The Tomb That Ruth Built (A Mickey Rawlings Mystery)

by Troy Soos

I recalled coach Charlie O’Leary coming into Miller Huggins’ office with a report on Ruth’s doings. The only way O’Leary could have known was if someone was keeping tabs on him.

  After smashing and consuming another walnut, Cooper spoke up again. “Of course, now and then the Babe likes to give me the slip—like you did in Boston. Since he had a car waiting for him, I assumed you went to his place in Sudbury.” The detective gave me a look that expected an answer. When I said nothing, he shrugged and went on, “I was following him the night he met you at Katie Day’s. I saw the two of you together, and I spotted Kessler.”

  “What made you notice him?”

  “What I noticed was you. I didn’t remember you and Ruth palling around before, so when I saw you drinking with him in a night club, I thought maybe he was getting you into his bad habits. I believe the Yankees were hoping you could be a good influence on him, instead of the other way around.”

  Vey uttered a confirming noise.

  “How do you know it was this fellow Kessler who confronted me? We were the only ones in the men’s room, and when I left he was gone. How did you see him?”

  “I get paid to notice things,” Cooper replied with a small smile. “I was keeping an eye on your party because that’s where the Babe was. When you left the table, I noticed Leo Kessler along with a couple of his cohorts get up and follow you. Kessler’s been around a while and I recognized him easy. I thought it strange when he posted his goons outside the men’s room. Sometimes a gangster will do that for protection—he wants the place to himself so no rival gangster catches him at a time when he’s vulnerable. But you were already in there, so I thought it odd.”

  “Can you tell me anything more about Kessler?”

  “He used to run crooked dice games years ago, but lately he’s building up a liquor business—that’s where the money is right now. Doesn’t have the brains to be a big-time operator, but he is dangerous. He’s done some muscle work for Rothstein, collecting bets and late payments.”

  A disquieting thought occurred to me. “Did you say anything to Mr. Barrow about me talking to Kessler?” Meeting with an associate of Arnold Rothstein could doom my baseball career.

  Through a mouthful of partially chewed nuts, Cooper answered, “Never said a word about it until Vey here came to me and asked if I noticed anything that night. For one thing, finding gangsters in a night club is about as unusual as discovering that they serve booze. For another, like you said, I never saw you talk to him—as far as I know, you could have just been using the facility at the same time.”

  “And you won’t say anything?”

  “No reason to,” answered Cooper.

  Vey spoke up. “Just as I hope you’ll be quiet about our meeting here today. Like I said, I don’t feel I’m betraying Mr. Barrow’s confidence, but I don’t know that he would see it the same way.”

  “You have my word,” I promised.

  Cooper said, “That’s about all I can tell you, but if anything else comes up we can get in touch through Mr. Vey.”

  “Thank you,” I said, getting a benevolent nod in reply. Turning to Vey, I said, “And thank you.”

  I left the shop more confident that Andrew Vey was on my side. But I also had a new puzzle to figure out. There were now two of Arnold Rothstein’s gang mixed up in this: Karl Landfors’ source Whitey, who was purportedly helping me, and Leo Kessler who was threatening me. Which side were they really on? And was Rothstein himself involved?

  * * *

  Instead of a picnic, or a boat ride, or a stroll through the gardens in Bronx Park, Margie and I went on a very different outing later that night. After a trolley ride to Manhattan, we got off at Broadway, a block south of Central Park. This area of Midtown, with all the theaters and speakeasies, reminded me of New Orleans during spring training. The evenings here were perpetually festive, with well-dressed people moving from one show or club or party to another.

  Margie and I walked to 232 West Fifty-eighth Street, where the sign above the door read Club Durant. It had recently opened as one of the city’s more exclusive night clubs.

  I discovered how exclusive when we walked inside and were stopped by a massive host in a tailored tuxedo. He looked strong enough to give Andrew Vey a thrashing and mean enough to do it just for the pleasure. “Name?” he demanded.

  “Mickey Rawlings.”

  “Never heard of yuh.” His stolid face and dull eyes could have been carved from granite and he had no discernable neck.

  “We’re just here to have a couple of drinks and do some dancing,” I said.

  “Not if I don’t let you in, you ain’t.” Speakeasies often required code words or membership cards to keep out the authorities, but it should have been obvious that we were not Revenue agents. This fellow simply enjoyed his job a little too much.

  Margie said to me in a hushed voice, “Let’s go someplace else.”

  There was a particular reason I wanted to get into the Club Durant, and I wasn’t going to let this bruiser stop me. “I play for the Yankees,” I said. “And if I like this place, maybe I’ll tell my teammates.”

  “I follow the ponies,” the man said, unmoved. “Baseball don’t interest me. If you was a horse, I might let you in.” He called to another man near the coat check room, who was similarly attired. “Hey, Frankie! Come here, wouldja?”

  Frankie strode over. Although slightly smaller, this man looked even more intimidating. He was horse-faced, with short-cropped hair and a five o’clock shadow. “Got a problem, Dutch?” he asked the host.

  “This guy wants in and I don’t know him from Adam. Claims he’s with the Yankees. You know baseball, you ever heard o’— What you say your name was again?”

  When I repeated my name to Frankie he said, “Yeah, I know who you are. You were with the Browns last year, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “So can we get in?”

  “Yeah, of course. The cover’s five bucks each.”

  As I pulled out a ten, a couple of men in sharp suits, each with a flashy woman on his arm, tried to go past us. “Whoa,” said Frankie, putting a firm hand on the chest of one man. “You gents know the drill. Hardware stays with me.”

  Without protest, each of the men pulled a gun from inside his jacket and handed it over. One of them offered up a second weapon tucked in his pants. “Collect them when you leave,” said Frankie, carrying the firearms to the coat check room.

  Margie was starting to look apprehensive. I calmly paid the cover charge and we went into the club. From behind, I heard Frankie reprimanding Dutch, “We don’t make money by keeping customers out, you idiot! Besides, if some guy claims to play for the Yankees you think he’s gonna give his name as ‘Mickey Rawlings’ unless he’s telling the truth? Use your head, dammit!”

  We were escorted to a small table near one of the black velvet walls. The place was well-appointed and fairly large, accommodating a couple of hundred customers. Although it was still early, more than half the tables were already taken. When a waiter came by, I ordered a bottle of champagne. It was overpriced, but I wanted to do something special for Margie.

  On stage was the reason I’d chosen this particular speakeasy. Jimmy Durante’s Jazz Band was filling the air with some of the best music I’d heard in a long time. A few couples were dancing, but most of the customers were listening, drinking, and quietly talking. It was difficult to sustain a dance when Durante played because he would frequently pause in mid-song to regale the audience with quips and stories. His voice was funny in itself, a gravely tone with a broad New York accent, and his prominent nose was the butt of many of his own jokes. I had seen him several times over the years with the Original New Orleans Jazz Band; Durante was the only member not from New Orleans, but his skills at ragtime piano were such that he fit right in musically. Even then, though, he had a propensity for making jokes in a voice that betrayed his New York origins.

  When the band took a break, I slipped a couple of dollars to our waiter to g
ive Durante a message.

  Minutes later, Jimmy Durante arrived at our table. “Well, if it ain’t Mickey Rawlings,” he rasped in his distinctive voice, the words coming out staccato. “Put ’er dere, pal.” We shook hands and he pulled up a chair to join us. He looked at Margie, his eyes twinkling with good humor. “Ha-cha-cha-chaaa… Who’s dis lovely lady?”

  I introduced him to Margie, who seemed immediately charmed by the entertainer. “Do you two know each other?” she asked with surprise. I had never mentioned Durante to her before.

  “Oh, sure,” said Durante. “Dere was some lean times durin’ de war when de band outnumbered de audience. Mickey was a regular when he was in town, and we got to talkin’ now and den.”

  “It doesn’t look like you’re having lean times anymore,” I observed.

  “It’s been good,” he replied. “Dere’s nights when de place is so populated, every time I turn my head I knock over five or six dancers wit’ my Schnozzola.”

  Margie laughed brightly.

  “But dat’s been a recent eventuality,” he said. “Wasn’t even sure de jernt would open for a while. You seen de sign—Club Durant?”

  “It’s missing an ‘e,’ isn’t it?” I said.

  “Dat’s on accounta we couldn’t afford it. De sign painter left it off unless we paid him more money.”

  The club had only been open for a couple of months and I wondered how his fortunes had changed so fast. “You must have turned things around quickly,” I said. “I mean, I know people will want to come see you perform, but doesn’t it usually take time for a club to start attracting customers?”

  “To tell yuh da trut’,” he said in a confidential tone. “I got myself some investors. Dey helped me get da place resurrected off da ground.”

  “Are your investors the kind of men at the front door?”

  “Dem’s de gents dat’s got the moohla,” he replied. “And dey keep de place respec’able. Frankie knows every hood in de city by sight, and he alleviates ’em o’ dere weapons before they can set a foot in de jernt.” Durante flagged a waiter and ordered us another bottle of champagne on the house and a beer for himself.

  “Can I ask you about one of them hoods?” I asked.

  “It’s usually best not to talk about ’em,” he demurred.

  “This particular one won’t mind,” I said. “His name’s Spats Pollard and he was a bootlegger. Your club was on his customer list. Did you buy from him?” Since Club Durant had opened so recently, I figured I might learn something about Pollard’s business dealings shortly before he was killed.

  “Dat ain’t my department,” he answered. “I play de music an’ make wit’ de jokes. I don’t know de business end too much.”

  “Do you know who would?”

  The waiter had arrived with our drinks and Durante instructed him to get Frankie to our table. By the time we’d finished making a toast to Durante’s continued success with the club, the horse-faced strongman had arrived. “You want me, boss?” he asked.

  Durante said, “My friend Mickey was makin’ a inquisition about a fellah name o’ Spats Pollard. Yuh know ’im?”

  “I did,” Frankie answered. I noticed his use of the past tense. To me, he said, “What’s your interest in Pollard?”

  “Since you know baseball,” I said, “you probably know Pollard pitched for the Cubs one year—1918. We were teammates that season, and I was wondering how he was doing. Last I heard, he got into the liquor business in New York.”

  “He didn’t do so good at that,” Frankie answered flatly. “He came by, offered us some product he claimed was better than anything else on the market, but no sale.”

  “Why not?”

  “We already had a supplier lined up. Pollard was trying to cut into somebody else’s business.”

  “You ever hear anything more about him?”

  “Nah, he’s been real quiet lately.” To Durante, he said, “If there ain’t nothing else, I better get back to the door.”

  Durante told him to go ahead and said to us, “I gotta go, too. It’s been a pleasure, but I gotta proceed wit’ de musicalities.”

  Margie and I slowly drank our champagne, thoroughly enjoyed the music, and after she thought I was sufficiently intoxicated she took me onto the floor to teach me a new dance called the Charleston. I had no more luck with it than I had with any other kind of dance, but we had a wonderful evening.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I wanted to yell at Miller Huggins, “I’m at the wrong base!” What on earth was he thinking when he put me in at first base?

  But I didn’t need to scream it. Huggins had clearly seen my confusion when he’d told me to go in to play first at the top of the seventh inning. I was so stunned, that he’d had to repeat the order, adding “Now get your ass out there,” before I ran out of the dugout to assume the strange new position. As trotted to the bag, I realized I didn’t even have a first basemen’s mitt, just my usual fielder’s glove.

  I understood why Wally Pipp needed a defensive replacement. He had been spiked by Ken Williams in a collision during the fourth inning, and had been hobbling in pain until he finally had to come out of the game. But Pipp was over six feet tall, practically a requirement for a first baseman, and I was more than a few inches shy of that mark. If I went into a stretch to take a throw, my overall reach would probably be a foot shorter than Pipp’s.

  As I threw warm-up grounders to the other fielders, I told myself not to waste time questioning why I was put in this position, but to prepare myself to succeed with the opportunity. It was, after all, a chance to shine in front of my former teammates, the St. Louis Browns, in our final home game before the road trip.

  When Sad Sam Jones got ready to throw his first pitch to the Browns’ left-handed hitter Gene Robertson, I had trouble figuring out where to place myself. Second base was where I played best, and I was comfortable at shortstop or third, although my arm wasn’t strong enough to make long throws on a regular basis. First base, however, was alien territory. I decided to play it as a mirror image of third base, and positioned myself off the bag accordingly.

  Jones, a right-hander with a curveball that dropped like a falling rock, worked Robertson to a 2-2 count. On the next pitch, another sharp curve, the Browns’ third baseman pulled a hard chopper up the first base line. I barely had to move to field the ball, but hesitated a moment after snagging it in my mitt. My instinct was to throw to first after fielding a grounder; on this play, I had to remind myself that I was the first baseman. I simply ran a few feet to step on the bag for the out.

  Next up was the bottom of the Browns’ batting order, pitcher Hub Pruett. I had gotten to know Pruett pretty well during his rookie season last year. The crafty left-hander had three unusual traits for a big-league pitcher: He was an aspiring medical doctor, the strongest language he ever used was “shucks,” and he practically owned Babe Ruth when the Babe came to bat against him. Pruett’s season record was only seven wins and seven losses, but he chalked up one statistic that any other American League pitcher would envy: Pruett struck out Ruth ten of the first thirteen times he faced the slugger.

  Although Hub Pruett had some pitching success against the Babe, he rarely succeeded as a hitter against anyone. Pruett was even more hopeless at the plate than most pitchers, and demonstrated that on his first swing against Jones. He dribbled a weak roller that was little more than a bunt up the first base line. I raced in, scooped up the ball, and got Pruett out on a swipe tag as he ran past me.

  With two out, and nobody on, hard-hitting lead-off man Jack Tobin came up—another left-handed hitter. I caught on to what Miller Huggins had had in mind. Three lefties in a row were batting against a right-handed pitcher with a sharp-breaking curveball. They were likely to be pulling the ball to first. Huggins didn’t need a tall first basemen to stretch for throws; he needed a good glove man—and he’d chosen me.

  Huggins’ strategy was nearly blown when Jones offered up a fastball for his first pitch. Tobin cer
tainly pulled it, lifting a towering drive that seemed destined for the right field bleachers. Fortunately, the ball hooked into foul territory for a long, loud strike. Having learned his lesson, Jones went back to the curveball that he’d been throwing so well. Tobin got around solidly on this one, too, but he launched it on a lower trajectory—right at my head. Purely by reflex I got my glove up in time to snag it for the final out of the inning.

  I loped to the dugout, savoring the cheers of the fans. I was pleased that I had handled my chances well and delighted that, after all these years, I could still learn something about the game. As I went to the bench, Aaron Ward jokingly called, “Hey, Rawlings! You mind letting us play a little baseball, too?”

  Huggins, with some amusement in his eyes, said, “Good going out there, Rawlings. You learned how to play first base awful quick.”

  I wanted to say, “Good managing,” but simply nodded my thanks. He knew that I’d caught on to what he’d been thinking. Miller Huggins had just given me another lesson on baseball strategy. Or maybe it was tactics—I never was sure of the difference.

  * * *

  After the game, a 4-2 win that put us three and a half games ahead of the Athletics in the standings, I walked home feeling taller than any first baseman in baseball. On Webster Avenue, only a few blocks from our apartment, my elation plummeted.

  A gruff voice behind me said, “You just don’t listen to me, do you, Rawlings?” It was Leo Kessler; I didn’t need to see his brooding dark eyes or the teardrop-shaped scar to recognize him.

  I turned to face the hoodlum. “Is there some reason I should?”

  “I already gave you one.” Kessler patted his hip; I knew what the baggy pin-striped suit was concealing. “But I’ll give you another, since you seem to need more convincing.” He glowered at me from under a white Panama hat.

  “What’s that?”

  He gestured toward the door of the Faris Pharmacy, only a few feet from where we stood. “Let’s step inside and talk.”

  I glanced around. This stretch of Webster Avenue was a mix of small businesses and modest apartment buildings. There were people socializing on front stoops, shoppers going in and out of the stores, and half a block away several girls were playing a noisy game of jump rope. I didn’t think Kessler would try anything out in the open. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said firmly.