Wednesday: Chapter Two
I guess a brief personal introduction is in order here. My name is Jonathan Walsh. Date of birth: twenty-nine years ago, give or take a few months. Birthplace: pretty much irrelevant. My father was a career Navy officer, and we moved a lot. About the longest single span of time I ever spent was three years of high school, when he was stationed just down the road in Long Beach.
Service brats often don’t have a lot of friends, and I guess I fell into that category, but there was always a golf course wherever we lived, so I kept busy. By the time I was ready for college, there were a number of golf scholarships sitting on my doorstep, but I decided to play it different. I enrolled at the University of Colorado, Boulder, majored in physics, philosophy, and snowboarding, and pretty much skipped the golf.
After managing to graduate, I worked a few years in the construction business, first in Denver, then in Houston. I’ve never minded hard work, but when I saw how dependent the construction racket can be on a shaky economy, I started looking for other things to do.
One day, out of the blue, I got a phone call from a hotshot developer in Dallas. He opened with, “A friend of a friend says you go both ways.”
“Uh…”
“Sorry,” the guy chuckled. “I meant on the golf course. You play righty, and lefty?”
“Oh. Yeah, I can do that. What’s the occasion?”
The guy chuckled again softly. “Just the usual. I wanta crush somebody’s nuts.”
And thus began my return to “competitive” golf. I generally played with a partner, and I let him set the stakes and call the shots. My job was simply to provide our “team” with a certain ineffable edge. I did it pretty well. Real well, in fact. At the end of six months, my game was sharp enough to take to the Tour’s qualifying school, and I’d saved enough money to afford a lengthy apprenticeship.
I eked my way through Q-school, and hit the road. Literally: I bought myself a used three-quarter-ton pickup with an oversized camper shell, and turned it into my home-away-from-home. It’s got living/sleeping quarters, kitchen, workshop, even an electric piano. I drive it from tournament to tournament, find a secluded spot in a parking lot, and I’m home for the week.
I had a lot of fun as a rookie on Tour, and I learned a lot, too. What I hadn’t learned, though, was how to win. It didn’t take a genius to realize that what was missing from my game was the mental side. Most of us, after all, are about on a par physically. What separates the guys who win from the ones who merely collect checks is the ability to excel at what’s called “course management,” and the really successful players excel at what I personally think of as “life management.”
So I’d vowed to clean up my act for this, my second year. I’d embarked on a good training and practice regimen. I’d worked on my diet. And I’d started experimenting with yogic breathing, inspirational reading, and ballet (though I didn’t say much about that stuff out loud).
I’d thought my prospects were pretty good heading into L.A., and now where was I? Standing on the 17th tee, surrounded by hundreds of people who had no idea who I was, with a dead– probably murdered– teammate lying at my feet, and an L.A. County detective staring at me and this actor fella lounging on the grass. What a start to the new year.
*
Within minutes the area was swarming with cops. Security is usually pretty good at Tour events, but I’d never seen a show like that before. Stansfield had the tee box and the area around Harris’s cart taped off. He had a couple of cops run ahead, gather up D’Alembert, Llewelles, and the Bill Burt group, and escort them to the clubhouse. Then he dragged Shipwreck, Cox, and me down the fairway, through 18, and up the hill.
There weren’t a lot of available rooms in the normally spacious clubhouse, but Stansfield managed to commandeer a small office on the second floor. The other players were eventually delivered, in spite of their protests. Bill Burt’s group had carded a net eagle on 17 and had gotten off well on 18,D’Alembert had been lining up a putt for net birdie on the 17th green, and now it looked like their golf was over.
Detective Stansfield sat everybody down and told us to shut up. He wasn’t a big guy, but he made the room seem way too small. It wasn’t so much the nervous, four-steps-and-a-turn pacing, as the way he held his hands. Like he was about to reach out and strangle somebody. Maybe he needed a cigarette. He stopped, facing us and awkwardly planting his hands on his hips. His malevolent glare swept each of us in turn, “us” being D’Alembert, Llewelles, the Burt foursome, Bill Burt’s caddie Boxcar, my caddie Shipwreck, the actor Brent Jay Cox, me, and two uniforms. He exhaled loudly, like he was disgusted with all of us, and told the two cops to wait outside.
“I’ll be brief,” he muttered. “My name’s Stansfield. Detective Stansfield, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. It looks like I’m here investigating a murder, and it looks like one of you is the murderer.”
We just sat there. In silence.
Stansfield began pacing again, talking almost to himself. “Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe this isn’t a murder. Maybe somebody else killed him. But I’ll tell you what I’ve seen so far. Howard Harris was alive when he arrived at the tee. You folks, inside the ropes, were the only ones who could get close to him. And now the guy’s got a bullet in his head.
“I’ll tell you something else. This morning, the department got an anonymous phone call. Said something pretty unusual was gonna be happening out here. Said we might wanta have some folks on the scene when it happened. Now I’m not saying that murder in L.A. is exactly ‘unusual.’ I wish it were. What I’m saying is that the department does not like being made a fool of!”
As Shipwreck might say, you coulda heard a moose fart.
Stansfield lowered his voice. “I’m not going to keep you long. For now, we’re just gonna go around the room and have each of you introduce yourself. Name, occupation, where you live, relation to the deceased. Let’s start over here.”
He pointed to Christy Mathewson McKenny. The lanky pitcher stood up nervously. In the smallish room, he looked about ten feet tall. I could only imagine how tall he must seem to a batter.
“You don’t have to stand,” growled Stansfield.
McKenny took a moment to absorb that, then sat down with a thump. “Uh, Christy Mathewson McKenny. Pitcher, Los Angeles Dodgers. Most folks call me ‘Choo-Choo.’ Let’s see: I live at Marina Del Rey, got a boat there. And, I guess me and Mister Harris talked a bit. I’m tryin’ to decide whether to play out my option year with the Dodgers. They’re jerkin’ me around, and my agent wasn’t helpin’, so I fired him, and Mister Harris sorta wanted to represent me. Actually, he was kinda pressurin’ me. Not so’s I’d go and kill him, though…”
Stansfield coughed. “Thank you, Mister McKenny. That’s enough, for now.” He looked at Daniel Breck.
The soap star frowned his trademark I’m-so-put-upon frown and locked Stansfield in his even gaze. Up close, the shock of blond hair looked much thinner than on TV. “Daniel Breck. Actor. Bel Air. I had as little to do with Howard Harris as I possibly could.”
“Would you care to expand on that?” asked Stansfield.
“No.”
The detective shrugged. “Okay…. Next?”
“My name’s Mikey.” This from the well-known comedian. Itook him to be about forty years old. He wasn’t so much a nerd, as somebody who was simply physically insignificant. When he was younger, he probably got mistaken a lot for a bellhop. The curly black hair was his signature: It was three inches high, but only on top. Like he had it permed in a toaster.
“Excuse me,” Stansfield interrupted. “Could we have your full name?”
“Oh. Sure. Michael Schwatz. I just go by ‘Mikey.’ I’ve got a comedy club on Sunset, ‘Wiseacres.’ Hottest place in town. If you want to make it, you’ve gotta be there. Hell, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You all know who I am.”
“We do indeed, Mister Schwartz,” noted Stansfield. “Now, if you’ll just tell us where you live, and your relation to the deceased.”
“Right. Uh, Westwood. Like to be where it’s happenin’. And Harris? Well, everybody knows he and I’ve been feudin’ for a lifetime. He won’t book his people into my place. Which is rich. His people need me a hell of a lot more than I need them. It’s like this story I was telling Big Bill: A guy decides to jump off the top of the Empire State Building. So he’s talkin’ to the elevator operator on the way up–”
“Thank you, Mister Schwartz.” Stansfield turned to Bill Burt, who just smiled.
“I’m the workin’ slug here. Name’s Bill Burt. Tour professional. Jupiter, Florida.” He paused to pick some lint from his well-pressed slacks. “I’m here to play golf. Never met the guy. Anything else?”
Stansfield shook his head. “Not now. Thank you.”
Simon D’Alembert shifted uneasily in his seat and introduced himself. He looked even more gawky and uncomfortable sitting down than he had, standing on the 17th tee. “I’m a film director by trade. I’m currently in development on a rather large project. It’s quite hush-hush at this point–”
“You mean that’s the response you get whenever you bend somebody’s ear,” joked Mikey.
D’Alembert jutted his chin our angrily. “You’re the one who came begging for a part–”
“Sure,” the dumpy little comedian laughed. “Can’t you see it? Me: the young Jesuit missionary, out to convert the savages? talk about casting against type.”
Daniel Breck, Mister Handsome, sneered, “Maybe someday he’ll do a remake of ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon.’”
“You can coach me, asshole.”
The detective put his hands up. “Mister D’Alembert, perhaps you’d like to finish?”
“Of course. Where I live: Brentwood. With my wife of thirty-five years. Did I know the man? Of course I knew the man. He practically ruined my life. This project was on hold for years, while I tried to talk Wilhelm Scheid-”
“The late Wilhelm Scheid,” teased Mikey.
“The late Wilhelm Scheid into playing the lead.” D’Alembert glared at Mikey, then at Breck. “Harris represented Scheid. The one actor of the age who could do justice to the role, and Harris wouldn’t let him even consider it. Don’t ask me why. And this after I’d told the world that nobody else would do.” He stopped, then lowered his voice. You could almost see him trying to ride down his anger. “And of course he’s dead now. Scheid, I mean. I guess Harris is, too. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned.”
My turn arrived. I’d tried to towel the blood off of my hands and arms on the walk to the clubhouse, but I could tell, sitting there, that everyone in the room was staring at whatever I’d missed. Mightily embarrassed, I croaked out a brief bio, closing with the pathetic statement that I’d just met Howard Harris the night before. What a cliché. If there’d been an acting coach in the room, he would’ve been shaking his head in despair.
The eyes-on-the-floor mood was relieved, immediately, by our make-believe doctor-for-the-day.
“Hey there!” he began cheerfully. “The name’s Cox, Brent Jay Cox. Actor. Glad to meet you all.”
“Excuse me,” the detective interrupted. “I’m a bit confused here. You’re not one of the players?”
“Me? Hell no. I’m just a witness. Saw the whole thing.”
“Saw what whole thing?”
“Well, you know. All these guys standin’ around, tellin’ lies, checkin’ out the babes.”
Stansfield frowned. “So you’re not one of the players?”
“Nope.”
The detective sighed. “Then I’ve a notion to politely ask you to leave, but from the sound of things you’d probably just run off to the press and make things worse.”
“Probably,” agreed Cox with a smile.
“Well, for now, then, just sit there and keep quiet.”
Stansfield glanced up at Boxcar and Shipwreck, who were slouching beside the door. He decided to dispense with their input for the moment, and turned to Llewelles. “Last, but not least…”
“I should hope not,” chortled the old man. He stood up, cleared his throat theatrically, and scanned the room with his steely blue eyes. He was in great physical shape for a man of his age. “I think you for the floor. For those of you not born in the early years of the last century, my name is Grantham Llewelles. Once star of stage and screen. Some of your grandmothers would remember me fondly, no doubt…. Unlike our esteemed director,” he bowed to D’Alembert, “I mus confess a happy married life has eluded me.”
“Five times,” laughed Mikey.
“Six, actually. I always count Clarissa twice…. Where was I? Ah yes. The question of domicile. Beverly Hills, of course. A modest bungalow, but quite well situated. When I am called away, at the last, I intend to leave it as a halfway house for struggling artisans.” He looked condescendingly at Brent Jay Cox, who just looked at him and smiled.
“I certainly knew the man,” Llewelles went on. “And I think I speak for all of us– all of us in the entertainment world, in fact– when I say… If you don’t mind, I’d like to quote La Bruyere’s reaction, on hearing of the death of Piso: ‘It is a great loss,’ he said. ‘He was an honest man, who deserved to live longer. He was intelligent and agreeable, resolute and courageous, to be depended upon, generous and faithful…. Provided he really is dead.’”
*
Things degenerated from there, and Stansfield eventually tossed us all out. All of us, that is, with the exception of yours truly.
He looked a bit undecided as the door closed. “You want coffee?” he asked. “I’m gonna step outside and grab a cup.”
He hurried from the room, leaving me to wonder what he needed me for. A moment later Brent Jay Cox hustled back in.
“This guy sure works fast. Is he givin’ you the third-degree? You’ve seen all this on TV, right? I mean, you’re a sharp guy. You don’t have to let him push you around.”
“We haven’t even talked.”
“He’s probably tryin’ to make you feel comfortable, so you’ll make a mistake. Say something incriminatin’.”
“He just went out for a cup of coffee,” I explained. “I didn’t even know the guy.”
“Hey, fine by me,” this busybody said. “You’re the guy with all the blood on his clothes…. Look, I’m gonna give you my card. This is my home, this is my service. I took some pre-law in school. If you need help–”
Just then Stansfield walked back in. He looked at Cox, then at me, sat down and blew on his coffee.
“Just leavin’, chief,” said Cox. Then he winked at me. “So if that engine of yours needs a tune-up, gimme a ring, and I’ll take care of it while you’re out on the course tomorrow.”
“We’ll see,” I mumbled.
“No problem. The brother-in-law’s a crackerjack mechanic.”
And with that he was gone. Stansfield gave me a funny look.
I shrugged. “Never saw him before.”
Stansfield took a tentative sip of his coffee, then set it down on a nearby table. We sat for a while. Was I supposed to say something? Confess? I looked down at my blood-stained shirt. Maybe I did need a lawyer.
Stansfield said quietly, “I knew your father.”
I tried not to react, but it was a helluva shock.
“At Long Beach,” he went on. “He was… what do they call ‘em?”
“Master-at-Arms.”
“Right,” he nodded. “Top cop. We worked together ona few cases…. He retired now?”
“Yeah. He and my mom live in Florida.”
He nodded again. “Good place. Away from the crazies.” Then, in the same casual tone, he said, “So, do you want to tell me about it?”
Just like that: “So, do you want to tell me about it?”
“Tell you what?” I gasped. “I never met the guy.”
Stanfield took a long sip on his coffee. “You know that phone call I mentioned? It really happened. We had an entire goddamn squad-room out here this morning, and Harris still gets himself killed. Talk about a kick in the teeth.”
I just sat there.
“The Commissioner called just now,” he continued. “He wants to know why somebody’s not behind bars.”
I gulped. “What’d you say?”
Stansfield stood up and walked to the room’s small window. “I told him that if I had to arrest somebody, it’d have to be you.” He looked out the window for a while, then turned to me and smiled. “But then we came up with a better idea.”
*
“No.”
“No,” I repeated. “I am not playing the stoolie. Excuse the language, but no fucking way.”
Stansfield, sitting across from me, took a last sip of his coffee. His bunchy, dark-blue suit looked awfully uncomfortable. “You don’t seem to understand. You don’t have any choice. My commissioner talked to your commissioner, and it’s settled: You’re going to cooperate.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you’re going to help me find out who did it. The Mounties get their man, and the Tour gets its image scrubbed clean. Everybody goes home happy.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Stansfield tossed his empty cup at a waste basket and missed. “I’m not real good at kidding.”
“But why me? You know I didn’t do it.”
“I do? You’re the guy with blood all over you.”
I pushed myself out of my chair, walked over, and picked up the styrofoam cup. “I just got to town two days ago.”
“You were standing right there,” Stansfield said.
“There were five hundred people standing right there,” I snapped back. Then I looked down at my blood-smeared arms. “And I’m the guy with blood all over him.”
Stansfield took the empty cup from me. “You are, indeed. So ere’s how it works: You’re playing the tournament, but you’re also working for me. You hang out, get to know these people, let me know anything you hear, anything that doesn’t sound quite right.”
“And if I don’t?” I asked.
He tossed the cup at the waste basket again and missed. Again. “Your dad was a cop. You know how these things go down.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“It means we can be friends,” he explained, “or….” He paused. “Actually, that’s your only choice.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then I said, “You know what? I think I’ll take that cup of coffee now.”
*
Stansfield just stared at me. I shrugged my shoulders and mugged at him. “That cup of coffee you offered?” I said, motioning toward the door. “I’ll take it now.”
He got the hint, but he clearly wasn’t happy. As soon as he left the room, I sat down and started thinking. Hard.
He returned in a few minutes. I blew on the coffee, set it down, and said softly, “I tell you what. I know, and you know, that I’m not a suspect here, so let’s just cut the crap on that one. And I seriously doubt that your commissioner talked with my commissioner. I’m not even all that sure my commissioner could pick me out of a police line-up, between me, a drunk, a dwarf, and a drag queen.”
Stansfield frowned down at me. “So what’re you saying?”
I smiled. “What I’m saying is: You can’t force me to help you. But it’s okay, because I volunteer.”
“What?”
“I volunteer,” I beamed at him. “That way you don’t have to draft me. I’ve already enlisted…. Anyway, look at it from my point of view: A guy in my foursome gets popped, I’ve got to be curious.”
I leaned back and took a sip of my coffee. “And you’d be amazed at all the trouble a guy like me can get into, with all the free time and distractions of a big-time golf tournament. I’m probably better off hangin’ with the cops, anyway.”
Stansfield snorted. “This won’t be no joyride.”
“Maybe not,” I shrugged with a smile, “but when we solve the thing, we’ll have the thanks of a grateful nation. On top of me winning the goddamn trophy.”
He shook his head. “And getting the girl, too, I suppose?”
“Why not?”
…
Aspen, CO