Murder at Ebbets Field

by Troy Soos

I thought of my bat tossing routine with Casey Stengel, when we competed for Florence Hampton in the movie. That was make believe, too, but I’d wanted to win. I tried to explain it to Margie. “Well, even if it’s just pretend, when you’re competing with somebody, you want to win. You just do. Nobody wants to lose.”

  “Men, ” she groaned.

  I was pretty sure that I was included in her general disgust with the male sex.

  In the hope of bringing her around, I switched to another topic. “I thought we could go to Prospect Park this afternoon, maybe take a ride on the swan boats?”

  “No, I can’t today,” she promptly answered. “I have something else to do.”

  I waited for her to tell me what the something else was, until it became clear she wasn’t going to volunteer it. Well, I wasn’t going to ask. “Maybe another time, then,” I said.

  She hesitated, then said, “There’s a filming Tuesday morning. Another big picture. If you want to come, I’m sure Mr. Garvin would like to have you there.”

  I couldn’t imagine Garvin liking that at all. Perhaps Margie was trying to tell me that she’d like it. “It’s not at Coney Island, is it?” I asked.

  “No,” she chuckled. “At the studio.”

  “Sure, I’ll be there. How . . . uh, how has Garvin been to you?”

  She snapped, “He’s more concerned about a broken spotlight than about me.” After a pause, she said, “Florence Hampton was my only true friend at the studio. It’s not the same without her. I don’t know if I want to work there anymore . . . certainly not for Mr. Garvin.”

  I took some satisfaction in the fact that she now sounded angrier at Elmer Garvin than at me.

  “There’s plenty of other movie studios who’d love to have you,” I said. “Or you can do something else. You should do whatever makes you happy.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do.”

  I made one more attempt to suggest that seeing me was the thing to do. “If you’re busy today, can we get together tomorrow?”

  “No,” she said. “Not tomorrow. Better wait until Tuesday.”

  I reluctantly agreed to Tuesday and we hung up.

  The conversation with Margie left me feeling empty. I felt like I needed to talk to a friend. So, a couple of hours later, I called Karl Landfors, the closest thing to it that I could think of.

  He wasn’t at his home number, but he was at his office at the New York Press. It didn’t seem like he ever went home.

  Although what I really wanted to talk about was Margie, what came out of my mouth was, “Virgil Ewing and Sloppy Sutherland are out of it. Neither of them was with Florence Hampton when she died.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup. They both have alibis that checked out.” I decided not to tell him what the alibi was. Landfors was still a newspaper reporter, and he might let it slip out about them going to the Feds. “And there’s something else,” I said. “Nobody was having affairs with Miss Hampton. She used the rumors as a cover to question the players about William Daley’s death.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Landfors said, in a pleased tone. Then he asked, “You’re sure Ewing and Sutherland weren’t fighting over her?”

  I was starting to get annoyed at the way people kept asking if I was sure when I told them things. “Yes, I’m sure. They just played along.”

  “Then who would want to kill Virgil Ewing if not Sutherland? Why did somebody try to poison him?”

  Jeez. I didn’t think of that. “Are we sure somebody did try to kill him? Did you get the results on the tobacco?”

  “Not yet. Assume it was poisoned though. Who would do it?”

  “Well.... Ewing thought it was the owners who tried to kill him.”

  “The Dodger owners?”

  “Yeah, he thought they might suspect him of jumping to the Federal League. I told him he was nuts, but he thought they tried to kill him to make an example of him.”

  Landfors said excitedly, “You know, he may have something there. I’ve been checking around myself, and it turns out the other Dodger owners didn’t like my sister. Besides being a woman, she was in favor of players’ rights. She said publicly that baseball players should be free to work for anybody they wanted to.” He sighed. “She should have been a labor organizer.”

  I noticed when Landfors was proud of her he referred to Florence Hampton as his sister. Maybe he was finally feeling a little closer to her.

  I also remembered Charlie Ebbets throwing her friends out of the ballpark. Humiliating her, yes. But committing murder? No. That was too far-fetched. “I don’t know who else would have wanted to kill Virgil Ewing,” I said, “but it wasn’t the owners.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Just because they’re baseball owners, they’re still bosses and they play dirty. They shoot down strikers, starve their families—”

  “Okay, okay, Karl.” I didn’t want to hear another one of his political sermons.

  He calmed down. “I’m going to look into this,” he said.

  “If you want to. Go ahead.” Landfors was fond of working out grand conspiracy schemes, and I knew I couldn’t dissuade him. He once told me some convoluted theory about Tammany Hall, Allen Pinkerton, and Ulysses S. Grant all having plotted the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

  But let Landfors think about it. At least it would keep him out of trouble.

  Monday afternoon, we opened a three-game series against the Braves at the Polo Grounds. We were tied for the league lead, so when the series was over only one team would be in first place.

  Just after my teammates and I completed our pregame march from the center field clubhouse to the dugout, I heard Landfors’s voice calling my name.

  I stepped out to the side of the dugout. Landfors was at the rail, sunlight glinting off his spectacles. He was holding a scorecard, two boxes of Cracker Jack, and—I couldn’t believe it—a New York Giants pennant. Could it be? Could Karl Landfors be turning into a baseball fan?

  Before I could say anything to him, John McGraw called for the start of infield practice.

  “Sorry, Karl,” I said. “I can’t talk right now.”

  “That’s okay. I’m ... uh, staying for the game.” He sounded sheepish about it. “I got the results on those tests for you. How about dinner after the game and we’ll talk then?”

  “Sounds good.” I took a few steps toward second base, then spun and added, “You rooting for the Giants today?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  Landfors was making a lot of progress. If he kept it up, he might turn out to be a regular human being someday.

  What he saw turned out to be less a baseball game than a war. And it was the generals who were the highlights.

  John McGraw engaged in guerilla warfare between the dugouts with tactics intended more to torment the Braves’ manager George Stallings than to defeat the team. I don’t think McGraw liked the idea of Stallings usurping his throne as baseball’s shrewdest manager.

  McGraw had enlisted help from some local boys to take advantage of Stallings’s superstitious streak. He’d given free passes to the kids in exchange for them throwing a steady stream of litter in front of the Braves’ dugout. Stallings scampered about, frantically collecting every bit of rubbish that fell in front of the bench. His pockets were soon crammed with scraps of paper, and the air was blue from the profanities he hurled at McGraw.

  Unfortunately for Christy Mathewson and Dick Rudolph, the antics of McGraw and Stallings overshadowed their pitching performances. Through five innings, they were both working on shutouts, Mathewson giving up one hit and Rudolph throwing a perfect game.

  In the sixth inning, with Boston at bat and Braves on second and third, McGraw pulled out all stops. He signaled a boy near the visitors’ dugout; the kid leaned over the railing and opened a sack, releasing a black cat onto the field, the ultimate bad luck omen, almost a death knell.

  The terrified cat raced back and forth in front of the dugout. Stallings let out a bell
ow and chased him. Then he screamed for his players to help, and a swarm of Braves was trying to grab hold of the feline; they fell over each other as they scrambled, looking like boys trying to catch a greased pig at a county fair. The cat meowed, Stallings cussed, and I couldn’t tell which was more scared. John McGraw roared with laughter at the trouble he’d caused.

  But when the animal was finally captured and taken away, the Braves continued where they left off. Hank Gowdy hit a sacrifice fly to put Boston ahead 1—0.

  McGraw showed another of his tricks in the eighth with the Giants at bat. He was coaching third base, his little black fielder’s mitt on his left hand. Chief Meyers was on second base with a double that broke up Rudolph’s no-hitter.

  Fred Merkle singled up the middle and Meyers was off with the crack of the bat. Rounding third, Meyers tripped on the bag and stumbled toward home. McGraw shrieked, “Back! Back!”

  The throw from center was relayed home, and Meyers scrambled to get back to third base. The catcher snapped a throw that got there ahead of him and Meyers was caught in a rundown. Merkle saw it and did just what he was supposed to, going on to second base. The Braves’ shortstop Rabbit Maranville did what he shouldn’t, going to second to take a throw instead of covering third.

  The third baseman ran Meyers toward home, then flipped a throw to the plate. Meyers quickly did an about-face. McGraw saw Maranville hadn’t yet broken to cover third, so he ran to third base from the coach’s box. Pretending to be an infielder, he held his glove high and yelled, “Throw it already!” Taken in by the ruse, Gowdy snapped a toss to him; McGraw ducked and let the ball fly over his head into left field. Meyers ran home to score.

  But the umpire was McGraw’s old nemesis Bill Klem who would have none of McGraw’s deceit. He ruled Meyers out and ejected McGraw.

  The score ended 1—0, and George Stallings came out ahead of John McGraw. The little Napoleon lost out to the Miracle Man, and for the first time this season the Boston Braves were in first place.

  We picked an Italian restaurant with red checkered tablecloths and dripping candles stuck in empty wine bottles. It was dimly lit and romantic, a place I’d have rather come with Margie Turner than Karl Landfors.

  Landfors ordered chianti and calamari marinara. To the waiter’s chagrin, I opted for steak, well-done, and a beer.

  After proposing a toast “to the valiant Belgians: may they soon have their country back,” Landfors commenced guzzling his wine faster than I downed my beer. Shifting from the war to baseball, he said, “That McGraw is something else. The way he pretended to play third base. That was sure something.”

  “Yeah, McGraw likes trickery, all right.”

  “Why does he wear the glove?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it makes him feel like a player still.” I chuckled. “Or maybe he’s been waiting all along for a time like today when he could use it. Can never tell with John McGraw.”

  I was happy that Landfors was developing such a liking for the game. It took awhile before I sensed that his enthusiasm about baseball was forced. It also became clear that his rapid drinking had more to do with nervousness than thirst. Red color was starting to creep into the black, white, and gray that usually dominated his appearance, as his face flushed from the alcohol and spatters of tomato sauce trickled from forkfuls of squid onto his shirt front.

  It was time to learn what he’d found out while he was still sober enough to speak. “You said you got the test results,” I prompted him.

  “Yes, yes I did.” Landfors took another gulp of wine, spilling a few ruby droplets on his tie. He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out two bulging small brown envelopes. “They both have arsenic in them,” he said. “The tobacco and the cork.”

  “So it’s arsenic for everybody!” I exclaimed. As the words left my lips, I realized it sounded as if I’d just ordered a round of beers. “Miss Hampton, me, and Virgil Ewing—somebody tried to kill us all with arsenic.”

  “And possibly William Daley,” Landfors added. He opened one of the envelopes and dumped pieces of cork on the table. “Something else about this: there’s a needle hole through it. That’s how the poison got in.”

  “I was curious about that, how you could get poison in a sealed bottle.”

  “That’s how. It was injected. The big question is who.”

  I picked up the envelope with the tobacco. “I did come up with a reason why somebody might want to kill Virgil Ewing . . . besides the owners, that is. What if somebody thought Ewing killed Miss Hampton. People didn’t know that he wasn’t having an affair with her. Maybe somebody thought he did kill her and wanted to get revenge for her.”

  Landfors lifted the chianti bottle to replenish his glass, but there was nothing more in it. He picked up the empty wine glass and absentmindedly rolled the stem in his fingertips. He said seriously, “Lately, I’ve been thinking more about why somebody would want to kill you. ”

  That wasn’t what I wanted to think about. If I let my mind dwell on the danger I was in, I wouldn’t be clearheaded enough to work out a plan for getting out of trouble. “I want to know who killed your sister,” I said. There, I said “sister.” It was more personal. “That’s the important thing.” It was also the key, I was sure, to the attacks on Margie and me, and the murder of the Dodger batboy.

  He leaned back in his chair. “I appreciate that,” he said, nodding. Then he looked about to nod all the way off to sleep. After a minute, he blurted, “So, how’s it going with Miss Turner?”

  “Good! Well, I think it’s going good, anyway.” I was still at the stage where all I remembered was what had happened last. And what had happened last was that Margie didn’t want to see me and wouldn’t tell me why. I didn’t want to talk to Karl Landfors about that.

  “You know what bothers me about poison?” I said. “It’s not visible . . . you can’t see where it’s coming from. A gun or a knife, those you can see, and you can try to avoid them. Poison can be in anything.”

  “Yes, it can,” Landfors said. “You should be careful, Mickey. Careful about everything.” There was something he wasn’t telling me. C’mon, Landfors. Out with it. But he didn’t say more and I didn’t prod.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tuesday was the first of September. We were going into the last month of the regular season with twenty-eight games left to play and every one of them crucial. The hundred and twenty-six games that had come before, the thousands of pitches and the hundreds of hits and runs, had left only a one game spread between the Giants and the Braves. The pennant race was just heating up.

  The only warmth I felt, though, was generated by finally seeing Margie Turner again.

  Margie and I were standing together in the middle of fetid Studio B. She was garbed as a waitress in a navy blue dress with a white frilly apron; a large white ribbon was tied in a bow atop her head.

  The set for today’s shooting was that of a fancy restaurant with a long polished bar and a dozen cloth-covered round tables. Dessert carts placed about the room held enough pies to feed all of Flatbush.

  The Vitagraph studio wasn’t my preferred meeting place. As far as I was concerned, we spent too much time with the movie company, among people we didn’t like, in circumstances that were often uncomfortable if not dangerous. But by now I would have been willing to meet Margie in the middle of the Hudson River without a boat.

  Warily eyeing the pies, I asked her, “What’s this movie going to be about?”

  “Just another pie-throwing movie,” she said. “Lots of pies. Four reels of them.” In a whisper she added, “Mr. Garvin doesn’t know how to make a long movie. The film we took at Coney Island is scattered all over the editing room, a useless mess. And the front office is pressing him to release something, anything. So he’s going back to the old way: in the studio, lots of people, lots of pie-throwing.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of any more gooey projectiles.

  “I don’t kn
ow. There’s Mr. Garvin. Do you want to ask him?”

  Garvin was passing by, with Arthur Carlyle following and the two of them in mid-argument.

  “Everybody is going to be in this,” Garvin said to Carlyle.

  “I am an actor, Carlyle protested. “I do not allow my face to be struck by bakery goods.”

  “Then duck. Now go get into costume.”

  Carlyle crossed his arms and planted his legs firmly; he showed no signs of moving.

  “Mr. Garvin,” I interrupted, “what did you want me to do?”

  He looked around. “Mmm.... You’ll sit at the bar. Think you can handle that?”

  “Gee, I might need a few rehearsals, but I think I can do that.”

  A hint of a smile crossed Carlyle’s mouth and he nodded his head at me.

  Elmer Garvin didn’t notice my sarcasm. “Good. Then get into costume. A hick maybe. Mr. Carlyle, would you help Mr. Rawlings find an appropriate costume? He’ll be playing a rube at the bar.”

  “Of course, Mr. Garvin,” Carlyle said, clicking his heels together. “Whatever you say, sir.”

  “Go with Mr. Carlyle,” Garvin said, and I followed Carlyle as he walked away. “Damn ham,” I heard Garvin mutter under his breath.

  The cramped men’s dressing room was exactly as I remembered: like a laundry in the aftermath of an explosion.

  Arthur Carlyle rummaged through racks of suits and piles of hats, socks, shirts, and shoes. “A hick,” he said. “That would mean plaid. Or perhaps . . .” He paused at a tan suit with green squares like a checkerboard. “Try this.”

  I shed my street clothes and donned the suit. It was a perfect fit.

  “Terrible,” was Carlyle’s verdict. “For a rube, it should be much smaller.”

  While he went through another rack, I asked him, “When you were on the stage, did you ever act with Esther Kelly?”

  “Hmm.... I don’t believe so. Let’s see . . . she was Esther Neilson when she was acting. You know, I thought it rather peculiar that she took Tom Kelly’s name. You never give up your stage name unless you give up the stage.” He pulled out another suit, a bright red plaid with wide lapels.