by Troy Soos
“Let’s sit down,” I offered.
Billy took my chair and I sat on the sofa without objection.
“It happened this afternoon at Ebbets Field,” Billy began. “Larry didn’t come out to the dugout when the game started, so Virg sent me to look for him. I checked all around, but I didn’t find him till the game was over. He was in the tool shed. Poor kid was puking his guts out and he looked just about dead. He gimme this tobacco, said he took it from Virg’s locker and thought he was being punished for stealing. Poor kid was always trying to be just like Virg, so I guess he wanted to learn to chew. Anyway, we took him to Kings County Hospital, but he died by the time we got there. Doctors said he was poisoned—”
“By the tobacco?”
“Naw, the doctors didn’t have no idea what killed him. I figgered out it was the tobacco.”
“Somebody poisoned Ewing’s tobacco?”
“That’s the thing. This ain’t really his tobacco. It was in his locker, but it wasn’t his. See, Virg always mixed licorice with his tobacco.” He smiled. “We used to rib him about it when we was kids—adding candy to your tobacco ain’t considered real manly.” He held up the Beechnut. “No licorice in this.”
“So if Larry Harron took it from Ewing’s locker, somebody else must have put it there,” I said. “And there’s poison in it.” To my mind, chewing tobacco was lethal enough without adding poison.
“Yep. And they meant to kill Virg with it.”
“Who do you think did it?”
“I figured it might have been you.”
“No,” I said firmly, as another suspect immediately sprang to mind: Sloppy Sutherland. He had the means: access to the locker room. No, that was opportunity. But wouldn’t Sutherland know about the licorice? “Who knows that Ewing mixes licorice with his tobacco?”
Billy shook his head. “Nobody, I don’t think. Like I said, it ain’t manly. Virg don’t want people to know about it.”
Okay, what about motive? Maybe it goes back to their competition for Florence Hampton. Sutherland thinks Ewing killed Miss Hampton, so he tries to kill Ewing to get revenge. Or Sutherland killed Miss Hampton and thought Ewing was on to him, so he tries to kill Ewing to shut him up. Or maybe it had nothing to do with Miss Hampton’s death. Maybe their general hatred of each other had just boiled over.
While I thought over the possibilities, I asked Billy, “You and Ewing grew up together?”
“Yep. In Gatlinburg, Tennessee.”
“You’re related?”
“Probably, but not close.”
“How come you’re trying to protect him?”
“Well, he had some trouble when he first come up to the city. You folks do things different than we do back home. Just ’cause we talk a little slow, you figure we think slow. So you try to take advantage of us. That happened to Virg a lot his first year. Then his ma asked me to come up here with him.”
“To protect him.”
“Naw. To protect other people. Virg don’t take it kindly when people try to take advantage of him. He got a temper.”
“Seems like you do, too.”
“Yeah, well, sorry ’bout that.” Billy looked a little ashamed. “You know,” he said, “when you was asking Virg about where he went after that party . . . and he said he went to Marsten’s . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Well, he didn’t come to the pool hall.”
“No?”
“Uh-uh. You think maybe he got into something that night that made somebody want to kill him?”
“Hard to tell. Do you know where he did go?”
“Naw. I asked him about it after you came to Marsten’s. He wouldn’t tell me.” Billy cleared his throat noisily. “So, do you or don’t you think it’s tied in to what you was asking about?”
I thought for a moment, only to find that I didn’t have an answer. So I picked one at random. “Probably,” I said.
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Then you can help me find out for sure.” It sounded as much like a request as a bunt sign from John McGraw. I was not expected to decline.
“First you almost strangle me, and then you ask for my help? Why the hell should I?”
“I expect whoever tried to kill Virg is gonna try again,” Billy said calmly. “And I ain’t sure what I can do about it. Leastways not by myself. I liked what I saw of you in Marsten’s: you woulda fought us if it come to it, but you was smart enough to avoid it.”
Lucky, was more like it.
“You’re asking questions ’bout Virg anyway,” Billy continued. “So you can do a little more poking around for me.”
Actually, I could see some advantages to joining up with him. If Ewing wasn’t at the pool hall the night Florence Hampton drowned, I still had to find out where he was—and why he’d lied about it. Having Billy on my side could come in handy.
I also saw a possible disadvantage. “If it turns out that Ewing did something,” I said warily. “That he hurt somebody maybe. Would you still try to protect him? I mean, if I found out he did something wrong, are you going to come after me?”
“If Virg did something, he had good reason for it.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“You find out the truth and that’ll do me jest fine.”
“Okay. You got to help though.”
“How?”
“Keep an eye on him. If you see him doing anything strange, going someplace unusual, meeting with somebody you don’t know, let me know. Especially if you see him with Sloppy Sutherland.”
Billy frowned. “You think it was him?”
“I don’t think anything yet. Just watch and let me know.”
“And what if he does get together with Sutherland?”
I wasn’t sure. “Call me,” I said. Maybe by then I’d know.
Chapter Seventeen
The morning papers all carried the story of Larry Harron’s death. Most gave it prominent space on their front pages, eclipsing their coverage of the war in Europe. They all gave the official cause of death as accidental arsenic poisoning. Since he was found in the ballpark’s tool shed, the police concluded that he’d gotten into some of the groundskeeper’s chemicals.
There was variation in the papers’ descriptions of the boy. His reported age ranged from twelve to sixteen. Some papers omitted any mention of his physical disability, while others suggested he was mentally retarded and didn’t know what he was eating. None mentioned any family.
The newspapers were unanimous in describing Larry Harron’s popularity among Dodger fans; most echoed the Brooklyn Eagle, which called him “a favorite of the Ebbets Field faithful.”
The Public Examiner took its usual hysterical approach to the story. Instead of stopping with a report on Harron’s death, it had a column written by William Murray headlined Does Death Stalk the Dodgers? Murray suggested that Florence Hampton, as part-owner, and now the batboy Harron had been killed in some plot to hurt the Brooklyn team. “How long until a Dodger player is murdered?” he wrote. Little did Murray know that it almost was a ballplayer who was killed.
At least I wasn’t mentioned in Murray’s article. He was pursuing a new scenario now. Instead of actresses who knew Mickey Rawlings being potential murder victims, it was people associated with the Dodger team.
I allowed myself a moment of relief that William Murray was off my back. Then I realized he had the right approach—there was some sense behind the sensationalism. Murray was looking for patterns in the tragedies of the last three weeks to see how they connected. I needed to do the same and see where the murder of Larry Harron—or attempted murder of Virgil Ewing—fit into the pattern.
I thought about calling Margie and decided against it. She’d be at the studio, and I didn’t want to cause her any more trouble with Elmer Garvin.
Besides, I didn’t know how much I should share with her. I still hadn’t told her that I wasn’t the one who put the champagne in the picnic basket. At firs
t I held back to avoid scaring her, to keep her from worrying. Then I realized she would probably do a lot more than worry. She’d likely go after whoever tried to poison us and possibly put herself in danger in the process. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything about it now.
I wasn’t sure if I should tell her about Ewing and the batboy, either. Not until I found out more about it.
I called Casey Stengel’s number to ask him about Larry Harron. No answer.
Next I went to the ice box and pulled out a small tissue-wrapped bundle from the bottom shelf. Before Ewing’s friend Billy had left, I’d asked him to leave the tobacco with me, but he wouldn’t. I guess he didn’t trust me completely. He forgot about the wad he’d knocked to the floor, though, so I wrapped it up and saved it. In a case that was mostly conjecture, it was the first hard evidence I had.
I laid the tobacco on the coffee table and sat back in my chair, staring at the leafy shreds of Beechnut. Yes, it was evidence, but it was telling me nothing.
Perhaps there wasn’t much to tell. It could be a mistake to try to draw complex conclusions from simple facts. Like the death of William Daley, the simple solution being that he really died from tainted oysters. The only evidence to the contrary was the material left by Florence Hampton—the notes from the ship’s physician and the description of arsenic that she had written. Maybe she just couldn’t accept his death as being from natural causes.
Aloud I cursed the speculative diversion about William Daley and the baseball tour. Reality was what mattered. Reality was the dead blue body of Florence Hampton, the intense pain I’d suffered a couple of nights ago, a wad of poisoned tobacco, and a dead batboy who had never harmed anyone.
Means, motive, and opportunity. I’d learned a couple of years ago that a murderer would have to meet all three criteria. They ran through my mind yesterday, but I hadn’t yet applied them to each death and each attempt.
I picked up a pencil and the scratch paper with my batting average calculations. Flipping it over, I started to write.
Victim: Florence Hampton. Suspects: Ewing, Sutherland, Kelly. They all met the means, motive, opportunity criteria. They were all with her the night she died, they each had a romantic interest in her, and all were strong enough to drown her.
Next case, an attempted murder. Intended victims: Mickey Rawlings and/or Marguerite Turner. Suspects: I put down a question mark. Motive: another question mark, but I thought maybe somebody didn’t like us asking questions about the night Miss Hampton died. Means: poisoned champagne. I added a question mark there, too. I couldn’t prove that it was poisoned. Opportunity: Tom Kelly was the only one there. No, that’s not true. Opportunity was wide open. The picnic basket had been left in the truck all morning. Anybody could have slipped the bottle in. Even Ewing or Sutherland; they were playing in Ebbets Field that afternoon so could have easily been on Coney Island in the morning.
Finally, Larry Harron. Motive: somebody wanted to kill Virgil Ewing. Means: poisoned chewing tobacco. Opportunity: Sloppy Sutherland. Tom Kelly would have been at the studio. No, he wasn’t! Margie said they all had Friday off. He could have gone to Ebbets Field and got into the locker room somehow.
Okay, I’ll go back to William Daley. Motive: question mark. Opportunity: Ewing, Sutherland, and Kelly were all on the cruise. Means: poisoned oysters.
Jeez, poison again.
Daley dead, officially of food poisoning but with symptoms that match arsenic. Florence Hampton dead by drowning. Me nearly poisoned, probably, and with symptoms matching those in Florence Hampton’s arsenic notes. The Dodger batboy poisoned by arsenic. There was almost a pattern here: Arsenic, drowning, arsenic, arsenic.
Why the change-up? A pitcher will vary his pitches, but would a murderer? Wouldn’t he stick to the method that worked? Damned if I knew.
Looking over everything I’d just scribbled, I realized that I didn’t know very much at all.
I called Karl Landfors and filled him in on everything.
“That’s curious,” he said. “There could be several reasons why somebody would change methods. One would be to confuse the trail, to keep a pattern from becoming obvious. Or it could be desperation. If he thought he was about to get caught, he might try anything. Or perhaps convenience. Something presented itself and he took advantage of it.”
“Couldn’t the answer be that there’s more than one killer?” I suggested. “Say Virgil Ewing drowned Florence Hampton and then Sloppy Sutherland tried to poison Ewing to get revenge.”
“Hmm. It’s possible, of course. Let me give it some thought.”
“Okay.” I didn’t say so, but I felt better having Landfors think about it.
Chapter Eighteen
Landfors did more than think about it.
Three days later he called back. The first words out of his mouth were, “Florence Hampton was poisoned.”
“She was drowned,” I argued. “You showed me the autopsy report. There was water in her lungs.”
“That’s true, there was.” In a flat, tired voice he explained, “The poison wasn’t enough to kill her. She was probably weakened by the poison, thrown in the water, and then she drowned.”
“Huh. How do you know about the poison?”
“I had her exhumed.”
“You dug her up?”
There was silence, then he said wearily, “Yes, that’s what exhumed means. I had Libby dug up and reautopsied.”
Libby. Sometimes I forgot this was his sister we were talking about. “Do the police know?” I asked.
“No, there was no need for that. I simply went to Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn; she was buried in the Daley family plot. I told the cemetery administrator that our family wanted her body moved back to Ohio, and he had her disinterred. I hired a private coroner to do the examination, then I told the administrator that we changed our minds and decided to let her rest next to her husband. So he had her buried again.” Landfors wasn’t gloating at the success of the ruse; he sounded exhausted, as tired as if he’d done the digging himself. “Only you and I know she was poisoned ... and the coroner, of course.” He paused, then added, “It was arsenic.”
“Is this autopsy right?” I asked. “If she had arsenic in her, why wasn’t it found the first time?”
“Nobody expected to find it. The assumption was that she drowned, and when her lungs were found to be full of water nobody bothered to do a chemical analysis. The second autopsy is correct. Arsenic is easy to detect if you look for it.”
“It is?”
“Yes, certainly. Arsenic is an element—it doesn’t break down, it stays in the body. Even a tiny amount can be detected.”
I had an idea. “Are you in your office?”
“Yes, why?”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
I put the champagne cork on Landfors’s desk; it had still been in the pocket of the jacket I’d worn to Steeplechase Park. Then I took the wrapped wad of chewing tobacco from my pocket and placed it next to the cork.
“Can you get these tested?” I asked.
“For poison?”
I nodded. “The tobacco is from Virgil Ewing’s locker. It’s the stuff Larry Harron, the Dodger batboy, got hold of.”
“My understanding,” Landfors said, “is that you don’t ingest the tobacco though. You chew it and spit, right?”
“Doesn’t always work that way.” Grimacing at the memory of my own early experience with the odious substance, I explained, “When you first try it, you usually end up swallowing some.”
Landfors’s face developed the same sour expression that it had when he’d tasted my coffee.
“And the cork,” I said, “is from the champagne Margie and I had on the beach. I thought maybe some of it could have soaked into the cork.”
“Could be.... I’ll have it tested if you want. But it sounded to me like you just had a stomach ache. If it was poison, why didn’t Miss Turner have the same symptoms?”
“She didn’t drink. She had stunts to
do in the afternoon.”
Landfors’s eyebrows rose and fell. “You drank it and she didn’t?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you better tell me the whole story again. What you ate, where you were . . . everything.”
I filled him in on every detail I could remember of our picnic lunch and concluded with the opinion, “I’m sure somebody tried to kill me. Or us.”
“Damn,” he exhaled. “I’m sorry, Mickey. I didn’t mean for you to get this involved. I don’t want anything happening to you. Libby was my sister; it’s my responsibility to find out who killed her.” He peered at me through the thick lenses of his spectacles and said stiffly, “I am hereby withdrawing my request for your help. I think you should forget about investigating my sister’s death and concentrate on baseball.” It sounded like something John McGraw would say, but it was more polite than McGraw would word it.
“Hell no,” was my answer. “I’ve been in worse scrapes. Besides, now I have a personal reason to stick it out.”
Landfors paused then nodded. “Very well. Thank you.” He started to toy with the cork, trying to stand it upright on the big head. He muttered, almost to himself, “Arsenic . . . poison . . .” The cork kept falling down and he kept trying to stand it up. I didn’t think it was such a good idea for him to be playing with it, and I wondered if poison could work its way through human skin.
“Something’s bothering me,” he finally said.
Yeah, I could tell. “What?” I prompted.
His eyes stayed down, staring at the cork. “Poison. Why poison? That’s a woman’s murder weapon.”
A woman’s murder weapon? They had their own murder weapon?
“The business with Virgil Ewing bothers me, too,” he continued. “That’s awfully convenient, the batboy getting killed instead of him. How about this: what if Ewing put the poisoned tobacco in the locker himself, and then left it for somebody else to take. Everybody assumes it was meant for him, and he’s eliminated as a suspect. Very convenient.”
Landfors drummed his fingers on the desktop. There was more on his mind, but it didn’t pass his lips.