Death is a Two-Stroke Penalty Page 3

  Becky Turnbull let out her breath in a rush. “Ooo, that man,” she said.

  “Becky,” Turnbull said in a slightly disapproving tone. Then they both looked at me.

  I pulled out an imaginary reporter’s notebook, licked the end of an imaginary pencil and said “Just the facts, ma’am. What the hell was that all about?”

  Turnbull didn’t smile this time. “Just a slight disagreement over a personal business matter,” he said, his tone and his words indicating that he would say no more. His wife watched Brother Ed walking into the clubhouse. There was a slight smile on her face that didn’t say she was happy.

  “Yeah,” I said, “But what ...”

  “No comment,” Turnbull snapped and he looked at me. I saw his expression and shrugged.

  “Peace be unto you,” I said. “Catch you later.”

  Arm in arm, Turnbull and his beautiful wife walked off toward the parking lot. I decided to head for my apartment and unpack. Turning to leave, I saw a woman standing behind a tree at the far side of the putting green. She was wearing mint green shorts and a matching striped top. She had long brown hair and wore mirrored dark glasses. Though she was frowning and chewing the inside of her cheek nervously as she watched the Turnbulls walk away, there was something familiar about her. I bet myself that she had a very pretty profile.

  Chapter 3

  A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, I returned to the press room. There were two messages from my editor in Boston. I crumpled them up and tossed them on the floor.

  Woody Johnson, golf writer for the Chicago Tribune, had staked his claim to the desk behind mine. Wrinkled, balding, bifocals perched precariously on his bulbous nose, bright orange golf shirt blending hideously with a brown checked sport coat, Woody was reading the local newspaper and grumbling.

  “Goddam president,” he said to himself, rustling the pages. “Goddam jerk doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore.”

  “Is it foreign or domestic today, Woody?” I asked. “Foreign,” he peered at me over the tops of his glasses.

  “Do you know what the goddam fool is doing in Central America?”

  “Does anybody know what anybody is doing in Central America?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “You’re goddam right,” he sighed, and put the newspaper down. “Who do you like this week?”

  It was an inane question and we both knew it. There were148 professional golfers entered in the Cannon Carolinas Open. Every one of them had the skills and capabilities to win the tournament. Nobody could predict with any certainty which one of them would be able to connect with that inner confidence, innate talent, and pure dumb luck over four days of pressurized golf to shoot the lowest score. But everybody liked to try. I threw out a few names, Woody countered, and we spent fifteen happy minutes discussing recent hot streaks, character issues and a dozen players’ ability to handle the ocean winds.

  “What do you know about Brother Ed Durkee and that Jesus group?” I asked when we were done.

  Woody peered at me. His left eyebrow arched slightly. Then he began beating on his desk with a pencil. He harrumphed.

  I started to laugh. “Jeezus, Woody,” I sputtered. “I’m sorry...you got a piece on him, right?”

  “This Sunday,” he nodded. “You too?”

  “Naw,” I reassured him. “Just curious. Ran into him today, and we talked some. Strange bird. Who is he?”

  Woody leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on my desk. Like most good journalists he was a born storyteller, and he was about to tell me his story unbounded by the finite demands of newsprint.

  “The Reverend Edwin Poteet Durkee, age fifty-four, is the paster of the Church of the Holiness of Eastland, Texas, out in the boonies west of Fort Worth. It is a Pentacostal denomination, kinda-sorta, which appeals strongly to the born-again types. Big into evangelism, radio and TV ministries, and missions. Coupla years ago, some players of that ilk invited Brother Ed to hold a Bible study during the Byron Nelson in Dallas. You know, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the baseball and football leagues. He seemed to strike a responsive chord and over a period of time, several other players joined the group, which began to call themselves ‘Golfers for Christ.’ There are now about two dozen members of the ‘God Squad.’”

  I laughed. “Nice headline,” I noted.

  Woody nodded, pleased with himself. “I thought so, too,” he continued. “Anyway, the Golfers for Christ continues on by itself every week while Brother Ed shows up at about half the tournaments over the course of a year. They do their Bible study thing on Wednesday nights and he holds a nondenominational service early Sunday morning. It’s the same thing that goes on in other sports. They talk about Jesus and getting right with the Lord and playing their best without rancor.

  “But,” Woody continued, “Brother Ed has taken to spending personal time with a lot of the players whenever he’s in town. It’s more than just reading the Scriptures and singing some hymns. He has become something of a spiritual coach for a lot of guys, just like their swing coaches and personal trainers and private shrinks. It’s interesting.” Woody pushed his specs back up onto his nose and tiled back in the chair.

  “To a man, the God Squad says that Brother Ed has helped them become better golfers. Helped their mental attitude, they said. Block out the evil and concentrate on the good, they said. A responsibility to use their talents to do God’s will, they said.”

  “Didn’t I read about a baseball team that outlawed chapel services because they felt the players were becoming too passive and accepting of defeat,” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Woody nodded. “You can carry that ‘God’s will’ stuff too far, I guess. Especially in sports. Fatalism can be fatal.”

  “There you go again,” I laughed, “Writing headlines. Well tell me...does it work?”

  He stared at me, not understanding.

  “Are the God Squaders playing better golf ?”

  “Not really,” he said. “John Turnbull has been the only real shooting star in the group. Some have had a couple good years, couple of them have dropped off the earth. They’re all as nice a group of gentlemen as one could hope to find, but I can’t really see any discernable influence of all their praying. Maybe God likes tennis players better.”

  “Maybe it hurts more than it helps,” I was thinking out loud. “Golf is hard enough at this level anyway, without adding all kinds of other clutter in your head. Have any of the God Squad dropped out? Gone back to their heathen ways?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, Hacker,” Woody growled. “This wasn’t an in-depth piece for the New York Times Sunday magazine. I heard some grumbling from a few guys about Ed Durkee. They said he really kept tabs on them, made ‘em march in lockstep in some ways. But that’s kinda typical for those fundamentalist types, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” I agreed.“Do they do a lot of proselytizing?” “You mean recruiting new Jesus freaks?” Woody smiled. “Not too much, except maybe for some of the younger gung- ho guys. Everyone knows its there if they want to go. I did get handed a few pamphlets, though.” “On the Watchtower?”

  He laughed. “They’re pretty low-key,” he said. “About the wildest thing they do is give away some tickets to local churches in the area. And I suspect that one of them always helps that crazy guy with the rainbow wig and the John 3:16 sign get in place.”

  I knew who he meant. He showed up on the TV screen almost every week, perfectly positioned for the camera angles on the 18th green so his message would get beamed out across America. He’s so ubiquitous that my fervent wish is that when the Rapture comes, everyone who ever held up a Bible verse on national TV while wearing a rainbow colored wig with be left behind. By special order of the Big Guy.

  “It’s an interesting concept,” I mused. “Do they become better players because they are in God’s favor? And if God makes them better players but they still don’t win, what does that say about God and his favor? And if they do play better because of divine influence, w
hat about the hundred other guys? Are they sinners or does God just love them a bit less? It’s a theology with a few holes.”

  Woody looked at me and shook his head. “Jeez, Hacker, they’re just trying to do what everyone out here’s trying to do: shoot birdies and make a big check. Brother Ed makes ‘em feel better so they can relax a little. It’s no different, and I don’t think any more effective, than replacing their grips.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “It’s tough enough to make a four-footer without God or Jesus or Buddha or anyone else looking over your shoulder.”

  With that, we ended our philosophical decision and went in search of a cold beer. Malt does more than Milton can, said a wise man, to justify God’s ways to man.

  Chapter 4

  EVEN THOUGH THERE WEREN’T many fans around the place, the tournament organizers had the concession stands open. I went outside and let a cute young thing in an amazing pair of tight white shorts pull me a draft beer in a blue plastic cup. Tables and chairs had been set up under a large green and white awning.

  I took my beer to one of the outer tables where I had a view of the putting green, and sat down. I thought about going to hit some balls myself. Playing a game of golf is for me a joyful experience that fully involves the senses and takes a total commitment of my attention. But when I’m at sixes and sevens, in need of some mild physical exertion and mental relaxation, I like to hit balls on the practice tee. Because I’m a former tour player, none of the pros objects to letting me use the practice range when it’s not otherwise busy.

  Okay, hitting golf balls is not aerobics. As exercise, it sucks, maybe. And it may sound dreadfully boring, the thought of standing out in the hot sun for an hour or two, mechanically and methodically launching balls into the air, over and over again, for no apparent reason. But for me, it’s good therapy. Whatever else I can or cannot do in life, I know I can stand on a bit of grass and hot a seven-iron high into the air, make it curve either left or right, and land it within a reasonable distance of my target. It is such a liberating feeling to be able to do that. For me, anyway. Which is why I can stand there and do it over and over for hours at a time.

  I was thinking about all this and sipping on my beer when a beautiful woman suddenly sat down at my table. She wore a pretty mint green outfit, shorts and top. Her long straight brown hair was pulled back off her face and tied in a pony tail, leaving her features open for inspection. The long and elegant lashes. That movie-star nose. The full and inviting lips. Nice profile.

  Those features stared back at me arrogantly across the table. She held her mirrored sunglasses in her long and elegant fingers, which I noticed were twitching a bit.

  “Are you a friend of John Turnbull?” she demanded.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” I retorted. I held out my hand. “Name’s Hacker. Yours?”

  She hesitated for a heartbeat or two. “Never mind that,” she said snootily. She ignored my outstretched hand, too. “Are you gonna answer my question, or not, Hacker?” she demanded again.

  I took a sip of beer and let her simmer on the other side of the table while I studied her. Her arrogance began to shift over a shade toward desperation. I didn’t like this at all. I go to great lengths in my life to avoid situations where other people can get me by the short and curlies, but I’m never comfortable when I find myself on the gripping end of someone else’s.

  “Well,” I said finally, as she fumed silently. “The short answer is no. I’m not what you would call a friend of John Turnbull, in the sense of having grown up with him, been his college roommate or spent many a happy evening carousing with him.” I took another sip of beer and watched the fire dancing in the girl’s eyes. “I do know the man, having talked to him some, and was almost run over by him last night in Atlanta, as I believe you know.”

  She flushed as she recalled the parking lot incident.

  “The longer answer to your question depends on what you really want to know, Miss whatever your name is,” I continued calmly. “And that answer depends on a few other questions. Like, who wants to know. And why. And what are you really driving at here, Miss —?”

  She sighed and dropped her head into her hands with an exhalation forced from her lungs by the weight of the world. “Aw, hell, never mind,” she sighed. She lifted her head up and looked at me sadly this time. “Would you buy me a beer?”

  I turned and signaled to a passing waitress to bring us two beers. By the time I turned back to my mystery guest, I saw yet another look on her face. This one was suddenly mysterious and sly and unmistakably seductive. Her long lashes beat once, twice, like a butterfly alighting. Her full lips, suddenly pouty, twitched upwards at the corners.

  “Say,” she said softly, eyes wide and large. “Haven’t I seen you around somewhere?”

  I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. Her line was straight out of a bad B movie. So was the gamine look this strange little chameleon had manufactured, apparently for my benefit. It struck me as wildly funny.

  Seductresses are not usually prepared for laughter as the reaction to their siren songs. Bold macho retorts, yes. Nervous laughter and a “golly gee,” maybe. Quick eyeball laser scan up and down the chest, almost always. Outright rejection, sometimes. But my loud guffaws were an affront to her womanly skill, if not her dignity. She turned a deep and angry red and her eyes flashed at me furiously while I laughed.

  I wiped my tearing eyes and subsided into controlled gasping just as the waitress brought over two more foamy cups of beer.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I slowly calmed down. She was glaring at me. “That was very well done. Were I a director, I would have yelled ‘Cut! Print!’”

  She continued to glare. Then she thought about it and, slowly, a smile began to form on her lips. Almost against her will, she too began to laugh, although hers was more on the sheepish side.

  “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said finally.

  “What’s your name, kid?” I asked her gently.

  “Jean MacGarrity,” she said. She looked back at me and this time her face was without pretense. I liked what I was finally seeing for the first time. A young woman, pretty and intelligent, but confused. Her eyes were wise beyond her years, and had a hard edge born of adversity. They were the eyes of a doe who had been evading the hunters with the big guns, and had landed somehow in a thicket she believed was safe.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, indicating with my hand the general scene: the golf course, the players, the Tour.

  She followed my hand with her eyes and look out across the green and quiet landscape that enveloped us. She didn’t answer for a long moment, lost in her own thoughts. When she turned back to me, that hard edge in her eyes had expanded and taken over. She backed deeper into her thicket and was not coming out.

  “I like golf,” she said. She dared me with a look to question her further. I declined. Nothing worse than trying to lure a wild beast from her lair.

  I shrugged. “None of my business,” I said. She down the last of her beer, muttered a quick “see ya around” and was gone.

  I watched her leave. Those long brown legs that ended nicely in her round green shorts caught the eye of most of the males about, and not a few envious looks from the females. I suspected that jean MacGarrity was a golf groupie. All professional sports have them and I had gotten to know a few over the years, seen them come and go. In a way, they were sad people. I had never been able to work out a rational psychological profile for the type. They all seemed to have different reasons for doing what they did, which was seek out professional golfers for sexual and, hopefully other, pleasures.

  Some were just cute young thangs looking for a fling on the wild side for a few weeks or months. Some were star-fuckers, who had their own personal and probably deeply perverted reasons for wanting to hang another celebrity pelt on their bedpost. Others I had known had been on a strange quest to seek Daddy’s approval that broke down roughly as: Daddy loves golf, so if I love a golfer, Dadd
y will love me. Sad. Pythagorean logic gone sadly astray.

  They came and they went. They were passed around like well-thumbed skin mags. The lucky ones, if you can call them that, found real live golfers to slum around with and fulfill their strange destinies. For a night, or a weekend, or sometimes longer. The unluckier ones, the next echelon, the close-but-no-cigar girls– the ugly and the fat and the unhappy and the really sick-o types– were ignored by the players and passed along to the hangers- on. They ended up in the beds of caddies and bartenders and manufacturers reps and tournament officials and network guys and, yes, members of the press. Until they were used up or totally degraded and finally went back to whatever unhappy existence had made them flee, an existence made much worse by the memories they would also carry with them.

  I downed the last of my beer. It was warm and as bitter as hemlock. Time for some therapy. I changed in golf shoes and went out to the practice range, almost empty in the late afternoon heat, and hit golf balls over and over until the sweat was trickling down inside my shirt and my hands began to ache. It felt wonderful.

  Chapter 5

  EVERY JOURNALIST DEPENDS on his sources, and every journalist who is any good spends a lot of time developing them. When I was on the police beat back in Boston, trying to lose myself in the misery of late-twentieth-century American culture, I had a bunch of good ones: the bartender in the Combat Zone strip joint, a couple of secretaries at City Hall, a beat cop who’d tell all the gossip for a cup of coffee and a jelly doughnut.

  I’d developed some good ones on my current beat, too. One of the more talkative players’ agents, a minor tournament official or two, most of the players’ wives and Fireman.

  Jackson LeRoy Johnson was a fixture on tour, known to one and all as Fireman. He had been a caddie since the days of Bobby Jones and had carried the bags of all the greats: Snead, Hogan, Demaret, Casper, Player and even old Arnie himself once or twice. He seemed ageless, which was not a bad trick for a man who had to be close to eighty years old. He didn’t caddie much these days, but served as the unofficial leader of that traveling band of gypsies who worked as regular caddies on the tour. Fireman drove from tournament to tournament in an ancient motor home, actually an elongated pickup truck with covered bed, a vehicle that looked as though it had been made somewhere around 1963. He’d park that damn thing close to the clubhouse at every tour stop, much to the consternation and bluster of the local bigwigs, calmly set out his WalMart vintage folding lawn chair, dig out his old pocket knife and a piece of wood, and sit there doing nothing but whittling and whistling softly to himself for the next five days.