Murder at Wrigley Field

by Troy Soos

  Standing at my oven, I kept glancing over my shoulder at Aggie O’Doul. I was becoming fascinated by this woman who could put a blowtorch to a man. I had to admit that instead of being repulsed by what she had done I admired her for it.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lefty Rariden warmed up for the bottom of the second inning by throwing everywhere but to his catcher. He succeeded in plunking the Pirates’ batboy and almost hit umpire Bill Klem. When he was younger, and capable of hurling bullets, Rariden’s carefully rehearsed display of wildness planted fear in the minds of batters who’d have to face him. He could no longer throw fast enough to scare anyone but still performed his routine, either out of habit or to maintain his colorful image.

  When he’d finished, Klem barked “Batter up!” and I dug in at the plate.

  Rariden pulled off his dark blue cap and mussed his red hair with his glove before replacing the cap at an arrogant angle. He then made some peculiar facial expressions intended to further distract me.

  C’mon, throw the damn ball already.

  The next instant, without the preliminary of a wind-up, he sent the ball speeding at my head. I staggered back just in time. There was more heat on it than I expected could come from Lefty Rariden’s aged right arm. Them old guys can really surprise you sometimes.

  I backed out of the box and knocked the sides of my spikes with my bat. I should have known it was coming. At the Knights meeting Rariden had said that he owed me one. I stepped back in. Rariden went into a windmill wind-up this time. Just before he delivered the pitch, my memory corrected itself: he’d said that he owed me two. Sure enough, his second pitch was another knockdown, but I avoided it easily.

  He’d kept his word, twice attempting to put me on my ass. I guessed correctly that the next pitch would be over the plate. It was a fat one, knee-high down the middle. I swung high, missing the ball by a foot, and sent the bat spinning out of my hands to the pitcher’s mound. It spun like a propeller blade, and Rariden had to leap over it to keep from taking it on the shins. Yup, there’s no end of useful things you can do with a baseball bat.

  Rariden had a broad grin on his long face. It was his turn again. Another quick pitch at my head to get back at me for the thrown bat.

  My turn. Once again I launched the bat at him to even things up for the latest beanball attempt.

  In his finest umpire voice, Bill Klem announced loudly and calmly, “I hate to spoil your fun gentlemen, but I hope you’re aware that you just worked yourselves to a full count. Now play ball!”

  I dug in for the next pitch. Rariden threw a slow roundhouse curveball; it started for a spot a foot behind my head, then bent into an arc and kept bending. My head knew where the pitch was going, but my rear end was fooled—it was retreating to the dugout as the ball broke over the plate. I swung late and missed by a mile.

  Lefty Rariden won this contest. I threw my bat on the ground, cursing Rariden in particular and elderly pitchers in general. They get so damn devious after they’ve started getting on in years.

  He used the slow curve on me again in the fourth. It was once too often; I hung in there and drove a line single to right field. In the seventh and ninth innings, he played a little too fine with the corners of the plate and walked me both times. There were no more beanballs or thrown bats. Things were all square between us.

  By the end of the ninth inning, Rariden was a very congenial fellow. He’d won the ballgame, outpitching a partially inebriated Phil Douglas. I sometimes suspected that Douglas was a pitcher primarily because it allowed him several days of uninterrupted drinking between starts. He’d cut it too close this time, but since we were as short of pitchers as we were of everything else, Fred Mitchell let him keep his turn in the rotation.

  An hour after the game, I was sitting with my new buddy, the now jovial Lefty Rariden. The two of us were in an anonymous dimly lit Rush Street saloon of his choosing, swilling illegal beers, very good illegal beers, which I no longer hesitated to order. Breaking the law distressed me far less than being in Rariden’s company.

  Earlier in the season, a visit from the Pirates would have meant a chance to get together again with my pal Casey Stengel. But Casey had left the Pirates in June to enlist in the Navy. Lefty Rariden, whose stories and jokes were more offensive than funny, was a poor substitute for Casey as a drinking companion.

  Casey got his nickname from “K. C.,” Kansas City, his home town. Wally Dillard was from Oak Park. Maybe O. P. was a name for him: Opie Dillard. I’d have to see what he thought.

  Rariden snorted. “Sure blew you guys away today. Hard to believe I ain’t pitched a game in three years!” It wasn’t the first time he’d complimented himself on his performance; through the first two rounds of beer he’d been alternating between telling dirty jokes and praising his own pitching.

  “Yeah, hard to believe.” It wasn’t the first time I’d given him that same response, either. This time I added, “What do you think of your new team?”

  “Pittsburgh ain’t a bad club,” he acknowledged. “Of course, if they was smart, they’d have signed me back in the spring. With me pitching for them all season, they’d be doing a lot better than third place. Be giving you guys a run for the pennant.”

  I ignored his conceit; few pitchers were known for modesty. “Last team you were on was the Whales wasn’t it?” The Chicago Whales, Charles Weeghman’s Federal League team.

  The gleeful look faded from his face and Rariden called for two more beers. “Yeah, that’s right,” he answered. “Say, you hear the one about—”

  “How’d you like playing for the Feds?” When I’d first met Rariden at the Knights meeting, he’d asked if we’d known each other from the Federal League. At the New York Press office, when I’d checked the Spalding Guides for Wicket Greene’s fielding statistics, I’d also looked up Rariden’s record: he’d pitched for the Chicago Feds during both years of their existence and had been out of organized baseball ever since.

  Rariden downed most of the brew that the bartender placed in front of him. “I liked it fine,” he said with a belch. “Some damn fine ballplayers in that league. We drew good crowds in most cities, made decent salaries, and the Whales took the pennant in ’fifteen. Only championship team I ever been on.”

  “And then the league folded. Must have been tough on you.”

  “Damn right. Nobody wanted me anymore. The regular leagues took the younger kids back, the ones who had a future. It was us old guys who got punished for jumping to the Feds; the owners figured we only had one or two good years left, so they’d make an example out of us.” He finished the rest of his beer in one long swallow and called for another. I was starting to lag behind.

  “Say, Lefty, I need your advice on something.”

  “Sure, and what’s that?” He looked relieved at the change of topic.

  “At the last Knights meeting, Frank Timmons asked me about getting some, uh, material out of the chemical plant.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Figured you had to be his previous supplier. So, what I want to know is, how hard is it to do?”

  Rariden laughed. “It’s easy if you know the right people.” He made no attempt to deny it.

  “And who’s the right people?”

  After another swallow of beer, he answered out of the side of his mouth, “Harrington.”

  “Bennett Harrington? He—”

  “Let me take the stuff out, yeah. It was just old-fashioned black powder, anyway, not the new smokeless stuff. Talk to him. See if you can make the same deal.”

  “A deal goes two ways. What does he get out of it? A cut of what I’d get from Timmons?”

  He laughed again. “Not even. Just do him a favor now and then.”

  “A favor like... ?”

  “Oh, anything that might hurt Charles Weeghman.”

  I made a quick connection. “Like putting smoke bombs in the stands?” If Rariden had access to powder, smoke bombs would hav
e been easy for him to make.

  His broad wink confirmed it, though his spoken answer was, “You never heard me say that.”

  “And you have no fondness for Weeghman anyway,” I pointed out. “When he sold out the Feds, you lost your career.”

  Rariden growled, “Bastard should have picked me up for the Cubs. He made a deal to cover his ass and hung the rest of us out to dry.”

  Lefty Rariden had a pretty sweet deal himself: he got paid by Frank Timmons for smuggling out gunpowder that he was allowed to smuggle in exchange for hurting a man he wanted revenge against. “You were doing okay,” I said. “Almost sounds too bad the Pirates signed you.”

  He gave me a wide-eyed stare that wasn’t a put-on. “Are you nuts? I’d rather be playing ball than doing anything else.”

  A trio of young bruisers in United States Navy garb swaggered into the saloon. Judging by the way they were speaking and walking, it wasn’t the first one they’d been in today.

  Rariden’s eyes narrowed and followed the men as they took seats at the end of the bar. The presence of the boisterous sailors seemed to antagonize him; I don’t think he liked for anyone to be louder or more obnoxious than himself.

  While Rariden was preoccupied with glaring at his rivals, I mentally regrouped. Since Curly Neeman had hinted to Aggie O’Doul that he’d shot Willie, he might have bragged to his buddies in the Knights about it, too. Even if shooting Willie Kaiser was a mistake, as he’d claimed to Agnes, Neeman would want to get whatever glory he could for having killed a German.

  “Lefty?” I said.

  No response.

  I couldn’t capture Rariden’s attention until I started a joke about a traveling salesman and a farmer’s wife. At the punch line, Rariden issued a belly laugh and cried, “That’s a good one! ‘Do you have to use my butt for a tally board?’ Hah!”

  Moving quickly on, I said, “Any of the guys in the Knights ever get carried away?”

  “Carried away how?”

  “By putting one of those guns Timmons sells to use. I heard one of them might have killed a guy just because the guy had a German name.”

  “Naw. Really?” Rariden looked genuinely taken aback. “I never heard about nothing like that.”

  Damn. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I heard wrong.”

  Rariden cocked his head in the direction of the sailors. “Feel like having a little fun?”

  “What kind of fun?”

  “Let’s take ’em on. Show ’em ballplayers are every bit as tough as navy gobs.” He was itching for a barroom brawl to further enhance his colorful reputation.

  “Uh, no, not for me, thanks. I got to be heading home.” I ended up in enough fights without looking for new ones. Maybe I was truly a utility player at heart, for I had no desire to be colorful.

  Rariden must have really been feeling his oats after the victory at Cubs Park; as I rose to leave the bar, he rolled up his sleeves and said, “Hell, there’s only three of ’em. That’s just about the right number for me to take on myself.”

  I went home with an easy conscience; whether or not Lefty Rariden survived his own foolhardiness didn’t concern me.

  As I passed Mrs. Tobin’s house, I noticed she wasn’t on her front porch. I hadn’t seen her there for several days, so I paused for a moment to look at her empty rocker. Something glinted in the window behind it. It was the service flag: the blue star had been replaced by a gold one.

  Damn. Harold Tobin wasn’t coming back.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chicago wasn’t the Windy City today. The air was stagnant and muggy, and the entire city sweltered in its sticky grip. Although noon was hours away, the thermometer had already topped ninety degrees.

  The windows of Bennett Harrington’s corner office were wide open, but there was no cross-breeze. All that passed through them were the combative sounds of State Street. Tempers shortened by the heat had street car conductors ringing their warning bells at automobiles, motorists honking their horns at trucks, truckers beating their horses, the animals squealing their pain, and everyone yelling at pedestrians.

  Still breathless from having battled my way through the traffic snarl, I was overheated and perspiring into a lightweight worsted suit that didn’t absorb moisture quite fast enough. I hoped the dark blue color would at least keep the sweat spots from showing through.

  “You have ten minutes, Mr. Rawlings,” Harrington drawled drowsily from behind his immaculate desk. For the first time, his loose white Dixie attire seemed entirely appropriate and sensible.

  “Thanks, Mr. Harrington.” I shifted carefully in my seat to keep from sticking to the leather upholstery. “I appreciate your seeing me without an appointment.”

  His terse secretary in the outer office hadn’t appreciated it at all; it threw off “the schedule,” which must have been chiseled in stone the way she referred to it.

  A benevolent nod from Harrington. “You said it was urgent.” He refreshed his water glass from the pitcher and took a sip. I eyed the glass thirstily, hoping he’d offer me some. He gave no sign of noticing.

  Wiping a damp handkerchief over my sweating forehead, I said, “It’s about Charles Weeghman.” With my throat dry and my chair so far from his desk, I had to strain my voice to be heard.

  “What about him?”

  I had no trouble appearing convincingly nervous. “He’s out to get me.”

  Harrington gave a small start. “Get you how?”

  I shifted again. “He’s been mad at me ever since I gave Willie Kaiser’s mother my uniform to bury him in. Weeghman got bad publicity because of it and seemed to think I did it intentionally to hurt him. I didn’t. It was just that Willie’s mother asked me to and I couldn’t say no.” Harrington nodded impassively. “Anyway, now Weeghman says he’s gonna drop me from the team and let me be drafted unless I take a pay cut.” This was another lie, which I chose to think of as a “story.”

  Harrington chuckled. “That’s a good one. I don’t think even Charlie Comiskey has thought of that yet.”

  “It’s blackmail is what it is.”

  “Well, some people might describe it that way. Others might call it negotiating.”

  “Whatever you call it, it ain’t right.”

  He shrugged. “Why come to me about it? Mr. Weeghman runs the ballclub. I’m merely a shareholder.”

  “Well, like I said, the thing with the uniform wasn’t intentional. But now I wouldn’t mind doing something to Charles Weeghman that was intentional.”

  “I don’t follow,” Harrington said flatly. His sleepy left eye snapped awake, and both eyes sparkled in a way that suggested he followed just fine.

  “People talk,” I said. “I know you’ve had guys doing things—arranging accidents and such—to try and put Weeghman out of business. I want to help. I figure if somebody else—you or Mr. Wrigley maybe—takes over, I might get a fair shake.” My voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.

  Harrington took a long slow sip of water. I’d have been grateful for a chance to lick the droplets condensed on the outside of the pitcher. “These people that talk. Who are they?”

  “I don’t rat.”

  He nodded approvingly. “And what have they been doing to hurt the Cubs?”

  “Sawed the bleacher seats, put pretzels in the concession stands, those smoke bombs that cleared out the park at the end of June...”

  “Why did they do these things?”

  “Because you wanted ’em to. I figure you want to take over the team.”

  Harrington pulled his watch from a vest pocket, checked the time, then snapped the cover shut and tucked it back in his vest. “Actually,” he said, “it’s the National League that wants me to take control.”

  “The league?”

  “Yes. The other owners and the league president.”

  The National League president? “John Tener knows about this?” This wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

  “Mr. Rawlings—you mind if I call you Mickey?”


  Oh jeez, he’s going to take the chummy approach. I nodded, but a warning flag went up in my head, similar to when he’d put his hat over this heart while referring to “this great game of ours.”

  “Well, Mickey, I’ll trust you to keep this between us. Although much of it is public knowledge.”

  Doesn’t take a whole lot of trust to confide something that’s public knowledge, I thought. “I’ll keep it to myself,” I promised.

  “You must be aware that Mr. Weeghman was one of the ringleaders of the Federal League.”

  “Yes. And in exchange for selling out the Feds, he was allowed to buy the Cubs and move them into his Federal League ballpark.” I had as much public knowledge as any other member of the public.

  “Selling out the Feds,” Harrington repeated with a smile. “Appropriate choice of words.”

  “Uh, thank you.”

  “See, that’s precisely the problem with Charles Weeghman. He’ll sell out his own mother. The man simply is not trustworthy. It was in the interests of the National League to let him in a couple years ago. In fact, the league put up $50,000 toward the purchase price and helped him find additional investors like myself—”

  “And Mr. Wrigley and Mr. Armour?”

  “Yes, that’s right. But now it’s time for Mr. Weeghman to go. He turned on his fellow owners once before. He might do it again. These are difficult times, and we all have to be able to trust each other.”

  I didn’t expect their motives were quite that pure. “Of course, Weeghman hurt the National League owners by starting the Federal League. Maybe revenge is another reason they want to get rid of him now?”

  He chuckled and the droopy left eye appeared to be winking. “You are an astute judge of human nature, Mr.—uh, Mickey. During its existence, the Federal League did inflict a great deal of damage to organized baseball. And I expect the other owners do indeed have long memories—”

  Bursting through the air came an explosion of horns, screeching brakes, an equine scream, and furious shouts. Another traffic accident. Harrington twisted in his chair and glanced at a window. “Sounds like a good one.” He then turned slowly back to me; it was too hot to get up and look.