Amen Corner Page 2

  He put the invitation back in his jacket pocket and pulled out the two badges he was carrying with him to Augusta: the laminated Masters participant badge that had been mailed to him several weeks earlier; and the silver Minneapolis Police Department badge that he rarely carried with him anymore.

  The Masters badge had his picture on the front: short, sandy-blond hair, still kept at police trim; pale blue eyes that an old girlfriend had once described as the color of a lake on a cloudy day; a slight crook in the bridge of his nose from running into a fence in a high school baseball game; and a clean-shaven face that showed the hint of a golfer’s tan, with the cheeks, nose, and chin darker than the forehead.

  The silver-plated police badge was heavier. An eagle spread its wings above the engraved words Minneapolis Police; his badge number was engraved below the seal of the city. He was still entitled to carry it, but he didn’t know if he wanted to anymore. He’d discovered during his layoff that there was more to life than putting assholes in jail.

  Sam had spent much of the previous year filling his 60-gig iPod with thousands of songs from his CD collection. He put each track into a playlist from the month and year the song was released, going all the way back to the ’50s. He preferred older music—pure escapism into long-gone eras that seemed more innocent than they probably were—and he hated to listen to songs out of season. “Hot Fun in the Summertime” sounded as ridiculous to him in January as “The Christmas Song” did in July.

  He put in his earbuds and dialed up the playlist for April, 1969, the month and year that George Archer won the Masters. The first song was “Will You Be Staying After Sunday” by the Peppermint Rainbow. Sam’s goal this week was just to stay until Sunday.

  A coffee-colored sedan accelerated up his block, too fast for the neighborhood; Sam was about to get up and yell at the driver to slow down when the car pulled to the curb in front of his house. It was an unmarked squad car, and Sam knew the driver: deputy chief Doug Stensrud, head of the investigations bureau.

  “I’m glad I caught you before you left, Sam,” Stensrud said as he got out of the car.

  He was a broad-shouldered man with a dark moustache and thick, black hair that was turning white from the center of his forehead outward. He’d been Sam’s partner for a couple of years after Sam was promoted to detective. Then Stensrud made deputy chief, and became his boss. There was still a bond between them, but the relentless paperwork and pressure from the chief, the city council, and the mayor had taken a toll on Stensrud’s sociability.

  “What’s up, Doug?”

  “I just wanted to wish you good luck at the Masters,” Stensrud said, laboring up the concrete steps to the porch. He’d put on about thirty pounds since he and Sam had been partners.

  “You could have sent flowers and balloons like everybody else.”

  Stensrud eased himself into the Adirondack chair next to Sam’s and wiped his damp forehead with the sleeve of his sport coat.

  “Weather’s finally warming up,” he said.

  Sam knew what was on Stensrud’s mind.

  “Might as well spill it, Doug.”

  “Sam, it’s been almost two years since you got shot and took medical leave. Don’t you think that’s long enough?”

  “No,” Sam said. “I still have things I want to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Climb Mount Everest.”

  “You’ve had time,” Stensrud said, looking at him out of the corner of his eye, without turning his shoulders. He returned his gaze to the sidewalk, where a mother pushed a stroller over the cracks in the concrete. “Look, we need you back. We’ve got eight unsolved homicides since the first of the year, and you know the gang killings are about to start piling up. Now, it’s great that you’re getting a chance to play in the Masters. We’re all thrilled beyond words. But I gotta tell you, your odds of making it on the pro tour are between zero and dick.”

  Sam laughed. Nobody knew better than he did that this was not only his first major championship, but his last.

  “I’m not turning pro, Doug.”

  “Then it’s time for you to get serious about your job. I’d like you to come back to work after Augusta.”

  A passenger jet rumbled overhead, low to the South Minneapolis rooftops in its landing pattern. Sam waited till the noise abated. He wasn’t sure if Stensrud was asking or ordering. Technically, his leave of absence was good for one year. The department could extend it if he asked, but they didn’t have to.

  “What if I don’t?” he finally asked.

  Stensrud now shifted around in his wooden chair to stare at Sam.

  “We want you, but we need a body,” Stensrud said. “You’re one of the best detectives I’ve ever worked with, but you’re useless to me if you’re not working. I’ve got cases to clear. If you don’t come in after next week, I’ll hire somebody else. I’ve got a stack of resumes to choose from. Some of them look pretty good.”

  Sam was surprised to feel a brief pang of concern. It was like seeing another guy dating the woman you broke up with.

  “I’m not ready,” Sam said.

  “Sam, I know it sucks to get shot. I’ve become a fucking blimp since I took that one in the hip ten years ago. But I went back to the streets. I had to—I’m a cop. And cops get shot sometimes.”

  Sam had gone through all of that with the department psychologist that Stensrud had insisted he see. He’d told the doctor that he wasn’t worried about getting shot again—although he also wanted to ask the condescending prick if he’d ever taken a bullet. He just didn’t feel the same way about the job that he did when he first made detective. He was tired of chasing scumbags, tired of working for civil servant wages, and tired of taking shit from the good people of Minneapolis for doing the work they wanted done but were too lazy, scared, or morally superior to do themselves.

  The months away from the job had been the most stress-free time he’d had since college. He wanted more of it. In fact, Sam wanted to tell Stensrud he would turn in his badge and his gun as soon as he got back from Augusta. But he couldn’t do it. He’d gone through his savings and needed to start cashing paychecks again. Maybe it would have to be cop paychecks.

  “I told you I’d make a decision after the Masters, Doug.”

  “I need your answer a week from Monday,” Stensrud said. “I can’t hold your job open any longer. I need a cop, whether it’s you or somebody else. In or out, Sam—it’s time to make a decision.”

  A maroon airport taxi pulled up next to Stensrud’s squad car and sounded its horn.

  “There’s my limo,” Sam said, getting up from his chair.

  “Need a hand?” Stensrud asked.

  “Think you can handle a golf bag?”

  They walked down to the street as the cabbie opened the trunk for the bags.

  “You’d make a good caddie,” Sam said to the deputy chief, who easily slung the bag off his shoulder and into the trunk.

  “I’m a cop,” Stensrud said. “So are you. Call me as soon as you get back.”

  Chapter Two

  Lorraine Stanwick sat in front of the mirror in the bedroom of the Firestone Cabin and fiddled with the clasp of her pearl necklace for several minutes before deciding she had to ask her husband for help.

  “Ralph, could you come in here a minute,” she called toward the living room. “I can’t get this fastened.”

  Ralph Stanwick was sitting in a padded armchair, alternately watching television and looking at the golf course through the living room window. He never got tired of the view of the 10th fairway, even during Masters Week when tens of thousands of ordinary golf fans traipsed up and down the hills, some within just a few feet of the cabin, leaving their footprints, their trash, and their common taint on his beloved Augusta National.

  Stanwick got up from his chair with a mutte
red curse and walked into the bedroom. The one-story house with white wooden siding and a gray roof was located next door to the Jones cabin and just east of the clubhouse, facing the 10th tee. The central living room was decorated modestly with framed photos of the National’s early years, and furnished with casual, comfortable arm chairs, a leather sofa, and a dining table off the kitchen. The bedrooms were located on either side of the living area. Due to their membership seniority and Ralph’s position on the club’s governing board, the Stanwicks had stayed in the Firestone Cabin during Masters Week for many years.

  “What is it now?” Stanwick asked.

  “This necklace,” Lorraine said. “Can you do the clasp?”

  She turned her back to her husband and held the two ends behind her neck.

  “I need my glasses,” said Stanwick, a tall, trim man who was mostly bald, with gray hair at the temples and eyebrows. His wife was five years younger, carried no extra weight, applied just the right amount of makeup to deal with her aging skin, and was wearing a tasteful Oscar de la Renta spring skirt and blouse combination. Stanwick thought his wife was shapeless, bland, and dressed like an old woman.

  Stanwick returned to the living room to find his reading glasses, and stopped in front of the TV to watch a local news reporter talking about the annual influx of golf fans that would hit town Monday morning. The reporter mentioned—as reporters always did, because the club requested them to—that police would be looking for scalpers and counterfeiters along Washington Road all week.

  “Richmond County Sheriff Leonard Garver said that his department confiscates as many as a dozen bogus badges each year,” the reporter said. “Augusta National won’t comment, but sources say a four-day badge can sell for up to $10,000 on the street…”

  Stanwick couldn’t help thinking back to the trial. He hadn’t been there, of course, but he’d gotten the verdict he wanted—or so he thought. Sixteen years would have been just about enough. Enough for Lee Doggett to get killed by an inmate, or maybe kill one himself. Even if he did make it to the end of his original sentence, Stanwick would either have been dead or too old for Doggett to bother with.

  But Stanwick didn’t dare attempt to influence the Sentence Review Panel. As a resident of Connecticut, he knew no one on the panel, and didn’t have enough pull with anyone who did. The new sentence—eight years—had not been long enough, and the eight years were up. Doggett was out now.

  “Ralph?” his wife called from the bedroom. “Did you get lost?”

  Stanwick picked up his reading glasses and returned to the bedroom.

  “You are so distracted lately,” Lorraine said, turning her back to him again with the ends of the necklace in her hands. “Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. He put on the glasses and began the aggravating task of trying to fasten the tiny clasp. He fumbled the little lever that opened the hook several times, and finally gave up in disgust.

  “Wear something else,” he said.

  “We’re having dinner with Harmon and Annabelle tonight, and I want to look nice,” Lorraine said. “I’ll bet you don’t even remember when you bought this string for me.”

  He didn’t. He knew it had probably been a gift some years back to cover up for something else he’d bought at their usual Manhattan jewelry store for one of his girlfriends. How could he be expected to remember which girlfriend, or when it was?

  Stanwick returned to the living room and sat down again, his mind returning to the subject that had worried him ever since he and Lorraine had left Connecticut for their annual trip to the Masters. He had no doubt that Doggett knew he had been behind the planted drugs and the excessive sentence, and he had no doubt what Doggett would do to him if they were somehow to meet. He glanced at the date window on his watch. April 6. Doggett had been out for a full day. Where was he now? Would he dare come back to Augusta? Even if he did, could he somehow get inside the gates and find me? Not likely…but not impossible. Masters Week, after all, was the one week of the year that the club opened its gates to the outside world. Stanwick was vulnerable—and the green jacket that members wore when they were on club grounds would make him that much easier to identify.

  He didn’t dare call the police. That might stir up old business that was best left forgotten. They’d want to know why he’d be afraid of a former groundskeeper who’d served his time. Best to just get through the week, be wary, and get out of town as soon as the Masters was over. Maybe Doggett wouldn’t come back. By next year, things could be different. There were ways to have Doggett taken care of permanently.

  Stanwick hated Lee Doggett for ruining springtime in Augusta—a time and a place he loved best in the world. More than winter in Palm Beach. More than summer in the Hamptons. More than autumn on Wall Street.

  He loved the sincere, “Hello, Mr. Stanwick! How was your winter?” that he received from nearly every employee on the grounds, from the locker room attendants to the waiters to the pro shop crew to club manager Bill Woodley. He loved seeing his friends from around the country, the captains of industry, finance, and government who forgot about business at the National, and instead just played cards, smoked cigars, drank good scotch, told filthy stories, and played golf on the finest and most coveted course in America. Most of all, Stanwick loved the looks of envy he received from gawkers on Washington Road every time he made the turn onto Magnolia Lane.

  Now, he was afraid to look at those gawkers. One of them could be Doggett.

  It was the one mistake Stanwick wished he could go back and fix. That first year as a member, he was so enthralled with the sense of power and privilege that came with the green jacket that he felt he could do anything. When that maid caught his eye, coming in to clean his cabin as he was leaving for a round of golf, he got the stupid idea that, with Lorraine back in Connecticut, this was just another easy opportunity.

  He had stayed in bed the next morning, pretending to be sick. He told the boys he might catch up with them on the back nine. When the maid came in—Laverne Evans, according to her name badge—she saw him in bed and said she’d come back later. He asked her not to go; he asked her to come into the bedroom and feel his forehead. Stanwick was young then, almost handsome—and with more hair. He was obviously well-off financially—how was a cleaning woman supposed to resist that combination? Besides, technically he was her boss—the employees were told they worked for the club members.

  She had been nervous, but she came into the bedroom. He put her hand up to his forehead, and she said he didn’t feel warm. She tried to take her hand away, but he held it, kissed it, ran his hand up her arm, told her she was beautiful, eventually drew her down to the bed with him and began unbuttoning her maid uniform. He could tell she didn’t want it to happen, but she didn’t pull away, either.

  When he saw her the following year at the club, her name badge said Laverne Doggett, and she would not look at him. In fact, they didn’t speak a word to each other for another 19 years, until the day she stopped him as he was getting into his car behind the Firestone Cabin and told him they had a son named Lee who desperately needed a job. Stanwick laughed at her, but she showed him a picture of Lee. It could have been Stanwick’s picture from his prep school yearbook.

  “I’ll make you take a blood test if I have to,” Laverne had said, her voice shaking, yet iron determination mixed with the fear in her eyes.

  That would be a disaster, Stanwick realized. He wasn’t as worried about Lorraine’s reaction as he was about being booted from the club if it became known he’d fathered a bastard child with one of the maids.

  “Does he know?” Stanwick asked her.

  “No. He thinks his real daddy’s dead.”

  “Don’t tell him. I’ll take care of it. But don’t ever—ever—speak to me again. If any of this gets out, you know you’ll be fired immediately.”

  I should have found a
way to be rid of both of them right there, Stanwick had told himself many times since then. Instead, he arranged an interview for Doggett with Jimmy Fowler, the club’s superintendent.

  Doggett was hired as a greenskeeper, seemed to do a good job, and never gave any indication that he knew who Stanwick was the few times they passed each other on the grounds. Laverne, petrified of losing her job, avoided Stanwick from that point on.

  Then came the counterfeiting arrest. Stanwick couldn’t believe Doggett would be stupid enough to risk one of the best jobs in Augusta for a few thousand bucks. There was something wrong with that kid. He’d had his chance. Now it was time to get rid of him.

  It had been easy enough to find a friendly cop who was willing to plant drugs in Doggett’s house in return for some political favors with his higher-ups, and the judge—in return for a couple of extra Masters badges—was amenable to using Doggett as an example for those who thought they could rip off Augusta’s most important fixture.

  If only that sentence had stuck…

  “In other state news, authorities are investigating the disappearance of a farmer from rural Claxton, Georgia,” the news anchor said. “Sixty-one-year-old Don Robey has not been seen since Saturday afternoon, and Tattnall County authorities report evidence of a robbery at his farmhouse…”

  The locator map on the screen showed Claxton about 50 miles west of Savannah—and about 100 miles south of Augusta. Not that far from Reidsville.

  “Ralph, are you going to put your tie on?” Lorraine said, now standing next to him. “We’re supposed to meet the Ashbys on the veranda in five minutes.”

  “Aren’t we spending enough time with them already?” Stanwick said. “Let’s just order something from the kitchen.”

  “Ralph, what’s gotten into you?” Lorraine said. She was used to being shut out of her husband’s business dealings, and she wasn’t naïve enough to believe he didn’t have his little flings now and then. But when she was with him at Augusta National, he was usually compliant with her social requests. Dinners at the clubhouse with the other members were their special times together.