An Open Case of Death Page 8

  “What’s a Crosby?” she asked.

  `I sighed. “I’ll explain it later,” I said.

  “Well, mind your manners and try not to piss him off,” she said. “Having someone like Jack Harwood in your corner could prove helpful down the road. Maybe you two could collaborate on a golf movie or something.”

  “What if he pisses me off?” I asked. “Pissing off can be a two-way street.”

  “That’s the Hacker I know and love,” she said and rang off.

  Showered, shaved and wearing a fresh coat of deodorant, I jumped in my car just before seven and followed the directions Jack had given me: across 17-Mile Drive from The Lodge and up the hill above the resort. This was a neighborhood of mansions summa est—each one looked bigger and more elaborate than the next: huge gated entrances, flowing formal gardens, outbuildings for the servants. As I passed all this opulence, most decorated gaily for Christmas, I began to wonder if my ten-year-old blue blazer, purchased for a hundred bucks from Land’s End, and still a little wrinkled from the plane ride west, would pass muster.

  I pulled into the address Harwood had given me, and found myself on a large square parking lot covered in crushed seashells outside a rather plain looking one-story brick hacienda. After driving past all the mega-mansions, I was a bit disappointed: Jack’s place didn’t look like that much, at least from the outside.

  A guy dressed in a long-sleeved black polo, chinos and black sneakers appeared from somewhere and waved me into a parking space near an open archway.

  “Right this way, Mister Hacker,” the guy said when I got out of my car. “Mister Harwood is waiting for you on the terrace.”

  “Lovely,” I said. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

  MacDuff led me through the wooden arch and into an expansive open courtyard, tiled in herringbone ceramics with a central fountain gushing water upwards, the spray caught in the bright floods. There were large liveoak trees at the corners of the courtyard, and the walls of the surrounding building—which I could now see was an impressive rectangle of a hacienda—were all old yellow adobe brick with windows and doors framed in heavy oak timbers.

  We walked in through a pair of towering oak doors, five inches thick and dotted with squares of black wrought iron, and entered a massive, forty-foot long living room, criss-crossed above in heavy wooden beams. At one end, a floor-to-ceiling fireplace, covered in intricate Spanish-style tiles, contained a crackling fire which threw out the scent of resinous wood that infused the entire room.

  MacDuff motioned for me to continue to follow, and he led me out to the broad terrace which looked down to Carmel Bay and across to Point Lobos. The sun had set an hour ago, but the Western sky still glowed faintly with the last light of the day. The twinkling lights of the houses across the Bay, and the floods the mansion owners around us had thrown on to show off their trees and lawns, were quite pretty. Another arm of the hill we were on and the tall trees growing there blocked any view of the village of Carmel at the eastern end of the bay, but a soft glowing aura in the night sky told us it was still there.

  There was another fire going in a round rocky pit built into the terrace, and a jumble of cushioned chairs and chaises were scattered across the space. Jack Harwood was standing next to his fire pit, poking at the logs burning there with a metal tool, sending red sparks rising up into the night air.

  “Mister Hacker, I presume,” Harwood said as I approached, nodding my thanks to MacDuff who turned and disappeared back into the house. “C’mon in.”

  We shook hands. “Too bad your view sucks,” I said, motioning out towards the beauty of Carmel Bay. “Otherwise, this place might be worth some bucks.”

  He chuckled, which I took as a good sign, and waved me into a chair near the firepit. The heat it was throwing off felt good as the chill of the night set in. MacDuff came back out carrying a small silver tray with two cocktails on it.

  “Bourbon Old Fashioned,” Jack said, picking one glass off the tray and motioning for me to take the other. “For some reason, I always drink them here and nowhere else. They seem to taste better here with my crappy view than down in L.A. or out in Wyoming.”

  I took a sample sip: the rich bourbon contrasted with the sweetness of ginger ale, but allowed the tartness of the Angostura bitters to fill in at the bottom. And my glass had three nice round maraschino cherries and a slice of orange stuck on a wooden toothpick, floating in the drink. I love maraschino cherries.

  “Nice,” I said. “But I’d have to try one in L.A. before I arrived at a final judgment.”

  He laughed. “Well, we’ll have to see if that can be arranged,” he said.

  Jack Harwood was, I knew, in his early-eighties, but only the lines I could see etched around his eyes and on his neck gave away any sign of advanced age. He was a small man—most movie actors are short in stature—but looked quite fit. His body was lean and chiseled, and he gave off an aura of energy and masculine fitness. He had a full head of wispy white hair, matched by his famous errantly bushy eyebrows. When he smiled, his teeth were bright white, almost glistening in the firelight. He was dressed casually in corduroy slacks and a designer sweatshirt of some kind: it looked plain and simple, but, likely made from the wool of endangered yaks, probably cost $500 in some Rodeo Drive men’s shop. He looked at me with that famous Jack Harwood scowl: a squinty, eyes narrowed glare that almost dared me to make my move. But I had seen enough Jack Harwood movies to know what happened to the poor sap who made that first move: it was never good and often fatal.

  He came and sat down next to me, put his feet up on a wooden stool. He raised his glass. “Welcome to the House of Harwood,” he said. We clinked glasses and drank. Me and Jack Harwood, having cocktails in Pebble Beach, on the terrace of a mansion likely worthy seven or eight times what I would make in my entire lifetime. Pretty damn cool.

  “House of Harwood,” I said. “Don’t you have some appropriately Spanish name for this place? Cortez’s Revenge or the Hacienda de Heaven or something?”

  He chuckled. “I always thought naming houses was pretentious,” he said. “It’s my goddam house, and has been for about twenty-five years now. So I call it the House of Harwood, because that’s what it is.”

  “Why did you settle down here?” I asked. “I mean, I know Los Angeles is a rat’s nest of a city, but that’s where your industry is based. Why do you live up here?”

  He sat back and took a sip from his drink. “I was in the Army, stationed over at Fort Ord north of Monterey,” he said. “This was years and years ago, late fifties, early sixties. I’d come over to Carmel with some of the guys from the base, looking for some cold beer and hot chicks, of course, and kinda fell in love with the place. So when I finally started to make some money in the movie business, I came up here to look around. This is about the fourth or fifth place I bought up here, each one a little better than the last. Hit the jackpot with this baby, though.”

  He took another sip and looked around, with a sigh. “Hate the idea of selling it, although I suppose all things must end. My manager wants me to deep-six it, but I guess I’m kinda attached to it by now.”

  “Well,” I said, “If you can’t find anyone to leave it to, the name’s Hacker. H-A-C-K-E-R.”

  He laughed again and raised his glass. “I’ll keep that in mind, Mister Hacker,” he said.

  MacDuff came back out onto the terrace, this time holding a tray with two large pieces of raw meat. He went over to the huge stainless steel barbecue grill on the far side of the terrace and, opening the top lid, threw the hunks of steak down on the grill which was glowing red with heat. The meat sizzled and immediately began to smoke. My mouth began to water.

  “So how is the book coming along?” Harwood interrupted my steak fantasy. “I thought you might have some questions I could help with. I’ve been playing golf here at Pebble Beach since I was eighteen years old. They actually let us enlisted pukes play for free on Mondays and Tuesdays back in the day.”

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p; He paused, reminiscing. “That was before the accountants took over and everything had to be monetized,” he said. “Hell, some of us in the Army truck pool would volunteer to work weekends just so we could be here at five a.m. on Monday morning, ready to be first off the tee. Sometimes, if business was slow, they’d let us go around a second time. Can you imagine?”

  “Sounds pretty awesome,” I said. And it did.

  “Afterwards, we’d go into Carmel, hit the bar at the Hog’s Breath Saloon,” he said. “Beer was seventy cents a glass.” He took a sip from his drink. “Man, life doesn’t get a whole lot better than that.”

  I let him sit there with his memories for a count or two.

  “I’m just getting started on the book,” I said. “Dottie van Dyke has loaded me up with reading material, which I’ll probably take back to Boston. But you used to play in the Crosby, right?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Bing brought his tournament up here in 1947, after the war. He had started it originally down near San Diego, near the racetrack he owned. After the war, Crosby was looking for a new place for his little tournament. I’m sure some money changed hands somewhere, but he brought it up here and all his friends from Hollywood came up to play. The Crosby Clambake.”

  “I understand the betting was rather ferocious,” I said.

  “Dear God, you could’ve funded a small country with what they bet in the Calcutta,” Harwood said, chuckling softly to himself. “I didn’t start playing until the late 60’s…I think my first was 1968. But the stories some of the old timers told me…hundreds of thousands changed hands. Some of the pros got in on the action. Hell, they probably made more betting than they could win on the course. Sam Snead was always buying teams left and right. He liked to make a little on the side whenever he could.”

  “You ever come close to winning?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he said with another soft chuckle. “You gotta have one of two things to win the Crosby, or whatever the hell they call it now. One, a pro who goes totally insane and makes everything he looks at all weekend. Or, two: an amateur who cheats like fuck.” He laughed. “I was either too honest or too bad to do the latter, and I never had a pro partner who went nutso. But Jeez, win or lose, you always had a good time. And not just with the golf. Every night there’d be a big party, and the entertainment was off the charts. Sinatra would sing, or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis would do half an hour of their best schtick. Fuckin’ Buddy Hackett would have them rolling on the floor. There’d be girls, booze, even some drugs…man, those were the days!”

  MacDuff finished grilling the steaks, put them back on his tray and went back inside.

  “Guess it’s time to eat,” Harwood said. “After Bing died, I think it was around 1977, ’78, everything changed. Of course, it started changing when they put the tournament on TV, which was back in 1958. Then, like everything else, it became all about the money. Television ruins everything it touches.”

  “Says one of the stars of the entertainment industry,” I said.

  “Touché,” he said, nodding at me. “But I don’t do any of my work for television. Here’s how I see it…the old Crosby Clambake was like a bottle of fine wine. See, some people love golf, but don’t particularly like pro-ams. Others like coming out to watch the celebrities, but don’t know shit about golf. OK? It’s an acquired taste. If you liked that kind of thing, like that particular bottle of wine, it was almost perfect the way it was. But then TV came along and took that bottle of fine wine and poured it out on the ground and said ‘If you want some of this, lick it up off the dirt.’ That’s what TV does. Lowest fucking denominator.”

  “And millions of people licked it up,” I said. “Still do. Willingly.”

  Jack Harwood drained the last of his cocktail and stood up.

  “And that, Mister Hacker, is why this country finds itself in the crapper,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

  The dining room, perpendicular to the long living room, was also Spanish: high, heavy wooden beams across the ceiling, terracotta floor in hexagonal shapes, and a long wooden table that could have easily held twenty guests. MacDuff had set two places at the far end: Harwood at the head, and one for little old me at his side. We sat down, Harwood poured two glasses of red wine from the crystal decanter next to his place. MacDuff came out and set two dinner plates down: the grilled steaks, a baked potato and a few stalks of asparagus.

  He lifted his wine glass toward me. “Salude,” he said. We clinked and I took a sip. The red was delicious, fruity, rich and with a slightly peppery finish.

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Thanks,” Jack said. “It’s from my vineyard. Grapes grow well in the hills up above town. Great country out there. We grow mencía up there and my guy mixes in a little Shiraz at the end.”

  “You sell a lot?” I had to admit, I had no idea that Jack Harwood was in the wine business, too.

  “Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Couple hundred cases a year. It’s mostly a hobby. And I like to drink stuff I like, so I just make it myself.”

  “Good to be the king,” I said.

  “Amen to that,” he said.

  After that, we stopped talking and began eating. The steaks were perfect, medium rare. There was a little tub of béarnaise sauce to dabble on the meat. I was hungry, since it had been some hours since lunch, and dug in with relish.

  I mentioned that the dining room looked like it hosted some big dinner parties in the past, and Harwood started telling me some Hollywood stories, finishing with a long and hilarious tale of the time the comedian Red Skelton challenged the actor Telly Savalas to a duel over the favors of a certain well-endowed young lady who had come to dinner with someone else entirely. Swords had improbably been produced, taken down from a display on the wall, and a long and drunken fight had ensued, complete with f-bomb laced insults, Shakespearean posturing and a hearty clashing of swords that took the combatants up and over the dining table and all around the house. “It’s a bloody miracle that neither of them died that night,” Harwood said with his sideways grin. “But it was a great sword fight. I always regretted not having filmed it. It had everything: Dialogue! Action! And the damsel off in the corner hiding her eyes but wanting to see which Lothario was going to win her heart.”

  He painted the scene so brilliantly that I could envision the two Hollywood figures going at it, sword and tong, knocking dishes off the table and turning over chairs.

  MacDuff came in and announced coffee in front of the fireplace, so Harwood and I moved into the living room. He sat in a leather chair next to the fire, while I sat on the plush sofa. MacDuff poured each of us a steaming mug and disappeared again.

  Harwood took a sip of his coffee and sat back in his chair, holding the mug on his lap.

  “I was sorry to hear of J.J. Udall’s passing,” I said. He closed his eyes and nodded. “Were you two close?”

  “I wouldn’t say we were the best of friends,” he said, “But I always got along with him. Smart dude. Knew everyone in the sports world. Fun guy on the golf course, which is important in my book.”

  “Did all of you owners get together regularly?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, couple times a year. We’d all synchronize our schedules and find a weekend we could all come up here. We’d review the numbers, ask a few questions. Jake Strauss was usually on hand if there was something big afoot.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, you know…” he waved his hand, “Big capital expenditures or some new building that needed construction. Strauss was the banker, so if we needed a banker’s opinion on something, we dragged him in.”

  “How is it going to work now that Udall is gone?” I asked.

  He was silent for a beat or two. I wondered if I had asked one too many questions.

  “You know, Hacker, I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s my understanding that all the arrangements were made for how we handle the passing of one of the principal shareholders. After all, none
of the four of us is exactly a spring chicken anymore. I think Jake and the lawyers had it all worked out. I guess we’ll find out what happens next when we find out.”

  “You worried at all?”

  “Nah,” he shook his head. “Investing in this place was rock solid. They don’t make places like Pebble Beach anymore. You can’t lose money owning a piece of a place like this.”

  He paused, thinking.

  “But I am going to miss J.J.,” he said. “You know, I think I was the last one to see him alive.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I heard about his heart attack when I was down in L.A.,” he said. “I came up to Frisco as soon as I could, and went to the hospital to see how he was. He was a little weak, and they had him pumped full of drugs, but he seemed to be in good spirits. Gave me the usual ration of shit.”

  He stroked his chin, remembering.

  “I remember, though, something he said just before I left him that night. He told me to be careful. Not to trust anyone.”

  “About what?”

  “Don’t know,” Harwood said. “He never said exactly what I was supposed to be careful about. I figured he was just a little disoriented, maybe drugged up with something they gave him. He passed away the next afternoon. They told me he seemed to be doing fine. It looked like he was going to recover, get out of the hospital and get on with it. But the nurse checked in on him the next afternoon and he was gone. The docs were surprised. But he was an old coot, his heart was weak, and I guess his time was just up.”

  He yawned, which reminded me that Jack Harwood was an old coot, too, and that it was time to go. I thanked him, he wished me well on the book, told me to call him if I had any other questions, and I made my way back down the hill, past all the gaily lit mansions and back into the lap of luxury at Pebble Beach.

  I parked my car in the lot near my room, but instead of going inside, I went out on the Terrace Lounge at the rear of the Lodge, to take in some night air, look at the stars, listen to the surf pounding against the seawall along the 18th fairway. There was a fire pit out there, filled with logs burning merrily, throwing out the smell of cedar.