Murder at Fenway Park (22 page)

I
slowly nursed my second beer, jiggling the glass now and then to give it a bit of a head. I had willingly exceeded my self-imposed limit of one brew, but would not be so reckless as to have more than two.

Hanratty’s was starting to fill up with an after-work crowd. The bar was elbow to elbow, and most of the tables were occupied. Each time the door swung open, my stomach tensed with expectation, then slumped with disappointment when it turned out to be just another stranger stopping in for a drink. While my insides rose and fell on this roller coaster of nerves, I considered the prospects of the venture ending successfully. My confidence, already lower than it was when I explained the plan to Karl, continued to slip down with each passing minute. Everything would have to click together just right for this to come off—and so far this year, nothing had worked out smoothly.

When we met in the morning, I had given Landfors the handkerchief with the hairs I’d scraped from the bat. I was pretty sure that the hair and blood weren’t a ball player’s at all, or even human. Tabby, I thought. Somebody had killed a cat to present me with a bloodied baseball bat. Or maybe a dog—I hoped it wasn’t a dog. Anyway, Landfors said he could get the hairs identified.

Finally, Billy Neal entered the saloon. This time my stomach didn’t respond at all—maybe it was relieved that the waiting was over or exhausted from all the false alarms of the past hour. I waved and yelled, “Billy! Over here!”

He saw me, and came over to the table where I sat. I’d saved him a seat, which he slid into. “What’s up, Mick? What did you want to see me about?”

“Uh—how ’bout a beer?”

“Sure, I could do with one.”

I flagged a waitress, and ordered a draft for Neal. While we waited for her to bring it, I asked him what he thought about facing the Giants in the World Series.

“We’ll beat ’em I think. They’ll be tough, but we got a better team. In a short series you never know though.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

The beer came, and most of it quickly went down Neal’s throat.

“I wanted to ask you about something, Billy.”

“What’s that?”

“Bob Tyler’s filled me in on what’s been going on.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about it though. He said I could do pretty well for myself by going along with him. But I’m not sure about him—I don’t know if I can trust him. He told me about your, uh, association with him. So I wanted to see if you thought he was okay.”

“He’s okay I guess. What did he tell you?”

“Jimmy Macullar. He told me about Macullar.”

“Huh. What
exactly
did he tell you?”

“About how that business with Corriden needed to be forgotten. How Macullar should have kept his mouth shut about moving him out of Fenway Park. How it’s to everybody’s advantage to keep it from being found out. And: how certain things sometimes have to be done even if they are, uh, unpleasant.”

“Yeah, okay. That’s pretty much what I told Tyler. Some things just gotta be done. He was pretty pissed about Macullar.”

“Seemed okay when he told me about it.”

“Yeah, maybe he’s coming around. I explained it to him, told him I had to—really wasn’t no choice.”

“And setting me up for it?”

Neal smiled. “Sorry about that ... I figured you were nosing around too much, ’specially after you talked to Harry Howell. Tyler was pissed at me for that, too.”

“He didn’t want you to set me up?”

Neal looked around at the crowd. “Look, we can’t talk about it with all these ears in here. How ’bout we go outside?”

I gave a glance at the table behind him and agreed.

Neal nodded toward the back door, and I led the way out into the alley. There were still a couple hours of daylight left, but the sun was below the roof of the bar; it left the cluttered alley in cool shadow.

I heard the door swing shut, and turned to face Neal. Before I could complete the turn, I was slammed by a hard jolting blow to the back of my head. Stumbling forward, I doubled the pain by knocking my forehead into a metal trash barrel. I crumpled to the cobblestones and blearily looked up at my attacker.

Neal quickly followed up on his shot to my head with a sharp vicious kick to my left ribs. I could hear the snapping sounds of bones cracking, and felt my breathing suddenly constricted.

Billy Neal towered over me, red-faced and breathing heavily. I curled up to make a smaller target, and steeling myself for additional blows draped my right arm over my left side to diminish their force.

Long moments passed with no additional kicks or punches. Neal’s breathing gradually became more even. I punctuated the silence by croaking in little gasps of breath as best I could.

Shaking his florid head, Neal finally puffed out, “Damn, you’re stupid.”

I could only groan in response. I was feeling that he was right about me being stupid. I
knew
this wouldn’t go smoothly.

“Tyler didn’t tell you nothing, did he?”

I lay there in silence, my brilliant plan as crumpled as my body.

Crack! Another hard kick—this time my arm took the brunt of it. “I said
did he?
”

“He told me some.”

“My ass, he told you ‘some.’ If he did, you’d know that he didn’t want you set up,
and
he didn’t want Macullar killed, and he sure as hell didn’t want Corriden killed.”

“You killed Corriden?”

“Yeah, me.” Neal crouched down on his haunches, and continued in a quieter voice. “That was a nice try, kid. You had me going for a minute there.”

“Why? Why kill Red Corriden?” Every syllable I uttered caused excruciating pain, and I already knew why he killed him, but I desperately wanted to keep Neal talking.

Neal smirked. “Okay, what difference does it make ... I’ll tell you what happened.” I could guess why it wouldn’t make any difference to tell me, and shuddered at the prospect of one more body turning up behind the pub—or wherever Tyler might choose to relocate it.

“Really, it was self-defense, me killing Corriden.”

“It was your idea to fix the batting championship,” I wheezed. “Wasn’t it?”

Neal sounded surprised, “How’d
you
know? Harry Howell tell you?”

I groaned a noncommittal noise.

Neal shrugged and said, “Yeah, that was my idea. I figured hell, people bet on who wins a game, so how about a bet on who wins a batting title? I ask Hal Chase about it, and he says sure, you can get a bet down on anything. Then he wants to know how I can fix it. I tell him Jack O’Connor’s an old pal and it’s no problem. Chase says great. He sets up the bet and finds the odds I get are real good. So then Chase wants in. He wants to get down a big bet.
Big.
And he tells me the fix better come off. And he’s holding
me
responsible if it don’t. Now this ain’t something I want to hear, ’cause Chase got some
really
rough pals.” I remembered Chase’s friend in the green suit, the one who was walking with Bob Tyler.

“O’Connor and Howell—they in on the bet?” I squeaked.

“Nah. That’s the great part: I don’t tell ’em about the bet, just that it’s to get back at Cobb for being such a bastard. So I don’t even gotta give ’em a cut. Smart, huh?”

“Mm.”

“Well, O’Connor tries to fix it, telling Corriden to play way back. But then the league finds out what Jack was up to, and Cobb gets the title anyway. So it’s pretty bad: I’m out a bundle of dough, Jack and Harry get booted out of baseball, and Chase is royally pissed.

“But it don’t turn out to be as bad as it could have. Chase knows he wasn’t double-crossed by me, so he don’t try to get me hurt. I figured it didn’t work like I wanted, but no real harm done.

“Then this year, Corriden that stupid son of a bitch comes up to the Tigers. And he decides he’s gonna make my life miserable. Seems he found out about the fix. Don’t know how, but he did. And he knows I set it up. From opening day the kid’s getting on me about it. He blames me and Chase for everybody thinking he’s a cheat. So he threatens to squeal on us. Says we hurt his career, his reputation, all that crap.

“So we’re on the first road trip in Boston, and he wants to meet me right after the last game at Fenway. He’ll tell me what we got to do to make it right. I figure, okay, the kid wants a payoff. So we meet in the runway. Nobody around. I offer him a hundred and he gets mad. Not enough? How ’bout five hundred? No, no good. He gets hopping mad. You know what the dumb bastard wants? He wants us to
confess.
Clear his name, he says. If we don’t, he’s telling Ban Johnson. Hell, even if I’m willing, which I ain’t, Chase would never go along with it. He’d set one of his pals to shut me up.

“So, it’s self-defense, see? If this kid squeals, Chase is coming after me. And if I confess, he’s coming after me, too. Corriden didn’t give me no choice. I pick up a bat ... and that’s it. Problem solved. It’s his own damn fault.”

“And Macullar? That wasn’t Tyler’s idea?” By now, I had caught on that it wasn’t, but I wanted to prod Neal along. Keep talking, Billy.

“Tyler’
s idea! All he wants is everything peaceful. No troubles in his nice new ballpark. And nothing that would get people interested in how he got where he is.

“Fact, him wanting to avoid trouble almost guaranteed I could get away with Corriden. Gutless son of a bitch was so worried about bad publicity, he had Corriden’s body moved clear across town. So it looked pretty good for me, ’cause I could prove I was nowhere near where they moved Corriden to.

“Then Macullar kept making noises that he didn’t like a ‘cover-up.’ The stupid bastard—you’d think a guy his age would have learned how to go along. I gave him a while, tried to talk some sense into him. But I couldn’t trust him. If he decided to talk about Corriden being moved, then I could be on the spot again. So I figured I had to take care of him.”

“Like you tried to take care of me in Fenway Park—you’re the one who shot at me.”

“If I shot
at
you, you wouldn’t be here. Nah, I was just giving you a little scare.” It was a little one, compared to how I was feeling now.

“You know,” Neal said, “killing Macullar really got Tyler riled. ‘When’s it gonna stop?’ he kept saying. Then he decides he’s gonna get tough. Says one more guy gets killed, and he’ll kill
me.
So that means you should be safe, kid.”

I’m going to get out of this alive?

“Except, like I said, Tyler’s gutless. And I figure two, three, what’s the difference?”

Damn!

Neal cocked his leg back to unload another kick on me. I kept the arm he’d already smashed over my side, and turned my head to cover it with my other arm.
Crack!
I heard the sound, and braced myself for the pain I knew would follow in about half a second. Two seconds, three seconds ... no pain. Am I dead?

“Mickey? You okay?”

I uncovered my head and, in agony, turned to answer the stupidest question I had ever been asked. “Never better, Karl. Long as I don’t talk, breathe, or move, you dumb ...” Oh, it hurt to talk—but my spirit felt considerably better.

Landfors had a massive grin on his face and a broken two-by-four in his hand. He stood triumphant over a collapsed Billy Neal.

“Don’t look so damn pleased with yourself, Landfors. If Neal’s dead you’re gonna have some explaining to do. Where the
hell
have you been?” A numbing wave of weakness passed through me. I shouldn’t have tried to speak. It took forever to get my breath back with the tiny nibbles of air I could take in.

“Sorry. I tried to follow you out the back door, but it started to squeak. Had to go out the front and work my way around. Thought for sure he was going to hear me creeping up.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough. Heard him admit to killing Macullar.”

“Good.”

Landfors knelt down and put his ear near Neal’s mouth. “He’s breathing, he’s okay.” Pinching together a lock of Neal’s hair, he used it to jerk his head up for examination. “Wow, helluva bump. I really clobbered this guy.” Karl sounded as proud as if he had hit a home run. He released his hold and Neal’s head banged onto the pavement—it made a similar sound to one I had heard in Fenway Park back in April, but this
thunk
had a sweeter ring to it.

“Is he out?”

“Cold.”

“Go make the call.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine. Hurry though.”

“Yeah. Be right back.”

Landfors hustled off. I felt queasy in my gut and dizzy in my head. Roaring bursts of speckled light began to erupt in my brain. I wasn’t sure if I’d still be conscious when he got back.

Billy Neal let out a groan. Oh, damn. No, it’s okay, he’s still out. But I may soon be joining him. One more thing to do. I painfully dragged myself over to Neal.