The Tomb That Ruth Built (A Mickey Rawlings Mystery)

by Troy Soos

  When we were next to him, pretending to share an interest in the giant sloth, he muttered to Landfors, “This your friend?”

  Landfors confirmed that I was.

  “Let’s walk,” the man said.

  The three of us fell into step, wandering around the displays as if we were simply touring the museum. I thought the caution might be a bit excessive, but was certainly willing to go along with it. Being seen together could cause us both a lot of trouble.

  Landfors made an attempt at introductions, but was cut off by the young man, who said to me, “Call me ‘Whitey.’ And I know who you are.” He hunched his shoulders as if trying to puff himself up. There was no need to make himself look bigger; the hard expression on his sharp face was sufficiently intimidating. He continued, “I hear you’re interested in Spats Pollard.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yup. Not real well, and I didn’t much like him, but we were acquainted.”

  If there was one thing that was consistent throughout this strange case, it was that those who knew Spats Pollard didn’t care for him. I said, “If you didn’t like him, then I guess you won’t be sorry to hear that he’s dead.”

  Whitey’s penetrating eyes darted to mine and briefly fixed me in an icy stare. “You think that’s news to me?”

  “It wasn’t in the newspapers,” I said. “And it’s been kept pretty quiet.”

  “I don’t need no papers to know what’s going on. But I’ll tell you something that might be news.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pollard getting killed was two years overdue.”

  That certainly was news to me. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  The three of us were working our way past an exhibit on “The Evolution of Man,” with individual display cases labeled “Neanderthal,” “Cro-Magnon,” and “Piltdown Man.” Whitey answered, “Pollard got too friendly with my boss’s mistress, a showgirl named Jenny Reece—good-lookin’ blonde who used to dance in George White’s Scandals.”

  “Your boss is Arnold Rothstein,” I said.

  Landfors gave me a bony elbow to the ribs. “We don’t mention his name,” he whispered.

  Whitey didn’t seem to notice. He had stopped to look at a reconstruction of a Neanderthal woman’s head. “Sure glad I didn’t live back then,” he said. “Them dames was ugly.” The bright light of the exhibit hall was harsh on his pockmarked face, and I thought she might feel the same about him.

  I said, “So Pollard was seeing this showgirl, and I take it your boss didn’t like that.”

  “We got rules,” Whitey replied. “And that’s a bad one to break. Stupid, too—there’s a million chorus girls in this city, so why the hell should Pollard go after one who’s off limits?” He shook his head in disapproval of Pollard’s poor judgment.

  “What did your boss do when he found out about it?”

  Whitey had stopped to examine a full-sized model of a Cro-Magnon man. “Hey, I think I know this guy—he’s a bookie with the Kid Dropper gang.” Chuckling at his own joke, he answered my question as if it was equally amusing. “What the hell do you think he did? He gave an order. Pollard was supposed to be taken for a ride—the kind you don’t come back from.” Whitey started walking again and we moved along with him. He continued his story, “When Pollard disappeared, we all thought the job was done. Then a few months ago, Pollard turns up alive, running around and trying to get a cut of the liquor business.”

  “Why wasn’t he killed as soon as Roth— I mean, as soon as your boss found out he was still alive?”

  “Because it ain’t that simple. Pollard being alive means there’s a lot of questions we got to get answers to. Why wasn’t the job done two years ago? Where’s he been all that time? Does he got partners? Is he tied in with another gang?” Whitey shrugged. “If we killed him as soon as he come out of hiding, we might never find out what all he’s been up to.”

  Whitey had raised a number of questions that I hadn’t thought of and didn’t want to investigate myself. For a moment, I was dejected that I might have to look into many more things than I had anticipated. I wanted this over with soon. Then it occurred to me that Rothstein might have already done the work for me. “Did you find any answers to those questions?” I asked.

  “Not as far as I know.” Whitey fidgeted in his bulky coat. “Tell you the truth, we was disappointed that Pollard got killed when he did—we wanted to know a lot more.” He looked around, at nothing in particular, then back at me. “Anyway, that’s about all I know about Spats Pollard. That help you any?”

  “I think it does. Thank you.” We’d reached the end of the exhibit hall and were standing next to a wooly mammoth that dwarfed the three of us. “One more question, though, if you don’t mind.”

  “Shoot,” he said, not even cracking a smile at his choice of word.

  “Why are you helping me? What’s in it for you?”

  Whitey’s slow smile was even more frightening than his cold eyes. “Same reason I’m helping your writer friend here. Two reasons, really. One is that he’s gonna owe me a favor—maybe somebody he’ll write something that helps me, or leaves my name outta something that might hurt me.” He glanced at Landfors, who promptly nodded in agreement. “The other reason,” he continued, “is if somebody else in our business takes a fall, maybe it opens up a spot for me. I’m always looking to move up.”

  It sounded rather cannibalistic. “You don’t have any loyalty to your friends?” I asked.

  The smile turned to one of genuine amusement. “There’s a big difference between us, Mickey Rawlings: You got teammates, I got rivals. There ain’t one guy in our gang who wouldn’t stick a knife in my back if it meant he got a little something out of it. And I’d do the same to him. Forget what you hear about criminal ‘organizations.’ In my business, it’s every man for himself. Ain’t no such thing as loyalty.”

  I had to give him credit for bluntness. Although I had the impression that he could kill a man with no more conscience than swatting a mosquito, I also had the feeling that he was one of the few people I’d spoken to about the case who was telling me the truth.

  * * *

  Back when I’d played for the Giants, Sunday baseball was still illegal in New York and some managers, including John McGraw, had occasionally been arrested for violating the old blue laws. Now, we rarely had a Sunday off, and most other breaks in the schedule were for travel. This Friday was to be our last off day for some time, so Margie and I decided to spend it enjoying springtime in the Bronx.

  Of course with only one day to do as we wished, we thought of a dozen different ways to use the time. Margie telephoned the studio to say that she wouldn’t be in, and we settled down to eat a pancake breakfast and go over the options. By the time we cooked up a second stack, Margie was making a case for visiting the New York Botanical Garden in Bronx Park, while I was expressing my preference for a boat ride in Crotona Park. For me, looking at flowers wasn’t any more interesting than looking at pictures of flowers. But I realized that it never really mattered where Margie and I went, since we enjoyed almost anything we did together.

  I had just agreed to the botanical garden when I noticed the kids on the street choosing up sides for a ballgame. No doubt they should have been in school, but today’s weather was much better suited to baseball than a classroom.

  The kids had some new equipment laid out next to a fire hydrant. New for them, anyway. I’d recently brought them several baseballs that had been used in Yankees batting practice and a couple of bats. One of the bats was a Bob Meusel Louisville Slugger that had a chipped knob; the other was a barely-used Mickey Rawlings model that the equipment manager insisted I would have to pay for.

  The boys chose sides, half a dozen on a team, and the game quickly got under way. Home plate was a manhole cover, first base was the left rear fender of a rusted Studebaker that hadn’t budged from the curb in months, and second and third bases were yellow bricks that had once been part of the crumbling f
ront stoop of the apartment house on the corner.

  As I watched the boys play, it was clear that their joy in the game was in no way diminished by the poor quality of their “field.” Although the action was often interrupted by passing traffic, and they were subjected to a brief tirade by a shopkeeper across the street who feared for his windows, they seemed to have just as much of a thrill in a solid hit or a good catch as my teammates and I did. The essence of baseball was the same whether played on the asphalt of a city street, on a cow pasture in Indiana, in a textile league in South Carolina, or in the steel and concrete expanse of Yankee Stadium.

  Did I really need to stay with the Yankees to enjoy the game? I wondered. If I dropped the Spats Pollard mess, the Yankees might drop me, but I would find another team someplace and I would still be able to play the game I loved.

  Turning away from the window, I stared at Margie for a long moment. “Do you ever miss acting?” I asked.

  She paused with the pitcher of syrup hovering over her plate and gave me a quizzical look. “Why do you ask?”

  “I was wondering… People saw your movies all over the world, the newspapers and movie magazines were full of stories about you, you had millions of fans… Everybody knew Marguerite Turner. Don’t you miss that?”

  “Not really,” she answered thoughtfully. “I acted in those movies because it was fun, not because I wanted to be famous. I miss those days, sometimes, because the picture business was more fun and free back then. No one thought movies would last, so we didn’t take ourselves seriously. But I don’t miss acting. I enjoy what I’m doing now.” She cut a piece of syrup-sodden pancake with her fork. “And besides, if I ever do get the acting bug again I can always go back into it. Of course, I’ll probably be cast in matron roles at this point…”

  “I was just wondering.” I stabbed at my own pancake. “Oh, and you’re still much too young to be a ‘matron.’ ”

  Margie smiled teasingly. “You were a little slow on that, but I’ll attribute it to the fact that you’re thinking about something else.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes. What you’re really wondering is if you would miss baseball if you couldn’t play.” She sipped her coffee and touched a napkin to her full lips. “Why are you even worrying about that?”

  “Miller Huggins is using me as a coach more than a player. He says he thinks I could be a manager myself someday.”

  “ ‘Someday’ is a long way off,” Margie said, with a confidence I myself wasn’t feeling.

  I continued poking at the pancake, turning it into a shredded mess. “Sometimes I think playing baseball is the most important thing in the world to me. Other times—like when I have to get involved in crimes—it doesn’t seem worth it. I could go back to playing for a mill league like I did before I made it to organized ball. Or I could work with kids like those.” I nodded toward the window, where the exuberant sound of their game was coming through. “I might like managing.”

  “You need to do whatever you feel is right for you,” she said firmly. “When you have something you’re burning to do, you need to do it. And if you ask me, I think you’re still burning to play baseball.” After a moment, she added, “I hope you know that whatever you decide to do, I’ll go with you.”

  Baseball suddenly evaporated from my thoughts. “There’s something else important to me,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s not a ‘what.’ It’s you—and I want you to be safe.”

  She smiled. “You silly. I feel perfectly safe.”

  “We have this road trip coming up, and I’d feel better if you weren’t alone.”

  “You want somebody to come stay with me?”

  “No, not here. I was thinking maybe you could stay in one of those bungalows at the studio. It’ll only be for about a week. You wouldn’t have to travel, and there’ll be other people living there, right?”

  She nodded.

  Before I could continue making my case, the telephone rang. “Speaking of the studio,” Margie said, hopping up to take the call, “that might be Natalie. She and Tom have been having some problems and I told her she could call me if she needed anything.” Margie put the receiver to her ear, listened for a few seconds, and said into the mouthpiece, “He’s right here.”

  I quickly went to the phone and took the receiver from her, hoping it wasn’t another threatening call. “Yes?”

  “Mickey, it’s Andrew Vey. I think I can help you out.”

  We spoke for a few minutes. When I hung up, I said to Margie, “I hate to do this, but I have to meet someone—it might be important. Can we go out tonight instead of to the park?”

  She agreed, although her eyes betrayed some disappointment.

  * * *

  I felt badly for putting a damper on the day we had planned, but, as she had been so many times before, Margie was completely understanding. Since I worried about her being home alone, I was relieved that she decided to go the botanical garden anyway. She’d recently bought a new Brownie camera and promised to take photographs for me.

  About the time that I had expected to be on a romantic outing with Margie in Bronx Park, I was instead walking into a dingy shoe repair shop a few blocks from the Polo Grounds. The shop, in the same rundown neighborhood as Silk Shaughnessy’s Dining Emporium, reeked of tanned leather, neatsfoot oil, and old sweat.

  The only occupant was a gnarled man at a messy workbench with a bare bulb hanging above it. He was hammering a nail into the heel of a woman’s lace-up boot. The man looked at me just long enough to ascertain that I wasn’t a customer and muttered through a mouthful of nails, “They’re in the back.”

  I walked across a dusty floor littered with scraps of leather, bits of thread, and bent nails to the open door of a small room behind the workshop. It was set up as a sort of office, and might have been furnished with rejects from the Forty-fourth precinct. The one desk consisted of a battered pine table with a rubber heel wedged under a short leg, a file cabinet in the corner was missing the handles from two drawers, and the only feature that the room’s three wooden chairs had in common was that they were all missing either a rail or a spindle.

  Seated on two of the chairs, their backs to the door, were a couple of men hunched in front of a radio that was on a workbench similar to the cobbler’s. I’d seen a few of the devices before; according to the label on the cabinet, this one was a “Radiola” manufactured by the Radio Corporation of America. Glowing tubes from the back of the radio emitted an eerie light and I could hear loud static like a bad telephone connection.

  Andrew Vey was listening to the headset that the other man held up to his ear. They were both trying to turn one of the radio’s knobs and arguing over which way it should be rotated.

  “Mr. Vey?” I said to get his attention.

  He turned. “Ah, Rawlings. Cooper here was just showing me his new wireless.” To the other man, he said, “I don’t know how you can listen to this noise. I’d get a headache in ten minutes.”

  “Radio is only going to get better—you’ll see.” The man swung around and cheerfully announced, “I’m Vern Cooper.”

  The name meant nothing to me. “Good to meet you,” I said.

  Cooper put his feet up on the desk; considering where we were, I was surprised to see that the shoes needed new soles. His overall appearance was as unremarkable as his nondescript gray suit. Cooper was probably in his late forties, with undistinguished features and a bland expression. He would probably make a good criminal since no one would ever be able to give the police a description other than “average looking.” The only thing at all noticeable was that his medium brown hair was cut somewhat lopsided; it looked like he and Andrew Vey might frequent the same blind barber.

  Vey stood, tugged down the bottom of his vest, and shook my hand. “Glad you could come.” He gestured at Cooper, who had reached into a bowl of walnuts on his desk. “I believe Mr. Cooper can help you with at least part of this puzzle you’ve been working on
.”

  “I could certainly use the help,” I said. Although I wasn’t sure how a cobbler could help me.

  Vey sat back down, causing his vest to ride back up. It was nearly as undersized as his little bow tie and had no chance of covering his muscular torso. As he pulled at it again, I wondered if he ever wore an outfit in which every article of clothing actually fit him.

  Cooper smashed open a walnut with a small claw hammer. He said in a mild voice that was devoid of regional accent, “That fellow who threatened you at Katie Day’s night club. His name is Leo Kessler. Low level hood in Arnold Rothstein’s merry band.” He popped a piece of freshly shelled walnut in his mouth.

  Questions flashed through my head faster than I could articulate them. The first one I could get out was, “How do you know that?”

  Vey spoke up. “Mr. Cooper is a private detective. He works for the Yankees.”

  I looked around the room and Cooper guessed the cause of my bewilderment. “The shop out front belongs to my brother-in-law,” he said. “I rent this room from him. Gives him a little extra income, and provides me with an inconspicuous place to run my business.”

  I still wasn’t quite following. “And your business is doing detective work for the Yankees?” If the Yankees already had a detective on their payroll, why the hell was I the one looking into Spats Pollard’s murder?

  Cooper looked to Vey, who explained, “Mr. Cooper’s sole assignment for the Yankees is to keep tabs on Babe Ruth. This is no secret, by the way, which is why I feel at liberty to tell you. After the Babe’s difficulties last year, Mr. Ruppert and Mr. Barrow decided to protect the team’s investment by hiring Mr. Cooper to keep an eye on him.”

  “Does Ruth know?”

  “Of course,” answered Vey. “The goal is to keep him from getting into trouble, not to catch him at it. If the Babe knows he’s being watched, he’s less likely to do anything harmful or embarrassing to the team.”