The Babe Ruth Deception (20 page)

C
ecil pulled the sleek touring car into the farm lot and stopped behind a large willow. A worn-looking Chevrolet stood there, next to an unhitched plow. He and Joshua wiped the makeup off their faces. They changed into worn overalls they had bought from a Brooklyn church that ran clothing drives for the poor. They threw their blackened towels and clothes into a small stream that ran behind the lot.

Joshua pulled a bottle of moonshine from the old Chevy. They took turns rinsing their mouths out with the bad liquor. “Don't go lighting any cigarettes around me,” Cecil said with a smile, their first words since fleeing the poker room.

“Tell you what, brother,” Cecil continued. “This is looking okay. Don't mean to jinx it, but did you see their faces? Those were some surprised badmen. It was a treat to see them scared.”

Cecil climbed into the Chevy. Joshua froze holding the door handle.

Cecil leaned over. “We got to move.”

“Who was in that car behind us?”

“The one pulled out after we took off?”

“Yeah. It was a big one.”

“Don't know. I wasn't calling the roll. Innocent bystanders, I guess. Come on. We got to go.”

Joshua didn't move. “Innocent bystanders don't hang around outside the Brook after midnight.” He hit the car roof with his open palm. “Dammit. I bet it was my father.” He leaned into the car. “Listen, he could be hurt.”

“Josh, we've already spent too long talking. Going back? That's the worst idea you ever had. We just cleaned out Rothstein. We made his boys look stupid. They're coming now, lots of 'em, and they're loaded for bear. You got a sweet little girl to worry about, a baby coming, all our plans.”

Joshua still didn't move. “Come on!” Cecil called. “Even if that was your daddy—and you don't know that—he's a volunteer. He picked his poison. Anyway, he's a rough tough character, didn't you tell me that enough times?”

When Joshua remained where he was, Cecil raised his voice. “Get in the damned car. We need to make tracks, right now. We're some country Negroes drank too much and can't seem to find Glens Falls, hard as we try.”

Joshua got into the car. Cecil had them on the road before the door was closed. He started driving slowly and unsteadily north.

* * *

Cook was slumped against the door of Fraser's Stutz. Fraser tried to open the passenger-side door to get to him, but it was stuck. To get at Cook from his own seat, Fraser stretched on his side, the steering wheel jammed into his back, legs hanging out the door. He tried to look Cook over in the darkness.

Cook's breathing was shallow, his pupils dilated. Fraser could feel swelling at the top of Cook's forehead, where his hairline had once started. Cook must have leaned over to brace himself, then got thrown straight into the windshield, unable to break the momentum with his hands.

Cook's torso began to spasm. He vomited yellow, oily-looking liquid onto his shirt. Fraser squirmed to reach his handkerchief. He tried to mop up. An acrid stench filled the car. Nothing from inside the human body smelled very good. Fraser wriggled out of the car and took off his jacket. He knelt on the driver's seat and draped the jacket over Cook.

He fought to clear his head. They were stuck in the middle of nowhere, yet way too close to the Brook. He'd have to flag down a passing car, but it was a lonesome stretch of road at a lonesome time of night. Also, anyone driving by could be connected to Rothstein.

Cook groaned. His eyelids flickered. “Where?” he mumbled. “Where am I?”

Fraser leaned over to look into Cook's eyes. “A few miles toward Glens Falls,” he said. “We got run off the road by Rothstein's thugs. You hit your head.”

Cook groaned again. “Not such a great plan, eh?”

“Not for us, but maybe we helped Joshua. No sign yet they've caught him.”

Cook's eyes fell closed. He panted for a few seconds. “Hope so.” After a couple of more breaths, he winced as he tried to sit up straighter, but couldn't. “I'm done, Jamie.”

“You're not gonna cash in your chips in a boring old car crash. That's nowhere near glorious enough for Speedwell Cook.” He gripped Cook's shoulder, meaning to be reassuring. “I'll flag down a car and get us to a hospital. Maybe there's a farmhouse around here where I can get help.”

Fraser tried to help Cook get more comfortable, pulling him from the gap between the seat and the door. “Better?” he asked.

Cook nodded. Then he seemed to black out again. His breathing got shallower. Fraser couldn't make up his mind. Wandering around the countryside in search of a friendly farmer meant leaving Cook in pretty shaky shape. He couldn't see any lights, any sign of nearby people. It had to be three or four miles back to the Brook, but he could hardly go there. A passing car, that was their best chance. But there hadn't been any. Not yet, anyway. And Rothstein's men might come by from either direction.

Cook grunted and started awake, eyes wide. “Speed,” Fraser said, “I'm here.”

Cook tried to take a deep breath but it broke up halfway. He looked right at Fraser. “Something I didn't do, what I came to Saratoga for. Need to get an IOU from Attell and Rothstein. It's Babe's. That's the job for Babe. I told your wife about it.”

“Come on, Speed. Babe's got plenty of money. Why doesn't he just pay it off?”

Cook pulled down his mouth at the edges. “Won't let him. Ran the interest so it's more'n even he can cover. They . . . they want him on the string. Bad for the Babe. Bad for baseball.” He stopped and licked his lips, his eyes drifting closed. He opened them. “There's something else, too. Some other hold, other thing they got. He won't say, not to me, but I think so.”

“What do you care? Aren't you the guy they threw out of baseball, the one who thinks they should all go to hell?”

Cook grabbed Fraser's arm with his old catcher's hand, still powerful. “I took this on. It's important for Babe, for the game. For me. You get it back. He'll pay you.” Cook relaxed his grip. “Give the money to the baby.”

Fraser's eyes blurred. “Sure. I'll do what I can.”

Cook gave a half smile. “Don't do what you can. Get it.”

Fraser nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

Time passed, not that much. Cook grunted. “What is it?” Fraser asked.

Cook still had the half smile on his face. “Could be a funny-looking baby, if it looks like you or me.”

“The baby'll be perfect. You'll see.”

* * *

By the time a car came by, Cook had been dead for a while. Fraser didn't try to wave it down. He stayed in his seat, next to his friend.

They sat together until morning light, when a passing truck driver stopped to see what was wrong.

A
man in a loose brown suit pointed Fraser to a church down the block. The stone structure of Abyssinian Baptist, topped by four spires and a pyramid crest, announced respectability. Fraser squinted against the high white sky as his eye followed the spires up. Except in the shade, the day was warm.

Inside the church, balconies circled three sides of a broad worship space. A choir loft rose behind the altar, a bank of stained glass windows beyond. White lilies swanned next to the pulpit. Joshua had sent a wire asking Fraser to arrange for flowers. He wired money to pay for everything. He couldn't come, of course. Rothstein's men might be watching. Joshua's telegram to his mother had been awful. “The sins of the son,” it said, “visited upon the father. I'm so sorry.”

Fraser wondered if Speed had ever been in this building. They had never exchanged a religious word. One of a thousand subjects he and Speed never talked about. What would be a better place for this service? The Catholic Protectory Oval up in the Bronx? Anyway, funerals were for the living, not the dead. Aurelia picked the church, probably for what it would say about Speed. That he was a man of substance. A serious man. Not the full picture, but part of it.

“You're here for the Cook service?”

Fraser pivoted to the soft southern accent. He took a hand extended by a man nearly his height. “Adam Powell. I'm pastor here.”

“Mr. Powell, how do you do.” Fraser was off balance. Surely this Harlem church had a Negro minister, but Mr. Powell wasn't any more Negro than Fraser was.

“How are you, sir? You didn't suffer any injuries from the crash?”

“Nothing serious, no.” The pastor's eyes told him that the question came from kindness, but Fraser felt the accusation behind it. Speed Cook died and the white man lived. An old story.

“Such a shame that Brother Cook's son can't be here.”

“Yes,” Fraser said. “Yes. He's in Europe. Business. He's very regretful.”

Pastor Powell showed Fraser to a reception room off the altar. Fraser shook hands with colored men in somber suits, white shirts, dark ties. Every one of them respectable, even the ones who looked like baseball men.

Fraser thought one was Cannonball Dick Redding, who had pitched against the Babe, but he let it go. Not the time or the place. The same for the small, balding fellow with a close-clipped beard, Doctor Du Bois, who had made Cook so angry when they were in Paris two years back. Fraser didn't feel like paying court to a great man.

He went to Aurelia. She sat near the coffin in a red plush chair. Leaning over, Fraser grasped her arms gently and spoke empty words of comfort, the ones he always used. Ones he had probably said to her before over the last few days. Her eyes flickered up, registered who he was, then went back to the middle distance. He and Aurelia had rarely spoken until five days ago, when he placed a scratchy call from Saratoga Springs that took three operators and ten minutes to set up. They had since stumbled through this bad dream together. Speed's younger brother had showed up a couple of days before, but he wasn't much help. He was taking the loss hard.

Fraser, the survivor, had dealt with the shoals of policemen, the coroner, arranging to bring Speed to New York and then to this church. What would go on inside the church, that was all Aurelia. She and her daughter never showed Fraser anything other than firm self-possession. Their grief was their grief, not anyone else's. Certainly not his.

Fraser could no longer avoid the gleaming walnut box. It was too small for the man Fraser knew, but there he was, eyes closed, a serene expression molded onto his dark face. Fraser would have preferred an angry glare, maybe an ironic twist to the mouth or the intense gaze Speed got when he was planning something. But this expression, not one Fraser could remember seeing, made the point that Speed was gone. It wasn't him.

Aurelia had rejected the undertaker's suggestion that Speed be buried in a new suit. His black suit was brushed and pressed but still old and worn. She chose the music, the prayers, the speakers, declaring that they were what he would have wanted.

“Doctor Fraser.” It was the pastor again. “We have refreshments.” He gestured to a small table covered with cakes and cookies. “You might fortify yourself. The service will be long. There's much to remember about Brother Cook.”

Fraser nodded. He chose a sugar cookie. The sweetness flooded his mouth. Did Speed like sugar cookies? He had no idea. Fraser felt like an impostor, portraying the trusted friend in whose arms Speed Cook died.

It turned out that Pastor Powell knew his business. The service stretched on and on, numbing Fraser with endless words and heart-churning music. He recognized some of the songs—“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”
—
though he didn't join in. He liked those songs in variety shows, but they were different here, no longer pleasing tunes. Here they pulled him down.

Seated with the other honorary pallbearers, Fraser felt conspicuous, surrounded by faces that ranged from beige to purple black. He imagined himself an anthropologist adrift in a new culture, one no less foreign than the tribes of the Kalahari. A handsome gray-haired man with a deep, sonorous voice delivered the eulogy. He described someone Fraser didn't know. A generous, openhanded man who was never too busy to help others, who felt every injury and indignity suffered by his race and fought to stop them. Was the eulogist tidying up the furious and sarcastic and always competent man that Fraser knew? Or had Speed shown only one part of himself to Fraser across the barrier of race? Or was that all that Fraser could see?

Moving down the center aisle behind the actual pallbearers, Fraser felt even more conspicuous, a clumsy goose among sleek ravens. On the street, a phalanx of Negroes stood in crisp military uniforms. Two, probably in charge, sported plumed hats from the age of Lord Nelson. Sunlight glinted off gold epaulets and brass buttons. Scabbards hung from their belts.

A man wearing an armband gestured him to an open car. Fraser wedged in between two beefy gents who seemed like former ballplayers. Another sat in the front, next to the driver. It was hot in their suits, in the sun, waiting for the miserable ride to the cemetery.

The man on Fraser's left turned his head and spoke. “I understand you were with Speed,” he said. “At the end.”

Fraser nodded, noticing that the fellow was older than he had first thought. He was about Fraser's age. “Yes,” he said.

“I'm glad he wasn't alone.”

“Did you play with him? With Speed?”

The man shook his head. “Don't know anyone who played
with
Speed Cook. You played
for
that man.” He leaned ahead to look across Fraser. “Isn't that right, Jerome?”

“Amen,” the other said.

“So,” Fraser said, “he was your manager? Or the team owner?”

“Hell, no,” the man smiled. “Just a teammate. Too long ago. But I played for him just the same. Isn't that right, Jerome?”

“Uh-huh.”

Fraser leaned back in his seat and introduced himself. Pete Johnson, the man on his left, had played outfield in Detroit and Cleveland. Jerome Hill had pitched. Both lived in Philadelphia now.

“I'm curious,” Fraser said, turning his head from one to the other. “What kind of ballplayer was he?”

The conversation lasted all the way to Queens, then after, when Fraser and his two new friends got something to eat and to drink. They talked into the evening.

* * *

The empty feeling had Fraser in its grip. Everything had come at him so fast, and then he was completely alone—Speed dead, Joshua and Violet and Eliza on the other side of the ocean. He was waiting for Eliza to send word for him to join them, or that she'd be coming back, but she never said. She must not know yet. They had made no real plans for themselves after Violet turned their world upside down. He didn't know if Eliza would stay in England until the baby was born, or maybe she would bring Violet home if Joshua . . . didn't work out. Maybe Fraser would join them for a while in England. Or not. Or maybe they would all stay in England forever and ever after.

He went to the institute and saw patients. He tried with them. But the research part of his day, he didn't even try with that. He avoided his colleagues, a course that drew no real notice. Antisocial behavior among medical researchers was hardly worthy of notice. Eliza had recruited Uncle Wilfred to look after her theatrical agency during her absence. Though Wilfred seemed a dubious choice, Fraser would have been a far worse one, so he followed his longtime practice of leaving such matters alone.

His spirits rose when each letter from Eliza arrived. In one, she reported cheerfully about the wedding, a civil ceremony that almost didn't happen when a British official demanded to see the groom's passport. After traveling through Canada under an alias, Joshua had no passport to offer. A hurried trip to the American consulate established that the Englishman was wrong. America's passport requirement had expired with the war. On the following day, armed with an explanation on official USA letterhead, the couple was married. It made Fraser sad that he hadn't been there. Eliza mentioned no problem over the races of the bride and groom. None of her letters mentioned race. Fraser didn't know if that meant there were no problems, that England was proving everything that Joshua had hoped it would be. He allowed himself to hope so.

The three of them had taken a furnished flat in an unfashionable neighborhood. Joshua wanted to live frugally until the liquor-exporting business was up and running, though Fraser knew he must be sitting on a great deal of Rothstein's cash. It probably was best not to flash that around, draw attention from the wrong sort. The women spent most days sightseeing while Joshua scouted for office space and worked out purchasing and shipping arrangements. Many nights they went to shows in complimentary seats provided by Eliza's London theater connections.

Beyond Joshua's frugality, Eliza didn't mention money problems. It seemed that Joshua had gotten away with it. Fraser hoped that he and Speed had helped. Did that make him a criminal, too? Was it a crime to help someone steal from criminals? The questions didn't interest him much. He had done it for Violet. That was enough.

Was the money worth Speed's life? Speed might think so, but then he had some funny ideas. Knowing how the question haunted Joshua, Fraser wrote directly to him about his father's death, so he would know the truth. And so he would understand that Speed always chose what he did, no one could stop him, and that in this case he would do it again.

Joshua's note back was short, nearly curt. Fraser tried not to mind. Haunting questions, guilty ones about those closest to you, didn't yield to logic. Fraser still hated how oblivious he had been as a boy during his father's final illness, how inept he was when he lost Ginny and their baby in a single terrible night back in Ohio. The logical explanations—that he had been a small boy, that he did his best during Ginny's childbirth—cut no ice with his accuser. Himself.

Eliza's letters said nothing about when they might come home. Nor did she urge him to join them. She must be waiting for things with Violet and Joshua to settle, for her own mind to settle. He envied her. At least she was with the others. After reading each letter, he felt more alone than when he opened it. He tried to keep that feeling out of his letters back, but it must have seeped in. His were much shorter. He had less news.

Fraser started going for nighttime walks along the Hudson, trying to quiet his mind so he could fall asleep. He had strolled those piers with Eliza when he first came to New York. He seemed to pass more toughs there now, men left behind in the mad race to get rich, but they didn't bother him. He had picked up the New York walk, the one that told would-be criminals you would be too much trouble, they should try someone else.

Even after the riverside strolls he slept poorly, waking up every hour or two, chasing some anxious thought about Speed, or Eliza, or Violet, or the baby. If it was 4
AM
or later, he went ahead and started his day. Sometimes he walked in the early morning, too.

About two weeks after the funeral, Fraser stopped at a corner on a dawn walk. He looked down. He wore the pants of one suit with the jacket from another. He turned back and watched morning spread over Manhattan like a laundered sheet. The light came gradually, striking a different window as each moment passed, revealing another building he hadn't noticed before. The buildings turned colors, starting in blueblack murk, then finding gray, then revealing their true colors as the sun breached the horizon and forced him to shade his eyes.

Fraser kicked at a stone on the pavement. It went a few feet. He stepped and swung his leg again. The stone skittered down the walkway. He thought for the thirtieth time about what Cook had asked him at the end, the business with the Babe Ruth IOU. Speed had cared about it. He said that it might save baseball. That sounded so melodramatic, not much like Speed, who wore his cynicism like armor, the better to shield his dreams.

No matter how many times Fraser shoved the Babe's IOU from his mind, it came back. He felt paralyzed about it, not knowing where to start. Talk to Abe Attell? To Rothstein? Where would he find them? What would he say? Why would they talk to him? Speed would have known answers to those questions, or at least would have made some damned good guesses. Also, he wouldn't have been so gutless.

Fraser started walking toward his building. Babe, he realized, was the place to start. Speed made the deal with Babe. The ballplayer knew Attell and Rothstein well enough to land up to his armpits in debt to them. And Babe was a neighbor at the Ansonia. Fraser would stake out the lobby until the Babe showed up. Nothing easier.