The Babe Ruth Deception (23 page)

I
n the hushed clubhouse, Babe was a brooding presence on a folding chair. The other players gave him a wide berth. He glared at Fraser. “Don't say a goddamned word.” He held his arm out. “Go ahead and drain this bastard. I can't move it right. Can't sleep with it.”

The elbow was puffy, abloom with sickening yellow and red, green and purple.

Fraser found a side room that was the closest thing to an aseptic location. A man in a suit arrived and announced himself as the team doctor, though Fraser had never seen the man in the clubhouse before. He announced that Colonel Ruppert had instructed that he should take charge of Babe's care. Fraser wondered if the man had been hired that afternoon. The new man watched while Fraser washed and laid out his instruments, then lanced the wound. After draining it, he rinsed it and applied a tight dressing. Babe didn't make a sound, though he steadfastly averted his eyes. “I'll look at it again at game time tomorrow,” Fraser said. “I'll try to rig up something smaller then.”

Babe flexed his arm and grimaced. He walked off to his locker. Fraser didn't see how he could play the next game.

After cleaning his instruments, Fraser found the clubhouse empty except for one very sulky home-run hitter. “Say, Babe,” he said, “want to see a little good news?”

Ruth, still silent, looked over. Fraser dug the paper from Wilfred out of his pants pocket. Babe glanced at it. Then he looked more closely. He balled it up and threw it at Fraser's face, catching him under the left eye.

“You dumb cluck,” Babe said. “That ain't mine.”

* * *

Next morning, Fraser bellied right up to the gorilla at Lefty's. “I need to see Rothstein,” he muttered. “Now. No waiting. Or you and I have a problem.” Fraser was committed to running this bluff. He wasn't even sure it was a bluff.

While a flicker of uncertainty crossed the gorilla's face, Abe Attell materialized, all smiles. “Hey, Doc. Thought we might see you. Let's grab a pew.”

Fraser didn't order anything. Attell asked for coffee. As soon as the waitress left, Fraser said, “So, you made a big mistake. You gave my man the wrong IOU. At least I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, that it was a mistake. Because you said you're such scrupulous businessmen. You remember that? I kept up my end of the deal. Men of your word, you said. My Aunt Fanny.”

“Hey, hey, hey. No reason to use harsh language, Doc.” Attell was enjoying himself again, which was just as infuriating as he meant it to be. “You should understand. The way Mr. Rothstein and I see it, you haven't actually kept up your end of the deal. Not yet.”

Rage flashed through Fraser's muscles. He ached to throttle this two-bit punk. Attell smiled, his crooked nose almost glowing with high spirits. “Listen, Doc. Our deal is that you give us winning information about the Babe. You gave us half of that. We got the information. We did what we thought was right with it, what you'd expect. But”—he held up an index finger—“was it winning information? Nobody knows. Only time will tell, you know? The Giants came back, they won a game. Great. And that inside information you gave us? Well, now everyone knows it. Everyone saw Babe leave the field yesterday. Now the world knows he's hurt, so now our edge is gone. We had it for, what, less than twenty-four hours? So what we might win from this deal, that's based on all the bets that are already in play. Which is a lot of action, you better believe it. Still, the Giants gotta win four more before you've held up your end. Then we've got a deal.”

“So why'd you pass along someone else's IOU? Just to make me look stupid?”

Attell sat back so the waitress could place his coffee on the table. “Doc, call it an education, no charge. You're an educated man, am I right? A doctor?” Fraser chose to seethe silently. “But now you know that you don't send some over-the-hill dandy to do business with us. Don't even think about that. And now you also know that you have to look at the paper, read it close, when you make a deal. Am I right?”

When Fraser still didn't speak, torn between fury and disgust with himself, Attell drank some coffee. “Look, Doc. The Giants win four more? Everything's jake, we tie up the deal.” He drank some more coffee. “Just one question I had. Mr. Rothstein, he watches the betting pretty careful. Real careful. Everything shook out just like we expected yesterday, except for this one place, this one place where everyone seems to love the Giants. You don't know anything about some smart guys handling bets down in Philadelphia, do you?”

“A dumb guy like me? How could I know something like that?” Fraser left without waiting for a response. Attell smiled and finished his coffee.

* * *

Rain came that afternoon, giving both teams a rest. For Babe it was a little time to heal. Fraser went to the Polo Grounds anyway, in case the weather cleared. He passed the time feeling like a fool. Speed would never have blundered so badly.

Sunday was a perfect day for baseball. In the trainer's room, Ruth said nothing when the dressing came off his arm. Fraser drained more pus and cleaned it again. It still looked terrible. After taking longer than he needed to examine the wound, he looked up at a pair of angry eyes. He couldn't figure out the smart thing to say, or the right thing. Well, the right thing was to get Babe to sit this one out. Would that be best for his betting strategy, his Rothstein strategy? Say, the Yanks lose this one but Babe comes back stronger than ever and they take the Series. Wouldn't it be better for him to play at half speed and make the injury worse? Fraser stood up straight, disgusted by his own thinking.

“Don't play, Babe,” he said. “You're going to aggravate it. And the Giants know you're hurt. You know what McGraw's like. They'll go after the arm. Sit this one out. You guys still lead the Series.”

“Hey, kid.” Ruth turned to the team doctor, a still silent presence. “Bandage this up for me, will you?”

“All right, all right,” Fraser said, reaching for gauze. “Just try to be careful with it, will you? It must hurt like crazy.”

Ruth didn't answer. He made a face when Fraser applied more iodine, then again when he taped the dressing tight. “I'm giving you as much motion as I can.” Babe tried his arm. He tried it again. He left for warm-ups.

Fraser went through the motions of observing Ruth on the field, then took his seat. Babe played the whole game in left field. When he singled in the fourth, he didn't try to steal second.

The Yanks held a 1–0 lead, but the game turned in the Giants' half of the eighth inning. Centerfielder George Burns, a little guy, stepped to the plate against Carl Mays, the Yankee pitcher who had won twenty-seven games that year. Two men on base. Most hitters didn't like facing Mays, not since he killed Ray Chapman with an inside pitch the year before. They tended to get nervous. But Burns hung in and smacked a double, scoring two runs and giving the Giants the lead.

By the time Ruth came up to bat in the bottom of the ninth, the Yanks trailed 4–1. His arm had to be shrieking with pain. His broad face wasn't lit with the usual grin. He didn't razz the pitcher or the catcher. His eyes were stern, his blunt features drawn into themselves. He dug his heels into the batter's box. He swung so hard at the second pitch that he nearly fell onto the first-base line when he missed. Fraser couldn't imagine the waves of affliction that had to be coming from that arm.

With no change in expression, Babe dug in again. He pointed his bat at the pitcher, then swung again, starting his long stride before the pitcher let go of the ball, putting just as much force into it this time. The crash of bat on ball seemed to bludgeon the world into silence. A second later, a roar exploded like a wave hitting a beach. It was another huge Babe Ruth homer. Yankees fans and Giants fans shared the elation. Ruth trotted slowly around the bases. When he reached the dugout, he tipped his cap.

The heroic home run should have inspired his teammates to storm back and take the game, but it didn't. They meekly made the last outs of the game. The Giants had tied up the Series, 2–2.

In the next game, Ruth's elbow was killing him, plus a bum leg was acting up, too. The Giants weren't giving him free bases on balls any more, but Babe wasn't finished. Leading off the fourth inning of a tie game, he took several huge practice swings, notable even by his gargantuan standards. Then he stunned the crowd by dropping a perfect bunt down the third base line. In the Giants' dugout, John McGraw turned apoplectic over having his favorite tactics turned against him. He screamed at his infielders to wake the hell up. When the next batter doubled, Babe raced in to score. When he reached the Yankees' dugout, though, he passed out cold.

Fraser strained to see into the dugout from his seat. When he heard what happened from other fans, he tried to scramble over the fence to check on his patient. A bald usher with too few teeth grabbed him. “Where d'you think you're going, bub?” he asked. By the time Fraser sputtered his explanation, Ruth was staggering out to patrol left field. Huggins saw Fraser and walked over to him. He said they'd revived the Babe with spirits of ammonia. Then Huggins rolled his eyes and shook his head. “The big ape's got guts. Give him that.”

Babe finished the game—a Yankee win that gave them a 3–2 lead in the Series. He had triggered the two-run rally that provided the winning margin. But he struck out feebly in his other times at bat. Fraser knew it. Everyone knew it. The Babe was too hurt to keep playing.

After the game, Fraser looked over the elbow with the team doctor. They agreed. The infection was dangerous. It could lead to blood poisoning, which might even mean amputation of the arm. Or it might just kill him. He had to stop playing. Ruth glared back. They prepared a public statement for the press. After leaving the Polo Grounds, Fraser sent a telegram to Philadelphia.

Next morning, he was back at Lefty's.

“You're absolutely sure now,” Attell said. “There ain't gonna be no miracle cure, no ninth-inning grand slam? He's not playing possum?”

Fraser shook his head. “The torture he's in? It's incredible he played the last few games. Pain like that, it wears you out. And the public statement's right. This could kill him.”

“Even a big strong guy like the Babe?”

“Yeah, even the Babe. He can't even drive a car. The Yanks hired him a driver. You know it's bad if he gives up driving.”

“All right, then. After yesterday's game, we got another run of serious action on the Yanks. I'm telling you, the betting's been through the roof. But Mr. Rothstein won't be amused if you're wrong.”

“Enough with the threats, all right?”

Despite having Babe sulking on the bench in civilian clothes in the next game, the Yanks took an early lead, but the Giants battled back to win. They took the next two games, each by a single run, beating Waite Hoyt in a heartbreaker to win the Series. John McGraw's scratch-and-claw baseball stood triumphant. In that last game, Babe came off the bench as a pinch hitter in the bottom of the ninth. It was a moment for the ages, the chance for the great slugger to trigger an epic comeback. Echoing Mighty Casey of the famous poem, he grounded out quietly.

After the game ended, Fraser sat for a while in the stands. He watched the Giants and their fans shout for joy and hug each other. Despite Prohibition, flasks were everywhere—mostly tipped upside down—while smiling police officers watched. Fraser felt his own elation. He and Rothstein and Attell had won. His elation was only slightly leavened by knowing Babe's disappointment.

Fraser decided not to stop by the clubhouse. It would be like a morgue in there, and he had logged enough funeral time recently. Babe wouldn't want to see him. Leaving the Polo Grounds, Fraser turned his mind to the problem that had never gone away. How could he make sure that Rothstein and Attell honored their side of the bargain?

T
he call came to Fraser's apartment that night. The voice said it was Christy Walsh. He described himself as Babe Ruth's business agent. He proposed they meet the next day in Ruth's apartment in the Ansonia. Not real early.

At around ten the next morning, the desk called to say that a man was waiting with a package for Fraser. He wouldn't leave it without seeing Fraser. Directed to the building's service entrance, Fraser found Pete Johnson in a gray suit with an orange tie. A large grip sat on the ground next to him.

“I didn't expect you so soon,” Fraser said, shaking his hand.

Johnson smiled and lifted the bag. “No time like the present.”

When they arrived in the Frasers' parlor, the guest declined food or drink. “This is business,” he said, placing the grip on the coffee table with some authority. “This here's your share.”

Fraser looked inside. Without thinking, he pulled out a wrapped packet of US currency. “How much is this?”

“That there's five thousand.”

“How much is in here?”

“It's a hair under one hundred fifty thousand, including the ten grand you gave me to start with.”

Fraser sank onto the couch. “Whoa, Nellie. How'd it get to be this much?”

Johnson sat in an armchair. “We bet the Giants, like we talked about, but we also got a lot of action on special bets—you know, how many home runs the Babe would hit, how many runs he'd score, all that sort of thing. People just wanted to bet on the Babe, even after he got hurt. Almost like they wanted to support him, you know, buck him up. And then he kept coming back after he was hurt, which made people think he'd make it through.”

“Some of this is yours, yours and Mr. Hill's, for knowing how to place those bets.”

Johnson smiled broadly. “Don't you worry about us, Doc. Jerome and I did just fine. Best week we've ever had. If you don't come around like you did, we'd probably have leaned toward the Yankees.”

“There's something you should know. One of Rothstein's men said they were suspicious about some betting down in your city.”

“He can be suspicious all night long. We played by the rules. Just like he did. You've got no idea how much that man made, all over the country.”

“How much?”

“Millions, easy.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. Also, you want to be careful how you handle this stuff.” He pointed to the open valise. “Taxes is real high right now, after the war and all.” He looked around the apartment. “I guess you do all right, so you know about that.”

“Don't assume I know anything, Pete. Tell me how you would handle this amount of cash.”

Fraser couldn't stop fingering the stack of bills while Pete talked, but he listened closely. By the time the man finished, Fraser knew what he would do with it.

* * *

“Didn't see you after the game.” The Babe, wearing a red satin dressing gown over blue pajamas, was giving Fraser the fish-eye from across the room. He held his left elbow away from his body. The bandage bulged out his sleeve. Babe's apartment was three times the size of Fraser's. Red velvet cushions glowed from much of the furniture, set off by dark walnut wood. Henry VIII would have been comfortable there. A tall man in a navy blue suit sat in a gigantic chair. He had to be Walsh, the man who had telephoned.

“I figured you wouldn't want to see me,” Fraser said. “I've been nothing but bad luck for you.”

“I did want to see you. Wanted to punch you in the nose.”

Fraser spread his feet. “Here I am.”

The Babe walked over and picked up a cigar from a box on a side table. “I don't really do much fighting. Never did. My old man ran a bar. Didn't seem to be much percentage in fighting. Even the tough guys end up getting hurt, like the old man did.” He lit the cigar. “Anyway, I got no gripe with you. All you did was tell me when my arm was bad. Which wasn't exactly news to the guy attached to it.”

“Want me to look at it?”

“Nah, the club's got me seeing some doc over on Park Avenue. I'm due there this afternoon. What the hell, I figure. You ain't cured me, so I'll try someone else. Maybe he knows something you don't.” Ruth gestured for Fraser to sit. “I got some barnstorming games to play pretty soon, so I need to be healed up soon.”

Ruth sat down and nodded at Walsh, who cleared his throat. “Babe tells me you've been trying to pick up a job Speed Cook was supposed to do. With a certain businessman here in Manhattan.”

Fraser didn't see any reason for euphemisms and circumlocutions. “Yeah, I've been trying to get Babe's IOU back from Rothstein.”

“Right.” Walsh was smoothing his tie, fingering the fat end. “We think—Babe and I, that is—we've been thinking about this situation. I didn't know about it until last night. We have an idea, a suggestion for how you might find it possible to approach this, ah, individual, in such a fashion that you might be able to work toward a more satisfactory conclusion of the matters that are unresolved.”

“For the love of Pete, Christy.” The Babe threw a leg over the arm of the chair. “Speak English.” He turned to Fraser. “We got a scheme for making Rothstein cough it up. We don't want to mess up anything you got cooking, so we figured we should talk.”

“Fine,” Fraser said.

“Also,” the Babe said, pausing to blow smoke rings, “I know what my handwriting looks like, so maybe this way you won't get fooled again.”

“I've been going through Abe Attell,” Fraser said, “but I don't know that you should be meeting with any of these people. If you're even seen with them, the commissioner's going to go off like a Roman candle.”

“Yeah, sure, but Christy and me think it's riskier for those bums to have that piece of paper. So we're gonna have to take a chance or two to get it back.”

“How?” Fraser asked.

Walsh, who had remained standing, stepped closer. “You go first. What was your plan?”

“I was going to go back to Attell and demand that he honor his promises. We had that deal, you know, that you weren't any part of—”

Ruth waved his hand. “Yeah, yeah, they wanted to fleece all the suckers betting on the Series and you helped 'em do it. Start from there.”

“Well, I kept up my end, and I know Rothstein did extremely well out of the deal. So he should honor his promises to me, which include giving me that paper.”

“They're not his promises,” Walsh said.

“What?” Fraser said.

“As I understand it, Rothstein didn't promise you anything. Attell did. Rothstein'll say he had no idea what the little guy was doing, but he sure didn't speak for me.”

Fraser's scalp started to tingle. “But everyone knows that Attell works for Rothstein. That he speaks for him.”

Babe broke in. “We're not talking about what everyone knows. We're talking about what a snake like Rothstein's gonna say and do. I personally think Christy could be right that Rothstein'll welsh on any promise made by Attell.”

“Well, it did occur to me that they might not honor their promise, so I had an idea for a second angle.” Ruth and Walsh looked interested. “Attell quoted me a price of seventy-five thousand for the paper. Based on some unexpected developments that I don't want to talk about, I'm in a position to pay that.”

The other two men smiled. “Your heart's in the right place, Doc,” Walsh said, “but you're not used to dealing with people like this. If you offer to pay, the price'll keep going up and up until they get to the price you can't pay.”

“See”—Babe leaned forward—“they want to have this thing to hang over me, for whenever they need it. For when they don't have a doctor giving them the inside skinny on what's going on. So they can make me do what they want. They ain't giving that up for money, not after they made all the money you think you made for them.”

“Why's their hold over you so strong? It's just an IOU—that's what Speed said. So the world finds out you got into debt and borrowed from the wrong people. Not smart, but not the worst thing in the world. Even Colonel Ruppert might be willing to pay it off for you, or front it for you.”

The Babe and Walsh exchanged a look. Walsh shrugged. Babe said, “I can't take a chance on Landis getting wind that these guys were into me, with all that Black Sox mess. And, also . . .” He looked over at Walsh again.

“It's what it was for,” Walsh broke in. “It was for a girl.”

“So it was for a girl,” Fraser said. “Most people think you like girls. They've seen your movie, at least a few have. You're a red-blooded American male. And everyone knows what can happen when boys and girls get together. Not necessarily a great thing when you're married, but so what?”

Ruth sighed, keeping his eyes on his cigar. “She looked a lot older, you know, older than she turned out to be.”

“It was a setup, pure and simple,” Walsh said.

“Yeah, they got me good.” The Babe passed a hand over his mouth. “It looks bad. I don't even remember if she was a good kid or not. I guess she was. But we took care of her. She's fine now.”

“There's photos,” Walsh added. “They look bad. Not the sort of thing for a hero to be doing.”

Fraser looked from one to the other and let the news sink in for a minute. “How young was young?”

Ruth didn't move.

“Too young,” Walsh said.

“By a lot?”

Walsh nodded again. “And it was back before Babe was making enough dough where he might've handled a problem like this himself.”

“And,” Babe said, “I was dumb. Also scared.”

Fraser made a face. “Did you ever tell Speed Cook about this?” Fraser thought he knew the answer, but he let the others sit through the uncomfortable silence. Speed had said there had to be something else going on, something more than money. This met the description. Would Speed have walked out on Ruth if he'd known the truth? Or would he have finished the job? Fraser wasn't sure.

Was Fraser staying in or was he out? At least Babe was ashamed. Ashamed of what he did? Or of being dumb? Another thing Fraser wouldn't ever know. But it wasn't just the Babe and his career and baseball that hung in the balance. Also Joshua, and Fraser had a personal stake in that man now. That's what really mattered. “Okay,” he said, “so how does this change what I planned to do?”

“Doesn't need to,” Walsh said. “You can go right ahead with what you meant to do, though it probably won't work. It can't hurt. But I need to come along. You and I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon at Rothstein's office over on West Fifty-seventh. Babe won't come with us, but he'll be nearby in the office of a friend of mine. If we need him, I'll duck out and call him to come over.”

Fraser thought for a moment. “Babe can't just saunter into the building that has Rothstein's office, walk right in off the street. Everyone would notice. He's Babe Ruth.”

“He can come through an alley behind my friend's building that enters into the Rothstein building.”

“Someone could see him in the lobby of Rothstein's building.”

Ruth shrugged. “Like the man said, there's some risk, but I'm through tiptoeing around with these crumbs. It doesn't work, and I gotta get out from under them.”

Fraser sat back, chewing on the inside of one cheek. “So,” he finally said, “since you think my strategy's going to fail, what've you got in mind?”

The Babe, a broad smile making his face glow like the moon, stood up and stuck his hands in the dressing gown pockets. “Actually, it's two things, and they were my idea. Christy thinks they might work. I'm seeing a guy tonight about one of them. Then we'll be ready.”

* * *

As suited a large man, John Slaughter had a seriously hollow leg. Babe was pretty near unconscious before the half cop finally began to run down. “What's there to celebrate?” Slaughter had asked when Babe found him at eight at the Downtown Club, which was nearly decent as those places go. “You guys lost the Series.”

The Babe beamed at him. “There's always something to celebrate.”

He led them on a downward tour through the layers of Manhattan society, moving on to the Renegade Room, then O'Malley's over on Tenth Avenue. Babe needed this guy to get sloppy, then feel overheated, then take off his jacket. That was the key. Babe aimed to lift one of those blank subpoenas out of the man's inside pocket. When Babe told Christy how Slaughter had been showing off those legal papers, Christy's eyes had narrowed. Like a flash he had a scheme for using one of them against Rothstein, but only the real McCoy. They couldn't fool Rothstein with a fake.

The thing was, Slaughter didn't seem to get sloppy or hot, at least not sloppy and hot enough to take off his coat. Babe finally drug him over to Francie's, a place where the liquor was free but the girls weren't. Babe had a word with Francie: he'd pick up the cost for one of her best girls to get Slaughter out of his goddamned suit coat. When that didn't work, he tried to set the man a good example, heading to the second floor with a doll of a brunette. Upon his return, after lighting up a cigar, Babe could see that Slaughter hadn't budged from his chair where he sat like some misplaced chunk of granite, mobile only when he knocked back another bourbon.

Babe had Francie send the twins over to work on Slaughter, but the big man didn't budge. He wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. After he finished his cigar, Babe tried setting a good example for him a second time. No soap. Well, it wasn't exactly a waste of time, but it didn't move Slaughter.