Triple Play: A Nathan Heller Casebook

by Collins, Max Allan

  Nonetheless, Bill Veeck was resigned to the fact that—no matter what his other accomplishments, whether noble or absurd—he would go down in baseball history as the guy who brought a midget into the majors.

  Back in June of ’61, when Veeck called the A-1 Detective Agency, saying he had a job for me, I figured it would have something to do with his recent resignation as president of the White Sox. A partner had bought out both Bill and his longtime associate, Hank Greenberg, and I wondered if it’d been a squeeze play.

  Maybe Bill needed some dirt dug up on somebody. Normally, at that stage of my career anyway, I would have left such a shabby task to one of the agency’s many operatives, rather than its president and founder—both of which were me.

  I had known Veeck for something like fifteen years, however, and had done many an odd job for him. And besides, my policy was when a celebrity asked for Nate Heller, the celebrity got Nate Heller.

  And Bill Veeck was, if nothing else, a celebrity.

  The afternoon was sunny with a breeze, but blue skies were banished in the shadow of the El, where Miller’s nestled, an undistinguished Greek-run American-style restaurant that Veeck had adopted as his favorite Loop hangout, for reasons known only to him. Any time Veeck moved into a new office, his first act was to remove the door—another of his trademarks—and Miller’s honored their famous patron by making one of Veeck’s discarded doors their own inner front one, with an explanatory plaque, and the inevitable quote: “My door is always open—Bill Veeck.”

  At a little after three p.m., Miller’s was hardly hopping, its dark front windows adding to the under-the-El gloom. Bill was seated in his usual corner booth, his wooden leg extended into the aisle. I threaded through the empty Formica tables and, after a handshake and hello, slid in opposite him.

  “Well, you look like hell,” I told him.

  He exploded with laughter, almost losing his corner-of-the-mouth cigarette. “At last an honest man. Everybody else tells me I look in the pink—I’m getting the same kind of good reviews as a well-embalmed corpse.”

  Actually, a well-embalmed corpse looked better than Veeck: his oblong face was a pallid repository for pouchy eyes, a long lumpy nose, and that wide, full-lipped mouth, which at the moment seemed disturbingly slack. His skin—as leathery and well-grooved as a catcher’s mitt—hung loose on him, and was startlingly white. I had never seen him without a tan. Though I was ten years older, Veeck in his midforties looked sixty. A hard sixty.

  “It’s a little late to be looking for dirt on Allyn, isn’t it?” I asked him, after a waitress brought Veeck a fresh bottle of Blatz and a first one for me.

  Arthur Allyn had bought the White Sox and was the new president.

  “This isn’t about that,” Veeck said gruffly, waving it off. “Art’s a pal. This sale clears the way for Hank to relocate in LA. When I get feeling better, Hank’ll take me in as a full partner.”

  “Then what is this about, Bill?”

  “Maybe I just want to hoist one with you, in honor of an old friend.”

  “Oh…. Eddie Gaedel. I guess I should have known.”

  We clinked beer bottles.

  I had seen Eddie’s obit in yesterday’s paper—and the little story the Trib ran in sports. Eddie had died of natural causes, the coroner had said, and bruises on his body were “probably suffered in a fall.”

  “I want you to look into it,” Veeck said.

  “Into what?”

  “Eddie’s death.”

  “Why? If it was natural causes.”

  “Eddie’s mother says it was murder.”

  I sipped my beer, shook my head. “Well, those ‘bruises’ could have come from a beating he got, and deserved—Eddie always was a mouthy little bastard. A week after that game in St. Louis, ten years ago, he got arrested in Cincinnati for assaulting a cop, for Christ’s sake.”

  Veeck swirled his beer and looked down into it with bleary eyes—in all the years I’d known this hard-drinking SOB, I’d never once seen him with bloodshot eyes…before.

  “His mother says it’s murder,” Veeck repeated. “Run over to the South Side and talk to her—if what she says gets your nose twitchin’, look into it…. If it’s just a grieving mother with some crazy idea about how her ‘baby’ died, then screw it.”

  “Okay. Why is this your business, Bill?”

  “When you spend six months bouncing back and forth between your apartment and the Mayo Clinic, you get to thinking…putting your affairs in order. Grisly expression, but there it is.”

  “What is it? The leg again?”

  “What’s left of it. The latest slice took my knee away, finally. That makes seven operations. Lucky seven.”

  “Semper fi, mac,” I said, and we clinked bottles again.

  We’d both been marines in the South Pacific, where I got malaria and combat fatigue, and he had his leg run over by an antitank gun on the kickback. Both of us had spent more time in hospitals than combat.

  “My tour was short and undistinguished,” he said. “At least you got the Bronze Star.”

  “And a Section Eight.”

  “So I lost half a leg, and you lost half your marbles. We both got a better deal than a lot of guys.”

  “And you want me to see what kind of deal Eddie Gaedel got?”

  “Yeah. Seems like the least I could do. You know, I saw him, not that long ago. He did a lot of stunts for me, over the years. Last year I dressed him up as a Martian and ran him around the park. Opening day this year, I had midget vendors working the grandstand, giving out cocktail wieners in little buns, and shorty beers.”

  “And Eddie was one of the vendors.”

  “Yeah. Paid him a hundred bucks—same as that day back in ’51.”

  That day when Eddie Gaedel—3’ 7”, sixty-five pounds—stepped up to the plate for the St. Louis Browns, batting for Frank Saucier.

  “Funny thing is,” Veeck said, lighting up a fresh cigarette, “how many times I threatened to kill that little bastard myself. I told him, I’ve got a man up in the stands with a high-powered rifle, and if you take a swing at any pitch, he’ll fire.”

  “You got the mother’s address?”

  “Yeah…yeah, I got it right here.” He took a slip of paper out of his sport shirt pocket but didn’t hand it to me. “Only she’s not there right now.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Visitation at the funeral home. Service is tomorrow morning.”

  “Why don’t I wait, then, and not bother her…”

  The gravel voice took on an edge. “’Cause I’d like you to represent me. Pay her and Eddie your respects…plus, your detective’s nose might sniff something.”

  “What, formaldehyde?”

  But I took the slip of paper, which had the funeral home address as well as Mrs. Gaedel’s.

  He was saying, “Do you know the New York Times put Eddie’s obit on the front page? The front goddamn page…. And that’s the thing, Nate, that’s it right there: my name is in Eddie’s obit, big as baseball. And you know what? You know damn well, time comes, Eddie’ll be in mine.”

  I just nodded; it was true.

  The pouchy eyes tightened—bloodshot maybe, but bright and hard and shiny. “If somebody killed that little bastard, Nate, find out who, and why, and goddamnit, do something about it.”

  I squinted through the floating cigarette smoke. “Like go to the cops?”

  Veeck shrugged; his wrinkled puss wrinkled some more. “You’re the one pitching. Hurl it any damn way you want to.”

  2

  Of course this had all begun about ten years before—in the summer of ’51—when Veeck called me and asked if I knew any midgets who were “kinda athletic and game for anything.”

  “Why don’t you call Marty Craine,” I said, into the phone, leaning back in my office chair, “or some other booking agent.”

  “Marty’s come up blank,” Veeck’s voice said through the long-distance crackle. “Can’t you check with some of those lo
wlife pals of yours at the South State bump-and-grind houses? They take shows out to the carnivals, don’t they?”

  “You want an athletic midget,” I said, “I’ll find you an athletic midget.”

  So I had made a few calls, and wound up accompanying Eddie Gaedel on the train to Cleveland, for some as yet unexplained Bill Veeck stunt. Eddie was in his midtwenties but had that aged, sad-eyed look common to his kind; he was pleasant enough, an outgoing character who wore loud sport shirts and actually reminded me of a pint-size Veeck.

  “You don’t know what the hell this is about?” he kept asking me in his high-pitched squawk, an oversize cigar rolling from one corner to the other of his undersize mouth.

  “No,” I said. We had a private compartment and Gaedel’s incessant cigar smoking provided a constant blue haze. “I just know Bill wants this kept mum—I wasn’t to tell anybody but you, Eddie, that we’re going to Cleveland to do a job for the Browns.”

  “You follow baseball, Nate?”

  “I’m a boxing fan myself.”

  “I hope I don’t have to know nothing about baseball.”

  “Veeck didn’t say you had to know baseball—just you had to be athletic.”

  Gaedel was a theatrical midget who had worked in various acrobatic acts.

  “Ask the dames,” Gaedel said, chortling around the pool-cue Havana, “if Eddie Gaedel ain’t athletic.”

  That was my first clue to Eddie’s true personality, or anyway the Eddie that came out after a few drinks. In the lounge car, after he threw back one, then another Scotch on the rocks like a kid on a hot day downing nickel Cokes, I suddenly had a horny Charlie McCarthy on my hands.

  I was getting myself a fresh drink, noticing out the corner of an eye as Eddie sidled up to a pair of attractive young women—a blonde and brunette traveling together, probably college students, sweaters and slacks—and set his drink on their little silver deco table. He looked first at the blonde, then at the brunette, as if picking out just the right goodie in a candy-store display case.

  Then he put his hand on the blonde’s thigh and leered up at her.

  “My pal and me got a private compartment,” he said, gesturing with his cigar like an obscenely suggestive wand, “if you babes are up for a little four-way action.”

  The blonde let out a yelp, brushing off Eddie’s hand like a big bug. The brunette was frozen in Fay Wray astonishment.

  Eddie grabbed his crotch and grinned. “Hey doll, you don’t know what you’re missin’—I ain’t as short as you think.”

  Both women stood and backed away from the little man, pressing up against the windows, pretty hands up and clawed, their expressions about the same as if a tarantula had been crawling toward them.

  I got over there before anybody else could—several men stood petrified, apparently weighing the urge to play Saint George against looking like a bully taking on such a pint-size dragon.

  Grabbing him by the collar of his red shirt, I yanked the midget away from the horrified girls, saying, “Excuse us, ladies…. Jesus, Eddie, behave yourself.”

  And the little guy spun and swung a hard sharp fist up into my crotch. I fell to my knees and looked right into the contorted face of Eddie Gaedel, a demented elf laughing and laughing at the pitiful sight that was me.

  A white-jacketed conductor was making his alarmed way toward us when my pain subsided before Eddie’s knee-slapping laughter, giving me the window of opportunity to twist the little bastard’s arm behind him and drag him out of the lounge, through the dining car, getting lots of dirty looks from passengers along the way for this cruelty, and back to our compartment, tossing him inside like the nasty little rag doll he was.

  He picked himself up, a kind of reassembling action, and came windmilling at me, his high-pitched scream at once ridiculous and frightening.

  I clipped him with a hard right hand and he collapsed like a string-snipped puppet. Out cold on the compartment floor. Well, if you have to be attacked by an enraged horny drunken midget, better that he have a glass jaw.

  He slept through the night, and at breakfast in the dining car apologized, more or less.

  “I’m kind of an ugly drunk,” he admitted, buttering his toast.

  “For Christ’s sakes, Eddie, you only had two drinks.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to be friggin’ Einstein to figure with my body size, it don’t take much. Anyway, I won’t tell Mr. Veeck my bodyguard beat the crap out of me.”

  “Yeah. Probably best we both forget the little incident.”

  He frowned at me, toast crumbs flecking his lips. “‘Little’ incident? Is that a remark?”

  “Eat your poached eggs, Eddie.”

  In Veeck’s office, the midget sat in a wooden chair with his legs sticking straight out as the Hawaiian-shirted owner of the St. Louis Browns paced excitedly—though due to Bill’s wooden leg, it was more an excited shuffle. I watched from the sidelines, leaning against a file cabinet.

  Suddenly Veeck stopped right in front of the seated midget and thrust an Uncle Bill Wants You finger in his wrinkled little puss.

  “Eddie, how would like to be a big-league ballplayer?”

  “Me?” Eddie—wearing a yellow shirt not as bright as the sun—squinted up at him. “I been to maybe two games in my life! Plus, in case you ain’t noticed, I’m a goddamn midget!”

  “And you’d be the only goddamn midget in the history of the game.” Tiny eyes bright and big as they could be, Veeck held up two hands that seemed to caress an invisible beach ball. “Eddie, you’ll appear before thousands—your name’ll go in the record books for all time!”

  Eddie’s squint turned interested. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Eddie, my friend…you’ll be immortal.”

  “Immortal. Wow. Uh…what does it pay?”

  “A hundred bucks.”

  Eddie was nodding now—a hundred bucks was even better than immortality.

  “So what do you know about baseball?” Veeck asked him.

  “I know you’re supposed to hit the white ball with the bat. And then you run somewhere.”

  Veeck snatched a little toy bat from his desk; then he crouched over as far as his gimpy leg would allow, and assumed the stance.

  “The pitcher’s gotta throw that white ball in your strike zone, Eddie.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s the area between the batter’s armpits and the top of his knees…. Let’s see your strike zone.”

  Eddie scrambled off the chair and took the toy bat, assuming the position.

  “How’s that, Mr. Veeck?”

  “Crouch more. See, since you’re only gonna go to bat once in your career, whatever stance you assume at the plate, that’s your natural stance.”

  Eddie, clutching the tiny bat, crouched. His strike zone was maybe one and a half inches.

  Then he took an awkward, lunging swing.

  “No!” Veeck said. “Hell, no!”

  Eddie, still in his crouch, looked at Veeck curiously.

  Veeck put his arm around the little guy. “Eddie, you just stay in that crouch. You just stand there and take four balls. Then you’ll trot down to first base and we’ll send somebody in to run for you.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Veeck explained the concept of a walk to Eddie, whose face fell, his dreams of glory fading.

  “Eddie,” Veeck said pleasantly, “if you so much as look like you’re gonna swing, I’m gonna shoot you dead.”

  Eddie shrugged. “That sounds fair.”

  On a hot Sunday in August, a crowd of twenty thousand—the largest attendance the chronically losing Browns had managed in over four years—came out to see Bill Veeck’s latest wild stunt. The crowd, which was in a great, fun-loving mood, had no idea what that stunt would be; but as this doubleheader with the Tigers marked the fiftieth anniversary of the American League, the fans knew it would be something more than just the free birthday cake and ice cream being handed out.

  Or the opening
game itself, which the Browns, naturally, lost.

  The half-time show began to keep the implied Veeck promise of zaniness, with a parade of antique cars, two couples in Gay Nineties attire pedaling a bicycle-built-for-four around the bases, and a swing combo with Satchel Paige himself on drums inspiring jitterbugging in the aisles. A three-ring circus was assembled, with a balancing act at first base, trampoline artists at second, and a juggler at third.

  Throughout all this, I’d been babysitting Eddie Gaedel in Veeck’s office. Gaedel was wearing a Browns uniform that had been made up for Bill DeWitt, Jr., the nine-year-old son of the team’s former owner/current advisor. The number sewn onto the uniform was actually a fraction: 1/8; and kid’s outfit or not, the thing was tentlike on Eddie.

  We could hear the muffled roar of the huge crowd, and Eddie was nervous. “I don’t feel so good, Nate.”

  The little guy was attempting to tie the small pair of cleats Veeck had somehow rustled up for him.

  “You’ll do fine, Eddie.”

  “I can’t tie these friggin’ things! Shit!”

  So I knelt and tied the midget’s cleats. I was getting a hundred bucks for the day, too.

  “These bastards hurt my feet! I don’t think I can go on.”

  “There’s twenty thousand people in that park, but there’s one whose ass I know I can kick, Eddie, and that’s you. Get going.”

  Soon we were under the stands, moving down the ramp, toward the seven-foot birthday cake out of which Veeck planned to have Eddie jump. Big Bill Durney, Veeck’s traveling secretary, helped me lift the midget under the arms, so we could ease him onto the board inside the hollowed section of the cake.

  “What the hell am I?” Eddie howled, as he dangled between us. No one had told him about this aspect of his appearance. “A stripper?”

  “When you feel the cake set down,” I said, “jump out, and run around swingin’ and clowning. Then run to the dugout and wait your turn at bat.”

  “This is gonna cost that bastard Veeck extra! I’m an AGVA member, y’know!”

  And we set him down in there, handed him his bat, and covered him over with tissue paper, through which his obscenities wafted.