Murder at Wrigley Field (5 page)

Good thing Black Jack Pershing didn’t see me throw batting practice, I thought.

Harrington came to his close. He paused to place his hat over his heart, then uttered the phrase of the day, “this great game of ours.” The move looked insincere and the words rang hollow. Yup, he was a politician at heart. But if Bennett Harrington could help keep the War Department from closing down the season, he was all right with me.

After a few final words from Charles Weeghman, the band launched into a slow, cautious version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” President Wilson had declared it to be the country’s national anthem for the duration of the war, so the musicians gave extra care to playing the notes as written.

The anthem ended with a raucous burst of rockets and firecrackers. Our adolescent lieutenant ordered, “Forward...
march!”
and we began moving toward second.

The Cincinnati squad marched toward the same destination from their place behind third. Seeing the Reds squad, I realized what a ridiculous appearance both teams must be making. The knobs flaring at the ends of the bats made it look like we were armed with toy blunderbusses.

As the Cubs and Reds converged toward the VIP platform, Bennett Harrington stood. He put his hat over his heart again and lifted his right hand in salute. The rest of the dignitaries scrambled to follow his lead.

Our lieutenant squealed, “Right turn . . .
march!”
and Cincinnati’s leader gave the same order for a left turn. Both squads executed the maneuver smoothly. The Reds veered off toward left field, while we marched toward the cheering fans in the right field bleachers.

I stole a look at Willie, tempted to congratulate him on the successful turn. I could tell from his satisfied smile that he’d sufficiently complimented himself on the feat.

Willie’s face suddenly froze. A fountain of red erupted from his chest, spurting from the “U” in
CUBS.
He gave a soft grunt and blood bubbled from his lips. I dropped my bat and moved to catch him as he began to collapse. In the back of my mind, the sound of thunder registered. I threw my arm around his back to hold him up.

Teammates stumbled into us, then quickly stepped away.

Willie’s eyes were wide, white, and sightless. He felt nothing as I laid him down on the grass, still supporting his head.

I never saw anyone die at such close range before. I didn’t know how quiet death could be. Like turning off a gas tamp—a flicker, a hiss, and it’s off.

That’s how Willie Kaiser died.

The aftermath was fast and frenzied like a series of quick cuts in a moving picture. I watched, dazed, feeling as powerless and detached from the action as if staring at a movie screen.

Calls went up for a doctor, and one was ushered from the stands to the field carrying the traditional black bag. He took his time to do an examination before pronouncing the obvious: Willie Kaiser was dead.

The players of both teams looked on horrified. I spotted Wicket Greene; his ugly mouth was agape, and he kept passing the back of his hand over his bulging forehead.

Mayor Thompson, J. Ogden Armour, Bennett Harrington, William Wrigley, and the other dignitaries quickly vanished from the scene.

I noticed blood on my right sleeve. Willie’s blood. I absentmindedly began rubbing the spot with my thumb. I knew I couldn’t erase it, but it was something to do. I wanted to make it all go away.

At the megaphone, Charles Weeghman announced that the game was canceled. He, too, looked distraught. I wondered if it was because he lost a .320 hitter or because he’d have to refund all of the day’s ticket sales.

Fred Merkle and Hippo Vaughn were recruited to take Willie to the clubhouse on a stretcher. I watched as they carried his limp body from the field.

Stadium police swarmed about with no apparent purpose but to show that they were there. Nobody was taking charge. This just didn’t happen at a baseball game. They could handle rain delays, fans running on the field, even a fire in the stands. For a shooting in the ballpark, they were at a loss what to do.

I approached a cop wearing sergeant’s stripes. “Who’s going to tell his family?” I asked.

“Damned if I know,” he grunted.

I sighed. “I’ll tell them.”

I looked at my sleeve, at the blood spot I was rubbing. Edna and her mother shouldn’t see that. As I walked to the clubhouse to change clothes, the cop called after me, “Who are you?”

Loudly and firmly, I answered, “His friend!”

A
ccidental death from a stray bullet. That was the explanation printed in the
Chicago American.
Same in the
Tribune,
the
Herald-Examiner,
the
Journal,
and the
Daily
News. Chicago’s Friday morning papers all came to the identical conclusion: some rowdy, probably drunk on illegal liquor, had carelessly shot off a gun in celebration of the holiday. The bullet had come down, purely by chance, in Willie Kaiser.

It was curious—and suspicious—how the newspaper stories matched each other almost word for word. This despite a conspicuous lack of specifics: no such drunken celebrant was identified, there was no mention of any witness who had seen someone wielding a gun, no make of weapon was specified—not even whether it was a pistol or a rifle. And each article ended with a sanctimonious sermon in favor of prohibition. The way the stories read, Willie’s death amounted to nothing more than a useful morality tale on the evils of alcohol.

The other similarity in the reports was their location: inconspicuous, single columns, no photographs. None of them appeared on the front pages, which were dominated by Independence Day observances and the war. The only baseball-related news to make a front page was in the
Daily News,
with a headline that read
Shoeless Joe a Slacker Says Comiskey;
it was subheaded
May Not Let Jackson Return to
Sox. I made a mental note to read that piece later.

I had to flip all the way to the inside pages of the sports sections to find the stories of Willie’s death. The sports page. What a place to report a shooting. Why not summarize it in a box score: no at bats, one shot, one death.

The similarities in the stories were too similar to be coincidence. The news coverage had been coordinated by somebody. Most national news these days had to pass through the government’s Committee for Public Information. Would they handle something like this?

Or was Weeghman behind it in an attempt to avoid bad publicity? A baseball player shot to death in a crowded ballpark—there couldn’t be anything worse than that for scaring away fans.

I tossed the papers on top of the
New York Press
issues stacked next to my chair. After a few minutes’ thought, I decided it wasn’t Weeghman. He wouldn’t have had the stories placed on the sports pages. That was the part of the papers his customers read.

Whatever the source of the tale, I didn’t believe a word of it. I wasn’t sure what I did believe, but I was certain that Willie’s death was no accident.

I had no more solid evidence for my conclusion than the papers had for theirs. Except for the fact that I’d been next to Willie when he was shot, and I’d seen with my own eyes what the bullet did to him.

What bothered me most was where the bullet hit him: right in the “U” of “CUBS,” dead center in his chest. I knew that an accidental shot would be as likely to hit that spot as any other, but it felt suspicious. I also knew that my logic was questionable, for if Willie had been intentionally targeted by a gunman with poor aim and struck in the foot, I could have easily believed the accident theory. Logical or not, the location of the wound was enough to get my instincts riled up, and I got to thinking.

About the path of the bullet, for another thing. I’d seen where the bullet had entered Willie’s chest. Since I had blood on my sleeve from supporting his back, I also knew where it had exited. The bullet had traveled horizontally. If somebody shoots off a gun in celebration, he shoots it in the air. The slug would have come back down vertically.

Now I had something tangible that didn’t jibe with the newspaper reports.

I thought a bit more and realized I hadn’t seen the bullet actually enter. I knew where the two wounds were, but I couldn’t swear as to which was the entrance and which the exit. Maybe the bullet had come from the other direction.

I pictured the way we were marching, Willie in the front row. The bullet couldn’t have entered his back without first striking another player behind him. It had to have come from the front.

What was in front? I could see the crowded right field bleachers and the fans on the rooftops.

The shot hadn’t come from the bleachers or somebody would have seen the gunman. Unless a pistol was used, maybe. But still somebody would have heard the sound.

From a roof, then? No, they had been packed, too. Again, somebody would have seen the shooter or heard the shot.

Heard...

The hollow thunder that I’d heard yesterday echoed in my ear. And I knew where the bullet had come from: one of the row houses on Sheffield Avenue. Not from a rooftop but from a window. No one to see the shooter, and four walls to give the sound a muffled resonance. A shot from outdoors would have cracked more like a bat hitting a ball.

Then it echoed again, more faintly, as I remembered a time when somebody had shot at me in a ballpark. Fenway Park. That shot had come from a tunnel under the stands and with the same deep, distant tone. I must have been about Willie’s age then. And, like him, I was in my rookie season. There was one big difference, though: I wasn’t killed. I was able to find out who shot at me, and I did.

For Willie to get justice, somebody would have to pinch hit for him.

Mrs. Chapman was slumped in her parlor chair, looking as though she had fallen into it hours before and hadn’t moved since. A baggy black dress hung about her in folds and wrinkles like a pile of unironed laundry. She clutched a crumpled white handkerchief in her fist, holding it to her bosom as unchecked tears streaked her sagging cheeks.

I’d heard there’s no worse pain than to lose a child, and from the look on her face I believed it. She had a far-off expression in her red, wet eyes as if staring at memories and noting every detail to keep them from ever fading.

“Mrs. Chapman,” I said tentatively.

She didn’t answer, didn’t flinch.

I exchanged glances with Edna. She was dressed in the same black as her mother, but she wore her mourning clothes with a kind of stiff defiance rather than resignation. Although Edna’s narrow eyes were also wet, she refused to let the tears escape beyond her puffy lids, so her cheeks were dry. She gave a slight nod in the direction of her mother, suggesting I try again.

I did, twice more, before she noticed I was there.

“Ah, Mickey.” Mrs. Chapman turned her head to face me without shifting her body an inch. There was faint pleading hope in her eyes. The same look that had been in them yesterday. By the time I’d gotten to their house, a neighbor had already phoned them with the news of Willie’s death. But when I’d arrived, Edna and her mother had looked at me hopefully, perhaps expecting I would tell them it wasn’t so. I’d have given anything not to have had to disappoint them.

“I, uh, I brought this,” I said, holding out to her a carefully pressed Chicago Cubs home uniform.

“They gave you one!”

“No, ma’am, it’s mine. But it should fit him fine.” Willie and I sometimes had to borrow each others clothes on road trips; except for his neck being a little thicker, we were the same size.

“I asked the Cubs for a uniform to bury him in,” Mrs. Chapman said in a choked voice. “They said no.” She took the uniform and laid it on her lap. If she looked closely at the right sleeve she’d find a threadbare patch were I’d scraped off every trace of Willie’s blood. “It’s what he would have wanted,” she said, tenderly stroking the fabric.

I doubted that she could know for sure how Willie would have wanted to be buried. He probably never gave it any thought. A rookie ballplayer doesn’t think about his own funeral plans. I never did, not even when the occasion seemed imminent.

But it gave some comfort to Mrs. Chapman to believe she was complying with his wishes, so I was glad to have stopped at the park for my uniform. There’d been few people there: four or five maintenance workers dismantling the platform and half a dozen police officers strolling around the playing field. It would be three days until ballplayers would be on the field again. Weeghman had canceled all Cubs games until after Willie’s funeral.

“My poor boy,” murmured Mrs. Chapman.

The warm musty air of the room, dense with the aromas of sauerkraut, lamp oil, and perfume, started to close in on me. It was the same as the very first time I had entered the Chapman’s home: heavy air, the kind found in the house of a stranger or an aged aunt, had tried to push me away. Then, after a few visits, the atmosphere no longer struck me as alien; it had become the agreeable scent of home. Now it was back, choking me, suggesting I was no longer welcome here.

I needed to get outside. “Think I’ll take the dogs for a walk,” I said to Edna.

“I just walked them,” she said softly.

Figures. No matter what happened, she wasn’t going to neglect the creatures who depended on her.

“Well, I’ll take them anyway.”

Her raised eyebrows asked if she could join me.

“You better take care of your mother,” I said. Mrs. Chapman was running a fingertip over the front of the jersey, tracing the
CUBS
lettering. Fresh tears glistened on her face.

Edna nodded.

I took the leashes from where they hung on the kitchen doorknob and went to the dogs’ room.

The dachshunds, who’d been sleeping off the earlier exercise, hopped up at the sight of the ropes and started bouncing around pretending they hadn’t been let out in days. A convincing bunch of actors they were. As I attached the leashes to their collars, I could swear Rube was smirking at the way they were putting one over on me.

Taking our usual route, I started walking them north along broad Paulina Street through the Chapman’s neighborhood of Ravenswood. Since the residents of this part of the city were predominantly German, no one objected to dachshunds.

It was slow progress, trying to walk four dogs who thought I was a maypole. I had to keep stopping to unwind their leashes from my legs.

Rube, oblivious to the death in the family, was in a playful mood, almost prancing. Although there’s nothing more ungainly than a dachshund with a limp, I thought he was the best-looking dog of the bunch. And I wondered how many more times I’d get to see him.

I was part of the family when Willie was alive, a big brother, in a way. Now I felt like an outsider. With him gone, his family probably wouldn’t want me around anymore. I’d serve only as a reminder of happier times that were permanently over.

Nothing was going to be the same without Willie.

We were on the corner of Lawrence and Hermitage when Edna came up at a brisk pace. Rube was tangled around my left leg, two others were around my right, and the fourth dog had his leg up to water a lamppost.

Edna answered my questioning look. “Hans came to visit. He’ll watch Mama.” She bent down and unwrapped the two dachshunds from my right leg.

She took control of their leashes, and we headed south on Hermitage. I should have said something comforting but couldn’t. All I could think was that before Willie was shot I had wanted to break up our dating routine, clarify it, stop seeing her. I felt inexplicably guilty now.

“That was nice of you to bring the uniform,” Edna said in her little-girl voice.

“Oh, well.... It seemed important to your mother.”

“You won’t get in any trouble, will you?”

Probably, I thought. “No,” I said. After all, what could the Cubs do to me—make me play in my underwear?

We paused while Rube tried to make use of the rear tire of a Model T. I tugged him away from the Ford to a Studebaker “Big Six” parked in front of it. In the back of my mind I was training him to a higher class of automobile in the event that he might run into Weeghman’s Packard someday.

Edna asked evenly, “Who would want to kill my brother?” Her tone was of genuine curiosity; it wasn’t an angry demand or a plaintive lament.

It was a question I couldn’t answer. After some thought, I mumbled, “The papers say it was an accident.”

She gave me a sharp look. I hadn’t answered her question, and evasiveness wasn’t going to work with her.

“I don’t know why anybody would want to ki—uh, hurt Willie,” I said. “He was a good kid. Never did anything to anybody. And a good ballplayer.” After it left my lips, I realized how silly that last sentence sounded. Would there have been reason to kill him had he been a lousy player? “I don’t know what happened,” I said with more snap than I intended.

“Would you find out?”

Edna Chapman had a disarming way of asking things so simply and directly that her requests seemed completely reasonable.

We turned east on Sunnyside Avenue, past the Ravenswood Methodist Episcopal Church, and I mulled it over. I didn’t know what I could do about it. There were too many things going on these days. How could I do any digging around when it wasn’t even clear where to dig? The papers had obviously been censored by somebody, probably the government. The cops weren’t revealing whatever they had found. And everything this year had political implications—not my area of expertise.