Death in a Green Jacket

by James Y. Bartlett

  “Who is ‘they?’” I asked.

  “The cops, mostly,” Brett said. “I’ve asked the people I know down at city hall to find out what they can, and they come back with nothing. It’s like John Judge has disappeared into a black hole in space. It’s sucked him and everything about him in and it’s like he never existed.”

  “Nobody here at the club can find out anything?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Brett said. “And that’s what scares me a little. Maybe he did have something to do with this place, and I just don’t know it. You remember I said that there are people who seem to have it in for us, because of who we are or what we supposedly represent. I haven’t been able to sleep the last week because I’m thinking that there will be something that links this murder to Augusta National, and they’re waiting until the entire world is looking at us next week before they spring the trap.”

  “So you want me to try and nose around a little and see what I can find out?” I said.

  “You seem to have a knack for it,” Brett said, a wry smile playing at his lips. “From what I’ve heard.”

  I was frowning. “I dunno, Brett,” I said, doubt creeping into my voice. “I’m a damn Yankee in these parts. Trying to get friendly with the local redneck gendarmes in a week’s time is gonna be tough. Are you sure they’re just not sitting on the investigation for a couple of weeks, at least until the circus gets out of town? Maybe they think that’s what you guys want.”

  He shook his head. “If that were the case, at least they’d tell us something about what they think went down. But nobody is saying anything about anything. All we get is the ‘case is under investigation at this time’ stuff.”

  “Not even the chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club can get an answer?” I was incredulous.

  He shook his head. “He is, as you know, fairly new around here,” Brett said. “I probably have better contacts locally than he does.” Now it was my turn to stall a little, looking out at the sun-soaked vista of grass and trees. This sounded very fishy. If what Conn had said about Augusta National—that nothing in town happened without its knowledge and involvement—was true, then Brett’s story of a police freeze on information didn’t make sense. From the picture Conn had painted, someone at the club could pick up the telephone and get anything he wanted from the city, including at least an idea of how the murder case was progressing. If not from the police themselves, then surely from someone at the mayor’s office or the city government.

  I turned back to Brett. “You must know something about what happened,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Bill Beckham, our superintendent, went down there after the body was discovered early that morning. He waited until the cops arrived and watched while they uncovered the body. The guy was buried pretty deep, which must have taken some time. And it was done neatly, not in a rush, not haphazard. He heard the medical examiner say that the man had been shot twice, both to the chest. They spent most of the morning down there—we had to close the back nine, which didn’t make some of the members very happy. Then, they took him away.”

  “Was he shot here, on property?” I asked.

  “We don’t really know,” Brett said.

  “How did the killers get into the grounds?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “I thought you guys had all the latest X-ray, super-duper spy gear to protect this place,” I said.

  “Well, we have video cameras all along the property perimeter,” Brett said. “Our security guy ran the tapes for the cops. Nothing. No one coming in. No one going out. Very strange.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “And nobody here knew anything about the guy?”

  “Nada,” Brett said, shaking his head. “As far as we know, he never set foot on our grounds in his entire life. No relationship whatsoever with Augusta National.”

  “Motive for the killing?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Suspects?”

  “Dunno,” Brett said. He looked at me and shrugged apologetically. “I asked all those questions,” he said. “Got nothing from the cops. Zip. ‘Case is under investigation until further notice.’ When I heard that for the umpteenth time, I figured I needed someone on the outside to do a little digging.”

  “So you thought of me,” I said. “Thanks a bunch.”

  “It’s not so much that they’re not talking,” Brett said. “I can understand if they’ve got some kind of case building and they don’t want to let the cat out of the bag. But I really want to know why they’re not telling us anything. That’s what keeps me up at night, worrying.”

  “Which implies that there may be something that does connect Augusta National with the killing, and that implies some kind of blockbuster announcement,” I mused.

  “And with the tournament coming up next week, I want to know what that thing may be, so I can at the very least prepare some kind of public answer,” Brett said. “I don’t like to be blindsided.”

  “Who does?” I asked, and wondered if it was going to be me.

  “C’mon,” Brett said, standing up. “We’ve got to go see Grosvenor.”

  He stood up. I remained seated. He looked at me and smiled.

  “Hacker,” he said, “You know that nothing happens around here without approval from the top guy. It’s the way the place was set up under Cliff Roberts and there hasn’t been a chairman since that hasn’t micro-managed this place. He knows why you’re here and what we want you to try and do. He just wants to meet you in person.”

  “Okay,” I said and followed him back into the clubhouse. Charles McDaniel Grosvenor was a distinguished and patrician figure who had been universally acclaimed as an excellent choice to head Augusta National when the last chairman had keeled over with a heart attack about 18 months earlier. Unlike most of the chairmen appointed to the job after über-leader and club co-founder Clifford Roberts, all of whom had been Southerners, Grosvenor was a Yankee, from the Main Line of Philadelphia. From a family corporation in the import-export business, his wealth went back at least four or five generations. He had already served a two-year term as president of the United States Golf Association, was a member of at least a half dozen of the finest golf clubs in the land, from Cypress Point to Pine Valley, sat on the board of directors of numerous corporations, had been talked about as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate—Republican, of course—and was expected to both maintain the hallowed traditions of the club and at the same time, shepherd in some much-needed changes. Like inviting a woman to join an all-boys club, and getting rid of that particular public relations nightmare.

  In his mid 60s, Grosvenor was seen as erudite, articulate, dignified and experienced, and everyone expected that he would carry on as chairman with a firm hand for at least the next ten or twelve years. We in the press had met him for the first time at last year’s Masters, and found him to have a sense of humor, a rare commodity on Washington Road. At the same time, he had left no doubt in anyone’s mind that he adhered firmly to the belief that the Augusta National Golf Club was a private organization and that, despite the fact that they invited the world of golf onto their grounds one week a year, what they did and how they did it was nobody’s business but their own.

  Because of that, nobody outside the club really knew what went on inside the gates. Grosvenor had continued the constant tweaking of the golf course, the annual effort to find a few more yards of length and other subtle ways to make the course a wee bit harder for the modern professionals who came in every year armed with new technology that threatened to turn what Bob Jones had envisioned as a stern test of golf into a birdie-filled theme park no different from any course on the PGA Tour. But none of us on the outside were aware of any major organizational changes at the club. We just showed up once a year in April and watched the usual assortment of self-important, white-haired old farts in green jackets running around pretending they were princes.

  We went back upstairs and down the hall. At the end, the hallway widened out and a secretary sa
t behind a mahogany desk, guarding the entrance to the chairman’s office. She smiled at us, picked up the phone and announced us, and waved us through the thick door. Charlie Grosvenor stood up behind his huge desk as we walked in. He came around to shake my hand, a journey which seemed to take several minutes. His desk was monumental, yet did not seem to overwhelm the décor in his office, which itself was huge, running the entire depth of the building, it seemed, with three windows overlooking the golf course and two more on the side. The desk itself was some kind of deep reddish wood, with an unusual grain that was polished to a mirror-like finish.

  Charlie Grosvenor was in his mid-sixties. His hair was silver, but he seemed to still have most of it. His face was tanned in that just-back-from-the-islands tan that never seems to fade from the rich. He wore dark tan khakis, Docksiders, and a pink Oxford shirt, open at the neck. He moved with grace, and his handshake was firm. He looked me in the eye. He saw me eyeing his desk as we shook hands and he motioned for us to take a seat in the seating area—love seat and twin upholstered chairs—in front of the huge desk.

  “It’s snakewood,” he said, gesturing at his desk. “Very rare, comes from Guiana. Only Brazilian rosewood is more expensive, and you can’t import that anymore. They’re trying to protect the rainforests.” He frowned as if that were a personal problem.

  It probably was. I knew that Grosvenor’s family business, the Grosvenor Group, had extensive operations throughout South America over the decades. His great-grandfather had competed with John D. Rockefeller to acquire that continent’s natural resources, and had corralled enough coal, bauxite, tin and other goodies to amass a fortune almost as huge as the Rockefeller clan. These days, Grosvenor Group was deeply into oil, with operations in southeast Asia, shipping, and pipelining natural gas across the Siberian tundra. Which meant Charlie Grosvenor could easily afford his aircraft-carrier desk made of rare snakewood and have enough left over to gild it with solid gold if he wanted.

  I looked around the office as Grosvenor asked if we wanted any coffee. Brett thanked him, but said we’d just had breakfast. The walls of the office were hung with photos of Charlie Grosvenor with various heads of state, world political figures, presidents and kings. Many of the photos had been taken here in Augusta, usually down on the 12th tee, with that damnable little hole perched on the edge of Rae’s Creek in the background.

  “So, Mr. Hacker,’ Grosvenor began in his deep baritone voice that spoke of polished hallways of power and generations of wealth, “Mr. Jacoby here has explained to you what we want you to do?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “And I’ve explained to Brett that it’s going to be hard to pry anything loose if the cops don’t want it pried.”

  “Hmmm,” he nodded. “There are always challenges when one deals with the authorities. But Brett has assured me that you seem to have a knack for overcoming such challenges.”

  He fixed his grey-blue eyes on me. I figured this was the point in the conversation when I was supposed to leap up and shout “Yes, O Master! I will do what you bid!” I resisted the impulse.

  I shrugged. “I used to be a crime reporter,” I said. “And I’ve had a few episodes where that background came in handy. But I’m frankly a little doubtful I can be much help here.”

  Grosvenor frowned. He didn’t like being told he couldn’t get what he wanted.

  “Is it a question of remuneration?” he began.

  “No,” I said firmly. “There is no remuneration. I’ve been asked for a favor by an old friend of mine…” I nodded at Brett … “and I’m happy to try and help. I can’t ethically accept any money from you anyway. My hesitation is that I’m just not sure I can find out what you want to know, and that I think you guys probably have way more influence locally than I’ll ever have.”

  His frown deepened and his eyebrows scrunched together. He didn’t look happy.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m disappointed that you don’t want to accept the assignment …”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. I just said you need to realize that I’ll probably be unable to deliver the goods. I will ask around. I’ll see what I come up with. I’ll tell Brett what I find out. I just want you to understand that I probably won’t find out who killed John Judge, or why. And next week, I’ll be just another reporter covering the golf tournament.”

  Now his lips were pursed, to go along with his knitted brow. “I see,” he said, and looked over at Brett, who had turned an interesting shade of red.

  “It’s about all we can expect,” Brett said, holding his hands out plaintively.

  “Very well,” the chairman said, heading back to the business side of his mammoth desk. “Brett will take care of the arrangements.”

  I sat there while the other two began to rise. Grosvenor noticed and sat back down.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you know of any reason why someone might want to bury a body in one of your bunkers?”

  His eyebrows began twitching up and down. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” he said.

  “I mean, do you have reason to believe that you or anyone at this club has an enemy” I said. “If John Judge had no connection personally with Augusta National, and if we temporarily discount the idea that this killing was entirely random or coincidental, then the young man’s death or the placement of his body might indicate a warning. A message to someone here at the club to do, or not to do, something that the killer wants. Can you tell me if there is any reason to believe that someone is being warned here at Augusta National?”

  Grosvenor leaned back and smiled. “I see,” he said. “No. I am not aware of any situation involving any of our employees or members that might have led to this tragic event. Do you know of anything Brett?” He looked at Brett with arched brows.

  “No sir,” Brett said.

  Grosvenor looked back at me. “There. Your question has been answered,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “I guess not,” I said, and rose.

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Brett said, and tugged on my sleeve to follow him out of the room.

  “One more thing, Mr. Hacker,” Grosvenor said as we began to walk away. I turned.

  “I don’t want any dirty laundry splashed over the pages of any newspaper,” he said. “Whatever you learn is to come to us and no further.”

  “Anything that’s public record is public,” I said. “Anything that I can dig out of the cops, I’ll pass on to Brett first. If there’s a problem, we can discuss it then.”

  “Fine,” the chairman said, and waved his hand. We had been dismissed.

  I did not back out of his office, bowing low.

  Chapter Seven

  After meeting with Brett, I drove aimlessly down Washington Avenue, thinking. Nothing seemed to be adding up. John Judge, white Southern boy, Bell South accountant, native of the area, is shot twice and buried in a bunker at Augusta National Golf Club. That by itself didn’t make much sense. From all outward appearances, Judge was a nobody. Nobodies usually aren’t executed Mob style, whether in Augusta, Georgia, or in South Boston, Mass., for no reason at all.

  Then, the local authorities seemed to have clammed up tighter than Sergio Garcia with a major title on the line. I didn’t know when the next municipal elections were scheduled, but if this had been Southie, the chief of police, the D.A. and the mayor would all be shoving each other aside to get in front of a TV camera and pontificate for the voters on how they would soon be bringing to justice the heinous perpetrator of this vicious crime. Instead, it appeared that someone had decreed that an iron curtain be dropped over the entire case, and so far, nothing was getting out. Judge’s own folks back there in Blythe couldn’t learn anything, which was strange enough—the cops are usually a bit more forthcoming and sympathetic to the families of murder victims. But then there was Brett Jacoby’s claim that not even the high mucks at Augusta National could find out anything about the Judge murder. And i
t happened right in front of their suddenly non-seeing eyeballs. That really did not compute.

  Brett had given me the business card of the detective in charge of the case, and some directions down to the Richmond County jail, where the sheriff’s offices were. I found my way to the ugly municipal yellow-brick tower on the edge of downtown. It took up most of a city block, and it looked like the jail part of the building occupied the top three or four floors of the six-story structure. You could tell because the windows were narrower than the arrow-slits they had once built in medieval castles in Europe.

  I parked my rental car, made my way up to the third floor, and asked to see Lt. Travis Kitchen, Homicide. Brett Jacoby wanted me to fly somewhat under the radar, so I told them I was a reporter for the Boston Journal, in town a bit early for the Masters and doing a little groundwork on the Judge murder for a possible take-out for the Sunday paper. All of that was mostly true, so if they strapped me to a lie detector, I would pass with flying colors.

  After some hemming and hawing, during which I got to read three back issues of Police Work and Detention magazine cover to cover, I was ushered into the office of Lt. Kitchen. He sat behind a standard-issue metal desk with his back to a window overlooking the city, with a tiny glimpse of the Savannah River in the distance. A large plate-glass window looked back into the squad room cubicles, which seemed to be mostly empty. Kitchen’s desk was neat as a pin, holding only a blotter, a telephone and a coffee cup.

  He stood up when I walked in, shook my hand and motioned me into the standard-issue metal armchair, black Naugahyde seat, in front of the desk. I sat. He was in his mid-fifties, with flecks of grey hair beginning to blossom at his temples. He had a thin mustache, strong arms bulging out of his white short-sleeved dress shirt, and his striped necktie was held in place with a sterling silver clip. His eyes were dark, almost black, and he stared at me with the appraising and slightly disapproving look that all cops have.