“Right. Now: opportunity. It had to be someone who was there.”

  “Wouldn’t it allays have to be someone who was there?”

  “No, not always. You can give somebody slow-acting poison and be miles away when it takes effect.”

  “Time out. I’m getting confused. Can we leave out guns and slow-acting poison? I think I’d be able to understand this better if we stuck to what happened to Corriden. ”

  “Oh, of course. You’re right.”

  “Anyway, what was it about opportunity?”

  “Well, it had to be somebody who was there. I went to the library and checked a newspaper for April twenty-seventh. It said there were a little over twenty-two thousand people at the game—”

  “Oh great. That sure narrows it down. Twenty-two thousand. And how about the vendors, and the people who work in the ballpark? The players? The umpires? That brings it to what? Twenty-five thousand suspects?”

  I must have sounded frustrated and hopeless. Peggy tried to be patient with me, but there was a hint of exasperation in her voice. “No. It doesn’t mean twenty-five thousand suspects. I didn’t check the paper to see how many suspects there were. I wanted to see if anything unusual was reported about the game.”

  “Oh... Was there anything unusual?”

  “No, not as far as I could tell. I thought perhaps there was a fight in the stands that could have carried over after the game, something like that. But there wasn’t anything.”

  Peggy was dragging me along on this unfathomable tour of her detective logic. Trying to follow it and failing, I became skeptical about this whole detecting process. “I still don’t get it. How exactly do we find one killer out of twenty-two thousand people who were there?”

  “Well, not everybody who was at the game is a suspect, of course. Motive, means, and opportunity all have to go together. It had to be somebody at the ballpark who had a reason to kill Mr. Corriden and could use a baseball bat to do it.”

  “But even putting it all together, it still seems like it could be practically anybody.”

  “No... How many people in the park that day even knew Red Corriden? And how many of them could have killed him with a baseball bat?”

  “Oh, I see. They’d have to be strong. It wasn’t a woman, or a child—”

  “That’s right! They wouldn’t have had the means. And opportunity: how many people would know their way through the corridors under the stands? Fenway Park is a new stadium. Most people have trouble just finding their seats. I think the key, though, is the motive.”

  “Do you have any ideas who would have had a motive?”

  Peggy shook her head. “No, not yet. I tried to think of the usual motives. Money is probably the most common. Does anyone benefit financially from Mr. Corriden’s death? Husbands and wives tend to kill each other a lot, too. Let’s see ... revenge, jealously, I don’t know what else. I gave a lot of thought to the motive possibilities. So I thought it would be helpful to find out about Mr. Corriden’s background, and then see if that could give us a clue to the reason he was killed. I started to find out a few things.” Peggy looked about the room, then walked over to a bookcase and took a notebook from a shelf. “Here it is. Let’s see what I have . . .”

  She sat back down, and referring to her notes, proceeded to astonish me. “Okay. He was born in Indiana. Twenty-four years old this year. Not married. Average size. Five foot seven, hundred and thirty-five pounds. Right-handed.

  “Let’s see... Began his career with Keokuk in the Central Association. Nineteen-eight. The next year, too. Nineteen-ten, the St. Louis Browns bought his contract. They sent him to play in Omaha, then brought him up to the Browns at the end of the year. Then what happened . . . Ah! The Browns acquired Jimmy Austin to play third base for them last year, so they released Corriden. He spent the year with Kansas City in the American Association. The Detroit Tigers bought him from Kansas City at the beginning of this year. They paid fifteen thousand dollars for him—that seems awfully expensive for a baseball player....” Peggy concluded with a satisfied look, “Well, that’s all I have.”

  I hesitated a moment, then couldn’t help asking, “Where’s Keokuk?”

  She answered with a giggle, “It’s in Iowa.”

  I was incredulous. “How did you find all that out?”

  “Just a couple of telephone calls. I started with the Detroit Tigers office. Then the Browns. Then I called the Sporting News in St. Louis. That was it.”

  “The telephone! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I was going to wait until we traveled West again to see what I could find out. Jeez ...” Maybe I really wasn’t cut out for this investigating business. This venture was starting to seem overwhelming. I tried to shake the confusion out of my head—to no avail. I thought coffee might help me think straight, and picked up the cup in front of me. The coffee was cold, but I gulped it down anyway. It didn’t help either.

  The door knocker unexpectedly sounded out four evenly spaced taps. Peggy bolted up, exclaiming, “Oh! He’s early. I wanted to tell you first—” She swept to the door and pulled it open to admit a man I had never met.

  “Who the hell is he?” almost blurted from my lips, but I swallowed it, mumbling only a garbled “whmph,” which went unnoticed.

  Although handsomely dressed, the man didn’t look like much. A bookkeeper. No, an assistant bookkeeper. More like the errand boy of an assistant bookkeeper. In every aspect of his appearance, he was thin and wiry. From his spindly arms and legs to his tightly pursed lips to the sparse strands of receding brown hair plastered across his skull—even to the dainty steel-rimmed spectacles perched on his bony nose. If he were a baseball player he’d be penciled last in the batting order, after the pitcher. And when he was sent up to the plate, he’d be told, “Crouch real low and try to draw a walk.” I didn’t like him.

  “Mickey, this is Karl Landfors. He’s a—was a friend of David’s. They worked together in New York. Karl, this is Mickey Rawlings.” “Mickey” suddenly sounded like a kid’s name.

  Landfors distastefully stuck his hand out and I tried to shake it. Our flesh made barest contact as he quickly slithered his fingers out of my grasp. I imparted a brusque, “Hi. Mick Rawlings.”

  “Yes, so I gathered.”

  “Coffee?” Peggy asked Landfors.

  “Yes, please. If it’s no trouble.” He used a different voice—almost tifelike—when he addressed Peggy.

  She tried hard to sound cheerful and light, as if she were throwing an afternoon tea party. She babbled about something or other while she filled the third coffee cup that was on the tray. Another indication that I might not make much of a detective: I had noticed the extra cup earlier, and assumed it was a spare in case I broke one.

  Peggy settled back on the couch, and Landfors slipped past me to take the spot next to her—where I had been seated minutes before. I had a choice of pulling him off the couch or sitting by myself in a chair. I reluctantly took a chair.

  “I thought Karl would be able to help with the murder case,” Peggy said, in a tone that sounded as if she were still trying to maintain a tea party mood. “He does a lot of investigative reporting.”

  “You told a stranger about it?”

  “He’s not a stranger—I’ve known him for years. He and David used to write for the same newspaper. He’s very reliable and I trust him completely.”

  “You’re a reporter?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re planning to write about this. For a newspaper.”

  “No. I promised Peggy that this would all be off the record. I only agreed to help as a favor to her.” He smiled slightly. “I don’t do routine crime-reporting anyway.”

  I turned to Peggy. “What exactly did you tell this guy?”

  “Of course if you don’t want my assistance,” Landfors continued, “I don’t intend to force it on you. But Peggy certainly seems to think you can use it.” Do I have to ask him to take his glasses off, or can I just go ahead and punch him?

  Peggy answered calmly, “I told him about the murder, and about Mr. Tyler having the body moved, and that the police might think you’re a suspect—everything you told me. I think this whole thing has to be resolved. Once and for all, to get it behind you. And Karl could be a lot of help.”

  I was furious that she would tell somebody about the murder, and about me, without first asking me. “Really? How is he going to help?”

  “I have contacts, and I know how to dig up information.” Landfors ended every statement with a wispy sniff. I wished he’d either blow his nose or shut up.

  Peggy continued to champion Landfors. “And Karl knows what will hold up in court. We can’t just guess at who the killer is. There has to be evidence, evidence to—”

  “Evidence,” Landfors took over, “to obtain an arrest warrant, then an indictment, and finally to convince a jury.” I didn’t like him finishing her sentence. And I wasn’t sure what an indictment was.

  “I already did some checking on your Robert Tyler.” Landfors addressed me in a slow, distinct way, as if he were explaining something to a rather dull schoolboy. “Did you know that he used to work for Ban Johnson—president of the American League?”

  Barely holding my tongue and fists in check, I answered, “I know who Ban Johnson is. And yes, I know Bob Tyler worked for him.” This is supposed to be helpful?

  Landfors went on unperturbed. “In fact, Tyler pretty much ran the New York office. Do you know how he raised the money to buy his share of the Red Sox?”

  My silence told him the answer was no.

  “It seems the New York American League team has a player who intentionally loses games—a Harold Chase.”

  “Hal Chase.”

  “Yes, whatever. As I was saying, Chase loses games for gamblers who place bets on the opposing team. Do you know who Arnold Rothstein is?”

  “No.” Get on with it already.

  “He’s a gambler. One of New York’s more notorious. He pays Chase more money to lose games than the Highlanders pay him to win.”

  “Everybody knows Chase throws games. What does this have to do with Bob Tyler?”

  “What it has to do with Tyler is that a baseball player who is known to be dishonest is still allowed to play major-league baseball.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Charges have been brought against Chase a number of times—not in a court of law, but to the league office. Two of Chase’s managers, Norman Elberfeld—”

  “Kid Elberfeld.”

  “—and George Stallings, have both filed complaints about Chase. The curious thing is that nothing was done to Chase, but both of those managers were fired.” Landfors paused, relishing my puzzlement before coming to the point. “It turns out that Arnold Rothstein paid a certain highly placed person in the American League office to ensure that Hal Chase could continue to play baseball.”

  “Bob Tyler?”

  “Very good. And that’s where Tyler got the money to buy into the Red Sox.”

  Jeez. “How do I know this is true? How did you get this information?”

  “Getting information is my business. Of course I don’t really follow baseball, so I talked to Fred Lieb, one of our sportswriters. He filled me in on some of the details.” Landfors smirked with satisfaction. His revelations about Bob Tyler impressed me. He didn’t, the revelations did.

  Peggy then threw a curve at me. “I had an idea. It may sound a little bizarre, but what if it wasn’t really Red Corriden? The body, I mean.”

  “Sure it was,” I said, feeling on firm ground. “That’s the only thing that is solved. Jimmy Macullar said he and the cop moved the body to Dorchester. Remember? It was Corriden.”

  “What I mean is, what if the body at Fenway. Park wasn’t Mr. Corriden?”

  “How? I don’t understand.”

  “You said his face was completely battered. Then how was the body identified? What if Mr. Corriden wanted people to think he was dead, so he gives the real murder victim his identity and disappears. That could even make Mr. Corriden the murderer. He could have killed the man, and put some papers or something with his identification on it in the man’s pocket. See?”

  “Is that from some detective story?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Landfors piped up, “It would make a good one though.” He was trying to flatter her. “I think that’s a theory that should be explored.” This from a guy who calls Kid Elberfeld “Norman.”

  I felt I was the one with the most useful expertise here, and asserted myself. “Keep in mind that we’re talking about baseball players here. Corriden, Tyler—okay, he’s not a player, but still... And Hal Chase, and Jimmy Macullar was a player. I think I’m in the best position to investigate the case. It needs somebody who’s in the game. Baseball’s my profession, and—”

  “Profession!” Landfors mocked. “You don’t really consider baseball a profession, do you?”

  I lost patience with him. “What the hell do you do that makes you such a big deal?”

  “I don’t waste my life playing a silly game.” A silly game?

  “Didn’t you ever play ball?” I asked.

  Landfors looked taken aback. “Well... A little. When I was young. I don’t think playing games is much of an occupation for a man though.”

  “You were the one they always picked last, weren’t you?”

  “What?”

  “When they chose up sides for a game. You always got picked last, didn’t you?”

  “I did not.”

  “Betcha did.”

  “Mickey! Karl! Please. You both sound like little boys.”

  I got up to leave. “I think I better go. I have things to do. Real nice meeting you, Landers.”

  “Landfors. ”

  “Mickey! Please!” Peggy sounded frantic. Her little party was not ending on a happy note. I stalked out the door, impervious to her pleas to come back.

  I sauntered down the steps and out onto the street at a carefully casual pace intended to show that I was thoroughly indifferent to what Peggy and her friend thought of me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Until I saw Peggy and Karl Landfors in the same room, I hadn’t realized how ridiculous my romantic intentions toward her were. I must have been crazy to have had hopes for Peggy and me as sweethearts.

  I never before asked myself the simple question: Why would Peggy be interested in me? True, I was a fairly good-looking guy, and being a major-league baseball player gave me some kind of celebrity. But those qualities were probably low on Peggy’s list of requirements for a beau. No, a college boy was the type for her. Unhandsome as he was, and lacking as he was in personality, Karl Landfors was more her type than I. There were looks that passed between them that showed me they thought the same way. And if they thought the same way, maybe they felt the same way—and maybe about each other.

  Peggy and Landfors had me pretty disoriented, not only personally, but about the investigation. Peggy actually seemed to think of it as just some kind of parlor game—although maybe I was somewhat to blame for her attitude, since I hadn’t told her how serious it had become.

  And the talk about evidence and the courts left me uncertain about my approach. I figured you just find the killer, tell the cops who did it, and then leave the judges or the lawyers or the police to work out the details. That’s it. Case solved. Peggy and Landfors seemed to think there’s more to it than that.

  Landfors did get my interest up with his information about Bob Tyler, though. If Tyler was involved with gamblers, that could put a new slant on things... somehow... I suppose. If Landfors was right, that is. How did I know he had accurate information? He might have made the story up out of whole cloth just to impress Peggy. The conniving little...

  I didn’t know how I was going to go about solving Red Corriden’s murder now. The only thing I was sure of was that I wouldn’t be working on it with Peggy anymore, and certainly not with Landfors. But somehow I’d figure out how to proceed, and when I solved it on my own, I’d make sure Landfors knew about it.

  I finally put Peggy and her irksome friend out of my thoughts, and turned my attention to the upcoming Independence Day doubleheader.

  July Fourth was the fifth straight day of a blistering Boston heat wave. It was the scalding, still kind of heat that makes you move around in the vain hope of getting out of its way. The exertion then leaves you instantly exhausted from the effort, and hotter than you were before. So you try moving again... and you’re singed some more.

  The first game of the holiday doubleheader turned out to be a runaway, and Smoky Joe Wood breezed—he was the only breeze this day—to an easy 6—0 win. The New York batters looked so spiritless and inept, that I could have pitched a victory against them.

  During the break between games, while the infield dirt was dragged and fresh lime was applied to the foul lines, our territory was invaded by the enemy. Hal Chase walked across to the Boston side of the field as if claiming it for his own. He stayed away from the players, though. It was the box seats next to the dugout that attracted him. Or, rather, their colorful occupants did.

  A front-row box in this location would usually be occupied by VIPs in somber-colored suits. Tickets for these seats took not only money but front office connections. The four men who greeted Chase were no politicians or industrialists, though. They would have been more at home at a racetrack. They wore loud checked suits and caps cocked at arrogant angles. They must have been hilarious wits, judging from the incessant, raucous howling that came from the box.

  Chase greeted them all loudly, then focused his attention on the least noisy of the four. The man was in a lime green suit with the vest buttons unfastened. A lemon yellow cap covered all his hair and drooped over his left eye. A black cigar not much smaller than a baseball bat stuck out from under a light-brown Teddy Roosevelt mustache.

  Chase clearly reveled in his notoriety. I couldn’t believe he would flaunt his friendship with gamblers in front of an entire stadium. I was relieved when the teams were called in to the dugouts and he left our side of the field. The air seemed to smell better with his departure. The gamblers remained, but they didn’t offend me by themselves—a ball player fraternizing with them was what I couldn’t stand.

 

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