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THE DOCTORS YELLED and screamed at me, but I checked out of the hospital anyway. They said with a concussion like mine, two days’ rest was mandatory. But I had work to do. Half for their benefit and half for mine, I pretended that nothing hurt as I pulled on my clothes and walked out.
Ravenel and I had talked for nearly an hour. I told him what I knew about Jocko’s little pharmaceutical business and that Bert Lewis had purchased more than his usual share of Quaaludes last week. Since John Turnbull knew about his caddie’s sideline business—that’s why he had fired him after all—that gave Jocko a prime motive to kill him. Self-preservation of his lucrative enterprise. And, it appeared that he had enlisted Bert Lewis’ help, perhaps at the threat of cutting off his drug supply.
Ravenel told me he had Bert Lewis’ fingerprints all over the fatal golf cart, and that another golfer had seen the two talking together after the Golfers for Christ meeting that night.
That was not rock-solid proof of murder, he admitted, but with the coroner’s report, it had been enough to bring Lewis in for questioning. Lewis, he told me, had gone catatonic, and nothing he said was making any sense. Ravenel wouldn’t tell me, however, who his eyewitness was. “That’s still confidential information and part of an ongoing investigation,” he’d said, somewhat apologetically. I hadn’t pressed.
It all added up to a pretty sordid little story, but a good one for my readers. I was anxious to get back to Seagrape, tie up the few loose ends, get a few official quotes on the record and file the piece. It had Page One written all over it.
Ravenel, in the meantime, went back downtown, where he planned to haul in Jocko’s local supplier, whom he identified as one Rudy Hill, owner of the Drowned Rat bar, small-time hood, wife-beater, statutory rapist and now, allegedly, drug dealer. That afternoon, Ravenel said grimly, he’d be back to collar Jocko Moore. “I’d send Doak after him right now,” he’d said, “But that would disrupt the goddam golf tournament, and that would piss the chief off. We’ll get him later this afternoon. He ain’t going anywhere.”
So I ignored the remonstrations of the medical staff, achingly pulled on my clothes and asked the hospital receptionist to call me a cab. Luckily, she didn’t say “You’re a cab,” or I might have lost it. The pain pills the doctor had given me kept the various throbbings down to a dull roar. My knee was sore, but it moved relatively well. Tomorrow might be a different story, but for today, at least, I was upright and mobile.
When I walked into the press room at Seagrape, I was greeted with the outpouring of sympathy I expected. None.
“Where ya been, dickhead?” “Get any last night?”
“Nice of you to check in, Hacker.”
“Call your editor. I think you’ve been fired.”
Suzy Williams, bless her Size C hearts, came running up with a worried look.
“Hacker!” she exclaimed. “We heard you were in an accident last night. Are you okay? Shouldn’t you be sitting down?”
“Get him a beer,” one of my buddies said. “That’ll cure what ails him.”
“Thanks,’ Suzy,” I said. “Just get me a Coke, OK?” “Damn,” the wiseguy said, “If Hacker doesn’t want a beer, he must have really hit his head!”
I flipped a collective bird to the room and they all went back to work, which involved mostly sitting there and gossiping while some of the early results were posted. On Saturday, the field is cut to the low 70 plus ties, so the last groups, with the leaders of the tournament, don’t tee off until around lunchtime, so they will finish in the late afternoon under the watchful eyes of the TV cameras and a nationwide audience of couch potatoes. The only ones finishing late in the morning were the also-rans.
I sat for a while nursing my Coke and trying to ignore the bolts of pain that occasionally shot up my leg. I needed some filler to flesh out the story I wanted to write. I also knew that my editor, that one-celled creation of an angry God, would want me to identify the eyewitness who had put Turnbull and Lewis together.
Billy Corcoran rushed into the room and began a harried conversation with Suzy. I hauled myself painfully out of my chair and walked over. Billy looked, as always, hot and sweaty and disheveled and untucked. His usual self.
“William, my man,” I said. “Need a favor.”
He stood up and looked at me warily, pushing some strands of loose hair out of his eyes.
“I need the names of some of the guys who were at the Bible meeting last Wednesday night,” I said.
He fidgeted, sighed, scratched his chin, shrug ged his shoulders, rolled his eyes heavenward and popped his knuckles. A perpetual motion machine, was Billy Corcoran.
“Well, let’s see,” he said, thinking hard. I watched the beads of sweat break out in the man’s brain. “I remember that Billy Chapman was there. And T.L. Peters. Eddie Roland. Alex, I think...yeah, Alex Klauser... Ummm...John Turnbull, of course. Ahhh...gee, there were a couple of others. I think –”
“That’s OK, Billy, thanks,” I said quickly, not wanting him to have a stroke right in front of me. He nodded and rushed off. Suzy and I watched him go and then looked at each other and broke out in laughter.
“Okay,” I said. “Which of those guys is still here?”
We studied the board together. “Chapman is playing pretty good,” Suzy said. “He’s out there today. So is Alex Klauser. Peters is long gone. He left town last night. Eddie Roland...I think he missed the cut, but I saw him hanging around this morning, out on the range. You might check the locker room.”
“Thanks, Suze,” I said and limped out the door.
As I made my slow and painful way up the walkway toward the locker room, I tried to remember what I knew about Eddie Roland. Little guy. On tour for about five years. No wins, but was able to earn a pretty good living. His trademark: always wore baggy trousers. No doubt, he collected big bucks from the manufacturer as well as frequent catcalls from the fans. I recalled the story: a few years ago the airline had lost his luggage and, having nothing to wear, Eddie had borrowed some pants from a buddy at the last minute. The pants had been at least two sizes too big, and Eddie was lucky they hadn’t fallen completely off in the middle of a backswing.
But he’d played pretty well that week—near the lead. So he’d kept wearing the oversized pants all weekend long and eventually finished in the top ten. The TV boys, of course, were ecstatic. They loved any sign of eccentricity, originality or verve. So they kept showing baggy Eddie all weekend long. In short order, a manufacturer jumped in with an offer to make Eddie some better-fitting but still baggy trousers, and a star was born. Eddie’s baggy pants became his signature, and he no doubt laughed all the way to the bank with his endorsement contract. The trend caught on, at least for a while, and they sold truckloads of baggy pants. Is this a great country, or what?
I suddenly remembered something else. The evening of John Turnbull’s memorial service, one of the Golfers for Christ had left the ceremony abruptly. He had been wearing baggy trousers. It had been Eddie Roland.
I limped into the locker room, looked around and finally found Roland, who had just come out of the shower and was wrapped in a white towel, and was briskly rubbing his curly reddish hair with another.
I introduced myself. “Thought you missed the cut this weekend,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, somewhat wistfully. “Played pretty awful. Decided to stick around a day or two and work out the kinks on the range. Easier than heading down to Memphis right away.”
“The police ask you to stay nearby?” I asked innocently. It was a shot in the dark, but I’d bet even Bulldog takes one of those once in a while.
He did a double-take, his eyes widening in surprise.
“How’d you kn—” he started to say, then stopped, flustered.
“It’s OK, Eddie,” I reassured him. “Ravenel and I are playing a Ft. Lauderdale on this one. All on the same team. Wanna tell me what happened Wednesday night?”
He sighed and slumped down on the bench in front of his locker. He slung the towel over his shoulders and grabbed on the ends.
“The meeting that night started off pretty regular,” he said. “We spent about an hour discussing Acts ... you know, the Book of Acts?” He looked at me, and I nodded. I guess I’d read Acts before, but I was hoping he wouldn’t ask me if I knew if it was Old or New Testament, because I didn’t know.
“After that, we broke for our business meeting,” Eddie continued. “That’s where Ed Durkee reports on finances and pledges and stuff like that.” He sighed and looked at me. “The night turned a little ugly there,” he said. “Johnny Turnbull and Ed got into it a little bit over this new investment idea that Ed’s been setting up for us. Johnny said he wasn’t satisfied with the material that Ed had put together on the thing, and that he wasn’t going to put a dime into it until he was comfortable, and maybe not even then. His wife is a financial whiz, y’know, so the rest of us figured that if she had doubts, there must be some good reason. Well, Ed Durkee got a little mad about that, and they did some yelling back and forth. I tell you, it was uncomfortable, and we all felt uneasy about it.”
“Are you planning to invest in that fund, Eddie?” I asked.
“Well, frankly, it’s a little pricey for me,” he said. I knew he was telling the truth: Eddie Roland would probably earn about $400,000 this year, which sounds like a lot, but isn’t once you deduct all his travel expenses not to mention his mortgage back home. He would break about even, maybe finish the year a little ahead. Unless Ed Durkee talked him out of his dough.
“I mean, I’m doing OK this year, but I can’t really afford to cough up twenty large just like that,” he continued. “And if Johnny or his wife had questions about the fund, well, I’d be real reluctant to jump in. I think most of the fellows would agree. Which is probably why Ed Durkee got upset.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Well, they calmed down eventually,” he said. “Durkee finally laughed and apologized and went out to get some coffee. Johnny was still upset, but he eventually chilled out, too. We all had some coffee and cookies and sat around telling jokes, and then we prayed together and everyone went home.”
“Is that when you saw Turnbull and Bert Lewis together?” I asked.
“Nah...that was a bit later,” Eddie said. “Me and Alex Klauser sat around for a while, talking about the golf course and just generally shooting the breeze. Then we split. My villa’s over yonder –” he pointed in the direction of the tenth fairway. “—and I decided to shortcut it across the golf course to get home. I got out there a ways in the dark, and looked back to get my bearings so I wouldn’t fall in the lake or something.” He laughed.
“Anyway, when I looked back, I saw Bert Lewis driving up toward the clubhouse in a golf cart. And then Johnny came almost running up the sidewalk after him. Except he wasn’t running...he was kind of lurching. And then he fell down...just fell over like a rock. His feet just stopped working. It was the strangest thing you’ve ever seen. I almost went back to check on him, but Bert got out of his cart and went over to him. I thought I heard him laughing, but I couldn’t be sure of that. But I figured if anything was seriously wrong with Johnny Bert would take care of it. So I kept on walking home.
He looked up at me, an appeal for understanding in his eyes. “I guess thinking back on it, I shoulda gone back to check on Johnny. But at the time, I just thought he had stumbled or something, and Lewis was there and –” His voice trailed off sadly.
“I understand, Eddie,” I said gently. “You can’t be blamed for anything.”
When I left him, he was staring into his locker. I don’t know if he believed me.
On my way back to the pressroom, I ran into Fireman. Leaving his parking lot outpost was unusual enough, but I could tell by the worried look on his face that something was seriously amiss.
“What’s up, man?” I asked.
He pulled out a battered old handkerchief and wiped his wizened brow.
“This is not a good week, Hacker-man,” he said sadly. “Dat crow we saw put the hex on this tournament, dat’s for sure. First that nice Mister Turnbull done and got killed and that Mister Lewis is in trouble and now one of my boys has done up and quit without a howdy do. No sir,” he said, shaking his aged head. “Dis is not a week for luck.”
“Who split?” I asked.
“Dat no-good Jocko Moore,” Fireman told me. “Lef ’ his man high and dry on the first tee wid no bag and no balls and no warnin’. Jest never showed!”
My antenna began to quiver. Jocko had taken a powder. He must have sensed that Ravenel was closing in. Or perhaps he had been warned. The game, as Holmes would say, was afoot.
“Where was he staying this week?” I asked Fireman, who would know such things about every caddie on the course.
“Ah believe he was staying down by the sheds,” Fireman said, pointing off into the distance. I knew vaguely where he meant: The golf course’s maintenance equipment and mowers were kept in a small village of outbuildings hidden in a glade between the fairways. This week, a dozen or so TV trailers, heavy equipment movers and assorted other tournament vehicles had been parked down there.
Fireman was telling me how he had managed to hustle up a last-minute replacement for Jocko’s golfer, but I was already on my way to the pressroom to find a telephone and call Ravenel.