Hunting a Detroit Tiger (15 page)

Dressed similarly to the other thugs, Hub Donner emerged from a nearby office. He didn’t appear jovial as he had at the Hotel Tuller, nor smug as he’d been when sitting with Frank Navin at the ballpark. Royally pissed was how he looked. After dismissing the guard who’d escorted me, he growled, “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you about Emmett Siever and the players’ union.”

“This is where I work for Mr. Ford.” Donner brushed a palm over his stubbly scalp. “That other business is for another place and time.”

“I didn’t know how else to contact you. Besides, you talked to me at Navin Field, and that’s where
I
work.”

Donner made no verbal reply, but his eyes indicated that he didn’t consider our situations equivalent.

“Anyway,” I said. “Now that I’m here, can we talk for a couple minutes?”

“Yeah, what the hell.” He led me out of the main room, stopping to tell a guard at the desk, “Don’t disturb me. This fellow might have some information on sabotage at the Rouge Plant tomorrow.”

Donner ushered me into a small windowless room furnished with one table and two chairs. He pointed to one of them. “Sit.”

His mention of the Rouge Plant had me a little disconcerted. Did he know that I’d met Boggs and Hyman there? They might have eluded a tail by their trick with the cars, but what if I’d been followed from my apartment?

I decided to volunteer that I’d seen them. If Donner thought I was being open with him, it might earn me some good will. “I met with a couple fellows from Fraternity Hall.”

Donner’s expression didn’t betray whether or not that was news to him. “I told you before it’s not wise for you to be associating with Reds.”

“I
had
to talk to them. They’re the ones mostly likely to know what really happened to Emmett Siever.”

“‘What really happened’ is what the newspapers said happened.”

“Told you before, the papers are wrong.”

“So you claim.”

I studied Donner, trying without success to pick up a hint of what was going on in that scarred heard of his. “It seems to me,” I said, “that we have a similar interest in finding out who really killed him. If it turns out a Wobbly killed Siever, the players won’t have anything to do with the IWW ever again. And if it turns out Siever was killed by—well, by a union buster, that’ll discourage the players from trying to unionize at all. Nobody will want to take Siever’s place if they think it could get them killed.”

A hint of amusement danced in Donner’s eyes. “Are you trying to tell me that you want to help me stop the players’ union?”

“Hell no. I’m only interested in clearing myself. The fact that it works out better for you too is just a good reason for you to help me find his killer.”

“Having it pegged on you suits me just fine.”

“The story that I killed Siever isn’t making anybody scared of me,” I said. “My teammates, for instance: they’re mad at me, not scared. Now if it turns out Siever was killed by somebody like you,
that
might make them think twice about going ahead with a union.”

“You flatter me.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to.” We eyed each other uneasily for a moment. I then asked, “How long has the American League had you working on Emmett Siever?”

Donner hesitated before deciding to answer. “Almost a year. Ever since he started agitating.”

“Do you know anything about what he was doing before that?”

“Siever was
nothing
before that. A washed-up ballplayer who wasn’t much good in his best years.”

“What I mean is, was he active with the IWW or anybody?”

“If he was, nobody seems to know about it.”

“Hmm.” I went on to another question that had been bothering me. “From what I hear, there weren’t many players joining up with Siever. Why was the league so worried about him organizing if he wasn’t successful at it anyway?”

Donner thought for a few moments. I wondered if he’d ever really considered the
why
of the situation. He might have simply done what the league owners hired him to do and never asked their reasons. “For one thing,” he finally answered, “Siever was a radical, and it doesn’t take a lot of them to be dangerous. Only needed a few players to go along with him for there to be real trouble. And some players
were
sympathetic to him—still are, most likely.” He folded his hands over his belly as if he’d just finished a meal. “Anything else on your mind?”

“Yes. Where were you when Emmett Siever was shot?”

A laugh exploded from his mouth. “Decided you don’t like being a hero, so you want to give
me
the glory?”

I stared at him steadily.

His belly still rocking, he said, “I was having dinner with Ban Johnson and Frank Navin, if you really want to know. Ask them if you like.”

“No need,” I said. The American League president and the owner of the Tigers were pretty strong alibis. “And it wasn’t that I thought you killed him,” I added, trying to sound conciliatory. “I figured you might have been watching him and maybe saw who went into Fraternity Hall—or who came out the back door.”

Intense distaste showed on Donner’s face. “I don’t got the stomach to go to that place. All them filthy foreigners in there, who knows what I’d catch from them. Can’t stand foreigners. Coming here, trying to cause trouble, expecting handouts. Parasites is what they are. It was men like Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller who made America great. Not immigrants coming in to steal the fruits of American labor.”

“I thought Carnegie came here from Scotland.”

Hub Donner leaned forward and any trace of good humor slowly vanished from his face. “Okay, I played along and answered your questions. Now it’s time for you to do something for me—and for the men who put bread in your mouth.”

“What do you—”

“This is what’s going to happen: you’re going to go public against the players’ union. Newspaper articles, speeches, the whole thing, just like I told you before.”

“And I told you I won’t have any part of that.”

“Then I hope you got retirement plans.”

I tried to appear unconcerned. “So what’s the worst that can happen? Frank Navin boots me off a team that can’t win a game and ain’t giving me a chance to play anyway? Might be a break for me. I’ll play someplace else.”

“I don’t see where that would be such a good break for you. Remember, it’s not just Navin—it’s the American League. You go against Ban Johnson, and you cut off half your employment opportunities. Leaves you with the Nationals, and you already wore out your welcome with a bunch of their teams.” Donner leaned back, a smug look on his face. “You’re gonna be lucky if you get picked up by a semipro team in a mill league somewhere.”

Jeez. I’d paid my dues in the industrial leagues years ago. I wasn’t ready to be heading back down the ranks yet. But I sure wasn’t going to go along with Hub Donner, either.

“What I don’t understand,” I said, resorting to an argument that I didn’t really want to make, “is doesn’t it make the league look bad that they couldn’t get a bigger star than me to go against the union? That would make it seem like all the rest of them were in favor of it.”

“
Bigger star?
” Donner laughed. “I wish I could get
any
kind of star. You’re a busher, kid. But you’re the one who killed Siever, so you’ll have to do.” He caressed the scar over his right ear. “Tell you what,” he said. “I like you. Don’t know why, but I think you’re an okay kid. Just need to get your priorities straight. I’m gonna give you a break. You take some time and rethink your position. Three days. Give me a firm answer by Monday. And I’ll be contacting
you
next time.”

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be liked by Hub Donner. I was sure that I wasn’t going to change my mind. But I agreed to think about it.

Donner walked me to the waiting area and summoned a guard to take me out. “Remember, I’ll call you. Don’t be coming here again. This is where I do Henry Ford’s business, not Frank Navin’s.”

Three days till Donner’s deadline, I thought, three weeks until Leo Hyman’s. I was going to have to get a scorecard and start keeping track of who was going to be coming after me, when, and for what reason.

S
unday morning, half past nine. Karl Landfors was still out, hadn’t phoned, and I was starting to worry. I hadn’t seen him since the previous morning, when he’d left for Constance Siever’s house. His dreamy manner and fastidious preparations had given the impression that May Day was more of a Valentine’s Day for radicals than a political observance.

When I first woke up and found Landfors missing, I worried that he might have been in trouble—perhaps caught up in another Palmer raid on “Bolsheviks.” But after I got the morning newspapers, my worries diminished. According to the headlines, there had been no revolution yesterday. No bombings, no assassinations, not so much as a firecracker. Some papers went so far as to pronounce that the Red Scare was over. I wasn’t so sure.

Mitchell Palmer maintained a defiant tone, claiming the revolutionaries had merely postponed their attacks in an attempt to discredit him and lull the nation into a false sense of security. Invoking the appeal that President Wilson had made to him last fall—“Palmer, do not let this country see red!”—the attorney general reaffirmed his intention to stop “the blaze of revolution” while it was still an ember. He also vowed to continue his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. I briefly wondered if Palmer might try to create a confrontation in order to justify his predictions and regain his credibility; but I decided that was a question for someone with a stronger interest in politics than I had.

Having more or less convinced myself that Landfors’s absence simply meant that he and Connie Siever were getting along better than ever, I moved on to the sports pages. Yesterday’s game at Navin Field was summed up by the headline
Tigers Handed Twelfth Bump
. A dozen losses without one win. I was starting to wish that it was to be a short season like last year, when the owners cut the schedule to 140 games in the mistaken belief that the war had eroded Americans’ interest in baseball. We were now back to a full 156-game season which, on the positive side, meant that the Tigers still had 144 chances to win a ballgame.

The extension of the Detroit losing streak wasn’t the day’s biggest baseball news. At Braves Field in Boston, the Dodgers and Braves had played the longest game in major league history: twenty-six innings. Nearly three games in one, and all for naught, as darkness put an end to the contest with the score tied 1-1. Joe Oeschger, whose fastball had sent me home early from spring training, pitched for the Braves, and Leon Cadore for the Dodgers. Remarkably, both pitchers went the distance. Their catchers needed to be relieved, but not Oeschger and Cadore, neither of whom allowed a run during the game’s final twenty innings.

The Braves-Dodgers marathon brought to mind another pitching duel, another one that I hadn’t seen in person but remained the ballgame I remembered most fondly. It took place on July 4, 1905, in Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds with Rube Waddell of the Philadelphia Athletics matched up against the Boston Americans’ Cy Young. I was thirteen years old that summer and idolized the colorful Waddell. I found out the next day that the game went twenty innings, both pitchers going all the way, until Waddell himself drove in the game-winning run.

To my mind, it was the perfect baseball game with the perfect outcome. I replayed it over and over the way some boys reenacted Civil War battles with toy soldiers. In my case, I used the box score and accounts from the game that appeared in New York and Philadelphia papers that my uncle got for me. I was already convinced that I was going to be a big-league ballplayer someday, and readily put myself in the spiked shoes of the men who played that game. One day I might be Socks Seybold or Harry Davis of the Athletics; on another I might be Boston’s Freddy Parent or Jimmy Collins. Sometimes I’d let myself be Cy Young, and on special occasions I would be Rube Waddell.

My reverie dimmed. I did become a major-league player, but I never got to meet Rube Waddell. In 1914 he died from pneumonia after helping flood victims in Texas. That ended something for me, but it took years more until I realized what it was: when a boyhood hero dies, it means boyhood is irretrievably lost.

I sighed. I no longer had the innocent faith in baseball that I’d had at age thirteen, and I was angry as hell that I couldn’t get it back.

By late morning, I was mad at Karl Landfors for not coming home without as much as a phone call, at whoever killed Emmett Siever and got me into trouble over it, at Joe Oeschger for nailing me with that fastball, and most of all at Rube Waddell for dying and ending my childhood.

Two hours before game time, Frank Navin was alone inside the main gate to his ballpark, stocking the ticket booths. If yesterday’s attendance was any indication, there would be a heavy demand for the tickets. Fans came out in record numbers hoping to be present at the first win of the season—but more than satisfied with heckling us mercilessly if we extended the losing streak.

I hopped a turnstile and joined Navin. He was in the process of opening a box of scorecards and sweating from the exertion. Frank Navin was not a typical team owner. Not content simply to observe the team’s play from his personal box, he took an active role in the club’s most mundane daily tasks. Navin often manned the ticket booths, ushered fans to their seats, or sold them refreshments. I’d read up on him when I was in the
Sporting News
office. Years before, he had been the club’s bookkeeper until a lucky streak in an all-night poker game provided him the cash to buy the team. Still a gambling man, he now divided his interests between the Tigers and the ponies.

“Need a hand with those?” I asked.

Navin was struggling to balance a stack of scorecards that came up to his drooping chin. “Over there.” He nodded toward one of the concession stands.

I took most of the cards from him and carried them to the booth, placing them on the counter. Navin reached up to put his pile next to mine. “Weather’s getting warmer,” he huffed.

“Finally,” I said. “I hate the cold.”

The Tigers owner took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped beads of sweat from his bald head. The temperature was only in the sixties, so his perspiration had less to do with the weather than with his flabby condition. Still, he was working hard, and to my mind the fact that he was willing to do manual labor made his penny-pinching ways less onerous.

“I have a problem, Mr. Navin,” I said.

“If it’s money, I can’t help. Barely breaking even this year. You signed a contract, and that’s all you’re going to get paid.”

“No, it’s not money.” I leaned on the counter of the concession booth. “It’s Hub Donner. He’s really pushing me to help him bust the players’ union. I can’t do that. I won’t go against my teammates.” I was supposed to give Donner my answer by tomorrow, but I’d decided to give it directly to Frank Navin instead.

“Then don’t.” Navin removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Son, as far as I’m concerned, you signed a contract to play baseball for me, not help Hub Donner fight the union. Just stick to the deal: you play and I pay you for it—but like I said, not a penny more than you signed for.”

“The salary’s fine, Mr. Navin.” I knew that statement would haunt me when it came time for the next contract, but his biggest worry appeared to be that I was going to try to touch him up for a few bucks. “And I appreciate you saying all I got to do is play ball. But Donner says Ban Johnson will kick me out of the American League if I don’t go along with him.”

“Ban Johnson’s in New York. That’s a long way from here. Don’t you worry about it.”

“Donner says he was here a couple of weeks ago. Said him, you, and Mr. Johnson had dinner. You sure Mr. Johnson won’t kick me out of the league?”

“Ban Johnson hasn’t been out here since January. If he wanted you to help Donner so badly, he’d have told me. So far, he hasn’t said anything. If he does, I’ll let you know. For now, just worry about baseball.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mr. Navin.”

I left him with the rest of the scorecards and headed for the locker room, wondering why Hub Donner had lied to me.

The fans who’d hoped to witness the Tigers’ first win of the season were disappointed. Those who’d come to heckle another defeat did so with glee and vigor. A 5-2 loss to the Indians ran our winless streak to a baker’s dozen. One hundred forty-three chances left to win a game this year.

Worse than the loss was the fact that I again had to watch the proceedings from the bench. I appreciated Frank Navin saying that all I had to do was play baseball for him, but I wished he would do more—like tell Hughie Jennings actually to put me in a game.

I was in a vile mood by the time I got home, and seeing Karl Landfors asleep on the sofa didn’t improve it any. I slammed the door hard enough to trigger a rattling noise in the cuckoo clock.

Landfors woke up with a groan and reached for his spectacles. Once they were securely on his nose, he slithered out from under the blanket. Blinking at me, he asked, “What time is it?”

“I thought you came here to help me find out who killed Emmett Siever, not to court his daughter.” I stalked into the kitchen and checked the icebox. Moxie again. I opened a bottle and went into the parlor.

“Well, yes, that’s true,” Landfors said calmly. He poked a forefinger behind one of the thick lenses and rubbed his eye. “What exactly would you like me to do?”

I gulped some of the pop. First thing I’d like you to do, I thought, is stop bringing Moxie in here. “You could have called,” I said. “Thought you might have got caught up in some anti-Red roundup or something.”

“That was inconsiderate of me. I apologize.” He blinked rapidly. “In the future I’ll let you know if I’m going to be late.”

I was starting to feel like a heel for yelling at him. Leave it to Landfors to take the fun out of being in a bad mood. I waved off the apology. “Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you and her are getting on so well.”

Landfors stood up. In his dark, floor-length nightshirt he looked like a folded umbrella. “Thank you,” he said. “However, I did come here to help you, and I have been somewhat remiss in that regard.” He went into the kitchen, and I heard him filling the coffeepot with water.

“You
have
helped,” I said. When he came back in the parlor, I added, “The problem is there’s still a long way to go.”

As he swapped his sleeping garment for trousers and an undershirt, Landfors asked, “
Where
exactly is it that you’re going?”

That was a good question. “I know where I want to end up,” I answered. “With the right person taking the rap for Emmett Siever’s murder. That’s where I
have
to end up.” I thought a moment more. “As far as how I get there, I’m not sure. It seems I’m trying to do two things at once: keep myself out of immediate trouble and meanwhile learn as much as I can that might lead me to Siever’s killer.”

With a nod at the newly replaced window, Landfors said, “Is that the ‘immediate trouble’ you mean?”

“It’s one of them. Another is getting dropped from the team—and maybe blacklisted—if! I don’t do what Hub Donner wants me to. There’s no way I’m gonna go along with him, and I’m supposed to give him my decision tomorrow. I might have bought myself a little extra time with Frank Navin, though. Maybe he’ll keep Donner off my back for a while.” I had the impression that Donner was obedient to his bosses. He’d seemed worried about conducting outside business at the Ford plant. Perhaps he’d worry about crossing Navin, too.

“As far as my teammates,” I went on, “things have eased up a little. It’s this losing streak. The players are numb from it, mentally and physically. Barely have the strength to take the field every day, never mind picking a fight with me. But it can’t go on forever, and then who knows what they’ll do.”

The smell of fresh coffee wafted into the room, and Landfors went into the kitchen. “Would you like a cup?” he called.