Murder at Wrigley Field (7 page)

Fohl wasn’t straight with me, I thought. Or maybe the classrooms were a little too innocent. Or perhaps because I agreed with what they seemed to be doing at the church there were things I’d chosen not to see. Something was missing.

I emerged from the park on North Avenue and headed east. Near California Street was the Crystal Theatre, where I’d been sitting with Edna Chapman one week ago at this time. One very long week ago.

In front of the theater, I caught a street car for Lake View. It wasn’t until the ride home that I realized what I hadn’t seen at First Trinity: young men. Other than Fohl and his friend Gus, everyone in the classrooms had been children, young ladies, or old folks.

Where were all the young men I’d seen entering the church? Like the fellow whose boy was going to be the next Ed Walsh. There were rooms Fohl didn’t show me and maybe a basement. The men were somewhere in the building, and I’d bet they weren’t taking music lessons.

S
unday morning, half past nine, halfway into my second cup of coffee, Charles Weeghman phoned. “What the hell are you trying to do to me?” was his greeting.

“Uh, I don’t know what you mean.”

“You see the morning paper?”

“Which paper?”

“Any of ’em, for chrissake.” He projected his scowl through the telephone wire. “Every goddamn one of ’em has it plastered on the front page.”

“No, I haven’t read the newspaperyet. What’s on the front page?”

“That I’m pro-German!” He paused. “And do you know why they’re saying that?”

“No.” But I had a feeling he was going to tell me.

“Because I let your friend Willie Kaiser be buried in a Cubs uniform!”

Oh, jeez. “Well, actually, Mr. Weeghman, that was my doing. See—”

Weeghman roared, “I know goddamn well it was your doing! It sure as hell wasn’t mine!” He must have been thoroughly peeved to take the time to yell at me over the phone. In a couple of hours I’d be at the ballpark and he could have the pleasure of bawling me out in person. Of course, this could be just a preview of what he’d be giving me at the park.

I tried to explain. “See, Mr. Weeghman, his mother said that’s what he would have wanted. Of course, I don’t see how she could have known that, but hey she’s his mother, so if anybody should know she would, right?” Picking up steam, I said, “Anyway, it made her feel better to do it, and I figured at a time like that it’s the least I could do. Did you know she lost two husbands?” Without giving Weeghman a chance to answer, I continued, “She told me you wouldn’t give her a Cubs uniform. So what I did was I gave her mine. But I didn’t know there might be a good reason why you wouldn’t give her one, like that the papers might take it the wrong way or something. See?”

His lengthy silence told me he didn’t see. Finally, Weeghman said, “Well, the uniform is just one thing you screwed up on. The other is First Trinity Lutheran. What the hell were you doing there last night?”

I’d forgotten that Weeghman was watching his players. “Uh, well—”

“You already knew I was pissed about Kaiser going there. What makes you think it was all right for you to go?”

“Well, because you told me to.”

“I
what?”

“You told me to see what he was up to.”

“That’s when he was alive. What do I care about him now?”

I didn’t like the way he said that, but I let it pass. Sometimes I don’t word things so good either. I groped for another explanation that might satisfy him about my presence at the church and came up empty.

“Look,” Weeghman said. “Stay away from that place. Stay away from anything German. I don’t need no more front pages like today. Find out who’s trying to put me out of business. That’s all I want you to do.”

“That’s what I was doing at the church,” I said. It wasn’t really, but I didn’t want Weeghman closing off any options. I intended to go wherever I pleased.

“What—you think Kaiser was involved in something there?”

“No, but he might have known people who were. Other people who were at the church when he went there last Saturday.”

“Huh.” It sounded like he was coming around. “So did you find out anything?”

“Not yet, but—”

“No buts. You keep working on it. I worked too hard to get what I got. I ain’t gonna have it taken from me.”

“Okay, Mr. Weeghman.” I figured I owed him something after getting him bad press for the uniform.

He clicked off without saying good-bye. I wondered if before buying a baseball team a prospective owner has to sign an agreement that he’ll treat his players like something you’d scrape off your shoe.

Then I decided that I did not need to make up for getting him in trouble over the uniform. All I owed him was to play good baseball. No, I did that out of pride and for the fans. I didn’t owe Charles Weeghman anything at all.

This year began with such promise.

In my second season with the Cubs, I was a starting player for the first time in my career. I earned a starting player’s salary: $3,800, enough to carry me through the winter without taking an extra job. And a couple of other firsts, long-standing goals of mine, appeared to be in easy reach.

One was to end a season over the .250 mark in batting. With so many of the National League’s best pitchers in France, that looked easy to achieve.

More important was getting to play in a World Series. When Grover Alexander, who’d averaged more than thirty wins a year for the past four years, joined the Cubs’ pitching staff, we were heavy favorites to win the pennant.

After the initial scare when Alexander joined the Army, things settled down nicely and still went pretty much according to plan. The Cubs kept rolling to the pennant, and I kept hitting. As of today, the Cubs were five games ahead of the Giants in the standings, fourteen games ahead of the third-place Pirates, and I had a batting average of .274. Even allowing for the fact that it was inflated by the low-caliber pitching, I figured it wasn’t inflated by more than twenty points and therefore was a legitimate .250. So I’d convinced myself, anyway.

I was settling into life as a citizen, too. For years, I’d moved from team to team, city to city, boarding house to hotel to apartment, and I’d gotten tired of it. On my arrival in Chicago last year, I’d decided no more boarding houses or cheap apartments for me. I rented this nice cottage and bought furniture that matched—mission—style furniture of white oak, clean and new and fully paid for. I used to assemble it years ago when I worked in a furniture factory; now I could afford my own.

Life was about as stable and normal as it could be for a ballplayer. I even voted in elections—though, breaking with Chicago tradition, never more than once. And I had a regular Saturday night date for the movies.

Everything was cozy and comfortable. Until the fates decided they didn’t like for me to be content.

Now my roommate and friend was dead. I no longer wanted to see my Saturday night date. Charles Weeghman was threatening to drop me from the team unless I helped him find out who was trying to put him out of business. Secretary of War Newton Baker was threatening to shut down baseball so that I could have the pleasure of being gassed in trench warfare, protecting censorship and persecution at home.

And I couldn’t even take a hot bath. My landlord still hadn’t agreed to get me a new hot water tank.

I decided if the big things were all going against me, at least I was going to have one little thing taken care of. Putting in a call to my landlord, I agreed to pay for a new one. “You’re right,” I told him facetiously. “It was my fault. I must have just misplaced the darn thing.”

Then I left for the ballpark to see if Charles Weeghman was going to chew me out some more.

Walking from my front door to the street, I saw my next-door neighbor sitting on her porch, knitting something brown and tangled. “Good morning, Mrs. Tobin!” I called with a wave. “Heard from Harold lately?”

The clicking of her knitting needles stopped momentarily as she held up a piece of paper. “Got a letter Friday!”

I walked up the flagstone path to her front steps. Mrs. Tobin was an attractive, petite woman with long chestnut hair and glittering green eyes; she had no husband and was rumored to be a divorcee. She sat in a bare wood rocking chair that was almost motionless. Piles of light and dark brown yarn rested in her lap contrasting with the blue calico of her dress. Hanging in the window behind her was a red and white service flag with a single blue star representing her one son in the service.

“What does he say?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s excited to be in France. Hasn’t been to Paris though. And he hasn’t seen any battle yet. That’s fine by me. He’s my only child. Harold’s raring to fight though. What is it about men and war, anyway? For some reason, they just love to fight.”

Was she implying that I lacked something because I wasn’t eager to go to war? “I don’t know, Mrs. Tobin. That a sweater?”

She held up the knitting. About half a sleeve was completed. “I want to send this off to him by fall. Winter can get cold in those trenches, I expect.”

“Expect so,” I agreed. “Tell him hi from me next time you write him.” I turned to go, then turned back. “Say, Mrs. Tobin, about a week ago did you by any chance see somebody move a water tank out of my place?”

The needles stopped. “A tank of water?”

“No, a water tank. You know for hot water. It was in my cellar and somebody took it.”

She shook her head emphatically and the clicking resumed.

“Well, I better get to the park. That’s going to be a real nice sweater.”

She smiled. “If you decide to go over there I’ll make you one, too.”

Was that a suggestion that I should enlist? “Thanks,” I said, and I walked back to the street.

Mrs. Tobin called after me, “Have fun at your game!”

She sounded like she meant it. But within two steps, my ears translated her words to, “Go play your game. Harold’s going into no-man’s-land to be cut down by machine guns.”

This damned war was making me crazy.

It was a relief to be in Cubs Park again.

Strange. Despite Willie being killed the last time I was on the field, I still looked forward to being in this ballpark. It was still a sanctuary for me.

With a doubleheader to play against Christy Mathewson’s Reds to make up some of the lost games, I’d have eighteen innings to concentrate on nothing but hitting Fred Toney’s fastball and Hod Eller’s shineball. And on turning double plays with our new starting shortstop, Wicket Greene.

Greene got what he wanted: Willie’s job. He at least had the good sense not to gloat about it. In fact, he wasn’t saying much of anything. Winning a starting job by replacing a dead man is nothing to brag about. Nor is taking the place of one who’s off at war, I suppose.

I slammed my bat on the locker room floor at the thought and garnered surprised looks from my teammates dressing nearby. Okay, so I hadn’t really earned my job either. But I was going to keep it, dammit. I liked playing baseball, playing every inning of every game if I could. That’s what it came down to: I wanted to keep playing baseball. After the number of innings I’d spent on the bench in my career, I deserved it. But I hadn’t earned it, any more than Wicket Greene had.

After picking up the bat, I resumed honing it with a dry ham bone. I sat in front of my locker, wearing only my summer underwear, while I waited for our clubhouse man to bring me a new uniform to replace the flannels that Willie would be wearing forever. I looked into the locker next to mine. Willie’s street clothes still hung there from his last day in the park, his last day alive.

I was itching to get out on the field and into the throes of a game because so far it didn’t feel like I was escaping from thoughts of Willie or the war.

At least we wouldn’t be repeating Willie’s final march today. With the four-day layoff, both teams needed extra practice. However much the owners wanted to convince the War Department that we were ready for war, shagging flies and taking batting practice took priority over close-order drills.

Our manager, Fred Mitchell, walked up to me with a cherubic boy in tow. Mitchell was a modest, square-jawed former pitcher and catcher who’d played for seven teams in seven years. As a pitcher, he’d relieved Cy Young in the first game in Boston Red Sox history and got credit for the win. Now in only his second season at the helm of the Cubs, he had us heading for the World Series. “Mickey,” he said, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I want you to meet our newest Cub. This is ...”

Cub? Jeez, they’re getting younger all the time. The war could go on for another five years and he still wouldn’t be draft age. Maybe that was the owners’ latest plan: fill the rosters with children.

“... played shortstop with the Oak Park Stars. He’s a little green yet though. Figured you could show him a few things.”