Murder at Ebbets Field

by Troy Soos

  Finally, the Municipal Building, which I thought was just too damn big to find anything in it. I walked through the pillars of the front court and under the central archway, which allowed Chambers Street to run through it, dividing the building’s ground floor.

  In the north entrance hall, I looked over the listings in the lobby directory. There were tax offices, and the Department of Sanitation, and license bureaus for just about everything—liquor, dogs, cabs, marriages, milk. And on the sixteenth floor: the District Attorney’s office.

  That’s where my mission came to an end. There was no one named James Bartlett who worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Not an assistant district attorney, not a secretary, not a janitor.

  Karl Landfors had lied to me.

  Casey Stengel, on the other hand, came through for me. He called in the afternoon and offered to bring me to a Brooklyn pool hall to meet Virgil Ewing.

  At seven o’clock I was riding the Fulton Street elevated, on my way to take him up on his offer.

  The rain had exhausted itself by now, and the clouds had parted enough to let an orange sunset squeeze through and cast its hue on the city.

  I got off at Willoughby and walked half a block toward Pearl Street. The air felt clean after the rain, the summer dust all washed out of it. Puddles large enough to be small ponds filled the streets, and squealing barefoot children filled the puddles. Some played with toy boats; most just played with other children, splashing and dunking each other while passing automobiles sprayed muddy cascades over them.

  Casey Stengel was at our appointed meeting place in front of the Loew’s Royal Theatre. He was demonstrating his batting stance to a group of street urchins, while regaling them with a story about—actually I couldn’t tell what his story was about, except that it had something to do with baseball. I wasn’t sure if the kids could tell either, but it didn’t seem to matter to them. They were enthralled by Stengel, and I remembered what was best about being a big-league baseball player: the adulation of youngsters. To a kid—especially a boy—one baseball player is worth ten movie stars.

  “Hey, Mickey!” Stengel called when he spotted me. He dismissed his audience with the parting advice, “Remember to lay off the high ones, boys.”

  We walked down the street together for another block. “Here we are,” he said when we reached Marsten’s Billiard Parlor. A swinging sign over the front door advertised: Pool, Billiards, Snooker.

  “I told Ewing I’d be bringing you around tonight,” Casey said as we walked in. “By the way, don’t call him Virgil; Virg is okay, or Ewing, but not Virgil. He doesn’t like it. Although I don’t see anything wrong with the name myself. It’s better than Lave Cross—his name is really Lafayette. Now isn’t that a helluva moniker for a ball player? But that’s not the strangest name I ever heard. There was this fellah ...”

  With one look I could tell that Marsten’s Billiard Parlor was for serious players. This wasn’t a saloon with a pool table or two, where playing pool was something you did while drinking beer. Marsten’s was all pool tables and no bar.

  More than twenty tables were neatly arranged in two rows. Well-dressed but tough-looking players had every one of them in use. Tall chairs lined the walls, their seats filled by silent men who paid rapt attention to the games in progress. Polished brass cuspidors were placed at frequent intervals on the carpeted floor, and ceiling fans turned slowly overhead to circulate cigar smoke. Frosted white lights hung low over each table; their brightness brought out the rich color of the felt, a green almost as pretty as well-kept infield grass.

  Casey led the way to the back, where there was a smaller room on a level a foot higher than the main floor. Only one table was in the room; it had elaborately carved woodwork with inlaid ivory markers and leather net pockets.

  Virgil Ewing was lining up a shot with a pool cue that looked like a straw in his meaty hands. He was wearing a yellowed undershirt that clung tightly to his barrel chest and droopy gray trousers that hung from one suspender. His face, red with concentration, was distorted by a lump the size of a cue ball in his stubbly left cheek.

  Half a dozen other men and a boy I recognized as the Dodger bat boy were in the room watching Ewing. One man had a cue stick in his hand and a resigned look on his face; he was sitting in a chair and looked like he’d been there for a while.

  I’d played pool myself a few times. At first I thought nothing could be easier than to hit a ball that’s sitting still. Then after some friendly games that invariably ended up costing me money, I realized it was harder than it looked.

  Virgil Ewing quickly pocketed four balls. After each shot, the cue ball was left in perfect position for the next one.

  The boy kept score by sliding a marker on a string, and he gave a small cheer at each shot Ewing made. He was about twelve years old, with a friendly innocent face and a small slim body that was hunched at his right shoulder. He was wearing his Dodgers cap with obvious pride and seemed equally proud to be in a pool hall with grown men. A batboy for the Brooklyn Dodgers by day and a pool hall denizen by night—he must be the envy of every boy in his neighborhood.

  Ewing paused from his shooting to chalk the tip of his cue.

  “Virg,” Stengel said. “This is Mickey Rawlings. You two met before, I think.”

  I nodded hello and offered my hand to Ewing. He shook it with a hard grip. “How you doing?” he drawled.

  Ewing’s opponent, a lean pale man who looked as if he spent a lot of time in pool halls—and judging by his clothes didn’t make much money at it—mumbted, “Rawlings.... You that sonofabitch cost Sutherland his shutout?”

  I shrugged. Yeah, I cost him his shutout, but I wasn’t a sonofabitch.

  The man rose from his chair and slid his hand on the cue until he was gripping it like a club. “You got some nerve coming in here. Goddamn Giant bastard . . .”

  I had an impulse to grab a ball from the table, to throw it at him if I had to. I held back though. Ruining the game would only get everybody mad.

  Stengel warned him, “If you want to start something, you’ll be taking on the both of us.”

  Another man, who’d been seated next to Ewing’s opponent, stood up. He looked like a bonebreaker, at least six foot four and more powerfully built than Virgil Ewing. He crossed his thick arms across his chest; his face was expressionless. If he was going to make it two on two, Casey and I were in trouble. I glanced back over my shoulder. It was a long way to the door, and we’d have to make it past a lot of Brooklyn pool players. Might as well stay and fight.

  “Hell, boys,” Ewing said with a smile on his face. “Let’s not have us no trouble here.” He spoke like a tantalizing slow curveball; you wanted to either finish his sentence for him or answer before he stopped speaking. He shifted his tobacco from his left cheek to his right. “Now there ain’t no reason to be mad at Rawlings here. He was just doing what McGraw told him to. Ain’t that right, boy?”

  I nodded. Although I didn’t like the way he called me “boy.”

  “See?” Ewing said to his opponent. “What I tell you, Spike? It weren’t his fault.” Spike? I don’t want to fight a guy named Spike. Ewing added, “Besides, it don’t matter none to me if Sloppy Sutherland gets himself a shutout or not. So you just set yourself back down and take it easy.”

  Spike didn’t. He took a step forward, grumbling, “Still ain’t got no business coming here iike—” The big fellow next to him unfolded his arms, grabbed Spike by the scruff of his neck, and pulled him down into his seat.

  “C’mon now, Spike,” Ewing said. “I remember when you didn’t like having Southern boys coming in here. But once you got to know me and Billy there, you changed your mind, didn’t you?” Ewing had nodded toward the big man, so I took it he was Billy.

  Ewing continued, “Hell, least we can do is be hospitable to somebody from just across the river.” Turning to me, he said, “You come to play, Rawlings?”

  “No, I came to talk.”

  “Tal
k. Hell . . . what you want to talk about?”

  “Alone. It’s kind of personal.”

  “Ain’t no need to be secret. You can see we’re all friendly here. Anything you want to say to me you can say in front of my pals.”

  “It’s about Florence Hampton,” I said loudly. I thought it might convince him that our talk should be private. It didn’t.

  At the mention of her name, Ewing’s friends started to make grunting sounds and vulgar comments. They sounded like ten-year-old boys snickering over a French postcard. The batboy giggled at their quips.

  Ewing bent over the table, lining up another shot. “What you want to know? If she was any good?” His friends started hooting and the batboy almost fell off his chair.

  I leaned over the table from the other side, putting my face inches from his. “Miss Hampton was a friend of Margie Turner,” I said through gritted teeth. “Miss Turner is a friend of mine. Either you show some respect for the lady, or I will feed you the eight ball.”

  “Oooo ... scary,” taunted Spike.

  Billy elbowed him quiet.

  Ewing stood back up. We both knew my threat was empty. He could have ground me up in one fist if he wanted to. He looked annoyed but not angry. It was the look of someone who knows he’s in the wrong but doesn’t like having it pointed out. “What do you want?” he said.

  “At the party, on Coney Island, you asked Miss Hampton to go swimming with you afterward. Did she?”

  “Uh-uh. She turned me down.” He added with a leer, “But she didn’t say no often.”

  I glared at him. He stared back for a moment, then took up his cue and deftly sunk the seven ball with a bank shot.

  “You didn’t see her at all after she left the party?”

  He paused to make another shot. “Nope.”

  “Where did you go after the party?”

  The four ball was frozen against the rail, and he was aiming to put it in the corner pocket. I knew it was a tough shot—to make it, the cue ball would have to hit the four and the rail at exactly the same time. “I came here,” he said. Then he stroked the cue smoothly and sent the four ball running swiftly along the rail, a streak of purple that was swallowed by the corner pocket with a gulp. He stood up with a smile. “Didn’t I, boys?”

  His friends grunted agreement.

  He bent back over and ran off three more shots. “Look,” he said, “I’m real sorry she got herself drowned. After all, there was some things about her that I liked real well. But I don’t know nothing about how it happened.”

  “Did you come here straight from the party?”

  “Yep.”

  “What time?”

  “Hell, that’s almost a week ago. But if I recall correctly, I believe it was about eleven. Weren’t it, boys?”

  Spike and Billy both said, “Yup.” The batboy nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” Ewing said. Then he squirted a stream of tobacco juice at a spittoon only four feet away—and missed it by more than a foot. His friends looked stricken. I don’t think he missed often.

  Stengel and I left, and we found a saloon where the lights were low and the beer was cold.

  I was poor company for Casey. While he launched into a story about a one-legged pitcher in Akron—or maybe it was about a bowlegged shortstop—my thoughts stayed on Florence Hampton.

  The encounter in the pool hall bothered me. I didn’t see how Ewing and his friends could talk about Miss Hampton the way they did. I guess they didn’t have any more respect for a dead lady than they did for a live one.

  It wasn’t just the general tone of the talk that gnawed at me though. There was one phrase in specific: the way Virgil Ewing had said she got herself drowned—as if it was her fault somehow. It was like blaming the victim for the crime.

  Oh, jeez. What if she did do it to herself? What if it was suicide?

  Margie said Miss Hampton had changed after her husband died. How did she change? What thoughts were going through her mind? Did she think there was nothing left to live for? That would explain the circumstances of her death: a woman who can’t swim ends up in the water, drowned, with no bruises.

  But why naked? Why would she want to be found that way? Wouldn’t she have some modesty left? Or was shedding her clothes symbolic, like casting off all her problems, all earthly concerns?

  I was doubtful. Suicide would fit with what happened but not with what I saw of the living Florence Hampton. She seemed too much of a fighter.

  One thing I was sure of: I was no judge of what would go through a woman’s mind.

  Fortunately, I knew somebody who was.

  Chapter Ten

  On Saturday, I worked. It wasn’t a day for playing baseball; it was a day for laboring at it. And I had to put in overtime. Because of the rainout the day before, a doubleheader was scheduled to make up the canceled game.

  The Friday downpour had turned the Polo Grounds’ infield into a treacherous mud pit. It was there that I toiled, the muck pulling at my cleats, as I worked every inning of both games at second base.

  And labor I did. With the ball wet and heavy, the pitchers naturally threw a lot of sinkers, resulting in an inordinate number of ground balls. The St. Louis batters drove grounders at me as regularly as if they were hitting me infield practice. Every one was an adventure; some would strike a clod and bounce high, others would stick on a wet spot and skid with no bounce at all. It was futile to try to field them with my glove. I had to use my body, moving in front of the ball to block it and trying to keep from slipping and falling down.

  By the end of the twin bill, my uniform was spotted with mud and my shins were covered with bruises. But not one ball had got past me.

  There was satisfaction in my efforts because they weren’t wasted. We took both games from the Cardinals. It boosted our lead in the standings to three games and gave us a bigger lift in morale.

  Even John McGraw was in a good mood. In the locker room he congratulated me, “Helluva good game, Rawlings. Looked like they were using you for target practice out there.” Then he punched me playfully on the shoulder, striking me harder than any of the ground balls had. With McGraw, any punch he didn’t aim at your nose was considered playful.

  The Sunday box scores showed I had a total of 21 assists in the doubleheader and no errors. I went only 1 for 9 at bat, so I avoided looking at the hits column in the stats.

  I spent all of Sunday at home, bathing my sore legs and worrying about a couple of conversations I was going to have to face.

  One was with Karl Landfors, to find out why he’d lied to me about James Bartlett.

  The other was with Margie. How was I going to ask her if Florence Hampton could have committed suicide? And even more worrisome: would she be angry that I hadn’t called her on Saturday? She might have been expecting that we’d be going out. I was never very good at guessing what women wanted.

  I finally telephoned Margie Sunday evening. She didn’t sound at all annoyed that I hadn’t called earlier, so of course it bothered me that she wasn’t bothered. Then, as my sitting room grew dark and we kept chatting, effortlessly and to no purpose, I discovered the delightful intimacy of a phone call at night. We voiced whatever thoughts were in our heads, transmitting them through lines that connected only us.

  I never got around to asking her about Miss Hampton. In fact, I couldn’t remember much of what we did talk about, except that her favorite color was yellow, we both liked ragtime, and we both thought that the Anti-Saloon League was a bunch of meddling radicals who would never succeed in prohibiting liquor.

  And before we hung up, we made plans for the next day. Plans that I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to.

  Margie’s parlor had the precise look of a place that had just been tidied up. The end tables on either side of her sofa glistened with fresh polish, and there was a small vase of violets perfectly centered on each one. The fringes of the throw rugs looked as if they had been combed.

  Th
e photos on the wall had all been straightened, too. I was being stared at by a dozen pairs of critical eyes. Having few relatives of my own, I didn’t know what it would be like to belong to such a large family. I wondered if I was someday going to have to meet them all.

  I was as painstakingly dressed as if I had come to meet a girl’s family for the first time. I even went to a barber for a shave and haircut, though I wasn’t due for a haircut for another week and a shave wouldn’t have been necessary until some time after that.

  Margie was all done up, too. Her hair was piled neatly, with just enough locks out of place that I knew it was still her. She was dressed in a trim black satin skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse. The blouse had diamond-shaped black buttons running up the front and a deep neckline covered by white lace with a lot of open spaces between the thread. A silver locket hung around her throat; when I looked closely, I saw it was a baseball pendant. The only color on her was the warm bronze flush of her skin. She looked awfully healthy considering she called in sick at the studio to take the day off.

  With no game scheduled for the Giants, we were going to Washington Park to see the Brooklyn Tip-Tops take on the Indianapolis Hoosiers. A Federal League game. Somehow she’d talked me into it last night. I think it was the way she’d said Please.

  We had some time before the game, so we sat in her parlor sipping iced tea with too much lemon and not enough sugar.

  It was funny, but I couldn’t think of much to say. The sweet way we’d talked the night before seemed silly in the light of day and face to face. I hated to think that we could only talk intimately in the dark and from a distance. Actually, it wasn’t funny at ait—it was damn awkward.

  Margie chatted too much and too fast, as if to make up for my silences.

  Finally, I abandoned any efforts at small talk and announced, “I talked to Virgil Ewing.”

  “You did?”

  “Uh-huh. Friday night. Casey Stengel took me to a pool hall where he was playing.”

  “But we agreed to do this together.” She sounded disappointed.