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IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when I got back to the press room, every bone and muscle in my body crying out in pain. Nobody appeared to have missed me, which did a lot for my feelings of self-worth. But I didn’t have time to sit and suffer. I had a story to file. Page One stuff on murder at a golf tournament.
Tom Kite was sitting over in the interview room, holding forth on his round. I listened to his recitation for a while. He told us that his five-iron approach on number six was “kinda pured” which meant it stopped six inches from the hole; and that his putt on seventeen was a “whoa momma,” which meant if the forty-footer hadn’t dropped solidly into the middle of the cup, it might have rolled all the way off the green.
I only listened with half an ear. I had to write something for the front page. Suzy Chapman walked by with a sheaf of papers in her hand and put one down in front of me without speaking.
I almost ignored it – the PGA Tour media staff produces page after page of meaningless statistics and daily news tidbits that most of us simply ignore, and I thought that was what she had dropped off. Then I glanced at it.
James L. (Jocko) Moore, the caddie of PGA Tour professional Billy Winocur, was found dead this morning in his room. Charleston police have begun an investigation into the death and have indicated that foul play may be involved. Moore has been an occasional caddie on Tour for the last three years.
That was it. The tour machine had packaged another body up neatly and hurled it into a dark corner where they hoped it would stay. I got a charge out of the part where they said foul play “may” be involved. Like maybe that sawed-off golf shaft had somehow fallen accidently through Jocko’s throat. Or maybe Jocko had elected to bid farewell to this cruel world and decided the best way to die would be to sever his own jugular in such a nice, clean way.
I was beginning to steam. I started to boil when my fellow reporters began to file back into the pressroom after being spoon-fed quotes in the interview room. I noticed that most of them picked up the one-page notice about Jocko’s death, harrumphed once or twice, and ash-canned it. The sound of computers clicking away filled the room as the golf writers bent to the task of chronicling the day’s sporting event. What the hell did I expect, a hue and cry?
Woody Johnson came over to his workspace at the table behind me, heaved his considerable bulk down in his chair with a groan, hissed open his can of beer and glanced at the news release. “R.I.P.,” he said and crumpled it up.
“That’s it?” I said to Woody, “R.I.P.? Whatever happened to who, what, when, where and how? The reporter’s creed?”
He peered at me over the tops of his bifocals. “Excuse me, Mister Woodward and Bernstein,” he snapped. “I must have missed something here. Did this Jocko guy ever win the U.S. Amateur? Or is there another reason why I should get my drawers in a wad over some druggie checking out with too much cocaine in his nose?”
“Don’t you think its halfway interesting or newsworthy that two guys have met a somewhat untimely death here this week?” I asked, incredulous.
“Nope,” Woody said flatly. “I mean, it’s too bad that John Turnbull died. But that was an accident, right? Jocko? That was gonna happen sooner or later. I mean, with all the news about steroids and such, a bit about a lowlife like Jocko doesn’t even register. My readers want to know about who’s winning, how many birdies they made, who shanked one into the woods or gagged on a three-footer, and maybe get the vital stats on Freddie Couples’ wife. Man, is she a looker. I followed her around all day!”
My editor in Boston felt the same way, after I had transmit- ted my story up to him an hour later.
“Death Stalks the Fairways?” he told me when I called. “C’mon, Hacker. This is the Boston Journal, not the Sunday edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.”
“It’s an important story,” I said.
“No, Hacker, it ain’t,” he retorted with finality. “Now if you reported that Jack Nicklaus is running around offing people, that’s a story. The Bert Lewis is under investigation thing was a story, but that was yesterday. It sounds like he’s off the hook now, and the buzz is off. Sorry, Hacker, but the Patriots just signed a new quarterback and that’s more important than some caddie getting iced. I’ll run it, but it’s an inside piece. And my watch says you still have thirty-eight minutes to file a piece on today’s round. We pay you to report on golf. You remember golf, don’t ya, Hacker?”
I called him a few unprintable names and slammed the phone down. What can you expect from someone who was born with but one testicle?
I had by now passed beyond the states of pissed and was entering the realm of surly. And the pain of my aching body did not make things easier. Surly is unusual for me, even-tempered and generally genial as I am. It took about four beers before I could begin to reason rationally once again. I figured I had become too involved in the seamy side of life. Over the last few days I had crossed the line between the calm and comfortable and rule-bound world of professional golf and entered the dark and chaotic world of humanity unbound. I had witnessed jealousies and bitterness and green and venality. Drugs and lust and anger and hate. And I had come nose to jowl with death. Death was nothing new to me. I have seen it before, frequently, on the city streets and in vile tenements. But there, I had been a dispassionate observer, one step removed from reality and screened from full emotional involvement by the nature of my job as reporter.
Here, that world has intruded where it usually doesn’t. Not only had my own life been threatened, but the ugly side of life had come into this place from which it was usually banished, or at least well covered up. And it had reached out to affect people I knew and liked. That was scary and disconcerting. I suddenly felt vulnerable, and I didn’t like that feeling at all.
On my fifth beer, I realized that what I needed was some human contact, some reassurance that there was still a good side out there, something alive and lush and growing. Something with a future, unlike death, struggling to keep the flickering light alive. I usually wax poetic like that after I’ve had five beers.
I still had a slip of paper with Jean MacGarrity’s number on it. I called it. She answered.
“Drinks?” I asked.
“Dinner?” she said.
“Done,” I said.