Death in a Green Jacket

by James Y. Bartlett

  Conn said he’d stay with her. He said he preferred to watch the final round on television anyway. “You can see more of the action on TV and you don’t have to deal with the crowds,” he said. “You go ahead and do your thing. I’ll keep an eye on her. She needs rest.”

  I stayed as long as I could, but around noon I showered and shaved. I checked in on Mary Jane before I left. She was on her side, eyes closed, breathing steady. I could only wonder what dreams she was having. Or nightmares.

  It took me 45 minutes to drive the last two miles. Traffic was at a virtual standstill in both directions on Washington Road. The usual assortment of vendors hawking visors and golf shirts and golf towels were crowded in the parking lots on both sides of the busy road. There were even some hopeful, or delusional, property owners still trying to sell a parking space for the fans. But everyone who had a badge was no doubt already inside the gates, packed in five or six deep along the ropes.

  I finally made it into the press parking lot, but had to drive up and down the aisles for another fifteen minutes before one of the volunteers, wearing his bright yellow hard-hat, took pity on me and showed me a spot where I could cram my car into a space. I could barely open the car door, but managed to squeeze out. It would have been a good time to have a moon roof.

  I could feel the tension in the air that was the unmistakable indication that a major tournament was heading toward its end. It seems the neutrons begin to orbit faster or something, because the atmosphere is completely different on Sunday afternoon than it is even on Thursday morning. It holds the potential for drama, for disaster, and everything in between.

  The crowd inside was thick, too. It took me a while to push my way through the milling crowds of people. Dare I say it, the place was mobbed, the word that got Jack Whitaker bounced from the hallowed grounds. When I finally arrived at the media center, Pee Wee was missing from his station at the door. I wondered where he was.

  Inside, at the back of the media work area, I saw a group of about fifteen or twenty of the other writers standing around my desk. Quigs Quigley was waving his hands, a phone stuck to his ear. I sidled up, and tapped Johnny Carpenter from the L.A. Times on the shoulder. “What’s up?” I said.

  He turned to glance at me, then did a double take, then jumped about three feet and made a strange sound that sounded like “Wraggghhhh!” It made me jump, along with most of the other guys standing there.

  “Jesus Christ on wheat toast,” Carpenter managed to squeak. “Tell me you’re not a ghost!”

  I smiled. “Gee, I don’t think so,” I said.

  Everyone else by now was crowding around me, patting me on the back, talking at once, excitedly. I couldn’t understand a damn thing any of them were saying and wondered if the entire press corps had suddenly lost every last one of their marbles. Not that it would be easy to tell.

  Quigs came up and actually gave me a hug. “Hacker,” he said, “My God. We’d heard you were dead!”

  “What?” I was dumbfounded. “What the hell are you talking about? And don’t hug me again unless you give me a ring first.”

  Everyone started babbling at once again, the cacophony too much. I held up my hand. “Shut up!” I said. “One at a time. What the hell are you guys talking about?”

  Quigs handed me a sheet of paper ripped out from a computer. It was a breaking story that had just come across the AP wires.

  AUGUSTA MOTEL FIRE KILLS TWO

  Boston golf writer, girlfriend feared dead.

  AUGUSTA, GA. –(AP) An early morning fire broke out Sunday before dawn at the Motel 6 in Augusta, Ga. Authorities said that two people were apparently killed in the blaze. Identification has not been confirmed due to the condition of the bodies, but the hotel register indicated that the victims were Peter Hacker, a sportswriter for the Boston Journal, in town to cover the Masters golf tournament at nearby Augusta National Golf Club, and his girlfriend, Mary Jane Cappaletti, also of Boston.

  Police have asked for dental records from Boston before making an official identification. Eyewitnesses said the fire broke out in the pre-dawn hours in Room 234, causing a fire of intense heat and smoke. All other motel guests were able to escape the blaze without injuries.

  “Holy crap,” I said.

  Quigs looked at me. “If it wasn’t you in that room, who was it?”

  I was reading the story again, my mind racing. “Huh?” I finally said, looking up. “Oh. I don’t know. Mary Jane and I have spent the week with a friend of ours in town. I told the motel manager to release the room. He said he could rent it fast to someone else.” I thought of the poor souls who had been sleeping in my usual Masters room. Two souls who thought they had lucked into a deal. Now, they were reduced to dental records. Which would never match with Mary Jane and me.

  I sat down, running a hand over my brow. An early morning fire in my hotel room. That was more coincidental than could be believed. It had to have been set by someone. But who? Certainly, it wasn’t Enrico de la Paz, who was tucked safely away in federal custody in one of Wilcox’ secret prisons.

  “You’d better call the office, Hack,” Quigs said. “We already called Frankie Donatello. You’ll be glad to know he sounded sad that you were dead.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Because he’s now gotta fill a twenty-inch hole in tomorrow’s paper by himself. They’d better notify Mass General. The idea of Frank actually having to do some work is a sure-fire coronary waiting to happen. If I was smart, I’d wait to tell him and get him out of my hair. Permanently.”

  “Don’t make jokes, man,” Quigs said, turning back to his laptop. “Especially about death and dying. We were all totally bummed.”

  “Awww, thanks,” I said. “They say if you really want to know what people think of you, go to your own funeral.”

  My first call, however, was not to the desk back in Beantown, but to Travis Kitchen. He picked up on the second ring.

  “This is the ghost of Christmas Past,” I said. “I hear people think I’m dead.”

  There was silence on the other end. “Hacker?” he said, finally.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Shit,” he said. “Do you know how much paperwork I’m gonna have to do over?”

  “Thanks for the sympathy,” I said. “Someone thought I was still registered in the Hacker suite at Motel 6. They were wrong. I’m guessing that fire was set. Correct?”

  “Yep. Incendiary thrown through the window. Very messy and very deadly.”

  “Well, I can rule out one suspect,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Enrico,” I said. I quickly filled him in on last night’s events.

  “Good Christ,” he said. “Do you ever just write golf stories for the newspaper, or are you a one-man weapon of mass destruction?”

  “Well, I am supposed to be covering this little golf event today,” I said. “But I find people everywhere are trying to do me in. I’m beginning to develop a complex.”

  “With good reason,” he said. “Tell you what. Let me pass off most of this grunt work to my crew. I’ll come out there and watch your back.”

  “And maybe watch the back nine?” I said, chuckling.

  “Well,” he said. “If you’re facing the course, I gotta stand there and watch your back. If I happen to see some golfers in the near distance, what am I gonna do? Close my eyes?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll probably be in the media center. Can you get into the place without a ticket?”

  “You know,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to face off with those Pinkerton idiots. I’d really make my day to have to shoot one or two of them just for fun.”

  “OK,” I said. “Start with Pee Wee at the door. But bring extra ammo. He’s a big fella.”

  He hung up. Then I called the desk back in Boston and asked for Frankie. His voice was trembling when he came on the line, accompanied by a sniffle or two. Awww.

  “Frankie?” I said. “Hacker here.”

&
nbsp; “Listen,” he said heatedly. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but Hacker was my friend. So take your juvenile game and shove it right up your …”

  “Frank,” I said. “Really, this is Hacker. It wasn’t me that got firebombed this morning. Mary Jane and I decided to bunk in with an old friend here in Augusta who had some extra room. Not that the Motel 6 isn’t a fine hotel or anything. Anyway, I just heard about the misidentification, so I thought I’d better call.”

  “Goddam it,” he said, his voice rising. “What do you mean by scaring the hell out of us up here? Do you know what we’ve been going through? I started in one a page-one feature on you, for Christ sakes. And where the hell have you been? Armand said you split yesterday afternoon for some goddam emergency! What the hell is that? We must have made thirty calls to you last night. We pay you to cover the big golf tournaments, damn it all, not go gallivanting around the South having a high old time. I’m telling you Hacker, this is going in your file. Of all the goddam screwy things you’ve gotten into, this one takes the cake. I ought a fire your ass right now, you know that? …”

  He went on in that vein for another ten minutes or so. I held the phone out away from my ear and watched the tournament on TV while he ranted. Tiger was still ahead by two shots, but Herron had gone three-under on the front side and was now heading into the back, full of confidence and mojo.

  “Frank?” I said when it sounded like he was winding down.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry if I worried you,” I said. “I’ll fill you in completely later. It’s a good story. But right now, I’ve gotta watch the tournament. I’ll have all my stuff up there by nine.”

  “You better have,” he started in again, “Because I swear to God …”

  I’d heard enough. I flipped my phone shut. It was time for one of the Masters broadcast’s four commercial breaks per hour (I’d once sat there with a stopwatch to see if they really limited commercial interruptions like they say they did. They do.) I sat there thinking.

  Who had firebombed that motel room? Obviously I had been the target—no one knew that Mary Jane and I had moved over to Conn’s house at the beginning of the week. My first suspicion would have been directed at de la Paz. But I knew it couldn’t have been him. So who? Charlie Grosvenor? Someone had told me that he usually didn’t use violent means against his enemies, preferring to throw money—not firebombs—at things to solve them. Still, I had learned some interesting things about Charlie and his, and Augusta’s past. Could he have snapped? Why? To get rid of a witness who might upend his little apple cart of corruption? Maybe. I remembered the scene in his office with Travis Kitchen, when he had looked worn down and almost fearful. Maybe he had gone over the edge.

  Or could it have been Juan Carlos Obrador? The Miami importer with his own wing at the art museum? Who might, or might not, be linked to his family in Colombia, whose business was growing, packaging and exporting cocaine and eliminating all who got in their way. Obrador himself was probably too old to toss a Molotov cocktail through the window at the Motel 6, but how about that bodyguard? He looked strong enough to do it. But why? What did they have against me? I had never once met them.

  My phone rang. It was Wilcox.

  “Mister Hacker,” he said, “Who’s winning?”

  “Tiger by one,” I said. “That’s why you called? Don’t they have a satellite downlink in the jungle? CBS says that more than 150 million people are watching right now.”

  “Actually, I wanted to pass on a factoid I just learned,” he said. “Been thinking about that Judge boy. You were right. Nobody seemed to give a damn about him with all this other stuff going on. So I dug out the records that we took away from Kitchen. He hadn’t had time to look at all of them.”

  “And?” I was watching Tiger tee off on the 10th. He hit one of his three-wood stingers down the hill with a nice draw.

  “And, guess whose tax records young Mr. Judge was doing on the side?”

  “Who?” I was paying attention now.

  “One Brett Jacoby, employee of Augusta National.”

  “You are kidding me!”

  “I never kid,” he said. “But I thought the information might prove useful in tying up any loose ends.”

  He rang off. I sat there stunned. Then I thought of something else that had been rattling around in the back of my head. I looked over at Quigs, who was typing something in his laptop.

  “Quigs?” I said.

  He kept typing to the end of the sentence, then cocked an eye at me. “Mmm?”

  “Who first announced that I had been barbecued at the motel?” I asked. “Did someone find that AP story on the wires?”

  “Naw,” he said. “Jacoby came in and told us.”

  “When?”

  He scratched the back of his head. “I dunno,” he said, thinking. “Must have been around 11, 11:30. I remember it was right after Lumpy drained a thirty-footer on the fourth.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He went up to the microphone at the front there…” he motioned. “And said something like ‘I have some sad news to report…our friend and colleague Hacker has apparently been murdered.’ Then someone from the wires found the piece moving and printed it out. We were all trying to figure out when we had last seen you and all that stuff.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Are you sure that was what he said?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said. I thought some more. Then I re-read the AP newswire.

  “God damn!” I said, and jumped up.

  “What?” Quigs turned around to face me, his face quizzical.

  I didn’t answer him. I was heading for the door At a run.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Once I got outside, I made a beeline for the main clubhouse. The top of the hill behind the clubhouse was mostly empty. Almost everyone was packing in around the nine holes of the back nine. Tiger and Casey O’Shea had just teed off on the ninth. Tim Herron, making a run, was down on the eleventh, the beginning of Amen Corner.

  I came running up to the back entrance to that wide first-floor hallway that led out to the circular drive. I started to push my way in, when someone grabbed my arm.

  “I’m sorry sir, but you can’t go in this entrance.” I looked at the Pinkerton guy standing there in his light grey uniform and hat with its snappy black rim in front. I recognized the friendly kid who had helped me set up the DVD player the other morning when I reviewed the security video. “Oh, hi Mister Hacker,” he said. “Sorry, you don’t have the right badge to get in here.”

  “What’s your name, kid?” I asked.

  “Jackie McCord,” he said.

  “Well, Jack,” I said. “The chairman called me and asked me to come over,” I lied. “Don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  He looked uncertain. “I dunno,” he said. “My orders are not to let anyone in here unless they have the right bage…”

  “Kid,” I said. “If you want to piss off the chairman by keeping him waiting, that’s OK by me. I got all day.”

  Now he looked nervous. “Well,” he said finally, “I guess he must know you and all, since you was looking at the video an’ all. I guess it’s OK.”

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, kid,” I said.

  Inside, I traversed the central hallway and took the stairs two at a time up to the second floor offices. At the end of the hall, Grosvenor’s office door was partially open. I strode down and kicked the door open with a crash.

  There were three men sitting in Grosvenor’s conversation grouping. Two of them had drinks the amber color of whiskey in which floated a couple of ice cubes. Grosvenor, in his green jacket, wasn’t drinking. I believe that one of the guests in the room was one of the vice presidents of the U.S. Golf Association, but I had never really bothered to get to know any of those bluebloods, so I couldn’t be sure. The other man, who had a ruddy face an
d receding curly hair that still retained a tint or two of red, I made to be one of the R&A guys over from Scotland.

  When the door crashed open, they all jumped and turned around in their seats to look at me with amazement. I pointed at the two gents holding their drinks. “You and you, outta here. Right now,” I barked, thumbing at the door.

  Grosvenor stood up, his face turning red with fury. “What do you mean by crashing into my office and ordering my guests around?” he demanded hotly. “I’ll have you know…”

  “You’ll have me know nothing, you son-of-a-bitch,” I said. I looked at the two men again. “Out. Now.” They both put down their drinks on the cocktail table and scurried out. I slammed the door shut behind them and turned to face Charlie Grosvenor.

  “You’d better have a good excuse for this behavior, Mister Hacker,” he said. “Before I call security and have you arrested.”

  “Get Jacoby in here … now,” I snarled.

  “I can’t do that,” Grosvenor said. “He’s working the press room. I can’t …”

  “Now!”

  Grosvenor looked at me and shrugged. He picked up the nearest telephone and punched a couple of numbers. He waited. “Brett?” he said. “Can you come to my office right away?” He listened. “Yes, yes, I know. I need to see you. It’s important.” He hung up.

  “He’ll be right up,” he said. “Now will you please tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Did he tell you this morning that I had been burned up in a motel fire?” I asked.

  “Well, since you obviously haven’t been, that would be a ridiculous thing for him to say, wouldn’t it?”

  “He announced it to the entire press room,” I said.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I’ll tell you when he gets here,” I said. And said no more. I took a position somewhat behind the office door, standing against the wall.

  It wasn’t long before there was a hesitant knock at the door. “Come,” said Grosvenor.