Murder at Fenway Park (20 page)

“That’s not callous, it’s survival instinct. So: what is it exactly you want me to do?”

“One thing is to look into Bob Tyler some more. He’s obviously one of the keys to all this. I’d especially like to know about his City Hall connections. Both Tyler and Jimmy Macullar said several times that Mayor Fitzgerald is a big Red Sox booster—it sounded like he and Tyler could be cronies. That really has me worried. If the whole Boston government is behind Bob Tyler, I have no chance at all in this.”

“I’ll check it out. Usually, Boston corruption is more on a neighborhood level. In New York, it’s centralized: Tammany Hall controls the city and Wall Street controls Tammany Hall. Tyler could have O’Malley’s precinct in his pocket but that’s probably the extent of it. I’ll see. Oh! You said Corriden’s body was found in Dorchester. That’s outside O’Malley’s precinct, right?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Let’s check something out right now.” Landfors hailed our waitress, “Gretel!”

She bustled over. “Strudel?”

“No. Well, maybe later. Can we use the phone? It’s long distance this time, but the
Press
will pay for it.”

“Of course. You know where it is.”

“Thanks. C’mon, Mickey.”

Landfors led me to a wall phone inside the kitchen. After a series of operators, Landfors got through to Boston. He held the receiver away from his ear so we could both listen. “I’d like to be connected to the police station in Dorchester,” he asked.

“Which one?” the Boston operator’s voice hissed.

“I don’t know, how many are there?”

“Savin Hill and Fields Corner.”

“Try Savin Hill.”

“One moment please.”

A male voice came through. “Division Eighteen.”

“Hello, this is—Jack Landers. With the—
Times.
I’m calling to check up on a murder case. A fellow named Red Corriden—John Corriden—was found murdered in Dorchester back in April. I wanted to see if the case has been solved, or at least if there’s been any progress.”

“Mm—okay. You’d want to talk to Lieutenant Downes. He’d have handled it. Hold on, I’ll transfer you.”

“Thanks.” Landfors winked at me.

“Downes.”

“Hello, Lieutenant. This is Jack Landers with the
Times.
I’m doing a follow-up article on the Red Corriden murder.”

“Corriden?”

“Yes, he was killed back in April. Found his body under a railroad trestle, I believe?”

“Oh, yes. Corriden. Not much happening on that one.”

“Could you tell me what you do have?”

“Not much to tell. He was beaten real bad—face was just about all gone. Didn’t hardly look human anymore. Turned out he was a baseball player. Never did get a handle on who might have done it. Pretty much chalked him up as a mugging victim. That’s about it.”

“Any suspects?”

“Not a one.”

“Leads?”

“Zip.”

Peggy’s wild idea about Corriden popped into my head. I nudged Landfors and whispered, “Ask who identified him.”

“Lieutenant, could you tell me who identified the body?”

“Yeah, hold on a second. I’ll check.”

Landfors and I smiled at each other. So far so good.

“Here it is. He was identified by a Hugh Jennings. Says here Jennings was his manager.”

“That’s great. Thanks.”

“What paper did you say you’re with?”

“
Times.
”

“What
Times?
”

“Downes. Is that D-O-W-N-S?”

“No. D-O-W-N-E-S.”

“Got it. Thanks for your help, Lieutenant.”

Landfors hung up with a satisfied smirk. “That worked out well,” he said. “It told us a lot. That cop just thought somebody was killed in his district. No attempt to conceal information, no hint there was anything shady going on. He’s not in on whatever Tyler and O’Malley orchestrated. It could mean that Tyler’s clout
is
limited to O’Malley’s precinct. But I’ll check it out. Anything else?”

“Just whatever you can find out about Bob Tyler. I have a
really
bad feeling about him.”

Landfors’s eyebrows perked up. “Do you think Tyler could be the murderer?”

“Well, I’m sure he
didn’t
kill Corriden. When I first met Tyler—just after I found Corriden—he was dressed too clean and neat, no blood on him, no sweat, nothing.”

“What if he was changing when you found the body?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t make sense. If there was time to change clothes, there was time to hide the body first. At least drag it out of sight.” Landfors seemed satisfied that I was right about that.

Then I summed up my current thinking. “This is what I think happened: Ty Cobb killed Red Corriden for trying to cost him the batting championship. That left Bob Tyler with a murder in his new ballpark—and Tyler didn’t want that, so he had the body taken away. But Tyler can’t feel secure, because there’s two people who knew somebody was killed in Fenway—me and Jimmy Macullar.

“I think Tyler’s been having me watched, to see if I’m going to be a risk. That means he has somebody working for him.”

“Any idea who his spy is?”

“It could be the man that Peggy and I saw with Tyler. Or it could be somebody on the team. But whoever he is, he’s more than a spy. I think he killed Jimmy Macullar, on orders from Tyler.”

“Because of what Macullar knew?”

“And because Macullar didn’t like taking part in Tyler’s cover-up—maybe he was going to expose it. Tyler wouldn’t stand for that.”

“So you think Tyler has a hired gun?”

“Yeah, I do. Oh—there is something else you can do. Whoever’s working for Tyler, I think the first thing he did was put the bat in my bed—try to scare me into keeping quiet. That had to be done by somebody who knew how Corriden was killed. There were two players, Charlie Strickler and Billy Neal, who didn’t join the club until the following day. At first, I didn’t think it could be either of them. Then I realized they didn’t show up at
Hilltop Park
until they next day—they could have checked into the hotel earlier.”

“Tyler got these players just after Corriden was killed?”

“A couple days after, yeah.”

“Suspicious timing.”

“That occurred to me. But there
were
injuries on the club, and Tyler did tell me he was going to get some more players besides me. Anyway, I’d just like to know for sure if I can rule them out, but
I
can’t ask around at the hotel—the whole team is staying there, and it’s too easy for me to get caught. Could you find out when Strickler and Neal checked in?”

“Sure, I’ll give it a shot. What’s the name of the hotel?”

“The Union Hotel on 125th Street. Also: how would somebody get a key to my room?”

“I’ll see if I can find out.”

“Oh. One last thing. It’s about Red Corriden. There could be one more person besides Ty Cobb who would have wanted to kill him: Jack O’Connor. Harry Howell told me O’Connor joined an outlaw league in California—it’s not part of organized baseball, so it’s not covered in the baseball papers or the guides. Can you check somehow where he was in April?”

“I could try. Let me get this down.” Landfors took a notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket. “I have a friend who works on a paper in Sacramento. He might be able to check if O’Connor is still in California. Do you know
where
in California O’Connor went?”

“Not the city. But it would have been the California State League. They probably don’t have more than a few teams.”

“Okay, I’ll do my best. It may take a couple of days ... how about if I give you a call when I got something?”

“That’d be great. Thanks.”

“Glad to. I have a feeling this could turn out to be interesting.”

O
n Monday, back in Boston with an off day, I stayed in my room at Mrs. O’Brien’s to await Landfors’s promised call. The regular season was down to the final three weeks, and soon we would be facing the National League’s champion in the World Series. This was a critical time for the Sox, and my play would be under greater scrutiny than ever. With the high stakes on my performance, I wanted to be as prepared as possible, so I used the time to make sure my equipment was in tip-top shape.

I first went over my glove, tugging and tightening the laces and checking them for tears. Then I gave the glove a light coat of oil to keep the leather soft and pliable.

The bats were next, and Mabel was the first one I pulled out of my bat bag. I’d decided she was the one I would use for the rest of the year. I sat on the edge of my bed and slowly rubbed her down with a ham bone from the kitchen.

With time still to kill, I decided to work on the rest of the bats—if Mabel cracked, I would need the backups. I reached into the bag and grabbed hold of another. The handle didn’t feel like one of mine. I slid it halfway out of the bag and saw that it wasn’t. The barrel was coated with something that had blackened but still contained traces of red.

I’d found the weapon that killed Red Corriden. In
my
bat bag. I let the bat drop back in the bag out of my sight.

Sliding to the middle of my bed, I pulled my knees up to my chin. I wrapped my arms around them and started to rock back and forth, trying to grasp what was happening here.

This was some kind of double reverse setup. It was the gun that killed Macullar that I was supposed to worry about. Now it’s Corriden’s murder weapon that turns up in my room. How soon would Captain O’Malley be coming to “find” it?

Well, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. The thing to do was hide the bat. But where? My room didn’t have a lot of hiding places: a bed, a desk, and a bureau were the only furniture. I could destroy the bat—break it up, sneak the pieces downstairs, and toss them in the kitchen stove.

No, I couldn’t destroy it. The bat was my first real evidence. It might help me make the case against Corriden’s killer. I needed to keep the bat, but keep it hidden somewhere. Would it fit in back of a dresser drawer?

I rolled to the edge of the bed and picked up the bat bag again. Grabbing firm hold of the alien bat handle, I pulled it all the way out. I found I was able to look at it a bit more easily than I could when I’d first seen it in the Fenway Park tunnel—maybe because at that time I had also just seen the bat’s bloodied target.

One of the first things I saw on the bat was the model: Ty Cobb was stamped next to the Louisville Slugger logo. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean the bat was owned by Cobb—probably a quarter of all bats in use were Ty Cobb models.

Looking closer, I saw some hairs matted on the dried blood. Some of them buckled up out of the crusty mess. They were orange in color—an orange I had seen before. It suddenly wasn’t easy to look at the bat anymore. I decided to hide it as quickly as possible.

My room was useless as a hiding place. Was there anywhere else in the house I could stash it? None that occurred to me—I was unfamiliar with most of the house and didn’t want Mrs. O’Brien to see me wandering around with a bloody baseball bat trying to find a place to stash it. How about outside?

I went to my bedroom window and opened it all the way. Poking my head out, I could see no helpful hiding place near the window—no convenient tree, no vine-covered trellis. The lack of access to my window told me that whoever planted the bat in my bag hadn’t used the window to sneak it into my room.

A flurry of beating wings directly above my head caused me to twist around and look up. A crow took off from the rain gutter on the roof. The gutter looked to be a fine container for a bat—as long as it didn’t rain. I pulled myself to a sitting position on the windowsill with my feet inside and my body out. With a slight jump and a long stretch, I was able to reach the gutter and feel inside: twigs, dirt, and something disgusting left by the crow—but no water. A bat should be safe there.

I slid back inside and took out the bat again. To use it for evidence, it had to be protected. I pulled a pair of old socks from my dresser and slid one sock over each end of the bat. They didn’t quite meet in the middle so I took a third sock, tore a hole in the toe and slid that one over the gap. Then I did the same with a fourth sock—partly for extra protection and partly because I didn’t want to be left with an unmatched sock.

The bat wrapped up, I went back to the window and quickly deposited it in the gutter.

I sat back down on the bed. Waiting for O’Malley to show up, I tried to figure how the bat got in my bag. I couldn’t see how anyone could have planted it in my room—no one could have come in through the window, and I couldn’t picture anyone coming in downstairs and getting past Mrs. O’Brien. It was more likely put into my bag before we left New York. The problem was, I didn’t know when. I just couldn’t be sure when the last time was that I had seen the bag with only my own bats in it.

Wait a minute ... Maybe it
wasn’t
a problem getting past Mrs. O’Brien. What if Bucky O’Brien was the one in cahoots with Bob Tyler? It was Bucky who suggested I room at his aunt’s house—maybe he even has
her
keeping an eye on me.

After a Tuesday afternoon game at Fenway, in which Bucky O’Brien lost to Cleveland but I prolonged my life by delivering two RBIs, I went home for the traditional stuffed cabbage feast.

No police had come to find the bat, and I couldn’t figure it out. If it was planted evidence, why didn’t O’Malley show up immediately? Why give me a chance to get rid of it?

Anyway, my own bats were now in the Fenway clubhouse, the one that killed Corriden was still in the gutter, and I was feeling a little safer. I’d even dropped the idea of Bucky and his aunt working for Tyler—other than that it would be convenient for them to spy on me, there was no reason to suspect them. And I was getting tired of suspecting everyone I met in the last few months.

Mrs. O’Brien was late getting supper on the table. Bucky and I sat in the parlor impatiently waiting to eat. Neither of us spoke. Bucky, I knew, was going over every pitch he made today and silently chewing himself out for every one he deemed a mistake. I was punishing myself with reviews of every mistake I made off the field this year. I wondered if I would get a chance to be washed up like Jimmy Macullar or if I’d get the early retirement Red Corriden had. Maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about what I’d do when my playing days were over.

My train of thought worked its way out of my mouth, and I broke the silence. “Hey, Bucky, what are you going to do when you’re through playing baseball?”

“So I lost the lousy game! Don’t go putting me out to pasture, for chrissake.”

“No, no ... I didn’t mean you. I meant—well, I was just wondering what guys do when they can’t play anymore. Guys like Fletcher and Strickler. You know, it’ll happen to all of us.”

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna be playing for a long time. I got years left in me yet.”

“I saw Harry Howell in St. Louis. Poor guy’s a barber now. I’d hate to be a barber ... How about Fletcher—what do you think he’s going to do?”

“Don’t know. Unless he can get paid for drinking. I don’t know what else he’s good at. Of course, that worked okay for Charlie Strickler—he’s tending bar at the Beacon Hotel.”

“I’d like to be a movie actor, I think ... But I’ll probably end up an ice farmer or something.”

“A
what?
”

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

“Boys! Supper!”

An hour after dinner, Karl Landfors came through. I was back in my room when the phone rang, and halfway down the stairs by the time Mrs. O’Brien called my name, “Mickey! Telephone! It’s long distance—from New York! Ah, here you are.”

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mickey. It’s Karl.”

“I was hoping it’d be you. Come up with anything?”

“A couple things. First, the Union Hotel—that’s a real dump, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s better than most places we stay at. The good hotels don’t take ball players.”

“Huh. Anyway, Billy Neal and Charlie Strickler registered on April 29 at four
P.M.
That’s about the time your first game at Hilltop was ending, right?”

“Yeah, I think so. So they
could
have gotten into my room, then.”

“Easily, in fact.
I
got a room key from the chambermaid. Told her I was with the Pirates—they’re in town against the Giants and they’re staying at the Union.”

The picture of scrawny Landfors being taken for a baseball player amused me. “Boy, if she believed
you
were a ball player, anybody could have gotten a key.”

“Actually, she seemed skeptical—until I told her I played second base.” Landfors paused to enjoy his little victory with that crack. Then he said, “You’re right, though. It could have been anybody. Their arrival at the hotel just means that Strickler and Neal had the same opportunity as everyone else. Although I’m still suspicious about the timing of Tyler getting them. What do you know about those two?”

“Well, they were both with Red Corriden on the Tigers. Charlie Strickler was Corriden’s roommate. They didn’t get along, but it was no big deal, I don’t think. And I don’t think Strickler could have been working for Tyler, either—if he was, Tyler wouldn’t have let him go.”

“What about Billy Neal?”

“I don’t think he’d be in on anything with Tyler, either. Neal isn’t all that happy about being on the team, and he isn’t quiet about it—I heard him giving Jake Stahl hell for not playing him enough. So Neal probably doesn’t even
like
Tyler.”

“You don’t have to like someone to work for him—on or off the field. But from what you said, Neal’s definitely in the clear.”

“How’s that?”

“If Tyler got him for purposes other than playing baseball, Neal would keep quiet. He wouldn’t bring attention to the fact that he’s not playing.”

“Oh. That makes sense, I guess.”

“Now: as to Bob Tyler. Nothing solid yet, but it might be good news. At least not bad news.”

“What is it?”

“As far as I can find out, Tyler doesn’t really seem to have any high-level political influence in Boston—”

“Then what’s all his talk about Honey Fitz? Tyler makes it sound like they’re tight as thieves.”

“Apparently Fitzgerald is just a rabid Red Sox fan. Always has been, no matter who was running the club. There
might
have been some expediting of the building permits to put up Fenway Park, but that’s about it—and I can’t even confirm that. Tyler probably wants people to think he’s close to the mayor just to enhance his own stature. That seems to be important to him—having people think he’s a big shot.

“I’ve been trying to find out what motivates Tyler. Since he took those payoffs from Rothstein, I assumed it was money. Doesn’t look like that’s the case anymore. Mostly he wants respectability—especially to spite Ban Johnson. They didn’t part amicably. Johnson didn’t
officially
fire him, but that’s what I’m told it amounted to. He forced Tyler to resign. So now Tyler is determined to show Johnson up.

“What this all boils down to is: I think you’re probably right about Tyler keeping you safe until the season’s over—how long is that now?”

“Twenty-one days.”

“Ouch. That’s not much. Anyway, Tyler seems obsessed with becoming World Champions—respectability comes with the title, and it will be the best way he can thumb his nose at Johnson. So he probably won’t let anything happen to anyone who can help him win.”

“Well, that’s encouraging. At least I have three more weeks then.”

“Yes, but don’t be too encouraged. Like I said, that’s not much time. Also, it’s tough to prove a negative.”

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t
find
where Tyler had influence outside O’Malley’s precinct, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there—could be that I just couldn’t find it. I
was
thorough, but I don’t want to give you any false sense of security. Besides, if they want to frame you, they don’t necessarily need any further influence. If they can get evidence planted on you, that’s all they have to do to get you convicted.”

“So I better find out what really happened to Macullar.”

“
We
better. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“Thanks, Karl.”

“No problem. Let me know if there’s anything else you want me to do.”

As I hung up, I was already conjuring up a new scenario. Ban Johnson
forced
Tyler to resign. Does that mean Johnson knew about Tyler taking bribes from Arnold Rothstein? Makes sense. He can’t
fire
Tyler because he would have to give a reason. Johnson can’t let the public know that the American League secretary was in league with gamblers, so he quietly gets Tyler to resign, expecting he’d be rid of him for good. Now Tyler is running the team that’s sure to win the American League pennant. Johnson must be fuming. And maybe more than that.