by Troy Soos
She warned, “You’re probably going to like that even less.”
I nodded for her to go ahead and tell me.
“Because Willie was too good a player.”
It took a minute for that to register. Then I burst into laughter. Agnes looked at me as if I’d gone mad. I wasn’t even angry at the slight to my abilities. I had to credit Bennett Harrington with one thing: he was an astute judge of talent.
When I stopped chuckling, I downed the rest of my lemonade, enjoying the coolness as it washed into my stomach. While Agnes refilled the glass from a pitcher in the ice box, I tried to gather my thoughts.
The skirt of her smart gray and white striped gingham dress swished as she sat back down across the small table from me. Morning sunlight through the kitchen window made her face seem radiant and brought out auburn tints in her neatly combed brown hair. From deep left field came the realization that I was becoming attracted to Aggie O’Doul.
I had to force myself to get back on track. “Neeman was supposed to kill me,” I said. “So he was under some kind of orders. Did he say who told him to shoot me?” Please say it was Harrington.
“No. Didn’t say.”
“You’re not holding back on me again?”
“Hell no, I’d tell you if I knew. But he wouldn’t say.” She smiled. “And believe me, I did my best to get it out of him. The little pissant held out though. I give him credit for that. I think he knew I didn’t have it in me to kill him. He must have been more afraid of whoever he was protecting than he was of me.”
With good cause. The man he was protecting did have it in him to kill Curly Neeman. Damn. I still couldn’t tie Neeman to Harrington. And I never noticed before how deep and bright Aggie O’Doul’s dark eyes were. The fact that she didn’t have it in her to kill someone made her even more attractive.
She said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before—about you being the one he was supposed to shoot. I figured you weren’t in danger anymore after Neeman got killed. And I didn’t think it was something you’d feel good about knowing.” Her head was cocked; she was obviously still puzzled by my strange reaction to the news. Since I didn’t understand it myself, I didn’t try to explain it to her.
“Neeman didn’t tell you anything else?”
“No. Nothing.”
The conversation stalled until I remembered one of the last things Willie had said to me. “Aggie, the day Willie was shot I was trying to get him to fight back when people picked on him. He told me he was fighting back but in his own way. He never got to explain what he meant by that. Do you have any idea?”
Aggie nodded and answered slowly. “His way of fighting back was to keep doing things by the book no matter how tough it got. He worked hard at the chemical plant, he played all out for the Cubs, he would have enlisted if not for his mother being so against it. Poor kid really believed that if he did everything like he was supposed to, things would work out.” She snorted. “Lot of good it did him playing by the rules.”
Yeah, sometimes the rule book doesn’t cover everything.
She’d given me my coat and hat, and I was about to leave, when I said, “I was wondering. How did you and Willie start, you know, seeing each other?”
“You mean how did a young, good-looking kid like him hook up with somebody like me?”
“No, I just meant...”
It took a minute until she decided to answer. “It started by talking, during work breaks, same as you and me. We talked and then one day we went to a movie together.”
“Why didn’t you want people to know you were seeing each other? You said Willie wanted to tell people, but you didn’t.”
“Personal reasons.”
“Oh. Are you married?” I thought perhaps to a soldier overseas.
The question set her on fire with anger. “What are you, kidding me?” she said through sneering lips. “Look, my mama raised ugly girls, not stupid ones. I know what men want me for, and it’s not for marrying and it’s not for showing me off to their friends.” Her face and voice slowly softened. “Willie was different. He always treated me like a lady. But if it was public.... Well, as soon as his buddies started ribbing him about it, he’d have dropped me.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” I said. “From what he told me, Willie was crazy about you.” I almost added as evidence that he’d even stopped going to burlesque houses.
Aggie’s expression was anything but angry now. “He told you that?”
“Lots of times.”
If she really knew Willie Kaiser, she knew that he was unlikely to have said any such thing. But her eyes told me that she chose to believe me, anyway.
I still thought that my best bet for finding someone who could tie Curly Neeman to Bennett Harrington was the Patriotic Knights of Liberty. Neeman had taken it upon himself to shoot a German instead of the player he’d been ordered to kill—me. Why would he have done that if not to brag about it? I could almost hear him crowing to the Knights about how he’d “killed the Kaiser.”
The Knight I didn’t get to speak with Wednesday night, the one who hadn’t been to any meetings lately, was Wicket Greene. There was something he’d said to me that didn’t jibe with what I’d learned from Aggie O’Doul. I confronted him about it after the Thursday afternoon game against the Cards.
“Wick—Sammy,” I said. Calling him by his real name might help, I thought. “You told me that Harrington promised if you threw games for him you’d become starting shortstop.”
Greene took a quick look around. There was no one near us in the empty tunnel outside the locker room. “Yeah. That’s right.”
Something didn’t make sense. If I was the one who was supposed to be killed, second base would be available, not shortstop. “You remember when the Cards were here last and we got in that scuffle in the locker room?” I asked.
“I remember.”
“You said you could get my job, second base, in a minute, but you wanted to play short.” At the time, I’d thought it was empty talk.
“Oh that. Harrington’s first offer was that I’d play second base if I helped him out. I told him it was shortstop I wanted.”
“And he agreed?”
“Yeah.”
Did Harrington have Neeman kill Willie instead of me just to keep his word to Greene? Not likely. “You haven’t been to any of the Knights’ meetings lately.”
“No. Haven’t wanted to.”
“Ever talk to Curly Neeman?”
He hesitated. “Sometimes.”
“Did you a big favor by killing Willie, didn’t he?” I steeled myself for another fight.
“No,” Greene whispered hoarsely. “He didn’t do me any favor at all.” His entire body seemed to slump.
“Tell me about it.” I’d realized only recently why Wicket Greene had told me about Harrington’s proposal to throw games: because compared to the bigger secret he was hiding, throwing baseball games was trivial.
Greene pointed to the locker room door. “I got to sit down.” Once we were inside and seated, he said, “You got to believe me, I didn’t know nothing about it. Not until afterwards. Curly Neeman bragged to me about killing Willie. ‘Got me a Hun’ is what he said. Then he told me who it was. And I knew he was doing work for Harrington. Like I told you, Neeman was the one who sawed the bleacher seats for him. Anyway, I felt awful. It’s because of me Kaiser’s dead.”
“Because of you?”
“Yeah. Because I told Harrington I wanted to play shortstop. That’s why he had Neeman kill him.”
“That’s what Neeman said?”
“No. But I figured that’s what must have happened.”
All this time Greene had been feeling guilty that he’d caused Willie’s death. “That wasn’t it,” I told him. “I was the one Neeman was supposed to shoot. Harrington wasn’t going to keep his promise to you. You were going to end up at second base after all.”
Greene looked ill. “Damn.” Then relieved. “So it wasn’t ’cause of me?”
“No. It had nothing to do with you.” Making Greene feel better wasn’t my objective in revealing this; I thought he might more readily answer a few more questions. “Neeman tell anybody else about what happened?”
Greene promptly answered, “Frank Timmons.” I should have thought of that. I remembered how eager Neeman had been for Timmons’s approval. “Neeman ended up pretty disappointed, though. He thought Timmons should have considered him some kind of hero for killing Kaiser. But Timmons didn’t want to hear it, and he almost made Neeman an outcast after that.”
Killing is bad for his business, Frank Timmons had said. It also explained why Timmons had asked me to smuggle out the gunpowder when he could have asked Curly Neeman to do it. He wanted to limit his involvement with Neeman.
“Anyway,” Greene went on, “that all soured me on the Knights. So I didn’t want to go to any more of the meetings.”
Well, at least I now had somebody who could confirm that Harrington had Neeman commit murder for him. Last question: “Would you testify about all this?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At least two people still alive knew that Bennett Harrington was behind the murder of Willie Kaiser: Wicket Greene and Frank Timmons. However, Greene wasn’t going to testify to that, and I was sure Timmons wouldn’t either. There was no way for him to profit from it.
Would Harrington be so sure, though? He couldn’t be entirely confident that he was immune from prosecution; he must have some fear of exposure. What if I played on that fear? Maybe I could bluff him, convince him that too many people knew what had happened for him to keep it covered up. Then again, maybe I couldn’t. “Don’t ever get in a poker game,” he’d told me. I had a sinking feeling that his assessment of my poker skills was as sound as his choice of me instead of Willie as the more expendable ballplayer.
An entirely different approach suggested itself next: forget about the murders and nail Bennett Harrington for something else. He’d allowed Lefty Rariden to smuggle gunpowder out of his munitions plant. That should qualify as treason, and the penalty for treason was the same as that for murder. This idea withered away when I realized that Lefty Rariden wouldn’t go public with what he’d done any more than Greene would. And the government would probably protect Harrington from any such charges anyway, for security reasons, of course.
I thought about it for three days. The most sensible thing for me to do would be to take the advice I’d given Edna Chapman and try to put it all behind me. But nothing else this season was sensible, so why start now?
I finally decided that my only viable option was to goad Bennett Harrington into making a move against me. There were two advantages to this scheme. One was that I knew he’d go for it. Harrington was aware that I knew too much about him, and he’d already tried to have me killed. The other, very important, consideration was that I was sure he would do it personally. Since he’d killed Curly Neeman himself, I figured he wanted to cut down the number of people involved. He wouldn’t get somebody else in on it again.
This was going to be my plan. Either I’d trap Harrington when he came after me or.... well, I wasn’t supposed to have lived beyond the Fourth of July anyway.
It was nine-twenty Monday morning when I rounded the corner from Randolph to State Street. I allowed the extra twenty minutes in case Bennett Harrington’s secretary was late for work. From what I’d seen of her, I didn’t think tardiness was ever a problem, but I wanted to be sure that she was there when I spoke to him. I wasn’t going to repeat Curly Neeman’s mistake. At this point, I only wanted to plant a seed in Harrington’s mind; I didn’t want him shooting me on the spot.
I took the stairs to the third floor and stepped into the outer office. The first thing I saw was that the secretary’s desk was empty. What I noticed next were the two plug-uglies in the room. One, a droopy-faced bear of a man, whose crossed arms barely met across the girth of his belly, was standing outside the open door to Harrington’s office. The other, a pale young man of slight build, moved up on me from the left. I looked from one to the other, then asked innocently, “Where’s the secretary?”
The young fellow said, “Sent ’er home.” He took a step closer to me. “You better get out of here, too,” he warned in a voice too high to sound truly threatening.
I willingly moved to comply when the other man barked, “Hold him! That’s Rawlings.”
I was immediately grabbed by the arms. The skinny thug was stronger than he appeared; he spun me around and slammed my back against the wall. I struggled to get out of his grasp, but he got a sinewy forearm against my throat and started to push.
It suddenly came to me that both of these men were regulars at the Knights’ meetings. Harrington must be employing some of them as personal bodyguards now.
I tried to twist my head to get the pressure off my windpipe. As I turned, struggling for breath, I saw the large man uncross his arms and pull open his jacket. A pistol was tucked in his belt.
Two against one. And one of them with a gun. No fair.
Before my brain could issue the order, my right knee took the initiative to throw out the rule book. It snapped up hard and fast and made full contact.
Gasping out a most amazing screech, the recipient of my well-placed kick buckled, his arm dropping away from my throat. As he doubled over, his coat gaped open to reveal that he was also armed.
Instinctively, my hand reached out and plucked the long-barreled revolver from his shoulder holster.
As my attacker fell to his hands and knees, I went down, too, taking a kneeling position behind him to use his heaving body as a barricade. The strangled, retching noises he was making told me he wasn’t going to be getting up any time soon. I aimed the revolver in the direction of the man outside Harrington’s door.
The fat man started to go for his gun. “Don’t move!” I yelled, keeping the pistol trained on him. Actually, it didn’t stay on him; it swept over him, back and forth and up and down as it wobbled in my hand. I didn’t know a damn thing about using a gun. Do I have to pull the hammer back, or just pull the trigger? I cupped my left hand over the hammer so he wouldn’t know if I was doing it wrong.
He could tell I didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked to my advantage. Instead of pulling his weapon, he hoisted his chubby arms and tried to calm me down, repeating the words “Take it easy” over and over.
I closed my left eye and squinted with my right trying to line him up in the sights of the gun. My hand became steadier, and I ordered, “Put your gun on the floor. Slow.”
He obeyed. The feeling of power invigorated me. “Slide it under the desk,” I commanded next. He gently kicked the pistol until it was under the secretary’s desk.
I stood up. “Move over there,” I said, waving the barrel of my gun at Harrington’s office door. He again did as instructed, stepping into the doorway. “Put your hands back up.” They were promptly raised above his head.
After a glance down to assure myself that his partner was staying on the floor, I followed the fat man to the door.
I cautiously looked inside the office. Frank Timmons was seated behind Bennett Harrington’s white desk, Harrington’s glittering, ivory-handled pistol in his hand. He was aiming at me more steadily than I was aiming at him.
I jumped back half a step and slid partially behind the door jamb. It provided some protection while still allowing me to keep all three men in sight. “Where’s Harrington?” I said.
Timmons answered, “Dead.”
I poked my head a little farther in the door and looked around Harrington’s office. All I saw was a mess of papers scattered on the floor. No body.
“It wasn’t us,” Timmons said, obviously appalled at the implication. “Somebody killed him last night.”
Jeez. “Then what are you guys doing here?”
Timmons said promptly, “Harrington had connections to some of my men. I want to make sure there’s nothing in his files that could
, uh, reflect badly on the Patriotic Knights of Liberty.”
Okay. Now what? The stand-off continued without incident or discussion while I considered how to resolve it.
“My suggestion,” I finally said. “Is that none of us were here this morning.” I allowed Timmons a moment to think it over. “Deal?”
He smiled slowly. Then he laid the revolver on the desk. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Mr. Rawlings.”
I backed my way to the staircase, keeping the Knights in sight. I continued to keep my eyes peeled as I went down the stairs and out to the street. I also kept the gun.
I suspended my boycott of the newspapers long enough to check the reports on Harrington’s death. He was killed, shot twice, on LaSalle Street, a block from City Hall, late Sunday night by “an unknown assailant.” No details on the gun.
His death got me to rethinking everything that had happened. I briefly entertained the notion that there was some kind of sabotage against his plant: Willie, Neeman, and Harrington all worked there. And so had I when the attempt was made on me. Then I discarded the idea, deciding that my previous theory made more sense.
Neeman killed Willie. Harrington killed Neeman, either to cut off the connection to himself or, more likely, because Neeman had disobeyed instructions when he’d shot Willie instead of me. So then who killed Bennett Harrington?
Frank Timmons? Maybe he didn’t like his cause and his men being used for Harrington’s purposes. But Timmons didn’t have a cause, he had a business. And, like he’d told me, killing is bad for business. It’s what made me certain that I’d be safe from the Knights.
Agnes O’Doul? She could have killed Curly Neeman when she had the chance but didn’t. And since she knew Bennett Harrington didn’t want Willie killed in the first place, she had no reason to retaliate against him.
I expanded the list of possibilities further. Finally, I thought I knew what had happened. The answer I would have least imagined seemed the most likely to be true. And I wished with all my heart that it wasn’t.
