Death at the Member Guest

by James Y. Bartlett

“Mr. Hacker … you got a phone call,” he said.

  I looked at the note. Tony Zec had called from Endicott, New York. Right on schedule. The kid was good at following orders.

  I went into the phone booth at the back of the grille and placed the call. I got through to the pressroom at the B.C. Open and Suzy Chapman answered on the second ring. “Press room,” she said in a tired, early morning voice.

  “Suze … don’t you ever go home? Does Tim Finchem know how many hours you put in for the Tour?”

  “Hacker,” she said wearily. “Finchem doesn’t know shit from shinola about anything other than smoozing either the players or the bigwigs who got bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. He could care less if I work seven hours a week or seventy.”

  “So,” I said cheerily. “Going well up there is it?”

  “Swimmingly,” she said. “First round got delayed by two hours of heavy rain. Just barely got the second round in yesterday, although the last three groups had to finish in the dark. Which meant I had to be here, oh, I’d guess about 20 hours. I hate golf.”

  I laughed. “How’s my young intern doing?” I asked.

  “Oh, you mean Warren Beatty Jr.?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “He’s doing pretty good, I think. Hasn’t sneezed on anyone’s backswing. Yet. Actually, he’s a nice kid. Reminds me of my little brother, a little. Except for all that acne.”

  “Is he there?”

  “I think he went out to the practice range to talk to some of the guys,” she said. “Want me to have him call you he gets back?”

  “Nah,” I said. “I’m gonna be busy most of the day.”

  “I’m sure you are,” she said. “Remember to take it back slow.”

  I laughed again. “Tell him I’ll call tonight. O-seven hundred.”

  “That’s what it is right now, you dumbshit,” she said. “You probably mean nineteen hundred. Seven o’clock pee emm in civilian?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I was a draft dodger. What you said.”

  “Ten-four,” she said and hung up.

  I went back and finished my breakfast. Frank Donatello had given the B.C. Open all of three inches of wire service crap, and run an inch of the leaderboard. That covered the first ten golfers. But the hapless Patriots got six pages of breathless coverage, in which our readers learned everything about every player up to and almost including the names of their kindergarten teachers. It would have been more interesting if we published the names and reputed side effects of the steroids each member of the team was taking, but I guess that wasn’t in the cards.

  With another cup of strong black coffee inside, I felt half human again. I walked into the pro shop to pick up some balls for the day. Teddy McDaggert was standing in the doorway the led back to his little cramped warren of an office, just off the back of the shop behind the counter. He was leaning against the door jamb, staring at nothing.

  I walked up and greeted him. “Mornin’ Ted,” I said. “Coupla sleeves of Titleists please.”

  He didn’t answer. Still staring off at nothing, he slowly raised a hand containing a cigarette to his lips and took a deep pull. I couldn’t help but notice that his hand was shaking. He blew the smoke out in a long, slow cloud.

  I waved my hand in front of his face.

  “Yo! Earth to McDaggert! Customer needs service. Come in please!”

  He started upright, his face beginning to color red, and he grinned at me sheepishly. “Sorry, Hacker,” he said. “Guess I’m not awake yet. Whaddya need?”

  I repeated my order and he bent to get the balls out of the glass counter, putting the cigarette in his mouth to free up his hands.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said. “Those things’ll kill ya.”

  “If this place don’t,” he answered. “One way or another, I’m goin’ toes up someday anyway.” He put the balls on the counter, I slipped him some bills and he turned away. I looked at the back of his head for a moment, then shrugged and turned away. Teddy looked like he had just lost his best friend. I shrugged and put it down to tournament stress. Couldn’t be easy running this three-day circus, trying to make everyone happy and having Vitus Papageorge looking over your shoulder the whole time. I glanced at my watch and, seeing that I had only about ten minutes before we were due on the tee, decided against going to hit some balls. I figured I had time to hit a few putts and that’s it. Not as good as warming up properly, but what the hell. Guy’s gotta adjust to the circumstances. And it was going to be a long day, anyway.

  I went outside and began to scan the long line of golf carts to find the one that held our clubs. To save time and energy, the crew just kept the golf bags on the carts at night and drove them back into the cart barn to plug them in to the chargers overnight. I couldn’t see my bag, and walked up and down the line for a minute. Finally, I caught the attention of an older teen holding a clipboard that looked like he was the caddie master.

  “You got Connolly’s cart somewhere?” I asked the kid. “We’re going off ten in about fifteen minutes.”

  The kid checked the list. “They should be out here,” he said. “There might be a couple wagons still in the barn haven’t been wheeled out yet. I can run down and look.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “You got stuff to do here. I’ll go. I just need my putter.”

  The kid pointed to a wooden shed behind a hedgerow at the back of the parking lot and I strolled across the asphalt. It was another gorgeous early fall day, and the sun was burning off the early morning chill. A light breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees. It was going to be a perfect day for golf.

  The cart barn was an old wooden structure with a pitched roof, stained with age, with two large swinging doors on either end. Pine needles draped on the roof and spilled out of the gutters on the side. One of the front doors was open, but it was still dark and gloomy inside. I could see the metal framing overhead, which held the big electrical transformers from which the plug-in wires dangled. I walked in the open door, and saw the shadows of some carts parked at the rear. Because there were no windows, it got darker and darker inside as I walked deeper into the shed. The air was hot and stagnant and slightly acrid. A low humming sound from the electrical chargers filled the barn.

  Halfway back into the barn, it became pitch black. I turned around and walked back towards the open door. I looked on both sides and finally found a bank of light switches. I flipped them to the on position. There were maybe ten carts still parked at the back, still connected to their thick yellow umbilicals dangling down from the overhead framework.

  I walked back. About halfway down the length of the barn, I stopped. Walking and breathing. Behind the last cart, something was hanging from the overhead grid. Something dressed in golf clothes. Something with a thick yellow electrical cord wrapped tightly around its neck. Something that was obviously dead.

  All I could see was the back. One arm hung limply by its side. The fingers of the other arm were tucked underneath the electrical cord, frozen in a terrible and unsuccessful battle to loosen the noose. The body began to turn slowly. And slowly, inexorably, the purple face of Vitus Papageorge swung into sight. His open eyes bulged and his tongue hung out of his silently crying mouth in horrible rictus. The diamonds in the rings on the hand that had been scratching at his neck twinkled cheerfully at me in the artificial light. But there was no light at all in his eyes.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, staring, frozen in place. I don’t know how long it was before the kid with the clipboard came whistling through the doorway behind me.

  “Found your clubs?” he asked cheerfully.

  Then he saw what I was staring at.

  “Holy Christ,” the kid said. He dropped the clipboard in a clatter and started forward as if to try and save Papageorge from his fate. I stuck out my hand and grabbed him.

  “Go and have Teddy call the cops,” I told him, trying to keep my voice calm and steady. “Nobody should be allowed in here until t
he cops get here. Go tell McDaggert. Now.”

  “Holy Christ,” the kid said again. Then he turned and ran out.

  Bedlam broke out quickly in the quiet environs of the Shuttlecock Club. Murder will do that. Throw a professional-size monkey wrench into anyone’s day. The kid came running back to the cart barn with Teddy McDaggert at his heels. Ted took one look at Vitus dangling from the rafters of his cart barn, said “fuck” rather softly under his breath and turned and ran out again. I’m not sure, but I’ll bet the PGA of America operations manual doesn’t have a chapter on what to do when the president of your club is found hung by the neck in the cart barn. Teddy would have to wing this one. The kid stayed and gazed at the body of Vitus Papageorge as it continued to twist slowly on the electrical cord.

  Pretty soon, a crowd of gasping, whispering onlookers gathered at the door to the cart barn, trying to peer inside. For some reason, people tend to whisper in the presence of death. Don’t know why. At this point Vitus Papageorge certainly could care less if they whispered or shouted. And I can’t say I gave much of a damn about it either.

  Jack Connolly pushed his way through the crowd and came and stood beside me. Together, silently, we watched Vitus hanging there. He stopped twisting. Thankfully, he stopped with his face to the back wall. I was getting tired of looking at those bulging eyes and ugly tongue.

  “Hmmm,” Jack said after a minute. “Looks dead.”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  “Nope,” I said. “You?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Good idea, though.”

  We were vetting some emotional steam, of course, but I glanced over at Jackie and saw that he was doing what I had first done. He was studying the scene, trying to see if he could figure out what happened. How it happened. It’s a reporter’s first instinct at a crime scene. Piece together the story. Find the beginning and work it through to the end. Who, what, when, where and how. That way, you don’t get caught up in the raw emotion of death, bloodshed and violence and the various unspeakable ways in which human beings often treat each other.

  I don’t know what Jackie saw, but I noticed that Vitus’ body hung some three feet away from the back of an empty golf cart that had been pulled forward, out of line with the final row of carts at the back of the barn. I noticed his huge staff bag filled with shiny clubs leaning against the back wall of the barn, next to a smaller, slightly care-worn bag of clubs that probably belonged to Fred Adamek. Since they were walking, their clubs wouldn’t have been strapped into a golf cart. There were three other golf carts still parked in a neat row, the yellow electrical cords still hooked up to the overhead transformers. One of those carts held my clubs and Jackie’s.

  “Looks like he was propped up on the back of that cart, the cord wrapped around his neck and the cart was then driven forward, leaving him dangling,” I said.

  “Umm,” Jackie nodded agreement. “Just like a hanging in the Wild, Wild West.”

  Behind us, I heard Teddy McDaggert chasing the onlookers away from the cart barn. “Cops on the way,” he said. “Stay away from the barn. Don’t want to mess up the crime scene.” Teddy had obviously been watching all the cop shows on TV.

  When he got the other golfers out of the way, he shut the two swinging doors on the front of the barn. The overhead fluorescent lights that I had switched on now provided the only illumination.

  With the doors closed, the air got closer and hotter almost immediately. And something changed in the air pressure, causing Vitus to swing around one more time, facing us.

  “Do you see something under his eye?” I asked Jackie, pointing.

  “The right one?” he asked, peering. “Looks like the beginning of a mouse.”

  “Could be where someone slugged him,” I said.

  “Maybe knocked him out so they could string him up,” Jackie nodded.

  “So who do you think?” I asked.

  “Shit Hacker,” Jackie sighed loudly. “Could have been almost anyone in the club, plus maybe a thousand people in both Lowell and half the state of New Hampshire. I don’t know too many people who actually liked the son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Cops should have fun with this one,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Jackie said. “Which reminds me. I ought to go call this one in. We might actually want to run something in tomorrow’s newspaper.”

  “Sure it won’t offend any advertisers?”

  “Up yours,” he snorted and left the barn.

  I glanced at my watch. 7:45. I still had about four hours before the first deadline for the early blue-star edition of my newspaper. Which would be just about enough time for me to come up with an explanation for Frankie Donatello as to why I was playing golf at the Shuttlecock Club in Lowell when he thought I was covering the PGA Tour in Endicott, New York. But rather than call the city desk right away, I decided to hang around for a bit and see what happened next.

  I heard a faint siren in the distance and listened as its insistent whoop-whoop got louder and louder. The first car skidded to a halt outside the cart barn and the doors flew open again. A uniformed cop came through first, his gun drawn and held down by his side. A short and plump man with dark hair, black slacks, white shirt, black shiny shoes, sticking a plastic case holding his shiny gold badge into his breast pocket, followed him. The uniform cop went over to Vitus, looked at him for a moment, then felt for a pulse in the carotid artery. He glanced over at the short guy standing next to me and shook his head once, briefly.

  The short guy blew out a breath, short and loud. He turned to look at me.

  “Tierney,” he said. “Lowell PD. Who’re you?”

  “Hacker,” I said. “Guest here. Came in to find my clubs. Found him hanging there.”

  “Was he dead?” Tierney asked.

  “Well, he wasn’t exactly doing the cha-cha,” I said. Tierney gave me the hard look cops do so well. I guess it was a little early in the morning to smart off. The uniformed cop was speaking softly into his shoulder-mounted microphone. Calling in the crime, requesting the medical examiner, photographer, crime-scene unit. Maybe ordering some coffee and doughnuts, too.

  Tierney turned to Ted McDaggert. “What’s your story?” he barked.

  “I’m Ted McDaggert, the golf pro here. This is the annual member-guest tournament here…all weekend. This guy…” he nodded at the dangling Vitus, “Is … was … the club president. Name is Vitus Papageorge.”

  “The banker?” Tierney asked. I noticed the uniform cop had whipped out a notebook and pencil and was taking all this down.

  “Yeah,” Ted nodded. “I was in the pro shop when my caddie master came running in to tell me Hacker here had found a body in the cart barn. I came to see, then called it in.”

  Jack Connolly strolled back into the barn as if he was dropping by Cumberland Farms to pick up a gallon of milk and some crullers. “Mornin’ Leo,” he said to the short cop in a pleasant, lilting tone.

  Tierney looked at Jack and his eyes got narrow. “Shit,” he said. “We got enough trouble here without the goddam press getting in the way, too. Especially a lace doily like you. Outta here.”

  “Fuck you, Leo,” Jack said, just as pleasantly. “Have you met my partner here? Hacker’s with the Boston Journal.”

  “Holy crap,” Tierney exploded. “Billy, get these asswipes outta here. Get their statements. Then, tape off the barn. Nobody goes home until we talk to them. That goes double for you two idiots,” he said, glaring at Jack and me. “I don’t care what amendment to the Constitution you throw at me, you’re both material witnesses and you don’t get off this island until I say so. Got it?”

  Jackie gave him the upright, one-finger salute and we walked outside the barn and stood there waiting to be interrogated.

  “He doesn’t seem to like you,” I said.

  “Well, most of the Lowell cops don’t,” Jack said with a smile. “We’ve kinda hammered the police union about all the
political promotions and cheating on the tests and stuff. They seem to think I’m some cop hater or something.”

  “Are you?”

  “Oh, hell yes,” Jack said. “Cops these days are greased more than an old Ford in the pits at Darlington. Not that I blame them, really. If I had people trying to stab, spit on or shoot me every working day, I’d wanna get a little extra for the trouble, too. But it’s the political crap that offends me. Anyway, there are still a few good ones, and I think Leo Tierney is actually a close as we get these days to an honest cop. He comes from a long line of cops. It’s in his DNA.”

  While we stood there in the bright morning sunshine, we watched a round little man in an ill-fitting black suit come running down the sidewalk from the main clubhouse. As he drew nearer, I noticed his well-gelled, slicked-back hair, his jowls that bounced as he ran, and the two pinky rings that glistened in the sun. He nodded rather frantically at Jack as he passed us and bustled into the barn. He was halfway through the door when we heard his outrushing exclamation of horror.

  “And that would be?” I asked my partner

  . “Herbert Incavaglia, our club manager,” Jack said. “Obsequious little twerp who kisses up to everyone. In fact, I think that’s Herbie’s main job description: Kiss up to all members. He’s particularly good at berating the staff in public. You know, snaps his fingers and demands loudly that the waitress go immediately to the kitchen and tell them Mrs. Pennington wants her garlic-mashed potatoes instead of these cold au gratins. Stuff like that. There aren’t enough drugs in the world that would enable me to do that job.”

  “Bet his nose was solidly welded to Vitus’ butt,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” Jack said. “Vitus hired the guy. Some of us think that Herbie tattled to Vitus whenever he heard someone making critical or negative comments.”

  “Hmmm,” I said thoughtfully.

  The uniformed cop came out of the barn, took us over near his squad car and flipped open his notebook. Licking the end of his pencil – why does anyone do that? I wondered – he looked at me and said “Start at the beginning.” I suppressed my urge to smart off to the guy, or make his life difficult, and just told him our story. What time we arrived at the club, what we did, and how I came to walk into the cart barn looking for my putter and discovering instead the corpus delecti.