Hunting a Detroit Tiger Page 3

  To everyone else, the radical labor leader was “Big” Bill Haywood; Donner wouldn’t even concede him his size. “The other scars from bullets too?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. Just got nicked up a little—pipes, ax handles, bricks. Kid’s stuff.”

  Hub Donner was doing all he could to impress me with his personal toughness. But to what purpose?

  “You said Mr. Navin asked you to meet me,” I reminded him.

  Donner nodded. “That’s right. He—” The waiter appeared with our drinks and made a production of setting them on the table. Donner waited until he was again out of earshot before continuing. “Mr. Navin thought you might be of some help to him—and to baseball.” For God and country, the way Donner made it sound.

  I stifled the groan that swelled my lungs. “Help him how?”

  “Simple.” Donner took a gulp of his steaming coffee. “Let the American League publicize the fact that you’re against a players’ union.”

  “But—”

  “You won’t have to do much. There’ll be some articles written under your name for the newspapers and some magazines. Don’t worry—somebody will write them for you. You just have to agree to let your name be used.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Of course, we’ll start with the Emmett Siever incident. The way I see it, you were at the meeting to confront him, tell him you didn’t believe in his goddamn union. Brave of you to do it right in Fraternity Hall, by the way, with all them anarchists there. Hey! That’s the way we’ll present it: you met him on his home field. Give it the baseball slant.” He thought a moment, brushing his palm over his stubbly head. The grating sound it produced was similar to his voice. “Maybe you can make some speeches, too. Can you talk in front of an audience? Again, we’ll get somebody to write them for you.”

  Donner was beginning to sound more like an adman than a muscleman, and I was starting to realize that he had brains to go along with his brawn. “No, I don’t like to talk in front of people,” I said. Now, how to get out of the rest of Donner’s plan? Or Frank Navin’s plan, or whoever came up with this bright idea.

  Massive steaks, with onions and potatoes heaped around them, were placed before us. Hub Donner fell to with his knife and fork, shoving large chunks of bloody meat into his mouth. I pushed my potatoes around with a fork as I thought over Donner’s proposal. My appetite was diminishing fast.

  Donner made a sucking noise as he tried to draw out a piece of gristle stuck between his teeth. Waving his knife around the room, he said, “What do you think of this place?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You should have seen the Ponchartrain in its heyday. That was a hotel. Couldn’t walk more than ten feet in the Ponchartrain bar without bumping into somebody with an automobile named after him. Henry Ford, Louis Chevrolet, the Dodge brothers, Ransom Olds, they were all regulars there.” He paused to use the tip of the knife on the stubborn piece of meat. “But those days are gone. The car men all meet at the Detroit Athletic Club now. Rest of the city’s business leaders come here, but it ain’t like it was at the Ponchartrain.” He shook his head. “Me, I don’t like change. I like things the way they used to be.”

  “Who are you?” I asked. “What do you do? You work for Mr. Navin?”

  Donner pointed his knife at my plate. “Eat up.” After putting another piece of steak in his own mouth, he said, “I’m what you might call a personnel coordinator. Factory owner or somebody has trouble with his employees, he calls me in and I coordinate them.”

  “You’re a union buster.”

  “Damned right I am. And proud of it. No way I’m gonna see Reds and Bolsheviks destroy this country.”

  “I thought Reds and Bolsheviks were the same thing.”

  He looked taken aback. “Yeah, well, whatever. All I know is they’re ruining everything made this country great. Used to be a man felt lucky to have a job and appreciated a chance to support his family. Now nobody wants to work. You know how many men are out on strike right now?”

  “Four million, the papers say.”

  “That’s right. More than one worker in ten is out on strike, living off the labor of honest men. And it’s not just miners and mill hands no more. Now you got railroads, police departments, the whole goddamn city of Seattle striking.” He shook his head with disgust. “People just don’t want to work no more.”

  Donner paused to finish his steak, and I chewed on some fried onion. It occurred to me that it might be fun to lock him in a room with Karl Landfors and let them lecture each other until one of them dropped. It also occurred to me that he hadn’t answered my question about whether he worked for Frank Navin. “Who hired you?” I asked.

  “The American League.”

  “A union’s okay with the National League?”

  Donner laughed. “Nah, they hired their own personnel coordinator.”

  “Oh.”

  He laid down his knife and fork. “It’s to save your job, if you think about it. Public’s already mad at baseball players. You boys go forming a union, and it could kill the game.”

  I’d heard of a hundred things that were going to kill baseball, but the game always survived. “Don’t see how that could be,” I said.

  Donner launched into a history lesson. “Two years ago: country’s at war, boys are dying overseas, everybody at home is making sacrifices. And what do the ballplayers do? Threaten not to play the World Series unless they get more money. What the hell kind of patriotism is that?” He slammed a palm on the table, then waved away the waiter who came scurrying to see what the matter was. “And last year even worse. Country’s getting back to normal, looking forward to the Series again, and the damn White Sox sell out to gamblers.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “It ain’t been proved yet, but everybody knows it.”

  I felt a heavy sadness. I’d heard the rumors, too, that the 1919 World Series hadn’t been on the level. But I didn’t want to believe it.

  I’d noticed that Donner had never asked for my views on organized labor. I don’t think it mattered to him. And I wasn’t going to volunteer my opinions—especially since I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about the union issue.

  Lunch finished, Donner lounged back in his seat and folded his hands over his belly.

  “Thanks for the meal,” I said. “But I really don’t want to get involved with this union business one way or the other. What the papers said about the other night was a mistake. I just want to clear it up and forget it.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” said Donner without a note of sorrow in his voice. “Mr. Navin’s gonna be disappointed.”

  I let the implied threat pass. “The season’s starting, and I got to concentrate on baseball.” I held up my bandaged wrist. “Got to get this thing healed and get back in shape. If I’m playing lousy, I’m off the team and no help to Navin anyway.”

  “Very well,” said Donner. “I’ll pass that along—to your boss. I think you’ll change your mind soon.”

  I forced a smile. “I’ll let you know if I do.”

  Donner returned a grin as devoid of sincerity as mine.

  Chapter Four

  A hundred times in the last year and a half, I’d suffered through a recurring nightmare: I was back on the battlefield, standing alone above a muddy trench full of German soldiers, firing down on them with my Springfield rifle. The dream never varied. In it, I never noticed until I started shooting that my targets, although dressed in the uniform of the Kaiser’s army, were merely unarmed boys playing soldier. And once I began firing, I couldn’t stop—every time I attempted to pull my finger off the trigger, the weapon would go off, putting another bullet in another boy. The rifle never ran out of ammunition, and I could never pull myself out of the dream, until all of the boys were lying dead in a bloody heap.

  I was aware that I was having the dream again, but something was wrong about it—something was different. I wasn’t shooting at kids dressed like soldiers this time. My targets
huddled in the trench were white-haired men in old-fashioned baseball uniforms—all of them looking like Emmett Siever. Something else was different, too: I was waking out of it while some were still alive.

  The telephone rang again and I realized why my dream had come to a merciful end. I stumbled from my bedroom to the dark parlor, rushing to pick up the receiver.

  “Mickey Rawlings?” The voice was muffled, as if the speaker was gagged or holding a handkerchief over the mouthpiece.

  I paused to let the last vestige of sleep drain from my head. “Yeah, this is me.”

  “Saw you with your pal Hub Donner yesterday. Guess we know which side you’re really on.”

  The struggle to both distinguish the words and comprehend their meaning was too much for me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Now we know why you killed Emmett Siever.”

  “I didn’t—Who is this?”

  “A friend of Siever’s. You’re gonna find out he had a lot of friends.”

  “But wha—”

  “And we’re not gonna let you get away with his murder.” The caller made an effort to be sure his next words came through clearly. “The cops may have let you off the hook, but we won’t. His death will be avenged.”

  Although it seemed futile to explain myself to an unknown voice on the telephone, I said, “I didn’t kill Emmett Siever, and I barely know Hub Donner.”

  “Whatever Donner paid you, it wasn’t worth it. We’re gonna throw you from the train.” Then there was a click as he hung up.

  I collected myself enough to be sure that this call was no dream. But who in real life threatens to throw you from a train? That seemed an odd thing to say, and I could make no sense of it. I pictured Pearl White tied to the railroad tracks in one of her movie serials, and briefly wondered if that was what the caller meant.

  Although sunrise hadn’t yet come, I knew I wouldn’t be falling asleep again. Instead of going back to bed, I went to the kitchen. As I filled the coffeepot with water, I thought of other threats I’d received over the years. They’d involved fists, bats, knives, guns, even a sword once. And those were all before I went to war and had to face cannons, machine guns, and poison gas. But being thrown from a train? That was a new one.

  After two cups of black coffee and a hot bath, dawn was starting to light my apartment and the caffeine was beginning to clear my head.

  I made a quick trip to the local newsstand and returned with the Thursday morning editions of the Journal, the Free Press, and the News. Sitting on the least tattered spot of the parlor sofa, I sipped a fresh cup of coffee and began reading the papers.

  As usual during baseball season, I went to the back pages first. The sports section described in detail the Tigers’ 3—2 opening loss to Chicago. Not really a bad start, I thought. The game did go eleven innings, and the White Sox—despite their surprising loss to Cincinnati in last fall’s World Series—were still the best team in baseball. Holding them that close was something of an achievement.

  Reading about the ball game made me long to be back with the team. The home opener wouldn’t be for another week, and staying in Detroit by myself for that long seemed interminable.

  Moving to the front pages, I was relieved to see that there wasn’t another word printed about me or Emmett Siever. Most of the headlines were about the national railroad strike:

  Palmer Paints Rail Strike Red

  Strike Chiefs Under Arrest

  Senate Urges Action to Break Railroad Strike

  The only local news to make the front pages was a growing feud between the U.S. Treasury Department and the Detroit police. Treasury agents were accusing the police of graft, claiming they’d been paid off by rumrunners to turn a blind eye to the booze coming over the river from Canada. Detroit mayor Jim Couzens defended his police department as “above reproach” and charged that the federal “interlopers” were incompetent to enforce prohibition and were seeking a scapegoat for their own failures. I found this report encouraging—it sounded like I wouldn’t have much trouble getting a beer in Detroit.

  I went back to the articles about the railroad strike to see how travel would be affected. I was happy to read that strikers were only targeting freight, not passenger trains. Baseball teams would still be able to go from city to city according to schedule.

  The strike stories did contain some troubling statements from Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, however. Palmer claimed to have evidence that “Reds”—the catchall term for Wobblies, unionists, anarchists, foreigners, communists, and a host of others—were planning a May Day bombing campaign, and he was vowing to use “any means necessary” to prevent it. I had the feeling that whatever this labor war I’d been drawn into was all about, it was only going to get worse.

  We’re gonna throw you from the train. I couldn’t forget those words.

  I set the newspapers down next to me and took a swallow of coffee. Okay, somebody saw me with Hub Donner, assumed I’m working with him to bust the players’ union, and figured that’s why I killed Emmett Siever. Was it one of my teammates—the ones Hughie Jennings said were mad at me? I couldn’t see how—they’d all been in Chicago while I was meeting with Donner. Besides, the Tiger players I knew would make a more direct threat—involving a baseball bat, not an anonymous phone call.

  My guess was that the caller was a probably a Wobbly, somebody who’d been at the IWW hall and was angry about Siever’s death.

  Damn that Hub Donner and his strong-arm approach. Sometimes a little stealth is called for. He should have been discreet, met me in a quiet place, out of view ...

  Jeez. I finally got it. The scheming sonofabitch wanted me to be seen with him, and for people to think we were pals. The backslapping, going to one of the city’s most famous hotels, specifying a window table so we could be easily seen.

  That’s why he was so sure that I’d change my mind about working with him. If the Wobblies thought I was in league with Donner, then I would have to go along with him just to protect myself from the IWW.

  I flung the papers on the floor. Like hell I would.

  “Can’t miss it,” Sergeant Phelan had told me. As I walked through downtown Detroit, though, finding police headquarters turned out to be something of a challenge. Part of the problem was that I hadn’t been to the city since 1912, the last year I’d played in the American League. There’d been so much growth since then that I had difficulty finding the old landmarks.

  Another problem was street names. As the auto industry turned the city from a frontier town to a major metropolis, respectability had become important. Red-light districts, once considered essential entertainment, were no longer quite so desirable. Loath to eliminate them, however, Detroit came up with a novel way of lessening their notoriety. I’d heard from other ballplayers that as certain streets became infamous for brothels and blind pigs, instead of shutting down the whorehouse and unlicensed saloons, the City Council simply changed the names of the streets.

  During my search for the police station, I discovered that Croghan was now Monroe, and Champlain had been rechristened Lafayette East. Finally, using Cadillac Square as a reference point, I did work my way to the drab stone building that served as headquarters for the Detroit Police Department.

  The desk sergeant inside the bustling front room was more lifelike than his counterpart at the Trumbull station house, but no more helpful in leading me to Detective Aikens.

  “Don’t know nobody by that name,” the sergeant said. “What’s yer business with him?”

  “It’s about the Emmett Siever shooting Monday night. Detective Aikens handled the case, I believe.”

  “Don’t think so.” He called across the room to another uniformed officer. “Hey Vern! The Siever shooting. That’s Mack’s case, ain’t it?”

  At Vern’s affirmative return yell, the sergeant said to me, “Detective McGuire’s the man you want to see. Let me check if he’s in.” He reached for a telephone, and after a brief conversation with McGuire, gave me dir
ections to a second-floor office.

  Walking along the upstairs hallway to McGuire’s office, I checked the names on each door looking in vain for “Aikens.” When I came to the one with Det. Francis McGuire lettered on the frosted glass, I rapped on Francis.

  “Come in!”

  I stepped inside to see a smallish man seated at a desk covered with papers and file folders. He was probably about thirty, but his long, rust-brown hair was uncombed and his face so mottled with freckles that he had the look of a twelve-year-old boy.

  “I’m Mickey Rawlings,” I said. “Desk sergeant said you’d see me.”

  “Sure will.” He stood up, offering his hand. “I’m Detective McGuire. Call me Mack. I don’t stand on ceremony.” McGuire flashed an easy smile, causing the freckles to move around like a kaleidoscope.

  I hesitated only a second before returning his grip. The swelling of my wrist was down, and a handshake couldn’t be any worse for it than what Dr. Wirtenberg had done.

  “Have a seat,” McGuire offered. “Oh—and close the door, please. Don’t want to let the heat out.”

  I did as he asked, though I could detect no heat. Despite a radiator clanging and gurgling behind his oak swivel chair, the room was chilly. McGuire was dressed for the cold, in a heavy three-piece tweed suit. I kept my overcoat on as I settled into the room’s only other chair. Space was so tight in the tiny office that my shoulders were wedged between the side of a file cabinet and a coat rack.

  “I actually came to see Detective Aikens,” I began. “But nobody seems to know him.”

  McGuire sat rigidly, hands folded on his desk like a well-behaved schoolboy. “Afraid I can’t help you there. I’ve never heard of him either. Anything I can do for you?”

  I didn’t understand how the police could have a disappearing detective. “Aikens was the officer who first showed up when Emmett Siever got shot. He’s the one I talked to.”