Mary Jane flopped herself down on the bed, crushing several of her new outfits.
“Wooo,” she said. “I’m beat. What a day!”
“Don’t get too comfortable,” I said. “We have a dinner engagement.”
I told her about meeting Conn for drinks at the Commerce Club. She glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed and heaved herself up.
“Gotta wash my hair,” she said. “You don’t need the bathroom for anything for a while, do you?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Have at it.”
She disappeared and I heard the shower power up. I went back to that last story and finished the last couple of graphs. Mary Jane stuck her head back out of the bathroom.
“Oh, by the way,” she said. “I got some pretty good information out of Beatrice.”
She withdrew and I heard her getting into the shower. She began to sing. I closed my laptop, went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet.
“Oooo, are you gonna come in and wash my back?” she said invitingly.
“In a minute,” I said. “Tell me about Beatrice first.”
“Well, once I got her talking, she didn’t stop for most of the day.”
“Is that why you were suddenly so hot and bothered to go shopping?” I asked. “To pump her for information?”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “Duh. Of course, Victoria always needs clothes. Child is growing like a weed.”
“So what did Beatrice say?”
“Oh, well. She told me all about Grosvenor’s wife, Marta,” she said.
“The one from Colombia.”
“Yeah. She’s his second wife,” Mary Jane continued, speaking over the gushing water. Steam filled the room. “He met her on a business trip down there. She’s quite a bit younger, and Beatrice says she’s gorgeous. He divorced his first wife, the mother of his children, and took up with Marta.”
“Where have I heard that before?” I said.
“Only in about a million other places,” Mary Jane said. “I don’t know what it is with you men and your trophy wives. Don’t you eventually get tired of having sex with hot young babes with whom you have nothing else in common?”
“Soon as that happens, I’ll let you know,” I said.
A wet washcloth came flying over the top of the shower curtain on a trajectory towards my head. But I was expecting something, and I caught it and tossed it back.
“So that’s the big deal? Charlie Grosvenor’s a horn dog who goes for young babes?” I couldn’t hide the disappointment in my voice. “Nine out of ten members at Augusta National probably have wives young enough to be their daughters. It’s what your successful executive does these days. Make a pot of money, dump the old wife and give her half the stock options, and find some young hard-body hottie to cohabit with. It’s the American way.”
“Yeah, but Charlie’s hottie is different,” Mary Jane said. “Her last name was Obrador.”
“Obrador?” I said, thinking. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“Don’t you ever read the front section of your newspaper? He was the Colombian Interior minister who was secretly working for the Medellin cartel,” Mary Jane told me. “Marta’s father. He’s now in prison, thanks to the United States and our war on drugs. And her brother has been a fugitive from justice for about the last ten years. He’s supposedly working for the cartel too.”
“And Marta?” I said. “Is she in the family business too?”
“Beatrice seems to think so,” she said. “She said family ties are very strong in Colombia. You have to be very careful who you trust in that business, and so you usually do business only with relatives. Blood is thicker than water, and all that.”
“So now we think that Charlie Grosvenor, or his company, and his wife are all drug merchants?” I said. “This is getting hard to believe.”
“It might help explain why the hit man is in town shooting people, though,” Mary Jane said. “Maybe there was a disagreement between Grosvenor’s operation and the one run by the Obrador family.”
“And Obrador sent Rico de la Paz up to send a warning. That’s the first idea I’ve heard all week that makes any sense.”
Mary Jane turned the water off and swept the shower curtain back.
“Your turn,” she said.
“What about the back-washing part?” I said.
“I took care of it myself,” she said.
I peeled off my clothes.
“Can’t talk you into making sure you’re all clean?” I said, getting into the shower.
“Gotta dry my hair,” she said.
“How about me?” I said. “I have some parts that are very much in need of careful washing.”
“I can see that,” she said, grinning. “You’ll just have to take care of that by yourself.”
“Curses,” I said. “Foiled again.”
Chapter Twenty
The Commerce Club was dark, hushed and had the smell of old money. We had been shown into the express elevator in the building lobby by a smiling uniformed porter, and stepped out into restaurant’s foyer. The semi-circular room was dominated by a tall mahogany counter. The large dining room lay to the right and the lounge was off to the left. A pretty girl dressed severely in black noted our names and motioned us into the lounge, where we found Conn holding up the end of the bar.
After introductions, he led us to a table against the windows that looked down on the sparkling lights of Augusta. From this side of the building, you could see the ridge that runs parallel to the river, and the rugged ground beyond, all hills and trees. Tables in the dining room looked more to the southeast, where the river began its long, flat, slow run to the sea.
We ordered drinks and admired the view and when the cocktails arrived, we all clinked glasses.
“So,” Conn said to Mary Jane, “You’re the woman brave enough to take on our friend Hacker. Martyrdom is not required in this country, you know.”
She laughed, her eyes bright and shining. “Don’t tell anyone, but he’s really a cupcake,” she said. “Much better than 72 virgins, if you ask me.”
Conn looked at her over the rim of his drink. I could see his lawyerly eyes sizing her up. He asked her a series of questions about her life and background. They seemed innocent and conversational, but I could tell he was doing a little light grilling. To her credit, Mary Jane answered his questions, chatting away happily about her life in Boston and her daughter Victoria. Finally, he smiled. One of his warm, from-the-heart smiles that I’d only seen used with people he really likes.
“Y’know what, Hacker?” he said. “I think she’ll do.”
“There you have it,” I said to Mary Jane. “Conn’s approval and a couple of bucks will get you anywhere in this town.”
“It’s pretty up here,” Mary Jane said, gazing out at the twinkling lights of the city.
“Yeah, I’ve always thought this was the best view of the city,” Conn said. “It tends to get uglier the closer to reality you get. But they did a nice job with this place.”
“Who are the members?” I asked.
“Oh, your typical movers and shakers,” he said. “Augusta’s finest.”
“Which one are you?” Mary Jane asked him.
“How’s that?”
“Are you a mover or a shaker?”
He grinned at her. She grinned back. “Wouldn’t you like to find out?” he said.
“Are you two flirting with each other right in front of me?” I said plaintively.
They laughed and I joined in.
Conn explained that the building had originally been built for the Augusta Mercantile Bank, one of the city’s oldest financial firms, which, like most other local banks in the country, had been swept up in a series of mergers and acquisitions. At one time or another, it had been part of Citizens & Southern, Wachovia, Bank of America and now was part of some banking behemoth from Chicago.
“It’s got some crazy name like the Fifth
Third Bank or something,” Conn told us. “Now if the First Bank is the best, what does that make the Fifth Third? Not someplace I’d want to put my hard-earned cash.”
The hostess from the front came into the lounge and told us our table was ready. We followed her back through the foyer and into the main dining room on the other side of the building. It was a large space, with two tiers that provided excellent views out the window walls to the river and the southern part of the city. In the far corner, a tuxedoed piano player was doing something with a jazzy beat, soft and low. The tables were covered in white linens with candles burning in glass lamps on each table and banquette. Serving tables were scattered about, and the inside wall held old hunting prints and uplit sconces. For a businessman’s dining room, it was pretty darn romantic.
It was busy, too. We wended our way to a table near the windows at the far end of the room. Our hostess handed us leather-bound menus and bowed herself away. Right behind her was the cocktail waitress from the other room with our half-finished drinks. Mary Jane and I looked out at the view.
“This side of the building has the best river views,” Conn said, “But it also overlooks The Terry, down there to the right. I’ve always thought there was a certain ironic justice in that.”
“What’s The Terry?” Mary Jane asked.
“It’s our ghetto,” Conn said. “It’s short for The Territory, and it’s always been the black neighborhood.”
“You don’t mean they have to live there, do you?” Mary Jane said, aghast.
Conn laughed. “No ma’am, not since the end of the War of Northern Aggression, which I believe you Yankees call the Civil War. Like the rest of the South, it took us a while, but we finally got the message. But The Terry is still the only place the poor and the working poor can afford around these parts. Of course, it also is home to most of Augusta’s lawless element.”
“Does Augusta National donate money to charities like all the tournaments on the PGA Tour?” Mary Jane asked. “It seems to me with all the money they have over there, they could do something about places like The Terry.”
“Not so you’d notice,” Conn said. “It was just a few years ago that they started a charitable program. I think people finally realized that Augusta National was hording their cash, and shamed them into it. Now they donate money to national golf organizations, they support the First Tee, and they give a chunk of change to a local foundation that does contribute some to local charities, along with the Girl Scouts, Easter Seals and some local museums. But you’re right; they don’t exactly spread the wealth around. Of course, the club has always had a complicated relationship with its home town.”
“How so?” Mary Jane asked, buttering a fresh yeast roll.
“Well, you have to remember that the club was founded, built and then visited by outsiders. In a small town like this, there are locals and then there is everyone else. Augusta National was never a local kind of place. The original members were either friends of Bobby or friends of Cliff. Neither of that group came from here. So people tended to look on the National as that uppity place that no one could join.”
“That’s not still the case, is it?” Mary Jane asked.
“No, they always invited a few of the more prosperous local fellows to join. The newspaper publisher, the mayor, the CEO of the golf cart company outside of town, a banker or two. But it’s still pretty much outsiders, as the locals say. It’s in Augusta, but it’s not of Augusta”
“Tell her about the blacks,” I said. I was perusing the menu. Chef Bubba had some interesting things cooking tonight. “Well, of course, when the club was founded, Jim Crow was still the law down here in the South,” Conn said. “Blacks could be waiters and caddies and groundsmen, but that was about it. My favorite story is about one member who actually came from Augusta had a manservant, a young kid really, who really got into the whole master-servant deal. So much so that Clifford Roberts noticed and told the member how much he admired his man Friday. Well, a few years later, the member dies and his widow, thinking that she’d do something nice for Cliff Roberts, wrapped the kid up as a Christmas wreath and sent him over to the National with a note saying ‘To Cliff…Merry Christmas!’”
“Good Lord,” Mary Jane said, shaking her head.
“Yeah. Roberts at least hired the kid and he eventually worked his way up to maitre’d in the clubhouse. But then, the club decided to allow the pros to bring their own caddies to the Masters back in 1983, and that meant all the Augusta caddies, who are all mostly from the Terry, lost the income they used to count on from Masters week. There was some rumbling and grumbling, but Cliff sent the Pinkerton guys over to the caddie shack to calm them down. Not much they could do—they’re employees at will.”
Our waiter came over and told us the specials for the night. Conn told us that while everything was good, Chef Bubba’s southern fried catfish was renowned throughout Dixie. Mary Jane jumped on that, while I opted for the rack of lamb. Conn ordered the veal piccata and a bottle of Australian shiraz.
“What’s ironic about the relationship with the city is that we really bailed out Augusta National in the early years when they were struggling,” Conn continued. “Before the Masters become the worldwide spectacle that it is today, they had trouble getting fans to come watch the thing. So Roberts turned to the local business community for help. Right up until the late 1950s they gave thousands of tickets to local businesses to distribute to customers and friends. And even though the club has always been stingy spreading money around locally, Augusta realized that once a year they had a chance for a visitor bonanza.”
“Didn’t they used to have parades and stuff?” I asked. It was well before my time.
“Yeah,” Conn said. “In fact, if you look over there against the wall, you’ll see a white-haired lady in a white dress.” Mary Jane and I sneaked a glance across the room. “That’s Vera Phillips. She was Miss Golf back in the late 40s.”
“Miss Golf?” Mary Jane said.
“Oh, yeah,” Conn said. “It was Augusta’s version of a debutante cotillion. Very chi-chi. And the whole city used to turn out for the Masters parade downtown. It was quite a spectacle.”
“What happened?” Mary Jane wanted to know.
Conn shrugged. “I don’t know. Combination of things, I guess. The tournament got bigger and more important once they started showing it on TV. Tickets became valuable. Money became paramount. Clifford Roberts either decided he didn’t need good community relations anymore, or figured that the economic shot-in-the-arm that the Masters represented for the area ought to be enough for the town. And that they should be grateful for it. The fun kinda went out of it decades ago.”
“But people do make a lot of money locally,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” Conn nodded. “People have sent their kids to college from Masters money. The ones who rent out their homes for the week for ten or fifteen thousand dollars. The ones who sell their badges to the scalpers and brokers. A lot of moolah changes hands around here the first week in April.”
“I understand that a lot of people around here still have badges from the old days,” I said.
“And a lot of them turn around and sell them every year for a grand or two,” Conn said. “When you’ve already seen Hogan and Palmer and Nicklaus over the years, and then some sharpie calls you offering some cold hard cash, and you figure you could go spend the week down on Hilton Head and still have some left over, it’s not that hard a decision.”
“Wasn’t there a scandal a few years ago when somebody killed themselves over tickets?” Mary Jane said.
“Good memory,” Conn said. “Yeah, there are always people trying to cash in on the Masters. Just like there are always people who’ll pay anything to be able to say they went to the Masters. And the harder it is to get a badge, the more they want one. Anyway, that poor schlub had promised tickets to some heavies coming into town, and then at the last minute, his source bugged on him—probably got a better of
fer from someone else. So he shot himself in the head.”
Conn scanned the room again. “There’s a group over there…see the table with all those Japanese guys? The Anglo fellow eating with them is a ticket broker. He’ll fly them in from Tokyo for a week, golf every day, nice condo, catered dinners and three or four badges, which they share. Some guys go on Thursday, some on Friday. I dunno what they do about Sunday afternoon. Probably arm-wrestle. Tell you the truth, I’d rather watch it on TV. You can get more of a sense of what’s happening.”
Our order of a starter of shrimp bisque arrived. We fell silent while we ate. I had to admit, Chef Bubba was pretty good. The soup was creamy, laced with sherry and had recognizable chunks of shrimp swimming around.
“So how do you like the Olde Magnolia?” Conn asked Mary Jane.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “Too bad we have to leave soon.”
Conn was surprised. “They’re throwing you out?”
“Not really,” I told him. “Our deal was just for this week. Starting Sunday we move over to Hacker’s Augusta address: Room 234 at the Motel 6. Same room has been rented by the Boston Journal for probably the last 25 years.”
“That won’t do,” Conn said to me. “You can’t take this lovely person to that motel hell. Heck, I feel bad enough thinking of you staying over there by yourself. You have to come stay with me. I’ve got the room—my cousin from Seattle usually comes over for the tournament, but he was too busy this year.”
“That sounds nice,” I said. “But we can’t impose on you like that.”
“Why not?” Conn said. “I invited you. That’s not an imposition.”
I looked at Mary Jane. She looked back at me as if to say “it’s up to you.”
“OK,” I said. “That’s very kind of you. Unfortunately, the paper prepaid for the week a couple of months ago, but I can maybe get them to send …”
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