An Open Case of Death

by James Y. Bartlett

  They’d done such a good job that people eventually forgot who the owners were. Because that had been news when they bought the place. All four of the Amigos was famous for something.

  J.J. Udall had been a well-known figure in sports for decades. He’d been part owner of an NFL team, then took over the commissioner’s job for a short time after Pete Rozelle died. He’d been part of a group of bigwigs who put up the cash to bail out the Los Angeles Olympics and turned it into a money maker. He’d owned a big share of an international sports television network, which raked in profits. Anything J.J. Udall got involved in made money by the truckloads. And in his earlier years, with matinee idol good looks, he had run through a stream of starlets and heiresses, making headlines with every affair and divorce along the way.

  The other financial power among the Amigos was Harold Meyer, a gnome-like San Francisco-based businessman who was much less public-facing than Udall, but equally as wealthy. If not more so. Meyer had purchased a big international airline for peanuts, ran it for fifteen years and sold it for billions just before a market crash killed it off. He took his profits and bought a company that made the kind of private jet which every wealthy mogul, foreign dictator, CEO, politician and PGA Tour star had to have. He was said to own pieces and parts of dozens more international companies involved in mining and military and manufacturing all over the world; some had called Harold Meyer a walking, talking military industrial complex.

  For the public face of Pebble Beach, they had brought in two more locals. One was Jack Harwood, the movie star, whose career started with a bunch of spaghetti westerns shot in Italy and then, thanks to a bit of lucky casting in an obscure movie that suddenly captured the world’s attention, he was transformed into a romantic matinee idol. Women swooned over him and men wanted to be him. After becoming a surefire box office smash who could and did command untold millions per film, he switched sides of the camera and began directing. Three Oscars later, he was at the top of that game, too. Fabulously wealthy and notoriously cheap, he still lived in a smallish mansion above Carmel by-the-Sea and had even done a turn as mayor of that determinedly iconoclastic little village.

  The last of the Amigos was Will Becker, one of the PGA Tour’s top stars in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Becker had played in the era of Nicklaus and Palmer and Watson, made tons of cash on Tour and won a small handful of majors, enough to solidify his reputation as one of the near-greats. The other three Amigos had brought Becker into their little ownership group because he was universally beloved by golf fans, had been born and raised in nearby Gilroy, the garlic-growing capitol of the free world, and, when wheeled out in front of the cameras next to Jack Harwood, was automatic good copy for the media.

  “OK,” I said, “Pebble Beach is experiencing some changes. Happens to everyone, right? Udall has joined the Choir Invisible. So what? He was, what, eighty years old? Didn’t he have a couple of heart attacks recently? His death can not have been a big surprise to anyone.”

  “No, of course not,” Strauss said. “But there’s a problem.”

  “There is?” I tried not to sound like a wise-ass, but failed miserably. Like I usually do. “You mean you trained me all the way down here to West 44th and fed me popovers because the Four Amigos are fighting over who gets to hold the biggest share of Pebble Beach? No wait, I mean the surviving Three Amigos.”

  “Do you mind if I explain?” Strauss looked unhappy. “The partnership agreement between and among the four principal partners was of course well structured and thought out and prepared with succession issues in mind.”

  “Of course,” I said. I sounded peevish, but was actually a little interested to hear where this thing was going.

  “J.J. Udall, despite all of his many famous relationships and four marriages, had never had any children,” Strauss said. “At least, none that anyone knew anything about.”

  “Hoo, boy,” I said. “Here it comes.”

  “And then, two weeks after his death, I received this …” Strauss reached into his coat pocket and extracted a folded paper, which he handed across the table to me.

  I opened it and read it. It was hand written on a blank white sheet of paper in blue ink. It was dated about a month earlier, or shortly after Udall’s death. It basically said the writer was the one and only offspring of the great James Jackson Udall and he wanted whatever portion of the Udall estate was due and pending, including all ownership shares of the Pebble Beach Company, a California corporation. It was signed “Michael Newell, Eureka, California.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Is it real?”

  “We don’t know,” Strauss said. “We’re trying to find out.”

  “I assume the appearance of this heir throws a monkey wrench into the plan to reorganize the company among the remaining three Amigos?”

  “It does indeed,” Strauss said. “The trust plan calls for a one-time distribution of Udall’s investment share to his estate and the redivision of the balance of assets into three equal shares to be controlled by the surviving shareholders. But the agreement says that any heirs to Udall’s estate would also receive a beneficial distribution equal to his original investment.”

  “How much did Udall put into the company at the beginning?”

  “Two hundred and fifty million,” Strauss said.

  I whistled. “So if this letter is true, this Newell guy stands to walk away with a quarter of a billion bucks. Does the Pebble Beach Company have that much money lying around?”

  “No,” Strauss said, shaking his head sadly. “It can probably raise that amount, since it is one of the premiere golf resorts in the world. But it will take some doing.”

  “How come you’re involved in all this?” I asked. “What does any of this this have to do with the U.S. Golf Association?”

  “Good question,” he said, nodding to himself. “First, I handled the Pebble Beach Company account at Baruch Brothers. I helped put this deal together for them twenty-odd years ago. Yes, I am retired from that firm, but working for Baruch is not unlike working for the CIA…when they call, you answer.”

  Silent Sam the waiter stopped by to see if we wanted anything else. We didn’t.

  “And as far as the USGA is concerned, we’re staging our national championship at Pebble next June,” he continued. “It would not be in our best interests if a nasty ownership battle blew up before or during the tournament. We’d rather the focus be on the golf, not the squabbling between parties.”

  “And there would be public squabbling because…?”

  “Because the remaining shareholders would have to contribute more equity, according to the terms of the trust. You see…”

  I cut him off. “It’s like a margin call,” I said. “When everything is going swell, they just cash their quarterly dividend checks. But if the doo-doo hits the fan, they have to make a withdrawal from Hip Pocket National Bank.”

  Strauss smiled at me across the table. “Your terminology is rather amusing,” he said, “But you’ve got the general idea.”

  “So if this Newell person is really J.J.’s long-lost kid, it will take a lot of money out of the pockets of Jack Harwood, Will Becker and Harold Meyer,” I said. “A movie star, an old golf pro and a big industrialist, any one of whom is likely to file a big lawsuit. Maybe all three.”

  “Which would create a public relations mess and a headache for the U.S. Golf Association and its national championship,” Strauss said.

  “And what is it you think I can do about any of this?” I said. I was half dreading and half fascinated by what he might say.

  “You seem to have been blessed with the ability to sort out problems like this,” he said.

  “Some would say cursed,” I said.

  He waved his hand. “Whatever. I’ve heard about your special talents and thought you might be of use in this one.”

  I kept silent.

  “I’d like to hire you to find this Michael Newell person,” he said. “Find
out if he is indeed the legitimate offspring of the late J.J. Udall.”

  “They have private investigators for things like that,” I said. “Call your friend down at Augusta National and ask if you can borrow his Pinkerton men for a month or so. They’d be better at it than me. I’m just a golf writer. Unemployed, at that.”

  “I need this done quickly and quietly,” he said. “I’d much rather it didn’t get into the newspapers.”

  “And you think a former newspaper guy would know how to poke around on the Q.T.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  So there it was. The thing the universe had belched up for me. Lying there in all its fragrant rottenness on the nicely starched linen tablecloth of the Harvard Club in Manhattan.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. The words escaped my mouth before my brain got out of first gear. “But I need a cover story. Some unemployed bum asking a lot of personal questions in Pebble Beach is going to trip the alarms with someone.”

  “I can help there,” Strauss said, looking relieved. “Do you know Dickie Steinmetz?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. Dickie was a longtime PR guy at the USGA. He used to edit the association’s magazine, Golf Journal, before they closed it down after everything in the world of print went digital.

  “Dickie had been working on a book, called ‘The Courses of the U.S. Open,’” Strauss said. “Coffee table thing, lots of old black and white photos, all about the courses we’ve used for the Open. You know, Shinnecock, Winged Foot, Baltusrol, Oak Hill, the Country Club…venues like that. Pebble Beach, too.”

  “Sounds like a best seller,” I said. I was being sarcastic.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” he said with a small smile. “But each of those clubs would purchase a few hundred copies to give to their members, so it would have a pretty good base of sales. And we can use it as a premium to give away if you sign up for a $100 annual membership in the U.S.G.A. So I had no trouble arranging for someone to agree to publish the book.”

  “Good for you,” I said, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Unfortunately, Dickie is not well,” Strauss continued. “He can’t finish the book. A small part of it is done. But I can appoint you to finish the last few chapters and that will give you cover, as you said, to work on this little project.”

  I thought about it. It sounded reasonable. I hoped.

  “And how much money are we talking about for this little project?”

  He smiled. We were now back on his kind of terra firma. He mentioned a number, which was almost enough to support my family for the next year. I tried to keep my face neutral while I nodded sagely. Oh, sure…I get offers like this every day. No biggie.

  “Can I think about it?” I asked. “Talk to Mary Jane? Let you know by the end of the week?”

  “Of course,” he said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a billfold. He rooted around and found a business card which he handed across the table. “This is my private number. Call me any time.”

  We stood up and shook hands.

  Mary Jane was over the moon when I reported back.

  “Hoo-yah!” she exclaimed, giving me a high-five. “I knew you could do it! My man, the author. We’ll get you some tweedy sports coats with leather patches at the elbows and maybe a cardigan or two for winter. What do you want for Christmas: the Oxford English Dictionary or a new Roget’s?”

  I held up my hand in a stop signal. “Thanks for the enthusiasm, but calm yourself,” I said. “I don’t even know if the book thing is really real, or just a ruse to get my toes inside the door out at Pebble. I’m really more of a private eye than an author. Maybe you should get me a deerslayer hat, a cape and a magnifying glass.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding a little deflated. But just for a couple of beats. “I think you should do the book anyway. It’s a good idea and you would kill it. I don’t know anybody who knows as much about golf as you do.”

  “Who else do you know who knows anything about golf?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” she said. “I mean, this Strauss guy wants you to finish the book, right? The snoopy stuff is just on the side, right?”

  Even though I’d officially been a married man for less than six months, I knew better than to disagree with my bride.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  Mary Jane was back on cloud nine. She went off to search the Internet for a catalog that sold clothes for authors and I sat back and thought for a while. I still had a lot of questions…questions about why I had agreed to stick my nose into the middle of someone else’s problem. Yeah, the money was helpful. And finishing off the book manuscript seemed easy enough. But there had to be a down side to this deal. I just hadn’t found it yet. But I did wonder why Jake Strauss just didn’t call in an army of Wall Street lawyers and have them crawl over every aspect of this case. They could find this Newell person. They could put him under the bright lights and hammer his kidneys with a leather-bound sap until he fessed up. They could then write codicils and postscripts and supplemental riders until the cows came home and make sure every dollar of profit at Pebble Beach was preserved and protected and delivered to their rightful owners.

  But he wanted me. One part of me was grateful and proud and agreed with his obviously brilliant decision to hire me. But another part, deep down in my lizard brain, I could hear the little ping ping of a warning signal going off.

  Mary Jane was sitting at our dining room table, engrossed in her laptop.

  “Hey,” she said. “Have you ever smoked a pipe? I just found a great sale on Meerschaums. You get a free bag of Borkum Riff with every pipe. Every author ought to smoke a pipe.”

  “You trying to give me throat cancer?” I asked.

  “That reminds me,” she said. “How are you fixed for life insurance?”

  “I had a policy at the Journal,” I said. “But I think it only covered me if I died while committing journalism.”

  “Well, don’t look now, but you’ve come close to collecting more than a few times,” she said. “Victoria and I would miss you a bunch if you were gone, of course, but we’d think more highly of you if we had a couple million in the bank after you croaked. Help get us over our sadness.”

  “Ouch,” I said, chuckling a little. “Okay Mrs. Black Widow, I’ll look into it.”

  She closed the lid on her laptop. “And I won’t insist on the pipe,” she said. “Probably stink up the place anyway.”

  My cell phone beeped at me. I picked it up and answered.

  “Hacker?” It was a male, raspy voice. I couldn’t immediately place it. I glanced at my screen and saw the number had a 415 area code.

  “Yeah?”

  “Andre Citrone,” he said. “San Francisco Chronicle.”

  “Drey? Geez, man, how are ya?” I said. “I haven’t seen you since …” I actually couldn’t remember when I last saw the well-known sports columnist for the Chron. I couldn’t remember seeing him at the PGA at Hazeltine in August or the Open in St. Andrews last July. But then, we were not actually BFFs; we’d say hello to each other at the big golf events and I recall we’d played a round or two together at one or another media happenings over the years. He was a nice fellow, covered all the sports in San Francisco, and appeared on TV occasionally on one of ESPN’s sports pundit shows. They liked him because he often dressed oddly—he favored things like flowing capes, tie-dyed shirts and sometimes one of those Muslim skull caps or taqiyahs—and had all the right political views. Or left, since he was from San Fran. He liked to pose as a mysterious man of the world, although I knew he had been born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, in a rather commonplace middle class family. A child of the Sixties, he had headed for the Left Coast as soon as he could, managed to snag a position as a runner in the Chron’s sports department and worked his way up the ranks to become one of their marquee sportswriting stars. It’s the American way.

  “I know,” he said now, with a chuckle. “I didn’t make it to any of
the majors this year. That’s the first time in I don’t know how many years for me. The paper had me doing other things, for some reason. I think golf is dead.”

  “Or dying. Well, it’s good to hear from you,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “First of all,” he said, “I was sorry to hear that you got laid off. That’s tough. How ya holding up?”

  “Oh, thanks, Drey,” I said. “Yeah, that’s never easy, especially after all these years. But I hear it’s going around.”

  “That’s the damn truth,” he said. “There may not be a newspaper business in ten years. We’re all dinosaurs walking.”

  “Good book title,” I said. “American Journalism: Dinosaurs Walking.”

  He laughed.

  “Speaking of books, I hear you’re writing one,” he said.

  That took me by surprise. How in the hell did he know that? I wondered.

  “I am?” I said. “Where’d you hear that?”

  He laughed again. “Oh, I have my sources,” he said. “They told me you’re coming out this way to do some research. I just wanted to call and offer any help I could for the project.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, actually, I haven’t signed any contracts with anyone yet. Haven’t even decided if I’m going to do it. So, thanks for the offer…I really appreciate it…but there’s no project to speak of, yet.”

  He was silent for a few beats. “That’s not what I was told,” he said. “I’d heard it was a done deal.”

  “Yeah, well, you heard wrong,” I said. “Who’d you hear all this from?”