Hunting a Detroit Tiger (12 page)

Landfors and I met for lunch at Kelsey’s. I took care to sit forward from the backrest. The wounds were tender but not excruciating.

“How did it go with the police?” he asked.

Sergeant Phelan had again been the officer on duty, and turned out to be no more helpful this time than he had when I’d first met him. “I was told that a broken window isn’t much of a reason to investigate anything.” The morning shooting hadn’t been my only reason for speaking to him, however. Phelan did prove himself helpful—though unwittingly so— when I’d asked him about the feud between the Treasury Department and the Detroit police.

Landfors nibbled at his food.

I thanked him again for patching me up.

He said, “I’ve been thinking: you might be best off dropping this. True, you have the Wobblies angry at you because they think you killed Siever, but if you go digging into it, you’ll have somebody else coming after you: the man who really murdered him. As long as Siever’s death is credited to you, he’s off the hook. But if he finds out you’re looking into things . . .”

“He’ll want to stop me to keep himself in the clear. I thought about that, Karl. I don’t see that dropping this now would make me any safer. Even if I did, the killer would never know for sure that I wasn’t going to bring it up again in the future, so he still might want to kill me, too. No, I’m not giving up.”

“I didn’t think so,” said Landfors.

Changing the subject, I said, “You haven’t told me about how it went last night.”

He smiled broadly, and a pixilated look came into his eyes. After giving me an almost verbatim retelling of his speech to Constance Siever and her friends, he recounted with relish every word of the adoring praise they’d heaped on him. As he spoke, his demeanor became increasingly distracted, and he repeated his favorite lines often enough that I had the sense of listening to a Victrola with its needle stuck in a groove. It made me wonder—just a little—if people ever tired of hearing me tell about the time I hit a home run off Big Ed Walsh in Fenway Park.

I patiently let him talk on through a dessert of apple pie.

Back in my apartment, I asked a question that shook him partway out of his reverie. “Could you set up a meeting with Leo Hyman?”

“Well, I suppose so. For when?”

“Tonight, if possible. We’re leaving for a series against the Browns on Sunday.”

Landfors flushed and stammered, “I, uh, I have a date for tonight. I can break it, though, if you want me to go with you.”

I didn’t need to ask who the unfortunate lady was. “No need. I can talk to Hyman by myself.”

He relaxed slightly when I passed up the opportunity to prod him about his date. “Very well,” he said as he went to the phone. After he got Leo Hyman on the line and told him what I wanted, Landfors relayed to me, “Tonight’s no good for him. Is tomorrow all right?”

“Sure.” I remembered that the IWW hall was probably under surveillance. “Not at Fraternity Hall, though. I don’t want to be seen.”

Landfors nodded and said into the mouthpiece, “Yes, tomorrow night is fine. And the meeting has to be invisible, Leo.” After another brief exchange with Hyman, he hung up. “He’ll call back to let us know where and when.”

“Thanks, Karl. By the way, what’s the problem between you and Hyman? Connie Siever said something about how you and him should make up. Did you two have a fight?”

Landfors returned to the sofa. “We’ve had some differences of opinion.” He pushed up his glasses and crossed one leg over the other. “Regarding tactics.”

“Tactics?”

He hesitated. “You won’t repeat this, right?”

I agreed that I wouldn’t.

“Leo Hyman advocates sabotage as a political tactic.”

There’d been endless stories about German sabotage during the war. “You mean like blowing up factories and sinking ships?”

“No, no. Nothing that drastic. Hyman goes for a more subtle approach. He’s a clever man—used to be an engineer. As a matter of fact, he’s quite capable of designing all sorts of complicated devices if he wanted to, but he generally tries to find the simplest way of doing damage. Hyman was the one who discovered that if you put mustard seed in cement mix, the seeds will grow and crumble the concrete. And it was his idea to have assembly workers at Ford put dead rats behind the door panels.”

“Dead rats?”

“Yes, the cars are shipped before the rats decompose. Then the dealers are stuck with smelly cars that no one will buy, or the customer returns it. Either way, it’s a problem for Ford.”

I imagined some poor fellow spending a thousand dollars for a new automobile, taking his family out for a drive, and the smell of decomposing rat ruining the outing. I generally didn’t take sides with the combatants in a conflict; I identified with those caught in the middle. “And you don’t agree with that approach,” I said.

“No. Innocent people get hurt. Imagine a foundation giving way and a building collapsing because of the mustard seed.” Landfors shuddered. “Those kinds of tactics only hurt our cause. People have to be won over by words and ideas, not threats. But Leo Hyman feels sabotage is the only real power the workers have, so they have to use it.”

I was glad Landfors and I were on the same side on this point. “So . . . where are you and Connie going tonight?”

He blushed. “Dinner. And a show.”

“Well, be careful. She might be a witch.”

“How’s that?”

“She was wearing a pin of a black cat.” I smiled to show I was only teasing.

“Oh that.” His expression grew a little grimmer. “Well, she sides with Leo Hyman in the tactics debate. A black cat is the sign of sabotage. So is a wooden shoe, by the way. That’s where the word came from—a ‘sabot’ is a wooden shoe. When French farmworkers had a grievance they would throw their wooden shoes into the machinery to jam it. Hence ‘sabotage.’”

“Seems to bother you more about Hyman than it does about Connie.”

His lips made a thin smile. “I don’t expect the subject will come up.”

We avoided political discussion for the rest of the afternoon. As evening approached, Landfors fell into a state of almost total confusion, flushed for no reason, took a long bath, and primped endlessly. I wondered when he’d last had a date.

He asked me to lend him a tie with color in it instead of his usual black. I offered him a new suit that I hadn’t yet worn myself—a double-breasted, chalk-striped, navy blue worsted with alpaca lining; it had set me back nearly $50. Landfors declined, saying he didn’t want her to think he was dressing up for the occasion. He was right: the goal on a first date is to look good, but give the impression that it’s your natural appearance—if you’re obviously dressing up, the girl might wonder what you really look like.

After Landfors rejected every tie I offered until I reached plain navy blue, I helped him with the knot and ushered him out the door. No matter how he’s dressed, I thought, a radical in love is not a pretty sight.

I picked up
Main Street
and settled in for the night, lying facedown on the sofa to ease the pain in my back. I was through the first fifty pages when the cuckoo emerged from the clock and issued eight groans. He seemed to be taunting me with the fact that it was eight o’clock on a Friday night, Karl Landfors was out on a date, and I was home reading a book.

This month couldn’t get much worse.

I
was alone again the next night, at the soda fountain of Fyfe’s Pharmacy, sipping a chocolate ice-cream soda with little appreciation for its flavor. The afternoon game had been another loss to Chicago, extending our “unvictorious streak,” as Karl Landfors called it, to seven straight games. Hughie Jennings still attributed the poor start to the team’s exhausting barnstorming trip, but that excuse was no longer carrying much weight with the sportswriters or the fans. The simple fact was that our hitters, including Ty Cobb, weren’t hitting, our pitchers couldn’t get anyone out, and our fielders turned the simplest plays into juggling routines. If we didn’t win one of the next four games, the Tigers would end up 0-for-April.

Landfors was off on another date with Connie Siever. All he’d tell me about the first one was that it had been “thoroughly pleasant,” but the fact that he borrowed my brightest red tie for this evening showed he was more smitten than his words indicated. He was in such a lovesick daze that I’d made him twice repeat the directions from Leo Hyman on where and when we were to meet.

In accordance with Hyman’s instructions, I sat at the end of the counter farthest from the entrance. Through the glass storefront, I watched the traffic on busy Woodward Avenue just north of the Campus Martius. I couldn’t get over how much the downtown had grown since I’d been here last. Back then, the city had been one of the smallest to have a major-league baseball franchise, and there had still been a rural character to many of the streets. But times change, especially in Detroit, where the roaring automobile industry sets the pace of progress.

While my eyes watched the passing cars, my mind turned to Margie Turner again. And I got to worrying that I’d missed my chance at “the one.” In the last six years, although I’d had enough dates and a few romances, I had never found a girl I was as crazy about as I had been about Margie. What if I didn’t find someone like her in the next six years? I would be pushing thirty-five and alone—or settling for someone just for companionship. If I’d only gone to California with her . . . It might have killed my major-league career for a while, but I still could have played ball in the Pacific Coast League . . . No, I’d made the right choice. Hell, it wasn’t really a choice at all. Not a ballplayer in the world would have given up a roster spot on John McGraw’s New York Giants to play for the Los Angeles Angels or the San Francisco Seals.

A bright blue Maxwell roadster slid up to the curb. The open, distinctive car was a refreshing contrast to the sea of black Fords cruising by, but not the ideal car to avoid a tail, I thought. I watched as Leo Hyman got out of the driver’s side and Whitey Boggs exited the passenger’s door. Hyman was again dressed in red flannel and dungarees, the only change being the color of his suspenders: yellow. The sight of Boggs was an unpleasant surprise; I had expected Hyman to be alone.

The two men came into the drugstore without acknowledging me and took seats near the door. Boggs pointed to the menu and the men gave every indication they were going to order something. After a few minutes, they quietly slid off their stools and ambled toward me. “Come with us,” Hyman said.

Abandoning my soda, I followed them as they went through the drugstore’s small storage room and out the back door into an alley. An empty, four-door hardtop Model T sedan was there, with its engine running. “In the back,” said Boggs, opening the rear door for me. I hesitated a moment. Then I figured Karl Landfors wouldn’t send me into a setup. I slid into the backseat, Boggs followed me, and Hyman went behind the wheel. He shifted into gear and eased out of the alley. Clever, I thought: if they were being watched, the blue Maxwell would still be under surveillance while they left in this car.

When we turned onto Griswold, Boggs reached into his jacket pocket. I tried to prepare myself in case he pulled his razor. All he took out was a strip of black cloth. “Gonna have to put this on ya.”

“Why?”

From the front seat, Hyman said, “No need for the blindfold, Whitey. Landfors vouched for him.”

“I don’t care what Landfors says. This guy shouldn’t know about the place.”

Hyman turned slightly. “I said
no.
”

Boggs jammed the cloth back in his pocket. He hunched his shoulders a couple of times, billowing out a cheap, gray Norfolk jacket that was at least two sizes too large for his slight body. The move reminded me of a cat fluffing out its fur to look bigger.

“Isn’t this a bit much?” I asked. “All I wanted to do was ask you a few questions, Leo. Why the production?” To Boggs, I added, “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Think I’m gonna let Leo meet you alone? You killed Siever with fifty of his friends right there. No telling what you’d try to pull with Leo if he was by himself.”

“That’s enough, Whitey,” Hyman said.

Removing his cap, Boggs ran a hand through his translucent, limp hair and turned his eyes to the window.

“The reason for the ‘production,’ ” Hyman explained, “is that your friend wanted it that way. Karl said he wanted our meeting to be ‘invisible.’ ”

“Oh, but this isn’t necessary. All I told him was that I couldn’t go to the hall to see you.”

Hyman tugged at his Santa beard. With him behind the wheel, I thought, we should have had reindeer pulling the car. “He shouldn’t have used that word then; he knows what it means.”

“Well, Karl’s been a little preoccupied lately. Probably didn’t realize what he was saying.”

“No need to go on then,” Hyman said. “We’ll just find a little place to pull in and talk.”

“No,” piped up Boggs. “Keep going. Maybe Rawlings doesn’t mind being seen with
us,
but I don’t want to be seen with
him.
”

“Fine,” said Hyman, with a shake of his head. He accelerated and we sped southwest on Fort Street. “Weren’t you supposed to be taking Norma out tonight?”

“Who’s Norman?” I asked.

Hyman laughed so hard his shoulders rocked.

The first color I’d seen came into Boggs’s face. “Norma,” he said sharply. “She’s my ... she’s the future Mrs. Boggs.”

“Distant future,” said Hyman in a teasing tone. He obviously would have preferred that Boggs had kept his date with her.

I was trying to sort out how much authority each of them had—it’s hard to tell with anarchists and communists. My impression was that Hyman was in charge, but he allowed Boggs to have his way at times.

The farther we got from downtown Detroit, the worse the road surface became. My back was starting to ache, and I squirmed in discomfort.

I asked Hyman, “What about the car you left in front of the drugstore?”

“Somebody will have picked it up by now. Whoever was following us—and somebody always is—will have caught on that he’s lost us, but it’s too late now.”

About five miles out of the city, Hyman cut into a cemetery and drove along a winding single-lane dirt road until we came to a small river.

“This the Rouge River?”

“Baby Creek,” he said. Nodding his head to the left, he added, “Rouge is right down there.” He eased the car over a shaky wooden bridge to the opposite bank which looked like it had been used as a trash dump. “This used to be a nice quiet area—marshes, mostly, great fishing and duck hunting—till Ford got himself a contract to build boats during the war. Boats weren’t worth a damn, but the Navy put millions into building that plant. Now it’s another part of his empire.” Visible beyond the dump site was the Ford Rouge Plant, its blast furnaces spitting smoke and cinders into the orange sky.

Hyman pulled up near a wood shack far from the main buildings of the complex.

“We’re meeting
here?”
I asked.

Boggs turned to me. “You have any objection?”

“What I mean is, Mr. Ford doesn’t mind you using his property?”

“Not a bit,” said Hyman as he killed the engine. “Because he doesn’t know about it. Perfect place for us to get together, in his own backyard. They watch our places closer than they do their own.”

The shack was the size of a small carriage house. Its bare boards had split and turned gray, and its corrugated metal roof was solid rust. Boggs took a key from his breast pocket, opened the padlock on the door, and led the way in.

“Where’d you get the key?” I asked.

Boggs shot me a look that warned I was being a little too nosy.

Hyman hesitated, then answered, “Whitey used to work for Ford until he got fired for his union activities. But he still has friends with the company. This place isn’t used much anymore anyway. It was just for storage during construction.”

There was little inside the windowless building: a cot along one wall, some torn cement bags and dented paint cans tossed in the corner, cigar butts and empty bottles littering the dirt floor. In the center of the room was an upended packing crate supporting a kerosene lamp; four boxes were placed around it like a dining-room table for hobos. Boggs lit the lamp and adjusted the flame. Hyman closed the door behind us, and we each sat down on a box.

“Damn,” said Hyman. His belly rested on his thighs, and the box was barely visible under his ample posterior. “Wish to hell you had better seats in here. This is murder on my ass.” With the low, flickering lamplight shining on his face, he looked like the Santa Claus from hell. After shifting to find a comfortable way to sit, he said, “So what’s on your mind, Mickey?”

“A lot of things. For starters, I’m wondering about the raids on the hall. You said
cops
keep tossing the place. But from what I remember about the Palmer raids, it was the
federal
government that carried them out, wasn’t it? Not local police.”

“You’re half-right,” said Hyman. “The Justice Department—”

“Anti-Radical Division,” Boggs interrupted.

Hyman shushed him with a sharp look. “That’s what it used to be called. It’s the General Intelligence Division now, a division of the Justice Department. Anyway, the GID did—and still does—coordinate the raids. Local police supply manpower and jail cells. Why?”

“So the federal government
is
involved, at least to some extent.”

“Yes. What’s your point?”

“During the war, there were thousands of guys who were made some kind of deputy federal agents—”

“American Protective League,” said Hyman. “There were
tens
of thousands. Just about any man or boy who ever wanted to play detective or spy.”

I went on, “And they reported to the Justice Department anyone they thought was pro-German or in some way unpatriotic.”

“Yes. We were in the ‘unpatriotic’ category. All union men were.”

“Well, I was wondering about Hub Donner. You told me he’s fought against unions for years. And he’s working as a union buster for at least two businesses right now: Ford and the American League. What I’m wondering is: could he be working for the Justice Department, too?”

“It’s possible,” said Hyman. “The GID still has what they call Dollar-a-Day men who spy for them and do some of the dirty business they don’t want to be connected with.” He smiled wryly. “I think Hub Donner would be more expensive than that, though. In protecting capitalism, he turns quite a nice profit for himself. Again: why?”

I wasn’t sure if I should tell these men my theory. A look at Whitey Boggs, and the memory of his flashing razor, made up my mind. Giving them another suspect in Siever’s murder should reduce their suspicions of me—and maybe discourage any more shotgun attacks. “Seems to me,” I said, “Hub Donner is a good candidate for having killed Emmett Siever—a whole lot better than me. Donner’s job is to stop the ballplayers union. What better way to stop it than killing the leader? Players are jittery enough about going against the owners, and now they’ll really be afraid.”

Boggs spoke up, “Somebody will take Siever’s place. They can kill us, but they can’t stop us.”

Hyman stroked his beard. It appeared a darker shade of gray owing to the black smoke filling the room. The only ventilation was chinks between the boards—not sufficient to remove either the smoke or the nauseating smell of kerosene vapors.

I went on, “There’s no doubt Donner was keeping an eye on Siever, right? So he’d know where he was that night. What better place to kill him than in the Hall?” It had also occurred to me that that might explain why Donner was pushing me to go public as Siever’s killer: putting me in the limelight would keep suspicion off himself.

“Hub Donner . . .” repeated Hyman. “What do you think, Whitey?”

“Whoever it was,” answered Boggs, “is gonna pay for it. Emmett Siever was one of the good guys.”

That gave me a nice opening for the questions I had about Siever. “Did you know Siever a long time?”

Hyman shook his head. “Less than a year. He was important to us, though. Linking the ballplayers’ union to the IWW made us seem less radical and foreign. We’re accused of being un-American, but what’s more American than the national pastime? You know, a few years ago, there was some talk of ballplayers hooking up with the ‘White Rats’—that’s the vaudeville union. The players decided not to because they didn’t want to be associated with actors. Siever didn’t have any such snobbish notions. He believed ballplayers were the same as every other worker.”

“I heard his speech,” I said. “You say Siever was good for the IWW, but what did
he
have to gain by being associated with
you?
Why did he come to you in the first place—or did you go to him?”

“He came to us,” said Hyman. “Through his daughter Connie. She’s been active with us for . . . oh, must be going on ten years now. She introduced him to me. Emmett was getting frustrated with the ballplayers—they’re a pretty timid bunch when it comes to organizing against the owners. He figured getting some real union men involved would light a fire under them.”