The Cincinnati Red Stalkings

by Troy Soos

  “Yes?”

  “Couple of private investigators came by about a week ago. They were looking for information on Rufus Yates. Of course, we don’t share our files with just anybody, so I wanted to know who they were working for.” He pulled another Murad from the pack, letting me stew in suspense. “They were sent here by the baseball commissioner. Seems they were checking if some ballplayer was in cahoots with Yates. Wouldn’t give the name of the player.” He lit up. “But it occurs to me that if Landis thinks a ballplayer is hooked up with a gambler, and when he starts an investigation the gambler ends up dead ... well, that might seem awfully convenient for the player, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it might at that,” I said.

  The interview over, I left City Hall, but didn’t go home. I stopped at a Central Avenue lunch counter for coffee and time to think. I wanted to go over everything Forsch had said about Yates while it was still fresh in my mind.

  I had no worry about the police seriously thinking I’d killed him. And although I briefly considered that Yates’s pal Knucksie might come after me to avenge his death, I quickly dismissed that too; from what I’d seen, it was clear that the two of them didn’t exactly have a close friendship. What did worry me was what Judge Landis might imagine. But I didn’t know what I could do about that.

  Then I tried to think how I could make use of the new information. It seemed obvious that somebody had paid off Yates’s fine and hired him to break into my place.

  Rufus Yates goes to jail on June 20 to serve thirty days; he’s still there on June 28 when Ollie Perriman is found dead, gets released on June 30, has my address on a betting slip dated July 1, and breaks into my home on the night of July 2. And what’s he looking for? That old baseball. Not the ball, but the message inside. A note about a murder in 1869, inside a baseball that Ambrose Whitaker bought in 1872, but wasn’t—

  Damn, you’re an idiot, Mickey.

  Under the nervous gaze of Mr. Driscoll, the librarian at the men’s circulation desk, I searched through old copies of the Cincinnati Enquirer for any item related to the auction. According to Ambrose Whitaker, it was held in April of 1872. I hoped his memory was right—if it was a different month or a different year, I could be here a long time.

  His memory was accurate. The Sunday morning paper for April 14, 1872, carried the sad news:

  DEPARTED GLORY

  Sale of the Red Stocking Traps and Trophies

  In the glorious April sunlight of yesterday afternoon a little knot of men gathered at the old Union Grounds to witness the disposal at auction of the “traps and trophies” of the Cincinnati Base Ball Club, whose sobriquet “Red Stocking”—the synonym of victory—was once on every tongue. A red flag fluttered drearily from “The Grand Duchess, ” where the never-lowered streamer “Cincinnati” was wont to proudly flaunt the breeze ...

  The article went on to report that the lumber of the half-dismantled ballpark had already been sold. It also listed the items that were auctioned: trophy balls, medals, streamers, and a set of goblets. The baseballs went for bids of one to ten dollars, most selling for three.

  I stared at the ancient paper, and I reread the article several times, a number of thoughts running through my head. Part of what I felt was a sense of loss that much of the charm of that era was gone—from the polite rituals that surrounded the matches, to a grandstand called “The Grand Duchess,” to the flowery style of writing. And it was sad that only two years after the Red Stockings had been the peerless club in the baseball world, their fortunes had plummeted to such depths. It also occurred to me that in the same month the auction was being held, the real Dick Hurley was playing for the Washington Olympics, and a young John Cogan was on the bench hoping for a chance to take the mound.

  Mostly what I thought about, though, was that there was no way Ambrose Whitaker could have bought a baseball at an auction held in 1872 when Spalding didn’t manufacture the ball until 1876.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I played all nine innings Thursday afternoon and didn’t remember one of them. The fact that I was allowed on the field at all was the only positive aspect to the entire day; it meant that I wasn’t on Judge Landis’s blacklist—yet.

  My thoughts were occupied by the death of Rufus Yates and on what could follow from that development. I tried to convince myself that his murder might have nothing to do with me—he was, after all, in a line of work with a high mortality rate and might have simply been killed in a dispute with another hood. But I had the sense that his death was more likely related to the scheme to set me up. Yates was supposed to convince me to stop poking around, and I’d left evidence on his face that he’d failed. Maybe his partner in the scheme wasn’t confident that Yates could keep me from digging further and decided to kill him to keep his own identity a secret. Whatever the reason Rufus Yates had been killed, Detective Forsch was right: from Judge Landis’s perspective it might look awfully convenient for me that he died before investigators could question him.

  When I got home after the game, Margie and Karl were both out. I put in a call to Forsch to see if there was any progress on the Yates shooting. He told me there were no suspects, but the assumption was that the gambler knew his killer and had let him in his apartment. Yates had been shot twice in the chest while sitting in an easy chair. There was no sign of a forced entry, and enough cash was in the room to eliminate theft as a motive.

  After getting off the phone with the detective, I thought some more. Lately, much of Yates’s activity had been related to me: the break-in at my house, arranging the photograph outside Redland Field, the encounter in the alley. According to both Forsch and the colored bookie Spider Jenkins, Yates was never more than a hired hand. He must have had his fine paid by somebody who wanted him out of jail to do a job. Since his first task after getting out of jail was breaking into my home, I figured that stealing the note about Sarah was what he’d been hired to do.

  I went over to the bookcase, pulled out Life on the Mississippi, and removed the piece of onionskin I’d tucked between its pages. I reread the words:

  On July 2, 1869, a girl named Sarah was murdered.

  She was from Corryville and about sixteen years of age.

  She is buried in Eden Park.

  I began to wonder if perhaps I’d been looking at the message the wrong way.

  Karl Landfors came in, lugging a bundle of groceries. I helped carry them into the kitchen, and noticed with dismay that they consisted mostly of Moxie. Karl was the only person I knew who liked the soft drink. He brought a bottle of it into the parlor and I grabbed a ginger ale.

  “Take a look at this,” I said, handing him the note.

  Karl gave it a quick glance. “You’ve shown it to me before.”

  “Read it again. There’s no mention of who killed Sarah.”

  He pushed up his glasses and reread the message. “So?”

  “Maybe it’s not an accusation. Maybe it’s a confession.”

  “By whom?”

  “Ambrose Whitaker. He lied about where and when he got the ball, so he is covering something up. And let’s go back to 1869: he’d been at the Red Stockings’ homecoming banquet, and he was about the age of a player. Maybe he decided to impress a girl by claiming to be on the team.”

  “If he was going to impersonate someone, why not one of the stars?”

  “Too likely to be recognized. A substitute wouldn’t be.” As John Cogan had said about his recent impersonation of Dick Hurley: It’s not like I was pretending to be Harry Wright.

  “But if Whitaker wrote the note, why steal it back? Even if he changed his mind about having written it, he’d know that his name isn’t mentioned—there’s nothing to implicate him.”

  “Maybe he thought it could be traced back to him because he was the one who donated the ball.”

  “I don’t know,” Karl said. “Pretty halfhearted confession, if you ask me.” He frowned. “And why put it in a baseball? Good chance nobody would ever find it.”r />
  “Maybe in his mind it didn’t ever have to be found. It could have just been something he had to say.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I hesitated. I’d known Karl for years, but never found it easy to speak with him about personal matters. “I’ve told you about my aunt and uncle that I grew up with.” He nodded. “Well, my uncle didn’t talk a whole lot except with customers at his general store, and only if the conversation was about baseball or politics. Never said much around the house. So after my aunt died, I was real surprised to find him writing a letter to her. I asked him about it, and he said he was telling her things he wished he’d said to her while she was alive. And it wasn’t the first one he wrote. He’d been writing a letter a week, and even put them in the mail, with just her first name on the envelope. He must have known they’d all end up in the dead letter bag at the post office, but he got out something he felt he had to say.”

  “Like putting a note in a bottle,” said Karl.

  “Right. Maybe Ambrose Whitaker did something similar, except he changed his mind and—” Another idea struck me that made more sense. “Or maybe he wasn’t the one who wanted it back. What if it was somebody who didn’t know there was nothing incriminating in the message?”

  “Such as?”

  “One of his kids, Aaron or Adela.” Maybe one of them wanted it back either to protect their father or to protect the family’s name—and business.

  Adela had seemed a sharp businesswoman, the type who’d want to protect her interests. Aaron I knew almost nothing about, except that he apparently had no involvement with the family business. What was he involved with? And was it something that might bring him into contact with someone like Rufus Yates?

  I told Karl what I knew about the Whitaker family and asked him to check into them further.

  He looked like a hound dog about to hit the trail. Nothing a muckraking Socialist likes better than the prospect of digging up dirt on a “robber baron.”

  Friday night, well after dinner time, Karl Landfors came home with his tail between his legs.

  “No luck?” I asked.

  “I spent all day looking into the Whitaker family, and nothing. ” He tossed his derby on one end of the sofa and plopped down on the other.

  “What do you mean ‘nothing’—there’s got to be some information on them.”

  He looked around. “Where’s Margie?”

  “Called a little while ago. She’s staying late at the zoo.” I moved to get up from my chair. “Got sandwiches if you’re hungry.”

  Karl waved me back down. “The Whitakers are the kind of business people who give capitalism a good name,” he said with disgust. “Kills my appetite.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said in mock sympathy.

  “They pay decent wages,” Karl went on, “their facilities have the most modern safety features, they don’t employ children ... I just can’t find anything on them.”

  “That’s now,” I said. “What about in the past? Nothing shady?”

  “Nothing!” Karl spat the word. “Ambrose Whitaker worked hard as a young man, built the streetcar company that made him wealthy, and kept working hard to make it grow. Nothing illegal—well, maybe a little. To do anything in this town you had to grease the Boss Cox political machine, but he only made the minimum payoffs necessary to get things done. Never established real political ties. He had a good reputation—treated his workers fair, and supported several charities. A couple of years ago, he turned the business over to his daughter Adela and son Aaron. His health was deteriorating, and he wanted to pass it on.”

  “What was wrong with him?”

  Karl shook his head. “Don’t know. ‘Poor health’ is all that I’ve read about it; never saw any mention of a specific ailment. Anyway, brother and sister were supposed to share the business, but Adela is the one in control. She’s modernizing and branching out into new areas. She recently made a substantial investment in a company called Formica out near Chester Park.”

  “And her brother?”

  “Let’s just say that for the family to remain prosperous, it’s probably best that he leave his sister to run things.”

  I thought for a few moments. “What about their personal lives?”

  “Mrs. Whitaker—Ambrose’s wife—died about fifteen years ago. Adela has never married, although she’s had the same suitor for the past five years; I think she prefers to be independent. Same as her father had, she has a reputation for honesty and fairness. She even pays their female workers the same as the men. Stubborn, though, from what I hear, and a hard negotiator.”

  “And Aaron?”

  “Well, because he stays out of the business, I couldn’t find out as much about him. He’s married, two children. No mistresses that I heard of. He likes to spend time with other men. Hunting, fishing ... he has a horse ranch outside Covington. I think he fancies himself a country gentleman.” He spread his hands. “That’s all I have.”

  “All right. Thanks, Karl.”

  “If only there was something scandalous in their past,” he said wistfully.

  I tried to console him that we might find something yet.

  Aaron Whitaker wasn’t what I’d expected. I thought he’d be rich, spoiled, and perhaps a bit dandified. That’s not what I found when I ventured across the river into Kentucky to visit him at his horse farm Saturday morning.

  He was outside the stable, working on the cinch of a finely crafted saddle that was resting on a fence rail. I hadn’t pictured him as the sort of man who worked with his hands, but his fingers were callused and his skin rough. Whitaker’s dungarees and red-and-black flannel shirt were well-worn. In both dress and build, he could have passed for a lumberjack. He was tall, muscular, with a weathered face and full orange beard.

  The farm, south of Covington and bordering the Licking River, wasn’t a showplace, either. It was of modest size, with a small ranch house, a decrepit red barn, and a stable that was in better repair than the other two structures. Across the dirt driveway from the stable was a pasture where several magnificent horses grazed on the high grass.

  “Are those racehorses?” I asked.

  “My horses are for riding, not racing,” Aaron answered. “Give me the awl, would you?”

  I handed him the tool. His answer was a disappointment. I’d wondered how any of the Whitakers would have contact with someone like Rufus Yates. Aaron seemed the best bet; if he bred racehorses, he might have known Yates from the tracks—and hired him to steal back his father’s confession. “I hear there’s a big demand for them,” I said. The racetracks had been shut down during the war so the animals could be used by the army for hauling supply wagons. Now the racing business was booming again.

  “I get offers,” he said. “But there’s not enough money in the world to get me to sell my horses to the tracks. I’m not in the breeding business.”

  “How much are you involved in the family business?”

  “I’m not.” He looked up at me. “You said you met my father and sister. Didn’t they tell you I stay out of it?”

  I admitted they had.

  He jabbed the point of the awl into the leather. “I’m forty-four years old. I’ve never had a head for business, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever develop one. My sister does, and I’m grateful to her for it. She runs the company, I stay out of her way, and she keeps me on a salary that’s far more than I deserve.” He chuckled. “Hell, maybe I am worth it—if I got involved in the business, I’d be sure to lose more money than what she’s paying me.”

  Aaron Whitaker sounded comfortable with the arrangement.

  “Now,” he said. “You told me our family might be in some trouble. What is it?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. But I’ve been hearing that there was a scandal some time ago that might come out.”

  “Scandal? About what?”

  I’d been hoping he could tell me. “It involves your father.”

  He paused from his work and wiped his forehead with a
bandanna. “I don’t believe that’s possible. My father and I have had our differences over the years, but I’ve never heard anyone question his integrity. I can’t imagine he ever did anything wrong.”

  “If he did,” I said, “and if it becomes public, that would probably hurt the family business, wouldn’t it?” And if that happened, Aaron could lose his income.

  He answered calmly, “I don’t see how. Even if there was some kind of scandal in the past, that’s not going to stop people from riding the trolleys.”

  “You’re not worried about it?”

  “So far, it doesn’t sound to me like there’s anything to worry about. Don’t get me wrong—just because I’m not active in the company doesn’t mean I don’t care about it. Or about my father and sister. If you get any specific information that something might be wrong, let me know.” He gave me a hard look. “Because if there is real trouble facing our family, I’ll do whatever it takes to protect them.”

  By Sunday, there were signs in the newspapers that life was starting to return to normal. Reports on the aftermath of the Black Sox trial were dwindling; the major baseball stories were the home run hitting of Babe Ruth, who was on a pace to eclipse the record of fifty-four he had set last year, and the retirement of Cubs manager Johnny Evers. There was nothing in the papers about the Hurley shooting or the death of Rufus Yates; the crime news of note were the massacre of a family in Kentucky by a deranged blacksmith, the capture at the Sinton Hotel of New York bootleggers who were recorded on a Dictaphone trying to bribe Prohibition agents, and a melee that followed another cross burning by the Ku Klux Klan in Dayton. Political news was also routine; on the national level, there were arguments to make beer legal again in order to collect taxes on it, and in local affairs the city council was leaning toward building a canal parkway instead of a subway.