The Cincinnati Red Stalkings

by Troy Soos

  “And that’s it?” I asked.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “What about the big favor Stram said he did for her?”

  “From what I gather, Mr. Stram thinks awfully highly of himself: the ‘favor’ was that he had sex with her.”

  Landfors coughed on a mouthful of food. Even among radicals, “sex” wasn’t a word you often heard from a woman’s mouth.

  “But it sounded like something went wrong,” I said. “That she was mad at him about something.”

  “She is. He continued to contact her, and he didn’t take it well when she made it clear that their tryst at the Emery was a one-time mistake. Katie didn’t like the way he kept pressuring her to get together again, but I think there was something more that made her mad, too. She didn’t say what it was, though.”

  “Well, what do you think?” I asked her. “Could she and Stram have killed Ollie Perriman?”

  “Katie is devastated by her husband’s death. And she’s feeling terribly guilty about what she did with Curt Stram.” She shook her head. “I don’t think Katie Perriman had anything to do with it.”

  “What about Stram?”

  Margie shrugged as if to say, “Who knows?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Baseball got top billing over opera in the Wednesday morning Enquirer. The death of tenor Enrico Caruso had made the front page, but the newspaper’s main headline read:

  White Sox Players Go Free;

  Cheers Greet Jury Verdict

  Late last night on its first ballot, the jury had returned a verdict of “not guilty.” According to the paper, five hundred spectators had packed the courtroom awaiting the decision; when it was announced, they erupted in a “joyful din,” crying “Hooray for the clean sox!” and tossing hats and confetti into the air. Among those cheering the loudest were the bailiffs, who’d been given the go-ahead by Judge Hugo Friend to join the celebration. And the judge himself congratulated the defendants and told the jury that he agreed with their verdict. The acquitted players rushed to the jury box, thanking their “liberators” and shaking their hands; the jurors in turn hoisted Shoeless Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams on their shoulders.

  The other judge with an interest in the case, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, “could not be reached to give his views on the acquittal.” Nor could American League President Ban Johnson or White Sox owner Charles Comiskey.

  I read every word of the coverage, even studying the definitions of “statutory conspiracy” and “common-law conspiracy,” and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the result. But I certainly didn’t feel like cheering.

  When I started to go through one of the stories again, I noticed next to it a brief update about Charlotte Ashby. While the investigation into the “Hurley” shooting continued, she was being transferred from Central Station in the basement of City Hall to the more secure environs of the Cincinnati Work House.

  A small marker near the main gate noted the date that the Cincinnati Work House first opened. And I noted the coincidence: it was in 1869, the same year that the Red Stockings made baseball history and a girl name Sarah was allegedly murdered. The mammoth stone prison, in Camp Washington not far from Nathaniel Bonner’s Queen City Lumber Company, looked far older than a mere half century. It had the appearance of a relic from the Spanish Inquisition, a medieval castle that had gone to seed.

  At the entrance, I told a potbellied jailer that I’d come to see Mrs. Charlotte Ashby. He let me in and led me to a small office.

  “You can talk to the prisoner for fifteen minutes,” he droned, “in the presence of a guard. There’s no touching allowed, and you can’t give her anything or accept anything.” He opened a book like a hotel register. “I need to see some identification.”

  I took a folded paper from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. At the top of the document, in Gothic lettering, was Honorable Discharge from the Army of the United States. A small, black-and-white photograph glued to the paper showed me from the waist up, wearing a greatcoat. He looked at the photo, then up at me. “You look different out of uniform.”

  “Yeah, a lot of people tell me that.”

  But there was enough of a resemblance to satisfy him. He returned my discharge paper and filled out a line in the register, recording the date, time, my name, and the name of the prisoner I was visiting. Then he turned the book around and handed me a pen. “Sign here, Michael Rawlings.”

  “It’s Mickey,” I said quietly. The U. S. Army didn’t get my name quite right on any of my paperwork. Uncle Sam didn’t seem to like the idea of a soldier named “Mickey.”

  I was next searched for contraband and led by another turnkey through a dank stone corridor. The antiquated jail had the look and feel of a place where people were still put on the rack, and I found myself half-expecting to hear the screams of tortured prisoners.

  We arrived at a room like a small dining hall. There were a dozen benches and tables bolted to the floor. A solitary guard, with a shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm, sat atop a stool at the far end. Although there were only two other people in the room, a middle-aged male prisoner and a man who appeared to be his lawyer, the guard looked like he was expecting a full-scale riot—he also looked eager and willing to use his weapon to quell any such trouble.

  My escort pointed me to a table in the middle of the room, and said, “Wait there.” I sat, uneasy under the gaze of the armed guard, waiting for Charlotte Ashby.

  The jailer soon returned with a slim, handsome woman of proud bearing and advanced years. Her silver hair was neatly combed but fell long and limp about her head; she probably wasn’t permitted hairpins. She wore a plain, shapeless gray dress, and her shoes, without laces, clomped loosely on the floor. The closest thing to jewelry were the shackles on her hands. I removed my hat and stood when she came into the room. The jailer led her to the other side of the table from me, warned against any physical contact, then left us under the watch of the guard.

  Charlotte Ashby spoke first. “I am only here because it allows me to leave my cell for a little while. I don’t know who you are, I don’t care, and I have nothing to say to you.” There was no offense in her tone, just a simple statement of fact.

  “My name’s Mickey Rawlings, ma’am. I’m not a reporter, and I’m not with the police. I’m a baseball player—with the Reds.”

  Her shrug indicated that she still didn’t care.

  “The reason I came to see you,” I persevered, “is because I’d like to ask you about Sarah.”

  We stared at each other for more than a minute. She cracked first. “What about her?”

  “I understand she was murdered. On July 2, 1869.”

  Mrs. Ashby struggled to keep her composure, but failed. Her body trembled, her eyes became watery, and she began breathing in ragged gasps. “Do you know that for a fact?”

  “Not for certain, no. But I came across some information that that’s what happened.” When she calmed down a bit, I asked, “What do you know about Sarah?”

  In a faint voice, Mrs. Ashby answered, “I know she disappeared that night. And I suspected the worst.”

  “You and her were friends?”

  “Yes, almost like sisters. Sarah—Sarah Mary Devlin—was fifteen at the time, and I was a year younger. We grew up together—”

  “In Corryville?” The more Charlotte Ashby thought I already knew, the more she might be willing to tell me.

  She nodded.

  “What was her relationship with Dick Hurley?” I asked. “When you shot him, you said you were doing it for Sarah.”

  The old woman began folding and unfolding her thin hands, then rested them flat on the table one on top of the other. “Like a lot of girls, Sarah and I got caught up in the craze for the Red Stockings that summer. Even wore red stockings ourselves. Some of the older girls went further in showing how much they liked the players, but with Sarah and me it was innocent. She was a good girl, Sarah was.” Mrs. Ashby took a handkerchief
from her dress pocket and wiped away a tear. “The day the Red Stockings came back from their trip East, the whole city went on holiday to celebrate. Sarah and I followed the parade, we saw the game, and later that night we went to the Gibson House where there was a banquet for the club. Couldn’t get in ourselves—tickets were five dollars apiece—but we stayed outside with a small crowd of fans. It was fun just being near the team. Well, like I said, I was a year younger, and as the night grew late I started worrying that I was going to catch it from my parents for being out. Sarah kept telling me a little longer, a little longer—she wanted to see the players come out again. All she wanted was one more look at them. But come midnight, I went home by myself. She stayed.

  “Next morning, Sarah was banging on my bedroom window. I let her in my room, and she told me she met one of the players—”

  “Hurley?”

  “Sarah wouldn’t say. What she did say was that she and the player were going to meet again that night—just the two of them.”

  “July 2.”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “I tried to talk her out of it. I was always the less daring, I suppose, but actually meeting a ballplayer, alone, it just wasn’t to be considered.”

  “But she went.”

  “Sarah was so excited. There was no changing her mind.”

  “And she wouldn’t give his name?”

  “No, and I pressed her for it. All she’d say about him was that he might not be the best player on the team, but he was sure one of the handsomest. Anyway, I talked to her again that night before she went to meet him. She was dressed up in her finest frock and wearing red stockings of course. I tried again to talk her out of going, but she thought it was going to be a wonderful adventure.” Her voice faltered. “I never saw her again.”

  “I’ve looked in the newspapers from back then,” I said. “There wasn’t anything in them about her being missing.”

  “Her family wouldn’t report it. They thought she’d run off with a boy, and they were too ashamed to have that printed in the newspapers. I told them about the ballplayer, but they thought I was telling a tall tale. I kept trying to tell people—the police, the newspapers—but they wouldn’t believe me either. That’s why I won’t talk to the police now; they had their chance.”

  “You thought the player was Dick Hurley because he left the team at the same time?”

  “No,” she answered. “He was only the substitute—I didn’t think of him at all. What I did was try to narrow down the possibilities by figuring out which players it couldn’t have been. Sarah said he wasn’t one of their best, so I eliminated George Wright and Asa Brainard and a couple of the others. She said he was handsome, so Fred Waterman and Charlie Sweasy were out—I knew the type she liked. It wasn’t until sometime later that I saw a picture of all ten players. And there was Dick Hurley, with his dark wavy hair and mustache, handsome as all get-out. That’s when I realized why she hadn’t given me his name: because he wasn’t one of the first nine. She wanted it to seem like she got a bigger prize than the substitute.”

  The guard barked, “Two minutes!”

  Mrs. Ashby continued, “The years went by, and I never heard anything more about Hurley. But I never forgot Sarah. I knew she was either dead, or he’d done things to her that made her ashamed to come home. Then last month I read about him coming back to Cincinnati for this museum. And I knew what I had to do.”

  “You decided to shoot him.”

  “Nobody else did anything for Sarah, so it was up to me. I didn’t mind going to jail for it. I’ve outlived two husbands, lost one son to the Spanish and another to the Germans. There’s nobody who’ll miss me, and I don’t believe being in prison can be any worse than living alone in a house where you’ve once had a family.” She pulled herself straighter. “I only wish I’d killed him.”

  “Mrs. Ashby,” I said, “that wasn’t Dick Hurley you shot. Just an old man trying to get a little attention for himself by pretending to be one of the famous Red Stockings.” I didn’t like breaking my word to Cogan, but I didn’t want her taking another shot at him if she ever got the chance again.

  The jailer came by and started to lead Charlotte Ashby out of the room. She turned back to call, “What was the information you found about Sarah?”

  She was pulled away before I could answer. I thought maybe I should come back to tell her about the note. Maybe she’d want to know where her friend was buried.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was no longer without comment on the outcome of the Black Sox trial. His statement appeared in the next morning’s paper:

  “Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.”

  I thought the phrase “regardless of the verdict of juries” was an odd one for a judge to use, but it fit Landis’s autocratic reputation. As baseball commissioner, he wasn’t bound by the legal system, and could make any ruling he wanted to in the interests of the game. And, the more I thought about the case, the more I agreed with Landis—to a point.

  The crux of the matter for baseball was whether the White Sox players had attempted to lose the World Series. But since there was no law against throwing a sporting event, they couldn’t be prosecuted on that charge. In Judge Friend’s instruction to the jury, he told them that the state had to prove the players had intended “to defraud the public and others and not merely to throw ball games.” As one of the newspaper editorials noted, that was like saying they had to decide whether an accused killer had intended to murder his victim or merely cut his head off.

  So maybe baseball did have to operate under a different standard, and Landis’s decision to override the conclusion of the jurors was proper. The leaders of the game, both major league and minor, sure seemed to think so. The papers carried statements from the presidents of the Pacific Coast League and the American Association hailing Landis’s decision and vowing that the acquitted players would be barred from their leagues as well.

  What troubled me, however, was that Landis had simply declared all eight players guilty, even though there was overwhelming evidence that some were innocent. Judge Friend had stated that he would not have allowed a guilty verdict against Buck Weaver or Happy Felsh because the cases against them were so weak. Weaver had been approached about throwing a game, refused, and played to the best of his ability. But he was being blacklisted for “guilty knowledge.” And the jury never even had to decide on utility player Fred McMullin; the case against him had been so lacking that the prosecution dropped it. Yet he was also barred.

  Judge Landis was going to sweep the game clean, but I worried that he was using a broom too broad. And that I might be swept out, too.

  My worries deepened when Detective Forsch phoned and told me Rufus Yates had been found shot to death.

  This time I was tempted to accept the cigarette Forsch offered me. I waved it off, though, and he lit one up for himself. He then told the two uniformed officers who’d escorted me into the interview room that they could wait outside.

  “So where were you last night?” the detective began.

  “Home.”

  “All night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone with you?”

  “Yes. Margie Turner. She’s my, uh ...” Jeez, I wished they’d invent a word for it. “... we live together. And Karl Landfors, he’s a friend visiting us.”

  “Both of them might lie for you. Any other witnesses who can swear you were home?”

  “Yes. I always invite one complete stranger to spend the night in case I should ever need a witness like that.”

  Forsch blew out a stream of smoke. “Don’t be a wise-ass, Rawlings. I’m not looking to screw you. As far as I’m concerned this is a formality. But
we’re gonna run through some questions.”

  “All right. Sorry.” I did feel on safe ground. Not only could I prove where I’d been last night, I didn’t expect Forsch would be under much pressure to solve the murder. The death of a hood like Yates surely couldn’t be considered a great loss to the community.

  “It’s curious,” the detective went on. “First you were asking about him, then you had a run-in with him where he wanted to kill you ... And now he’s dead.”

  “Asking questions doesn’t mean I killed him.”

  “There’s more. Your address was found in his room.”

  “It was?”

  “Written on the back of a betting slip.”

  Back to the gambling. Was this going to get to Landis? “I don’t understand. Why would—” Maybe Yates was planning to come see me and do what Knucksie had refused to do.

  Forsch pulled a piece of yellow paper from his pocket. “You have any explanation for this?”

  I looked at it. The slip recorded a two-dollar wager on a horse named Celtic Treasure. Written in a childish scrawl above the betting particulars was my address. Then I noticed the date of the bet: July 1. “This is the day after Yates got out of jail,” I said. “And it’s two days before my house got broke into. He’s the one that did it.”

  Forsch shook his head. “He still had a couple weeks to go on his sentence.”

  “He paid the fine and got out early. I checked.” It was my turn to ask a question. “You sure he was in jail when Oliver Perriman got killed?”

  “Yes, that I do know. He’d been in there a week before, and he was still there the day after.”

  I was trying to make sense of this, but was getting nowhere. I wanted to go home. “Anything else?” I asked.

  Forsch toyed with the cigarette pack. “One thing more. It’s not a matter for this department, but you might be interested ...”