I woke early and alone. I sat up and scanned the room, which appeared empty. I couldn’t see any sign of the activities of the previous evening. No champagne bottles left overturned. No lipstick-smeared glasses. No tidbits of underwear scattered about. No hurriedly scribbled notes on my pillow: “Thanks for a good time, ya big lug!” It was if nothing had happened, which led me to wonder if anything really had happened.
Sighing, I went to the bathroom. No lipstick hearts drawn on the mirror. Empty.
‘Tis brief, m’lord. As woman’s love.
I got on this Shakespeare kick in college, in between golf tournaments, and I used to know whole scenes by rote. Don’t ask me why. It’s a skill that doesn’t come in particularly handy either playing or writing about golf. But odd bits and pieces come flooding back to me at the strangest times, and one of the oddest is after sex. Like this morning, in the shower, those two lines. Hamlet always was such a buzz kill anyway.
It was regret, I figured. Not over the act itself, but for the briefness of the glow it had produced. There was never enough glow and it never lasted long enough.
I shrugged it off in the steam of the shower and made ready to face the world anew. It was another golden Florida morning, it was Friday, and the golf tournament was underway. The LPGA, unlike the male counterpart, usually stages three-round tournaments. But the fact that golf was being played outside was reason enough to gird the loins and head forth.
The telephone interrupted me in mid-gird.
“Hacker?” said a soft voice on the other end, It was Honie Carlton. I slapped my forehead in sudden anguish. My episode with Sybil has pushed all thought of my injured and hospital-bound young friend out of my head. I was immediately and intensely guilty.
“Honie!” I started to babble. “How are you feeling? Where are you? Are you okay? …”
She stopped my rush of words with a tiny laugh.
“Oh, Hacker, shut up and listen,” she said. There was a tiny reminder of the pre-attack lilt in her voice. “I’m fine. I’m back at the hotel. My boss flew in from Texas last night and is taking care of things. Now listen, I just heard some big news! You won’t believe it! Benton Bergmeister is dead!”
I was, as they say, struck dumb. Bergmeister had also faded out of my consciousness that night we had come upon Honie after her attack. In the excitement of getting her to the hospital, I had forgotten about old Benton. And that he had been about to tell me why he was quitting the LPGA Tour. I guess he really had. Quit, that is.
“Hacker? Are you there?” Honie demanded petulantly. “Did you hear what I just said?”
“I heard, I heard,” I said. “When, where and how?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just overheard Karla – she’s my boss – talking to someone. She ran out of here all afluster, so they must have just found out.”
“Thanks, kid,” I said. “I’m on the case. Anything you need?”
“Naw,” she said. “Go get ‘em.”
I got. In the lobby, there was no outward manifestation of anything abnormal going on. People were coming out of elevators, heading for the restaurant buffet, sitting in chairs reading the morning papers, and booking tours with the concierge. Just a typical day, modern American resort-style.
Behind the front desk, the hotel staffers were also going about their business, cashing guests out and snapping for bellmen. Except for one youngish girl with pretty blond hair, who was standing over to one side, almost out of sight. Her face had gone pure white and she held a hand over her mouth in the traditional pose of shock. I watched as an older man in a gray suit wandered past her, stopping to whisper something urgently in her ear. She immediately shook her head as if to clear out the cobwebs, and jumped back to work, picking up a stack of papers and heading for the nearest computer terminal.
But that told me that something unusual was afoot.
I made a beeline for the security trailer hidden in its little grove of bushes. When I walked in, Don Collier was talking on the phone. He hung up as soon as he saw me.
“Hiya, Don,” I said pleasantly. “Where’s the stiff?”
He stared at me. “What? Who? How? He started three different questions, almost simultaneously.
I laughed. “Word travels fast,” I said. “Especially amongst us newshounds. So what’s the scoop?”
He sighed deeply. One of the telephones on his desk began an insistent chirping. He flipped it a bird and jumped up from his chair. “Fuck it,” he growled. “I’m tired of talking with the suits and PR types. C’mon, you might as well walk with me. You seem to know everything anyway.”
He led me back into the hotel, to the north wing, to the third floor. Benton Bergmeister had been assigned an “inside room,” which was a euphemistic way of saying he had a room with a parking lot view. Oh, away in the distance one could catch a glimpse of the Olympic-size outdoor pool, but it still was a parking-lot view. Big Wyn enjoyed the palatial suite with views across the golf course, while the poor commish, who had the misfortune of possessing a dick, got the parking lot.
There were about a half-dozen plainclothes cops in Benton’s room, all of whom seemed to be doing something officious. All of whom were totally ignoring the body of Benton Bergmeister lying in his bed, naked, pale and sagging. He lay on his back, one arm by his side, the other flung casually across his pale and flaccid belly. He looked, as do most dead people, smaller and somewhat shrunken. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly ajar, as if he had died in midsnore. In fact, he looked like he was still asleep. Which I guess he was, in a nap that would last forever.
The room was neat and clean. Bergmeister’s briefcase lay on the desk, open, with papers spilling out onto the desktop. Next to the briefcase was a bottle of Scotch, empty save for about two inches in the bottom. There were no clothes scattered about, which struck me as odd since Benton was undeniably naked. I guess he was a neat stiff.
One of the cops saw us and walked over. He nodded at Collier. “Hey Don,” he said. “We’re about done here. Who’s this?”
“Hacker,” Collier answered. The cop looked at me with flat, penetrating, clear gray eyes. “He’s a reporter. Doing a story on the women’s tour.”
“Guess he’s got something to write about,” the cop said. He nodded over at Benton’s body.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Guy died,” the cop said and walked away.
“Friendly people here in Miami,” I said loudly to Collier. “I thought all the asshole cops worked in Boston.”
The cop spun on his heel at that, but Collier hustled me out of the room.
“Cause of death?” I asked.
“They’re not sure,” Collier told me. “Hopefully, it’s a heart attack or stroke or something natural.”
“Yeah, that’d get the monkey off the hotel’s back,” I agreed.
“Cynical, but true,” Collier nodded. “It might also be suicide. In addition to the booze, there were a whole lot of prescription bottles in the guy’s bathroom, and several of them were empty or nearly so. One of the dicks said that if he had mixed some of those pills with the booze, it woulda been a no-no. Quiet but effective way to check out.”
“Inconvenient,” I said. “But again, not the hotel’s fault. People check in to check out all the time, right?” Collier nodded. “Of course, maybe somebody offed poor old Benton.”
“Shit, Hacker,” the hotel man bristled. “Don’t even think that! You saw that room. There wasn’t the first hint of foul play in there. Guy took off his clothes, hung them up, laid down to sleep and didn’t wake up. One way or another.”
The smart-ass cop came out into the hallway and lit a cigarette. He blew out the smoke silently while he fixed those steady gray eyes on Collier and me.
“M.E. on the way?” Collier asked. The cop nodded. His eyes never moved. “Well, let me know what he says. I got an entire front office ready to shit themselves. Not good on the publicity front, you know what I mean.”
The cop shrugged. I could tell he wasn’t going to stay up nights worrying about the problems the executives of the Doral Hotel and Country Club were having on the publicity front.
“Listen,” I said to the cop before we left. “I don’t know if it means anything or not, but a couple of nights ago, Bergmeister told me that he was planning to quit his job.”
The cop’s right eyebrow ticked upwards a centimeter or two. I could tell he was drooling with interest. “That so?” he said, letting more smoke drift out of his nose.
“Yeah,” I said. “And my impression was that he was damn glad to be getting out of here. I think he was tired of working for a bunch of women.”
“I can understand that,” the cop said as he turned to go back into the room. “Workin’ for women will fuckin’ kill ya.”