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I USED TO KNOW A HOMICIDE dick on the Boston force named Eddie “Bulldog” O’Shaunessy. If ever a nickname fit a man, Bulldog fit Eddie O’Shaunessy. First of all, the man looked like a bulldog, with his heavy Irish jowls hanging down and those pale watery eyes that peered out from his immobile face. He was a heavyset man who walked and talked ponderously, but when he needed to move, he could move fast.
He was also called Bulldog because of his investigative method. He would first assemble a list of possible suspects in a murder case, writing them out slowly and deliberately on a yellow legal pad. Once he had listed all the suspects, he would simply start at the top of his list, where he usually put the chief suspect, and begin the pursuit. One after the other, he would begin questioning, re-questioning, interviewing, re-interviewing, doggedly chasing down facts and witnesses, day and night, until either the guy confessed or until Bulldog had convinced himself that the guy didn’t do it. In which case, he’d go to the next name on his legal pad and start the process all over again. If you heard
Bulldog was on your case, you either got out of town, or got yourself a good lawyer.
I was still not convinced that John Turnbull’s death was anything but a sad accident, but I decided to borrow from Bulldog’s modus operandi. After a mostly sleepless night of tossing and turning, I got out of bed early Thursday morning, found some paper and decided to make a list.
I stared out the window at the mist hanging over the marshes. If Turnbull had indeed been murdered, I could think of three suspects right off the bat. Jocko Moore, Turnbull’s ex-caddie. He was pissed at the golfer for firing him, and revenge is always a good motive. But Fireman had told me that Jocko already had found another bag. Although Jocko would certainly know where to find a golf cart in the middle of the night. The caddies’ staging area for the tournament was in the resort’s cavernous cart barn.
My second candidate was Bert Lewis, Turnbull’s rival in the shootout. Was it possible that Bert Lewis had gone off the deep end when he lost? Could a simple golf rivalry, even with a thousand dollars thrown in, really spill over into hatred and murder? It sounded farfetched in the cool light of morning, but I knew that men had killed and been killed for far less.
I also wrote down the name of Jean MacGarrity. Jilted girlfriend, or at least one who felt jilted, even if she wasn’t a girlfriend at all. Known to be very drunk and very angry on the night of the possible crime. Had John Turnbull been shot through the chest with a Saturday night special, Jean might qualify as a higher-ranking suspect on my list. Such deflected passions resulted in bloody crimes virtually every night someplace in this gun-crazed nation. But John Turnbull, if he had been murdered, had been tossed bodily off a bridge. I doubted if all the bottled-up passion in the world would be enough to provide the slender Jean with the strength. I put an arrow facing down next to her name: she was going at the bottom of my suspect list.
The name Ed Durkee floated through my head, but I thought it more likely that Becky Turnbull would have been the reverend’s target. She had prevented her husband from joining into Durkee’s investment scheme, and Becky and Durkee obviously couldn’t stand one another. But Durkee and John Turnbull appeared to have, at worst, an uncomfortable rapport. That’s a far cry from murder.
When I finished my list, I looked at it with a sinking feeling. I had only two reasonable suspects: Jocko “Drugstore” Moore and Bert Lewis. What would Bulldog do? He’d go stick his jowly face right up against Jocko’s and start firing those endless, pressing, relentless questions that would weaken the suspect’s knees and create sweaty halfmoons under his armpits.
This is ridiculous, I thought. What if Turnbull really had accidentally fallen off that bridge? But what was he doing out there in the middle of the night? Sighing, I got up and headed for the shower. I planned to work on my sleuthing technique in there.
IT WAS JUST after six in the morning when I found my way down to the bag storage and cart barn that was built beneath the main clubhouse building, well out of sight of the members. The first threesome in the tournament wouldn’t tee off until 7:30 A.M., but the caddies were already bustling about, cleaning clubs, gathering the supplies of balls, gloves, towels, and laying their bets in the weekly caddie pool.
Jocko Moore was asleep, oblivious to the growing clamor of the morning, leaning upright on a golf bag. He had a towel draped around his neck and a stained golf cap pulled down low over his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in two or three days. I reached down and shook his shoulder.
“Jocko...hey Jocko, wake up,” I called.
“Hrumph,” he grumbled, opening one eye and looking sleepily up at me. “Whadda ya want?”
“Whose bag you got this week?” I asked.
“Little Billy Winocur,” he mumbled, rubbing his sleepy eyes. “Fuckin’ rookie, too scared to even fart out loud. Be lucky not to shit his pants, much less make the cut.” He stretched out his legs, yawned, stood up and glanced at his watch. “Got an hour before we go,” he said.
“That give you time to check the pin positions?” I asked, knowing that was the duty for the caddies.
He stretched again. “Naw,” he said, yawning again. “Not worth the effort for this gomer. He’ll be lucky to hit half the greens, much less focus in on the pin.” He shook himself, rubbed his eyes and then straightened up, more fully awake. “Who th’fuck’re you?” he asked, looking at me intently.
“Hacker, Boston Journal,” I told him. “You used to carry for Turnbull, right?”
Jocko laughed bitterly. “Yeah,” he snorted. “The late, great John Turnbull.”
“Heard he fired you last week. Wanna talk about it?”
Jocko looked at me differently then. His eyes narrowed down to slits and his mouth curled into a near-perfect sneer. He had it all down pat: curled lip, unshaved visage. “No comment,” he snarled. “Isn’t that what Tricky Dicky Nixon used to say? No comment. Yeah, I like that.”
“Yeah, Tricky Dick used to say that,” I agreed affably. “But he was guilty as hell, too. What are you guilty of, Drugstore?”
He didn’t like that nickname. His eyes turned cold. “What the hell do you want, asshole?” he demanded.
“I’m doin’ a story on the guy, what else?” I shrugged. “I figured since you had his bag, you knew something about the guy.”
Jocko stretched and twisted like his lower back muscles were stiff and sore. He was thinking. Probably figured whatever he told me would show up in my story and make him look like a big deal. Guys like Jocko like to look at themselves as big deals, because most of the time people look at them like the dirtbags they are.
“Yeah, well, I guess I knew the guy,” he said. “He was really starting to stroke the ball well the last year or so. I was only on his bag for the last six months, since the first of the year. We got along okay.”
“So why’d he fire you?”
Jocko spit sullenly on the dusty floor.
“Him and his goddam religion,” he mumbled. “Asshole was always talkin’ ’bout how God gonna do this and that and watch out for his children.” He spat again. “Well, I guess he’s right, because now he’s dead as shit and I got a new bag for the weekend. Amen.” He laughed sarcastically.
“Doesn’t sound like you two g ot along so well,” I observed.
“Yeah, well, I was his caddie,” Jocko said. “Not his friend. I carried his sticks and gave him his numbers and read his putts. But what I do off the golf course is none of his business. Or yours either, for that matter.”
“How about what you were doing last night?” I pressed. “You got any comment about that, like where you were and who you were with?”
He smiled snarkily. “You’re sounding like a cop, Hacker, not a newspaper guy. But if you want to know, I was down at the local juke joint. Met up with this tight little snatch from Charleston State. We drank a few brews, did a little foolin’ around. Y’know.”
He grinned at me. Classy guy, this Jocko.
“I suppose this beauty can substantiate that?” I wondered.
Wrong. Too obvious. Bulldog would not have approved. Jocko Moore didn’t either. He moved quickly, reached out with his thin, wiry arms and pinned me to the wall with a painful slam.
“Okay,” he said in a very calm and very dangerous voice. “What’s the game here, man?” His eyes were close to mine, clear and liquid and very bright. “You sound more and more like a fuckin’ cop, Hacker, and I don’t like cops. ‘Where was I?’ ‘Who was I with?’ You got a lot of questions, and I don’t like any of ‘em. You got something to say to me, man, why’nt you just go ahead and say it, or get the fuck out of my face.”
The bag area suddenly went silent as the other caddies stared over at us.
“Okay, Jocko,” I said. “Lighten up, man. I’m just trying to find out what happened to JohnTurnbull the other night. Thought you might be able to tell me something.”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Jocko said. “That self-righteous son of a bitch drove himself off that bridge and got squished, and that’s too goddam bad for him.”
“Well, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t” I said.
“Meaning what?” Jocko finally let go of my shoulders.
“Meaning someone could have thrown him off that bridge.”
“And you think it was me?” His sneer was back.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Was it?”
Jocko didn’t say anything. He just looked at me and laughed. I wasn’t sure what Bulldog O’Shaunessy would have done about that. So I turned and left.’