Murder at Wrigley Field (18 page)

“Made a couple calls.”

“I’m on my way to work.”

“I know. Thought I’d join you.” I added, “If you don’t mind.”

She shrugged and started walking south at a rapid pace. “What did you want to talk about?”

I hustled to keep up with her. “Willie Kaiser and Curly Neeman.” Agnes seemed a no-nonsense type, so I thought I’d be up front with her and see where it got me.

After a few steps she asked, “What about them?”

“Did Neeman tell you who killed Willie?”

She pulled up short and gave me a stony glare. I suppose I was too blunt. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said firmly.

We stood in the middle of the crowded sidewalk while pedestrians brushed past us. I said softly, “I know you and Willie were, uh, keeping company.”

“He told you?”

“We were roommates.” Evading isn’t the same as lying.

“He wasn’t supposed to tell anybody.”

“I also know—you told me yourself—that Curly Neeman was always riding Willie at work.”

Agnes nodded.

“And it was clear from what I saw that you and Neeman weren’t exactly buddies.”

“We hated each other.” She resumed walking. “Don’t want to be late.”

As we walked, somewhat slower now, I leaned to her ear and said, “Somebody took a blowtorch to Curly Neeman before they shot him.”

“What are you, a cop?”

“No. I was a friend of Willie’s, and all I want is to know who killed him. If it was Curly Neeman, then I guess that’s it—nothing more to do. If it wasn’t, I want to find out who did it.”

“It was Curly Neeman,” she said simply.

“Did you—”

“I didn’t kill him, no. All I did was encourage him to talk.”

“With the—”

“Torch. And he admitted he shot Willie.” She smiled. “The little pissant admitted it pretty quick, too.”

I had to force myself not to envision what she’d done. “Did Neeman say anything else? Did he do it on his own, or were there others in on it?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t say if there were others. At the plant, Neeman was always threatening Willie with what the Knights were going to do to him. I think it was just talk though. Neeman made it sound like he had a whole army at his command. Made the little pissant feel a big man, I guess.”

So that was how Willie had heard about the Knights. Maybe he learned something from Neeman that caused him to warn Hans Fohl about them. “Neeman didn’t give you any other names when you talked to him?”

“No. He just kept saying it was a mistake.”

“Well, there
was
somebody else involved.”

“Who?”

“Whoever killed Curly Neeman to shut him up.”

We said little more until our ten o’clock break at the plant, when Agnes went to her toolbox and brought me a small bundle wrapped in a dirty rag.

I tugged open the knot to find a handful of peach stones. Unlike the shells I’d been shoveling in the oven, these were whole stones. “What are these for?”

She reached over and plucked one of them from the rag. With an easy twist, she broke it open. It was filled with dark powder. “Gunpowder,” she said. “Curly Neeman tried to kill you, too. I pulled these out of the bin after you got hurt that night. There were a lot in there. He filled them with gunpowder and glued them closed.”

“He told you that?”

“No. But do you have any doubt?”

I thought a moment. “No.” Boy, it sure was a good thing I’d started using smaller loads in the oven.

“You want to keep these?” Agnes asked.

“No, that’s okay.” I walked to a trash bin and dumped them. When I got back, I asked her, “Why did you think it was Curly Neeman who killed Willie? Just because of the way he was harassing him? Lots of people were doing that.”

“It was more than what he said to Willie; it’s what he said to me.” She rubbed her nose with her palm. “After Willie was killed, Neeman liked to drop hints to me that he did it. Bragging about it, I guess.”

“Jeez, what a bastard.”

Agnes elaborated on that description with words that would have made John McGraw blush.

No one came to tell us when it was ten past, but we promptly went back to work as soon as the break was over.

Standing at my oven, I kept glancing over my shoulder at Aggie O’Doul. I was becoming fascinated by this woman who could put a blowtorch to a man. I had to admit that instead of being repulsed by what she had done I admired her for it.

L
efty Rariden warmed up for the bottom of the second inning by throwing everywhere but to his catcher. He succeeded in plunking the Pirates’ batboy and almost hit umpire Bill Klem. When he was younger, and capable of hurling bullets, Rariden’s carefully rehearsed display of wildness planted fear in the minds of batters who’d have to face him. He could no longer throw fast enough to scare anyone but still performed his routine, either out of habit or to maintain his colorful image.

When he’d finished, Klem barked “Batter up!” and I dug in at the plate.

Rariden pulled off his dark blue cap and mussed his red hair with his glove before replacing the cap at an arrogant angle. He then made some peculiar facial expressions intended to further distract me.

C’mon, throw the damn ball already.

The next instant, without the preliminary of a wind-up, he sent the ball speeding at my head. I staggered back just in time. There was more heat on it than I expected could come from Lefty Rariden’s aged right arm. Them old guys can really surprise you sometimes.

I backed out of the box and knocked the sides of my spikes with my bat. I should have known it was coming. At the Knights meeting Rariden had said that he owed me one. I stepped back in. Rariden went into a windmill wind-up this time. Just before he delivered the pitch, my memory corrected itself: he’d said that he owed me two. Sure enough, his second pitch was another knockdown, but I avoided it easily.

He’d kept his word, twice attempting to put me on my ass. I guessed correctly that the next pitch would be over the plate. It was a fat one, knee-high down the middle. I swung high, missing the ball by a foot, and sent the bat spinning out of my hands to the pitcher’s mound. It spun like a propeller blade, and Rariden had to leap over it to keep from taking it on the shins. Yup, there’s no end of useful things you can do with a baseball bat.

Rariden had a broad grin on his long face. It was his turn again. Another quick pitch at my head to get back at me for the thrown bat.

My turn. Once again I launched the bat at him to even things up for the latest beanball attempt.

In his finest umpire voice, Bill Klem announced loudly and calmly, “I hate to spoil your fun gentlemen, but I hope you’re aware that you just worked yourselves to a full count. Now play ball!”

I dug in for the next pitch. Rariden threw a slow roundhouse curveball; it started for a spot a foot behind my head, then bent into an arc and kept bending. My head knew where the pitch was going, but my rear end was fooled—it was retreating to the dugout as the ball broke over the plate. I swung late and missed by a mile.

Lefty Rariden won this contest. I threw my bat on the ground, cursing Rariden in particular and elderly pitchers in general. They get so damn devious after they’ve started getting on in years.

He used the slow curve on me again in the fourth. It was once too often; I hung in there and drove a line single to right field. In the seventh and ninth innings, he played a little too fine with the corners of the plate and walked me both times. There were no more beanballs or thrown bats. Things were all square between us.

By the end of the ninth inning, Rariden was a very congenial fellow. He’d won the ballgame, outpitching a partially inebriated Phil Douglas. I sometimes suspected that Douglas was a pitcher primarily because it allowed him several days of uninterrupted drinking between starts. He’d cut it too close this time, but since we were as short of pitchers as we were of everything else, Fred Mitchell let him keep his turn in the rotation.

An hour after the game, I was sitting with my new buddy, the now jovial Lefty Rariden. The two of us were in an anonymous dimly lit Rush Street saloon of his choosing, swilling illegal beers, very good illegal beers, which I no longer hesitated to order. Breaking the law distressed me far less than being in Rariden’s company.

Earlier in the season, a visit from the Pirates would have meant a chance to get together again with my pal Casey Stengel. But Casey had left the Pirates in June to enlist in the Navy. Lefty Rariden, whose stories and jokes were more offensive than funny, was a poor substitute for Casey as a drinking companion.

Casey got his nickname from “K. C.,” Kansas City, his home town. Wally Dillard was from Oak Park. Maybe O. P. was a name for him: Opie Dillard. I’d have to see what he thought.

Rariden snorted. “Sure blew you guys away today. Hard to believe I ain’t pitched a game in three years!” It wasn’t the first time he’d complimented himself on his performance; through the first two rounds of beer he’d been alternating between telling dirty jokes and praising his own pitching.

“Yeah, hard to believe.” It wasn’t the first time I’d given him that same response, either. This time I added, “What do you think of your new team?”

“Pittsburgh ain’t a bad club,” he acknowledged. “Of course, if they was smart, they’d have signed me back in the spring. With me pitching for them all season, they’d be doing a lot better than third place. Be giving you guys a run for the pennant.”

I ignored his conceit; few pitchers were known for modesty. “Last team you were on was the Whales wasn’t it?” The Chicago Whales, Charles Weeghman’s Federal League team.

The gleeful look faded from his face and Rariden called for two more beers. “Yeah, that’s right,” he answered. “Say, you hear the one about—”

“How’d you like playing for the Feds?” When I’d first met Rariden at the Knights meeting, he’d asked if we’d known each other from the Federal League. At the
New York Press
office, when I’d checked the
Spalding Guides
for Wicket Greene’s fielding statistics, I’d also looked up Rariden’s record: he’d pitched for the Chicago Feds during both years of their existence and had been out of organized baseball ever since.

Rariden downed most of the brew that the bartender placed in front of him. “I liked it fine,” he said with a belch. “Some damn fine ballplayers in that league. We drew good crowds in most cities, made decent salaries, and the Whales took the pennant in ’fifteen. Only championship team I ever been on.”

“And then the league folded. Must have been tough on you.”

“Damn right. Nobody wanted me anymore. The regular leagues took the younger kids back, the ones who had a future. It was us old guys who got punished for jumping to the Feds; the owners figured we only had one or two good years left, so they’d make an example out of us.” He finished the rest of his beer in one long swallow and called for another. I was starting to lag behind.

“Say, Lefty, I need your advice on something.”

“Sure, and what’s that?” He looked relieved at the change of topic.

“At the last Knights meeting, Frank Timmons asked me about getting some, uh, material out of the chemical plant.”

“Yeah?”

“Wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Figured you had to be his previous supplier. So, what I want to know is, how hard is it to do?”

Rariden laughed. “It’s easy if you know the right people.” He made no attempt to deny it.

“And who’s the right people?”

After another swallow of beer, he answered out of the side of his mouth, “Harrington.”

“Bennett Harrington? He—”

“Let me take the stuff out, yeah. It was just old-fashioned black powder, anyway, not the new smokeless stuff. Talk to him. See if you can make the same deal.”

“A deal goes two ways. What does he get out of it? A cut of what I’d get from Timmons?”

He laughed again. “Not even. Just do him a favor now and then.”

“A favor like... ?”

“Oh, anything that might hurt Charles Weeghman.”

I made a quick connection. “Like putting smoke bombs in the stands?” If Rariden had access to powder, smoke bombs would have been easy for him to make.

His broad wink confirmed it, though his spoken answer was, “You never heard me say that.”

“And you have no fondness for Weeghman anyway,” I pointed out. “When he sold out the Feds, you lost your career.”

Rariden growled, “Bastard should have picked me up for the Cubs. He made a deal to cover his ass and hung the rest of us out to dry.”

Lefty Rariden had a pretty sweet deal himself: he got paid by Frank Timmons for smuggling out gunpowder that he was allowed to smuggle in exchange for hurting a man he wanted revenge against. “You were doing okay,” I said. “Almost sounds too bad the Pirates signed you.”

He gave me a wide-eyed stare that wasn’t a put-on. “Are you
nuts?
I’d rather be playing ball than doing anything else.”

A trio of young bruisers in United States Navy garb swaggered into the saloon. Judging by the way they were speaking and walking, it wasn’t the first one they’d been in today.

Rariden’s eyes narrowed and followed the men as they took seats at the end of the bar. The presence of the boisterous sailors seemed to antagonize him; I don’t think he liked for anyone to be louder or more obnoxious than himself.

While Rariden was preoccupied with glaring at his rivals, I mentally regrouped. Since Curly Neeman had hinted to Aggie O’Doul that he’d shot Willie, he might have bragged to his buddies in the Knights about it, too. Even if shooting Willie Kaiser was a mistake, as he’d claimed to Agnes, Neeman would want to get whatever glory he could for having killed a German.

“Lefty?” I said.

No response.

I couldn’t capture Rariden’s attention until I started a joke about a traveling salesman and a farmer’s wife. At the punch line, Rariden issued a belly laugh and cried, “That’s a good one! ‘Do you have to use my butt for a tally board?’ Hah!”

Moving quickly on, I said, “Any of the guys in the Knights ever get carried away?”

“Carried away how?”

“By putting one of those guns Timmons sells to use. I heard one of them might have killed a guy just because the guy had a German name.”

“Naw. Really?” Rariden looked genuinely taken aback. “I never heard about nothing like that.”

Damn. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I heard wrong.”

Rariden cocked his head in the direction of the sailors. “Feel like having a little fun?”

“What kind of fun?”

“Let’s take ’em on. Show ’em ballplayers are every bit as tough as navy gobs.” He was itching for a barroom brawl to further enhance his colorful reputation.

“Uh, no, not for me, thanks. I got to be heading home.” I ended up in enough fights without looking for new ones. Maybe I was truly a utility player at heart, for I had no desire to be colorful.

Rariden must have really been feeling his oats after the victory at Cubs Park; as I rose to leave the bar, he rolled up his sleeves and said, “Hell, there’s only three of ’em. That’s just about the right number for me to take on myself.”

I went home with an easy conscience; whether or not Lefty Rariden survived his own foolhardiness didn’t concern me.

As I passed Mrs. Tobin’s house, I noticed she wasn’t on her front porch. I hadn’t seen her there for several days, so I paused for a moment to look at her empty rocker. Something glinted in the window behind it. It was the service flag: the blue star had been replaced by a gold one.

Damn. Harold Tobin wasn’t coming back.