The Cincinnati Red Stalkings

by Troy Soos

“Thanks, Mr. Wright. I may be seeing you soon in Cincinnati. I hear you might be coming to the opening of the exhibit for your old team.”

  “I’m not sure if I can. I’m awfully busy here. But I do hope we get a chance to chat again. Not many people ask me about my baseball days anymore.”

  During my nightly phone call home, I asked Margie if there was any news yet on why Charlotte Ashby had shot Dick Hurley.

  “No,” she answered. “According to the papers, she hasn’t said a word to anyone about why she did it. I do have some news for you though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Spider Jenkins, the gambler you met at the Stars game, called. He was pretty skittish—wanted to talk only to you, and really didn’t want to give me a message. But I coaxed him into it. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not. What did he say?”

  “Lloyd Tinsley did bet on the 1919 World Series.”

  “Huh! So maybe—”

  “But he bet on the Reds.”

  “Oh.” So he and Rufus Yates weren’t in on a fix together. According to Kid Gumbert, Yates had wanted the Reds to lose the series. Tinsley had bet on them to win. “Did he find out anything about Yates?”

  “Not yet. He said he’ll keep looking into both Tinsley and Yates. Oh—he also says you owe him twenty-five dollars for the information. You can leave it with Ralph at the Palace, he said.”

  “Pretty steep, but okay.” I had told Jenkins to name his price, after all, and a deal was a deal.

  “How’s Karl?” Margie asked. The two of them had met several times when we lived in Detroit.

  “Uh, you’ll be seeing him for yourself soon. He’s coming to stay with us for a while.” I held my breath.

  She didn’t yell at me for not asking her about it first. “That’s wonderful! It will be nice to see him again. And I wish you were here tonight already.” I assumed her desire to see me had a romantic basis, but she added, “I could use your help. I’m going to the zoo later to dig up a wildebeest that died last week.”

  “You’re what?” And I thought I did some crazy things.

  I still wasn’t sure if she was kidding me about her plans for the night when we hung up, and I went back to the room.

  After packing, I checked the schedule to see when our first games in Redland Field would be. Then I looked at the date of the game when I’d met Rufus Yates outside the park: July 10. Something seemed wrong with that. I flipped the calendar back to June. According to the report Detective Forsch showed me, Yates had begun a thirty-day sentence on the twentieth of that month. Thirty days. So how did he get out after only twenty?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Thanks for letting him stay,” I said to Margie.

  She handed me a stack of plates and bowls to set on the dining table. “It will be fun to have a houseguest.”

  Margie had to be the most optimistic person on earth to think that it could possibly be “fun” to have Karl Landfors around.

  Karl and I had arrived in Cincinnati only a couple hours earlier, and I was already irritated with him. After the long train ride from Boston, we both badly needed a bath. Out of hospitality, I let him go first, and he remained in the tub for so long that I was going to have to wait until after dinner to wash off the soot and dirt from the train.

  The table was set, Margie’s latest batch of burgoo was ready, and the drinks were poured by the time Karl came back downstairs wearing a clean change of clothes. The degree of cleanliness was the only variable in his wardrobe, which consisted entirely of black suits, white shirts, and black ties.

  “Smells wonderful,” Karl said as he sat down. He tilted up his long nose and sniffed in about half the room’s air supply. “What is it?”

  “Burgoo,” Margie answered. “Something like mulligan stew.”

  “Except you probably never had mulligan stew with squirrel in it,” I said.

  Karl dropped the napkin he’d been primly folding. “Squirrel?”

  “Or worse. You never know what critters might end up in the pot.” I asked Margie, “You didn’t put in any of that wildebeest you dug up, did you?”

  She smiled. “Just the eyeballs for flavor.”

  Karl approached his first few bites skeptically, but then appeared to enjoy the food. Throughout the meal, I said little, letting Margie and Karl catch up. She told him about her job at the zoo; he talked about the Sacco and Vanzetti trial and the Defense Committee’s planned appeal.

  After dinner, we went into the parlor for coffee and peach pie. Margie and I took the sofa while Karl sat stiffly on the edge of an armchair. We’d barely sat down when Margie popped back up. “Oh!” she said. “I have something to show you.” She went over to the sideboard and came back with a small stack of newspapers. “You made the headlines.”

  Uh, oh. I’d made headlines before, and they rarely involved good news.

  “No, you’ll like it,” she said, apparently noticing my expression. “It’s about that hidden ball trick you pulled.”

  I certainly did like it when I saw the two-column headline:

  Rawlings Outwits Giants

  McGraw Howls Over Game-Winning Play

  Not only was it great to see my name in print like that, it was especially nice to see it given top billing over John McGraw’s. The article accompanying the headline referred to me as “the crafty veteran.” I liked “crafty,” but seeing myself called a “veteran” was probably like the first time a woman hears herself addressed as “ma’am.” On the whole, I was thrilled with the coverage, though, and I glanced around the parlor to see where best to display that game ball.

  “The other stories are in there, too,” Margie said. “About the Dick Hurley shooting.”

  “Shooting?” Karl asked. In Boston, I’d only mentioned my problem with Judge Landis and Rufus Yates. I hadn’t yet told him about the death of Oliver Perriman or the attempt to kill Hurley.

  While he nibbled his dessert, I filled him in on Dick Hurley’s disappearance in the midst of the 1869 season, the arrival in Cincinnati of a man who claimed to be Hurley a couple of weeks ago, and on the contents of the note I’d found in the old baseball. As I talked, I skimmed over the newspaper articles about the shooting. They reported that while Hurley was recovering in Old City Hospital, Mrs. Charlotte Ashby had been charged with attempted murder and was being held in Central Station. She was refusing to make a statement to police, and the motive for her action remained a mystery.

  “So your theory,” Karl said in a dubious tone, “is that the shooting was to get revenge for something Hurley did fifty-two years ago?”

  “Not necessarily ‘revenge,’ ” I said, “but at first I did think it might be related to what happened to Sarah—especially if she and Hurley had eloped. Now I have no idea why he was shot. I talked with George Wright in Boston, and he told me Hurley was kicked off the team for drunkenness. So there probably never was any elopement.” I took a sip of coffee. “And as for this fellow who was shot, I suspect he’s a fraud anyway. Maybe Charlotte Ashby knows his true identity, and wanted to kill him for some reason that has nothing to do with the real Dick Hurley.”

  Margie said, “Maybe you should tell that to the police—about him being an impostor.”

  “I don’t know for a fact that he is, it’s just the sense I have from the way he talked. A lot of what he said didn’t ring true.” I dug a fork into the pie. “Sure would’ve helped if Lloyd Tinsley had checked him out first, but all Tinsley wants him for is publicity.”

  “Tinsley is the business manager,” Karl said. I’d pointed out most of the team, including Tinsley, Pat Moran, and the coaches, to him in the club car during the trip from Boston.

  I nodded. “He also has a stake in the exhibit Ollie Perriman was setting up—a hundred percent stake now that Perriman’s dead.” I gave him a brief rundown on Perriman’s death, and on the break-ins at Redland Field and our home. “I thought maybe that could be a motive for Tinsley to want Perriman dead—to get the exhibit. Bu
t now I’m pretty sure he had nothing to do with it.”

  “What makes you sure?” Karl asked.

  “Pretty sure. I’m not certain about anything in all this.” I paused to organize my thoughts before continuing. “I figure Perriman was killed for one of two reasons: either somebody wanted him dead, and the break-in was to cover up the motive for the murder, or somebody wanted to steal something from the collection and killed Perriman while trying to get it. If Lloyd Tinsley wanted something from the collection, he could have taken it anytime; no need to kill Perriman. And the only reason I could think of for Tinsley wanting him murdered is to inherit the collection—but that doesn’t make sense because he’d do better to wait until Perriman finished organizing it.”

  “Is there anyone else who would have motive to murder Perriman?” Karl asked. “Or do you believe he was simply killed in the course of a robbery.”

  Margie looked over at me, then said, “Well, his wife might have been having an affair with one of the players.”

  “Curt Stram,” I said. “There was something between him and Katie Perriman, and whatever it was turned sour.” I told them of my talk with Stram, and about him saying that he’d done her a favor, and now she was mad at him. “Could be one of them wanted Perriman out of the way.”

  Karl was rubbing his nose and blinking rapidly as he tried to absorb everything.

  I pushed away my empty plate. “I think Rufus Yates is the key in all this.”

  “The gambler you were photographed with,” Karl said. He appeared relieved at the mention of somebody he’d already heard about.

  “Yes. He was definitely involved in trying to get the Reds to throw games during the 1919 World Series—I talked to one of the players he tried to bribe. And Yates is only part of it. There’s also whoever it was who took the photo and sent it to Garry Herrmann. For a while I thought it could be Tinsley, because Yates once played for a team he ran in the minors. I figured maybe it went something like this: Tinsley and Yates were partners in trying to get the Reds to throw the Series, Ollie Perriman came across evidence of it among the stuff he gathered for his collection, and so Tinsley had Yates kill him.” I shook my head. “But that doesn’t work. Yates was in jail when Perriman was killed, and, according to a local bookie, Tinsley bet on the Reds, not against them.”

  Karl looked puzzled. “Isn’t any kind of betting in baseball enough to get you kicked out?”

  “Not back then it wasn’t. Lots of managers and players bet on the games. As long as you bet on your own team to win, it was always okay.”

  “So where do you go from here?” Karl asked.

  That was the question. “I’m not sure. There is something new that’s come up about Yates: he was supposed to be serving a month in jail—thirty days or thirty dollars—but he got out more than a week early. And I’ve been wondering: how did he come up with the money after twenty days in jail? If he had enough to pay the fine when he was sentenced, why not pay it right away and avoid serving time? And if he didn’t have it, where did it come from? Maybe somebody paid the fine for him. And maybe knowing who put up the money will tell me who his partner is.” I leaned back in the sofa, my head tilted against the cushion. I felt tired and grimy and didn’t want to talk or think about it anymore. “Thing is, I don’t know where to start.”

  Apparently the grime hadn’t escaped Margie’s notice. “Maybe with a bath,” she suggested.

  We all retired early. Karl Landfors was settled in the guest room, and Margie and I were in bed.

  “Do I smell better now?” I asked her.

  “You weren’t bad before. I just thought a hot bath would do you good.” Margie began to massage the back of my neck. “Besides, it gave Karl and me a chance to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Among other things, we decided to help you.” Her fingers dug deeper.

  “Mmmm. That feels good. Help me how?”

  “Karl’s going to look into how Rufus Yates got released early. And I’m going to talk to Katie Perriman; maybe I can find out what the ‘favor’ was that Curt Stram did for her.”

  “Thanks, but I—”

  Her fingers left my neck, and she curled up close to me. “Something else probably do you good, too.”

  “Uh, Karl’s right across the hall.” His proximity put a damper on my enthusiasm for the way Margie and I traditionally celebrated my return from a road trip.

  “So? The door’s closed—it’s not like he’s going to see us.”

  “I know, but ... he’ll hear.” With Margie and me, there was little chance of it being a quiet celebration.

  Her hands flew up under my arms and she tickled me until I was choking back the laughs and bouncing to free myself from her. “Stop,” I said. “He’s gonna think we’re ...”

  She halted the tickling. “Well, if he thinks that’s what we’re doing anyway, then we might as well.”

  Margie always did make such good sense.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I approached Redland Field with fresh enthusiasm Monday afternoon. This was the first time I’d be playing in the park since my encounter with Rufus Yates had landed me on the “injured” list. I was eager to see how the fans would greet me. They were usually generous with applause when a player returned from an injury. And maybe they’d pour on a little extra because of my hidden-ball play in New York.

  Even the weather was encouraging. The heat wave had broken while we were on the road, and the temperature was now in the mid-seventies. The sky was clear and the breeze mild. A perfect day for playing baseball.

  My high spirits took a dip when I hit Findlay Street and spotted the face from the photograph. It was fixed in my memory, and I had no doubt this was the same newsboy who’d appeared in the picture with Yates and me. He had a batch of papers under one arm and a single issue held up in a hand smudged with black ink. The boy’s ragged corduroy knickers appeared to be a size too large for him, and the only other garment he was wearing—a yellowed undershirt—was at least a size too small.

  Along with a dozen or so other newsies, he was yelling, “Paper! Getcha paper!” Each boy tried to shout louder than the others. He spotted me as I neared, and tried to hand me a copy of the Times-Star. “Paper, mister?” There was no indication that he recognized me.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked.

  “Nope. Should I?”

  I took the newspaper from him and dug into my pocket. The prospect of a sale brought a little brightness to his eyes. “About three weeks ago,” I said, “I met a man just about where we’re standing now. Somebody took a picture of us—and you’re in the picture holding up a paper.”

  “Yeah ... So?” He eyed my pocket, waiting for his money.

  “You didn’t try to sell us the paper. Looked like somebody only wanted you to hold it up next to us.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” the kid said. “The guy”—he pushed one of his ears forward to give the impression of Rufus Yates—“said it was a joke on you. Gave me a buck to do it.”

  I thanked the boy and handed him twice that amount.

  There wasn’t much applause when I stepped into the batter’s box for the first time, but I didn’t take it personally. By the bottom of the third, it was already clear that this wasn’t going to be the kind of game where there would be a lot to cheer about. Nor was there anything to jeer. The game had simply settled into a leisurely, lackluster battle between two equally mediocre ball clubs: the sixth-place Cubs and the seventh-place Reds.

  The pitching matchup was nothing to get excited about, either. Chicago’s Lefty Tyler and our Hod Eller were among the league’s least effective hurlers. This was August 1, and the men were tied in victories with two each—an average of half a win a month.

  As the game progressed, there were few strikeouts, plenty of routine grounders and fly balls, and no spectacular catches or extra-base hits. By the seventh inning, with the score tied at 3–3, it had the feel of one of those sandlot marathons that kids play—where they g
o on for twenty or thirty innings, with the fun of playing more important than the final outcome. It was the kind of game that didn’t provide much entertainment for spectators, but was an easy one to play in, and I was starting to wish it would continue into extra innings.

  I also wished that Margie and Karl Landfors could have been there. But she was at the zoo, and he was trying to find out how Rufus Yates had gotten out of jail early. I’d been starting to suspect that Karl hadn’t come to Cincinnati merely to take a rest from the Sacco and Vanzetti case, as he’d told me before we left Boston. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if Margie had contacted him earlier and asked him to come and help me. But I wasn’t going to ask either of them about it. I was just glad he was here.

  My hope for extra innings was denied when the Cubs put together three bloop singles in the top of the ninth and the resulting run held up to give Johnny Evers’s ball club a 4–3 win.

  I left the park feeling as fresh as when I’d arrived. I’d played the full nine innings at third, but hadn’t been pressed either physically or mentally. I’d made no errors and, in keeping with the routine nature of the game, had gone my traditional 1-for-4 at the plate.

  There was still a trickle of late-departing fans heading down Dalton as I started for home. I’d crossed Sherman Avenue when a Liberty Street trolley pulled up a block ahead and began to take on passengers. I picked up my pace, hoping to catch it, when a big fellow came up behind my left shoulder and jostled me. “Excuse me,” I said, trying to step a little faster. He came up again, nudging me harder and throwing me off stride. I turned. “What are you—?”

  He said nothing, and his broad face was expressionless as he gave me another push. The man kept bumping me like a cowboy using his horse to nudge a stray calf back into the herd.

  One more shove propelled me into a narrow alley between a run-down apartment building and a secondhand furniture store. Standing about twenty feet inside the alley entrance was Rufus Yates. I’d just recognized him when I was slammed from behind and sent stumbling forward, my boater falling off in the process. By the time I regained my balance, I was face-to-face with Yates.