Hunting a Detroit Tiger (25 page)

“If you think I was pushing hard before,” Donner said, “I can really play hardball if that’s the way you want to go. I could snap your wrist like a twig.”

I stopped short. “Maybe you could,” I said. “But before you got hold of it, there’d be a lot more marks on that ugly face of yours.”

Anger simmered in Donner’s eyes while his mouth formed a weak grin. “No reason to go into what-ifs,” he said. “I don’t think we’re at that point yet.”

Yet? I didn’t see how things could go much further. I resumed walking and turned east on High Street. Donner kept pace beside me. He seemed desperate, and I wondered just what he might be willing to do to get me to turn against the players. Donner wasn’t the only one under pressure, though. I had three days to give Leo Hyman something on Siever’s death.

“Let’s try this a little differently,” I suggested. “Instead of threats, you do something for me.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I know you were
not
having dinner with Ban Johnson the night Siever was killed. So let’s start by telling me what you
where
doing.”

Donner barely considered my proposal before dismissing it. “I collect information,” he said. “I don’t give it.”

“Your loss.”

We’d reached Crawford Park, and Donner pointed to a bench facing the fountain. “Can we sit a minute?”

Since I still hoped that I might get some information from him, I agreed, and we sat down.

“There’s something else I can do for you,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“The league has authorized me to offer you an honorarium if you agree to do what we ask.”

“Honorarium?”

He withdrew a letter-sized manila envelope from an inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to me. I lifted the flap and saw a crisp new $100 bill. It was the first one I’d ever seen.

“There’s a thousand dollars in there,” Donner said. “You can walk home with it now. A lot of things you can do with this much money—buy yourself a new car, if you want to.”

I rifled through them. There were ten bills. A thousand dollars in cash. I was impressed by the sum, but I felt no temptation. It was with a great deal of satisfaction that I handed the envelope back to Hub Donner.

“Go to hell,” I said.

There had to be a connection. In one way or another, there were quite a few people involved in Emmett Siever’s death: the IWW, the GID, the Detroit Police Department, and possibly Hub Donner. The question was: what role did each of them ptay—what actions had led to Siever’s murder, and what actions were taken to hide the circumstances of his death?

It was Margie who suggested a way to find out: start with what they all had in common. They had all been at the scene of the crime.

She was right. I’d gone with Karl Landfors to the back rooms of Fraternity Hall, but that was to retrace my own steps that night. What I needed to do was determine the movements of the killer.

On Friday evening, with less than twenty-four hours to go until Hyman’s deadline, Margie Turner, Connie Siever, and I walked together along First Street on our way to Fraternity Hall. Margie was the one who had asked Connie to accompany us. She’d said that Connie’s standing with the IWW could ease our way into the hall. In order to get us into the back rooms, Connie came up with the cover story that we were volunteering to help in the kitchen.

We started up the path to the front entrance. I asked Connie, “Can we go in the back way?”

She studied me a moment. “If you prefer.” She then led us around the side toward the rear of the building. The first item on my list of questions was: how did the killer get in?

Connie and Margie stopped at a side door near the back. I continued past them, into a broad alley that ran behind the hall. The back wall was solid concrete block, with no doors or windows. Calvin Garrett could only have gotten through the door where the women were waiting for me. Before rejoining them, I gave a quick look over the alley itself. There was enough trash—shells of abandoned automobiles, wooden barrels, and discarded packing crates—to provide plenty of hiding spots for anyone who had the place under surveillance.

“There’s a toilet inside, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Connie said.

“Uh, no. I’m fine.” I returned to where they were standing. “Okay, you have a key?”

Connie pointed to the door. “What good would a key do?”

She was right: there was no lock, not even a handle. She slapped three times on the wood. Half a minute later, somebody inside asked who was there; at Connie’s answer, the door swung inward.

We stepped inside and a small, plain, dark-haired woman lowered the crossbar back into place.

“Hello, Norma,” Connie said. “I brought along a little kitchen help.”

A smile of welcome flashed over Norma’s pale, friendly face. “We can use them,” she said. “Expecting a lot of people for dinner tonight.”

Connie made the introductions. I paid little attention to what she said, for I was absorbed in studying the layout of the area.

The hallway ran straight ahead, uninterrupted, all the way to the opposite end of the building. On the left was an interior wall that separated the meeting hall from the back rooms; one door, halfway down the corridor, connected the two areas. To the immediate right was an open area that contained an ancient printing press, a workbench cluttered with carpentry tools, and a foot-powered band saw. Piles of handbills, booklets, and posters were on the floor, cans of paint and ink on the shelves, and dozens of picket signs stacked in the corners.

The three women walked ahead of me while I moved slowly, mentally recording everything I could about what I saw. Beyond the work area, the hallway narrowed. Five offices were to the right, their doors closed, as they had been when I was here with Leo Hyman and Karl Landfors. When we passed the door on the left that led to the main hall, I averted my head; I wished I’d never stepped through it that night in April.

The kitchen was another open area to the right, just past the offices. There were two men and four women hard at work preparing dinner. Norma took charge of us, assigning Connie and Margie to something that involved vegetables, and asking me to watch the soup pots. When I asked what I was to watch for, she changed my task to peeling potatoes.

While I settled down to put my army training to use, Connie said, “Men are so useless. I hate to think what people would have to eat if we let the men do the cooking. The folks who come here for food have enough troubles as it is.”

“Men,” repeated Margie with a wink in my direction. “What are they good for?”

“Taking out the trash,” said Norma.

The conversation turned to the trip Connie was planning to Tennessee. I sensed that my participation in the suffrage discussion wasn’t welcome, so I fell to with the potato peeler and looked about the room for hints as to what could have happened the night Siever was killed.

It occurred to me that I had never gone past the kitchen.

I silently got up and walked around the corner. Next to the kitchen was a pantry; its door was open, allowing me to see piles of canned goods, cleaning supplies, and sacks of flour, sugar, and coffee. A large steel sink was being used as a grain bin; it was filled with ears of corn.

I stepped beyond the pantry. The hallway ended in another open area. There were racks of folding chairs, a blackboard, and some miscellaneous furniture. No doors, no windows.

“Looking for something?” Norma asked.

I turned around. “The knife was a little dull. I was looking for another.”

“All you had to do was ask.”

“Didn’t want to interrupt.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “Very considerate of you.” After leading me back to the kitchen, she supplied me with another peeler and I went back to work. The women resumed their talk about suffrage. I noticed that Margie spoke knowledgeably about the status of the amendment and that Connie was attentive to Margie’s opinions.

After I’d produced a sizable pile of peels, I offered to take them out to the trash. “I hear it’s what we do best,” I said.

Margie laughed, and Norma said, “It’s around the corner out back. Prop the door open, so we don’t have to let you back in.”

I dumped the peels into a tin bucket and hauled them to the back door. Before stepping outside, I stopped to give the door a thorough inspection. It nestled firmly against the jamb; there was no room to slide anything in to lift the cross bar from the outside. The steel bar pivoted on one side; the other rested in a bracket. Surrounding the bracket was an additional piece of metal. I pulled at the entire assembly; it was all strong and secure. When I lifted the bar, I felt the resistance of a spring in the pivot end. The spring prevented the bar from being left in the up position. I opened the door, wedged a doorstop in the bottom, and went outside, where I tossed the potato peels into a trash bin.

From my examination, it was clear to me that to get in through the back door, you had to be let in. Somebody inside either had to open it for you or leave it propped open. So how did Calvin Garrett get in? If he saw the killer leave, surely the killer didn’t leave the door propped open. And I couldn’t imagine the Wobblies opening it for him.

When I got back to the kitchen, Whitey Boggs was there inspecting the work of his Relief Committee. Most of his “supervision” involved remaining in close proximity to Norma. Margie and I stayed until dinner was cooked and served.

Just before we left, Boggs ducked his head close to me and whispered, “We appreciate the help, but you sure picked an odd way of spending your last night alive.”

T
here were too many threads that I couldn’t tie together. I had nothing definitive, not even any new theories that I could offer to Leo Hyman as justification for another deadline extension. It was time to call the smartest guy I knew, and see if he could come up with any answers.

Saturday morning, I placed a call to Karl Landfors in Boston, and gave him a rundown on where things stood. I told him that Siever had been both shot and stabbed, and I reported on my visit to Calvin Garrett and my talks with Leo Hyman and Stan Zaluski.

The line was silent for some time after I finished my account. Then came Landfors’s assessment of the situation: “I must say, this is really most puzzling.”

Jeez. Okay, if he can’t give me answers, maybe he can at least give me information. Among the issues that remained unclear to me was Calvin Garrett’s function in the GID. “Could you explain to me about the Justice Department’s General Intelligence Division?” I asked. “Some of what Garrett told me doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll try,” Landfors said. “But the GID is less than a year old, and it doesn’t exactly publicize its activities. I don’t know much.”

That was probably the first time in his life Karl Landfors had uttered that sentence. “Calvin Garrett is a special agent, based in Washington, DC,” I said. “So why was he up in Detroit spying on some little IWW hall? I mean, there are probably hundreds of union halls and labor organizations they keep tabs on. Does the GID use their agents to stand in alleys watching these places?”

“Hmm. No, the GID is only supposed to maintain and organize intelligence information supplied to them by other federal agencies and local police. I don’t think they were originally intended to be in the field at all. I hear their director makes a habit of exceeding the bounds of his authority, though, so perhaps he does use his agents in more active roles.”

I remembered the stubby little man I’d seen. “Hoover?”

“That’s right. John Hoover. Calls himself ‘J. Edgar’ now. An ambitious man, and ruthless from what I hear. You’re right, though: even if Hoover was putting agents in the field, it doesn’t seem likely that he would waste one of them on routine surveillance. As far as
why
Garrett was in Detroit, it could have something to do with Mitchell Palmer losing the primary election there. After the loss, Palmer said ‘Detroit is the largest city in America in population of radicals and revolutionists.’” Landfors issued a humorless laugh and said, “I have a lot of friends in Chicago and New York who would like to claim that title for their own cities. Anyway, Palmer has to redeem himself for what happened to him in Michigan. One way is to hit back at the people he thinks hurt him there.”

That was pretty much what I’d suggested to Garrett. “Okay, so you think the Justice Department was going to start a major crackdown on Detroit ‘Reds’?”

“Seems likely.”

“Would a crackdown include the out-and-out murder of a labor leader?”

Landfors breathed out a whoosh of air. “You’re asking if Calvin Garrett murdered Emmett Siever.”

“Yes.”

“I have a hard time believing that. Even if the GID was to go to that extreme, I believe they would be more subtle about it. Pushing Andrea Salsedo out a window and pretending he jumped is one thing. Shooting a man is something else.”

“I don’t see much difference between the two, Karl.”

“Not in effect, but in technique. I think shooting is too direct for the GID.”

“But if the plan was to assassinate Siever, that might explain why Garrett was there instead of some beat cop or two-bit detective.”

“Oh!” Landfors’s tongue tripped over itself getting out the next words. “There’s a problem with that theory: if Garrett shot Siever, why didn’t he leave? Remember, you said yourself he could have simply left the building.”

That’s right. And my recent examination of the door confirmed that there was nothing to prevent someone from going out. “I guess I still have some digging to do,” I said finally. “How are things going there?”

“Not good. These men are going to be railroaded, and it’s all politics.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll do what I can to stop it, but I doubt that writing about the case will be enough.”

“Wish I could help,” I said.

“Wish I could have been more help to you,” he responded. “Oh, uh, you haven’t by any chance seen Connie lately?”

“Last night. She and Margie are becoming pretty chummy.”

“Did she ask—”

“Yes, she asked about you. Call her.”

“You think?”

“I’m positive.”

“Very well. I’ll trust your judgment on that.”

Trusting my judgment regarding women was like taking fashion advice from Hub Donner, but I didn’t want to disillusion Landfors.

If Whitey Boggs was correct that last night was to be my last one alive, then today would be my last game. There was perfect weather for it: a high clear sky, warm with low humidity, just enough of a breeze to flutter the flag in center field. There were plenty of fans on hand as well. The Tigers had been showing signs of life lately. Instead of allowing our spirits to remain as low as our place in the standings, we were taking one game at a time, playing for pride and respect. And we’d been winning. The fans, the press, the entire city was starting to get behind us.

All that was missing was Margie Turner. I’d asked her not to come to the game, and I wasn’t going to see her tonight. If somebody was going to come after me, I wanted it to be me alone. I didn’t want Margie in the line of fire. Of course, that wasn’t the reason I gave her; I mentioned only that I had “things to do.”

I’d already taken batting practice and was watching Chick Fogarty take his turn in the cage. Ty Cobb, who’d been first to hit, stood between home plate and the seats, talking with reporters and photographers.

I looked at St. Louis Browns starting pitcher Elam Vangilder warming up outside the visitors’ dugout. There were odd feelings running through me. The notion that it could be my last game made me determined to play a good one. But there was too much fight in me to accept that it was my last. I still had to get a hit off Walter Johnson, after all. No way was my last major-league at bat going to be against Elam Vangilder.

Fogarty unleashed a mighty swing at a half-speed fastball, and missed it by a foot. With an angry curse, he clubbed home plate with the head of his bat. It occurred to me that I might have to watch for more than the men from Fraternity Hall. What if the Wobblies decided to use somebody from the players’ union to get back to me for Siever’s death?

It would help if I knew for certain who on the Tigers team was unionizing. I shot a look at Cobb. I might not know who the head of the union was, but the leader of the team was easy to identify: Ty Cobb.

I made my way toward the Georgian. He was working his Southern charm on the press, laughing and joking. I knew he could explode with no warning, so I tried to get his attention with subtle gestures.

“What are you twitching about, boy?” he demanded.

“Need to talk to you,” I said.

Cobb scowled, then dismissed the reporters. “Give us a minute, will you please, gentlemen?” When they dispersed, he said, “Well, kid, what is it?”

I didn’t like being called “boy” or “kid” but didn’t correct him. Pick your battles, I told myself. “It’s about the union. I know you were one of the vice-presidents of the Baseball Players Fraternity—”

He cut me off. “That was strictly honorary.”

I wasn’t sure if Cobb wanted to distance himself from the current union or if he’d changed sides. It was well-known that his investments in Coca-Cola and General Motors had already made him a rich man. Could a capitalist also be a union man? “Well, I thought you might know who’s involved with trying to unionize now,” I said.

“Might be,” he said. “Where you going with this?”

“I want whoever is involved to know that I’m not against the union. I won’t do anything to hurt it, and I don’t want any trouble. Could you pass that message along, please?”

“If the occasion comes up, I expect I could do that for you.”

I nodded at the batting cage. Tiger players were yelling for Fogarty to get out and give them a turn. “By the way,” I said. “I hear Chick Fogarty’s the team’s union leader.”

“Where’s your head, boy?” Cobb snapped. “Would
you
trust him in a job like that?”

Fogarty had missed another pitch and was pounding the plate, apparently trying to drive it into the ground. “No, I guess I wouldn’t,” I said. But I
would
trust him to do an effective job of beating someone up.

I’d spent a peaceful Saturday night alone in my apartment. No one came to the door and no shotgun pellets came through the window. I didn’t even get a phone call. By Sunday morning, I’d decided they’d had their chance. I was going to get on with living normally. As normal as it ever got for me, anyway.

I left Navin Field after another win over the Browns, and turned up Trumbull to stop home before going to meet Margie at the Rex. I was dressed in my cheeriest red necktie and a cream-colored poplin suit. I had my straw boater tilted back to catch the sun on my face. Although determined not to let the Wobbly threat affect my actions, it still hung over me, causing me to look at every passerby with misgiving.

While I was casting a suspicious glance at a peanut vendor, two large men in old work clothes caught me by surprise, stepping out from behind a parked ice wagon. I was fairly certain that I’d seen them before in Fraternity Hall.

One of them said, “Gonna take you for a little ride,” and gestured at a black hardtop Dodge moving slowly along the curb.

The other man had an overcoat draped over his forearm; he pulled back the coat just enough to reveal the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun.

The rear door of the Dodge opened and the first man started to push me toward it. My effort to resist was brief, lasting only until I heard the sound of a hammer being cocked. One of the first rules of staying alive is don’t argue with a loaded gun. The second rule is assume that any gun pointed at you is loaded.

I was hustled into the backseat, where Whitey Boggs was waiting. “Your time is up,” he said. The other two men hopped in, one in the front and one in the back, and the driver hit the gas to send us speeding south.

“Where we going?” I asked. My situation didn’t look promising: there were four of them, and I was wedged between a man pressing a shotgun against my ribs and Boggs, who I was sure had his razor.

“To administer a little justice for Emmett Siever,” Boggs answered.

I turned to the man on my right. “Mind pointing that thing to the side? I don’t want to die just from hitting a bump.”

The gunman said to the driver, “Try not to hit any bumps, Pete. Don’t want a mess back here.” The barrel remained where it was.

Whitey Boggs said nothing more. I started to wish that he’d put a blindfold on me. Either wherever they were taking me wasn’t a secret, or I wouldn’t be alive to identify it anyway.

After a right turn onto Jefferson, we crossed the railroad tracks. I silently cursed the driver for taking them so hard—the car bounced and lurched when he hit the rails. We proceeded about half a mile on a dirt road, until we were near the Wabash Freight Depot. The driver pulled up to a small, run-down brick building that looked like it had once been a warehouse.

“Last stop,” said Boggs.

The driver killed the engine, and I was led out of the car. I spotted a slow-moving freight car rolling along the tracks. The idea of bolting for the train was tempting, but I knew I couldn’t outrun buckshot.

The four men ushered me into the abandoned warehouse. It contained a few crates and barrels and a great deal of dirt. The walls shook and the floor rumbled from activity in the freight yard.

I was starting to feel numb, frozen. I wanted to fight, or to flee. But every option seemed more likely to hasten my death than prevent it.