Hunting a Detroit Tiger (5 page)

“Yeah, I know, you don’t know any Aikens.”

McGuire shrugged. A loud metallic belch came from the radiator.

“Things is,” I said, “I’m getting all kinds of trouble about this. People read the papers, and they believe I did it. All I want is for the police to tell the papers that I didn’t do it.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. According to the report, you did do it.”

“Then whoever wrote the report got it wrong.”

“No, that’s not possible, either. I wrote the report.”

“But you weren’t there. You never even talked to me!”

“Take it easy, Rawlings. I didn’t need to talk to you. The situation was thoroughly investigated, and it was clear what happened: Siever pulled a gun on you, and you shot him in self-defense. Case closed.”

Case closed? It was never open, as far as I could tell. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Why ‘self-defense’? How did you come up with that?”

“Would you prefer that we charged you with murder?”

“No!” I thought a moment and tried another angle. “Okay, what did I shoot him
with?
I didn’t have a gun.”

“You must have. You couldn’t have shot him without one.” McGuire ventured a small smile, but I saw nothing humorous in the situation. “And of course Siever’s was in his hand.”

“It was?” I searched my memory. I was sure I hadn’t seen a gun anywhere near Siever’s body.

“You were there. You must have seen it.” McGuire’s jaw shifted. “The report’s written, and the case is closed, Rawlings.”

I was still picturing Siever as I had found him. There’d been no gun in sight. “Emmett Siever did not have a gun in his hand.”

McGuire smiled again, the freckles twisting themselves into a new pattern. “Right. And you didn’t shoot him.”

I clenched my right fist. The resulting pang stopped me from doing anything more with it. Good thing, since slugging a police detective in his own office would be a very stupid thing to do.

Hunching over his desk, McGuire began rifling through the stacks of papers. He pulled a photograph from a folder and slid it to me. “See for yourself.”

I picked up the black-and-white print and forced myself to look at the unsettling image of Emmett Siever’s bloody corpse. His body was basically in the same position as when I’d seen it in the kitchen of Fraternity Hall. With one exception: clutched in Siever’s right hand was a long-barreled revolver.

How did it—No, don’t get interested, I told myself. So somebody planted a gun on him, what concern was that of mine? Don’t get involved.

But I was already involved. If somebody went to the trouble of planting a gun, what else might they do to maintain the story that I killed Siever? I was torn. From painful experience, I knew how ugly it could be to get mixed up in a murder case. On the other hand, it was also probably the only way to keep myself
out
of trouble.

It started to dawn on me that McGuire might not be an adversary. “How does a case get opened again?” I asked.

He tilted back in his chair and interlocked his fingers over his vest. “Well, now, that’s hard to say. The department doesn’t like to reopen investigations. We have other cases to move on to, you know. As far as I’m concerned—and more importantly as far as my captain is concerned—I’m off the case.” He paused. “Of course, if some new evidence was to come up ...”

“How do you find new evidence if you’re not investigating anymore?”

“I won’t find it. Somebody else would have to, and then bring it to me.” He smiled again. “I think I’ve probably said all I can on this matter.” He drilled me with a look that told me a bit more.

I understood him perfectly. “Thank you.”

We stood and shook hands. McGuire added, “It would have to be very strong evidence.”

“It will be,” I said.

E
arly Saturday afternoon, two days later, a volunteer showed up to help me obtain evidence about Emmett Siever’s murder. Not that I’d asked for his help; nor had he offered. He’d simply phoned to say he was coming, and I knew that what he was really telling me was that I had an ally.

The 1:20 train from Chicago pulled into Michigan Central Depot at precisely 1:19 and Karl Landfors stepped down onto the platform. While a porter put two pieces of luggage next to him, Landfors checked his pocket watch. A satisfied look brightened his angular face, as if he was personally responsible for the prompt arrival. He very well could have been; knowing his irksome nature, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d nagged the engineer into complying with the schedule.

After Landfors tipped the porter—the man’s exaggerated “Thank you, suh!” and deep bow suggested the tip was a miserly one—we exchanged perfunctory handshakes, and I hoisted the larger bag, a leather-bound canvas coat case. “Thanks for coming,” I said.

Landfors reached down for an alligator Gladstone bag, grunting as he picked it up. “It’s not entirely because of you that I’m here.” With a thin forefinger, he pushed his horn-rimmed spectacles higher on his long nose. “Emmett Siever has a daughter—Or is it had? She’s still alive, so it might be present tense. But of course he’s dead, so he no longer has her. Perhaps past tense, then.” He sighed. “Anyway, I want to pay a call on her.”

I smiled at his determination to pretend that it wasn’t concern for me that had prompted his trip. “Too bad you couldn’t have made it to his funeral,” I said. “Hardly anybody went.”

“Did you go?”

“No. Read about it in yesterday’s
Journal.
The way the paper put it, there weren’t enough people there to field a baseball team. Whoever wrote the story tried hard to make it sound like there’s no loyalty among radicals.” I shifted the bag to my other hand. “The paper also mentioned me again as the one who killed him.”

As we walked out of the train station, Landfors said, “I feel somewhat responsible for your predicament, and I will do what I can to help.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” I hailed a cab—like almost every other automobile in this city, a black Model T—and gave the driver my address. Once Landfors and I were seated inside the standard-issue Ford, I said, “You’re not responsible for what happened, though.”

He brushed lint and dust from the lapels of his severe black suit. They weren’t necessarily mourning clothes; Landfors always dressed as though he was going to a funeral. “In a way, I am.” Landfors pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed his cheeks and forehead. “My motives in asking you to meet Emmett Siever were not entirely pure.”

“What do you mean? You knew something was going to happen to him?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s just ... Well, in the past, you and I have been on the same side in some pretty tough battles.”

“We sure have.” There’d been a few scrapes that we’d barely come out of alive.

“In some ways we seemed to think alike,” he went on. “I was hoping, I suppose, that you might take an interest in politics ... and the labor movement. It’s been a tough time for us—for progressives—since the war, and we can use you on our side. I always had the feeling you were sympathetic to the cause, and I thought if you got to know Emmett Siever, a former ballplayer, you might want to become active. Pretty stupid of me, huh?” He turned his head to me, his eyebrows arched above the rims of his glasses.

I wasn’t angry at Landfors for trying to get me involved in his passion. It seemed only fair, since it had been largely because of my influence over the years that he’d become a baseball fan. “No, not stupid at all,” I said. I didn’t know how to explain to him how I felt. “I just don’t trust any kind of organizations right now. All these different groups wanting to control how people think and act, each group claiming to have a lock on patriotism. It’s as bad as it was during the war; except now instead of ‘Huns’ it’s ‘Bolsheviks’ who are supposedly gonna destroy the country. I want things to go back to the way they were before the war—those were good times, everybody seemed to get along with each other. Sorry, Karl, but I’m not going to have anything to do with either side in these political fights. Hell, I’m just trying to fit in with the Tigers, and that’s tough enough—especially now.”

During the remainder of the ride, I told Landfors of my conversation with Hughie Jennings and that it looked like it would be even harder than I expected to get along with my new teammates. I also filled him in on my meetings with Hub Donner and Detective McGuire.

The cab swung onto Grand River Avenue and let us off in front of my landlady’s hat shop.

We climbed the shaky staircase to my rooms. “This apartment ain’t much,” I said as I opened the door. When Landfors had phoned and told me he was coming, I’d insisted that he stay with me. It hadn’t occurred to me until this moment that he might not want to.

Landfors stepped inside, his face souring as he looked around. “Not quite like the house you had in Chicago. I liked that place better.” He took off his derby; sparse brown hair, almost as threadbare as my sofa, was plastered to his bony head. Landfors wasn’t yet forty years old, but looked more like fifty. He was one of those serious guys who’d probably skipped childhood entirely to hasten his entry into middle age. His aging process had been further accelerated by three years on the front lines in Europe, first as a war correspondent and then an ambulance driver. What had taken the greatest toll on him, however, was the loss of his new bride in the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic.

“I liked the other place, too.” I put the suitcase next to the sofa. “But I’m always gonna be moving, and I don’t want to let myself feel too settled again.” In Chicago, I’d been renting a cottage and had filled it with new furniture of my very own. It had been my first real home in many years, and I hated having to move. But when the Cubs sold me to the Tigers, I sold the furniture and came to “Dynamic Detroit,” as the city boosters called it. And I’d finally accepted the sad fact that utility infielders don’t get to settle down until they’re retired utility infielders.

While I went to the kitchen for ginger ales, I called to Landfors, “I had another phone call, too, before I went to police headquarters. Anonymous, some guy trying to disguise his voice. Said Siever had friends, and they were gonna ‘throw me from the train.’ ” Back in the parlor, I handed Landfors a bottle of Stroh’s. With Prohibition having become the law of the land on January first, the brewery had switched to the production of soda pop and ice cream. “Have any idea what that’s supposed to mean?”

Landfors took a long swallow of soda pop. “It’s a Wobbly expression.” He hiccuped and thumped his chest with his fist. “Migrant workers travel on freight cars. Wobblies riding the trains check to see if the bindlestiffs have IWW membership cards. No card, no ride. The Wobblies throw them off the train.”

“Nice recruiting method.”

“The IWW has done more than anyone to improve the lot of migrant workers. It’s only reasonable to expect them to do their part by joining up and supporting the fight. This is a war we’re in, Mickey. All’s fair.”

That attitude was one of the things that had me down on causes. True believers were willing to do anything for their side to win. And Landfors was a true believer. Although we did think alike in certain ways, the two of us also had some distinct differences.

“Does ‘all’s fair’ include killing people?” I asked.

“No.” Another hiccup. “Not usually.”

I’d have preferred the answer to be a definitive no. “That fellow who called to say they’re going to throw
me
from the train ... should I be worried?”

“Probably. But not too much. If they were really going to do something, I doubt if they’d call you ahead of time.” Landfors sounded as unconcerned as Sergeant Phelan.

Carrying the bottle of pop, he began to prowl the parlor, poking his nose here and there and wrinkling or bobbing it depending on whether he approved of what he saw. One of the few items to garner an approving nod was a set of Mark Twain books that I’d brought with me from Chicago. Stronger approval came when he saw the literature I’d been given at Fraternity Hall stacked on the phone stand. From the pile—which I’d meant to throw out—he picked up a red booklet entitled
IWW Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent
. “The ‘Little Red Song Book,’ ” he said, smiling. “Some good ones in here: ‘Joe Hill,’ ‘Solidarity Forever,’ ‘Casey Jones’ ...”

“Yeah, and we sang most of them. I thought I was in a church choir.”

Landfors chuckled. “Music is powerful. And a lot of people the IWW is trying to reach can’t read—but they’ll remember songs. Wobbly writers use mostly Christian hymns—that way the music’s already familiar—and put labor lyrics to them. It gets the message across quite effectively.”

It figured there was a strategy behind the sing-alongs; radicals were generally too serious to enjoy music for its own sake. “The singing
was
pretty rousing,” I admitted. Pointing at the sofa, I said. “This is just for tonight. Tomorrow you get the bed.”

“I don’t need—”

“I bought a ticket while I was waiting for your train. I’m going to Cleveland tomorrow. First thing I need to do is be with my teammates again, face them in person at least and try to make things right if I can. It’s only for three days, then we’re back here for the home opener. Besides, I can use a few days to think over what to do about this Siever thing.”

Landfors rubbed his nose. “If you’re leaving tomorrow, we better do something special tonight. I’ll take you to a nice dinner.”

“Thanks, but I was thinking something a little different. You friendly enough with the Wobblies to get us into Fraternity Hall?”

“I suppose so.”

“Great. I want to go back and see where Emmett Siever was killed.”

Two images of Siever remained vivid before my mind’s eye. One was the dead, bloodied man I’d seen in person, slumped on the kitchen floor at Fraternity Hall. The other was the photographic likeness that Detective Mack McGuire had shown me in police headquarters—the one in which Siever was gripping a revolver, a revolver that most definitely had not been there when I’d found him. Those images were only pieces of the picture—and in the case of the photograph, it was a false one. What I needed was a fresh, objective view of the entire crime scene.

We walked to Fraternity Hall, through a neighborhood that had been largely taken over by the automobile industry. A few well-kept older homes remained, but most of the buildings on First Street were of recent construction: institutional rooming houses to accommodate workers new to the city, and brick factories that manufactured everything from magnetos to headlamps.

Near Bagley, between a ten-cent-a-night rooming house and a Detroit Edison substation that emitted a humming noise, we arrived at the plain, concrete block building where I’d come to meet Emmett Siever five days earlier.

Karl Landfors pressed the doorbell. After a long minute, the same wiry old man who’d taken my two bits admission on Monday night creaked open the door. He pulled a short-stemmed cherrywood pipe from his mouth and scrutinized our faces. “Cards, please.”

Landfors produced several cards from his wallet; they all featured the color red either in the ink or the paper. The old man examined the cards, nodded, and handed them back. “Welcome,” he said, stepping aside to let us into a large vestibule. Low tables along the walls were covered with stacks of pamphlets, newspapers, and handbills. Tacked above them were crude posters illustrated with brawny, bare-armed workmen; they carried slogans encouraging workers to join the “One Big Union,” and one, with a drawing of a wooden shoe, advocated “Sabotage” if wages weren’t satisfactory: “Good Pay or Bum Work. The IWW Never Forgets!”

Offering Landfors a gnarled hand, the man said, “Stan Zaluski. Happy to have you here, Karl. I’ve read some of your pamphlets. And your pieces in
The Liberator
, of course. Powerful writing. We need more like it.”

Landfors grinned as he returned Zaluski’s grip. I wondered if he had authored any of the literature on the tables.

A compactly built man who seemed familiar to me appeared in the open doorway to the main hall. He had the complexion of a ghost—almost no pigmentation in his skin, and hair that was blond to the point of white. If he was a baseball player, he’d doubtlessly be nicknamed Whitey. He leaned against the jamb, hands plunged deep in the pockets of his loose-fitting white duck trousers, looking me up and down. “Check the other guy, too,” he said.

“I intend to, Whitey.” Zaluski turned his attention to me. “Need to see your card, too, if you don’t mind.”

I squelched a smile at hearing the pale man’s name. “I don’t have one.”

Landfors spoke up. “This is Mickey Rawlings. A good friend of mine.”