Chapter One
Murder in the Golf Shop - October 1951 Austin, TX
A fresh breeze blew in from the north rattling the leaves from the tall cottonwoods that surrounded the pitch and putt golf course next to the railroad tracks. The foliage had begun to turn, and the big yellow leaves floated down dotting the greens and fairways in a mottled mosaic. A dozen golfers were stretched out around the course’s nine par-three holes. Frank and Jack were on the eighth hole, perhaps one hundred yards from the pro shop when the pre-war blue Pontiac rattled up and parked on the gravel shoulder next to the small white clubhouse. A hand-painted sign on the window proclaimed, “Hole in One Wins a Free Round for Four!”
A stocky man in khaki pants and a windbreaker jacket got out and stood by his car for a few minutes. Frank noticed him because he was drinking a can of beer. The beer wasn’t so unusual, but drinking it on the street at noon was not normal protocol in these parts. The beer should be in a bag. He should drink in the car. The man looked to be in his late twenties. He wore big black plastic glasses that were fast becoming popular in the year 1951.
Moving to the ninth tee, Frank teed up his Maxfli number 2 and chose his sand wedge. The flag was only about three hundred feet away. He took a healthy cut, and the ball flew straight but overshot the flag. It landed on the berm behind the green. The ball’s backspin pulled it down the incline and onto the frog hair at the edge where it stopped. A squirrel scampered across the fairway.
Jack laughed, “Got yourself some lucky spin on that one, pal.”
Frank nodded like a bobble head, “Damn right, and that was no luck buddy, that was one hundred percent skill. Just a little less and it woulda holed out. Glad I pressed you on this hole.”
Jack looked shocked. “Hey, I didn’t hear that! I didn’t accept no press!”
"Oh yes you did. There's five big dollars ridin' on this hole now. Go on swing, you big jackass. You're in my pocket now, yessir, you are."
As they argued good-naturedly, the stocky fellow leaning on his car tossed his Schlitz can into the street with a loud clink and began to walk toward the little concrete block building. Jack and Frank advanced on the ninth hole each carrying a nine iron, a putter and a wedge.
Frank had noticed the guy's trashy behavior as he was walking up to his ball. “Some people,” he thought to himself. He shook his head, but went back to the business at hand. The putt was challenging. Downhill, on a fast, hard-packed nap. It had a little break to the right.
The husky fellow in the windbreaker rounded the pro shop, opened the screen door and disappeared inside. Jack was making his putt when the shouting started. They could hear it easily from where they stood, though words were hard to make out. ‘Son of bitch’ was audible. Mumble, mumble, and then a loud, “No!” followed by a muffled pop.
Frank looked at Jack just as two more pops resounded, and two more “No, no’s” with a crash of some kind of metal.
For an instant Frank and Jack just stood there, then Frank said, “You think you're hearing what I am hearing?” There was another metallic noise, and in about five more seconds, the guy in the glasses and khaki pants slammed out of the door and trotted around the building. Frank and Jack were running up the hill as the Pontiac spun its tires in the gravel of the street. Another golfer in a red polo shirt on the first hole hollered at Frank just as he reached street level.
“Get his license number, that guy just shot Kenny! Frank caught sight of the plate. 1951 Virginia. A black and white plate, not too different than Texas, but the colors were reversed this year. 5321.
“I got it,” shouted Frank. He wrote the number down with the little short pencil on the back of his score card.
The three golfers banged into the golf shop. The cash register was open, but there was money still in the till. There was no one in the shop. A trash can lay turned on its side with a new bullet dent in it.
Jack went behind the counter and back into the pantry. He stuck his head out of the door. “Oh god, he’s in here. It doesn’t look good. He's bleeding all over. He’s unconscious and gasping.”
“Call the cops, call the sheriff, call the ambulance.” A couple of more people came in from the course all agabble and adrenaline charged. Everyone tried to get into the back room where Kenny Bodine was breathing bubbles of snotty blood out his nose. He had been shot in the lungs, the gut, and one shot in the chest that looked like it must have hit his heart. His eyes were open and the pupils had dilated to black pools. There was a slight cough from Ken, and then his breathing stopped. Someone had called the police from the pay phone, and came in to say, “The police are on their way, and an ambulance.” Someone said, “Ambulance? I think this golf pro's going to need a hearse.” Frank said, “I just talked to the police. I gave them the license number. That was like an old Pontiac wasn't it? Blue?”
“Did you tell them what he looked like? Does anyone know who that guy was?” Jack picked up a .25 caliber shell casing from the floor. “Hell, this is a girl's gun! Who shoots anyone with a .25 caliber?” Frank scowled at Jack. “You dumb shit, put that casing back where you found it. That's gonna be evidence.” He looked back at the cooling body of Kenny Bodine. “I'd say that .25 caliber did it's job just the same. Shit. This is bad.”
More people piled into the golf shop all asking what had happened. Two teen aged boys stuffed their pockets with golf balls and another helped himself to a Butterfinger.
+++++++++++++++++
Matt 's old Pontiac was packed and ready to go. He had a gladstone bag in the backseat and four Schlitz beers left in the paper bag. As he drove northwest out Burnet road he took a church key and opened another can. Driving and using the little steel opener required practice. He steered with his left knee as he held the beer in one hand and used the opener with the other. He only spilled a little on his pants. The city streets soon turned rural and onto a 'farm to market' road that began to twist and turn through the cedar scrub. A few cedar-chopper shacks and cabins could be seen through the trees. There was little traffic on the two-lane asphalt. The black and white road sign said Texas Road 2222. He was already out of the city limits so he was pretty sure there would be no police in his rear-view mirror. He was suddenly shaking and felt like he had just run a four-forty.
He drove slowly, not wanting to attract attention and hoping against all logic that none of those golfers had taken his license number. He was slowly realizing that he had flown off the handle in an irreversible way and that possibly his life had changed utterly. He had just done what he was once trained to do. He killed a man. He was frightened, but in a curious way elated. It was a deed that could not be called back.
“Well, Semper Fi, you dumb bastard. You did it! You just rid the world of another one of the scum who are ruining the future of this country.” Matt made up one moral justification after another as he drove.
His mind was whirling. “Perverted is what that Bodine was, and he was corrupting people all around him, not just my wife. No one deserved to die as much as that little prick. One less thespian for the world to miss.” he thought to himself. “Renee is going to hate me, but I am saving my kids from being around people like that.” He thought a little more. “Hell, Renee already hates me, the fucking bitch. God, why can't I quit her?” He balled a fist and hit his knuckles on the big ivory colored steering wheel. “Ow.” He stopped hitting it.
He passed between caliche hills and road cuts that exposed the white cretaceous limestone. Builders in Texas prized this rock, especially the kind that had fossils that could be seen. Austin Stone is what they called it.
Matt turned on the radio to see if there was any news of the shooting. He twisted the dial to the Senator's radio station. There was a regular network news show on. After what seemed like an hour, he rolled through the intersection called Four Points. It was a filling station mainly that served as a place for the choppers to pick up their mail, a godforsaken pocket of redneck poverty not ten miles from the state capitol. He turned on to Marshall Ford Dam road and headed toward the massive concrete pile that blocked the Colorado River. He thought about how the Senator had gotten his start helping the Greenes build this engineering marvel. He could see Lake Travis before he entered the high walled road across the top of the dam. The lake was blue and sparkling. Pretty. He motored on across and over the rip rap rubble on the edge of the main dam when suddenly, seemingly from out of nowhere, a red light was flashing behind him as an Austin Police car turned on its red light and siren. The cop pulled alongside his car and motioned for him to pull over. Matt's mouth was dry and his shirt was suddenly wet as he placed his hands on the steering wheel so the policeman could see them. “What the hell is an Austin cop doing out here in the boonies?” he thought.
###
Across town, at the law offices of Selwyn Scott and Summers on the 8th floor of the Atwood Tower a phone rang. Red Selwyn picked up the line.
His secretary Maggie spoke in her hill country twang, “Mr. Selwyn, you've got a call from Judge Morrison. “A cloud passed over Selwyn's's angular features before he took the phone in hand and almost hollered out a brisk, 'Hello Judge, how are you this fine day?'
There were plenty of judges in Travis and Blanco Counties, but there was only one around the office who they called The Judge. At not quite age 45, Judge Morrison stood 6'3”, weighed 260 and was respected not only for his wealth and business acumen, but for the fact he could whip anyone's ass within three counties with his bare hands...and, that not being sufficient, he carried guns as well, a pistol in his pocket and a shotgun under the edge of the front seat of his Lincoln. Red Selwyn knew the Judge well and treated him with as much respect as was possible without appearing to be kowtowing to him. If the truth be told, there were not many who knew the Judge who did not fear him. Perhaps his children or his homely wife liked him, but not many others did, yet in his neck of the woods no one ever dared speak ill of him. He had many spies and his hearing was sharp. The judge had what one might call a dominant personality.
His words came over the line to Red Selwyn in rapid fire delivery with some bad distortion caused by the rural exchange connection.
“OK Red, we got a problem, so fuckin' lissen up.” The phone squawked. “One of Preston's boys has gotten himself into a scrape, and for reasons I won't go into here, we gone take care of him. I have already called Judge Betts and made sure that this case is going to be remanded to his court, but we are going to need you and Emmett's help on this. I have a couple of guys comin' down to the jail to make sure that he gets bailed out quick. We don't want him bein' grilled by nobody. You got that?”
Selwyn was dressed in a light-colored suit and a powder blue tie. A long ash hung off the end of the Roi-Tan cigar he held between thumb and middle finger. He leaned forward hunching over the phone and almost cupped it in a foetal position and precisely asked the Judge, “What's the name of the client? Tell me the story. Who is it? Whaddeedoo?”
“Well, I can't go into a whole lot of it right now, but it's Matt Ware. He has lots of information in that head of his. You know the work he's done for us, so we need to link up on this. Anyway, it looks like he shot someone who was fuckin' his wife.”
Selwyn looked at the law books on his wall. Vernon's Statutes. Case books. Blackstone, the whole cover job. It had been years since he had opened any of those references. That is what clerks were for, and the law school library in town was as good as could be had at Harvard. He had been thinking he ought to sell those damn things. They just take up space.
The Judge lumbered on. “To tell the truth, there is a bit more to it than that, but that’ll do for now. I need for you to call Preston in DC and find some guys to go the bail. I'm trying make sure that Betts doesn't make it too high or too low. You and Emmett will be taken care of, don't worry about that part.”
“Judge, your money is no good here....” he started to talk.
“Goddamn it, shuddup and lissen.”
Selwyn stood up and carried the phone with him as he went to his office door, opened it and silently mimed to his secretary, “Get Emmett in here now.” Her eyebrows arched and she got up and went and knocked on Emmett Scott's office door. In a moment, Emmett was in the office with Red.
The Judge continued his spiel of instructions. “Now looky here, they'll be bringin' Ware into the downtown jail in about ten or fifteen minutes, and one of you guys ought to be there as soon's possible. I have a call in to Mayor Miller and he’s callin' the chief of police so that they all understand that they have a special obligation to be careful with this one. There's more ridin' on it than it appears, and that is all I am gonna say.”
Selwyn looked at Emmett Scott and asked into the receiver, “A.W., er, Judge, I will be down there in ten minutes to start the process of getting him on the ground. Leave it to us. There was a pause. “Well holy shit. Yessir, I am on my way.” He hung up the phone.
Selwyn said to Emmett Scott, well shit fire! We got a job to do today. Call Sam Summers. Matt Ware is in the soup today. Find some of Matt’s family or friends. We need to put up the dough for them to bail him out. Can’t have people tracing us as putting up his bail. We gonna have to call in some chits pronto.
Preston Lamar Hawkins’ main assistant in his Washington office in the Senate Office Building was Walter Sloat. He took the news calmly. “Yes, Mr. Selwyn, I will tell the Senator just as soon as he gets out of the caucus he is in. It shouldn't be more than an hour. Is there anything you want him to do?”
Red said, “Yeah, you better call Flo Hawkins, I think she needs to know about this as soon as possible, we don’t wish for her to get all excitable.”
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