Hunting a Detroit Tiger (17 page)

T
he next three days and nights blended together in a delicious, exhilarating sequence of Margie, baseball, and Margie. We were rarely out of each other’s sight, and often in each other’s arms. I was so intoxicated with Marguerite Turner, and so oblivious to all else, that it required a conscious effort to check the clock now and then to make sure I’d be at Navin Field in time for batting practice every day.

Margie accompanied me to each game and sat as close as possible to the home dugout. Never the shy type, Margie made her presence felt, brandishing a
Detroit
pennant like she was leading a cavalry charge and cheering louder than any leather-lunged bleacher bum.

Except for the pitching rotation, Hughie Jennings stuck with the same lineup that had produced the season’s first win, giving me three more full games at second base. We won the final game with Cleveland and split the first two games of a series with the St. Louis Browns. Despite the distraction of Margie in the stands, I made no more errors and continued to hit. Over four games, I totaled six hits in fourteen at bats, for a batting average of .429. Or maybe 428—I never was quite clear on how to round off. Whatever my exact average, Ty Cobb was batting .203 and
I
was leading the team in hitting. None of my hits was longer than a single, but one of those singles was a drag bunt that I’d laid down left-handed against the Browns’ Urban Shocker; it was my first major-league hit batting lefty and gave me hope that I could be a successful switch hitter.

After each game, I showered and changed quickly, then hurried out to meet Margie at the gate.

Our dinners were also hurried. On Tuesday, we picked a restaurant near her hotel; the following nights, we remained within the confines of the Hotel Franklin, eating in the Franklin’s cafe so that we’d have less distance to travel to Margie’s room afterward. We ate just enough for sustenance, talked little, smiled a lot, and skipped dessert. Later in the evening we would wash, dress again, and go out for ice cream—then it was back to her hotel. The nights were curiously refreshing although we didn’t get much sleep.

I saw little of my apartment, going home only for fresh clothes and to check the mail. I saw nothing of Karl Landfors. So soon after having urged him to do more about Emmett Siever’s death, my own interest in it had virtually vanished. The pressure seemed to have eased. Hub Donner’s deadline had come and passed, so I assumed my talk with Frank Navin had settled that issue. Leo Hyman’s deadline was still more than two weeks away; in the back of my mind I knew the days were ticking by, but I no longer felt an urgency about it.

It was basically wishful thinking on my part. I hoped that my romance with Margie would, like a magic amulet, somehow protect me from danger—that trouble would veer around me the same way that passersby make extra room when a courting couple comes down the sidewalk. It wasn’t
impossible
that nothing more would happen to me, but I knew in my bones that it was no more likely than me batting .400 for the entire season.

With Friday an off day in the schedule, Margie and I planned a picnic outing to Belle Isle Park. I probably should have spent the day working on Emmett Siever’s murder, but Margie’s show would open on Sunday and the run wasn’t guaranteed for more than two weeks.

After I left her room Friday morning, I stopped at the hotel newsstand for the
Detroit Journal
, then hailed a cab to take me home for suitable clothes. During the ride, I flipped open the paper to check an ad I’d seen before for the Coliseum of Amusements. I found it listed with the movie and vaudeville shows. The amusement park, near the Belle Isle Bridge, boasted “Rides, Slides, Games.” I thought we could go there after the picnic—it might be as close as we could come to reliving some of the times we’d had at Coney Island.

I next turned to the sports section to read about my 2-for-4 performance at the plate in yesterday’s game. Next to the account of the game was an article headed
Traitor to the Team?
The “traitor” was me.

The gist of the story was that the Tigers’ good fortune was about to end. I was going to publicly criticize the players’ union, and the resulting ill feelings on the team would start us losing again.

Whoever wrote the piece was clever about it: there were no quotes attributed to me or to anyone else—nothing that could directly be proved wrong. The story combined speculation, lies, and editorializing to produce something that sounded like news. There was no byline to the piece, but I had no doubt that the man behind it was Hub Donner.

I had the cab drop me off half a block from my apartment so that I could pick up the
Free Press
and the
News.
Scanning these papers as I walked up the stairs, I saw that they also carried the story, but in shorter versions.

As usual, Karl Landfors was out. I brewed a pot of coffee and thought about the newspaper stories.

At first, I put part of the blame on Frank Navin for not telling Hub Donner to back off. Then I realized that I had assumed too much. Navin had never said he would intervene with the League’s union buster; all he’d said was that he wouldn’t kick me off the team if I elected not to go along with Donner.

Thinking about it further, I started to suspect that Donner’s main allegiance was to Ban Johnson and the American League, not to the Tigers’ owner. The stories in the papers were almost as bad for Navin as they were for me. There’s no way Navin would want Donner to be instigating dissension on the team just when we were starting to win. Or maybe the planted stories weren’t at the behest of either Johnson or Navin. Perhaps Hub Donner had personal reasons for going ahead with his publicity campaign: to take attention off himself. Whatever Donner’s reason, this move was sure to cause more trouble between me and my teammates.

One thing was clear: I was going to have to take on Hub Donner. Even if I couldn’t pin Siever’s murder on him, I had to find some way to stop what he was doing to me. I pictured Donner as he’d sat across from me in the Men’s Grill of the Hotel Tuller, fingering his bullet wound and telling me how rough he could get. Perhaps my bravery had something to do with the fact that I was hitting .400, but I decided to give Donner the chance to show me how hard he could play.

Most of the coffeepot was empty by the time I came up with a plan. It occurred to me that if Donner and the IWW spied on each other, then maybe the Wobblies could tell me where Donner had really been the night Siever was killed. At the very least, I was sure they’d be willing to help me give Donner a little grief. I had wondered for a while why Leo Hyman had given me a reprieve in the first place—what did it matter to him if the Wobblies went after me to avenge Siever’s death? Then I realized that he might be giving me the time to cause trouble for his old enemy Hub Donner.

At about the time I should have been leaving to meet Margie, Karl Landfors walked in. He looked like an undertaker who’d been on a three-day binge. His collar was no longer clean, his shirt was wrinkled, and the crease was gone from his trousers.

“Long night?”

He grinned. “And morning.” I was glad to see he was no longer blushing about his activities with Connie Siever. “Sorry I haven’t been around much.”

Struggling to keep a straight face, I said, “Well, I’ve missed your company. But I understand.”

He pulled off his coat and headed to the closet. “I just stopped in for a few minutes. We—Connie and I—are going out again.”

As if I’d thought the “we” was Landfors and Ty Cobb. “No problem, Karl. Say, have you had a chance to ask her about her father yet?”

“Well, I’ve broached the subject a few times.” He found some fresh clothes and started changing into them. “The conversation always seems to go off on another path, though.”

“You sweet talker, you.”

He paused in his efforts to attach a new shirt collar. “Actually, the conversation—her end of it at least—usually turns to the Suffrage Amendment and her plans to organize in Tennessee.”

“Oh.”

He mumbled something that indicated he wasn’t always happy about Connie Siever’s choice of topics.

As he ran a comb over his remaining hair, I asked, “By the way, Karl, can you give me Leo Hyman’s phone number?”

He gave me the number without asking why. After Landfors left—in a suit identical to the one he’d arrived in—I phoned Hyman at home and we arranged a meeting for later in the afternoon.

Then I placed a more difficult call. To Margie, to cancel our picnic.

I first tried to get by with saying that “something came up.” Her silence urged me to elaborate. I decided I should tell her all, before she had a chance to read the stories Donner had planted. I didn’t want her thinking that I was betraying my fellow ballplayers.

Fifteen minutes later, Margie knew almost as much about what was happening with Hub Donner, the IWW, and the players’ union as I did. And I had a new volunteer to help me solve Emmett Siever’s murder.

The projectionist’s booth of the Empire Theatre was barely spacious enough to hold two people. With three people in it, including Leo Hyman and his belly, it was uncomfortably cramped.

Stan Zaluski, the old man who took tickets at Fraternity Hall, stood next to the projector, working the machine as it beamed Wallace Reid’s latest movie,
Double Speed
, for the Friday afternoon audience. I sat on a stack of film cans, Hyman on a low stool that looked like it was about to be swallowed by his butt.

The dimly lit booth was further crowded by several years accumulation of
Motion Picture Magazine
as well as posters, heralds, and lobby cards for just about every movie since
The Great Train Robbery.
The air was thick with smoke from Zaluski’s Cavendish tobacco, and simmering from the heat of the projector’s lamp.

“This is nicer than the last place we met,” I said. But not by much, I thought.

Hyman brushed his long white mustache away from his lips. “I rather like it myself.” Pointing to the small window through which the movie was beamed, he added, “If the conversation’s poor, at least there’s entertainment.”

Zaluski was absorbed in his work, turning the handle of the projector while keeping one eye on the screen and another on a chart in front of him. I knew from a long addiction to movie magazines that the chart told him how many frames per second to crank specific scenes. Chases were supposed to be turned faster and love scenes slower. With a Wally Reid auto-racing picture, just about every scene went at breakneck speed, and Zaluski’s sinewy arm was getting quite a workout.

Turning my attention from Zaluski to Hyman, I said, “I really want to go after Hub Donner.”

Hyman’s brow lifted, causing his spectacles to move up as well. “For killing Emmett Siever?”

“Whether he killed Siever or not—and I think there’s a good chance he did—I want to cause him some trouble. Because that’s what he’s doing to me. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not getting involved in your politics or anything. Part of it’s baseball, and part of it’s personal. Donner’s trying to use me to cause friction on the Tigers. And I don’t like being used.”

“At least you’re being honest,” Hyman said. “So you want to ‘go after’ Hub Donner for purely selfish motives.”

“Well ... yes.” I didn’t like the word “selfish,” but I suppose it applied.

“And you want us to help you.”

“Not help, really, just a little information.”

“Information is the most valuable asset there is in a war,” Hyman said. His tone sounded like the one Landfors used when lecturing me about politics or history.

“I’m not in a war. I just have a little battle going with Donner. If you didn’t want me to win it, why did you give me the extra time?”

Hyman’s face turned implacable. “You have two weeks left.”

Zaluski sucked hard at his pipe.