Death in a Green Jacket

by James Y. Bartlett

  “So you’re telling me that Augusta National knowingly had this nice quiet little church-going, mama-loving, accountant bumped off?” I was incredulous. “For what purpose?”

  Conn was shaking his head at me. “Oh, Hacker,” he said, “Typical media. Jumping to the wrong conclusions with half-baked information. I suppose I should have told you Rule Number Two in Augusta—nothing is ever as it first appears. There are layers, my friend. Layer after layer after layer. Most of which go back decades, if not generations.”

  “Sounds kinda Gothic,” I said.

  He nodded. “Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “Up to and probably including the crazy aunt in the attic.”

  “So tell me what’s going down,” I said as our steaks arrived. We stopped talking long enough to arrange all the condiments, load up the baked potatoes, and each eat several bites of meat before Conn began talking again.

  “Okay,” he said, chewing rapidly. “Let’s look at what we know and examine what we probably don’t know. First, poor little Johnny Judge was killed.”

  “I haven’t even heard how,” I said.

  “Two shots in the chest,” Conn told me, eyes dark, shaking his head.

  “Could be a Mob hit,” I said. “You got one of them down here?”

  He chuckled softly. “La Cosa Nostra? Naw. Down here, most of the traditional criminal activities are run by the boys down in The Terry,” he said. “Law enforcement chips away at the edges when they need to, but the unspoken arrangement is that The Terry is the place to go when you need a hooker, some cocaine, a quick loan to carry you over, or to lay down a bet. Unless someone gets carried away, they let all that go on.”

  “Somebody got carried away then,” I said, thinking of the body in the bunker.

  Conn shook his head. “But the shooting of this Judge boy doesn’t fit the usual pattern,” he said. “The fellas that run things down in The Terry know one thing very, very well: if they start shooting up white people, the game will be called off damn quick. Especially if they start shooting nice, plump, God-fearing, Mama-loving white boys like that Judge kid.”

  “So he wasn’t shot by the local bad guys,” I said. “Then who did it?”

  “Ah, well, that’s the next interesting question, isn’t it?” Conn said. “To me, it’s very illuminating to consider where the body was…ah…positioned.”

  “In a bunker at Augusta National, two weeks before the biggest golf event of the year,” I said. “Sounded like a deliberate act to me, too.”

  “More like a warning, I’d say,” Conn said.

  “About what?”

  He smiled enigmatically and shook his head. “To tell you the truth, Hack, I don’t know. Over the last year or so, I have heard some whispers and the usual assortment of rumors have filtered their way through town. People are always gossiping about what happens out there at that club. It’s one of the great participatory sports here in Augusta, and it goes on after church on Sunday, at the chamber of commerce, at the garden clubs and down in the dives of The Terry. One learns to pick out the gossip that sounds ridiculous or mean and impossible and discount it. But one also learns to listen for the true notes, and piece together stuff that really happens.”

  “And your rumor antennae have told you what?”

  He shrugged, and cut himself another slice of steak. “There’s a new leadership group out there,” he said. “Ever since Grosvenor took over a year ago as Chairman, there have been all sorts of rumors of discontent.”

  He was talking about Charlie Grosvenor, who had been appointed Chairman of the club some 18 months ago. The appointment had been endlessly analyzed in the golfing press because Grosvenor was the first chairman of Augusta National since Clifford Roberts whose home territory was Wall Street and not the Olde South. He spoke in clipped, patrician tones, rather than the folksy, down-home drawl that many had come to associate with official Augusta National since the days of Jackson Stephens and Hootie Johnson. And like your typical Wall Street investment magnate, when Charles Grosvenor spoke, he expected people to jump to do his bidding. Conn continued to talk as he ate. “Some of the old guard don’t like the way the man runs the place. Feel rubbed the wrong way. Is it generational? Natural progress? The way clubs go? Nobody likes change, least of all some of those troglodytes at the National. And every chairman makes his own enemies at that place. It’s the main recreation at the National—complaining. Of course, they can’t do it openly or else they get bounced, so they whisper. But some of the whispers I’ve heard have been a bit deeper than the usual fight against change. Nothing I can really put a finger on, but there’s something going on that has people deeply upset.”

  “Upset enough to have someone shot to death and buried on the tenth fairway?” I wondered. “And how does this Judge kid fit into the picture?”

  Conn shrugged again. “Sorry, Hacker, I don’t know everything. Far as I can tell, John Judge worked out at the regional office of BellSouth, and was in charge of construction oversight. Y’know…they buy telephone wire and poles and switches and things, and someone has to tote up the costs and make sure the invoices get paid and such like that. There’s a lot of new home construction going on all around us, so I imagine they kept him hopping. Sounds hopelessly boring to me, but just about perfect for someone like this Johnny Judge, who apparently liked to fish and hunt, go visit his Mama now and then, and live a quiet life. He seemed like one happy to have a job, a regular paycheck and weekends off.”

  “You said his murder might be a warning,” I said, pointing my fork across the table. “A warning about what?”

  Conn shrugged again. “Dunno,” he said. “But that brings me to Rule Three.”

  “Which is?”

  “Follow the money.”

  “That’s Rule One in most places,” I said.

  Conn shrugged. “That’s Augusta for you,” he said. “We like to be different.”

  Chapter Six

  The nice lady at the Olde Magnolia was gobsmacked when I told her I wasn’t going to take breakfast at the inn. “Oh, what a shame!” she exclaimed, as though her heart had been broken. “The chef is making his coconut French toast!” I allowed as how it did seem a shame to let all that work go to waste, but that I had a previous breakfast appointment. She let me go, but didn’t look happy.

  It didn’t take long to drive from the inn over to Washington Road. Passing by all the concrete and asphalt detritus of modern-day Americana--the strip malls and gas stations and drive-thrus and car washes—I turned in at the entrance to Augusta National, which had only a modest white sign announcing the most famous golf club in the world. A steel gate blocked the way one car-length into the place, and a grey uniformed Pinkerton guard came out of his wooden guard house. He had epaulets on his shoulders, a holster on his hip and a clipboard in his hand and I felt thankful he didn’t approach my car with weapon drawn.

  I told him I had a breakfast appointment with Brett Jacoby. He looked down at his clipboard, asked me to wait, and went back inside his little hut to make a call. The gate magically opened and he waved me on towards the clubhouse. As I drove through the gateway I resisted the impulse to shout back at the guy “Aha! Al Qaida has once again tricked you, you infidel dogs!”

  I had never actually driven down the famous Magnolia Lane—the press parking lot is further down Washington Road with its own entrance. The green waxy leaves of the twin row of ancient trees created a dappled sunlight pattern on the ground as I drove towards the clubhouse. The driving range was on my left as I swung around what they call the Founder’s Circle, a grassy area outside the front door. Next to the flagpole, twin monuments enshrine the memories of Jones and Roberts. A gardener was busy setting bright yellow pansies into the planters that create the club’s logo: a yellow map of the USA into which a flagstick would be set roughly in the location of Augusta. Thousands of people would take a photograph of the scene in the next week.

  A white-jacketed attendant came out of the clubhouse ent
rance, greeted me by name and offered to park my car for me. I graciously allowed him to take the wheel and followed his directions inside. There was a deep mahogany counter inside the door where another Pinkerton guard was watching the four video monitors that seemed to have the place covered. He motioned me up the stairway off to the right, telling me that Mr. Jacoby would be waiting for me in his office, second door to the left.

  For a place that was going to host the first major golf tournament of the year in six days, it was amazingly quiet inside the thick concrete walls of the clubhouse. Beyond the counter, a green runner occupied the center of a wide hardwood hallway whose floor was polished to a mirror-like finish. I could see that the old house—it had been built in 1857 by Dennis Redman, an indigo farmer—had the antebellum system of air conditioning seen throughout the South: a roomy central hallway with large door openings on both ends which could be flung open to allow whatever breeze existed to drift through the house. Today, the doors were shut and the air conditioning was turned on.

  Upstairs I found a nondescript hall filled with offices. There was a slight humming sound of fluorescent lighting and computers turned on. But there was no one in sight. I guess I expected more chaos the week before the Masters—people running about tossing paper at each other and shouting “You forgot to order the pimento-and-cheese sandwiches???” Instead, it seemed like I’d walked into the deepest recesses of Ernst & Young, where all was calm, cool, controlled and number-crunching.

  I peeked inside the second door to the left and saw Brett Jacoby at his desk. His office was small and orderly, with a view out over the now-empty driving range.. The desk held a computer, a full-size calendar blotter, a picture of Mrs. Jacoby and the two kids and nothing else. Brett was talking on his telephone, facing away from the door. Jacoby resembled nothing so much as a college professor. He had lost most of his hair, except for a furry strip around the sides and in back, and his bald pate was shiny and seemed to have been buffed into perfection. He was somewhere in his fifties, a bit paunchy around the middle, not too tall. He was wearing a blue-on-white pinstriped dress shirt, matching necktie and pressed khakis.

  He hung up the phone, saw me standing there and rose to greet me. He waved me into a guest chair in front of his desk. We spent a few minutes catching up—something we usually do the week of the tournament. Jacoby had worked at the Atlanta newspapers for almost twenty years before Jackson Stephens had asked him to become the club’s public face. It had taken him a year or two to get settled into the job, but he stuck it out. Now, he told me, he loved his work, his family liked the Augusta area and all was well.

  “C’mon,” he said finally, “I promised you breakfast.”

  He led me down the hall, down a small back staircase and into the Trophy Room, where a few tables were set for breakfast. The portrait of Eisenhower beamed from one wall and the painting of His Holiness Bob Jones occupied another. I looked around for the massive silver reproduction of the National clubhouse, which is the trophy given to the winner of the Masters, but it wasn’t on its usual plinth. Brett saw me looking and said “They send it out every year about this time to get it polished up.”

  We sat down near a window looking out onto the golf course and a waiter materialized out of nowhere. “Mornin’ Mr. Brett,” the man said, his deeply black face wreathed in a pleasant smile. “Who is this fine gentleman you’ve got wid’ you this mornin’?”

  Brett introduced me to Calvin, and after he shook out our napkins for us, he strolled off in search of the coffee pot.

  “When he comes back, just tell him what you’d like to eat,” Brett told me. “They don’t have menus for breakfast—chef just whips up whatever anyone orders.”

  “I can see how one could get used to living in the lap of luxury,” I chided him.

  “Yeah,” he said, turning a little red, “It don’t suck working here most of the time.” Brett went on to explain that because the club is closed down during the summer months—from May until October 1st—it was usually quiet if not boring for that part of the year. But when the members were in town, both the activity and the level of luxury ratcheted up a few notches.

  Calvin came back and we ordered. Just for the heck of it, I ordered an egg-white omelet with chorizo sausage and fried green tomatoes. “Yassir,” Calvin smiled at me, as if he had an order like that every single morning of his life.

  Brett and I discussed the world of golf and sipped our coffee for the next few minutes, until Calvin brought our plates. I’ll be damned if the kitchen hadn’t filled my order, right down to the grilled chorizo. “Tell the chef he’s on his toes,” I said. Calvin’s face broke out in a wide, wrinkled smile as he refilled our coffee cups. “Yassir,” he said, nodding his head. “I’ll tell Miss Daisy that yo’ is happy. She gon’ like that.”

  “Hell,” Brett said, “She didn’t even have to break a sweat. I’ve seen Japanese guys order the Tokyo Special and out it comes just like they like it in Osaka—raw fish, steamed rice and tofu.”

  “I get the feeling that the one thing this place is not missing is resources,” I said.

  We ate quietly. The food was delicious. I was hungry.

  “So,” I said finally, pushing back my plate and downing the last of my coffee. I saw Calvin out of the corner of my eye start forward with the coffee pot again, and I waved him away. “What’s going on around here and what can I do to help?”

  Brett put down his knife and fork. He poured a little cream into his coffee cup and then picked up his spoon and stirred the coffee thoughtfully. I got the sense that he was stalling, thinking.

  “Look,” I said. “I know how buttoned down this place can be. If you’re having second thoughts about letting some outsider sniff around whatever dirty laundry there is, if there is any, then don’t worry about it. I got a good breakfast and a nice inn to stay in and I can waste my time this week playing some golf. No problem. On the other hand, if you think there’s something I can do to help you, just ask. If I don’t think I can do it, I’ll say so.”

  Brett looked at me gratefully. “There are a lot of people who would like to harm this place,” he said. “Especially after that whole Martha Burk circus…hell, even before that. We seem to represent something a lot of people resent. And there are plenty of guys in the press and outside that would love to dig up some dirt and use it to drag our name through the mud.”

  “Brett,” I said, “I’ve never been a big fan of the way you guys do business. I think you know that. But it’s not my club and I don’t lose any sleep over it. You guys put on a pretty good golf tournament every year, and that’s all I’m interested in. Everybody in the press room has an opinion on how you guys should run this place, and my opinion is the same as everyone else’s: not worth pig’s snot. It’s your club. On the other hand, if Augusta National is doing something illegal or immoral or something, then that’s a legitimate news story and, since I’m a legitimate news reporter, or so they say, I’d be interested in that.”

  Calvin came over unbidden and filled our coffee cups again.

  “But I came over here yesterday because you asked me for a favor,” I said. “You and I go back a ways. I know you’re a straight shooter, and I think you know I am, too. So, again, tell me what you want to, or tell me nothing. No hard feelings either way.”

  Brett looked relieved.

  “Thanks, Hacker, I appreciate that,” he said. “Let’s go take a walk.”

  We walked out the central hallway to the back entrance which led out to the grass lawn behind the clubhouse. For the umpteenth time, I took in one of the grandest vistas in golf, and for the umpteenth time, it almost took my breath away. There is a scale to Augusta National that never translates onto the television screen. You have to stand there on the sunny grass behind the clubhouse and let it overtake your senses. There were dozens of workmen in yellow construction hard hats milling about, putting the finishing touches on the grandstands and draping ropes along the fairways and touching up t
he various wooden parts with green paint. But even with all that activity, the view assaulted one’s senses.

  First, it’s the way the course drops away down the hill towards Rae’s Creek. I always think that the golfers should be wearing crampons instead of spikes to maneuver their way up and down those hills. Then, there’s the contrast between the wide-open spaces of that hillside, and the tall loblolly pines that define most of the fairways. Then, there’s the flowering things in bloom everywhere one looks: the azaleas, the dogwoods, the wisteria vine climbing the clubhouse wall. Finally, there’s the feel of that warm Georgia spring sunshine and the smell of freshly mowed grass. Today, I didn’t hear any of that rippling of applause that always seems to ride up the hill on a warm gust of wind, but that’s always there, too. It’s an amazing place.

  Brett led me over to one of the white metal tables that had been set out in the shade beneath the spreading arms of the ancient live oak trees behind the clubhouse, overlooking the ninth green. There were green-and-white umbrellas opened above all the tables. We sat down and took a moment to drink in the view.

  “I never get tired of looking at all this,” he said, sweeping his arm outwards. “Been here what, five, six years now? Never get tired of this.”

  I nodded in agreement, sat back, and waited.

  Finally, Brett sat forward, leaning on his arms.

  “I called you, Hacker, because I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, looking intently at me. “My job is to present the image of Augusta National to the world, and I’m afraid I can’t do that with this situation.”

  I waited.

  “When they found that body here last week, it threw me for a loop,” he continued. “Not only because of the publicity, even though we had nothing to do with the crime in any way. But the whole thing has been vacuumed up. It’s like when they took that poor man’s body away in the ambulance that morning, they took everything about him too. Who he was, who killed him, what he was doing here…They won’t tell me anything.”