“Trust isn’t so easy to come by in this situation.”
“Hey, for us, too. We’re taking the chances here, remember? We’re covering the bets, putting up good money, which we gotta pay off if you’re wrong. Which reminds me. If we act on the information you give us, you’d damned well better be right. Being wrong—hell, I don’t need any help from you to be wrong. I can do that all by myself.”
“Tell you what, Abe. I’ve got an idea how we can do this.”
Chapter 29
Fraser was groggy with another dream when he opened his eyes in the sunlit train car. He was chasing someone. Or someone was chasing him. Maybe it was because of the jouncing ride of the early express back from Philadelphia. The patchy track bed delivered random jolts into the steady pulse of steel wheels on steel rails, all of which tortured Fraser’s spine.
He used a handkerchief to wipe sweat from his forehead. This was it. He had made his deal with Attell. Now he had made his deal with Pete Johnson and Jerome Hill in Philadelphia. After hurrying home to clean up, he had to get the bank to wire funds to them, then recruit Uncle Wilfred. Then back to the Babe and then Attell and Rothstein again.
He let his head rest against the window. New Jersey rushed by as the morning light slanted higher. He imagined packing his clothes, heading to the piers, and walking onto the first ship to England. After six days, maybe five, he would see Eliza, see Violet. He wouldn’t have to pretend he had the nerve to face down New York gangsters. He had wondered a few times in the past if Speed would ruin him somehow, even get him killed. Eliza liked to predict that he would. Fraser never imagined it could happen after Speed was gone.
By the time he climbed out of a taxi for game three at the Polo Grounds, Fraser was thinking about the lives that were built around baseball. Instead of tromping down hospital corridors that reeked of disinfectant to see people he didn’t often help, a baseball man lived his life in the sunshine, under an open sky. His brain was filled with nothing more vexing than whether the third-baseman was playing too far off the foul line. So what if you were wrong? Nobody suffered for your mistake, not really suffered. Maybe he could be a sportswriter—that looked soft. Even an usher, or a trainer for the players—he might be qualified for that.
He pushed out of his mind the arrangements he’d been making since he left George’s Diner with its twenty-five strains of botulism. There were too many moving parts to the deal. Any one of them, starting with Uncle Wilfred, could fail. It was a risk to involve the old fellow, but Fraser needed someone he could trust. Speed was gone and the rest of his family was in London, which left Wilfred. At least he was enthusiastic. Also he had no competing obligations. As Eliza had predicted, Wilfred’s new show had folded after only eight performances in August. The old fellow would respect the role Fraser had given him to play today. At least Fraser hoped he would. Fraser had to play his own role.
Fraser found Ruth lacing his shoes, already dressed in the pin-striped uniform and short-visored cap.
“Hey, Doc,” the big man greeted him, a grin on his face, “how’s your old man?”
“More to the point, how’s your elbow?”
Babe shrugged. “Feels great. Just had a three-hour nap. I’m feeling tip-top.”
“Let me take a look.” Ruth held out his arm. Fraser pulled up the sleeve and peeled off an amateurish bandage. He rotated the elbow to pick up the light. He didn’t need a lot of time to see that it was bad, but he took a little extra time anyway. That delay usually made patients uncomfortable, got their attention better. “It’s not looking good, Babe. It’s getting infected. See here?” He pointed to a swelling.
“Doesn’t feel so bad.”
“It will.” Fraser let more seconds slip by as he bent to look more closely. “That needs to be drained.” He waved at the small black bag he had carried in. “I’ve got the instruments with me. It won’t take long and then I’ll bandage it up.”
“Can I play after you do that?”
“Probably not today. It’ll hurt, but I bet it already does. I’ll have to cut into the elbow. You’ll have to be careful not to reopen the wound so it doesn’t get reinfected.”
“Tell you what, Doc. Let’s skip it, wait a day. Maybe it’ll clear up.”
“Infections don’t usually just reverse themselves. They run their course, which can be very damaging.”
“What can a day hurt? If we win today, we’re up 3–0. It won’t be so bad if I miss a game.”
Fraser knew in his bones that it was a mistake. He should insist. But he let it go. Ruth held his arm out. “Bandage it up, but not too much. I don’t want the Giants thinking I’m really hurt. They’ll go after the elbow if they do. Fucking McGraw’s a killer.”
Instead of following Babe out to the field, Fraser headed for the street door. From the sidewalk, he waved to Wilfred, who sat in a taxi pointed west, toward the pickup spot. When the cab pulled away, Fraser turned back to the stadium. Now three things had to go right. First, the Yanks had to start losing because of Babe’s bad arm. Second, Attell had to keep his word. And Wilfred had to get it right.
From his vantage point next to the Yankees’ dugout, Fraser could see that Babe was being careful with his arm while trying to conceal the injury. He showed no restraint during batting practice. The swings still looked titanic, and the ball still flew off his bat. Even if the arm held up for a while, Fraser told himself, it was going to give out.
When the Giants took the field to start the game—they were designated the home team for this one—Fraser stood to encourage the Yanks. He looked over to Attell’s box. The little man was there. Fraser took off his hat, waved it out at the field. That was the signal.
* * *
By the third inning, Fraser was a wreck, his leg jiggling madly. The Yankees had a 4–0 lead. Babe had hit a single that drove in two runs. Had Fraser called it wrong? Was Babe that good, playing through the pain and stiffness of that ugly elbow? Was he beyond the limitations that applied to mere mortals? Or was he just better with one arm than everyone else was with two?
The scoreboard mocked Fraser. The Giants hadn’t scored yet in the Series. Not once in twenty innings. Even John McGraw’s brand of low-scoring baseball required at least one run to win a game. How could they possibly overcome a four-run deficit? McGraw was showing his own nerves. He had already brought in a relief pitcher to stop the Yankees as soon as possible. Preferably now.
Babe looked cocky taking his lead off first base, chatting with the first-baseman. He yelled over as the pitcher started his windup. After each pitch, Babe trotted back, toed the bag, and winked at the fans seated behind the foul line. After the third pitch, with a count of two balls and one strike, Babe took off his cap and carefully placed it back on. Everyone in the stadium could see his grin. Fraser couldn’t help but envy his mastery of the sport, how much he enjoyed that mastery. Fraser had underestimated Ruth’s talent, and his spirit. Fraser was going to pay for that mistake. Attell and Rothstein would see to that.
As the pitcher delivered the next pitch, Babe broke for second base. Yankee fans shouted. The big galoot was going to swipe another base, grind these Giants into rubble all by himself. His slide set off a dust storm. The umpire crouched low to get the best view. “Out!” came the bellowed call. Yankee fans froze. The Giants’ rooters roared to life.
Babe bounced up and started to trot off the field. He winced. His movements revealed the pain. No one could miss it. Fraser looked away. He knew he should be ashamed of himself, but his heart leapt with joy.
The Giants tied the game in the bottom of the inning, showing their first signs of life in the Series. The next time Ruth batted, he struck out. Even in the best of health, Babe was prone to strikeouts. His swing was so long and so powerful, he was bound to miss the ball some of the time. A lot of the time. But this time was different. He didn’t look good. He was favoring the elbow, anyone could see it. Fraser’s leg jiggle slowed down. The door was open. It was up to the Giants to walk through it.
Fraser took a deep breath. His leg wasn’t jiggling at all.
Wilfred took the seat next to him before the ninth inning began. He was dressed for his part, a fair imitation of a racetrack tout in a checked suit and spats. He smelled like the third shift at a brewery. “What’d I miss?” he asked.
Smiling, Fraser said, “The longest damned ballgame I’ve ever sat through.” He looked over at Wilfred. “Did you get it?”
Wilfred winked, a long, slow one. He reached into his jacket pocket and handed over a sheet folded into quarters. Fraser held it low, between his knees, opening it just a bit to peek in. It looked right. He refolded it and placed it in his trousers pocket. “Any trouble?” he asked.
“Nah. Once it came over the wire that the Giants scored all those runs, the guy showed up and handed it to me. Didn’t say a word.”
Chapter 30
In the hushed clubhouse, Babe was a brooding presence on a folding chair. The other players gave him a wide berth. He glared at Fraser. “Don’t say a goddamned word.” He held his arm out. “Go ahead and drain this bastard. I can’t move it right. Can’t sleep with it.”
The elbow was puffy, abloom with sickening yellow and red, green and purple.
Fraser found a side room that was the closest thing to an aseptic location. A man in a suit arrived and announced himself as the team doctor, though Fraser had never seen the man in the clubhouse before. He announced that Colonel Ruppert had instructed that he should take charge of Babe’s care. Fraser wondered if the man had been hired that afternoon. The new man watched while Fraser washed and laid out his instruments, then lanced the wound. After draining it, he rinsed it and applied a tight dressing. Babe didn’t make a sound, though he steadfastly averted his eyes. “I’ll look at it again at game time tomorrow,” Fraser said. “I’ll try to rig up something smaller then.”
Babe flexed his arm and grimaced. He walked off to his locker. Fraser didn’t see how he could play the next game.
After cleaning his instruments, Fraser found the clubhouse empty except for one very sulky home-run hitter. “Say, Babe,” he said, “want to see a little good news?”
Ruth, still silent, looked over. Fraser dug the paper from Wilfred out of his pants pocket. Babe glanced at it. Then he looked more closely. He balled it up and threw it at Fraser’s face, catching him under the left eye.
“You dumb cluck,” Babe said. “That ain’t mine.”
* * *
Next morning, Fraser bellied right up to the gorilla at Lefty’s. “I need to see Rothstein,” he muttered. “Now. No waiting. Or you and I have a problem.” Fraser was committed to running this bluff. He wasn’t even sure it was a bluff.
While a flicker of uncertainty crossed the gorilla’s face, Abe Attell materialized, all smiles. “Hey, Doc. Thought we might see you. Let’s grab a pew.”
Fraser didn’t order anything. Attell asked for coffee. As soon as the waitress left, Fraser said, “So, you made a big mistake. You gave my man the wrong IOU. At least I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, that it was a mistake. Because you said you’re such scrupulous businessmen. You remember that? I kept up my end of the deal. Men of your word, you said. My Aunt Fanny.”
“Hey, hey, hey. No reason to use harsh language, Doc.” Attell was enjoying himself again, which was just as infuriating as he meant it to be. “You should understand. The way Mr. Rothstein and I see it, you haven’t actually kept up your end of the deal. Not yet.”
Rage flashed through Fraser’s muscles. He ached to throttle this two-bit punk. Attell smiled, his crooked nose almost glowing with high spirits. “Listen, Doc. Our deal is that you give us winning information about the Babe. You gave us half of that. We got the information. We did what we thought was right with it, what you’d expect. But”—he held up an index finger—“was it winning information? Nobody knows. Only time will tell, you know? The Giants came back, they won a game. Great. And that inside information you gave us? Well, now everyone knows it. Everyone saw Babe leave the field yesterday. Now the world knows he’s hurt, so now our edge is gone. We had it for, what, less than twenty-four hours? So what we might win from this deal, that’s based on all the bets that are already in play. Which is a lot of action, you better believe it. Still, the Giants gotta win four more before you’ve held up your end. Then we’ve got a deal.”
“So why’d you pass along someone else’s IOU? Just to make me look stupid?”
Attell sat back so the waitress could place his coffee on the table. “Doc, call it an education, no charge. You’re an educated man, am I right? A doctor?” Fraser chose to seethe silently. “But now you know that you don’t send some over-the-hill dandy to do business with us. Don’t even think about that. And now you also know that you have to look at the paper, read it close, when you make a deal. Am I right?”
When Fraser still didn’t speak, torn between fury and disgust with himself, Attell drank some coffee. “Look, Doc. The Giants win four more? Everything’s jake, we tie up the deal.” He drank some more coffee. “Just one question I had. Mr. Rothstein, he watches the betting pretty careful. Real careful. Everything shook out just like we expected yesterday, except for this one place, this one place where everyone seems to love the Giants. You don’t know anything about some smart guys handling bets down in Philadelphia, do you?”
“A dumb guy like me? How could I know something like that?” Fraser left without waiting for a response. Attell smiled and finished his coffee.
* * *
Rain came that afternoon, giving both teams a rest. For Babe it was a little time to heal. Fraser went to the Polo Grounds anyway, in case the weather cleared. He passed the time feeling like a fool. Speed would never have blundered so badly.
Sunday was a perfect day for baseball. In the trainer’s room, Ruth said nothing when the dressing came off his arm. Fraser drained more pus and cleaned it again. It still looked terrible. After taking longer than he needed to examine the wound, he looked up at a pair of angry eyes. He couldn’t figure out the smart thing to say, or the right thing. Well, the right thing was to get Babe to sit this one out. Would that be best for his betting strategy, his Rothstein strategy? Say, the Yanks lose this one but Babe comes back stronger than ever and they take the Series. Wouldn’t it be better for him to play at half speed and make the injury worse? Fraser stood up straight, disgusted by his own thinking.
“Don’t play, Babe,” he said. “You’re going to aggravate it. And the Giants know you’re hurt. You know what McGraw’s like. They’ll go after the arm. Sit this one out. You guys still lead the Series.”
“Hey, kid.” Ruth turned to the team doctor, a still silent presence. “Bandage this up for me, will you?”
“All right, all right,” Fraser said, reaching for gauze. “Just try to be careful with it, will you? It must hurt like crazy.”
Ruth didn’t answer. He made a face when Fraser applied more iodine, then again when he taped the dressing tight. “I’m giving you as much motion as I can.” Babe tried his arm. He tried it again. He left for warm-ups.
Fraser went through the motions of observing Ruth on the field, then took his seat. Babe played the whole game in left field. When he singled in the fourth, he didn’t try to steal second.
The Yanks held a 1–0 lead, but the game turned in the Giants’ half of the eighth inning. Centerfielder George Burns, a little guy, stepped to the plate against
Carl Mays, the Yankee pitcher who had won twenty-seven games that year. Two men on base. Most hitters didn’t like facing Mays, not since he killed Ray Chapman with an inside pitch the year before. They tended to get nervous. But Burns hung in and smacked a double, scoring two runs and giving the Giants the lead.
By the time Ruth came up to bat in the bottom of the ninth, the Yanks trailed 4–1. His arm had to be shrieking with pain. His broad face wasn’t lit with the usual grin. He didn’t razz the pitcher or the catcher. His eyes were stern, his blunt features drawn into themselves. He dug his heels into the batter’s box. He swung so hard at the second pitch that he nearly fell onto the first-base line when he missed. Fraser couldn’t imagine the waves of affliction that had to be coming from that arm.
With no change in expression, Babe dug in again. He pointed his bat at the pitcher, then swung again, starting his long stride before the pitcher let go of the ball, putting just as much force into it this time. The crash of bat on ball seemed to bludgeon the world into silence. A second later, a roar exploded like a wave hitting a beach. It was another huge Babe Ruth homer. Yankees fans and Giants fans shared the elation. Ruth trotted slowly around the bases. When he reached the dugout, he tipped his cap.
The heroic home run should have inspired his teammates to storm back and take the game, but it didn’t. They meekly made the last outs of the game. The Giants had tied up the Series, 2–2.
In the next game, Ruth’s elbow was killing him, plus a bum leg was acting up, too. The Giants weren’t giving him free bases on balls any more, but Babe wasn’t finished. Leading off the fourth inning of a tie game, he took several huge practice swings, notable even by his gargantuan standards. Then he stunned the crowd by dropping a perfect bunt down the third base line. In the Giants’ dugout, John McGraw turned apoplectic over having his favorite tactics turned against him. He screamed at his infielders to wake the hell up. When the next batter doubled, Babe raced in to score. When he reached the Yankees’ dugout, though, he passed out cold.
The Babe Ruth Deception Page 21
