Murder at Wrigley Field

by Troy Soos

  My tailbone was the first part of my anatomy to land on the concrete floor. The pain of that impact caused another explosion to rip along my spine.

  When I was no longer in motion, I mentally took an inventory of body parts: it felt like everything was where it was supposed to be, though my smarting backside made it difficult to feel anything else. My right hand was up, palm out, to shield my eyes. But I couldn’t see it, couldn’t make out any shapes. And the only image my brain conjured up was of me standing in the batter’s box against Walter Johnson, totally blind. Then I realized I couldn’t hear, either. Only the roaring sound of a waterfall in my ears.

  My hearing came back first. I hoped it was only the first of my senses to return. I heard the crackling sounds that still echoed from the oven like bursting popcorn and people shouting fragments of sentences that all started with “What the—”

  Then the sense of touch returned to the rest of my body, mostly a tingling sensation in the limbs. I didn’t know if it was caused by the explosion or the shock of the landing.

  Next, the feel of liquid in my right eye. I couldn’t yet see, though. I brought my hand slowly to my face, hoping desperately that there would still be an eye there.

  There was. They were both there. My lids were closed, and my right lid was covered with something wet. I brushed it away; the wetness returned and I wiped a few more times, then gave up when it was immediately moist again.

  “Are you all right?” I heard. It took a moment to recognize the voice as Agnes O’Doul’s.

  “Don’t know. Think so.” Except for my eyes. They were wide open now and seeing nothing but sparkles.

  I blinked a few times and got liquid in my right eye; it stung, causing me to blink more rapidly. I wiped at the eye and looked back up. Just as suddenly as the blast, Aggie’s face was in front of me. I don’t remember ever seeing anything so pretty.

  “You look okay,” she said. “Just some cuts, I think.”

  Curly Neeman’s voice was the next I heard. “What the hell happened here?”

  Agnes O’Doul answered him, “Mick—Rawlings here almost blew himself up.”

  Her words made it sound like I’d caused the explosion, and I didn’t think it was true. I forced myself to sit up, then stand. I was unsteady, but all the moving parts seemed to be in working order. To Neeman, I explained, “I put a load in the oven, started to rake it, and ka-boom! It just blew up on me.”

  “Musta been rigged somehow. Sabotage!” He glared accusingly at the other workers who’d gathered around. “So which one of you is workin’ for the Germans?”

  They hustled back to their work stations. Neeman looked satisfied, though why I couldn’t imagine. “You’re supposed to be in charge of security,” I said to him. “Why don’t you do your damn job?”

  Neeman’s eyes bugged and his pincers started chewing the air.

  Agnes, the only worker who remained near me, said, “Yeah. Ain’t that why you’re here, to keep this kind of thing from happening?”

  His only answer was to order Agnes back to work and tell me I could go home early if I wanted to.

  I did.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The following night, Wednesday, I was squirming in my seat at the weekly meeting of the Patriotic Knights of Liberty. The fidgeting wasn’t solely due to the length of Frank Timmons’s speech; it was primarily because my back still hurt from getting knocked on my ass in Bennett Harrington’s chemical plant.

  The soreness and lack of mobility kept me from playing in the afternoon game against St. Louis. I had the urge to play anyway, and in my younger days I would have stubbornly kept quiet about the injury rather than give up playing time. Now that I was wiser, I knew I had to put the interests of the club ahead of my desire for a few more at bats. A second baseman who can’t bend over to field ground balls isn’t an asset to his team. I didn’t want to end up costing us a game by letting a grounder through my legs. Fred Mitchell, though he appeared skeptical at my story about having fallen down the cellar stairs, readily gave me the day off. Wally Dillard, who’d vetoed my “Pickles” Dillard suggestion, took my place at second base. He played it so well that I knew my back would be better by tomorrow. I don’t mind sitting out one game for the benefit of the team, but I’m not about to lose my starting job to a seventeen-year-old.

  Although Frank Timmons wasn’t the sole cause of my discomfort, he was certainly adding to it. He’d been on an interminable tirade, ranting about yellow-bellied men who left the fighting to others. He did it with such conviction that it took a while until I realized that every man in the room, himself included, fell into that category.

  Just when I was certain that I would never be able to stand again, Timmons came to a thundering conclusion. His audience, which never came to the realization that the “yellow-bellied” description could apply to them, applauded him enthusiastically, then left their seats to examine the weapons for sale and to talk in small groups.

  I was the last out of my chair, painfully forcing myself to straighten up. I kept my head down, self-conscious about my appearance. The blast had singed off both of my eyebrows, then put one back in the form of a scab left by the cut over my right eye. I probably should have gotten it stitched but hadn’t. Flying peach stone fragments had left several other cuts and scratches on my face, none of them deep but none of them attractive, either. I wore a straw boater tilted forward as far as it could go without falling off and kept the hat on indoors. The good news was that none of the fragments had penetrated my eyes, and my vision had completely cleared up.

  From under the brim of my hat, I looked around the room. Wicket Greene was standing alone near a rusted engine block. I expected him to be with Lefty Rariden again, a couple of decrepit ballplayers commiserating together and talking about past glories that were largely fiction. Rariden’s red hair was nowhere to be seen though.

  I walked stiffly over to Greene; it occurred to me that the way I looked and moved qualified me for honorary status as decrepit. “Lefty not here tonight?” I asked.

  “Ain’tcha heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “He’s gonna be pitching for Pittsburgh. They signed him this morning.”

  The Pirates’ fans had my sympathy. “What they want him for? His arm’s deader than—” Willie Kaiser came to mind. I searched for another way to end the sentence and came up with “the Federal League.”

  Greene shrugged. “He’s over draft age and he can reach the plate. That’s good enough these days.”

  If the pitching standards got any lower, I could end up batting over .300.

  “How’s the back?” Greene asked. There was no note of genuine concern; the question was merely to make conversation.

  “It’s getting better. I think.”

  “I heard about what happened at the plant, the bomb or whatever it was. That’s sure lousy luck.”

  How did Greene know about that? “Nobody’s supposed to know I’m working there,” I said. Bennett Harrington had promised to keep quiet about it. Trying to maintain the pretense that my employment was for purely patriotic reasons, I added, “I just want to help in the war effort. I don’t want any publicity.”

  “Then you better tell Curly Neeman to shut up about it.”

  Neeman. Of course. I spotted him near the weapons table, regaling a couple of other Knights with some loud story. “I think I’ll do that.” With a dismissive nod at Greene, I hobbled off to give Curly Neeman a few well-chosen words to the effect that he’d better shut up.

  I’d almost reached him when a meaty hand clapped me on the back and sent a searing tremor along my spine. “Brother Rawlings! Are you prepared?”

  I twisted to face Frank Timmons’s sweating visage and issued an affirmative groan.

  He touched my arm and indicated that he wanted me to join him at a vacant end of the room. I followed until my slow pace caused him to stop short of the destination. He lowered his pink round head. Maintaining a toothy grin, he said in a low voice,
“I wanted to talk to you about your position at the Dearborn Fuel Company.”

  Curly Neeman must have told everyone I was working there. “What about it?”

  “I have a proposition for you, Brother Rawlings. I need your help. The Patriotic Knights of Liberty needs your help. Your country needs you.”

  Warning bells in my head were pealing loudly. “To do what?” Please note the lack of enthusiasm in my voice, I silently hoped.

  He didn’t. “I’m glad you asked!” Timmons rested a hand on my shoulder and drew me toward him. “You remember that incident with the U-boat attacking Cape Cod?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, ever since then, the good men of the Patriotic Knights of Liberty have been arming themselves to the teeth. Acquiring a considerable number of weapons and a great deal of ammunition, and, uh, other materials.” In other words, business was booming. “Demand has been so high, I’m finding myself unable to satisfy it. That’s where you can help.”

  “How?”

  “In your position at the Dearborn Fuel Company, you surely have access to materials. Specifically gunpowder. If you can acquire such material for me—for us—you’ll be doing a great service.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “And, of course, you will be generously compensated.”

  I ducked my head, not knowing what to say. The wasp-faced Curly Neeman was looking up at me. Somehow he’d weaseled himself into our conference. Timmons didn’t seem disturbed by Neeman’s presence. I suspected that Neeman was probably privy to many of Timmons’s business dealings.

  “The place I work in doesn’t have that stuff.” I addressed myself to Timmons. “All we got is peach pits.”

  Neeman piped up, “You could get a transfer.”

  “Fine idea, Brother Neeman!” Timmons transferred his hand from my shoulder to Neeman’s. If Curly Neeman had a tail, the possibility of which I didn’t entirely dismiss, it would have been wagging to show his pleasure at Timmons’s approval.

  “Might even be safer for you to move someplace else,” Neeman added. “We found there was explosives in them peach stones. Maybe you should be working in a different building.”

  Instead of somebody bringing in a load of explosives I’d be right in the middle of where they made them. It didn’t sound safer to me. “I’ll see about that tomorrow,” I said, trying to sound agreeable.

  With the excuse of needing to rest my back, I left the meeting early.

  By the time I reached my house, the trolleys had jostled my spine until it felt like I was impaled on a hot steel spike. When I got home, I made straight for the bathroom and a bottle of hot liniment.

  I’d had a few thoughts about Timmons’s proposal. One was that he must have had a previous source for gunpowder, but for some reason that source had dried up. The reason could be that the source was no longer at the Dearborn Fuel Company but pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates instead. Lefty Rariden.

  The other idea I came up with had to do with Willie Kaiser. If somebody at the plant had been smuggling out munitions, Willie could have stumbled onto it, and the reason for killing him might have been to keep him quiet.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mickey!” The high-pitched cry came from behind the third base dugout.

  I backed out of the three-way catch I’d been having with Fred Merkle and Wally Dillard. While Merkle and Dillard continued warming up for the opener of our series with the Braves, I ambled over to the front row seats to speak with Karl Landfors.

  He was starting to look like the Landfors of old, which to my eyes was going in the wrong direction. His clothes were black and white and stiff and somber, and the tan was fading from his face. A new black derby was perched daintily on his head.

  When I reached the railing, it was my appearance that received comment. “Somebody spike you in the face?” he asked.

  “No. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Okay.” Landfors paused in a way that he intended to be dramatic. “I have something.” He opened his coat far enough for me to see the tip of a brown envelope in an inside pocket.

  I laughed. “You look like a man with an autopsy report.” It wasn’t the first time Karl Landfors had brought an autopsy report to a baseball game. I hoped it wasn’t going to become a habit.

  “Police report, too,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk.

  With all the things that had changed in the world, it was almost comforting that Landfors was reverting to his old familiar ways.

  An attractive young brunette in a white shirtwaist and navy blue skirt asked Landfors for his ticket. The white straw hat pinned to her hair had USHER written on the hat band. Another recent change due to the war: for the first time, women were serving as ballpark ushers and, perhaps not coincidentally, attendance was starting to rise again.

  “Meet me outside after the game,” I said to him.

  Landfors raised his hand in mock salute and followed the usherette back to his assigned seat.

  It took several hours, and a couple gallons of saliva, until the game was over. Shufflin’ Phil Douglas and Boston’s Dick Rudolph, both spitballers, pitched twelve superb innings of shutout ball. Rudolph’s spitter wasn’t much—his own catcher once conceded that the most that could be said for it was that it was wet—but his control was terrific. After the Braves scored twice in the top of the thirteenth, Rudolph shut us down again in the bottom of the inning to take the win. I managed to play the entire game at second base with my back almost entirely free of pain.

  I quickly showered and dressed and hustled out of the park to meet Landfors.

  “Dinner?” he greeted me.

  After a great game like that, his first thoughts are about food? Talk about un-American. “How ’bout if we grab a couple sandwiches and head back to my place,” I suggested. “I gotta leave for work soon.”

  “I thought baseball was what you did for ‘work’.”

  I explained about my job at the Dearborn Fuel Company and the explosion that left my face looking as it did.

  “Accident?” he asked.

  “If you can tell me how a pile of peach pits can accidentally explode.”

  Landfors actually pondered it for a while before he answered, “Beats me.”

  Then I told him about Curly Neeman’s claim of sabotage.

  “People are seeing saboteurs everywhere,” he said. “If a fellow gets a flat tire, he thinks German agents are responsible.”

  I thought that what had happened to me was a little more severe and unusual than a flat tire, but I dropped it.

  We stopped at a cafe for sandwiches and ginger ales. Landfors ordered roast beef. I opted for peanut butter. My visit to the Union Stockyards had killed my appetite for meat.

  As the sandwiches were being prepared, he said, “I estimated some distances during the game. From your description of where Kaiser was marching when he got shot, I’d guess it was about seventy-five yards from where he was to across Sheffield Avenue.”

  I pictured the scene in my own mind. “Mmm ... about two hundred fifty feet, I’d say.”

  Landfors peered at me over his spectacles. “Nearly the same thing.”

  “Oh.” I’m a baseball player; I measure things in feet. Roughly three hundred feet from home plate to the outfield fence, ninety feet between bases, sixty feet from the plate to the pitching rubber. Sixty feet six inches really, but I can’t see to that fine a resolution. Anyway, those are my references for distance.

  We carried the dinners to my house. During the walk, Landfors filled me in on the information he’d obtained. “The autopsy report confirms what you told me. The bullet went through him at a horizontal angle, not vertically.”

  “They find the slug?”

  “No. But according to the police report, they did find the rifle.”

  “Where?”

  “Where you suspected. Second floor of one of the houses on Sheffield Avenue. The gunman left it there.”

  “Huh.”

  “It’s a Maus
er ’ninety-eight. Uses spitzer bullets.”

  “Ninety-eight caliber?” That sounded awfully big.

  “No. Eighteen ninety-eight. The year that model came out.”

  “Oh. ‘Mauser’, ‘spitzer’—those sound German.”

  “They are. Actually, there’s an interesting story about that rifle. When the British brought out their first tanks, the Germans found that if they turned the bullet around, with the blunt end forward, it could blast right through the tanks’ armor.”

  “That’s what happened to Willie?”

  “Well, no. It’s just something I learned when I was over there.”

  I figured Landfors was entitled to show off some of his hard-earned knowledge, as long as it didn’t distract us from determining what had happened to Willie.

  I waved to Mrs. Tobin as we approached my house. “Nice lady,” I said. “She got a boy in the army. Been working on a sweater for him for weeks now.”

  I opened the door and let Landfors through first. “It’s funny,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of folks here knitting sweaters for the doughboys, but in three years I never saw a soldier wearing one.”

  “What difference does it make? As long as it makes her feel she’s doing something to make her boy more comfortable.”

  Landfors’s attention had already wandered. He pointed to the Mark Twain collection in the bookcase. “Finally decided you’re going to learn to read?”

  “Yeah. Might come in handy—in case you ever learn to write.”

  He grinned and sat down on the sofa.

  After taking the soda bottles into the kitchen to open them, I brought them back to the parlor and sat down in my chair. Landfors was already nibbling at his sandwich; I ripped open the wrapping of mine and proceeded to catch up.

  “The rifle being German,” I said. “Could that be why the papers didn’t know how to report the shooting?”

  “Probably,” he said, spitting crumbs on the floor. “He could have been killed by German-Americans angry that he wouldn’t join them.”

  “Or by an American, like the kind who used to heckle him from the stands, who wanted to kill a German.”