Death is a Two-Stroke Penalty Read online

  I shook my head. “I suppose John knew all this?” I asked. She nodded, unable to speak. “And I guess that must have caused something of a conflict between you too?” She nodded again. “We finally came to ... well, to an understanding,” she said, finally gaining control of herself again. “I told him I had no problems with his religion as long as I was never forced to join in.”

  “And were you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said fiercely. “Never. We talked a lot of religion... hours and hours. He was a very calm and understanding man.” Her voice quavered again, and I looked away. She drew in a deep breath.

  “He really liked his Bible study group. He told me that in his first few years on tour, it had been good for him to get together with some of his peers and just talk about stuff. Then Ed Durkee came along.”

  The last bit of sun in the western sky had disappeared. The sky had gone from deep indigo to midnight black. A soft breeze rustled the palm fronds in the trees around us, a whispering, restless sound. In the background, the rhythmic pulsating of the insects in the marshes provided a counterpoint.

  “John was uncomfortable with Ed, who is a lot more fundamentalist than John’s tradition,” she said. “Durkee is into control, plain and simple. His God is an angry and vengeful one, whose laws must be followed to the letter. It gives him a very hierarchical outlook on life.”

  “You mean, he’s the chief and everyone else is supposed to be an Indian?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” she nodded. “And John never quite fit into that pattern, which made both of them slightly uncomfortable with each other. When Ed came on the scene, maybe eighteen months ago, Johnny was starting to play well and make some good checks. Then we got married and –”

  She couldn’t continue. She put a hand to her mouth and wept, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. I stopped and put my arms around her and held her tight until she stopped. By the time she did, my shoulder was soaking wet. She noticed when she pulled back and couldn’t help giggling as she tried to wipe at it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to smile, “I shouldn’t –” “Nonsense,” I told her. “That’s what it’s there for. Tell me more about Durkee and the group.”

  “I’ve seen his type in the business world many times,” she said as we continued walking down the path. “Durkee can be so ... so manipulative. Everyone thinks he’s so understanding and helpful. I think he’s a bastard. Every time I see that man, I can’t help but think of that old man in his scarlet robes—” Her voice began to shake again. I grabbed her hand as we walked on. I heard a faint rumbling of thunder rolling in over the marshes, heralding a coming storm. Far off to the west, over the Bohicket Marsh, I could see the faint white outline of thunderheads roiling up into the sky.

  “John told me that Durkee actually sets quotas for some of the new players,” she continued. “He tells them how much money they should be winning for Jesus. I couldn’t believe it. John tried to convince me it’s just a form of positive reinforcement and goal-setting. But I think it’s so ...controlling. John told me one guy even had to quit the tour for a year, get his head back on straight. He couldn’t make Durkee’s quota and felt like he was letting God down by playing badly. Couldn’t deal with that.”

  “Not too many of us could,” I agreed.

  “Then there’s the money part. Each member of the group is supposed to pony up a couple thousand dollars a year to finance the ministry, as Ed likes to call it. That’s about sixty thousand a year that goes straight to Durkee. On top of that, they’re all encouraged to ‘tithe.’ That’s ten percent, and Durkee makes sure he gets ten percent of the gross, not net, money. I mean, a young guy out on tour is usually struggling financially anyway, much less without giving cash away to Brother Ed. And he’s always coming up with new projects that call for extra donations. His latest scheme is this Christian Investment Fund.”

  “What’s that?” I asked. I’d never heard of it.

  “He wants each member of the group to kick ten thousand dollars into an investment pool, to be invested only in companies run by evangelical Christians,” Becky told me. “There are mutual funds of all kinds, and this is one of the strangest I’ve ever come across. I told John I wanted to see an official prospectus first. Show me the names of the management, the names of the companies, their track records, what kinds of businesses they were in. All the stuff that any investment advisor would recommend.

  “Well, that was about two months ago, and I haven’t seen anything yet. Makes me even more suspicious,” she concluded.

  “Did John share those suspicions?” I asked.

  “Well, he pretty much lets me deal with the financial parts, since that’s my line of work. But he wouldn’t press Durkee too hard. Said he believed in him. Durkee was beginning to press hard for John’s investment money. But I wouldn’t let him write a check. Not until I saw some hard facts and figures. But Johnny was so willing to overlook people’s faults. He was ... was –” She began weeping again, quietly. Another heavy rumble of thunder rolled in over our heads. I saw a flash of lightning in the distance.

  “We better get going,” I said and took her elbow to hurry her along the path to our villas. “Why do you think someone killed him?”

  She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at me intently. “W-what?” she quavered.

  “This morning, right after the doctor gave you that shot to put you to sleep, you told me that someone had killed your husband.”

  “I didn’t know—” she stammered. “I mean...oh, Hacker, I don’t know what to think. What was Johnny doing last night? Who was he with? Why did he have to ... have to die?”

  The tears came flowing again. They would come frequently for this very pretty, very smart, and very distraught woman. I wished I had a magic wand that I could wave and make it all right again. The same magic wand that would end disease and starvation and homelessness and war and unhappiness for everyone in the world. But I don’t have such a magic wand, and I don’t know anybody who does.

  “Those are all good questions,” I said to Becky and held her tightly again while she wept. “The police would like to get some answers, and so would I, but they’ve been told to lay off.”

  She pulled away from me and even in the threatening darkness of the oncoming storm, I could see the angry fire in her eyes.

  “Oh, I can just bet they have,” she said bitterly. “I know all about damage control and how organizations go about burying their smelly fish. No...John Turnbull wasn’t murdered...it was an accident. Because anything else messes up the tournament and the reputation of the tour and that threatens the almighty dollar and gives them a big black eye.” She strained with vehemence. “Did you hear that Sermon-on-the-Green a little while ago? Talking about accidents? No...they want it to be a nice, clean package they can wrap up and put away. Forgotten in a few days.”

  She pulled away from me and stomped her foot in frustration.

  “Well, John Turnbull is not going to be forgotten,” she said. “Yes, Hacker. I think someone killed my husband. There! I said it! Do you think I’m totally crazy?”

  I didn’t answer her at first. I was dealing with a raging flood of thoughts, all coming at once, all vying for my undivided attention.

  Fact: there were unanswered questions about Turnbull’s death.

  Fact: the Charleston police hierarchy wanted those questions left unanswered, preferring to use the conservative and most obvious explanation, that Turnbull’s death was an accident.

  Fact: The woman standing in front of me was in an extreme state of emotion, which had to be figured into the equation.

  Fact: the possibility that John Turnbull had indeed been killed opened a gigantic can of worms that demanded an answer. Like who, and why, and how.

  I looked down into her frowning eyes.

  “No,” I said finally, “I don’t think you’re totally crazy. But I can’t see a whole lot to go on right now that would suggest what you say is true.”

  “B
ullshit!” she spat. She grabbed both my arms with a sudden strength born of fury. “You said yourself that there are unanswered questions,” she pleaded. “Who is going to ask and answer those questions? The police? No way. I need your help Hacker. I need you to find the answers. Will you do it for me?”

  I didn’t have time to answer. There was a sudden blinding flash followed almost at once by an ear-smashing clap. On cue, the skies opened and rain began pelting down with a ferocious roaring sound. I grabbed Becky’s arm and we dashed toward our villas, about two hundred yards away. Another bolt of lightning turned the ink-black night into day, at least for a split second.

  “Wish I had a one-iron,” she gasped as we leapt over the instant puddles that had formed on our path.

  “I know, I know,” I answered as we ran. “Like Trevino says, not even God can hit a one-iron!”

  We were laughing together when we finally ducked under the awning in front of her open door. Inside, we could see a group of players’ wives bustling around in the kitchen, preparing to spend a long and likely tearful night with Becky. She paused before going in and looked up at me. Her eyes were small and hard and determined. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  “No promises,” I said. “But I’ll keep nosing around and see what turns up. Okay?”

  She leaned up and kissed me softly on the cheek.

  “Thanks, Hacker,” she said. “I knew I could count on you. Go on now, and let me be. This part I’ve got to do by myself.”

  She went inside and closed the door.

  Chapter 12

  I USED TO KNOW A HOMICIDE dick on the Boston force named Eddie “Bulldog” O’Shaunessy. If ever a nickname fit a man, Bulldog fit Eddie O’Shaunessy. First of all, the man looked like a bulldog, with his heavy Irish jowls hanging down and those pale watery eyes that peered out from his immobile face. He was a heavyset man who walked and talked ponderously, but when he needed to move, he could move fast.

  He was also called Bulldog because of his investigative method. He would first assemble a list of possible suspects in a murder case, writing them out slowly and deliberately on a yellow legal pad. Once he had listed all the suspects, he would simply start at the top of his list, where he usually put the chief suspect, and begin the pursuit. One after the other, he would begin questioning, re-questioning, interviewing, re-interviewing, doggedly chasing down facts and witnesses, day and night, until either the guy confessed or until Bulldog had convinced himself that the guy didn’t do it. In which case, he’d go to the next name on his legal pad and start the process all over again. If you heard

  Bulldog was on your case, you either got out of town, or got yourself a good lawyer.

  I was still not convinced that John Turnbull’s death was anything but a sad accident, but I decided to borrow from Bulldog’s modus operandi. After a mostly sleepless night of tossing and turning, I got out of bed early Thursday morning, found some paper and decided to make a list.

  I stared out the window at the mist hanging over the marshes. If Turnbull had indeed been murdered, I could think of three suspects right off the bat. Jocko Moore, Turnbull’s ex-caddie. He was pissed at the golfer for firing him, and revenge is always a good motive. But Fireman had told me that Jocko already had found another bag. Although Jocko would certainly know where to find a golf cart in the middle of the night. The caddies’ staging area for the tournament was in the resort’s cavernous cart barn.

  My second candidate was Bert Lewis, Turnbull’s rival in the shootout. Was it possible that Bert Lewis had gone off the deep end when he lost? Could a simple golf rivalry, even with a thousand dollars thrown in, really spill over into hatred and murder? It sounded farfetched in the cool light of morning, but I knew that men had killed and been killed for far less.

  I also wrote down the name of Jean MacGarrity. Jilted girlfriend, or at least one who felt jilted, even if she wasn’t a girlfriend at all. Known to be very drunk and very angry on the night of the possible crime. Had John Turnbull been shot through the chest with a Saturday night special, Jean might qualify as a higher-ranking suspect on my list. Such deflected passions resulted in bloody crimes virtually every night someplace in this gun-crazed nation. But John Turnbull, if he had been murdered, had been tossed bodily off a bridge. I doubted if all the bottled-up passion in the world would be enough to provide the slender Jean with the strength. I put an arrow facing down next to her name: she was going at the bottom of my suspect list.

  The name Ed Durkee floated through my head, but I thought it more likely that Becky Turnbull would have been the reverend’s target. She had prevented her husband from joining into Durkee’s investment scheme, and Becky and Durkee obviously couldn’t stand one another. But Durkee and John Turnbull appeared to have, at worst, an uncomfortable rapport. That’s a far cry from murder.

  When I finished my list, I looked at it with a sinking feeling. I had only two reasonable suspects: Jocko “Drugstore” Moore and Bert Lewis. What would Bulldog do? He’d go stick his jowly face right up against Jocko’s and start firing those endless, pressing, relentless questions that would weaken the suspect’s knees and create sweaty halfmoons under his armpits.

  This is ridiculous, I thought. What if Turnbull really had accidentally fallen off that bridge? But what was he doing out there in the middle of the night? Sighing, I got up and headed for the shower. I planned to work on my sleuthing technique in there.

  IT WAS JUST after six in the morning when I found my way down to the bag storage and cart barn that was built beneath the main clubhouse building, well out of sight of the members. The first threesome in the tournament wouldn’t tee off until 7:30 A.M., but the caddies were already bustling about, cleaning clubs, gathering the supplies of balls, gloves, towels, and laying their bets in the weekly caddie pool.

  Jocko Moore was asleep, oblivious to the growing clamor of the morning, leaning upright on a golf bag. He had a towel draped around his neck and a stained golf cap pulled down low over his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in two or three days. I reached down and shook his shoulder.

  “Jocko...hey Jocko, wake up,” I called.

  “Hrumph,” he grumbled, opening one eye and looking sleepily up at me. “Whadda ya want?”

  “Whose bag you got this week?” I asked.

  “Little Billy Winocur,” he mumbled, rubbing his sleepy eyes. “Fuckin’ rookie, too scared to even fart out loud. Be lucky not to shit his pants, much less make the cut.” He stretched out his legs, yawned, stood up and glanced at his watch. “Got an hour before we go,” he said.

  “That give you time to check the pin positions?” I asked, knowing that was the duty for the caddies.

  He stretched again. “Naw,” he said, yawning again. “Not worth the effort for this gomer. He’ll be lucky to hit half the greens, much less focus in on the pin.” He shook himself, rubbed his eyes and then straightened up, more fully awake. “Who th’fuck’re you?” he asked, looking at me intently.

  “Hacker, Boston Journal,” I told him. “You used to carry for Turnbull, right?”

  Jocko laughed bitterly. “Yeah,” he snorted. “The late, great John Turnbull.”

  “Heard he fired you last week. Wanna talk about it?”

  Jocko looked at me differently then. His eyes narrowed down to slits and his mouth curled into a near-perfect sneer. He had it all down pat: curled lip, unshaved visage. “No comment,” he snarled. “Isn’t that what Tricky Dicky Nixon used to say? No comment. Yeah, I like that.”

  “Yeah, Tricky Dick used to say that,” I agreed affably. “But he was guilty as hell, too. What are you guilty of, Drugstore?”

  He didn’t like that nickname. His eyes turned cold. “What the hell do you want, asshole?” he demanded.

  “I’m doin’ a story on the guy, what else?” I shrugged. “I figured since you had his bag, you knew something about the guy.”

  Jocko stretched and twisted like his lower back muscles were stiff and sore. He was thinking. Probably figu
red whatever he told me would show up in my story and make him look like a big deal. Guys like Jocko like to look at themselves as big deals, because most of the time people look at them like the dirtbags they are.

  “Yeah, well, I guess I knew the guy,” he said. “He was really starting to stroke the ball well the last year or so. I was only on his bag for the last six months, since the first of the year. We got along okay.”

  “So why’d he fire you?”

  Jocko spit sullenly on the dusty floor.

  “Him and his goddam religion,” he mumbled. “Asshole was always talkin’ ’bout how God gonna do this and that and watch out for his children.” He spat again. “Well, I guess he’s right, because now he’s dead as shit and I got a new bag for the weekend. Amen.” He laughed sarcastically.

  “Doesn’t sound like you two g ot along so well,” I observed.

  “Yeah, well, I was his caddie,” Jocko said. “Not his friend. I carried his sticks and gave him his numbers and read his putts. But what I do off the golf course is none of his business. Or yours either, for that matter.”

  “How about what you were doing last night?” I pressed. “You got any comment about that, like where you were and who you were with?”

  He smiled snarkily. “You’re sounding like a cop, Hacker, not a newspaper guy. But if you want to know, I was down at the local juke joint. Met up with this tight little snatch from Charleston State. We drank a few brews, did a little foolin’ around. Y’know.”

  He grinned at me. Classy guy, this Jocko.

  “I suppose this beauty can substantiate that?” I wondered.

  Wrong. Too obvious. Bulldog would not have approved. Jocko Moore didn’t either. He moved quickly, reached out with his thin, wiry arms and pinned me to the wall with a painful slam.

  “Okay,” he said in a very calm and very dangerous voice. “What’s the game here, man?” His eyes were close to mine, clear and liquid and very bright. “You sound more and more like a fuckin’ cop, Hacker, and I don’t like cops. ‘Where was I?’ ‘Who was I with?’ You got a lot of questions, and I don’t like any of ‘em. You got something to say to me, man, why’nt you just go ahead and say it, or get the fuck out of my face.”