“Nobody owns you, Benton,” I said. “I think there’s a constitutional amendment against it. You either let her push you around like that for all these years, or she’s blackmailing you. And that’s illegal, too.”
His back straightened. “I do not get pushed around,” he said gruffly, but with some pain in his voice. He turned his eyes on me and I had to look away. There was pain in those eyes, too, and I couldn’t bear to look.
“I can see you don’t believe me,” he whispered. “No one believes me. The woman is evil.”
“Evil?” I echoes. “That’s a pretty strong word, Benton.”
“Not strong enough,” he claimed, shaking his head dolefully. “The woman is a manipulator. It’s not enough that she holds all the reins of power. She must control everything, every little detail. No decision, no matter how small, can be made without her approval. Any revenue source must include something for her. She doesn’t manage this Tour, she dominates it. It’s a need she has…”
His voice trailed off sadly. He stared into his glass, his thoughts far, far away. Finally, he sat up with a jolt and took another sip.
“What did she have on you, Benton?” I asked quietly. If I hadn’t heard Mary Beth Burke’s story of Big Wyn’s vicious episode with young Carol Acorn, I wouldn’t have asked the question. But I was beginning to understand something about Big Wyn’s management techniques.
“Wh-what do you mean?” he stammered.
His response told me I was on the right track. I zeroed in.
“Benton,” I said. “You’ve been here more than seven years. Nobody with any dignity would take that much crap from somebody like Big Wyn. Like you said, you were ready to retire when you took this job. So I’m guessing you stuck it out only because you had to. She had something on you. What was it?”
He took another long drink before answering. This time, he pretty much drained his cocktail. Instantly, the waitress appeared and Benton nodded affirmatively. She disappeared.
“I’ll tell you,” he said when she left. He turned toward me with a sigh of what had to be relief. His hands were shaking slightly and color had come up in his face. He seemed anxious to spill something, to someone. And it was more than just the booze talking. Benton Bergmeister had a Lake Meade-sized pool of anguish built up inside, walled in by his own personal Hoover Dam. He had been longing for a way to punch a hole in that dam for a long time and let the truth come gushing out through whatever thick, reinforced walls had been built. He now felt that he could safely do so, and I was the lucky one, or unlucky, to be close at hand when he broke through. And that was now.
“I’ll tell you,” he cried again. “I’ve needed to tell someone for a long time.”
“Is this off the record?” I interrupted. Normally, if a guy wants to spill his guts, you let him and figure out later what you can publish and what you can’t. But I didn’t want to take advantage of Benton’s alcoholic state.
He thought for a minute. “Aw, screw it,” he said finally. “I don’t care what you print about that bitch. She deserves everything she gets.”
Benton took one last fortifying swallow of his drink and prepared to let the waters flow.
Suddenly, there was a high-pitched scream from outside the bar, followed by a hysterical cry for help. Bergmeister was frozen to his chair by the effects of his nine or ten drinks, but I leapt to my feet and ran out to the hallway outside the bar, where the door led to the outside patio.
A well-dressed matron in a blue satin dress was standing there, her fist held to her shocked, gaping mouth. She was staring out the double glass doors. A long, red smear of blood on one of the doors led downward to the figure of a slumped heap on the walkway outside. The heap was Honie Carlton.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I got to Honie first, while behind me I heard someone say
“Get an ambulance…fast!”
She lay on her back on the sidewalk, her all-American face gray with shock and creased by rivulets of blood. Kneeling, I felt for a pulse on her neck. When I felt the steady beat, relief washed over me. She was hurt, but not in any immediate danger. The blood was pouring from a couple of nasty gashes on her temple and scalp, and I could see a bluish welling beginning to rise on her left cheekbone. Her eyes were closed and when I gently lifted an eyelid, I could see her eyeballs had rolled backwards into her head. That was not a good sign.
My examination was halted when I was unceremoniously jerked away by two extra-strong hands. They belonged to a heavy-set man dressed inconspicuously in khakis and a white, short-sleeved oxford. The walkie-talkie affixed to his belt told me who he was: hotel security.
He made the same kind of cursory examination of Honie’s vital signs that I had, pulled his handset from its leather clip and spoke a few soft words into it. Almost simultaneously, I heard the soft bleating of a siren in the distant night air. The security guy look around at the small crowd of aghast guests that had gathered.
“It’s okay folks,” he said calmly, holding Honie’s head off the ground. “Help’s on the way. Go on, now. Give us some room here. Thanks.”
Some other hotel personnel ran up and helped push the crowd back inside the glass doors. Standing in the doorway, peering out with her hand to her mouth in a pose of shock, was Casey Carlyle. I watched as she turned and sped down the hallway towards the lobby.
The security guy turned to look at me when I didn’t move away with the rest. “Husband?” he asked.
“Friend,” I said. “She’s with the LPGA. Name’s Honie Carlton.”
“She staying here?” the guy asked. I nodded. He pulled his walkie talkie out again and passed on the news. I could imagine the fast telephone call that would be made to the general manager. Hotel guest assaulted outside main building. Possible liability suit. Get down here fast and begin damage control.
“Get lots of muggings around here?” I asked.
The security guy cocked an eye at me, but after a moment’s pause, shook his head. “Very unusual,” he said. “Neighborhood around here’s not too good, but we hardly ever get bad guys in here. We have cameras and sensors all over the place. We’ll close the place down tight and do a perimeter search. If there’s a perp hiding out there –” he motioned out at the golf courses, “—we’ll find him.” All the time he was talking, I noticed that he was carefully attending to Honie. He made sure her airways were unclogged and that she could breathe. He held her head just above the hard concrete of the sidewalk and had pulled out a handkerchief to try and wipe some of the blood from her face.
The siren got louder as it whooped up to the hotel and within minutes, two paramedics burst through the glass doors. They took over from the security guy, made yet another quick examination and radioed in Honie’s vital statistics to a hospital emergency room. They moved with efficiency and skill, and the security guy and I backed off and watched.
“Don Collier,” the security guy said, holding out his hand. “I’m with the hotel.”
I told him my name and we shook hands. “I’m going with her,” I told him. “She’s an old friend. I’m also staying here at the hotel.” I told him my room number.
Two more paramedics arrived with a stretcher, and accompanied by three management-types from the hotel. Collier pulled them off into a corner and briefed them. He spoke a few more times into his walkie-talkie.
As they lifted her onto the stretcher, Honie groaned once, softly. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. I followed the crew back through the lobby and out to the entrance. It took a bit of arguing, but eventually they let me ride in the ambulance to the hospital. I think they saw the look in my eyes.
On the ride in, one of the medics riding in back with me telephoned in to the hospital.
“Mobile Three,” he said. “We’ve picked up the Doral call. White female, approximately 25 years old. Contusions and app
arent concussion. Loss of blood minimal. Possible fractures to ribs, collarbone, upper arms. Blood pressure steady. Breathing normal. Over.” He looked up at me. “They’ll have a neurologist standing by and get the orthopedist on call to come check her out for broken bones. I don’t think anything major is busted, but her breathing is a little wheezy, which could mean a broken rib or two. She’ll be okay.”
He looked down at her as the ambulance weaved through traffic.
“World’s going to hell when they start attacking guests at the Doral,” he said. “Druggies know where the money’s at, though. All those rich tourists are like sitting ducks for them. And the druggies don’t give a damn how it looks for the Chamber of Commerce.”
He bent down over Honie and listened again to her breathing through a stethoscope. Her eyelids flickered open briefly and another soft moan escaped from her lips. I reached across the cramped aisle of the ambulance and grabbed her hand. It felt cold and limp and lifeless.
“Hey, kid,” I said softly. “It’s Hacker. You’re gonna be okay. We’re on the way to get you an aspirin or something, so just hold on.”
Her eyes flicked open and she turned her head to look at me as through a thick and enveloping fog.
“Murr,” she said thickly, trying to sit up. The paramedic and I gently pushed her back down. “Murr,” she said again, insistently. “Wampy…hernninon…bulldosh.. farrinch.” Her eyes closed again and she was silent for the rest of the ride.
“They sometimes are like that after a concussion,” the medic said. “It’s normal. She’ll be okay.”
At the hospital, I was politely but firmly held back while they wheeled Honie out of sight into the bowels of the emergency room. The paramedic who’d been driving took me to an orderly who took me to a nurse who took me to a small office where I was forced to spend half an hour answering questions posed by a bored clerk in front of a computer screen. I knew the answers only to about half the questions, and when I began to wonder in a loud voice if they were withholding medical services for lack of answers to a bunch of stupid questions, and whether they were prepared for some major-league malpractice suits, they finally led me back to her curtained-off room.
There, a slightly harried doctor of Asian descent assured me that Honie was stable, breathing well and would be held overnight for observation. Nothing broken, nothing damaged, pretty good concussion resulting from a beating. All precautionary tests had been ordered, results would be studied later that night and again in the morning. Patient had been medicated for pain and would sleep comfortably and deeply through the night. Come back in the morning, Mr. Hacker, sir, and she should be able to hold a conversation with you. But not now.
So I taxied back to the Doral and went searching for Don Collier. The security office was housed in a mobile trailer, a boxy, prefab structure well hidden behind the main hotel structure. Wooden stairs led up to the trailer’s door and a latticelike molding had been nailed into place around the base to disguise the concrete blocks upon which the building rested. Going up the three stairs, I could feel the whole building shake.
Inside, Collier was alone, sitting at a cheap metal desk, talking on his telephone. The air inside was hot and stale and smelled of burnt coffee. Behind the door, I noticed a blackened glass globe coffee pot, with a half-inch of acidic brew curdling inside.
Collier’s desk was military neat and mostly empty. The desk took up most of the width of the trailer. Behind it were a couple of beat-up file cabinets and a row of TV monitors, each showing a different view of some public area of the hotel. Red lights winked off and on below the monitors, on which the pictures changed periodically. Most of the cameras were showing doorways.
Collier hung up the phone and looked up at me.
“Nice digs,” I said.
He looked around and shrugged. “Not much sense making like Donald Trump,” he said. “No one much comes in here except me and my men. All we do is try and keep it clean. How’s the girl?”
“She’s sleeping it off,” I told him. “Nothing broken except her head. Any news on this end?”
He shook his head. “Negative,” he said. “No witnesses as far as I can find, no sign of any nonlocals. We swept the golf courses and only found one couple engaged in nonauthorized activity on thirteen green of the Gold course.”
“Nonauthorized activity?” I asked.
“Screwing like bunnies,” Collier grinned at me. “Let’s just say we scared the pants back on ’em.” He laughed. “These conventioneers can come up with the strangest places to make whoopee. Never figured out why they want to roll around in pesticides and get their privates attacked by bugs when we have some of the most comfortable beds in the world. But hey—” he shrugged, “The customer is always right.”
His phone rang and I watched the changing views of doors and entrances while he spoke briefly.
“I personally checked around that courtyard where Miss Carlton was assaulted,” he said after he hung up. “Nothing there I could see, but I’ll take another look after sunrise. I did find Miss Carlton’s things, however.”
He turned to a little cabinet behind his desk and pulled a notebook binder and Honie’s pocketbook out of the top drawer. The binder was one of those bulky, daily calendar efficiency things, with colored tabs and preprinted sheets designed to help workaday types organize and plan every last facet of their lives. I have a deep and long-standing aversion to the damn things. I don’t like to look at a blank page and worry about thinking up enough things to do to fill up an entire day. I don’t like to preplan my life down to the quarter hour. I prefer to let life happen. I like to do what I feel like doing. I don’t like being made to feel guilty if all I can think of to do is two things in a day, leaving all those extra lines blank. I don’t like seeing all those empty lines as representative of my pathetic attempt at a life. Besides, I’ve never seen one of those damn things that had a space on it labeled “Break to take a leak.” Guess that’s not an efficient way to spend one’s time.
“Mind if I take a look?” I asked Collier. He nodded his assent, so I picked up the notebook and began to leaf through it. I found the section for today’s activities. Honie was apparently one of those hyperorganized persons, but I decided not to hold that against her. Looking back through the last few days of her calendar, I saw her scribbled notations, phone numbers and messages, and appointments listed in her neat handwriting. Some of her entries were in some kind of personal shorthand code, and others had been crossed out, apparently when the task had been accomplished.
“Hacker A. 4:30 p.m. Flt. #478.”
“Cocktails, 7:30. Wyn’s suite. Send dress out for cleaning.”
I remembered when Honie had been dismissed from the gathering that first night and my heart went out to her.
I flipped over to today’s activities. Once back from the beach, her afternoon had been a busy one. She had apparently met with several of the local TV news crews and sports writers doing interviews, distributed a handful of publicity photos of some of the players, checked on supplies for the press room and called ahead to the next tournament stop, in Sarasota, for some advance work. There was also a penciled notation at the bottom of the page that caught my eye. “Julie W. 5:30. Bring pub.cal.”
“Did you see this?” I asked Collier, showing him the notation. “It looks like it was added after the rest of the day’s tasks. Everything else on this page is written in ink.”
Collier nodded. “Already checked it out,” he said. “Julie W. is Julie Warren, one of the players. She’s also on the player’s committee and she told me that she had asked Miss Carlton to discuss some future publicity plans for the next few tournaments. ‘Pub.cal’ stands for ‘publicity calendar.’ She said they met for about forty-five minutes in the Players’ Lounge, then went their separate ways. Miss Carlton was assaulted an hour later. Miss Warren says she went back to
her room after the meeting and took a shower.”
I shrugged and went back to Honie’s daily calendar. But I couldn’t find anything else that might indicate who or why. Still, I recalled uneasily, Honie’s description of Big Wyn’s Mafia included Julie Warren. Had Big Wyn sent Julie to beat Honie up? Even with what I knew about Big Wyn’s style, I doubted that.
“Let me know if anything turns up,” I told Collier. “Somebody whacked the hell out of that girl and I’d like to find out who.”
“You and me both, pal,” he said.
Walking back through the lobby on my way to my room, I was intercepted by Casey Carlyle. She was wearing conservative slacks and a cashmere sweater.
“Oh, Hacker, there you are,” she said, gushing a bit as she grabbed my arm. “I understand you went to the hospital with Honie. Is she OK? Is she badly hurt? Did she say who did this terrible thing?”
I look for a moment into her cool blue eyes. Her words indicated a normal concern for a fellow employee, but her eyes were dead and flat, as they had been the night of Wyn’s cocktail party. I got the sense I was being pumped for information. But I smiled at her and patted her shoulder reassuringly.
“Oh, she’s been hurt pretty bad,” I said, “But the doctor says she’ll be fine. Nobody knows what happened yet. They’ll try and talk to her in the morning.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Casey exhaled. “I’ll go and tell Wynnona.”
She turned and took her beautiful self away in gliding, graceful steps, her long blond hair streaming behind her. Call me a cynic, but as she went I wondered to myself if she was going to tell Big Wyn that Honie wasn’t badly injured, or that Honie hadn’t yet identified her assailant.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Death from the Ladies Tee Page 9
