Murder at Ebbets Field (19 page)

That wasn’t what I wanted to think about. If I let my mind dwell on the danger I was in, I wouldn’t be clearheaded enough to work out a plan for getting
out
of trouble. “I want to know who killed your sister,” I said. There, I said “sister.” It was more personal. “That’s the important thing.” It was also the key, I was sure, to the attacks on Margie and me, and the murder of the Dodger batboy.

He leaned back in his chair. “I appreciate that,” he said, nodding. Then he looked about to nod all the way off to sleep. After a minute, he blurted, “So, how’s it going with Miss Turner?”

“Good! Well, I think it’s going good, anyway.” I was still at the stage where all I remembered was what had happened last. And what had happened last was that Margie didn’t want to see me and wouldn’t tell me why. I didn’t want to talk to Karl Landfors about that.

“You know what bothers me about poison?” I said. “It’s not visible . . . you can’t see where it’s coming from. A gun or a knife, those you can see, and you can try to avoid them. Poison can be in anything.”

“Yes, it can,” Landfors said. “You should be careful, Mickey. Careful about everything.” There was something he wasn’t telling me. C’mon, Landfors. Out with it. But he didn’t say more and I didn’t prod.

T
uesday was the first of September. We were going into the last month of the regular season with twenty-eight games left to play and every one of them crucial. The hundred and twenty-six games that had come before, the thousands of pitches and the hundreds of hits and runs, had left only a one game spread between the Giants and the Braves. The pennant race was just heating up.

The only warmth I felt, though, was generated by finally seeing Margie Turner again.

Margie and I were standing together in the middle of fetid Studio B. She was garbed as a waitress in a navy blue dress with a white frilly apron; a large white ribbon was tied in a bow atop her head.

The set for today’s shooting was that of a fancy restaurant with a long polished bar and a dozen cloth-covered round tables. Dessert carts placed about the room held enough pies to feed all of Flatbush.

The Vitagraph studio wasn’t my preferred meeting place. As far as I was concerned, we spent too much time with the movie company, among people we didn’t like, in circumstances that were often uncomfortable if not dangerous. But by now I would have been willing to meet Margie in the middle of the Hudson River without a boat.

Warily eyeing the pies, I asked her, “What’s this movie going to be about?”

“Just another pie-throwing movie,” she said. “Lots of pies. Four reels of them.” In a whisper she added, “Mr. Garvin doesn’t know how to make a long movie. The film we took at Coney Island is scattered all over the editing room, a useless mess. And the front office is pressing him to release something,
anything.
So he’s going back to the old way: in the studio, lots of people, lots of pie-throwing.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of any more gooey projectiles.

“I don’t know. There’s Mr. Garvin. Do you want to ask him?”

Garvin was passing by, with Arthur Carlyle following and the two of them in mid-argument.

“Everybody
is going to be in this,” Garvin said to Carlyle.

“I am an
actor,
Carlyle protested. “I do not allow my face to be struck by bakery goods.”

“Then duck. Now go get into costume.”

Carlyle crossed his arms and planted his legs firmly; he showed no signs of moving.

“Mr. Garvin,” I interrupted, “what did you want me to do?”

He looked around. “Mmm.... You’ll sit at the bar. Think you can handle that?”

“Gee, I might need a few rehearsals, but I think I can do that.”

A hint of a smile crossed Carlyle’s mouth and he nodded his head at me.

Elmer Garvin didn’t notice my sarcasm. “Good. Then get into costume. A hick maybe. Mr. Carlyle, would you help Mr. Rawlings find an appropriate costume? He’ll be playing a rube at the bar.”

“Of course, Mr. Garvin,” Carlyle said, clicking his heels together. “Whatever you say, sir.”

“Go with Mr. Carlyle,” Garvin said, and I followed Carlyle as he walked away. “Damn ham,” I heard Garvin mutter under his breath.

The cramped men’s dressing room was exactly as I remembered: like a laundry in the aftermath of an explosion.

Arthur Carlyle rummaged through racks of suits and piles of hats, socks, shirts, and shoes. “A hick,” he said. “That would mean plaid. Or perhaps . . .” He paused at a tan suit with green squares like a checkerboard. “Try this.”

I shed my street clothes and donned the suit. It was a perfect fit.

“Terrible,” was Carlyle’s verdict. “For a rube, it should be much smaller.”

While he went through another rack, I asked him, “When you were on the stage, did you ever act with Esther Kelly?”

“Hmm.... I don’t believe so. Let’s see . . . she was Esther Neilson when she was acting. You know, I thought it rather peculiar that she took Tom Kelly’s name. You never give up your stage name unless you give up the stage.” He pulled out another suit, a bright red plaid with wide lapels.

“So she doesn’t expect to act anymore.”

“No, no one will risk giving her a role. I am afraid the poor lady shall never again trod the boards.”

It would be a lot easier to talk with Carlyle if he spoke English. I tried on the plaid suit. Again a perfect fit. Carlyle frowned. “The problem is that you’re rather on the small side yourself. I don’t know if we have anything that’s going to be too small for you. Try the other one again.”

Back to the green and tan, but I was sure it hadn’t shrunk in the last five minutes. “Why won’t people give her any parts?”

He pinned up the sleeves and trouser cuffs four inches above my wrists and ankles. “Well, what I hear at the Lambs Club is that she drinks a bit excessively. Between us gentlemen, I don’t blame her. Tom Kelly is not a very good husband. She made him. Without her, he would have no career. And he repays her sacrifice by philandering.” Carlyle added an oversized polka dot bow tie to my neck. “So she has taken to the bottle. Poor girl can’t remember lines anymore. No one is going to hire an actress who blanks out on stage. Hmm. . . . That doesn’t quite do it. You need something else.”

He opened a drawer of his makeup kit, pulled out a red walrus mustache, and dabbed some glue on it. “Here we go,” he said as he attached it to my upper lip. I looked in the mirror. I didn’t like it, but at least I was disguised enough that John McGraw would never recognize me.

“Just a
touch
more,” Carlyle said.

What more could he do to me? How much sillier could I look?

From another drawer he pulled out a set of spectacles. Oh, no. I don’t want to look like Karl Landfors. They were huge goggles with thick lenses. In the mirror I couldn’t tell what I looked like.

Then he topped my head with a porkpie hat. “Perfect,” he said. “Now go on out and I’ll get into costume.”

“Okay. Thank you.” I added to myself, “I think.”

“My pleasure. Always glad to help an aspiring member of the craft.”

I went back out to the main floor of the studio and walked up to Margie. When she realized it was me, she burst into laughter. “That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed.

“I feel silly,” I grumbled, as I repositioned the spectacles up on my forehead so that I could see.

“That’s what acting is all about. You can act however you want to—silly or evil or coy. And it’s just acting. It’s like being a child playing make believe. Enjoy it!”

“I’ll try ...” It would have been easier if I didn’t look so ridiculous. Although if Margie liked the way I was made up, it couldn’t be too awful.

When Arthur Carlyle came out of the dressing room, in a waiter costume with a handlebar mustache and a towel draped over his forearm, I waved to him and mouthed, “Thank you.” He acknowledged it with a nod.

Garvin then bellowed into his megaphone, ordering changes to the sets. People scurried about in response to his commands, moving chairs and tables “a little more this way” and “a little more that way.”

After everything was moved, and then moved again back to its original position, Garvin stopped yelling and began pacing. His head was down, his lips were moving, and coins jingled in his pockets.

“He doesn’t know what to do,” Margie whispered.

“Okay, we’ll start with the bar,” Garvin finally announced, as he strode to the barroom set. “Mr. Kelly, take your place please. Mr. Rawlings, over here.”

Tom Kelly moved behind the counter as a bartender. I went to the front of the bar, where Garvin put me on a stool. Then he called another actor—Mr. Carver, he called him—and put him two stools away. Carver was dressed as a dandy, an unconvincing one, like Sloppy Sutherland on a bad day.

Garvin said, “Okay. You two are going to argue.” He turned to me. “Just like you did with Casey Stengel. You did that good.”

“Are we fighting over a girl?”

“Argue about whatever you want.” He seated himself behind the camera.

I felt stiff and self-conscious. Let yourself go, I told myself. Pretend to be the character you’re dressed as, and have fun with it. It’s just make believe.

Something nagged at me, though, and my inhibitions remained. I scanned the crew behind the camera, and then the actors costumed as waiters, waitresses, diners, cooks, and busboys. All of them in the business of make believe. If they could do it, I should be able to.

I didn’t even have to worry about John McGraw. He would never recognize me in this costume. But still I couldn’t relax and enjoy my role.

Make believe . . .

I slowly realized it was Florence Hampton who kept me from abandoning myself to acting. I could feel her presence in the studio. Her death was full of make believe: false names, nonaffairs, people being other than where they claimed . . . and there was nothing fun about it.

I looked around the room again.

And I suddenly knew who killed Florence Hampton.

My mind raced as I tried to think what to do about it. Stay calm, I told myself. Don’t let on.

“Okay, gentlemen,” Garvin called. “Just do as I tell you. Uh, Mr. Rawlings, lower the glasses please.” Mechanically, I pulled them so that they were seated on the bridge of my nose. “Start camera!” I heard the gears of the camera turn. “Mr. Kelly, start some business—polish the bar, pour a couple of drinks.” Kelly poured two drinks and slid them before each of us. “Now start talking.” Carver and I started talking—he about stamp collecting and I about baseball—while Kelly polished the countertop with a bar rag. “Start arguing!” Our words grew heated, incoherent but heated. “Now go for each other. Fight!” We hopped off the stools and started grappling. “Mr. Kelly, let him have it!”

Have what?

Then my head exploded.

When my eyes opened again, I was in the dressing room, laid out on a pile of musty overcoats. Elmer Garvin and Tom Kelly were staring down at me.

Tom Kelly was the first to speak. “I’m sorry, kid. The bottles must have got mixed up.”

“Should have been a sugar bottle,” Garvin said. “It was supposed to crumble when it hit you, not bust your head open.”

I didn’t know what they were talking about, but my head felt exactly as Garvin described it, like I was missing the top of my skull.

“How does it feel?” Margie’s voice asked from behind me. I raised my eyes; she was kneeling behind me, a bloody cloth clutched in her hand.

“Like I’ve been scalped.”

Margie dabbed carefully at the back of my head with the rag. “It’s still bleeding some,” she said.

“We sent for the studio doctor,” said Garvin. “Your lousy luck sure seems to be holding.” He didn’t sound particularly bothered by it.

I lifted my right hand and reached back to touch the wound.

Margie caught my wrist and put my arm back down. “Don’t touch it,” she said. “Wait for the doctor.”

It was only a few more minutes until the doctor arrived. He looked like he’d been dressed for the role by Arthur Carlyle: white hair with matching beard, small gold spectacles, immaculate frock coat, and black leather bag. I hoped he really was a doctor and didn’t just play one in the movies.

“Well, what have we here?” he asked in a soft soothing voice. It sounded like there was nothing he hadn’t seen before.

“Small accident,” Garvin said. “Mr. Kelly hit him with a real bottle instead of a sugar bottle.”

“You should be more careful with your props.” The doctor placed his bag on the dressing table. “You can all leave now.”

Garvin and Kelly exited the room without hesitation.

“May I stay?” Margie asked.

“Of course, Miss Turner. You can assist me. I’ve patched you up often enough that you should know how it’s done.”

Margie gently ran the fingertips of one hand along the back of my neck. “Dr. Campbell’s a good doctor,” she said.

He asked me, “Can you sit up?”

I raised myself on my elbows. “Yes.”

“Let’s see how bad it is,” Dr. Campbell said. He pulled off his spectacles and leaned over me, peering at my head. “My, that’s an ugly one.” His finger started to probe my scalp, and I was barely able to suppress a scream at the pressure. “You’ll need a few stitches.”

The doctor next crouched down in front of me and stared into my eyes. “Pupils look okay.” He pulled a fountain pen out of his pocket and held it in front of my nose. “Keep your eye on the pen.” He moved the pen back and forth and I followed it with my eyes. “I think you’ll be fine,” he decided. “We’ll just have to sew up that cut.”

The doctor opened his black bag. “First let me give you something to kill the pain.” Reaching into the bag, he withdrew a syringe.

“No,” I said. “No needles. You can sew me up, but no needles.”

“It’s going to be painful,” he warned.

“No needles,” I insisted. I didn’t want anybody putting anything into me. I had some thinking to do. Stitches were okay—my head had a hole in it, so it made sense to close the hole—but I wasn’t going to let anybody do anything to me that could affect my thinking. The bottle busting over my head had interrupted it, but I was going to try to get back on track.

“Very well,” he conceded. Then he took a razor from his bag. “I’ll have to shave around the cut.” He moved behind me and started scraping with the blade. After shaving a patch of hair, he cleaned the wound with a liquid that stung worse than a fastball on the hands.

Dr. Campbell next pulled a needle and some coarse black thread from the bag. I was tempted to ask if he had another color, one that would better match my hair. “Ready?” he asked.

I tried to nod, but it hurt, so I said, “Yes.”

“Hold him still, Miss Turner.”

She gripped me tightly just behind my ears. I felt the needle go in. I didn’t think my head could feel any worse but this was a sharp pain. I clenched my teeth so hard and quickly that I bit into my inner lip.

While Dr. Campbell continued weaving, I focused my thoughts elsewhere. On Florence Hampton’s killer. As I thought about questions like how and why, the stitching became no more than a tugging sensation.