The Babe Ruth Deception (13 page)

“You got something on the coon?”

“Not a lot. I heard his kid is running booze. One of those ex-soldier boys. Word is he does some hijacking.”

Rothstein raised an eyebrow.

“You're right,” Attell said, nodding his head. “That's dangerous work. We've probably got friends who wouldn't mind knowing how to shut him down. Hell, we wouldn't mind shutting him down.” Attell finished his coffee and set the cup down. “Okay, boss. I'm on top of it. No sweat. ”

Rothstein pulled a roll of bills from his pants pocket and threw a ten and a twenty on the table. They both slid out of the booth. One of the bodyguards handed Rothstein his hat. Attell picked up his own.

“When we leaving for Saratoga, boss?”

“A couple days. Still lining stuff up.”

“Big stuff?”

Rothstein shrugged.

When they got out on Broadway, Attell said he'd left something inside, he had to go back. AR nodded. “You're missing that skinny dame already, aren't you?”

Attell grinned and gave the boss a wave. He went back to look for the waitress. She'd probably never met anyone who'd been champion of the world.

R
uth had already doubled once when he came to the plate in the sixth inning. Cook sat forward in the left-field bleachers.

The Yanks' field, the Polo Grounds, was no conventional shape for baseball. Center field was huge, where fly balls went to die, and it sloped downward from the infield. The distance down the foul lines was under three hundred feet, pop-fly range for a hitter like the Babe, while foul territory was generous. The bleachers allotted to Negro fans were far from home plate but allowed Cook to do some missionary work with his neighbors, talking up the Bacharach Giants' games up in the Bronx. He handed out some free passes.

Cook didn't root for any white team, not after they drove him out of their game. He cordially wished that they'd all rot in hell. But he did take special pleasure seeing the Detroit Tigers get beat. Their star, Ty Cobb, was a serious nigger hater. Today, unfortunately, the Tigers held a 4–1 lead over the second-place Yanks, who were straining to catch Cleveland at the top of the American League. And that bastard Cobb had just hit a home run. The Tigers' pitcher didn't look interested in giving up the lead. At least Speed could watch the Babe at the plate. The man's swing was so smooth but still packed such a wallop.

Babe looked at two pitches out of the strike zone. The man next to Cook confided, “That pitcher, he's afraid of that
terr-rr-rrrible
bat.”

“He oughta be,” Cook said. “That big guy eats pitchers for breakfast.” They both laughed. Cook offered his half-empty bag of Cracker Jacks to his neighbor.

The sun felt warm. The breeze off the river was freshening as the early August afternoon approached evening. Cook couldn't help admire the grass and the smooth ground of the outfield. He remembered again the choppy fields when he played, what, twenty-five years ago? Hell, it was thirty-five years. Where does it all go?

Cook still enjoyed the bleacher camaraderie, strangers sharing their knowledge of the game and the players, seminar-style. If anyone misses a play, the others fill him in, adding commentary, maybe some history about the players involved. One fan notes a runner taking a big lead. Another points out an infielder creeping in, smelling a bunt. A third suggests that the pitcher looks to be slipping something on the ball from the bill of his cap—watch how he does right there, see? Even though Cook knew more about the game than the others did, he never dominated the exchanges. He liked to listen. He usually learned something.

His seminar mates had already chewed over Commissioner Landis's decision to throw the Black Sox out of the game despite the jury's verdict. The judgment in the bleachers: throw the bums out. When fans have to cough up two bits for a seat at the ballpark, the least the players can do is actually try to win the game. Cook agreed. Anyway, the consensus emerged, who the hell believes a jury in Chicago?

“Those people out there,” one man said, “they tell you the rain stopped? You take your umbrella anyways.”

“And then,” chimed in another amid the laughter, “you check your wallet, make sure it's still there.”

Cook wished he could share such moments with Joshua, but the boy never did take to the game, not from the first. Maybe Cook had come on too strong about it. Now, between Violet Fraser and the bootlegging, that was the least of their problems. It wasn't like they were passing a lot of friendly hours together. Or any. But Cook couldn't hold back the wish. Missing something that never was there. A damned stupid thing to miss.

The smack of wood on baseball broke Cook's reverie. Leonard's fastball had strayed too close to that terrible bat. Cook's eye picked up the line drive as it cleared the second baseman's leap, then bounced joyously between outfielders and caromed off the right-field wall. The big man, surprisingly fleet, steamed into second base with an easy double.

Cook's neighbors roared their pleasure. The colored sections at the Polo Grounds always cheered a little harder for Ruth. After all, he might be one of them.

“If he'd got under that another eighth of an inch,” Cook's closest neighbor said, “that was a home run.” He turned to Cook. “Think he'll break last year's record?”

“Yeah, yeah, I do.” Cook pointed at the large runner taking his lead off second base. “I bet he'll hit sixty. There's nothing that man can't do on the ball field. He's only been hitting full-time for, what, less than three years? Wait till he gets some practice!”

The whole section enjoyed Cook's suggestion that the Babe was going to get better. They basked in the glow that they were watching a man who was the best. No argument. Just the best. Maybe the best ever.

* * *

At the end of the game, Jamie Fraser was waiting when Cook emerged at the bottom of the Negro bleachers. “Aurelia told me I could find you here. You've been hard to track down.” Fraser's voice was sharp. This wasn't a social call. Since learning that his son's blond doxy was Violet Fraser, not a doxy at all, Cook had shied from having this conversation. But it had to happen. He put his hands in his pockets. He didn't know how a handshake might strike Fraser right now.

“Been a busy time.”

“Yeah, I see.” Fraser gave a sarcastic nod toward the playing field.

“I'm here on business. Listen, I don't like this situation any more than you do.”

“Don't give me that. If we were talking about
my
son and
your
daughter, you'd feel a lot different. We need to talk.”

Cook sighed. “I've got to stop in the clubhouse. Then we can talk, all right?” He pointed to the other side of the stadium. “Wait for me out on Eighth Avenue. Ten minutes.”

“And have you give me the slip? Not after the trouble it took to find you.”

“So that's how it is? Sure. Sure. You come on with me.” He started walking without looking back.

Cook passed onto the field and across to the clubhouse, feeling Fraser on his shoulder but not talking to him. He asked the two guards on the door to let Fraser through, too, another guest of the Babe. Inside the hallway, he paused to adjust to the dim light. Through a doorway, he could make out some men leaning over a card game. Others were toweling off and dressing. A team official in shirtsleeves began to challenge Cook, but Ruth's voice came across the room. “Hey, kid, he's okay!”

Cook made his way across the room, Fraser a half step behind. “Hey, kid,” the Babe said, chewing on an unlit cigar. “What's the good word?” He focused on Fraser. “Say, don't I know you?”

“Yeah, I live at the Ansonia, too. We talked about your workouts last winter, remember? Also, my wife, Eliza, produced your movie,
Headin' Home.
”

Babe groaned. “Don't remind me. How's she doing?” Babe stood to draw on his trousers. “Nice girl, but I'm telling you, that's the last deal I do with a broad. I didn't exactly get paid.” He looked reproachfully at Fraser.

“Neither did we.” The news didn't seem to mollify the ballplayer.

“Babe,” Cook broke in, “I've been talking to the guy you mentioned, you know, the Little Hebrew?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I've got an idea for how we can get what we need. I want to lay it out. Someplace private.”

Ruth pulled his suspenders up over his broad shoulders. In his shirtsleeves, in a room full of professional athletes, he stood out as a remarkable physical specimen. “There's a mick bar over on 155th,” he said, “away from the river. It's a little noisy, but we can talk there. I got places to go tonight, so it can't be long.”

“Anything we need to know to get in?”

“Nah. O'Brien's been there forever, no one's moving him. . . .” He shrugged.

The bar was easy to find. A placard over the door proudly advertised alcoholic beverages available within. Prohibition hadn't yet reached this neighborhood.

Postgame revelers shouted over schooners of beer, hats perched on their heads at all angles. Drawings of prizefighters on the wall celebrated the pugilistic lifestyle. The customers were uniformly male, just like the ballpark crowd.

Cook and Fraser found a table on the side, across from the bar. “Babe won't show for a while, signing autographs and chewing the fat with the fans,” Cook said. “So say what you came to say.”

Fraser pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “So we get this note from you this morning. It says that Joshua says that Violet's all right.”

Cook nodded.

“That's it? That's all we get?”

Cook nodded again. “You got what I got.”

“What kind of crap is that? We need to find our daughter and talk to her. Talk some sense to her. Where the hell are they?”

“Want a beer?”

“No, dammit, I don't want a beer. I want some answers. Eliza expects that I'm punching you in the nose right now and, I'll tell you, it's starting to seem like a good idea.”

“If it'll help, I'll say you did.”

“Don't get cute. Where's Violet?”

Cook shook his head. “Jamie, I don't know where she is. I tracked Joshua down through his business. He can't move that, at least not yet. I told your wife that I'd talk to him and I did. He says it's love, they're going to make their lives together. Gonna sing sweet songs in the sunshine, God help us. Doesn't mean we can change it.” He looked around. “Look, I need a beer. You?”

Fraser made a face.

Cook stepped to the bar and bought a draft. While he was lowering into his chair, Fraser asked, “So what did you tell him, about singing sweet songs in the sunshine?”

“I told him fat chance. No one's gonna let them be. Their lives'll be hell. It damn well could get him killed, get Violet hurt. You know that. I know that. Now I said it to him.”

“So what're you going to do?”

“What can I do?”

“You've got to do something!”

“Joshua's twenty-five years old. Since he got back from France—since you and I
got
him back from France—he's done one thing after another that's crazy or wrong or both. The damnedest thing is he still hears me out when I tell him what he's doing wrong, but it's like he's listening to the town fool. Tolerant, not arguing. Then he does just the same as he meant to do, what I just finished telling him
not
to do. And no, Jamie, I don't know where he lives.” Cook drank some beer, then some more.

“You know, Speed, how can you be so calm when he may be signing his own death sentence with this? Violet's, too.”

“I told him. I can't make him. He says he's got a plan.”

“What's the plan?”

“He wouldn't say.”

“Bullshit.”

“Jamie, if I could think of something to do to stop all this, I would. Don't you know that?”

“Start with telling me how to find my daughter. You owe me that.”

“I wish I could. You're not going to make anything better by going off like some vigilante on a mission.”

“Where do you get off telling me what to do? I'm supposed to leave my little girl with some Negro bootlegger who's trying to get himself and her killed? You don't really know me. Tell me where his business is.”

Cook's fists balled. He tried to control his voice. “Don't make this something between you and me. Listen to me. We're dealing with people who are fully grown. Don't push so hard that you make them go through with this craziness just to spite us. Joshua, he's just not the same now.”

“What do I care how he is? He's ruining my daughter's life. That's what I care about. Where's his business? You know where that is.”

“You gonna kidnap her? Fight a duel with sabers? This ain't something that's in your line. It's not in my line anymore, either. You won't even know where to start. Let's figure out what we can try to do, what's possible. You and me, we've been pretty good at that, a couple times before.”

“Stop it, Speed. Answer me. Where's his goddamned business?”

“You're going to make things worse.” Cook tried to relax his hands. Balled up like they were, they were starting to hurt. “If you're so hot to find your little girl, go find his business your own damned self.”

Fraser stood abruptly, his hand crushing the brim of his hat. His chair fell backward with a clatter. Only a few drinkers looked over as he stalked away.

At the door Fraser pushed past three women in tight dresses, big smiles plastered across their faces. Right behind them was the Babe. “Watch it there, kid,” Ruth said. “There's ladies coming through.”