Murder at Ebbets Field

by Troy Soos

  “Well, yeah, we did. That’s why I’m telling you what I found out.”

  The look in her eyes told me she had a different definition of “together.” “I thought we would both talk to him,” she said.

  “Oh. But... it was at a pool holl. It really wasn’t the kind of place to bring a lady.”

  She rolled her eyes. I think she was used to going wherever she pleased. “Well, what did he say?” she asked.

  “That he didn’t go swimming with Miss Ham—uh ... with Florence. He said he didn’t see her after the party and that he went to the pool hall afterward.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “His friends backed him up, but I’m not sure.” Ewing’s friends didn’t look like the most trustworthy bunch. I remembered the batboy nodding—he had an honest face. “I think it was true,” I added. Then I remembered Ewing missing the spittoon. “Or maybe not.”

  Margie frowned.

  I was having less success telling her about Virgil Ewing than I’d had at chit-chat. I pulled out my watch. “It’s almost three. Should we go early and watch batting practice?” I felt a need to get out to a ballpark, in the sunshine and the open air.

  “Sure,” she said. Then she gave me a smile that told me our misunderstanding was forgiven . . . as long as it didn’t happen again.

  Washington Park hadn’t changed much since I was a kid. The new owners had done some refurbishing—concrete replaced the old wooden stands and a new scoreboard was in center field—but it was basically the same.

  Except for the attendance. This park used to be packed when the Dodgers played here, but not many people came out to see the Tip-Tops of the Federal League. Maybe the name was the problem; the Ward brothers had christened their club in honor of one of their bakery products. How can you root for a team named after a loaf of bread?

  The crowd was so sparse that for two bucks I was able to get us a pair of box seats only four rows behind the third base dugout.

  One similarity between the Dodgers’ old and new homes was the tone of the advertising. Ebbets Field had its Tanglefoot flypaper sign. Here, to the right of the scoreboard, was a billboard that urged:

  For Comfort Sake

  Demand Loose-Fitting Underwear

  BVD

  I wondered what the Ward brothers would have named their team if they’d owned an underwear factory.

  Margie and I settled into our seats supplied with enough hot dogs and crackerjack to feed both teams.

  While we watched the ball players go through their warm-ups, I noticed that we were being watched by a portly man of about forty standing near an adjacent box. More specifically, / was being watched.

  He stared at me unabashedly while his hands mechanically fed a stream of peanuts to his flabby mouth. He was in a light brown suit with broad green stripes. A shabby black derby with a large nick in the brim was jammed low on his head. He wore a crooked blue bow tie that looked as if it was showing ten minutes to five. never quite trusted a man in a bow tie; it was the sort of accessory worn by smarmy salesmen and petty bureaucrats.

  Or maybe by a reporter for the Public Examiner? That would explain his seedy arrogance.

  I tilted my hat down over my eyes and tried to ignore him. No use. He came over to me and made a show of bending over to look up under the brim of my hat. If he turned out to be William Murray, I was going to give him a shot in the mouth. “Mickey Rawlings, isn’t it?” he asked. When he spoke, I noticed he had no front teeth-okay, so I’ll aim for his nose instead.

  “Yes,” I answered guardedly.

  “Say, you’re a helluva second baseman.”

  “Oh, well, thanks,” I said with some relief. This guy’s a fan!

  “Think you could sign my scorecard for me?”

  “Sure. Be glad to.” It was nice to be asked in front of Margie.

  He handed me a Tip-Tops scorecard and a pen. I scrawled my name with a flourish and handed it back.

  “Thanks.” He folded the scorecard, stuffed it in an inside pocket of his coat, and walked away.

  A cold wave suddenly washed through my body. There was another occupation that would fit the man’s appearance and actions: private detective. I’d heard that the American and National Leagues were employing spies to see if any of their players went to Federal League games. I should have known better than to sign a Fed program. That could be hard evidence against me. Jeez.

  I tried with limited success to forget the man once the Tip-Tops took the field and the first pitch was thrown.

  As the game settled into its rhythm, I finally brought up the subject of Miss Hampton’s death. I thought it might be easier to talk about her here; what had happened to her was so remote from the activity in the ballpark that maybe we could be more detached about it. I remembered Karl Landfors bringing his autopsy report to a game and winced at the similarity between us.

  “I had a question about Florence Hampton,” I began.

  Margie kept her eyes fixed on the Hoosier at bat. “Yes?”

  “Do you think she . . . could she have.... You said she changed after her husband died. Do think she could have been so upset that she killed herself?”

  Margie didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said calmly, “I wondered about that. She did change after William died, but she wasn’t despondent. She was upset, but she seemed determined somehow, not depressed. No, it wasn’t in her to commit suicide.”

  “I only knew her one day, but I didn’t think so, either. She didn’t seem like the type to give up on anything.”

  “She wasn’t.” Margie turned to look in my eyes and added, “Neither am I. I want to find out what happened to her.”

  “We will,” I promised.

  That topic over, we relaxed and spoke only of the game unfolding before us.

  After the sixth inning, I had to visit the men’s room. When I came out, my way was blocked by the man with the derby and the crooked bow tie. “McGraw know you’re here?” he asked.

  I tried to step past him.

  He put his hand on my arm. “If you give me a minute of your time, you’ll find it to be well worth it.”

  “Why’s that?” I said, shaking off his hand.

  “I’d like to make you an offer.”

  “For what?”

  “To play baseball.”

  “I already play baseball.”

  “Not often, you don’t.” He smiled, but I didn’t find him funny. “Now, if you were to sign with another team . . .”

  “What team?”

  “Brooklyn. The Tip-Tops.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You haven’t heard my offer.”

  “I play for John McGraw. For the New York Giants. I’m going to be in the World Series.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, that sounds pretty good, if it happens. But you think McGraw’s gonna play you in the Series? You hardly play as it is. Now if you come over to the Tip-Tops, you’ll be our starting second baseman. We’ll pay you four thousand bucks a year. Don’t tell me you’re making that much with McGraw.”

  No, I couldn’t tell him that.

  He dug into his vest pocket and pulled out a creased business card. Handing it to me, he said, “Think about it. Give me a call if you’re interested.” I looked at the card; it read PeterKurtz, Agent. “You’ll be in good company coming over to the Federal League. There’s a lot of big-name players signing with us for next year. Like I said, think about it.” He patted his jacket pocket and added with a smile, “Meanwhile I got your autograph to remember you by.”

  Kurtz walked away and I went back to my seat.

  Jim Delahanty was at second base for the Tip-Tops. He was thirty-five, one of the last of the five Delahanty brothers who played big-league ball. I used to watch his brother Big Ed play for the Phillies. I couldn’t take a job away from Jim Delahanty. But I was glad in a way that the League had finally tried to recruit me.

  I told Margie about Kurtz’s offer, omitting mention of the salary. Even $4,000 a year was probably a l
ot less than she earned for making movies.

  “Why don’t you consider it?” she asked.

  “It’s not the big leagues. Maybe someday it will be but not yet. Look at Benny Kauff out there.” Kauff was the Hoosiers’ —and the Feds‘—biggest star. “The ’‘Ty Cobb of the Federal League,’ they call him. If he was so good, they wouldn’t say ‘of the Federal League.’ It’s like being most valuable player in the Paterson Industrial League.” Which I once was, so I knew it didn’t amount to much.

  “Besides,” I said. “I owe John McGraw. He took me from nowhere and put me on a world champion team.”

  “Where was nowhere?”

  “Beaumont, in the Texas League. That’s where I played all last year. After the season was over, I stayed and played winter ball until spring, when the Giants came down. They have their spring training in Texas—in Marlin, outside of Waco. So I went for a tryout. And McGraw signed me.”

  “He must have been impressed with you.”

  I laughed. “Not especially, but he didn’t have a lot to choose from.” Normally I would have let the misconception stand, but with Margie Turner I felt compelled to tell her the unremarkable truth. “McGraw was on Daley’s world tour, managing the National League all-stars. When he got back to the States, he found that the Giants’ owners sold off half his infield. And the players who were left were threatening to jump to the Feds. So McGraw went to spring training without an infield. That’s why he signed me. You got to have nine players on the field come opening day.” I sighed, remembering that McGraw had then signed a few more infielders and I was once again relegated to a utility role.

  “Strange how things work out,” Margie said wistfully. “That damned world tour helped you get a job and it cost Libby her husband.”

  There was no blame in her voice, but the observation made me uncomfortable. “Why ‘Libby’?” I asked. “I can see how you get ‘Margie’ from ‘Marguerite,’ but how do you get ‘Libby’ from ‘Florence’?”

  “I don’t know . . . . she never told me her real name, I don’t think.”

  “Her real name?”

  “Sure. ‘Florence Hampton’ was probably her stage name. Like ‘Mary Pickford.’ ”

  “Gladys Smith,” I said.

  “That’s right.” Margie laughed. “You really are a movie fan. Bet you don’t know my name though.”

  “It’s not Marguerite Turner?”

  “Nope. Margaret Groot.”

  “Why’d you change it?”

  She laughed again. “I just told you. Because my real name’s Margaret Groot. The fan magazines would choke on that one. I grew up near Turners Falls, in Massachusetts, so I took Turner for a last name. Then Margaret Turner sounded a little too plain, so I made my first name more exotic: Marguerite. But I still prefer ‘Margie.’ ”

  Yeah, she was definitely more of a Margie than a Marguerite. Margie Groot from Turners Falls. The different name made her seem different. It made her even more of a regular person to me.

  Maybe Florence Hampton was really a different person, too.

  The Hoosiers ended up winning the game 1–0 on a pinch hit double by young Edd Roush.

  I looked around before we left the park, giving one last thought to Peter Kurtz’s offer. Although it might not have been an offer as much as a threat.

  That’s a good way to recruit players: get them banned from organized baseball and then they have no choice but to sign with an outlaw team.

  I might end up playing here after all if that scorecard ends up in John McGraw’s hands.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was at the Municipal Building at 8:30 Tuesday morning and waited until it opened at nine. This time I wasn’t looking for the district attorney’s office. I wanted a marriage license.

  The Marriage License Bureau was on the third floor. The only person in the office was a young man standing behind a counter with a glass front; it was like a bank teller’s, with a hole in the glass to talk through and a small gap between the glass and the countertop to exchange papers. The clerk’s slicked back red hair was parted perfectly in the middle and he wore a massive green bow tie with vertical gold stripes. He had an expectant smirk on his face as I approached his window.

  “I’d like to see a marriage license,” I asked through the hole in the glass. “From June 1913. The groom’s name was William Daley.”

  The smirk vanished. “You want to see a license. Somebody else’s license.”

  I thought it a straightforward request, but he didn’t seem to understand. “Yes.” How much more could I elaborate?

  “Most people want one of their own,” he said.

  “I don’t. Can’t I see his? Isn’t it a public record?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Then what do I have to do to see it?”

  Here I was, his first customer of the day, and already I was throwing his routine out of whack. He tilted his head to look around the rest of the office and appeared disappointed. I think he would have liked to tell me to keep the line moving, but there was no line. “All right,” he said with a sigh. He stepped away to a set of oak file cabinets behind him. “June of last year, you said, right?”

  “Yes.”

  He ran his fingers down a row of drawers, checking the labels on the front, then pulled a drawer halfway out. “Do you know the date?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “How do you spell ‘Daley’?”

  Everything was a challenge for this guy. “D-a-l-e-y.”

  He flipped through all the documents in the drawer. “Nope. Nothing here for a Daley,” he reported gleefully.

  Jeez. I thought for sure ... “Oh! The wedding was in June. Maybe he got the license earlier.”

  “That’s usually the way it works,” he sniffed.

  I started to suspect that the glass above the counter was to keep people from smacking him. “Could you look?”

  “Of course,” he said sourly. He pulled out the drawer above the one he’d just gone through and flipped through its contents while muttering to himself, “I am a civil servant. It is my pleasure to serve the public.”

  He withdrew a pale green paper from the drawer and brought it to the counter. Instead of sliding it through the gap, he held it up against the glass. “This is an official document. You can see it, but you can’t touch it.”

  I didn’t need to touch it. Having read the name of Daley’s bride, I’d seen enough.

  From the Municipal Building, it was three blocks to Spruce Street and the offices of the New York Press.

  The Press city room was just as I remembered: loud. It was noisier than a game at Ebbets Field. There was a ceaseless din of typewriters clattering, telephones ringing, and people shouting. Apparently no one got up from their desks to talk to anyone, they just yelled across the room in a raucous crossfire of conversations.

  Karl Landfors’s desk was in the same distant corner of the room where I’d first gone to see him two years ago.

  Since then, he’d turned it into something like a private office. He used the back of his rolltop desk as one wall, an overflowing bookcase made another, and a row of battered file cabinets a third. Actually, it was more like a nest: the furniture was all old, chipped, and mismatched. I could picture Landfors going around collecting pieces that had been abandoned by other reporters to build his “office,”

  Landfors had his back to me. He was seated at his desk, typing rapidly with all his fingers—I didn’t know men could do that. His jacket hung on the corner of the bookcase and his derby was hooked over an unplugged gooseneck lamp clamped to the edge of a shelf. The desk top was stained with spilled ink and scarred with carved names like a schoolboy’s. A large map of Europe was tacked to the wall next to him.

  I rapped on the side of a file cabinet to get his attention.

  “Ah, Mickey!” he said in a startled tone.

  “Hi, Karl.”

  He pointed to a straight-back chair that still had most of its legs. As I slowly took off my hat a
nd coat, Landfors’s eyes swept back and forth over me, curious to know why I was there. By the time I sat down, I had his full attention.

  I came right to the point. “There’s no James Bartlett in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Karl. You lied to me.” I said it matter-of-factly, not as an accusation.

  “Well ... of course not. He’s with the Brooklyn office, not Manhattan. I told you it was Brooklyn. You must have—” He didn’t have much conviction in his voice.

  “No, Karl. You told me Manhattan, and there’s no James Bartlett.”

  Landfors slumped his shoulders in surrender.

  I went on, “There’s something else, Karl. I went to the Marriage License Bureau this morning.” His eyebrows rose above the rim of his glasses. “Florence Hampton had to use her real name on her marriage certificate: Elizabeth Emily Landfors.”

  Karl took off his spectacles and laid them on the desk. Leaning back, he closed his eyes, and with his thumb and forefinger rubbed the red indentations on the bridge of his nose. “Libby,” he sighed. “My sister.”

  I couldn’t be mad at Landfors for lying to me. His sister was dead. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. Not that I blamed him. The way we went at each other, I’d never given him a reason to count on me for much support.

  Landfors shrugged and his jaw started flexing, but no words came out. Then he spread his hands. “I’m not sure exactly. When I first heard about her drowning, I knew something was wrong—she never would have gone into the water of her own free will. So I tried to focus on finding out what happened to her instead of grieving for her. I don’t know ... maybe it was just easier for me to think of Florence Hampton being dead instead of my sister Libby. If I thought of her as my sister, there would have been too much for me to think about. We’d had some . . . uh, disagreements.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police? There wasn’t any political scandal to worry about.”

  “Libby’s name was dragged through the mud often enough. Even as Florence Hampton, she was still my sister. I didn’t want to stir up any more gossip.”

  “You knew she was afraid of the water.”