P.G.A. Spells Death

by James Y. Bartlett

  “Don’t look like much,” Oswald said. “But just wait.”

  We climbed off the bus and went inside. The cinder-block room was filled with plywood tables with square holes cut in the middle. Underneath each hole was a fifty-five gallon plastic trash can. Customers sat around the tables and huge trays of boiled crabs and shrimp were brought out, along with wooden blocks and small wooden hammers: you used the hammer to crack the shells of the crabs, dug out the meat and tossed the empty shells into the hole in the table.

  “Mistah Ben,” called out a large black women standing behind the counter at one end of the room. “Bless your heart!”

  “Hiya, Fiona,” Oswald said, waving at her. “We got about eight, and everyone’s hungry.”

  “Y’all done come to the right place, then,” Fiona said. “Sit yourself down and we’ll get you fed right up!”

  We seated ourselves around one of the large tables. Some of Fiona’s crew brought out some pitchers of iced tea, plastic glasses filled with ice and the hammers and planks. The floor was poured concrete, the cinder block walls were painted lime green, the lighting overhead was fluorescent and there was a jukebox against one wall that flashed colors. I went over and pumped in a few quarters and pushed the right buttons and the doleful opening chords of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World” echoed through the room. Some of the other diners, mostly black folk, nodded their approval.

  “Righteous,” said one old man sitting near the juke box. He was wearing a paper bib and his face and fingers all seemed to be coated in crab juice. But he was smiling.

  It wasn’t long before the rest of us were similarly decked in seafood detritus. Fiona brought us several large metal trays loaded with boiled blue crab, several more with boiled shrimp and dishes full of cole slaw, french fries and hush puppies, cocktail sauce and drawn butter. For a long time, there was nothing but silence from our table, except for the sounds of wooden hammers cracking crabs open and humans sucking the delectable meat into their gaping maws.

  Ben Oswald finally sat back with a deep sigh of contentment and looked around the table proudly.

  “Best goddam food south of DC,” he said. “And I’ll kick the ass of anyone who says different.”

  That kind of narcissistic pronouncement was like waving a red flag in front of an angry bull to me, but I decided to let it pass. One, I was too full of fresh shrimp to argue, and two, I realized that being the boss-man was important to The Assassin. He was, of course, just another dipshit who happened to know how to make good golf TV, but so what? I kept my trap shut and thought that Mary Jane, at least, would have approved of my newfound maturity.

  Oswald turned his gaze on me.

  “Whaddya think, Hacker?” he said. “Best seafood you ever had?”

  “Best seafood of its kind,” I said, borrowing the qualifying phrase from what Gary Player always says about whatever golf course he’s standing on. “Bar none.”

  “Goddam right,” Ben growled. “Kelsey? You had enough?”

  “Way too much, Ben,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “Goddam right.” He took a few sheets from the carton of wet wipes that Fiona’s crew placed on the table and wiped down his hands, arms and face, then passed it around.

  “OK,” he said as the rest of us hosed ourselves down. “I want everyone at the course tomorrow at one p.m.,” he said. “Which means those of you going off golfing need to leave early and get back in time. You got that, pro?” He was looking right at Jimmy Williams, who just smiled that 100-watt smile of his and nodded.

  “Meeting at one, rehearsal at two,” Oswald continued, looking around the table. “We’re just three weeks from the Masters. We gotta start handicapping these fuckers, y’know? Tell the folks who’s playing good, who’s not. Van, you got all that?”

  Van Collins, the head announcer, nodded solemnly. He was staring at his tall plastic glass which was filled with ice, water and what I suspected was Scotch that had come from Van’s own hip flask. Van seemed to be a big fan of Scotch.

  Oswald went on. “Billy, you’re on seventeen. Parker, sixteen. Kelsey and Kenny are the rovers. Any questions?”

  I raised my hand.

  “Hacker?”

  “They got dessert here?”

  7

  Tony Sciutto was already in the coffee shop when I came down at eight the next morning, a half-eaten plate of scrambled eggs, grits, hash browns and bacon in front of him. I plopped down across from him in the booth, introduced myself and shook his hand. The waitress brought over a pot of coffee, filled my cup and refilled Tony’s.

  “Sorry, Hacker,” he said, not looking sorry in the least. “I’m an early riser, so I was getting a little hungry.”

  “No apologies necessary,” I said. “Go ahead and eat. I’ll catch up.”

  He picked up his fork and went back at it. Sciutto was probably in his late forties. His hair was black and trimmed short. His complexion was olive, with dark shadows of whiskers evident on his cheeks, even though he had apparently shaved already earlier in the morning. He was wearing jeans and a somewhat faded old golf shirt.

  The waitress came back around and I ordered. Tony kept eating. A couple of the other members of the IBS crew walked past our table. I could tell who they were because both were wearing T-shirts that said “IBS” on the front.

  “Shooter,” one of them said in greeting as they walked past.

  Tony nodded but didn’t stop eating.

  “Shooter?” I asked.

  He looked at me and grinned. “Old nickname,” he said. “It’s a riff off my last name and what I do, so ever since I got into TV, people have called me that.”

  My waffles arrived about the same time he finished his eggs, so I dug in while he sat back with a sigh and sipped some coffee.

  “So,” he said.”Whaddya got?”

  I grabbed the file folder I had brought down from the room with me and tossed it across the table at him. He opened the folder, took out the six or seven pages I had written the night before and began to read.

  “Not sure it’s a script in the format you’re used to, since I have no idea what format that is,” I said. “But I think you can get the gist of it.”

  I ate my waffles while he read. And the three strips of bacon that came with them.

  He finished and looked at me over the tops of the pages.

  “That’s pretty damn good,” he said. “I can work with this. And Becky Ann will make it sing.”

  “Really?” I said. “You’re not just telling me that to make me feel good on my third day on the job?”

  “Oh, Christ no,” he said. “I was fully expecting to have to completely wing this segment. But this is good stuff. Oswald will like it, though he’ll never say so. You can tell he likes something if he doesn’t insult you to your face, but says something nasty about an innocent bystander instead. He’s a piece of work, Ben is.”

  “Great,” I said. “When do we get started?”

  “No time like the present,” he said, standing up. “Besides, we gotta get out to the Plantations by one. Otherwise that asshole will say something insulting to both of us.”

  After a busy morning shooting video at various places around town, Shooter and I rode the IBS bus from the hotel out to the golf course just after noon.

  I was still amazed at how Shooter had taken my skeleton script and turned it into something. I was also amazed that he had made me do the stand-up in front of the camera. He called it laying down the tracks. That had not been something I’d even thought about doing. As they say, I have a great face for radio. But he just told me to shut up and read my lines. Which hadn’t been hard, since they were literally my lines.

  He had used a small handheld camera about the size of a shoebox. I had held a wireless mic for the audio that was captured in his little shoebox. We had done four or five locations, one or two takes each, and then he had smiled at me and said “That’s a wrap!”

  “It is?�
�� I’d said.

  “I’ll give the raw footage to Becky Ann, along with your script and by this time tomorrow, she’ll have a nice four-minute segment,” he said. “You thought of a name for this yet?”

  “A name?”

  “Yeah, you know…’Hacker’s History’ or something like that.”

  “I think Fractured Fairy Tales is taken,” I said.

  “Holy crap,” Shooter said. “Those were great. Rocky and Bullwinkle, right?’

  “Good memory,” I said.

  Our bus pulled in to the Club at Plantation Pines, one of the many fancy real estate developments that dot the Lowcountry coast from Nag’s Head to Jacksonville. Lots of piney woods, black lagoons, green fairways with bright-white bunkers … all surrounded by fabulous McMansions: five-car garages, acres of rolling green lawns and the obligatory pool in the back. I used to wonder where all the rich people who could afford living in these places came from, but decided that was one of the mysteries of the age. They all come from somewhere, brimming with cash and looking for that luxurious respite from a busy, stressful world. Of course, the stress follows them inside the gates, but they don’t know that until they’ve moved in.

  The bus took a side street away from the magnificent brick-and-gable clubhouse with its landscaped entrance drive and four-story USA flag out front, and took us down to the television compound. Here, on a three-acre field of flat, treeless ground, IBS and its contractors had rolled in about a dozen trailers which were now parked cheek to jowl. Off to one side, a bristling array of satellite antennas pointed up into space.

  We embarked from the bus and Shooter led me through the maze of wooden walkways, rimmed on both sides with thick black cables, to the collection of trailers at the center of the field which contained the control rooms and other facilities for the TV crew. One of them held the canteen and that’s where we went first.

  “Don’t know about you, but making TV makes me hungry,” Shooter said and led me inside. Two trailers had been parked side by side and opened up to create a double-wide space. Along the back, white-coated chefs were busy putting hot food of various kinds into the steam trays on the line, and members of the crew lined up with trays and plates to load up. There were burgers and dogs, various kinds of pasta, fresh veggies, salads, desserts and more.

  We got in line, grabbed our plates and trays and went though, loading up for lunch. We grabbed some chairs at the long tables that stood against the wall. Shooter went over to the drinks station and got us each a tall glass of iced tea.

  “Mazeltov,” he said as he sat down.

  “Sciutto a Jewish name?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Naw,” he said. “I’ve just worked in New York too long.”

  “Hey, Hacker,” said a voice behind me. I turned around and saw Digby Allen standing there. He gave me an awkward little wave.

  “Hiya, Digby,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “Good,” he said. He turned and kept walking. Talkative fellow.

  I turned back to my lunch. Shooter nudged me.

  “You know him?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Met him up in New York.”

  “Strange dude,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Who isn’t strange?”

  Shooter grinned at me. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Still that one has a rep with some of the crew.”

  “A rep?”

  “Well, let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise some of us if they found a bunch of dead kittens underneath his bed,” he said. “Just sayin’”

  “Dead kittens?” I said. “Yeah, that qualifies as creepy.”

  Shooter was about to say something else, when Arnie Wasserman stuck his head in the door of the canteen and yelled “Talent group meeting, five minutes. Trailer 33B. Five minutes.”

  “It’s showtime,” Shooter said, and we got up and left.

  8

  Trailer 33B was the main control room for the broadcast. I followed the other talent into the room. One of the long walls was covered almost from end to end with banks of TV monitors. I counted more than thirty screens, each one labeled with either a number or a name, which I assumed was the cameraman, and some of them had both. There was one large monitor in the center of the wall, directly opposite the center of the rows of controls—all glowing with the colors of the rainbow—where the directors sat. I figured that large monitor showed the program feed which went out to the satellites and eventually appeared on TV screens all around the country.

  The tech crew had taken their places at the various boards and controls. Ben Oswald sat in the middle, directly opposite the large main monitor. His leather chair, on plastic wheels like the others in the room, was the largest and plushest. There was nothing in front of him but an empty white blotter. On either side of his position, there were assistant directors with their own specialized control boards, computer screens, and telephones. The assistant director to Ben’s right hand was the guy who mashed the buttons to select which camera’s shot would go out to the world. The guy on the left would be in charge of the Chyron graphics, the scoreboards, and any other informational screen that Oswald might need during the telecast. I didn’t know what the other assistant directors in the main row did, but I assumed they talked to the cameramen, the talent in the booths, and called up the replay tape after good or bad shots. There were some seats behind Oswald, back against the wall opposite the monitors, where the production people sat. And the shorter end walls of the trailer were also utilized with desks set perpendicular to the main set-up. I saw the replay guys taking up positions there, ready to cue up any shot Oswald wanted to show again and get it ready for broadcast.

  Oswald entered the trailer, with Arnie right behind. Ben sauntered over to his seat at the center and sat down. Arnie stood behind him, his ever-present notebook open and ready. Wasserman had dressed down here in the South, and today was wearing starched denim and a long-sleeved cotton shirt in bright pink. Oswald was dressed in his usual frumpy pants and a shirt. He had either given up on the idea of dressing for success, or he just didn’t care anymore.

  “Awright people,” Oswald called out from his high-backed leather command chair. “Listen up. We’re gonna do a live shot rehearsal from two to three. I want everyone in their place and ready to go at 1:55. You all know your places. Let’s be sharp, on the ball. Right? Let’s do it.”

  That was the full extent of the meeting. The announcers turned and filed out of the control room trailer, heading for their assigned places on the golf course: talent to the towers and the fairways, camera and sound crew to their stations. Shooter left. He told me he was shooting approach shots on sixteen. I just stood there.

  “Hacker!” Oswald’s sharp eyes missed nothing. Especially me. “Where the fuck are you supposed to be?”

  “Beats the crap outta me,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ on stilts,” Oswald exclaimed, throwing his hands up in dismay. “Arnie! Tell this idiot fuckwad where he’s supposed to be.”

  He turned back and started firing directions at the group of assistant directors who had taken their seats and were playing with the buttons and slides on their control boards, heads down, looking busy.

  Arnie Wasserman glided over to me. He looked into his notebook and nodded to himself.

  “You’re supposed to be working on your history segment,” he said. “But of course, Shooter is busy. So maybe you should be working on your script?”

  “The segment’s in the can,” I said. “We shot it this morning. Recorded the audio tracks. Becky Ann has the film and the script.”

  He looked at me, lips pursed, eyebrows raised. I don’t think he was expecting that.

  “Really?” he said.

  “Done and dusted,” I said, smiling at him. “Maybe I could just sit in here and watch how great golf television is made.”

  He looked at me closely to see if I was trolling him. I mostly was, but I did want to see how it all worked.

 
“OK,” he said finally and motioned at a nearby empty chair. “Sit there and keep quiet.”

  I mouthed the words Yes, boss at him and sat down.

  At five minutes to two, the overhead lights in the control room were turned off. But with the multiple screens on the wall and the glowing colors from the control boards, there was enough light to see what was going on. The main monitor showed the IBS logo, while the other monitors were jumping around as the cameramen sought some actual golfer to focus on. It was Wednesday, so the morning pro-am was finishing up, and some other players were out playing a few holes, getting ready for the start of the tournament tomorrow.

  Just before the top of the hour, one of the assistant directors announced “thirty seconds.” He gave another warning at fifteen seconds, then ten. Then he counted down: “five…four…three…” He then held two fingers aloft, then one.

  “Music and roll tape,” Oswald barked. Both of the assistant directors flanking Oswald touched a few buttons and we heard the familiar musical intro that IBS used, and the main monitor, now bordered in red to indicate it was live, showed the IBS Sports logo. Aerial shots of the golf course, taken from a helicopter fly-by on a recent bright sunny morning, filled the screen while the studio announcer’s prerecorded voice told the viewers that they were watching the PGA Tour on IBS. Shots of some of the more famous players in attendance danced across the screen.

  “Standby camera two,” Oswald said. I looked up at the bank of monitors and found Camera Two: it was showing the front of the Plantation Pines clubhouse.

  “Standby Van,” Oswald said. “Intro and Camera Two in three … two … now!”

  At his command, the clubhouse shot filled the main screen and Van Collins’ dulcet baritone welcomed viewers to Savannah for the playing of the Southern Plantation Open which, he told us, was an important run-up to the Masters, just three weeks away. Oswald ordered a series of shots of the golf course while Van and Jimmy Williams began talking about which players seemed to be reaching the peak of form, and which ones seemed to need some extra work before heading up to Augusta.