Mike Reuther - Return to Dead City

by Mike Reuther

  When he finally managed to break away from the photographer and a few other people who wanted a few minutes of his time, he ambled slowly to the dugout where I was waiting for him.

  “I don’t know what help I can give you,” he said as he spat a stream of tobacco juice at the dugout steps in front of us. “These kids come, and they go so fast. You don’t hardly get to know any of ‘em.”

  “What about Lance Miller?”

  “Yeah. I figured that’s who ya wanted to talk about. Well what about him? We didn’t get along. I guess that’s no secret. As far as I’m concerned he pissed away what chance he ever had at being any type of real ballplayer.”

  “But he put out for you here.”

  Dutch nodded. “He did. I have to say he helped some of these youngsters on the team too.”

  “So he did some good then?”

  Dutch looked at me. He had a weathered, leathery old face, the kind of mug you’d see on washed up rodeo performers.

  “Son,” he said. “I been in this game for so long I can’t remember half the guys I played against let alone managed. But Lance and me go back a long ways. A long ways. I had him back in Rookie League ball years ago. Couldn’t teach him a blessed thing. Hell. The kid didn’t want to be taught nothin’.”

  He gazed out at the ball field and spat another stream of tobacco juice at the steps. The brown liquid formed in a gob at the edge of one step. We watched it stretch like gum from the concrete before dripping in a neat little circle to the step below.

  “Ah hell. Like all the rest of ‘em nowadays,” he continued. “They know it all. Got their own agents and personal trainers and everything else.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  And I figured that’s the way it was. Guys like Diggen and this old baseball hand. They were relics from the days when ballplayers ate dirt for breakfast, sharpened their spikes with nail files as if preparing for combat, and lived and breathed baseball all their waking hours. Modern players failed to fit the mold.

  But Reuther was hardly through.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “There are some hard-working young ballplayers on this club. Take Vaughn. Kid lives for baseball. Little on the religious side and a bit high-strung, but I’ll take nine Vaughns on my team any day.”

  Reuther shook his head. “But even that kid has an agent, and a personal trainer to boot.”

  “Personal trainer?” I said.

  “You don’t know? Sure. Emerson’s his personal trainer. He’s got a deal worked out with Vaughn that gives him a percentage of the kid’s earnings. Ya ever heard of such a thing? Can’t say I’m too happy about that. But what can ya do?”

  “Vaughn got sent home,” I said. “Why was that?”

  Reuther’s eyes narrowed in on me. “Got himself too worked up about things. That’s just the way he is. The kid’s no natural hitter. Just an old slap hitter who can get the bat on the ball. Got himself into a slump. A real doozy. Got to the point where he couldn’t do nothing. Even his fielding was shot to hell. Figured sending him home the last few weeks of the season was best.”

  “Isn’t that a bit radical?”

  “Nah. The kid needed to get his mind off the game. It was eatin’ him up. He’ll go to instructional ball this winter and get straightened out.”

  Reuther smiled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You know what we did during a hitting slump when I was playing?”

  I shook my head.

  “Tie on a good drunk. Best little fixer-upper for a batting slump. Can you imagine me tellin’ kids that these days?”

  I turned down Reuther’s invitation to watch the first few innings of the game against a team from Binghamton, N.Y. in the dugout along the first base line. Wallace assured me it would be okay to sit in one of the five buck seats behind the Mets dugout for a while. At the end of the third inning, he’d meet me once again over at the clubhouse entrance to take me down for a talk with Emerson. The stadium was all but empty. Maybe two hundred fans at the most. They were scattered in various parts of the grandstands. That’s why it was easy to spot Ron Miller. He was in a box seat right behind home plate and staring at me. When I gave him a big wave, he quickly turned his attention to the field where the opposing team’s lead-off hitter was settling himself into the batter’s box.

  Jack Walter was sharp. I had to give him that. In that first inning, he fanned two of the Binghamton hitters and got the other batter to pop up harmlessly to the shortstop. From what I could see, the kid looked to be a prospect. His fastball hopped, and he had a wicked slider that ran in on the hands of left-handed hitters. The cheers he got from the sparse crowd as he strutted off the field at the end of the inning didn’t exactly break any decibel levels though.

  Hanson was the lead-off hitter for the Mets. He took a couple of pitches to work the count in his favor then got a fastball from the Binghamton pitcher he drilled up the alley in right-center. It was a sure double, but Hanson smelled a triple and took off for third. He was churning around second when suddenly he stumbled and went down. I thought he had just tripped. He made no move to get to his feet though, and then the relay from the outfield came in, and he was tagged out. He was just lying there in the infield dirt when the entire Mets team piled out onto the field to come to his aid. Everything was real quiet in the ball park as the players formed a circle around Hanson. After a few minutes, Hanson got to a sitting position, and Emerson and a couple of teammates helped him to his feet and led him to the dugout to the scattering cheers of the sparse crowd. I looked over at Miller. He was talking with Wallace and shaking his head. A few minutes later Wallace was over at my seat and telling me that my rendezvous with Emerson was off.

  “He’s too busy now attending to Hanson.”

  “I’ll stay out of his way.”

  “Mr. Miller said absolutely not.”

  “Listen. An ambulance will be here soon. He’ll be out of Emerson’s way then.”

  Wallace gave me a blank look.

  “They’re taking the kid to the hospital … “

  Wallace began to stammer and look at his watch. “Look Crager. I got to tear. You can talk with Emerson another time.”

  He began backpedaling past the box seats. “I’ll call you.”

  I looked toward Miller’s seat. He was watching me.

  I left the ball park and got a rental car. It took me five hours to reach the Maryland town Billy Vaughn called home. Finding him was a cinch. It was one of those small burgs with a main drag, a few side streets and a single red light plunked down in the middle of what passed for a downtown. Some old man sitting on a bench in front of an American Legion hall told me I could probably find Billy over at the ball field at the edge of town.

  “Just drive a half mile and take a right at the Dairy Queen. Ya can’t miss it,” I was assured.

  Billy was there all right. Crouched in a fielding position out near second base, he was picking off ground balls being hit to him from home plate by some teenaged kid. They were the only two people here. This was a true country field. No dugouts, not even bleachers to sit in. Just a backstop pieced together from chicken wire and a snow fence for an outfield wall.

  It was almost dusk, and I just stood there next to the backstop for a while watching Billy scoot across the dirt infield to snare balls with his glove. He was a pleasure to watch. I got to say that. The kid was quick but smooth. He must have grabbed about fifty ground balls in this time without fumbling even one. Finally, Billy had had enough. He trotted over to the first base area and pulled from a bag a towel and wiped his head with it.

  The kid who’d been hitting the grounders turned around now to face me.

  “He’s really something ain’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “The best damn player we ever had come out of this town.”

  “Or who will ever come out of here,” I said.

  Then Billy came over. He had a bat on one shoulder and was carrying his bag. He only seemed a little surpri
sed to see me. “You’re that detective aren’t you sir?” He looked at the ground. “How’s the team doing?”

  “Can’t buy a win.”

  “Yeah. I heard.” He pawed at the dirt with his cleats.

  “So,” I said.

  “Yeah. Say Jimmy. I don’t want to be rude, but I guess there’s some things I have to discuss with this man.”

  Jimmy said fine. He asked Vaughn about getting in some more practice tomorrow.

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Meet me here at five. We’ll do some hitting. Get in some running.” He turned to me. “I guess you’re still looking into that murder. Huh?”

  I said I was.

  “The ball club sent me home here ya know. Said it was to get my head on straight.”

  “So I heard.”

  “I don’t believe it. They wanted me away from there.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He pawed at the dirt again with his cleat. “I wasn’t honest with you sir.” He bowed his head. “I was no better than the rest of them, I guess.”

  “How do ya mean?”

  “I was sleeping with Reba Miller.”

  He slowly raised his head. “Kinda puts a different slant on things doesn’t it.”

  I agreed that it did.

  “But I didn’t kill Lance Miller. I could never murder anyone.”

  “How could a nice kid like you get mixed up with someone like her?”

  But I already knew the answer to that. Women like Reba Miller had been getting their hooks into fresh-faced young kids like Billy since God created man.

  “I feel just awful about it. I had a girlfriend here in town I was going to marry. As soon as I got my career established that is.”

  “You got more to tell me don’t you kid?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “You were over at the Spinelli Hotel the night Lance got murdered weren’t you?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I wasn’t at the banquet. Mrs. Miller asked me to meet her in a room she had reserved there.”

  “A room?”

  “That’s kinda how we had it arranged. We’d meet there and … well … you know.”

  “So she snuck away from the banquet to meet you up in that room?”

  “Yeah. But we never really got together that night.”

  “Oh.”

  “Lance caught her coming into my room.”

  “That must have been some scene.”

  “Not really. She stopped there in the hallway. I heard them behind the door. He said he had just been called up to the show and was leaving later that night.”

  “The Show?”

  “The Major Leagues. Anyways, I heard them walk off together then down the hall.”

  “And that’s the last you saw of either of them?”

  “That was it. I knew she was in love with Lance. She talked about him every time we got together.”

  “So she was using you to get at him,” I said.

  Billy shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s what was going on. Thing is … I think I was in love with her.”

  “Yeah … well … those things happen kid.”

  It was Billy who broke the uncomfortable silence that followed.

  “So the team is doing pretty crumby?”

  “I think they won three games all of August.”

  He smiled. “I guess it’s wrong. But I’m kinda glad.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. They gave me my release you know.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “It was right after I talked with Chief Gallagher from the police department.”

  “Gallagher?”

  “He called me here at home. He wanted to know about steroid use on the ball club.”

  “Gallagher’s dead kid.”

  “Oh my gosh. Really.”

  “Suicide.”

  He bowed his head. Then he raised it and gazed out toward center field.

  “He sounded funny that day he called,” he continued. “Something about wanting to make things right. I guess he tried to talk with some of the players too.”

  “What did you tell him kid?”

  “Only what I knew sir. That Lance was taking them. From what I heard, he owed that gym owner, Mick Slaughter, a few thousand dollars for steroids.”

  “Oh. What else?”

  “Just that Hanson and maybe a few others on the team were taking them too.”

  “Well that explains that,” I said.

  “What sir?”

  “Hanson collapsed today running the bases.”

  I drove straight from that little Maryland burg to the ball park back in Centre Town. It was past 2 a.m. when I arrived. I parked the car about a half a block away from the field along a street of tidy, well-kept homes. Getting into the ball park would be gravy. I’d seen a couple of kids earlier that season slipping through a hole in the corner of the fence near the left field foul pole.

  Sure enough, I was just small enough to squeeze through it myself. A three quarters moon bathed the inside of the empty ball park in a weird glow. Early morning dew shimmered on the outfield grass. I walked slowly along the foul line, crossed the infield and entered the first base dugout. It was dark as hell, and I nearly killed myself going down the clubhouse steps leading from the dugout. The lousy aroma of body sweat hit me as I entered that dark clubhouse. The only sound was the dripping of water from the shower room.

  “Who’s there?”

  The room suddenly lit up. There, standing just ten feet away was Emerson. He was in a crouch and holding a knife as long as my arm.

  Chapter 13

  “Crager,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same. What’s with the blade? Preparing to disembowel some jockstraps.”

  He looked at the knife in his hand as if cognizant of it for the first time, smiled and scratched his head.

  “Hey. I’ve had break-ins here before. Just protecting myself, I guess.”

  “Yeah. With that thing you could do some heavy damage. Let me see that.”

  He stepped toward with the knife but kept a hold of it. It was a hunting knife, a very large hunting knife with a blade that glistened like it was well polished.

  “Nice.” I said.

  He nodded. Cuts pretty good too. I do some hunting now and then. Mostly deer.”

  “Got any others?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hobby of yours?”

  He nodded and rubbed his eyes. It was obvious I had just woke him up, though he was dressed in work clothes.

  “What. You sleep here?”

  “I got a room on the other side of the shower room,” he said, pointing behind him with the blade.

  “How’s the kid?”

  “Hanson? In the hospital. You know what the doc thinks it was? Steroids.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Yeah. Said the kid’s heart was running like an old man’s. He liked to have died out there on the ball field.” Emerson slashed the air with the blade. “It’s that fuckin’ Mick Slaughter. These kids are getting there steroids at his lousy gym. Someone’s gonna die one of these days. I’m tellin’ ya. That’s what it’s gonna take to get this out in the open.”

  “Steroids didn’t kill Lance Miller.”

  “How’s that Crager?” His hand gripped the blade.

  “Do I have to spell it out?”

  Emerson’s eyes hardened. “What? I killed him? Look that could have been anyone’s knife.”

  “Hobby of yours huh? How about I get a look at your collection.”

  “You’re out of line Crager.”

  His big beefy face had gotten red.

  “Yeah. Tell that to the police.”

  He took a step toward me with the knife. “Out.”

  “What are you gonna do big guy. Stab me too. C’mon. I’ve taken blades away from bigger kids than you.”

  That stopped him. He gave me a smile and chuckled. “
Okay Crager. You wanna have a look? Be my guest.”

  And so I did. It was one hell of a collection too. In fact, his room was like a small museum given over not only to knives, but of various military hardware. Grenades, machine gun bullets, guns, helmets and uniforms, medals and insignias hung on the walls, on shelves, and were spread out on a table he had in the corner of his room. The knives dominated the room though. I spotted a Japanese bayonet from World War II, a Samurai sword or two, and what I took to be hunting knives of various vintage and size. I grabbed one of the hunting blades, running my thumb up and down the sharp metal.

  “Yeah. I got a few of those,” he said, watching me eye the knife. “Don’t prove nothin’ though.”

  “Who’s accusing you?” I asked. Neither of us said anything. I continued studying the blade. I could feel him watching me closely. He was breathing heavily, like someone with a mild case of emphysema.

  “It’s late,” I said, carefully placing the blade back onto the table.

  He was smiling. A little too smugly too.

  “I take it you can find your way out Crager?”

  I nodded.

  “Just tell me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why in the name of hell would I want to kill Lance Miller?”

  “Why not? He was taking money away from you. Lance gets to go to the majors while two of your boys are left toiling away in the minors for milk money.”

  “Two of my boys?”

  “Walter and Hanson. I know for a fact you had a deal with Hanson. And I wouldn’t doubt you had the same thing worked out with Walter. Everyone knows those two were the real prospects in this organization.”

  “Ha. Well. You are pretty sharp Crager. But that doesn’t mean I killed anyone.”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  I drove over to Pat’s place. It was about 3 a.m., but she was still awake. She always stayed up late when she didn’t have to work the next day. I gave a few light raps on the door then let myself in with the key. The kids were tucked away, and she was on the couch watching an Alfred Hitchcock video. The title eludes me, but it was one of his classics, something to do with an insomniac who witnesses a murder through an apartment window.