Murder in the Ball Park

by Robert Goldsborough

  “Before what happened to the senator, did you ever hear Mrs. Fentress express interest in holding public office?”

  “No, never. I was quite surprised by her announcement, although I had not been on the staff very long, just a couple of months, so I did not know her all that well. I liked her, though. She was very friendly from my first day, and very patient helping me learn the ropes. For that matter, so was Mr. Davies.”

  “Very well,” Wolfe said. “Now if you will excuse me, I have other business I must attend to.” He rose and walked out of the office as Armstrong watched him go, a puzzled look on his face. Wolfe’s destination was the kitchen, where he would likely finish off the dinner leftovers—namely, a couple of pork fillets braised in spiced wine.

  “So, is that all?” he asked, turning to me.

  “Yes, it is, and thank you so much for coming,” I said, walking him back to the front room, where his former coworkers were thumbing through magazines.

  “Now what?” Ross Davies demanded, springing to his feet.

  “Now you all are free to leave,” I said. “Mr. Wolfe appreciates your time.”

  “Although I was glad for the opportunity to meet Mr. Wolfe—and you, too, of course, it seems to me this was a total waste of time,” Davies grumped. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Goodwin. I guess I’ve just been on edge lately, after what . . . well you know. By the way, thank your man—Fritz, isn’t it?—for being so solicitous toward us. The glass of wine he poured for me in the front room was absolutely first-rate. Oh, and so was the scotch, thank you.”

  “I will be sure to tell Fritz you liked the wine,” I said as the others rose silently and followed me to the front door, where I dispatched the trio into the gentle June night and watched them walk toward Tenth Avenue, presumably in search of a taxi.

  When I got to the kitchen, I found that Wolfe was tackling what had been left from dinner. He had parked himself in the only chair in that room that was big enough to accommodate him and attacked the remains of the pork fillets with gusto.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “Look, I know business talk is verboten during meals, but I don’t count this as a meal. I call this a snack, although I concede it might look like a meal to us ordinary mortals.”

  Wolfe put down his utensils and glared at me. “If you insist on badgering me about the futility of this evening, you will find your efforts to be fruitless. Clearly, I learned very little from those three gentlemen that I did not already know or hadn’t already surmised.”

  “Yeah, they weren’t exactly bubbling over with new information, were they? But really, what had you hoped to get out of them?”

  “I don’t know, confound it! Find something to eat. This may not qualify as a meal according to your standards, but I prefer not to partake alone.”

  I put together some odds and ends from the refrigerator, plus a glass of milk, and sat where I usually had my breakfast. “Do I have instructions?” I posed after having done some chewing and swallowing.

  “You have not heard back from Mr. Cohen about the particulars of that marine’s death?”

  “You know I haven’t. I would have informed you.”

  “Surely he will report tomorrow,” Wolfe said, finishing the remains of the meal. “Then there will be instructions.”

  Chapter 17

  Sure enough, Lon called a few minutes before nine the next morning, just after I had settled in at my desk following breakfast. “What have you got for me today, scribe?” I asked.

  “I called the mortuary this morning, where I talked to a loose-lipped employee. It turns out the young marine was a suicide.”

  “You have got my undivided attention. Go on.”

  “Unfortunately, suicides of veterans are not all that rare, as you know. A lot of them came home with their brains all messed up, which isn’t surprising given the horrors they saw. Sometimes they dwell on what they’ve been through for years after the war and finally decide to end it all. You may remember that we did a long series on the subject in the Gazette a few months back, more than four years after the end of the war.

  “Yeah, I do recall it. But the timing of this, given the guy was such a good marksman . . .”

  “I still think it’s a reach, Archie.”

  “How did Thompson die?”

  “Shot himself with his old service revolver, or so the gabby guy at the mortuary told me.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “At his widowed sister’s house in Queens, Flushing to be precise. He had been living there, apparently for some time.”

  “Her name is Hackman, according to the death notice,” I said. “I assume he was either a bachelor or divorced.”

  “Bachelor, never married. Again, that’s according to the mortuary man, who would have given me his own life story if I had asked him for it.”

  “Well, after all, who else does that poor guy have to talk to? Anything more you want to tell me?”

  “No, I pumped our gossipy undertaker’s assistant dry. Where do you go from here?” Lon asked.

  “That is up to the man who signs my checks.”

  “How could I forget? You will, of course, remember to keep your old and dear friend apprised as to developments.”

  “I’m sure that if I forget, you will remind me.”

  “You can bet on it,” Lon said. After hanging up, I called Wolfe in the plant rooms.

  “Yes?” As usual, his tone was abrupt. He hates interruptions when he is playing with his posies.

  “Mr. Cohen just telephoned with further information regarding the death of Richard Thompson.”

  “Can it wait?”

  When I responded in the affirmative, the reply was the familiar click of a line gone dead.

  At one minute after eleven, Wolfe stepped into the office as if we hadn’t spoken a word to each other since the night before, asking if I had slept well. Getting the pleasantries out of the way, he settled into his favorite chair, and rang for beer.

  He leafed through the day’s mail I had stacked on his desk blotter, then turned to me. “Report.”

  I proceeded to give him a verbatim account of my conversation with Lon. He leaned back saying nothing, eyes closed and hands interlaced over his stomach. Part of me hoped he would begin to push his lips in and out, in and out. That is an exercise he often—although not always—goes through on his way to solving a case. However there would be no such routine today. He opened his eyes and fastened them on me.

  “That woman in Queens.”

  “Who are you talking about—oh, the sister of the guy who shot himself?”

  “Yes. See her.”

  “She may not want to talk to me—or to anyone else, for that matter. And I wouldn’t blame her, given all that’s happened.”

  “Archie, there are myriad areas in which you are found to be lacking, areas we have often discussed. However, resourcefulness is not among them, and I have never known you to shy away from a challenge. I have full confidence you will find a way to ingratiate yourself with Mrs. Hackman.”

  “You remember her name?”

  “Certainly,” Wolfe said, sending me one of those looks I get whenever he thinks I underestimate him.

  Several years ago, because I thought it would help with a case we were working on, I had a phony press card made up, never mind how. It sports a photograph of my phiz with a properly serious expression and identifies me as a staff reporter for a major New York newspaper—but not the Gazette, in deference to my friendship with Lon Cohen. I had never used the card, feeling that was one line I preferred not to cross, and even Wolfe was unaware of its existence.

  I took the card from the top dresser drawer in my room, admiring my likeness in the photo. The card identified me as ALAN G. NELSON, REPORTER. Why Alan G. Nelson, you ask? A common name, but not too common,
like Joe Smith or John Jones. I slipped the card into a slot in my billfold and went downstairs to join Wolfe for lunch in the dining room, veal cutlets and Fritz’s best mixed salad with Devil’s Rain dressing, followed by a rhubarb tart.

  After polishing off the meal, we went to the office and had coffee. While Wolfe immersed himself in one of his current books, The Universe and Dr. Einstein by Lincoln Barnett, I dialed the number listed for Marguerite Hackman of Queens, hoping she was not at work. A listless female voice answered on the third ring.

  “Mrs. Hackman?”

  “Yes, I am Marguerite Hackman. But if you are selling something, forget it, because I am not buying.”

  I assured her I was not a pitchman and identified my so-called self and my newspaper, saying I was doing a feature on war heroes and their difficulties in adjusting to civilian life.

  “I really am not interested, Mr. Nelson.”

  “But your brother was a true hero.”

  “Yes, yes, he was, but he was not the same man when he came back,” she said in a voice full of unutterable sadness.

  “I would like to come to your home if I may, Mrs. Hackman, and learn about your brother and his struggles.” I could hear breathing on the other end for five seconds, ten, fifteen.

  “You say that you are a newspaper reporter?”

  “Yes,” I told her, repeating the name of the newspaper and wondering if this was the lie that would finally consign me to the fires of hell that I had learned about in Sunday school as a kid growing up back in the Ohio farming country.

  More breathing, then a sigh. “All right. Now mind you, I don’t have guests in my house often, so please do not expect anything fancy.”

  “No, ma’am, I won’t. I’m hardly the fancy type myself. When would it be convenient for me to see you?”

  “Oh, dear, let me see. What about this evening? Would seven thirty be all right for you?” I told her I’d be there, cradling the receiver and making a mental note to request that Fritz save me a serving of the shrimp bordelaise that was on the dinner menu.

  At a few minutes before seven, I stepped out into the evening sun and walked toward Tenth Avenue to flag a northbound cab. I usually have a sense of anyone tailing me, and after I had gone no more than twenty paces from the brownstone, I realized a car, a light-gray Chevrolet sedan, was moving along slowly behind me. At the corner, I hailed a yellow cab and jumped in. “See that Chevy?” I told the driver, who looked like he could have seen action in the First World War.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” he said with a lopsided grin. “You want me to lose him, right?”

  “You somehow read my mind. Think you can?”

  He laughed hoarsely. “Hell, I could shake a boa constrictor, sport. Hang on. By the way, just where we headed?”

  I gave him the address. “Flushing, huh? I’ll be damned. Every other time I’ve gone to that part of town has been to take fares out to LaGuardia, as they’re calling our airport nowadays.” He floored his hack as we lurched up Tenth Avenue, weaving from one lane to another and back again amid the honking from drivers we had cut off. “Chevy still behind us?” he asked.

  I looked out the back window. “I don’t see it, but keep going as if it was still right behind us.”

  By the time we crossed the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge and entered Long Island City, I was sure we had lost the tail, and I sat back, silently rehearsing my interview with Marguerite Hackman.

  “You can drop me here,” I told the cabbie when we had traversed the streets of Queens and reached the neighborhood. “This is close enough.”

  “What? We’re still more than a block from where you’re going. Don’t you believe I shook him?”

  “People in my line of work can’t be too careful,” I said, realizing I sounded like an actor in a Grade-B gangster film. “But you did do one hell of a job,” I added, giving him a healthy tip.

  Chapter 18

  I walked along the tree-lined street past almost identical two-story frame houses that stood shoulder to shoulder with only narrow passageways separating them. My destination differed from its neighbors only in that its shutters were a bright yellow as opposed to the black of almost every other house.

  The woman in a housedress who opened the door to my knock was probably close to forty, but her drawn appearance added years and her thin smile was forced, accenting the lines on her face. “I am Marguerite Hackman, Mr. Nelson. Please come in,” she said softly. “I hope you were able to find the house easily.”

  “I was, thank you,” I said, showing her my press card and stepping into a small, neat living room with green-and-white striped wallpaper, a sofa, two chairs, and a small television set with a round screen in one corner. Framed photographs of two men shared a mahogany end table, the younger one in uniform and wearing a somber expression, the older man in a double-breasted business suit and smiling. I liked his looks.

  “Please sit down,” Mrs. Hackman said. “I’ve just brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Will you have a cup?”

  I told her that would be fine and sat at one end of the sofa, pulling out a pencil and my reporter’s notebook. “That was Richard—Dick he was always called,” she said when she returned with a coffeepot and two cups on a tray. She indicated the marine, who looked sternly out from the photograph. “The other picture is of my late husband, Earl, who died four years ago of cancer, much too young. He had just turned forty-two when he was taken from me.

  “Our one regret was that we were never able to have children,” she went on, “but our marriage was wonderful nonetheless. I wouldn’t have changed a minute of it.”

  I studied both photos and nodded. “So you have lost the two men closest to you. That’s rough.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said, sitting in one of the chairs and smoothing the skirt of her housedress. “They were very different, Earl and Dick,” she went on as she poured coffee. “My husband was outgoing, friendly, always ready with a joke or a story. He was a grand storyteller. Just the type to be a salesman, which he was. He enjoyed life and he enjoyed meeting people. He represented a company that made small kitchen appliances, like toasters, waffle irons, and orange juice squeezers, and he sold them to department stores and hardware stores in the New York area, including over in New Jersey and the close-by towns in Connecticut. That meant he never had to travel. He was home every night, usually with lively tales about the events of his day.” I nodded as I sipped the very good coffee.

  “My brother—he was eleven years younger than me—was quite a different story, Mr. Nelson. He was always wild, from even before his high school days. He got thrown out of school at least twice, never got a high school diploma, and my parents finally told him to get out of the house. He enlisted in the marines even before Pearl Harbor, and—did you read the death notice in one of your competing papers, the Gazette?”

  “Yes, I did. That’s where I learned about Dick.”

  “Then, of course, you know the details of his heroism,” she said. “I don’t think he even fired cap guns as a kid. But in the marines, he became an excellent shot and won all kinds of awards during training, even before he got into the war.”

  “Your parents must have been very proud of what he did on Okinawa.”

  “They were proud of him, although they both died within a few months of each other soon after the Japanese surrender, so they saw very little of Dick after the war. Which was a good thing.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked as I went through the motions of scribbling in my notebook.

  “The war had a terrible effect on Dick,” she murmured. “He wasn’t the same man when he came back. Oh, I don’t mean because of his physical injury, which was minor—shrapnel in his legs, which got removed in a military hospital before he came home. It was his mental injuries that really changed him. He had developed a bad stutter, and he started drinking a lot. He had never been much of a drinker b
efore, even in his wild days. But that was not the worst of it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Back home, he began hanging out with a bad crowd. Some of them were veterans, too, and overall they were a mean bunch. Although I couldn’t prove it, I think he began using some sort of drugs around the time. He lived alone in my parents’ house over in Jamaica after they died and he threw some wild parties there. The neighbors on all sides complained, and that brought in the police. Dick started a fight with one of the officers and ended up spending a night in jail.”

  “Was he working at the time?”

  “Off and on. He had a number of jobs, so many I lost count. He unloaded ships on the North River docks for a few weeks but got fired. Same with construction work and day labor. He even worked for a while at both Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds doing janitorial work, but he lost those jobs, too. He was undependable.”

  “Was it well known that he had been such a great marksman?”

  “Yes, it was. A year or so ago, you may remember that the Gazette did a series of articles on honored war veterans living in and around New York, including the suburban areas. They called it ‘The Heroes Among Us’ and featured a different marine, soldier, sailor, or airman every day for months. The write-up on Dick included a picture of him holding his rifle. It was taken in this room by a Gazette photographer. I was right here when it happened. After the series was finished, the newspaper held a fancy dinner at one of the big hotels, the Waldorf Astoria, it was, honoring each of the men and including all kinds of politicians and executives in the audience. I even helped Dick buy a new suit for the occasion.”

  “He must have felt pretty good about that.”

  “He didn’t seem too excited about it beforehand, although I think he had a pretty good time, meeting those other GIs and comparing stories.”

  “Did he ever get married?”

  “No, and that, too, is a very sad story. As you can see from his picture, Dick was a handsome young man. There were several girls interested in him. One in particular, her name was Ellen, would have been good for Dick, a steadying influence. She knew him before the war, but like a lot of us, she saw an entirely different person when he came home. I think he was incapable of any sort of permanent relationship by then. They saw each other off and on, but Ellen finally realized it was not going to work out.”