Hanging Curve (26 page)

T
he new bleacher seats had been added to Sportsman’s Park, and every one of them was occupied. More than thirty thousand fans were on hand for the Browns’ Independence Day doubleheader against the visiting Cleveland Indians.

Any other year, this occasion would have been one of the highlights of the season for me. A major-league baseball game was as much a part of a Fourth of July celebration as fireworks and flags, and it was always something special to play on the nation’s birthday. It was impossible for me to get excited about these games, though.

For one thing, Lee Fohl was putting the Browns’ pennant drive into high gear, which meant he was relying primarily on the regulars. My role would be limited to coaching Marty McManus from the bench.

I was also distracted by the situation in East St. Louis. I had no doubt that Roy Enoch’s klavern—with or without his blessing—would be planning some action to get revenge for the dealership being burned down. I only hoped that I could find a way to get things resolved before we left on our next road trip.

Most of my hopes rested with Margie. She was in Collinsville, at an Elcars’ semipro game, to find out what she could from their female fans.

 

 

“The game itself was terrific,” Margie reported. “The other team was also white, so there was a completely different atmosphere from the game with the Cubs.” She took a bite of her hot dog and washed it down with soda pop. Dinner was informal, on a picnic blanket in Fairgrounds Park, while we waited for the holiday fireworks display.

“Who won?” I asked, hoping it hadn’t been the Elcars.

She smiled. “Collinsville, five-four.” After tossing a piece of bread to a nearby pigeon, she said, “I learned some things from the women there. I don’t know if any of it’s useful though.”

I still had concerns about Margie being involved in this. “Were they suspicious about you asking questions?”

“I hardly had to ask anything!” Margie laughed. “All they did is gossip—they barely paid attention to the game. Jessalyn Enoch and Doreen Uhler were both there, and they seemed happy to have another set of ears around to listen to their talk.”

“Did you find out anything about Whalen?” Before she’d left for the game, we agreed she should focus on him, since he’d lied about Slip Crawford.

“Some, but I don’t know if it’s helpful.” Margie refolded her legs and smoothed out her skirt. “J. D. Whalen started pursuing Jessalyn soon after her fiance Tim Lowrey was killed in the riot. I don’t know if it was his idea, though. He might have been encouraged by Jessalyn’s father. Roy Enoch promoted Whalen from mechanic to Lowrey’s sales position, and seemed to be grooming him to take over the business.”

I asked, “Was the falling-out between Enoch and Whalen a couple months ago because of Whalen starting his own garage or because of something between Whalen and Jessalyn?”

“I don’t know. Whalen pursued her off and on for a few years, but she never warmed up to him, from what I gather.”

“You don’t think she and Whalen were involved earlier—while she was engaged to Lowrey?”

Margie shook her head. “The other girls at the park filled me in on Jessalyn when she went to the ladies’ room. She’s not likely to attract many suitors—neither her appearance nor personality is terribly pleasant. The girls seemed to think Roy Enoch was essentially bribing Whalen to court his daughter with the better job and more money.”

“And it didn’t work?”

“No, I think she loved Tim Lowrey, and no one was ever going to replace him for her. That’s another odd thing, though: The girls all agreed that Whalen would have been a ‘better catch’ for her than Lowrey. After Lowrey was killed in the riot, he became something of a martyr, but he wasn’t well liked when he was alive. Doreen told me she’d heard that Lowrey was always bragging to the other workers that he had it made because he’d be marrying the boss’s daughter.”

“Hm. Did you learn anything else?”

“Nothing new. Doreen did mention Padgett’s temper, but you already knew about that. She said, ‘With his temper, he should have my hair color.’ She also said he never got angry with her, but
would
get into a jealous rage at any man who showed her attention.”

I thought over what Margie had told me. She was right; there wasn’t much we didn’t already know.

“Do you think it was worth me going there?” Margie asked.

I smiled. “At least you got to miss seeing us play against Cleveland.” We’d lost both ends of the doubleheader, shrinking our lead over the Yankees to one game. “I’m not sure where to go from here.”

“Well,” Margie said, “what about talking to Hannah Crawford?”

I didn’t really want to question Slip Crawford’s widow, but I had to concede that it was a sensible idea.

 

Once again, I’d called Franklin Aubury, this time to set up a meeting with Crawford’s widow; I didn’t want to show up unannounced and start asking her questions about her dead husband. I’d also told the lawyer about Karl’s and my interrogation of Padgett, and that I thought we were making some progress. I didn’t tell him yet that it looked like J. D. Whalen had instigated the lynching.

Margie and I arrived at Hannah Crawford’s spacious Olive Street apartment Thursday afternoon. Mrs. Crawford was a pretty, shapely woman with skin almost the same shade as her black hair, which was straightened and cut in a Dutch bob. She greeted us graciously and ushered us into a pristine parlor.

“I sure appreciate what you’re trying to do for my Sherman,” she said. “You just tell me anything I can do to help.”

As she poured us tea from a silver pot, I looked around and saw the photos of her husband on the mantel. Many of them were formal portraits of Sherman Crawford wearing a suit and tie; others showed “Slip” Crawford in the baseball uniforms of the Indianapolis ABCs and St. Louis Stars. On the wall above, was a color-tinted wedding portrait of the two of them together.

I began, “I understand you and your husband used to live in East St. Louis.”

“Until the riot,” Hannah Crawford answered. “Our house was one of those that was burned down. We moved to St. Louis right after, and never went back across the river again.”

“But Slip went back to pitch in the Cubs’ game. Why did he do that? Why go back to East St. Louis to play in a semipro game?”

“The city had been our home for several years. Slip always felt bad about the way we left, and he wanted to do something for the community. He figured pitching that game against the Elcars was one of the best things he could do for the colored people of East St. Louis. Nothing’s ever going to make up for what happened to us during the riot, but every time we get some small victory against the whites, it’s something for us to cheer about.”

“Were you at the game, too?”

“Sure was. Afterward, we had dinner with some friends who used to be neighbors.”

“Did your husband say anything after the game?”

She hesitated. “About what?”

“You remember when one of the Elcars’ batters—J. D. Whalen—started to go out to the mound? Slip said something to him, and Whalen backed down. Did he tell you what he said?”

Hannah Crawford thought for a while. “Mr. Aubury says I should feel free to tell you anything. This is the first time I’ve told anybody what I’m going to say to you, and I want
your
promise you won’t use it in any way to hurt the memory of my Sherman.”

I promised that I had no intention of harming her late husband’s reputation.

She said, “The day the riot started, I was home, and Sherman was over in St. Louis trying out for the St. Louis Giants. When word started to spread about what was happening in East St. Louis, he came back over Eads Bridge—almost had to fight his way back, because of all the people going in the other direction trying to escape. Sherman didn’t know it, but I was one of them, along with our next-door neighbors. I figured Sherman was already safe, being in St. Louis; I didn’t know he’d try to come back to check on how I was.

“Well, by the time he got to where we lived, our house was already up in flames. So he started to search for me, all the while having to avoid the whites who were shooting colored folk like it was target practice. The city was crazy—killing, burning, looting. One of our neighbors was even killed for a pair of shoes.

“Anyway, Sherman kept looking for me. As he did, a couple of white men passed near him, and went into an alley. Sherman hid until they passed. But apparently, these men weren’t hunting colored people. One of them knocked the other on the head with a tire iron.”

“Was he killed?” I asked.

“Sherman wasn’t sure, but he thought so. Said the man’s skull cracked as loud as a gunshot. He never checked though—soon as the man who’d hit him left, Sherman took off before he ended up getting blamed for it.” Hannah Crawford looked down at her folded hands. “He always felt a little cowardly about what happened—that he didn’t try to help the man, and that he left town never to come back. I suppose that’s another reason he wanted to play for the Cubs that day.”

And that’s when he saw the man who’d swung the tire iron that night: J. D. Whalen. I asked, “So what did your husband tell you after the game?”

“He recognized the man who killed the other fellow in the alley. It was the one who went out to the mound. When he did, Sherman said something to him like, ‘You better have another tire iron with you.’ ” She shook her head, then almost screamed, “That damned fool! Soon as he said that, he was as good as dead.”

Margie said, “I don’t understand. Why would your husband let Whalen know that he recognized him?”

“I think I can answer that,” I said. “Crawford was in a tight spot and he wanted to get Whalen off-stride. And it worked—he struck him out.”

Hannah Crawford nodded. “That’s what he told me. He didn’t really
plan
to say anything; it just came into his head and out his mouth. He didn’t think of any consequences beyond the ball game.” She began to weep. “We sure started to worry about it afterward though.”

With good reason, I thought.

I
pored over the thick transcripts and depositions of the 1917 trials in the basement of East St. Louis’s City Hall. As I did, I wondered how Franklin Aubury had managed to stay awake in law school if he had to read this kind of stuff. It was all in a dry legalese that made it tough to tell if any of it meant anything.

It took a couple of hours, but I sorted through the material until I’d found the coroner’s reports on each of the six white men who’d been killed in the riot. Most had died of gunshot wounds. The only one who’d been killed by bludgeoning was Tim Lowrey. He’d suffered a fractured skull from “a blunt object, perhaps a metal pipe.”

It looked like the connection between 1917 and 1922 was confirmed. Slip Crawford had never gone back to East St. Louis until the game against the Elcars. That’s when he saw J. D. Whalen again. And that’s when Whalen learned that there’d been a witness to his murder of Tim Lowrey—and when he’d decided to make sure Crawford could never tell what he saw.

But after five years, and with the only witness to the crime dead, how could I prove what Whalen had done?

 

I knew there was no way to get Whalen for Crawford’s lynching—the only witnesses were Klansmen—so my best chance to nail him was for the murder of Tim Lowrey.

The main question about that, I thought, was whether it was a planned murder or a spontaneous act. Whalen might have been able to get a mob riled up against Crawford to do his killing for him, but he certainly didn’t start the riot in 1917 for the sole purpose of providing cover for his murder of Lowrey.

Okay, start with the basics, I told myself: means, motive, opportunity. The means was a tire iron. Opportunity was the riot—in the mayhem of the burning and the killing and the looting, with few police on patrol, it was easy for Whalen to add one more victim to the toll. No one would investigate it as a murder, and the blame would be placed on Negroes.

But what was his motive? He’d pursued Jessalyn Enoch after Lowrey’s death—was
she
what he wanted?

There was one person who might be able to give me more information.

I placed a phone call to Waverly Motors, and asked for Mr. Whalen.

“You got him,” he said.

“This is Mr. Lockhart in the tax office at City Hall,” I said. “We have a bit of a mix-up on your paperwork here. Right now, your business is only listed as a garage, and we need to correct that to include automobile sales.”

“Oh. Okay, what do I have to do?”

“Just fill out a couple of forms. Can you be at City Hall tomorrow at ten?”

“I suppose.”

“It will only take a few minutes. Come to room 142 and ask for Lockhart.”

 

At ten o’clock the next morning, I arrived at Waverly Motors, where I was greeted by the hirsute Clint.

He said, “Hey, you guys are playing real good. Looks like you’re gonna take the pennant.”

“Don’t jinx it,” I joked.

“I been thinking of taking you up on that ticket offer. Haven’t been to a ball game in ages.”

“Anytime,” I said. “Just let me know, and tickets will be waiting for you.”

“Thanks. Oh, J. D.’s not here, if you come looking for him.”

I knew that. “I wanted to talk to
you,
if you have a minute.”

“Sure, but I promised some guy to have his car done by noon. You mind talking inside?”

I followed Clint into the service bay, where he resumed work on the engine of a Chevy coupe.

“You mentioned about all the good people who got caught up in the riot,” I began. “Was J. D. one of them?”

“No reason to go digging up bones. Let it be.”

“The bones keep coming to the surface,” I said. “That might be why this problem with the Elcars keeps getting worse.” I tried to make it sound like I wanted to keep Whalen out of trouble. “Wouldn’t want J. D. to get hurt in whatever happens.”

“Don’t see why he should.”

“He
was
involved in the riot, wasn’t he?”

“All the fellows at Enoch’s were. But they didn’t start nothing. When they heard about it, they just grabbed tools or whatever else they could use as weapons and started patrolling.”

“Patrolling?” So that was how Whalen and Lowrey happened to be together in an alley that night.

“Yeah, there was rumors that coloreds were coming over from St. Louis, and it was gonna be out-and-out war.”

“But that didn’t happen.”

“Hell, there was rumors flying around like you wouldn’t believe. Made people crazy, but hardly any of ’em were true. Can’t blame J. D. or any of the fellows at Enoch’s for getting caught up in things—there weren’t a whole lot of cool heads that day. And they’ve all suffered enough. That’s why I say it should stay buried.”

“They’ve
suffered?
”

“Sure. Felt like idiots for what they did, and then to lose Tim Lowrey because of their foolishness. Good people can do stupid things sometimes.”

“Yeah, they can.” And at least one of those “good people” did an evil thing.