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JAMISON COX’S REMARK clicked on that little light bulb in my head. Not the one about Bert Lewis looking like he’d just lost his best friend—in a sense I suppose he had –but the one about his agent. I realized there was a gap in my knowledge about John Turnbull. He had been making his agent very happy for the last six months and his death had suddenly changed all that.
I went back to the press room, which was buzzing with the posting of Bert’s sterling round. The 64 had catapulted him into the lead, two ahead of Lanny Wadkins and Paul Azinger. Kite was three behind after a so-so second round. Suzy Williams was jotting down some notes as she studied the scoreboard. She would be writing up some tour tidbits to go out on the wire later that afternoon.
“Hey, Suze,” I greeted her. “Lewis had himself a day, huh?” She looked up.
“Hi Hacker,” she said. “Sure did. Wish I could get him to come out and talk to you guys, but he’s clammed up on us. Billy’s in there trying to talk some sense into him right now.”
“Well, his caddie told me that the hole kept getting in the way today,” I said. “You can use that if you want.”
“Hey, thanks, I will,” she beamed at me.
“Listen, Suze,” I said. “Do you know who John Turnbull’s rep was?”
“Sure,” she said. “It was Ricky Hamilton out in Austin. He handles almost all of the born-agains.”
“Really?” I said. “Do you have his number handy?”
“Think so,” she said. She riffled through her Rolodex, found the number and read it off to me.
“Thanks, kiddo,” I said. “Do you know how long it would have taken your boss to find that number?”
“Billy,” she said sweetly, “has trouble finding his nose when it needs blowing.”
The sports agent is the silent partner in most tour players’ careers. For the young, up-and-coming pro, the agent helps round up financial backers that pay the bills. When the player begins to cash checks and win tournaments, the agent lines up the corporate outings and clinics that bring in extra cash and often lead to endorsement deals. And when the player becomes a star, the agent upgrades the endorsements and smoothes the way for TV commercials and the rest. All for a cool fifteen percent of gross.
Of course, the agent needs some skill in being able to determine which young horse may turn into a thoroughbred. That, or dumb luck. Witness Mark McCormack, who rode the success of a brash young golfer named Arnold Palmer into a worldwide sports marketing conglomerate.
Ricky Hamilton was no Mark McCormack. If his clientele was made up of members of the tour’s God Squad, his income stream had more ups and downs than the Colorado River.
Hamilton answered his own telephone when I called. Dead giveaway. Mark McCormack probably has fifteen layers of assistants between him and the switchboard.
“Yo, Hamilton heah,” he drawled.
“Hello Mr. Hamilton,” I said. “Pete Hacker, Boston Journal.”
“Howdy, Mistah Hackah,” he said cheerfully. “How in the hell are ya this fine day?”
“W’all, ah’m jest happier than a longhorn that’s seen a shorthorn,” I said cheerfully back. Sometimes my smart mouth just takes over and runs without me.
“Beg pardon?” the Texan said.
“Never mind,” I continued. “I’m calling about a piece I’m putting together on John Turnbull, who I understand was one of your clients.”
“Thass right, he was,” Hamilton said. “An’ I’m damn sure sorry the man has passed.”
“Yes, a terrible tragedy,” I murmured. “Would it be fair to say that Turnbull was your most successful client?”
“Well now, I don’t rightly know if you can say that,” he hedged. “A lot of my boys are doin’ purty good right now, and any one of ’em might get hot and just bust out.”
“But John Turnbull had earned something over three hundred and fifty thousand this year,” I said. “Who else you got making that?”
“Whether I do or don’t, I reckon is my business,” he said.
“I want to know what kind of deals you had working for Turnbull,” I pressed. “Product endorsements, commercials, anything like that? I’m trying to figure out how much he might have earned. If he hadn’t died.”
“Well, we was starting to do right well with Johnny,” Hamilton said. “I had pretty much sewn up a good club deal for next year for him.”
“You mean, he was going to play somebody’s line of clubs?”
“Thass right,” Hamilton agreed. “Worth about two million over five years.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Just the usual,” he said. “He was starting to get some outing bookings. If he’d a been able to win once or twice more, the floodgates woulda opened. Magazines, TV commercials...the works. He was a nice young man with a good image. Advertisers like that. They like that a lot.”
“So Turnbull was starting to make some big bucks,” I said.
“Well, yes and no,” Hamilton said, hedging a bit. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, Johnny was insistent that we pay off his original sponsors. You know, the guys back home that had fronted his first coupla years on tour. That was about two hunnerd thou. Then he had some taxes, set-asides for expenses. Management fees. Basically, he had just about broken even for the year,” Hamilton concluded.
“Your fees come off the top, right?” I said. “’Course,” he said. “Man’s gotta make a livin’.”
“So his death has put a bit of a crimp in your earnings for the year?”
“W’all, I guess you could say that,” the agent said slowly. “But it sounds kinda hard.”
“How about insurance?”
“Well, we got ever’one set up with a million bucks policy,” he said. “In fact, I think the policy pays double for accidental death. That’s in case a plane goes down or sumthin’.”
“So Turnbull’s wife will come out OK then?”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Hamilton said. “’Course, the church gets its percentage.”
“How’s that?” My ears perked up.
“Well, Johnny and the others in Golfers for Christ all pledge ten percent of their earnings to the church, and all have a rider in their insurance policies that provides a bequest equal to twenty- five percent in the event of their death.”
“So John Turnbull’s life insurance policy is worth $250,000 to his church?”
“Well, actually, in this case, seein’ as how his death was an accident an all, it would be more like half a million,” Hamilton did the math for me.
“And which church stands to benefit from this windfall?” I wondered.
“Ah, hell, Hacker, thought you’d know that,” he said. “Church of the Holiness. Y’know...Ed Durkee’s church. He pastors to all them boys. Fine man. Father figure. Helps ’em out with their problems, their finances, their golf games, their wimmen. Fine, fine man,” Hamilton said reverently.
“And a rich man, now,” I mused. “I heard something about a Christian investment fund that Durkee is trying to start. Know anything about that?”
“Not a dang thing,” Hamilton said. “Not my area. You’ll have to talk to Brother Ed ‘bout that. Listen...I got another call. Have a nice day.” And he rang off.
I was reasonably certain that Ricky Hamilton didn’t have another call. I was very certain he did not want to talk to me about Ed Durkee’s investment fund.