The Babe Ruth Deception Read online

  “Who are you?”

  “Doctor James Fraser.” Medical credentials might not help here, but what could they hurt?

  “Does he know you?” The gorilla disdainfully looked Fraser over.

  “I’m a friend of Speed Cook.”

  Fraser said the name as though the gorilla should recognize it, but he couldn’t tell if it registered or not. The other man nodded at an empty booth. “Try the coffee. I’ll see if the boss wants to see you.”

  Fraser sat so he retained his view of Rothstein. At regular intervals, the people facing the gambler were replaced by new supplicants. They never stayed long. Slightly reassured to be in the great man’s waiting room, he ordered a coffee and a cruller. The pastry, with a generous dusting of powdered sugar, tasted good going down but then sat in his stomach like a stone. He tried to act nonchalant as the petitioners continued the parade to the rear booth. What were all those conversations about? Inside tips on races and prizefights? Sure. Schemes for cheating and stealing from an employer? Maybe. Gambling debts that couldn’t be met for a few more days, or longer? Definitely.

  The gorilla nodded at Fraser. Brushing powdered sugar off his vest and pants, Fraser rose. He gathered himself. He intended to be all dignity and self-possession, unfazed by the humiliating wait for a few precious moments with the Great Rothstein.

  Not two steps from his booth, Fraser froze. Rothstein was leaving through a back corridor, presumably headed to an alleyway exit. What gave? Fraser’s temper began to rise. This was a step down from humiliation to full-fledged mortification.

  Abe Attell emerged from the same corridor that had swallowed Rothstein. He gestured for Fraser to join him in Rothstein’s booth. Fraser, uncertain, sat. Attell waved for the waitress and ordered a coffee. Fraser passed.

  Attell rearranged the sugar bowl and cream pitcher, pushing them to the side. “You got a lot of nerve, brother.”

  “What?”

  “You coming in here to talk about Speed Cook? We ain’t stupid, pal. We figured out it was Cook’s nigger kid up in Saratoga. That kid’s got bad habits, likes to take stuff that ain’t his. The way I think, we got no business with you but to tip you upside down and shake till the money falls out. But the boss, he’s cooler than me. He says I should hear you out. I figure there’s always time for you to learn your lesson.”

  Fraser fought for his footing. He had intended to talk to Rothstein, not Attell. And he expected a business conversation, not threats. Attell wouldn’t have talked to Speed this way. Fraser decided to act like Attell hadn’t said anything. “Cook was talking to you about a debt from the Babe.”

  Attell cocked his head and smirked. “You know, I don’t got a lot of time to spend on the problems of dead niggers, much less ones whose kids are thieves.”

  “Mr. Rothstein wanted you to hear me out.”

  “Okay, you got ninety seconds.” He wagged an index finger. “Start with the part where we get paid back, both the note that Niggerlips signed and the money that got stole.”

  “Speed Cook and I had nothing to do with any stealing. Nothing.”

  “Cook kicking the bucket three miles from the scene of the crime kinda blows a hole in that one. You’re down to seventy-five seconds.”

  “What does Babe owe on the note?”

  “We’d take seventy-five grand from the big ox, plus the money that got stole.”

  Fraser looked away from the table. That was why the problem was so big, why Babe called on Speed. Even Babe couldn’t pay that much. The job—first for Cook and now for Fraser—was to get the IOU back without paying Rothstein’s price. What was Speed thinking when he took it on? “How’d it get that big? That’s nowhere close to what I heard.”

  Attell pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and lit one.“Forty seconds. Babe knew the terms, what the interest was. What it always is. And he knows that this wasn’t just money. It’s what he was using it for, which no one’s ever heard about. We held up our end on that. Nobody’s ever heard. And that big ox knows we held up our end. His end is to pay up, not change the deal. Tell him that.”

  Attell puffed on his cigarette. He picked up the Luckies and matchbook. “Time’s up. Lesson’s next.”

  Fraser had come with only one card to play. “I’m thinking we can work a trade.”

  Attell let his eyelids droop and sat back. “Thirty seconds more, Doc.”

  “I’m a doctor, you know. . . .”

  “That why they call you Doc?” Attell was having way too much fun.

  “What about inside information on the medical condition of the Yanks, of the Babe? Wouldn’t that be valuable to someone in your line of work?”

  Attell smiled and shook his head. “What is it with you? You think you’re dealing with children? We get the lowdown on the Yanks, on everyone.”

  Fraser waved a hand dismissively. “From clubhouse boys, towel jockeys, sportswriters. Even the players, even the Babe, they can’t tell you what you can learn from a doctor who’s on the inside, one from the Rockefeller Institute, who’s seeing the players close up.” He leaned forward. “Listen. You’ve got the World Series coming up, the Giants against the Yanks. Every game right here in New York, every New York fan crazy to get a bet down on his team. Business is going to be brisk. They’ll bet on everything, on how many times the Babe takes his cap off. The sort of information I’m talking about would be very useful. I have the expertise, and I have the access. There’s nobody else can offer you both.”

  Attell took a drag on his smoke, then stubbed it out in Fraser’s coffee cup. He shrugged. “Maybe no lesson today. How do I get word to you?”

  “Leave a message at the Ansonia. You know it? Also”—Fraser held up a finger—“I’m trading for Cook’s son, too.”

  Attell grinned, the sort of grin a wolf gives to a small lamb that’s been separated from the flock. “Jesus, Doc, you got brass ones. Tell you what. You make us enough money to pay back for both, maybe we’ll think about it.”

  Fraser smiled back.

  He needed to talk to Babe. What the hell had he just done?

  * * *

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Trying to get me on the hook for fixing another Series?”

  Ruth looked exhausted at six in the morning. He had just stumbled into the Ansonia’s lobby, where Fraser had been waiting for too many hours. The Babe’s fedora was askew. His necktie hung in two limp lines. His suit begged for dry cleaning. It was hard to believe that this shambling wreck would lead the Yankees into the first game of the World Series in nine hours.

  “You don’t need to do anything, Babe. Nothing. Nothing involves you, even breathes on you. I’m the one who’s in touch with these people. And nobody’s talking about you throwing a game, throwing an out, or a single pitch. I’m simply going to trade information. Accurate information. The deal may not smell too great, but that’s because of who I’m trading with and why. It shouldn’t be illegal. Nothing like what the Black Sox did.”

  Babe scratched his cheek and yawned. Sensing indecision, Fraser pressed his point. “Look, you want to get something valuable back from some hard guys who know it’s valuable. And you don’t want to pay for it.”

  “I don’t have the money!”

  “Well, we’ve got to give them something. So this is something. And it doesn’t cost you a dime.”

  Babe yawned again and stood. “Okay, Doc. Just don’t fuck me up, okay?”

  Fraser rose to be on Ruth’s level. “Don’t worry about that. But listen, to do this thing right, I need to be in and out of the clubhouse during the Series. I need to be seen getting in, you know what I mean? Seen by the smart guys. And they need to see me watching you during warm-ups, out on the field. Even during the games. So I need to be real visible out at the Polo Grounds.”

  The Babe started walking toward the elevator. “Okay?” Fraser called after him.

  “Yeah, fine,” Ruth said without turning his head. “Come to the clubhouse before the game.”

  Chapte
r 28

  By the second game of the Series, Fraser was starting to relax around the team. He arrived at the Polo Grounds hours before the first pitch. He sat by while players griped about their muscle pulls and bruises, helping out where he could. When it was time to warm up on the field, he followed them out. He took up a spot near the Yanks’ dugout, arms folded, leaning against the railing. He kept his eyes nailed on the Babe.

  The slugger got ready his own way. He shagged a few fly balls and played catch to warm up his arm, swapping tales with teammates about the night before. He was all business when it was his turn for batting practice. The whole park stopped to watch. Ruth usually aimed for the fences. When he tagged one, caught it full on the barrel of the bat, he held the corkscrew pose at the end of his swing and admired the ball’s flight, its brave defiance of gravity.

  Fraser liked the way the small manager, Huggins, kept his players on their toes. The man wasn’t real warm. Pretty frosty, really. But he didn’t miss much on a baseball field. Fraser also took a shine to the starting pitcher for the second game, Waite Hoyt, a strapping kid from Brooklyn who couldn’t be much older than Violet. His open face reflected every emotion that passed through him, beginning with the thrill of pitching in the World Series. The boy was just about jumping out of his skin.

  And so were the fans. This Series was for the championship, sure, but it also was a class war, a battle for civic dominance. Giants fans affected the hauteur of aristocracy. After all, their team had been winning championships since the 1880s. In 1904, the Giants refused to play in the World Series because, they sniffed, the newly formed American League wasn’t worthy of the effort. The 1921 Series was their sixth since then, but there were cracks in the foundation of their arrogance. The Giants had won only one of those World Series, something that drove their manager crazy. That was feisty John McGraw, the reigning genius of the baseball world, a fierce apostle of scratch-and-claw baseball. A perfect inning for McGraw was for his leadoff man to earn a walk, steal second, take third on a bunt, and score on a sacrifice fly. No hits, two outs, one run. He despised the power game of Babe Ruth and the Yankees. Sitting around and waiting for a slugger to hit home runs was stupid, McGraw thought, and unreliable. He was eager to prove it by winning the Series.

  The Yankees were the brash newcomers. They’d been around only half as long, and had been renamed the Yankees a mere eight years before. They’d never won anything, never been in the World Series. They didn’t even have their own ballpark, making do as renters in the Giants’ Polo Grounds. But they had turned baseball upside down with the Babe and his prodigious clouts, with a whole new way to play the game. The man had clobbered fifty-nine home runs that season. That was more home runs than eight entire teams hit. Even die-hard Giants fans thrilled to watch him, this magical manchild who was remaking the game right before their eyes.

  When the game began, Fraser took his reserved seat behind the dugout. He watched Ruth when the slugger was on the field, but so did everyone else. The fans shouted to him when he trotted out to left field. They screamed for home runs when he came up to bat. Everyone stood when he stepped into the batter’s box, hoping to see this force of nature work his will on the game they loved. While John McGraw seethed in the Giants dugout, Ruth commanded the ballfield.

  The Yankees had a 1–0 lead when they took the field in the fifth inning. Fraser had noticed Abe Attell sitting in a box about two sections over, right behind home plate. Attell’s box was three up from the one where Commissioner Landis presided, his features set in a permanent frown under a shock of flyaway white hair. Vice and virtue, a hundred feet apart. Vice looked to be having a better time.

  Fraser didn’t wave to Attell or nod in his direction. He knew Attell would look for him. He wanted the gambler to appreciate Fraser’s privileged position with the Yanks, and with the Babe. He was pretty sure Attell had.

  In this game, McGraw plainly had resolved that he wouldn’t let Babe beat him. The first time Ruth came to the plate, the pitcher walked him on four pitches. Next time, same story. McGraw was out to show baseball that you can’t win the game with home runs if the slugger never gets a pitch he can hit.

  When Babe’s third at-bat also ended with a base on balls, his frustration got the better of him. He stole second base cleanly, not even bothering to slide. The Yankee fans whooped and hollered in delight. You might keep the Babe from hitting home runs, they told each other, but he’d beat you another way, sure he would. Then the big man, showing surprising grace and speed for his size, stole third base, too, sliding in just ahead of the catcher’s throw. The crowd went wild, screaming their lungs out, exulting in his daring.

  By the end of the game, Yankee pitcher Waite Hoyt had channeled his excitement into an overpowering performance, shutting the Giants out and giving the Yanks a 2–0 lead in the series. With three more wins—the Series was being played as a best-of-nine contest—the upstart team could win its first world championship ever.

  Except Fraser had noticed something after Ruth slid into third base. His left arm, the way he carried it. He never rubbed it or showed any discomfort with it. But he held it out slightly from the rest of his body. Something, Fraser thought, was wrong.

  Fraser found Babe in the clubhouse after the game, wearing only his victory cigar. But the arm was bad. The inside of his elbow looked like raw hamburger meat.

  “We need to wash that,” Fraser said. “Get some disinfectant on it.”

  Babe beamed, cigar clenched at a jaunty forty-five-degree angle. “Don’t be an old lady. You’re here to be seen by the smart guys, not to sweat over this stuff. I’m telling you, though, that field”—he took the cigar out of his mouth and shook his head—“it’s a mess. All sorts of pebbles and crap on the base paths. Like a sandlot.”

  Fraser knew he should push the Babe on this. He was the doctor and the damned thing needed attention. Then again, he had already said that, and this was exactly the sort of information that might give Fraser the edge he needed with Rothstein and Attell, something he and they would know and others wouldn’t.

  Babe stood up. “I’ll wash it off in the shower. Listen, I’m in a rush, need to see some people. Gonna cut loose. Two games to nothing, eh? If only they’d give me a goddamned pitch to hit. Then I’d show that bastard McGraw something to remember!”

  Fraser held his tongue as the slugger strutted off, towel in one hand and cigar in the other. He knew he should demand that Babe at least put some iodine on the wound. Well, he had tried, sort of. It was the Babe who had pushed him away.

  When Fraser reached the Ansonia, the desk clerk handed over a message. Part of him hoped it was from Ruth, asking him to clean and dress his arm.

  Inside the creamy Ansonia envelope was a torn-off scrap of paper. There was writing on one side that made no sense. The other side read: “8 pm, George’s, Fifty-third and Eighth.” It was signed “AA.”

  Fraser smiled. He had a nibble. A definite nibble.

  * * *

  Attell was waiting for him at George’s on Fifty-third. Another good sign. The little prizefighter was eager.

  They went through the motions of looking at the food-stained menu, the cardboard soft from use. George’s was a greasy spoon that had earned the label.

  “Order the scrapple,” the little man said. “It’s terrific here. Stick to your ribs. They serve it twenty-four hours.” Attell seemed to be in high good humor, which Fraser hadn’t expected. He feared the gambler would resent having to deal with someone he held in contempt, like Fraser, or else he would be on edge to make a deal. Instead, Attell seemed almost joyful. He must think Fraser was a patsy. It was insulting, but understandable.

  Fraser ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, guessing that the cook couldn’t do much harm to that, but he was wrong. The bread was limp and the cheese carried a worrisome aroma. Fraser elected to make do with coffee while Attell inhaled an intimidating brick of scrapple. Conversation was impossible while the gambler shoveled the gelatinous substance into his fac
e. Wiping his mouth with a daintiness that contrasted with his other table manners, Attell gestured at Fraser’s plate. “You going to finish that?”

  Fraser pushed the dish over. Attell was equal to the challenge. Fraser tried to recall the symptoms of tapeworm.

  Attell sat back with a sigh.

  “You could order another,” Fraser said.

  Attell held his hand up, palm out to Fraser. “Don’t tempt me. Honest food, you know?” He made a feeble effort at stifling a belch, then surrendered completely to the next one. “So,” he said, a satisfied look on his face. “How bad is it?”

  “The arm?”

  Attell nodded.

  “I won’t know until I see it tomorrow afternoon. But it’s his throwing arm, so it’ll be hard to protect it. Pretty much impossible.”

  Attell sat forward and spoke softly. “You know, if the Babe’s hurt—you know, really hurt—it raises some possibilities. For a betting man, that is. The Yanks are up 2–0, so the action’s running their way. But if the Babe has a bad wing, and if we’re the only ones who know how bad . . .” He shrugged. “That could be very interesting. Very interesting.” Attell’s eyes narrowed.

  Fraser’s heart rate picked up. This felt too easy. He made himself wait. He gave Attell time to like the situation more. And more.

  “So,” Fraser said, “I take it we have a deal? A trade? For Babe’s IOU and for putting Speed’s kid in the clear.”

  “Not so fast, Doc,” Attell said. “We have an idea of a deal. It’s just a little baby idea. See, first we gotta see if this really helps us with the betting line tomorrow. And if it works good, then maybe the idea starts to grow up a bit, maybe we can move on to have a grown-up deal.”

  Fraser stared at him, trying to let the silence get uncomfortable. “Why would I do that? That way you hold all the cards. No matter what happens, you get to say that the information from me didn’t help.”

  “Hey, you know you can trust us. We’re businessmen. We can’t stay in business if we don’t keep our word. It’s the same as paying off bets. Ask anyone. We always pay off. It’s only good business.”