Death in a Green Jacket

by James Y. Bartlett

  I was thinking very seriously of going home and spending more time with Mary Jane and Victoria, despite the fact that I would have to make some extra flights to get back to Augusta in a week. Frank Donatello, that idiot boss of mine back in Boston, would throw several conniption fits about my expense report. But then, he does that anyway. I think it’s in his job description.

  But I hadn’t made up my mind on what to do when my cell phone bleeped at me.

  “Yo,” I said. I believe in brevity.

  “Hacker?” said a voice I recognized but couldn’t quite place. “Are you on deadline? This is Brett Jacoby at Augusta National.”

  Brett Jacoby was a former golf writer for the Atlanta newspapers who had been hired about five years ago to be the first in-house public relations executive at the National. It had been a hire long overdue. Before Brett, all matters concerning credentials and such had been handled by a sweet old dear who was always polite but firm in her denials of special requests, and all statements made by the club were issued by the Chairman. After Brett, the club fast-forwarded its press relations into at least the twentieth century, if not the 21st, built a fancy new press facility with satellite uplinks and wireless Internet access, upgraded its historical facts and figures resources, digitized its photo library and otherwise tried to make life a little easier for those who covered the tournament. Of course, most of what Brett did still involved saying “no” to people, but as a former newspaper reporter himself, he knew how to do it without being insulting. That was a first for the club.

  “Brett!” I said into the phone. “How’s things? Getting ready for the invasion of the world of golf?”

  “Oh, are people coming this way?” he said drily. We laughed.

  “Hack,” he said. “I was wondering if I could talk you into coming up early. Kind of as a personal favor.”

  “What’s up?” I was curious.

  “Well, you probably heard about the crime we had this week up here.”

  “Oh, yeah, the body in the bunker,” I said. “I haven’t seen much more about it in the news.”

  “No, it’s been pretty quiet,” he said.

  I paused.

  “That your doing?” I asked.

  I heard him sigh.

  “That’s part of what I’d like to talk about with you, if you can come,” he said. “There’s some things happening on that front, and I’m tied down, as you can imagine, with all the tournament stuff.”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “You’ve got some police reporting background,” he said. “There’s a lot going on I don’t know anything about, and I’m afraid we might be getting slammed from certain directions. I really need another pair of eyes and ears up here on the ground.”

  “You want me to work for Augusta National?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Officially? No,” he said quickly. “That’s the favor part. Listen, I know this is all kind of screwy sounding, and I’ll understand if you don’t want to do it. Or can’t. But there’s more to this story than has been released to the public, and I want to try and protect my employers if I can. To do that I need more information, and to get that I need someone like you. And you might stumble onto a pretty good story.”

  I felt the small hairs at the nape of my neck rising. That’s a sure-fire signal that there was something interesting going on. Something I’d probably have to find out about. And I suspect Brett Jacoby knew that.

  “Can I get in a round of golf?” I asked, laughing.

  He sighed again. “The golf course is closed in preparation for the tournament,” he said automatically. Then he chuckled a bit. “I can pull some strings and make sure you get into the Monday press round.” Every year, after the Masters tournament, names of the members of the worldwide press covering the tournament are drawn from a hat and 30 lucky stiffs get chosen to play the Augusta National course in its tournament trim on Monday morning. I had never been one of the chosen few.

  “Done,” I said. “Actually, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do for the next week. Even though an extra week in Augusta, Georgia is not exactly at the top of my to-do list, it sounds interesting. I’ll do it.”

  “Great, Hacker, thanks!” Brett said. His relief was evident. We talked some logistics. He said the club would arrange accommodations and we made arrangements to meet for breakfast Tuesday morning.

  He rang off and I sat there for several minutes revising my list of questions concerning the strange-sounding case of the body in the bunker.

  Chapter Three

  Monday morning I slept in. It’s my off day. I had the entire day to get to Augusta, and figured I could put off doing laundry for another day or two. So I caught a few extra winks, had a large and leisurely breakfast while perusing USA Today’s report on the just-concluded Players Championship. Ricky Donovan, that paper’s golf writer, seemed to think Tiger’s shot on the island-green 17th, a one-hop-off-the-flagstick-for-kick-in-birdie, was one of the “shots of the century.” Whatever. I packed up my stuff and headed out.

  I decided to take the cross-country route to Augusta, because there is no Interstate way to get there from Jacksonville without going up through Macon and Atlanta, which made no sense at all. So I jumped on I-95 north for an hour or two until I crossed over the Savannah River and then, at Hardeeville, I took old U.S. 321 which roughly follows the river as it angles northwest up through the Carolina Piedmont. I was on the South Carolina side of the river, and once I left the coast, I found myself deep in Dixie. The Old South. As the highway passed through little towns like Baker Hill, Tillman and on past Groover Landing, I found myself wondering, as I did every time I drove through a rural section of America, just who were the people who lived here and what did they do to make a living?

  At first appearance, the answer was not much. Traffic on the highway was limited to the occasional trucker hauling timber or chickens or some unknown something locked tight in a silver rectangle of steel; a few pickups, dusty from the fields, and me. The little townships I slipped through silently each seemed to contain a seed & feed store, a Hardee’s hamburger joint, the local bank and maybe a gas station. One side of town would be the “colored” section, where the homes were ramshackle, unpainted, propped on concrete blocks and guarded by mangy dogs. Across Main Street or over the railroad tracks would be the “good” part of town, with neat brick homes and orderly, trimmed lawns encircled by chain link fences, magnolias and azaleas in bloom, and, occasionally, a large Gothic-looking mansion-type place up on a hill.

  Did these people like living out here in Nowheresville? I used to think that one had to live in a city to be fulfilled. But now I was beginning to think that the folks who managed to find a quiet little podunk like the ones I was driving through perhaps had the better deal. They knew all their neighbors. They knew practically everyone in town. If they wanted to be left alone, they probably were. They could park anywhere they wanted and probably didn’t have to lock the car door. Or the front door. There was quiet. Peace. A connection with the seasons and with the land. What more could one want?

  I drove through another little town and out into the empty countryside, which was coming alive in spring. The trees down here in the South had already leafed out, the hedges of forsythia and banks of azaleas were in full bloom, and the long dark fields on both sides of the road were beginning to show green sprouts of something, poking their heads hopefully up into the warm bright sunshine.

  I suppose one could want to go see the latest movies. To buy, if in the mood, some Thai fish paste for a marinade. A hefty Sunday newspaper with a maddening Op-ed page and good long sports stories. One might want a neighborhood hardware store where one could get a key made or find a PVC elbow joint to fix that undersink problem. One could want friends to come over for an evening of laughter, debate and good food and wine. One might want any of the millions of things that a big city offers and a country town does not.

  Somewhere in the middle, no doubt, lies nirva
na.

  I turned my thoughts to what lay ahead, waiting for me in Augusta. It sounded like Brett Jacoby had an intriguing problem. I wasn’t sure I could help, but I was willing—intrigued even—to find out what he had in mind. I had called Mary Jane the night before, as I did almost every night now, to talk about our day and connect with a kindred soul. I told her of Brett’s call and my decision to go up to Augusta a week early and see what he wanted.

  “Let me get this straight,” she had said. “You are going to go help the Augusta National Golf Club pull whatever chestnuts they’ve got burning out of the fire?” She had paused and let me think about that. “You? You hate the Masters.”

  Well, I argued back now, silently in my head, perhaps “hate” is too strong a word. Let’s just say I have never fallen under the magic spell of the Masters. It’s easy to do, and most of those who go there every April to watch the golf tournament unfold eventually submit to the charms of the place. I mean, you walk out in back of that big white clubhouse and the ground opens up and falls away down the sweeping slopes of the hill that comes to an abrupt stop at Rae’s Creek. Those huge old pines tower alongside the fairways, and it can take your breath away. And before you get it back, you catch a whiff of the hundred-year-old wisteria climbing up the side of that antebellum clubhouse, and you see the tables scattered beneath the gnarled limbs of that famous old oak out back, and people you haven’t seen for a year come up with smiles on their faces to greet you. The warm Georgia sunshine hits your face and you hear the first bursts of applause sounding like the wind in a mountain ravine wafting up from Amen Corner and it’s very easy to get swept away into that magical Masters land.

  But I’ve always resisted drinking the Kool-Aid. It’s because of that magic spell that gets cast every spring that the crusty old bastards who run their little boy’s club can get away with acting like, well, crusty old bastards. They can snap their cigar-stained fingers and make a venerable national television network dance to their will. They can disinvite anyone they want, for any reason they make up. Hell, they could probably institute a rule saying all competitors must henceforth play in the nude and most of the players would do it, just because of that magic Masters crap.

  One reason I’ve managed to resist the magic is that for me, the Masters is just another work week. The players may all wax Wordsworthian about how they love coming to Augusta, how well they’re treated, how wonderful life is…but for me, it’s just another stop on the never-ending Tour. It’s another week away from home, living out of a suitcase, trying to get one or two of those golf-playing morons to say something halfway interesting. It’s also a week in which I, and about three dozen other regular Tour writers, have to wrack our brains to come up with something new and interesting to write about a golf tournament that’s been played at the same hilly old golf course since 1930-something. Try doing that about twenty times in a row and see if you can find something magical to write about.

  Another reason I’ve always resisted the magic is because I believe the club long ago came to an important fork in the road and took the wrong one. Augusta National, as we all know, was founded by two men. The first was the great Bob Jones who, at the end of his brief career as the world’s best golfer, wanted only one thing--to get away from the rest of us. After his fourteen year career—seven years in the wilderness followed by seven in which he was practically unbeatable—he became a national celebrity in the manner of The Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jordon and Bill Clinton. He could go nowhere without being mobbed by fans desperate for a touch, a smile or a word. That stops being fun very quickly, and that’s why Jones, when he decided he wanted to build a golf course where he could go to relax with his friends, wanted someplace very private and way off the beaten track.

  History records that he turned to Clifford Roberts, a Wall Street financier, future rainmaker for Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential run, and a self-described “designated bastard.” Roberts’ job was to raise the money to build the club—not an easy thing to do in the depths of the Depression in 1930-31—and Bobby Jones’ job was to attract the right kind of member. That would be someone who loved golf in its purest form, and had the means to pay to keep everyone else outside the gates.

  Bob Jones was happy to turn over the business details to Roberts. Jones was a genial man, someone who loved a good story and a strong drink, loved to laugh, and who enjoyed life, his wife and family and his privacy. Roberts loved to be a bastard, to say “no” to things, and to keep white-knuckled control on all aspects of Augusta National. The partnership worked well until Jones gradually grew weaker and sicker with the muscle-wasting disease that eventually killed him. As Bobby slowly faded—he somehow managed to hang on until 1971—Clifford Roberts took over more and more control of the club, until he became the sole power. And at some point along the way, Augusta National Golf Club became the personification of Clifford Roberts.

  It became—and still is—an unfriendly place. The members there, for whatever reason, decided to adopt the Roberts façade of being grumpy bastards. Maybe they all are grumpy bastards, drawn as they are from the top ranks of business, finance and the professions. Certainly, few of them let the Masters magic dust inject some sunniness into their personalities. But I’ve always wondered what kind of personality the place would have assumed if Bob Jones hadn’t fallen ill, but remained hale and hearty until old age. I’d like to believe that the Masters would have developed into the kind of tournament Jones first envisioned—a joyful gathering of good friends in the warm spring sunshine, to celebrate the return of warm weather, the camaraderie of golfers, and the sheer exuberance of competition. The Masters, as Jones himself often said, is the championship of nothing. For that simple reason alone, it is probably the most cherished title in golf.

  But under Roberts’ churlish hand, the tournament long ago stopped being fun. Despite all the famous innovations he came up with—from gallery ropes to plus-or-minus scores to par to free parking for the fans to the green-wrapped pimento-and-cheese sandwiches—Clifford Roberts sucked all the joy out of the Masters. He turned it into a place where you have to tiptoe past the graveyard and speak in respectful whispers so you don’t get thrown out on your ear.

  A rumbling from my empty stomach interrupted my reverie. I was still motoring through the Carolina farmland, but I decided that I would stop in the next crossroads town and find something to eat. In a few minutes, a neat wooden sign announced that I was entering the town of Blythe, South Carolina. That sounded nice. First, I passed about a two-mile section of franchise row, with, in rough order, a MacDonalds, Wal-Mart, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Pep Boys, the Red Dots liquor store, Hardee’s, and a couple of car dealerships, which were apparently competing to see who could fly the most obnoxiously large American flag. I think the Ford place had Toyota beat by maybe four square feet.

  Just for the heck of it, or perhaps following my inerrant reporter’s sense, I turned off the two-lane highway at the sign for downtown, which turned out to be one block of low, one-story buildings ending in a public square of sorts, with a cupola-topped courthouse building shaded by large magnolia trees. And there on the corner, with a slanted, nose-in parking space right in front, was Walt’s Diner. “Home Cookin’” the sign in the window promised. Just the kind of place I prefer to one of the franchise burger places, where you’re never entirely sure what it is they put between the buns.

  I pulled in, locked up, and stood and stretched in the bright afternoon sun. It was a little after one, so the main lunch crowd had come and gone. The bell above the door tinkled as I walked in. A long counter with round swivel stools ran down the left side of the diner, while about six small wooden tables covered with red-checked vinyl sat against the wall on the right. Half the tables were full, and all but one of the stools was empty. I decided to sit at the counter, where I could watch Walt, or whoever it was doing the cooking, working in the kitchen along the back.

  There was just one waitress working the lunch shift at Walt’s. She wa
s a slightly frumpy middle-aged woman, with brown hair piled haphazardly atop her head, pinned in place with some leathery things and festooned with two yellow pencils. She was wearing a yellow long-sleeved oxford shirt, blue jeans and a white apron that looked the worse for the lunch rush.

  I plopped down on my squeaky swivel seat and picked up the menu stuck in the holder of the amenity tray in front of me. The waitress gave me a few seconds before she came up, pulled a worn order pad from her hip pocket and we went through the southern ritual of fine dining.

  “Som’thin’ to drink, hon?” she asked.

  “Ice tea,” I said.

  “Sweet or unsweet?” she asked.

  “Sweet, like me,” I said.

  I got the usual half smile. It was probably the four hundredth time today she had heard that. She scurried off to get my tea and I went back to reading the menu. The specials for the day included stuffed grape leaves. I needed to know Walt’s last name, and how many generations removed from Thessalonica he was before I went for that. Fried chicken, which I could smell bubbling in the hot grease in the back. Baked lasagna, which would never match up with Mary Jane’s, whose recipe was borrowed from her Italian mobster in-laws. Or a ham steak smothered in red-eye gravy, with a selection of two sides.

  The waitress came back, slapped down the red plastic tumbler filled with tea and ice cubes, laid down a long-handle spoon, the square sugar-packet holder and a napkin which was rolled up with the rest of my silverware. She whipped out her order book again.

  “What’ll it be?” she asked, pushing a stray strand of hair back on top of her flushed head.