Brooks Koepka and Ricky Fowler, out in the fairway, both hit nice shots: Koepka to about six feet, Fowler about twenty feet from the hole. The pin was cut in the front left, near the edge of the green, which meant almost all putts were downhill, curvy and fast as hell.
“So why do you still look worried?” I asked Sharky.
“Do I?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” I said as the two golfers walked onto the green amid steady applause from the gallery. “Your forehead is all scrunched up, and I think you’re running out of nails to bite.”
He chuckled. “Still got ten toes,” he said.
“You take off your shoes, bucko, and I’m outta here.”
Fowler’s putt rimmed the hole but spun away three feet. The crowd groaned in unison. The golf groan. Koepka took his time with his birdie and rammed it home. There was an explosion of joyful noise. The putt moved him to five under par, just two back of the leader.
“So what’s got under your skin?” I pressed, when they walked off toward the seventeenth tee.
Sharky shrugged. “Just a feeling,” he said.
We watched two more groups play through. Most of them made par, except for Matt Kuchar who found the bunker across the green from us, had to come out softly to keep the ball on the green, and was left with a fifteen footer for par, which he missed.
“Let’s go get a brewski,” I said. I nodded at the concession stand across the barranca and a little way back up the fairway, off to the right. He nodded, and we slowly made our way through the crowds, around the green and up the cart part back towards the tee.
I bought a couple of overpriced Budweisers—is there any other kind?—and we stood there drinking, checking out the posterior attributes of the female fans walking past and occasionally looking at the golfers playing the hole. Being that we were in California, some of the posterior attributes were deserving of our careful attention.
Sharky nudged me suddenly.
“Hack,” he said in a whisper. “Two guys at two o’clock.”
I looked and immediately saw two large men coming our way, up the hill from the green. It’s funny, but I could tell immediately that these two were not here at Pebble Beach to watch the golf.
The tallest of the two was just over six feet, had a heavy five o’clock shadow on his face and his eyes were darting around the crowd of people. He was looking for somebody, or something. He wore black jeans, heavy soled work boots, a navy windcheater jacket and a dark knitted cap. Not your typical, let’s go watch some golf kind of outfit. Plus, he had black fingerless gloves on his hands.
The other one, following a step or two behind, was shorter and rounder, with a heavy, florid face. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.
They were stopped about fifty yards away. The tall guy was still scanning the crowds. But they were still in search mode, it seemed to me.
“You know them?” I asked.
“The fat guy is a bouncer at a strip club over in Salinas,” Sharky said. “Don’t know the tall one. But I’m pretty sure I saw him yesterday in the lobby when Mr. Chin was meeting with Meyer and Strauss.”
“Well, that doesn’t bode well, does it?” I said.
“I’d say it bodes badly,” Sharky said.
We were standing next to the fairway ropes, just a few steps away from the concession stand. A large green Club Car vehicle pulled up next to the stand. It had a flat bed on the rear filled with some cardboard boxes and several cases of beer. Reinforcements. The black guy driving the cart, wearing his official neon yellow “I’m a worker” jacket, stomped on the brake, making a loud squeal, got out, grabbed a box and headed over to the stand with it.
We looked down where the two guys were. The sound of the brakes had made them look in our direction and they were now looking right at us. The tall guy turned and said something to the short fat guy, and they began striding more purposefully right at us.
“I believe we have been spotted,” I said. “I wonder what they want.”
“Don’t think we should wait and see,” Sharky said.
“Why don’t you zig thataway,” I said, pointing off to the right beyond the concession stand. “And I’ll zag thisaway. Meet you at the car in thirty.”
Sharky didn’t bother to reply. He just vanished, silently. For a guy with a big beer belly, he could move fast when he had to.
I glanced at the two hoods, who were getting closer. They had to push through or step around the crowds of people, most of whom were flowing in the opposite direction. That slowed their progress and gave me a few seconds to think.
I looked over at the cart filled with beer and boxes. The delivery guy had left the key in it. And why not? Who would steal a golf cart full of beer and food in the middle of the U.S. Open?
In two steps, I was at the cart. I grabbed one of the heavy boxes off the flat bed, dropped it onto the gas pedal and turned the steering wheel a bit to aim it down the hill. The cart shot off like a rocket, careening down the path and right at Mutt and Jeff, who were now about ten yards away and closing fast.
“Hey—!” I heard the tall one shout. But I didn’t stick around to watch. I hightailed it up the hill towards the tee box, dodging my way through the tide of people. When I got there, I kept going.
I heard some women screaming behind me, but didn’t stop or turn around. There was a temporary fence across the cart path between the course and 17 Mile Drive. I leaped over it, turned left and ran down the Drive. Luckily, they blocked and redirected most traffic on the usually busy road for the tournament, so I had clear sailing as I ran the half-mile or so back towards the Lodge. Ignoring the sage advice of the great Satchel Paige, I turned around once to look back, but no one was gaining on me. So I slowed down to a brisk walk.
Back among the safety of the crowds milling around the practice green, retail mall and Lodge entrance, I found a hidden nook next to the Ralph Lauren shop and waited there to see if anyone was still coming after me. After five minutes, seeing no one, I figured I was in the clear.
While I was standing there, I heard some sirens in the distance. Some people walking past were talking to each other.
“Did you hear?” one was saying. “An out of control golf cart ran into the crowd back on sixteen. Couple people are hurt.”
“Geez,” the other one said. “Hope it wasn’t terrorists.”
I laughed, silently, to myself. Al Qaida Hacker. Then, I thought Hope Johnny Levin doesn’t hear about this.
Later that night, Mary Jane and I were lying on our bed in the hotel room, watching TV. Victoria was fast asleep on the bed next to us. Sharky had driven me back to the Inn at Spanish Bay, laughing hysterically all the way when I told him what I had done to thwart the two hoods. The hysteria part was understandable.
I had rendezvoused with my girls, listened to all their adventures of the day, taken them to dinner at the Inn’s main restaurant which featured mostly inoffensive food that even eleven-year-old girls liked, and we had watched a fireworks display that the hotel had laid on for the Open. We had all oohed and aahed over the colors exploding over the darkening Pacific, churning out there amid the rocks and the seals.
The news came on, and the lead story was about a runaway and driverless golf cart that had mysteriously slammed into spectators on the sixteenth hole at the Open that afternoon. Officials said a heavy box had fallen onto the cart’s accelerator causing the vehicle to lurch forward into the crowd of spectators. Two people had been hurt enough to require transport to the Community Hospital in Monterey; one with a broken leg and the other with contusions.
“Hacker,” Mary Jane said.
“Hmmm?”
“Were you and Sharky at the tournament this afternoon?”
“Yup.”
“Were you anywhere near the sixteenth hole?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Hacker …”
I sat up. “Do you think we did that?” I tried to sound incredulous.
“Did
you?”
“I am offended that you would think the father of your child could do such a thing,” I said.
“You’re the father of my child because we had passionate sex on Christmas Eve,” she said. “That has nothing to do with you creating some kind of ruckus at the U.S. Open. Which sounds exactly like something you would do.”
“How do you know?”
“That you created a ruckus? Because …”
“No, not that,” I said. “How do you know it was Christmas Eve when we got pregnant?”
“We, kemosabe?” she said with a soft chuckle. “I don’t see your belly growing out four or five inches. I don’t see you gaining thirty pounds or having to pee every forty minutes.”
“Point taken,” I said.
“I can count, you know,” she said, reaching out and taking my hand in hers. “The doctor told me how many weeks pregnant she thought I was, and I counted back.”
“Maybe we should name it Santa,” I said.
She laughed, softly. “Maybe,” she said. “Be better than naming it Jesus.” She pronounced it ‘Hay-seuss.’
That made us both laugh. I reached out and snaked my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in tight. Her head nestled into the crook of my arm. Her hair smelled like lilacs and sunshine.
“What are we going to name … the baby?” I hated calling it “it.” Mary Jane knew the baby’s sex: she had seen several ultrasound images already. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to be surprised, like most fathers down through the millenia.
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “We’ve got time to decide. Three months to go.”
Three months. Then life as we knew it would change forever. My life. Her life. Victoria’s life. We all knew it was coming, yet none of us had the slightest idea what that change would be like.
“My father’s name was Daniel,” I said. “I really don’t remember much about him, but that’s a pretty strong man’s name. Daniel Hacker. Danny. Dan. Works for me.”
“Mmmm,” she said, sleepily.
“My mother’s name was Vanessa. Maiden name O’Rourke. Not crazy about that name, but I wouldn’t object. Of course, we could go with your Mom or Dad’s names, too. Jim and Janet, right?”
“Mmmm.”
The news was now telling us about a transit strike up in San Francisco. A group of homeless people were protesting because I guess they sleep in the subway and having a strike harshed their vibe, or something. And in California, marching and protesting is something everyone does.
“Actually,” I said, “To answer your question, yeah, it was me that sent that golf cart down the path this afternoon. These two thugs were coming after Sharky and me. Sharky thinks they were sent by Meyer—he saw one of them in the lobby yesterday when we sent Mr. Chin in to find out about their real estate scam. I figure Meyer suspected we knew what was going on, and sent these two leg-breakers out to reason with us sweetly or something.”
She didn’t say anything.
“But I think Meyer tipped his hand,” I continued. “Sending thugs out must have been exactly what he did to poor Charlie Sykes last December. They reasoned with him too…reasoned him right over the cliff. Which is why I felt it the better strategy to evade them today. Sharky concurred. Which means he took off like a scalded rabbit. You should have seen it. Anyway, I was just trying to slow them down. Buy us a little time to get away. I had no intention to leave them with broken bones or anything.”
Mary Jane was still silent. I raised my head a bit and looked at her. She was fast asleep in the crook of my arm. Her chest rose and fell in the quiet rhythm of sleep. The hot moist puffs of her exhalations warmed the side of my chest. If she had been a kitten, she would be purring.
But she wasn’t a kitten. She was my beloved wife. And she held within her a baby—our baby, who was growing and kicking and preparing, inexorably, to make his—or her—way into the world and kick that world into a completely different gear.
I fell asleep with the television still on and tried to conjure, in my dreams, the face of my child, so I could see who it was. If I could see its face, maybe I’d know what I needed to do to be a father. But instead, I dreamed of bad faceless men coming up the hill, trying to grab me.
It was around noon on Sunday. Mary Jane, Victoria and I were one of the many thousands of spectators milling around near the wrought-iron clock next to the practice putting green at Pebble Beach. The air was as electric as it always is on the last day of a major golf tournament. The other three days are interesting, sometimes dramatic, often exciting. But Sunday is the day when all the marbles are on the table. Do or die. Metaphorically, of course.
I had arranged to meet up with Sharky and Agatha at the clock. I thought we’d all go somewhere and have lunch and then find a place to watch the final round unfold. The leaders were not scheduled to tee off until around three. That meant the folks watching on television back east would get to watch the tournament unfold in prime time.
The Vickster was loving all the crowds, the hubbub and excitement. Any kid would. Mary Jane was casting nervous glances around, no doubt trying to figure out where the nearest rest room was to take care of her once-every-half-hour need to whizz.
Sharky and Aggie arrived at almost the same time as Jack Harwood, once again dressed in his old-man disguise with the big-brimmed floppy hat and face-hiding sunglasses. Shark and I had been discussing where we should go to eat—he recommended the volunteer tent for its excellent buffet and shady cool calm—when Harwood walked up.
“Hey, Hacker,” he said. “Say, we’re about to have a board meeting upstairs. Maybe you’d like to come?”
I smiled and turned to Mary Jane.
“Honey,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Jack Harwood.”
Jack turned to her, whipped off his sunglasses and gave her one of his patented crooked grins, eyes and eyebrows dancing.
“Ms. Hacker,” he said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Hacker has spoken highly of you. And this must be young Victoria …” He smiled down at Vickie. She wasn’t entirely sure who this man in the strange hat was, but she beamed back at him anyway.
Mary Jane was struck dumb. She looked at Harwood with glistening eyes that spoke of admiration and amazement and excitement all at once.
“I … you…I’m…” she stammered.
“Yes, I know,” he said, smiling. “Listen, I’d like to borrow your husband here for about an hour. After that, I’d like to invite all of you to join me in the owner’s skybox on the eighteenth. It’s quite a comfortable place to watch the golf. We can talk in peace there. Sound okay?”
Mary Jane could just smile. And nod.
Sharky volunteered to take everyone up for lunch at the tent and we agreed to rendezvous again in an hour.
Harwood repositioned his sunglasses and led me into the Lodge. In the lobby, he walked over to a little man dressed in a light gray business suit. The man had frizzy gray hair surrounding his head like a halo, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose and was holding a large leather satchel in one hand. They shook hands.
Harwood nodded to me. “Hacker? This is Maurice Cohen. He’s been my lawyer for the last fifty years. Maury, this is Hacker. I told you about him.”
The lawyer smiled at me. “Good afternoon,” he said.
Harwood led us upstairs and into a long conference room that looked out onto the 18th green and the seawall beyond it. The morning fog had burned off already and the sun was shining gloriously on the golf course. It looked like several million people had gathered around the green and down the fairway to watch the early players finish their rounds.
Cohen took up the position at the head of the conference table, opened his valise and began pulling out stacks of papers and documents which he arranged neatly in front of him. The door opened and Will Becker walked in. He was dressed in slacks, a golf polo and a blazer.
“Hey, Will,” H
arwood said, and went over to shake his hand. “I think you know Hacker, here don’t you?”
“Hiya, Boston,” the old pro said, and sat down. He nodded at Maury Cohen, who was now sitting calmly at the head of the table, hands folded. “Where’s the fuckwad twins?” he said.
As if on cue, the door opened again and in walked Harold Meyer and Jake Strauss. Strauss was wearing his USGA uniform of blue blazer, shirt and tie, gray slacks. Meyer was less formal: he wore black slacks and a lightweight blue silk sweater over a white golf shirt.
“What the hell is this?” Meyer rasped.
“Please come in and take a seat,” Maury Cohen said. For an old man, his voice was clear and authoritative. He gestured with his hand for the two latest arrivals to take their seats. They did. The rest of us also sat down opposite.
“This is a duly authorized emergency meeting of the board of directors of the Pebble Beach Company,” Cohen said.
“Authorized by who?” Meyer said. “I didn’t authorize anything of the kind. You can’t just …”
“According to the by-laws of the corporation,” Cohen said, picking up a sheet of paper from one of the stacks arrayed in front of him and holding it aloft, “An emergency meeting can be convened at any time by the votes of a majority of the board. Messrs Harwood and Becker have so voted.”
“Well no one asked me about any vote,” Meyer said, his face red with anger. “And I do not approve.”
“Very well,” Cohen said. He pulled a yellow legal tablet in front of him and began to scribble notes on it. “The minutes of the meeting will reflect that two directors have voted to convene this meeting, and one director…” He nodded at Meyer … “…has voted no. Since there are currently three directors of the corporation, the vote is two to one and the emergency meeting is thereby convened.”
“What’s the emergency?” Jack Strauss spoke up.
“Also in attendance at this meeting is Mr. Jacob Strauss, executive director of the U.S. Golf Association,” Cohen continued, jotting notes as he spoke. “Mr. Strauss is an ex-officio adviser to the board, but has no voting authority under the by-laws. And we also have with us today one Mr. Hacker. How would you describe Hacker’s role in this, Jack?”
An Open Case of Death Page 22
