The Tomb That Ruth Built (A Mickey Rawlings Mystery)

by Troy Soos

  “Sounded outside to me,” I quipped, trying to hide my nervousness.

  “What are you, a comedian?” the umpire growled.

  “He sure as hell ain’t a ballplayer,” said Ruel. He tossed the ball back to Johnson and added, “That was just his changeup. The next one’s gonna be a fastball.”

  From that, I guessed curve and was right. Low and outside—judging by where Ruel caught the ball—for ball one.

  I correctly figured a fastball would come next and swung hard. It grazed the handle for a foul tip that went all the way to the backstop. At least I got a little wood on it.

  “Hey, how about that?” Ruel piped up. “The ball actually hit your bat. You gonna stick it out there again and hope Johnson puts it on the sweet spot?”

  “Keep talking and I’m gonna stick it in your ear,” I replied.

  “It’s your own ear you better worry about.”

  I shuffled back from the plate an inch or two. Ruel wanted me to think the next one would be coming in tight. Fine, I’ll play along. But I was sure he’d set up for a knee-high pitch on the outside corner.

  Johnson whipped his right arm around again and I lunged, trying to poke the ball into right field. It cued off the end of the barrel, sending a tremble through the wood. It wasn’t a solid hit, but thanks to Johnson’s speed I didn’t need to get much on it. The ball went out on a looping arc over the first baseman’s head.

  I ran hard out of the batter’s box while Sam Rice bolted in from right field, Joe Judge scurried backwards from first base, and Bucky Harris raced over from second. None of them had a chance as the ball dropped two feet inside the foul line. It had heavy spin on it from going off the end of the bat, and instead of taking a true bounce the ball squibbed into foul territory. A few strides from first base, my brain and feet together made a spontaneous decision to go for two. I touched the first base bag with the side of my foot and propelled myself toward second. Charley O’Leary, coaching first base, tried in vain to stop me. My legs suddenly felt eighteen again as I sprinted the final feet and did a hook slide under Peckinpaugh’s tag. Safe!

  As Peckinpaugh tossed the ball to Johnson on the mound, I popped up and dusted myself off. I was aware of three things: I had just hit a double off Walter Johnson, there were more people cheering me than I’d ever heard before, and Johnson had an expression on his face that indicated I wouldn’t be getting any more hits off him any time soon.

  Unfortunately, the last proved to be true in this game. I grounded out and popped out in my two remaining at bats, and Johnson beat us 4 - 3 to put the Yankees in the loss column for the first time this year. Still, I felt like my season had finally begun. I only wished that Margie had been there to see the game.

  After a shower and change, and a lot of good-natured kidding from my teammates about my hitting prowess, I stepped out the players’ entrance to find that she was there. And standing next to her was Karl Landfors.

  Chapter Five

  Post-game traffic outside the stadium was so snarled that the three of us elected to walk to our apartment. We made a few attempts at conversation along the way, but noisy crowds and the harsh, incessant rumble of automobiles made it difficult to sustain them.

  Once we were in the quiet of our parlor, Margie said to me, “I hope you don’t mind us showing up like that. When Karl wrote that he’d be coming to New York, I thought it would be fun to surprise you.” She and Landfors both looked well-satisfied at having sprung him on me.

  “It was a nice surprise,” I replied. I always enjoyed seeing my old friend, even though he really wasn’t much to look at. Landfors had a pale, angular face with a sharp nose. Resting upon that nose was a pair of thick steel-rimmed spectacles. His bony frame was clothed in an off-the-rack black suit that would have been considered drab by an undertaker. “But how did you get to the clubhouse door? The stadium cops don’t let anybody past the gate.”

  Landfors removed his black low crown derby, revealing that his translucent hair had thinned almost to the point of invisibility. “The same way you get to do anything else in New York,” he sniffed. “You pay a cop to look the other way.”

  Margie walked to the kitchen, saying over her shoulder, “I picked up some dinner. Hope everybody’s hungry!”

  I assured her that I was. Landfors, who seldom concerned himself with food, muttered, “At least the cop only demanded two bits. Worth it, I suppose.”

  Our small dining table was furnished with only two seats, so I dragged over the parlor’s one Morris chair for Landfors. Glancing out the window, I noticed the boys playing in the street again with their taped bat and misshapen ball and reminded myself to get them something better.

  As I went to help Margie in the kitchen, I called back, “What brings you to New York, Karl?” I hadn’t seen him since St. Louis.

  “A story,” he answered tersely. Brushing back his coat, he sat down primly on the front edge of the Morris chair. Landfors was a writer of the muckraking type. He’d written for a number of newspapers and magazines, always trying to expose some kind of social injustice and usually disappointed when his stories failed to generate the public outrage he’d expected. There probably wasn’t a progressive cause or radical organization that he hadn’t championed at one time or another. He’d also been a great ally to me in some of the tough situations I’d faced over the years.

  “What kind of story?” I asked. Margie handed me a blue ceramic platter that held a cold glazed ham and a small wheel of cheddar cheese. I placed it in the middle of the table. Plates, forks, spoons, and glasses were handed to me next, and I arranged them in the appropriate spots.

  Landfors hesitated. “It’s the Dot King murder.”

  Margie came in with French bread and a plate of pickles and olives. “That’s something different for you, isn’t it?” she said.

  I was about to make the same comment. The death of a Ziegfeld chorus girl, dubbed “The Broadway Butterfly,” had been in all the newspapers for weeks. The stories were full of lurid details about her many suitors and her fast lifestyle, but there was nothing political that I recalled.

  Margie surveyed the dinner spread. “I’m forgetting something… Oh!” She briskly walked back to the kitchen, her long skirt swishing.

  “I want something different,” said Landfors. “I’m tired of causes. I’ve been working on them for years and it’s gotten me nothing. Worse than that, nobody seems to care anyway. If all the public wants is salacious stories about chorus girls, fine, I’ll give it to them. I’ll bet any of the Hearst newspapers would be happy to have me write for them. In fact, I think I have an angle on the case that could prove very interesting.”

  I suspected that if Landfors was soured on radical causes it was because something had gone wrong between him and a certain lady friend who shared his politics. I didn’t ask, though; I figured he would tell me about it in his own time.

  “Here we are!” announced Margie, holding aloft a bottle of red wine in each hand. “And it’s the real thing.”

  Landfors blinked eagerly behind his thick lenses. I preferred beer, but he was the guest and was partial to wine.

  “Where’d you get it?” I asked.

  “Mr. Tomasetti, the grocer on the corner. Very nice man. I’ve been shopping at his store for a few weeks. The first time I went in, he recognized me from my old movies. Today I told him it was a special occasion and he got these bottles for us from his back room. From Italy, before the war.”

  I poured a generous amount for each of us and Margie proposed a toast, “To good friends.” After we clinked glasses and sipped the dry red wine, we began tearing off pieces of bread and cutting slices of ham and cheese. I hadn’t realized before how hungry I was.

  Shifting his gaze back and forth to indicate the question was intended for both of us, Landfors asked, “How do you like being back in New York?”

  While I chewed a mouthful of ham, Margie said, “It’s almost like last time: Mickey’s involved with another murder.”


  Landfors blinked rapidly. “What murder?”

  Margie again answered. “Some ballplayer was found dead in the new stadium.” She ripped apart a piece of bread. “And I don’t see why that should be Mickey’s problem.”

  “You can’t seem to stay away from crime, can you?” Landfors said with a tight smile. “Tell me about it.” He eased back in the chair, causing it to suddenly recline. The pickle he’d been directing at his mouth struck his right nostril instead.

  I managed to stifle a laugh and helped him move the backrest of the chair upright. After refilling the wine glasses, I gave him a quick account of Spats Pollard turning up in the Yankee Stadium wall. “But I’m only doing this to keep my job,” I insisted. “I’ll make enough of an effort to keep the front office happy, and then I’ll let it drop.” From the expressions on their faces, neither Landfors nor Margie appeared to believe me.

  Margie raised her glass and neatly changed the subject. “Another toast,” she said. “To Mickey, who got more hits than Babe Ruth today.”

  “Thank you.” I lifted my glass. Trying to sound more modest than I felt, I added, “But it was just a cheap hit and it was only one.”

  “A double off Walter Johnson is more than most players get,” she said. “I cheered like crazy when you slid into second.”

  I nodded my thanks again and drank half the glass. She was right: Today’s game was something to celebrate.

  “Ah, baseball,” said Landfors. “The only profession in which a man can fail seventy percent of the time and be considered a great success.”

  I stared at him for a long moment and decided not to respond. I finally asked, “Do you have a place to stay?”

  “Yes, with a writer friend in Greenwich Village.”

  I was glad to hear that. Because as much as I liked Karl Landfors, he sometimes made it difficult for me to remember why.

  * * *

  The Forty-fourth Precinct was headquartered in a three-story yellow brick box of a building on Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx. The traditional green lamps that designated a New York City police station were on either side of the front door.

  On Monday morning, I went through that door and checked in with a surprisingly jovial desk sergeant. He told me how to find my way inside and let me pass through into a dreary office space with peeling beige walls and soot-stained ceilings. The stationhouse was furnished with a mismatched jumble of battered desks, chairs, storage shelves, and cabinets.

  In a windowless corner of the second floor, I found Detective Jim Luntz seated at one of the better desks, looking much the same as when I had seen him in Ed Barrow’s office. He even wore the same rumpled khaki suit which had acquired a scorch mark on the lapel. His old fedora was atop a pile of file folders on his desk and a half-full mug of black coffee rested on a smaller stack of papers. The pipe clamped in Luntz’s teeth was burning a blend of tobacco so noxious that I thought he might use it to coerce confessions from suspects.

  The detective peered up at me with a weary expression on his drawn face. At closer proximity to him than I’d been in Barrow’s office, I noticed a touch of gray in his dark hair. “I got a message you’d be stopping by,” he said. “You learn anything about Pollard?”

  “Not yet,” I admitted. “I need more to go on, and I was hoping I could get it from you.”

  He flicked a finger in the direction of a Windsor chair that was missing half its spindles. I pulled it closer to his desk and sat down. Luntz leaned back and drew so hard on his pipe that his cheeks pulled in. “So how can I help?” he asked, expelling a cloud of smoke along with the words.

  “I have a five year gap that I don’t know how to close,” I began. “I did what you suggested: I started with the body. I went to the place where Pollard was found, but I don’t think I really learned anything. And I only remember a little about him from ’eighteen when we were on the Cubs. I got a couple more ideas I might look into, but first I wanted to see what you know about him.”

  Luntz nodded and pulled a slim sheaf of papers from one of the accordion portfolios under his hat. “This is all I got. Anything in particular you want to know?”

  I had a number of questions, but started with the simplest. “You said Pollard was missing for two years. He hadn’t been dead all that time, though, had he? The fellow at the refreshment stand said the bullet holes looked fresh.”

  “Here’s the coroner’s report.” Luntz briefly reviewed an official-looking form. “The cause of death was three very big bullets—.45s probably, but they passed right through him so we don’t have the slugs. And he wasn’t dead for more than a few days before he was found.”

  “So he was alive during those two years he was supposedly missing. Any idea where he was?”

  Luntz shook his head. “Wherever he could find something to steal, probably. Gangsters don’t work regular jobs.”

  “That’s another thing I’ve been wondering about,” I said. “In Barrow’s office, and now again, you called Pollard a ‘gangster,’ not a ‘crook’ or a ‘bootlegger.’ Was he with a particular gang? Do you think he could have been killed in a gang war or something?” There were almost daily newspaper stories about deadly shootouts between the city’s various gangs.

  A hint of a smile crossed Luntz’s face. “You’re asking questions like a cop. Usually I do the interrogating.”

  “Hope you don’t mind,” I said. “I’ve been involved in a couple of murder investigations before, and I figured those were sensible questions to ask.”

  “They are,” he chuckled. “I’m just not used to other people asking them.” After a long draw on his pipe, the detective answered, “Pollard mostly operated in Manhattan, so the information I have is from detectives there. He was a two-bit criminal who worked on the fringes of several organizations, but never at a high level. Like most petty crooks, he was hoping to make a big score someday so that one of the major gangs would take notice and take him in.” He tapped the pipe stem against his lower teeth. “As to who killed him, of course the logical guess is another gangster, but I have no idea who or why.” The detective rarely looked at me when he spoke, generally keeping his gaze on his paper-strewn desk or on the bowl of his pipe.

  “Your investigation hasn’t turned up anything?”

  Luntz hesitated. His cheeks began to work like a bellows until clouds of smoke rose to the stained ceiling. I could barely breathe from the overpowering stench of the tobacco. With the pipe clamped firmly in his teeth, he finally mumbled, “I’ve had a lot of other work to do.”

  I was puzzled. There were higher priorities than murder?

  The detective sat upright and slowly withdrew the pipe from his mouth. In answer to my unspoken question, he said, “I’ll be honest with you: I love the Bronx. I grew up in Highbridge and I got family in just about every part of the borough. So when I joined the force this is where I asked to be assigned. There’s more action and faster promotions in Manhattan or Brooklyn, but this is my home and these are the people I want to serve. The Bronx is a nice borough and I want to keep it that way—quiet and peaceful, where decent people can walk the streets safely.” He paused. “So if some gangster gets himself killed, I figure what the hell, that’s one less hoodlum out there hurting civilians and one less arrest I’ll have to make later.”

  I had no doubt that dead criminals were seldom mourned by law enforcement, but I was surprised that a police officer would so freely admit that he was happy to have murders lighten his work load. “So you don’t investigate at all?” I asked.

  He put the pipe back in his mouth and appeared disappointed to find that it had gone out. “Oh, I look into everything that happens in my precinct. But if it turns out to be gangsters killing gangsters, it drops way down on my list of priorities.” Luntz struck a match and held it to the bowl. Sucking wetly on the bit, he went on, “I wouldn’t be doing much of anything about this Spats Pollard thing if it wasn’t for Jacob Ruppert pressing us. He’s convinced that there’s some kind of plot against him and h
e’s got the influence to make the department do whatever he wants.”

  “You think there’s anything to his notion that somebody’s really out to hurt him?”

  “Nah. I don’t even understand what he was talking about—didn’t make any sense to me at all.” Luntz drew hard to get the pipe burning again. “As far as Huston being behind it, everybody knows those two men don’t get along. But you don’t kill somebody to annoy your business partner.”

  I agreed with him there. The Yankees’ co-owners had been feuding for years, but Til Huston had been the driving force to get the stadium built on time. No matter how much he disliked Jacob Ruppert, he wouldn’t do anything to damage the reputation of the ballpark that was largely his creation.

  Luntz abruptly gave me a sharp look. “Maybe you could answer a question for me.”

  “Sure.”

  “When we were in Ed Barrow’s office, what was Ruppert saying about John McGraw?” he asked. “Did you make any sense of it?”

  “Well, there’s even worse feelings between Ruppert and McGraw than there are between Ruppert and Huston.” That was no secret; the Little Napoleon’s New York Giants had been the premier team in baseball until Babe Ruth and the Yankees overshadowed the city’s National Leaguers. “McGraw is jealous of the Yankees’ success,” I explained. “That’s why he kicked them out of the Polo Grounds and they had to build their own park.”

  “Huh.” Luntz drew slowly on the pipe. “Then McGraw probably wouldn’t mind giving Ruppert a great big problem in the new park.”

  “Probably not. But he wouldn’t kill anybody.”

  “Maybe Pollard wasn’t murdered at the park. Maybe he was moved there—dumped. Does McGraw know the kind of people who might need to dispose of a body?”

  I considered that idea for a moment. John McGraw certainly did know such people. The Giants manager was on friendly terms with a number of underworld figures. He was even business partners with a few, owning a couple of pool halls and making regular bets at the racetrack. “He might know them,” I answered, “but he wouldn’t be involved with something like that.”