Murder in the Ball Park

by Robert Goldsborough

  “They’re not. For some reason, maybe an inkling of things to come, I grabbed them out of the safe in your office when I got the Marley,” Saul said, shaking his head ruefully. “Glad you brought it up, Archie. I’ll have to reimburse Mr. Wolfe for them.”

  “The hell you will. If anybody’s going to pay to replace those bracelets, it’s me, after the stupid stunt I pulled.”

  “We can talk about it later. Here we are,” Saul said as the taxi pulled up in front of the brownstone.

  Wolfe was reading when we walked into the office. “Are you hurt?” he said, looking up and eyeing me.

  “My body a little, my pride a lot,” I told him, sliding gingerly into the chair behind my desk and wincing. “Fortunately, this gentleman’s timing was impeccable,” I said, nodding in Saul’s direction. “I suppose I should be irked that you felt I needed looking after, but under the circumstances, well . . .”

  Wolfe set his book down. “It would seem you have earned a drink, Saul,” he said. “You know where to find the scotch.”

  “I do, and a fine label it is. Thank you, sir.”

  “What about me?”

  “Since when have you ever bothered to ask?” Wolfe posed.

  “Point taken,” I said, asking Saul to get me a scotch from the bar cart against the wall, which he did. “I assume you want a report?”

  Wolfe dipped his head a quarter of an inch, the signal to proceed.

  For the next half hour, Saul and I recounted the events of the evening, from our respective trips over to Queens to my visit with Marguerite Hackman and the face-off with the pair of toughs who were presumably in the employ of Franco Bacelli. Wolfe took it all in, along with two bottles of beer.

  “Oh, and one other thing,” I told him, purposely saving my little surprise for last. “Thompson’s sister found these on his key ring when she was going through his personal effects. She had no explanation for them.” I dumped the pair of keys on his blotter.

  “Most unusual,” Wolfe said, picking them up and studying them. “Also most suggestive.” He leaned back and closed his eyes for several minutes while we sat in silence, finishing our drinks.

  “Saul, I thank you again for your service tonight,” he said after his brief séance. “It would seem that Archie is in your debt. Perhaps he can show his appreciation by having you as his guest some evening at Rusterman’s.”

  “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing,” Saul said, grinning and getting to his feet. “Well, I’ve had all the excitement I want for one day. I will say goodnight.”

  After Saul had left, Wolfe turned to me. “I hardly think instructions are necessary concerning these keys, or at least one of them.”

  “A visit to the Polo Grounds,” I said.

  Wolfe nodded, then made a face. “I can almost guarantee that Inspector Cramer will be here tomorrow, probably in the morning,” he said. “Archie, go to bed, get some rest.” With that, he rose, left the office, and headed for the elevator.

  Chapter 20

  As usual, Wolfe had nailed it. The next morning following his session with the orchids, the world’s smartest detective had been at his desk less than ten minutes when the doorbell rang. “Per your prediction, it’s you-know-who,” I said after walking down the hall and viewing the stocky figure on the stoop through the one-way glass. “Do I let him in?”

  I got the hint of a nod along with a scowl and went to the front door, pulling it open. “You are late,” I told Cramer, looking at my watch. “Since he’s been downstairs, he’s already had time to order beer and drink almost half of the first bottle.” The glowering inspector refused to look at me and said nothing, brushing on by and stomping toward the office.

  “Good morning, sir,” Wolfe said evenly.

  “I’ll tell you if and when it’s good,” Cramer gruffed, dropping into the red leather chair, pulling out a cigar, and jamming it into his mouth. “And it sure as hell isn’t a good morning right now.”

  “May I assume you are referring to the Milbank case?”

  “You may. By chance, have you seen today’s Mirror?”

  “No, sir. That is not one of the newspapers delivered here.”

  “Of course—what was I thinking?” Cramer said, slapping his forehead. “That tabloid is way too low-brow for the likes of you two. Well, here is what you missed by being elitists: a page one editorial, with a headline in red type, no less. Leave that kind of stunt to the Hearst crowd. Anyhow, the paper has topped the Daily News’s reward of fifty grand for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Orson Milbank’s killer by offering seventy-five thousand dollars themselves.”

  “The press has indeed been exhibiting commendable civic responsibility,” Wolfe said.

  “Commendable civic responsibility, my aunt Fanny!” Cramer bellowed. “That latest reward was a flamboyant way of underscoring the editorial’s main point, which is what they refer to as, and I quote, ‘the sorry state of law enforcement in this great metropolis.’ ”

  “Strong words.”

  “Oh, there’s more, lots more. Their diatribe goes on to say, and I can recite every word, that ‘it is a tragedy of immense proportions that the police department of the nation’s largest and most important city also happens to be the nation’s worst and most inept police department. Perhaps we should formally rename them the Keystone Kops.’ The editorial then singles out Commissioner Humbert and yours truly for special mention. ‘Both of these men are taking their salaries under false pretenses’ is how we are presented.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, at least the mention of your name in that context,” Wolfe said, sounding as if he meant it. “My views on the commissioner, however, are well known.”

  “Oh, that’s just the beginning,” Cramer replied, chewing on his unlit stogie. “You can bet that now the other papers will try to top the Mirror with bigger rewards and even stronger blasts at the department—and at me. Well, I can live with the heat. God knows, I have for years; it comes with the job. And if they do decide to throw me out on my tail, as I have been expecting, so be it. But I didn’t come here to complain about myself. Something unusual happened last night, and I would be interested in your thoughts.”

  “Indeed? You rarely solicit my opinion, sir,” Wolfe said, coming forward in his chair. “Should I be flattered?”

  Cramer grunted. “Not necessarily. Maybe it simply says something about my state of mind these days. I’m well aware that your knowledge of the city’s geography has never been one of your strong points, so I will go slow. Do you happen to know where Flushing is?”

  “Somewhere over in Queens, I believe.”

  “Bingo. It has the airport, of course, but in general it is a quiet area, residential streets with some trees, single-family homes, hardworking people, and very few troublemakers.”

  “An idyllic picture,” Wolfe agreed.

  “Yeah, so one would think. But last night, the boys from one of the local precincts over there got a strange, anonymous phone call. The voice on the line said that two men were handcuffed together on a corner, and one of them also was handcuffed to a signpost. The caller also claimed they had been disarmed and cuffed by a couple of pensioners—not very likely.”

  “A most unusual occurrence.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it, though? Things get even more unusual. A prowl car tore off to the intersection and, I’ll be damned, what the uniforms found was exactly what had been reported in the anonymous call: two men, cuffed together and unable to move beyond the signpost. And it doesn’t stop there. These two turned out to be Lenny Packer and Tony Motta, a couple of thugs on the payroll, or so we think, of one Franco Bacelli. Strange, wouldn’t you say?”

  Wolfe raised his shoulders and let them drop. “I am not familiar with the intricacies of the world of organized crime, so I cannot venture an opinion, although this does seem to be puzzling, at least on the surfa
ce.”

  “You can’t venture an opinion, eh?” Cramer said. “Well, let me push on, if you don’t mind. Bacelli and Liam Dwyer, a rival mobster whose name you may have seen in print, have been in a blood feud of late, and a number of their men have been killed, presumably by the other side. Now here we find two guys from one of the warring armies alive and well, although damned embarrassed. Their guns, a snub-nosed revolver and an automatic, were found lying in the street beside them, chambers empty. The pistols had not been fired, at least not recently. Don’t you find that strange?”

  “It does seem somewhat out of the ordinary,” Wolfe said. “What did Messrs. Packer and Motta say by way of explanation?”

  “Not a blessed word!” Cramer said. “They just asked for a lawyer, who happens to be with them now. The lawyer is a Bacelli mouthpiece, hardly a surprise. There’s nothing we can really hold them on, except unlicensed possession of a weapon. Oh, and one other thing: The automobile in which they had apparently traveled to the area was found nearby with one of its tires ripped apart like it had been shot, which it had. A shell casing was found on the pavement under the car.

  “Now bear in mind, this is a peaceful neighborhood, one of the quietest in the whole damned city. There hasn’t even been a car theft within blocks in more than two years. Oh, and—as I said earlier—our anonymous caller claimed the hoods had been disarmed by a couple of old men who were passing by and didn’t like having them in the neighborhood. Preposterous.”

  “All very interesting, Inspector. But why are you telling us about this?” Wolfe asked.

  “Sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake, but I got curious and began wondering if somehow, some way, these strange goings-on were tied to the death of Milbank. I just thought I’d see if you had any thoughts.”

  “Archie,” Wolfe said, turning to me, “have you any theories about this admittedly strange occurrence?”

  “None, but if I were to guess, it would be that these two cretins found their way into Flushing and decided to cause some trouble. Why . . . I don’t know. They may have run into not old men but rather some young neighborhood guys who turned out to be tougher than these hoods thought and the young men decided to teach them a lesson without really hurting them. Then to rub it in, when they called the precinct, they said the hoods had been disarmed by a couple of old-timers.”

  “Young neighborhood guys who just happened to have handcuffs and were able to disarm two hard cases?” Cramer posed. “Also preposterous. And who shot the hoods’ tire?”

  I shrugged. “Sorry. I gave the only explanation I can think of.”

  “It would seem that given the way you have described Flushing, it would be an unlikely place to have any connection with the senator’s murder,” Wolfe said.

  “So it would seem,” Cramer agreed grudgingly. “By the way, have you made any progress on your investigation?”

  “Very little. And you?”

  “Hah! Next to nothing. We’ve interviewed probably fifty or sixty people who were in the Polo Grounds that afternoon, including ushers, vendors, groundskeepers, and even the radio broadcaster, and not one of them noticed a single soul in the left-field upper deck.”

  “That is hardly a place anybody would look unless a ball headed out that way,” I said.

  “That’s just it!” Cramer growled. “A ball did head out that way—the home run that got hit just before the shooting.”

  “Yes, but remember that the homer sailed into the lower deck, Inspector,” I said. “In fact, it just barely cleared the wall. It looked like the left fielder might be able to grab it, so everybody’s attention was focused there, not upstairs where you say the shooter apparently was.”

  Cramer shot me a glare. “You’ve got yourself an answer for just about everything, don’t you?”

  “We realize you have been under a great deal of pressure, sir,” Wolfe put in, “but what Mr. Goodwin said makes perfect sense. I am hardly an authority on baseball, but all eyes would have been focused on the ball and the player trying to catch it, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yeah, that well may be. It’s certainly not getting us any closer to putting this mess to rest.” As he got up to leave, he stuck his chewed-over cigar into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. That alone said volumes about his mental state. He usually ended his visits to the brownstone in a rage, hurling the stogie at our wastebasket and invariably missing.

  “Oh, one more thing, Goodwin,” Cramer said as he paused in the office doorway. “Were you by chance in Flushing last night?”

  “Flushing is hardly a place I am accustomed to visiting. I’ve probably been there no more than once or twice in my life.”

  The burly copper mouthed a word and steamed off down the hall. After he had gone and I had locked the front door behind him, I went back to the office, where Wolfe was reading his book. “Well, I did not lie to the man,” I said.

  “No, that much can be said. Mr. Cramer finds himself stuck up a tree without a ladder.”

  “I don’t see that we’re all that much better off ourselves.”

  “At the moment, we are not, although we do not have government officials, civic organizations, and outraged journalists ranting about our ineptitude and clamoring for our jobs.”

  “Well, at the moment, I have to say that I’m feeling pretty damned inept myself. What’s next?”

  Wolfe started to reply when the phone rang. I answered, and a now-familiar voice asked for Nero Wolfe.

  I turned to Wolfe and silently mouthed the caller’s name, staying on the line. He picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

  “I believe you know who this is.”

  “I do. State your business.”

  “Your boys like to play pretty rough,” Franco Bacelli said.

  “Only when they are given no alternative. If you are calling to complain, I might point out that those two men whom I presume are in your employ could have had their weapons and their identification papers taken from them. As it is, they were left unbruised, which is more than I can say for an associate of mine.”

  “People don’t mess with my men, Mr. Nero Wolfe.”

  “Nor with mine, sir. Your men are incompetent boobs. When you came to my home, uninvited, you boasted that you would find Senator Milbank’s killer before I did. Your method, it now appears, was to follow one of my agents and determine what line he was pursuing, rather than to conduct an independent investigation of your own. You and your operatives have been badly outflanked.”

  “And you have made yourself an enemy and you will live to regret it,” Bacelli growled.

  “Pfui! Over the years, I have made far more formidable enemies than you, sir. Now if you have nothing more to say, I—” Wolfe stopped talking because the line had gone dead.

  “Now I wish Saul and I had taken their guns and their identification,” I said. “Then you could have demanded that Bacelli come here to pick them up.”

  “I have no desire to see that man more often that is absolutely necessary,” Wolfe grumped. “A visit to the Polo Grounds is in order, I believe.”

  “Yep. Specific instructions?”

  “Obviously, determine whether one or more of those keys fits into locks on the stadium gates. Avoid detection if possible.”

  “Well, for starters, there’s no game there today; the Giants are playing down in Philadelphia, so the ball park figures to be empty, or close to it. If I do run into someone?”

  “Use your intelligence, guided by experience,” Wolfe replied, repeating a line he has used on me more times than I can count. Before I could attempt to fire off a clever retort, he picked up his current book and buried his nose in it, his signal for me to button my lip.

  Chapter 21

  As I mentioned earlier, the Polo Grounds lies near the northern tip of Manhattan. To be more precise, it squats like a tired and battered fortress at West 155th Street and Eight
h Avenue and backs up to the Harlem River, the narrow waterway separating Manhattan and the Bronx. I parked the Heron on the street and walked over to the old park’s entrance nearest home plate. Not surprisingly, the joint seemed to be shut up tight.

  Seeing no one around, I strode to one of the barred iron gates and eyed its large lock. I pulled the pair of keys from my pocket, but before I could try one, a voice interrupted me.

  “Hey, you there, Mac!” It was a short, red-haired guy in blue coveralls standing with a cigarette outside a gate farther along the stadium’s outer wall. “The joint’s closed up, unless you wanna order advance tickets,” he yelled as he trotted toward me. “Those windows is around on the other side. I think at least one of them’s open.”

  “Thanks, but I’m really looking for someone in your maintenance department,” I improvised. “Anybody around?”

  “Every one of our crew is out on the field now, getting it in shape for the Pittsburgh series. I was just grabbing a quick smoke on my break. Anything special you want?”

  “Just to talk to the boss.”

  “Too bad, he ain’t around. Hadda go to a funeral, his wife’s aunt. But his assistant’s here, the straw boss, you might call him. Follow me.”

  We walked along the outer wall for about twenty yards and came to an open gate. I followed him as we walked through a dank tunnel under the stands and then out onto the sunlit playing surface. There were more than a dozen men, also in blue coveralls, scattered around the diamond and the outfield with shovels, rakes, and hoses, working to pretty up one of the oldest and most historic fields in baseball.

  “Hey, Marty, guy here needs to see you,” the redhead shouted, pointing a thumb in my direction. A husky specimen wearing a sport coat and a broad-brimmed hat turned from supervising two guys who were adding soil to the pitcher’s mound and shot me a quizzical look. “We’re pretty darn busy right now,” the man called Marty said. “What do you need?”