Charlie Strickler’s new uniform suited him: green suspenders hoisted his trousers, the sleeves of his collarless shirt were rolled up above his elbows, and he wore a bar rag over his left arm like a symbol of office.

  Strickler slowly drew me a draft, tilting the glass until it was almost full, then holding it upright to give it just the right head. He beamed with pride as he slid the beer in front of me. He was washed up as a ball player, but he was just hitting his stride as a bartender. “On the house,” he said.

  I wanted to be a paying customer, so I guzzled the first one, then ordered another. As Charlie refilled the glass, I thought maybe I’d have time for a third.

  I didn’t think of Strickler as a suspect anymore; I’d bought the explanation he gave me when I confronted him at Han-ratty’s. I knew some roommates could be real nuisances, but nobody gets himself murdered just for being annoying.

  My only worry about being here was that Tyler might find out that I came to see him. But I was running out of leads, and needed to take the risk. I thought there was more Strickler could tell me about Corriden.

  “This hits the spot, Charlie. Have yourself one on me.” He immediately reached for the tap to accept the offer.

  “Say, Charlie,” I said. “When you were rooming with Red Corriden—”

  “Come on, don’t go asking me about him. That was a hundred years ago. I got another life now. Baseball gave up on me. Now I got other things to do.”

  “Just one question? That’s all I’ll ask.”

  “All right, one. But I don’t like it, I won’t answer it.”

  “Fair enough. I just want to know: was there anything particular that was bothering him? Somebody after him? Something like that?”

  “Somebody after him? No, he never said nothing like that. But truth is, I didn’t stay in the room much when he was around. And when I did, I ignored what he said. Damn kid was always nagging at me. About drinking too much, and playing poker and craps. Especially about the cards and dice. That kid would carry on about gambling like Billy Sunday preaching against liquor. I just had to stop listening when he’d talk at me. So ... I don’t know if anything was bugging him.”

  I kept my word and didn’t ask any more questions. And Charlie Strickler didn’t say anything more about Red Corriden. And then we had a few more beers and argued about who was going to be elected president.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  For two months, I’d been convinced that Ty Cobb murdered Red Corriden. Suddenly a number of other contenders emerged with possible motives. And one of them knocked Cobb out of first place on my list of suspects.

  Ban Johnson wasn’t a serious possibility, of course. And Jack O’Connor was still an unknown; perhaps Landfors would find out something more about him.

  Robert F. Tyler is the one who moved into the top spot. As Peggy said, he was already involved in a crime by having the body moved. And I’d figured he was behind Jimmy Macullar’s murder. Now I found a motive for him to kill Red Corriden.

  According to Charlie Strickler, Corriden was riled up about gambling—he was on some kind of crusade. Who at Fenway Park was involved with gambling? Bob Tyler, who took payoffs from Arnold Rothstein. I thought, somehow, Red Corriden found out what Tyler had done. Then he confronted Tyler on the Tigers first trip to Fenway. And Tyler took extreme measures to squelch him. That would give Tyler an even stronger motive for having the body moved, and for having Macullar killed to complete the cover-up. And for having me killed if I kept nosing around.

  That’s what I thought. But the only thing I could be really sure of was that Red Corriden didn’t kill Jimmy Macullar.

  Since the Red Sox already had the pennant sewed up, Stahl decided to let some of the regulars take a rest before the World Series. I was to play second base during the short road trip to Chicago and Detroit.

  The three Chicago games were unmemorable. I played mechanically, my thoughts on the Corriden and Macullar murder cases, my mind laboring for ways to get proof. I had uncovered motives, I had developed theories. But I had found no hard evidence.

  And by the time the Chicago series was over, my latest theory bit the dust. I was already certain that Bob Tyler hadn’t killed Corriden himself. Now I realized that if he had someone else kill Corriden, he wouldn’t have allowed it to be done in Fenway Park. So it wasn’t Tyler.

  Ty Cobb was back atop the suspect list.

  Smoky Joe Wood pitched our first game in Detroit, going for seventeen wins in a row and sole possession of the American League record. The game ended up close, but Wood just didn’t have his best stuff. The Tigers hit him for six runs while the Sox could come up with only four. The loss left him in a tie with Walter Johnson for the A. L. record.

  The rest of the games were pretty routine. Ty Cobb did come down to second base a few times—safely, but never head first. And my legs stayed intact.

  I spent most of my time between games trying to make the most of what seemed likely to be my last chance to investigate the Corriden case. With time running out on me, I paid little heed to whether or not I was followed, and talked openly to Detroit ball players. I asked what they knew of both Red Corriden and Ty Cobb. The exact responses varied, but the essence of their content could be summed up by “good kid” and “son of a bitch,” respectively. Nothing useful.

  After the second game of the series, I sought out Hughie Jennings’s office. Walking through the corridors of Navin Field, I grimly imagined Red Corriden in the runways of Fenway Park.

  Jennings looked out of place behind a desk. I couldn’t picture him anywhere but in the third base coaches box, his orange hair and freckles ablaze, spurring on his team with the rebel “Ee-yah” yell that gave him his nickname. I asked him straight out what I wanted to know: how could he be sure that the body he identified in Boston was really Corriden. He seemed to think the inquiry a strange one, but he didn’t hesitate to answer. He said the corpse was difficult to look at but easy to identify: he knew it was Corriden by a distinctive spike scar on the left leg.

  That wasn’t a big help to the investigation, but it was worth tying up a possible loose end. To my surprise, I felt no satisfaction in finding that Peggy was wrong about the body not being Corriden.

  During our last night in Detroit, I lay disconsolate in my hotel bed, wondering what to do next. Fourteen days left in the season, and I was completely out of ideas. It’s bad enough to see time ticking off so quickly, but to let it pass without knowing how to make use of it was exasperating.

  Billy Neal was still up, playing his usual game of solitaire. Snapping the cards, placing jack on queen, ten on jack, nine on ten ... I resented seeing someone so pointlessly killing time. Didn’t he know how valuable it could be?

  “Playing solitaire the only thing you ever do, Billy?”

  “Nope. Sometimes I play poker, sometimes bridge.”

  “Oh yeah. Didn’t you play with Clyde Fletcher once?”

  “Mmm—yeah. A couple years ago, I guess.”

  “Fletch told me Hal Chase was in the game—and he cheated.”

  “Yeah, he sure did. Didn’t cheat by himself, though.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No, it was a bridge game—almost impossible to cheat without a partner. Fact, it was your pal Fletcher who was in on it with him.”

  “Fletcher? Are you sure?”

  “Hell, yeah. I should know, I lost a bundle.”

  Fletch. Jeez.

  I listened intently to Billy Neal’s breathing, waiting for it to turn into the slow regular rhythm that would indicate sleep. For the first time, I’d have preferred a roommate who snored. I knew who the murderer was, and needed to call Karl Landfors.

  After I was convinced that Neal was asleep, I padded out of our room in my stocking feet and went down to a public phone in the lobby.

  Landfors’s number was answered with a groggy, “Yeah?”

  “Karl, this is Mickey.”

  “What the—do you know what time it is?”

  “Yeah, real late. Listen, I know who killed Jimmy Macullar— and Red Corriden. And if you help me, I think I can prove it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I got it solved. Look, we’re leaving Detroit first thing in the morning. I should be back in Boston by Thursday. Can you be there—in Boston?”

  “Mmm, I think so. Yeah, sure, I should be able to get away.”

  “Great! When we get together I’ll lay it all out for you. There’s one more thing: do you know any bookies in New York?”

  “No ... I don’t think so.”

  “Can you find one?”

  “Find a bookie in New York? Gee, there’s a tough assignment.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. See if you can put a bet on Joe Jackson to win the batting championship.”

  “What?”

  I repeated, slowly, “Find out if you can put a bet on Joe Jackson to win the American League batting championship. Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it. Oh! Wait a minute. I heard from my friend in Sacramento: Jack O’Connor’s been playing for Alameda in the California State League this year. He’s sending me some box scores. They show O’Connor was playing in Bakersfield when Corriden was killed. And he was in Sacramento when Macullar got it. It couldn’t have been O’Connor.”

  “Yeah, I know it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Ty Cobb, either.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I slowly nursed my second beer, jiggling the glass now and then to give it a bit of a head. I had willingly exceeded my self-imposed limit of one brew, but would not be so reckless as to have more than two.

  Hanratty’s was starting to fill up with an after-work crowd. The bar was elbow to elbow, and most of the tables were occupied. Each time the door swung open, my stomach tensed with expectation, then slumped with disappointment when it turned out to be just another stranger stopping in for a drink. While my insides rose and fell on this roller coaster of nerves, I considered the prospects of the venture ending successfully. My confidence, already lower than it was when I explained the plan to Karl, continued to slip down with each passing minute. Everything would have to click together just right for this to come off—and so far this year, nothing had worked out smoothly.

  When we met in the morning, I had given Landfors the handkerchief with the hairs I’d scraped from the bat. I was pretty sure that the hair and blood weren’t a ball player’s at all, or even human. Tabby, I thought. Somebody had killed a cat to present me with a bloodied baseball bat. Or maybe a dog—I hoped it wasn’t a dog. Anyway, Landfors said he could get the hairs identified.

  Finally, Billy Neal entered the saloon. This time my stomach didn’t respond at all—maybe it was relieved that the waiting was over or exhausted from all the false alarms of the past hour. I waved and yelled, “Billy! Over here!”

  He saw me, and came over to the table where I sat. I’d saved him a seat, which he slid into. “What’s up, Mick? What did you want to see me about?”

  “Uh—how ’bout a beer?”

  “Sure, I could do with one.”

  I flagged a waitress, and ordered a draft for Neal. While we waited for her to bring it, I asked him what he thought about facing the Giants in the World Series.

  “We’ll beat ’em I think. They’ll be tough, but we got a better team. In a short series you never know though.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  The beer came, and most of it quickly went down Neal’s throat.

  “I wanted to ask you about something, Billy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Bob Tyler’s filled me in on what’s been going on.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about it though. He said I could do pretty well for myself by going along with him. But I’m not sure about him—I don’t know if I can trust him. He told me about your, uh, association with him. So I wanted to see if you thought he was okay.”

  “He’s okay I guess. What did he tell you?”

  “Jimmy Macullar. He told me about Macullar.”

  “Huh. What exactly did he tell you?”

  “About how that business with Corriden needed to be forgotten. How Macullar should have kept his mouth shut about moving him out of Fenway Park. How it’s to everybody’s advantage to keep it from being found out. And: how certain things sometimes have to be done even if they are, uh, unpleasant.”

  “Yeah, okay. That’s pretty much what I told Tyler. Some things just gotta be done. He was pretty pissed about Macullar.”

  “Seemed okay when he told me about it.”

  “Yeah, maybe he’s coming around. I explained it to him, told him I had to—really wasn’t no choice.”

  “And setting me up for it?”

  Neal smiled. “Sorry about that ... I figured you were nosing around too much, ’specially after you talked to Harry Howell. Tyler was pissed at me for that, too.”

  “He didn’t want you to set me up?”

  Neal looked around at the crowd. “Look, we can’t talk about it with all these ears in here. How ’bout we go outside?”

  I gave a glance at the table behind him and agreed.

  Neal nodded toward the back door, and I led the way out into the alley. There were still a couple hours of daylight left, but the sun was below the roof of the bar; it left the cluttered alley in cool shadow.

  I heard the door swing shut, and turned to face Neal. Before I could complete the turn, I was slammed by a hard jolting blow to the back of my head. Stumbling forward, I doubled the pain by knocking my forehead into a metal trash barrel. I crumpled to the cobblestones and blearily looked up at my attacker.

  Neal quickly followed up on his shot to my head with a sharp vicious kick to my left ribs. I could hear the snapping sounds of bones cracking, and felt my breathing suddenly constricted.

  Billy Neal towered over me, red-faced and breathing heavily. I curled up to make a smaller target, and steeling myself for additional blows draped my right arm over my left side to diminish their force.

  Long moments passed with no additional kicks or punches. Neal’s breathing gradually became more even. I punctuated the silence by croaking in little gasps of breath as best I could.

  Shaking his florid head, Neal finally puffed out, “Damn, you’re stupid.”

  I could only groan in response. I was feeling that he was right about me being stupid. I knew this wouldn’t go smoothly.

  “Tyler didn’t tell you nothing, did he?”

  I lay there in silence, my brilliant plan as crumpled as my body.

  Crack! Another hard kick—this time my arm took the brunt of it. “I said did he?”

  “He told me some.”

  “My ass, he told you ‘some.’ If he did, you’d know that he didn’t want you set up, and he didn’t want Macullar killed, and he sure as hell didn’t want Corriden killed.”

  “You killed Corriden?”

  “Yeah, me.” Neal crouched down on his haunches, and continued in a quieter voice. “That was a nice try, kid. You had me going for a minute there.”

  “Why? Why kill Red Corriden?” Every syllable I uttered caused excruciating pain, and I already knew why he killed him, but I desperately wanted to keep Neal talking.

  Neal smirked. “Okay, what difference does it make ... I’ll tell you what happened.” I could guess why it wouldn’t make any difference to tell me, and shuddered at the prospect of one more body turning up behind the pub—or wherever Tyler might choose to relocate it.

  “Really, it was self-defense, me killing Corriden.”

  “It was your idea to fix the batting championship,” I wheezed. “Wasn’t it?”

  Neal sounded surprised, “How’d you know? Harry Howell tell you?”

  I groaned a noncommittal noise.

  Neal shrugged and said, “Yeah, that was my idea. I figured hell, people bet on who wins a game, so how about a bet on who wins a batting title? I ask Hal Chase about it, and he says sure, you can get a bet down on anything. Then he wants to know how I can fix it. I tell him Jack O’Connor’s an old pal and it’s no problem. Chase says great. He sets up the bet and finds the odds I get are real good. So then Chase wants in. He wants to get down a big bet. Big. And he tells me the fix better come off. And he’s holding me responsible if it don’t. Now this ain’t something I want to hear, ’cause Chase got some really rough pals.” I remembered Chase’s friend in the green suit, the one who was walking with Bob Tyler.

  “O’Connor and Howell—they in on the bet?” I squeaked.

  “Nah. That’s the great part: I don’t tell ’em about the bet, just that it’s to get back at Cobb for being such a bastard. So I don’t even gotta give ’em a cut. Smart, huh?”

  “Mm.”

  “Well, O’Connor tries to fix it, telling Corriden to play way back. But then the league finds out what Jack was up to, and Cobb gets the title anyway. So it’s pretty bad: I’m out a bundle of dough, Jack and Harry get booted out of baseball, and Chase is royally pissed.

  “But it don’t turn out to be as bad as it could have. Chase knows he wasn’t double-crossed by me, so he don’t try to get me hurt. I figured it didn’t work like I wanted, but no real harm done.

  “Then this year, Corriden that stupid son of a bitch comes up to the Tigers. And he decides he’s gonna make my life miserable. Seems he found out about the fix. Don’t know how, but he did. And he knows I set it up. From opening day the kid’s getting on me about it. He blames me and Chase for everybody thinking he’s a cheat. So he threatens to squeal on us. Says we hurt his career, his reputation, all that crap.

  “So we’re on the first road trip in Boston, and he wants to meet me right after the last game at Fenway. He’ll tell me what we got to do to make it right. I figure, okay, the kid wants a payoff. So we meet in the runway. Nobody around. I offer him a hundred and he gets mad. Not enough? How ’bout five hundred? No, no good. He gets hopping mad. You know what the dumb bastard wants? He wants us to confess. Clear his name, he says. If we don’t, he’s telling Ban Johnson. Hell, even if I’m willing, which I ain’t, Chase would never go along with it. He’d set one of his pals to shut me up.

 

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