actually planned on it, no,” I admitted sheepishly. “But I can always change my plans.” I smiled with what I hoped was boyish charm across the table.
She laughed and reached across the table to grasp my hand tenderly. “Another time, another place,” she said, smiling at me.
“Sure,” I said. “That’s kinda what I thought, too.”
“How are you feeling?” she asked. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks, darling,” I said, laughing. “I feel like it, too.” It was the truth. My aches and pains had intensified, despite the amounts of beer I had downed, or the pain pills I had been popping like candy. My knee throbbed, my head was killing me and I couldn’t feel anything in my right arm. The pain pills weren’t kicking in, and I suspected the doctors had substituted placebos as revenge for my leaving the hospital. But despite the pain, I needed this. Dinner. Candlelight. A pretty girl. Life.
She sipped her wine. “So, have you figured out who killed Johnny yet?” she asked. “And is it the same guy who yanked his caddie’s chain?”
“The police don’t know for sure,” I told her. “It looks like two different killers. There’s one guy who could have done both, but not for any real compelling reason. And the cops don’t think that guy has the killer instincts anyway. So, to answer your question, they haven’t got the foggiest.”
“Did Bert Lewis really have anything to do with it?” she asked.
“Well, I think he’s involved in it somehow, but no, I don’t think he’s a killer. No matter what the police say, there’s not enough good motive there for him to have killed Johnny.”
“Lots of irony, there,” Jean said.
“How’s that?”
“Johnny once told me that he went to the University of Texas just so he could play with Bert,” she told me. “Lewis had been one of his heroes. He’d known him since they were kids on the junior circuit and he’d always admired Bert’s game. Then he found out he could beat him. Johnny told me that’s when he knew he could be a professional. If he could beat Bert Lewis, he could beat anybody. Then he always felt bad because Lewis never won on Tour.”
“It’s always tough when you find out that the people you hold in great esteem turn out to have feet of clay,” I mused. “Sometimes ... most times ... it happens when you realize your godlike parents are just folks. Or your spouse disappoints. Or your pastor runs off with the choir director. Can really screw up the emotional gyroscope.”
“Well, Bert’s gyro-thingie wasn’t in the best of shape any- way,” Jean observed, sipping her wine.
“Understandable,” I said. “He was usurped. Big man on campus. Number one on the golf team. Lots of pressure from dear old dad. Then this young whippersnapper he’d always beaten comes along and cleans his clock and he drops down the chart. Probably his first major setback in life and he just didn’t have the inner mechanisms in place to deal with it. Instead, his failure festered and grew and got bigger and bigger. Took him over. Sad.”
She stared at me across the table with those huge, wild- animal eyes of hers. Tonight they stared at me with a layer of admiration and trust. Somehow, I had managed to lure the beast from her thicket where she had been hunkered down just a few days ago. Now, she was walking out in the sunshine again, nuzzling softly up against me, hunting, perhaps, for a morsel of sugar I might be hiding in my hand. And, I suddenly was aware, I held in that hand a dangerous power. I could extend my hand with the piece of sugar she wanted, and the angels would sing, birds would chirp and the rainbow would appear on the horizon. Or, I could reach out with that same hand and snap her neck in two, neatly and cleanly and efficiently. She had no defenses, this one.
I dislike having that power, No human should be able to choose for another life or death, sugar or the knife. For it to work, things have to be more equal. That’s why I hadn’t planned on a seduction. Not with this one. Not now.
The waitress brought out the Caesar salad I had ordered and dished it up for the two of us. Then she added a few twists of fresh-ground pepper.
I filled Jean in on what I had learned about the God Squad, Brother Ed Durkee and Turnbull’s finances. She nodded wisely.
“There’s all kinds of leeches around here,” she said. “And there’s hundreds of ways to separate these guys from their money. Johnny knew all that, and if he didn’t, his wife certainly did.”
I looked at her. Mentioning Becky Turnbull was strange from the woman who had tried to pry Becky’s husband away. Jean noticed my expression.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s all pretty strange. I’m thinking of moving out to California. Becky has offered to help me find a job.”
“What?” I was dumbfounded.
She laughed aloud, her mouth full of salad. Her deep laughter and hearty eating made me realize again that this was a woman of full appetites. I had to take stock of all that her red dress was revealing across the table. Yes, she was indeed all woman.
“Yeah,” Jean said, grinning as she jabbed her fork into her salad. “Becky knew all about Johnny and me. Johnny was not a secret-keeper and besides, like I said, we never did anything. She called me yesterday and said she knew I must be down, having lost such a good friend, and would I like to come and talk?” Jean’s eyes filled with tears suddenly. “Why can’t I ever be perfect like that?”
I reached over and with my napkin dabbed away a drop of dressing from the corner of her mouth. “You’re already perfect like that,” I told her.
Jean MacGarrity actually blushed. Maybe it was the sudden intimacy of my action, or the rush of the realization that we were comfortable together, or my soft and well-meant words. But our eyes locked and deep messages of a frank and beautiful nature suddenly passed between us. It was one of those moments of stomach-churning, heart-stopping, skin-flushing importance that are so rare and wonderful. In the next instant I thought again of her vulnerabilities balanced out against our shared need. I reached across the table again and gently stroked her cheek, soft and pretty in the candlelight.
“Another time, another place,” I said softly. She gazed back at me with what I think was understanding and something that spoke of relief, and then smiled happily at me. Then she popped a red cherry tomato into her mouth.
We finished our dinner talking quietly of other things and of each other. Afterward, we shared a drink in the Out of Bounds lounge, and then I walked her home in the dark and humid evening. With me limping and moaning, and her laughing aloud at my pain, it was not the most romantic walk in the history of love. Still, our goodnight kiss was brief and warm and heartfelt. Another time, another place.
Chapter 24
THE MORNING OF THE final round of the Carolinas Open dawned bright and sunny, with a stillness of air that foretold an afternoon of almost unbearable heat and humidity. The tournament was scheduled to begin earlier than usual for a Sunday, however, due to the fact that CBS had scheduled an important West Coast ballgame for broadcast late in the afternoon. Starting times had been moved up two hours so that the exciting finish could be completed by 4:00 p.m.
My aches and pains had subsided a bit after a good night’s rest. My knee was still a little tender, but my head had stopped throbbing and had settled into just a dull ache. The rest of me was stiff, but I felt a bit more mobile. After a long hot shower and a couple cups of black coffee, I felt semi-human once again.
I don’t know if the change in schedule allowed the God Squad time for their usual Sunday morning chapel service, but the regular meeting of the Press room Irregulars took place promptly at 9:00 a.m., as it does every week. There are about
twenty of us in the Irregulars, most of us writers with a few Tour officials thrown in as well. We attack the breakfast buffet first, spend about five minutes discussing any earth-shaking world news, and then get down to business. Ten bucks a man thrown into the pot, payoffs only for win and place. We don’t screw around trying to pick a tournament winner before the week begins: That’s a fool’s game. Hell, any one of the 150 or so pros entered have the capabilities to win. And a dozen or more might be riding a hot hand. The odds are way too long for the Irregulars. We like short odds, and on a Sunday morning, there are usually no more than 10 guys with a chance to win, and usually less than that.
We all studied the leaderboard and waited for the Gods to whisper an answer, then wrote down a name on a slip of paper and passed it on, along with a ten-spot. Tie-breakers are total strokes and number of putts in the last round. If there are still ties after that, the pot is split. No winners means a carryover until next week. Since no one had predicted Mark Cranmer’s last-round charge up in Atlanta, there was more than $500 in this week’s pot.
I thought about it for a while, figured Lanny Wadkins was overdue for one of his lightning-strike rounds and picked him to win, with a 272 total, 29 putts on Sunday. I gave my slip and money to Woody, who was this month’s secretary-treasurer. He glanced at my choice.
“A conservative pick, Hacker,” he said, peering at me over his bifocals. “Faint heart never won fair child.”
“Ne’er,” I said.
Death is a Two-Stroke Penalty Page 15