The Babe Ruth Deception Read online

  “Come on, now. You knew this wasn’t going to be an artistic triumph. The idea was to cash in on Ruth—give baseball fans around the country a close-up look at the new hero. No one’s expecting Chekhov.”

  Eliza wheeled on him, hazel eyes flashing. “If you think it’s helpful to remind me of my own idiocy, I can go home in a taxi.”

  In their early days together, Jamie had delighted in his wife’s high spirits. Like a proud mustang, he had thought. These days the word that came to mind was difficult. Increasingly, he found himself paddling dazedly in her wake, surprised by some unforeseen eruption. What was his crime this morning? Ah, yes, taking too long with the news section of the Herald. And that was after she had already looked through two other newspapers. Lock him up and throw away the key! Of course, she’d never been easy, which he had liked. Imagine that.

  Eliza issued a dramatic sigh and slipped a gloved hand into the crook of his elbow. “All right, dear. Let’s face the music before I drink enough to tell everyone what I really think. It’s actually good champagne. Remarkable in view of our supposed Prohibition laws.”

  “We should find out who their bootlegger is.”

  As they began to circulate, Fraser kept away from the edges of the roof. He also took care not to look up at the sky. He never knew what would trigger his vertigo. Even thinking about being on the roof could do it, trigger fantasies of plunging through space. He minded the current fashion to dismiss any fear of heights as a “phobia,” a sign of mental disorder. Avoiding high places was simple common sense. Any species without a healthy fear of heights was courting extinction. At least, that’s how Fraser saw it.

  Eliza greeted actors, critics, newsmen, socialites. Her smile was bright, her words warm but never cloying. She laughed her social laugh, the one with brittle undertones that used to grate on Fraser, but he’d gotten used to it. No one would guess that she despised the movie. When she introduced Jamie, she pumped him up. He was always “Doctor James Fraser, of the Rockefeller Institute uptown.” He smiled genially and muttered affable words, secure in the knowledge that no one in her world cared a fig about some dreary medical researcher. Their only concern was the fervent wish that he never say anything about science, medicine, or illness, so he never did.

  Sometimes Eliza found it too much trouble to introduce him, which left him free to stare at the crowd. He enjoyed watching her operate. He also liked that she was wearing the gray pearls, the ones he bought in Paris. He liked her in those pearls.

  Fraser noted a young man as tall as he was, about twenty feet away, looking equally detached from the social scrum. With a start, he realized it was the Babe, dark hair flopping onto his forehead. There was something elemental, even brutish, about his size, the way he stood, yet that disappeared when he smiled. The movie screen flattened him out, concealed the force of his presence.

  Pressure on Fraser’s arm meant that Eliza was weary of her current conversational partner. Fraser leaned down. “That’s him, over there,” he said into her ear.

  She raised her head. “Ah, yes. Fresh from his dramatic triumph!”

  “He doesn’t look all that triumphant.”

  “Fitting.”

  “Introduce me.”

  Eliza looked up. “Really?”

  “Is there anyone else here you’d rather speak with?”

  “Just when I think you’re not paying attention, it turns out you are.” She squared her shoulders. “Prepare yourself for monosyllables and a bit of unfiltered leering.”

  He smiled. “Your appeal spans the generations.”

  She patted his cheek. “You can have a sting, dear. I’m aware that my appeal to Mr. Ruth is that I am female, which is the sole quality required to earn his single-minded attention.”

  “He’ll take us up to twenty minutes and then we can go home.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  The big man enveloped her in a bear hug. He waved over a waiter as Eliza disengaged and introduced her husband.

  “A grand movie, Mr. Ruth,” Fraser said. “How did you enjoy making it?”

  “Call me Babe,” the ballplayer said, snatching a glass from a tray. “Everyone does.” He stared over the crowd.

  “How’d you find the movie-making?”

  “Huh?” Babe looked back at Fraser. “Ah, it was sorta silly. I’m not really much like the guy in the movie—he’s all shy and modest. But your wife, that fruitcake director, they all said that’s what people want.” He finished his glass and looked for another. “I liked kissing the girls,” he said over his shoulder.

  Eliza shot Fraser one of her “see?” looks.

  “Do you think you’ll make another?” Fraser asked.

  “Only if they pay me.” Ruth reached over a small man’s head to snare another glass and toasted Jamie. “Here’s lead in your pencil.” After swallowing, Ruth noticed that Eliza had arched an eyebrow. “Oh, jeez,” he said. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  Eliza laughed, not her social laugh. “You’re really not at all like that fellow in the movie.”

  Ruth smiled happily and killed the rest of the champagne. “Shit,” he said as his scan of the room focused on a far quadrant, “would you look at him.”

  “Who?” Fraser twisted around to follow the ballplayer’s gaze.

  “The goddamned Little Hebrew, Abie Attell.” Ruth reached into his suit jacket and brought out a silver flask. He offered it to Eliza and Jamie, who declined, then he took a long swallow. “Tell me something,” he said to Eliza. “Why was it a secret that Attell was backing the movie?”

  “Didn’t anyone tell you?” She was cool. Butter wouldn’t melt.

  “Not a word.”

  “It wasn’t a secret, not that I knew about.”

  Ruth’s face was grim. “It was from me.”

  Eliza turned to Fraser. “Dear?”

  “Ah, yes,” Fraser answered. He turned to Ruth, who was working on his flask again. “Babe, I’m afraid it’s our turn to be headin’ home.”

  Ruth put the flask away and focused on Eliza. “Say, you live up at the Ansonia, like me. D’you have your car here? I could do with a lift. I got some places to go to.”

  * * *

  Babe’s eyes danced when the valet stepped out of Fraser’s brand new Stutz Bearcat, scarlet body with a black roof. “Doc,” he called as he walked around the long front end, “you’ve got great taste in cars as well as dames.” He grinned at the car’s tall front grille, its headlamps as big as melons. “She’s a beaut.”

  Waiting for Eliza to clamber into the rear seat, Fraser answered, “The car’s nice, too.”

  “How fast can you get it up to?”

  Fraser nodded at the police officer listening in from the curb. “I don’t really remember, Babe. I always take it easy here in town.”

  Fraser set off at a modest rate, pausing at every intersection. Manhattan traffic was becoming ever more treacherous, forcing drivers to stutter uncertainly through a maze of cars, horse-drawn wagons, bicycles, and those afoot. Babe hunched forward in his seat, taking swigs from his flask and drinking in the sights Fifth Avenue offered on Saturday night. He was absorbing New York through his pores.

  “Getting out of Boston, moving down here,” he said to no one in particular, “it was like getting out of school.” He looked over at Fraser. “Most towns, you know, you gotta go find what’s happening. There’s usually something going on, even in the dumpiest places, but you gotta go find it, starting with finding the people who can show you where it is. It’s like a damned treasure hunt. Here, it’s just right out there. Casinos, speakeasies, whatever you want. Half the speaks haven’t even taken down their signs as saloons.”

  “You like getting out at night?” Fraser asked.

  Babe laughed and sat back. “Why not? Gonna be dead a long time.”

  “Babe,” Eliza said, leaning forward from the darkness of the backseat. “Why does it bother you to have Abe Attell behind the movie?”

  “Abie? Damned little chipmunk’s always got
an angle. See, also, there’s talk he’s gonna get indicted out in Chicago, for fixing the Series last year. Helen—she’s my wife—she thinks maybe I shouldn’t be seen with guys like him right now. You know, makes a bad impression.” He took another pull on his flask.

  “Sure,” Fraser said, “but your team wasn’t even in that series. It was Chicago and Cincinnati, right? What could it matter to you whether Attell gets charged?”

  “I sure as hell was in the Series the year before, 1918. Remember? The Red Sox beat the Cubs.”

  The traffic tower at Forty-second Street, the city’s first stoplight, brought them to a halt. Fraser, bathed in red glow, tapped the steering wheel impatiently while waiting to turn left. He planned to take Broadway uptown. “But you said they’re not looking at that Series, the one in 1918.”

  Babe snorted. “Bet your sweet life they will.”

  “Why?”

  “D’you follow that Series?” He smiled over at Fraser as his skin suddenly shone green. Fraser worked the shift lever.

  “No, I was in France, at an army hospital.”

  Ruth started to giggle, an odd sound from such a large figure. “You hadda see it.” He giggled again. “This guy Flack, I pick him off base twice in the same game. Like a sleepwalker, he was. Then I come up to bat and his own pitcher waves him out deep—you know, I hit the ball pretty far. Most of the time, anyway. But Flack just stares back at him. He stands there, doesn’t move a muscle. So I hit the ball over his head and win the game.”

  “You’re saying that the game was rigged, Flack was paid off?”

  Babe shrugged. “I don’t the hell know. The Cubs won a couple of games, so it’s not like they just lay down and died. But a couple of times, during the games, jeez, I’m telling you. One time a ball hits the outfielder in the glove, he doesn’t move two feet to get it. Hits him right in the damned glove and it pops out. Guys in the dugout start joking that we should just hit the ball right at ’em, let ’em drop it, throw it away. Easier than trying to get a hit.”

  Fraser turned onto Broadway. The lights of the wide avenue stretched before them like low-hanging stars. Babe drank again, sipping now. “And if there’s anything rotten went on,” he said, “you can bet your bottom dollar that Abie Attell was in the thick of it. Hell, him and his boss, that guy Rothstein, they’ve got some ballplayers on weekly salaries, just in case they need some game to go one way or another.”

  When they reached Fifty-seventh Street, Babe sat up. He looked around the car and barked out, “Pull over here.” He was halfway out the door before Fraser could stop the car. “Thanks for the lift,” he said, then stood on the sidewalk, a tall figure in a suit that fell just so from his broad shoulders. With a purpose, he set off down the cross street.

  “So much for poor wifey, sitting home alone,” Eliza said from the rear seat.

  “Babe’s not really a homebody?”

  “Not his home.”

  * * *

  Fifteen blocks later, they turned the Stutz over to the doorman. For Fraser, entering the Ansonia’s imperial lobby was an experience that never grew old. A large ceramic urn perched on a marble table worthy of St. Peter’s in Rome. Tonight the urn exploded with blue gladiolas, orange hibiscus, and ivory calla lilies. Lobby noises echoed across checkerboard marble floors that alternated with plush carpeting. Overstuffed furniture awaited distinguished backsides.

  They could never afford such a premier address on Jamie’s salary at Rockefeller. But Eliza, a leading theatrical agent, could handle the rent on her own. And lobby encounters with their neighbors—sports figures like the Babe and heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey, musicians like the opera tenor Caruso—were good for her business. It didn’t hurt that every floor held a kitchen with staff who would prepare meals for tenants. Neither Eliza nor Jamie was much of a hand at the stove.

  The lobby was quiet. The Ansonia’s friskier residents were still at post-theater suppers or nightclub shows, while the more staid folks had hunkered down for the night. The elevator operator knew they were going to the third floor. His presence made Jamie choke back the question until he was fumbling the key into their door lock. “How deep are you into these people—Abie Attell, Arnold Rothstein?”

  Eliza placed her bag on the hall table and flicked on the lights. When he closed the door, she stepped into his arms, her face against his shoulder, facing away. “Maybe the better question,” Jamie said, “is how deep are they into you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Really?”

  She sighed and stepped back to look up into his eyes. “If that terrible movie makes any money, which it shouldn’t if there’s a God in heaven, everything will be fine. Money fixes everything.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been in business with people like this before.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “How does any bad decision happen? I got talked into this movie in the first place, even though I don’t know much about films or anything at all about baseball.” She stepped over to the mahogany coffee table in the parlor and took a cigarette from a silver box. She lit it and inhaled deeply. “You liked the idea, remember?”

  “Sure, anything with Babe Ruth seems like a sure winner, but when was the last time you listened to my opinion about business?”

  Eliza flounced onto the couch. She accepted Fraser’s offer of a nightcap. He poured them each two fingers of bourbon, good stuff that the Ansonia staff helped him find despite the legal ban on such beverages. He sat next to her.

  “All I can say is it seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said. “In June, just before we started to film, one of the partners backed out. George Reiniger—you remember him?”

  Fraser shrugged a no. Neither of them spent a lot of time on the other’s professional life.

  “Well, George showed up with a substitute who could cover his fifty thousand for the project. We jumped at it. We needed to get going so we could cash in on Babe’s big year, first year in New York, all the home runs. We had to get the movie out before the season ended.”

  “Well, Babe’s holding up his end, still hitting homers,” Jamie said. “He broke his own record weeks ago.” He felt warm now, expansive. The bourbon tasted like dessert.

  “Well, that turned out to be Abe Attell.” She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray that advertised a hit show from several years past. “We’d spent most of the money by the time I understood who he is.”

  “So it was probably Rothstein money.”

  She finished her drink. “Whoever’s it was, it spent like everybody else’s. I’m sorry about this . . . connection. I should be smarter than that. But I’m hoping it’ll go away. Can’t figure out what else to do—no one’s going to buy Attell out now, not for that dog of a movie.”

  “So the problem is if someone gets mad about losing his money?”

  “Yeah, who would mind that?” She moaned softly as she stood, picking up the shoes she had kicked off. “What do you think: Eliza Fraser, moll for the mob?” She tried a rueful smile. It was more ghastly than winning.

  “I thought being colorful was good in the theater world.”

  “Colorful, yes. Even downright raffish. But not actually criminal. That’s overdoing it.” Eliza finished her bourbon, then trailed a finger down his cheek. “Don’t drink too much, dear.”

  He saluted her with his glass. “Be there in a few.”

  Over his second, which he intended to be his last, Fraser’s mind snagged on Eliza’s use of the term criminal. That word, and the idea behind it, was not a casual matter to her. Through no fault of hers, she was indelibly connected to a man many would call an arch-criminal. Hell, that’s what everyone would call him. It was the great secret of her life, one not even their daughter Violet knew. As long as he’d known her, her deepest fear was falling into that category. This Babe Ruth business was definitely under her skin. He wasn’t sure if it should be, or if she was just being skittish.


  Lately he’d been remembering his first wife, Ginny, dead so long. It seemed like things were a lot simpler with her, but maybe it was just that they’d been younger and young people are simpler. He smiled. No, that wasn’t right. Eliza was definitely more complicated. A lot more complicated. He daily confronted how much he didn’t understand about her, but one thing he did know. She wouldn’t ever ask for help, not from him, and not when she really needed it. But she expected him to help without being asked. He didn’t mind that. Except maybe the part about not asking. A third drink, he decided, might be a good idea. Just tonight.

  Pouring a short one, he had a thought. He could look up Speed Cook, his old . . . friend. That was the best word, though it really didn’t capture it. They had never spent much time together—just a couple of stretches of a few months each. Even those had been twenty years apart. But they were damned interesting stretches. After the Cook family’s troubles in Paris last year, troubles that Fraser helped repair, Speed owed him one. At least one.

  Fraser stared out the window at the city’s lights, making no effort to find a pattern in them. Speed was smart about the world. He had knocked around a lot of places, sometimes in surprising ways. Most important for Eliza’s current situation, he’d played professional ball back in the eighties, before the white players drove out the Negroes. Now Speed was promoting Negro baseball teams around New York, also promoting rights for Negroes. He was bound to know gamblers like Abe Attell and the men he worked with. And the one Attell worked for.

  Eliza and Speed had gotten off on the wrong foot twenty years ago. That was because of her secret. The thing was, they hadn’t found the right foot yet. She probably wouldn’t like having her new troubles laid out for Speed. She didn’t need to know.

  Chapter 3

  It was the middle of the third inning before Fraser, clutching a bag of warm peanuts, climbed the bleachers behind the first-base line. His outing to the Catholic Protectory Oval, the home field for the New York Lincoln Giants, had started badly. An uncertain navigator in the best of circumstances, he had stopped several times for directions to this Bronx outpost. It didn’t help that Speed Cook’s team, the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants, was visiting the Bronx from its home field in Brooklyn. In Negro baseball, Fraser concluded, geography was a fluid concept.