Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 25, No. 3, March 26, 1980

Road Trip by Dick Stodghill

Tony Drakes batting average had plummeted...

We flew out of O’Hare on a six o clock charter and nobody was sorry to say goodbye to Chi after dropping three in a row to the Cubs.

Bill Brophy had buttonholed me before we boarded the bus at Wrigley Field and said, “Let’s wait till we get to Cincy to eat, have a late dinner at the Maisonette.” It was O.K. with me. They’d serve a meal on the plane, but unless I’ve got both feet on the ground the only nourishment I want comes out of a bottle.

After we were settled in at the Netherland Hilton I met him in the lobby and we walked the few blocks to the restaurant. We had just started on our salads when Tony Drake, the Stars’ third baseman, walked in alone. He nodded but kept going when Brophy waved to him to join us. I wasn’t surprised — Drake was a loner.

A few minutes later a silvery blonde with curves in all the right places slinked by our table and I gave her a double take because I had seen her at the Hyatt Regency back in Chicago and again at Wrigley Field. You run across a lot of good-looking women around the league but she wasn’t one you’d mistake for somebody else. I rubbernecked and, sure enough, she sat down at Drake’s table.

Brophy grinned. “Looks like Tony’s been busy since he hit town,” he said. I just stared at him because I knew it wasn’t that way. There isn’t much that surprises me but this did. A woman like that and Tony Drake didn’t add up any way you looked at it.

The next morning I was having a late breakfast at the hotel when Drake came in and joined me. He seemed uneasy, preoccupied, but you expect that from someone who hasn’t had a hit in more than a week. That starts any ball player, except maybe a few of the really big names, wondering if he might be in line for a ticket to Pawtucket or Columbus, Georgia.

Drake was halfway through his third season in the majors but only his second as a regular. He was a better-than-average gloveman and a steady .275 hitter until recently. Kind of a shy kid out of a small town in Iowa. A pro ball player for six of his twenty-four years but still a little in awe of the big cities, a little naive.

Something was on his mind or he wouldn’t have sat down without so much as a nod from me first. Some of the Stars would pull up a chair if you were in conference with the Commissioner himself, but not Drake. I cleaned up my steak and eggs. As he ordered breakfast I pulled my coffee cup closer and lit a cigarette. “Gonna be a warm day,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Humid.”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that little gal back in Iowa?” He was engaged to a pink-cheeked, corn-fed hometown girl. She and her parents had taken in a series at St. Louis earlier in the year and Drake had showed her off like a prize heifer.

“She’s O.K.,” he said, and his face turned two shades redder than the Stars’ caps. “You saw me with that woman last night, didn’t you?”

I nodded and watched him over the rim of my cup. He wanted to say more but didn’t know how to go about it. He picked at his food when it came and when any ball player does that you know something’s wrong. After a while he pushed the plate aside with half his breakfast still on it and we got up and went our own ways.

It was an off-day — Thursday usually is in Cincinnati — but Pat McGann, the Stars’ manager, had called an afternoon batting practice. Drake wasn’t the only one not hitting and the team average had dipped to a paltry .252, not good for a division contender. Scoring only two runs in three games at Wrigley Field, a hitters’ paradise, was even more disturbing. Those three straight losses while the Phillies were winning two out of three had dropped the Stars five games behind. In late July that gets you worrying.

Before the session got started I interviewed McGann and then walked out and stood around the batting cage with the rest of the writers who traveled with the team and one from a Cincinnati paper. I jotted down a few comments I could use. Nothing much, just the usual trite stuff, but a couple were a little funny — the dry kind that some ball players must lie awake nights thinking up.

When it was over I went back to the hotel, wrote a story — off day or not, they expect one — and then banged out about two-thirds of a column for Sunday. That left me with nothing to do until the game the next night. After dinner with Brophy and a couple of the players at Grammer’s, a good German restaurant a mile or so north of the hotel, I settled in the lobby with The Sporting News.

About nine o’clock Drake got off the elevator, brushed past a couple of Baseball Annies who rushed over when they spotted him, and went down the stairs and out the door. On a hunch I got up and tagged along behind. He walked a couple of blocks and went into a small tavern. I didn’t want him to know I was nosing around so I loitered in front of a store across the street.

After maybe fifteen minutes he came out and headed back toward the hotel. I dodged traffic and entered the tavern. Just as I’d expected, there was the blonde at a table, and sitting beside her was a slick-looking character, the kind that makes you check to be sure your wallet’s still in your pocket.

I took a stool at the bar, had a beer, and was right on their heels when they left. They walked to another hotel, got separate keys at the desk, and I was waiting for them when they got to the elevators. I eyeballed the room number on her key tab and got his by strolling by as he unlocked his door.

Back in the lobby I studied the bellhops, picked out the most likely prospect, and slipped him a ten. A few minutes later he handed me a card with two names on it. Phony, I figured, but better than nothing.

I went back to my room and tried to piece it together. The setup smelled, I was sure of it. Whatever was going on it was probably the cause of Drake’s tailspin at the plate. The woman looked like she wasn’t above some kind of a hustle and the smoothie she was with was a con artist if I ever saw one.

The answer wasn’t going to come to me without more to go on, I knew that. I picked up the phone and started to dial, but then put it back down. After a few seconds I grabbed it again. What the hell, I smelled an exclusive, and if I was right the newspaper would pick up the tab.

“That you, Marchetti?” I said when a man growled “Yeah?” on the other end of the line. He grunted and it sounded affirmative so I said, “I’ve got a job I need done right away.”

“What’re you doing in town? I thought you were on the road with the team.”

“I am. I’m calling from Cincy. Now here’s what I want you to do—”

I asked him to check out the blonde and her friend without telling him much else. Whatever it was they were up to, I figured they must have started it there at home or they wouldn’t have picked on Drake.

“Who’s paying for this?” he said when I was through.

“Maybe the paper, maybe me.”

He grunted again and told me how tough it would be. I couldn’t argue with that but I knew Nick Marchetti was as good a private eye as you’d find anywhere. When he finished crying the blues I said, “Nick, I want you to hang loose for a couple of days. Check the flights to Cincy and be ready to buzz out here in a hurry.”

“Cincinnati in July? No way, man.”

I chuckled. “It beats Minneapolis in January.”

He complained a little more, told me how many big cases he was working on, and finally said O.K., he’d come if I yelled for help. I told him I’d phone him at noon the next day for a report and hung up, grinning. Big cases, sure. He probably hadn’t left his favorite stool at Clancy’s Bar all month except to sleep. (I had called him at Clancy’s.)

I marvel at guys like Marchetti though. When I phoned the next day he knew more about that pair of hustlers than I could have found out in a month. The woman’s name — her real one — was Teresa McNair and she had served eighteen months for some kind of scam a few years earlier. Nick couldn’t be a hundred percent certain about the guy but his description fit one of Teresa’s cohorts, a two-time loser named Joe Schnell, a small-time grifter.

That didn’t prove anything, but it removed all doubt in my mind that they were pulling something and Drake was the mark. I reminded Marchetti to be ready for a fast trip to Cincy and then sat back and tried to think it through. I didn’t have any luck so I hopped a shuttle to the races at River Downs.

My luck wasn’t any better at the track and I hung around too long trying to get back even. Instead of arriving at the park three hours before game time like I should have, I jumped out of a cab at Riverfront Stadium ten minutes before the first pitch. I ran in the gate, took the elevator to the press box, signed in, hurried to the bulletin board, and began scribbling the lineups in my scorebook.

It took a while for it to soak in that Freddy De Angelo and not Drake was at third base for the Stars. Freddy was O.K. in the field but, like with most utility men, you could add his weight and his waistline and come up with his batting average. I rushed through the rest of the lineup and slipped into a seat next to Brophy.

“What’s the matter with Drake?” I said.

Brophy frowned at me. “Where the hell have you been?”

“At the track. What about Drake?”

“He didn’t show. You’da known that if you’d been here.”

“No kidding!” It was such a surprise I didn’t even think to tell Brophy he wasn’t my babysitter. Ball players below the level of superstar don’t turn up missing when a game’s scheduled. For that matter, not many superstars do either.

“That’s right,” Brophy said. “Nobody knows where he is. They checked back at the hotel but he wasn’t there. Checked the hospitals too, but he didn’t turn up.”

“Cover for me, will you?” I said and walked to the phone at the top of the press box where the Cincinnati publicity director sits. I thought better of it, went down the hallway to a room behind the broadcast booths. You could use the phones there without having half the writers in the press box listening in.

After getting past the bartender at Clancy’s and another “Yeah?” from Marchetti I said, “Grab the next plane out here.”

When I got back to my seat the Reds were still batting in the bottom of the first and already had three runs on the board. If they didn’t snap out of it in a hurry the Stars could quit looking up at the Phillies and start glancing over their shoulders to see who was coming up on them from behind.

I couldn’t concentrate on the game. The press box at Riverfront is enclosed and it’s so tight you can’t hear the crowd unless everyone screams at the same time. If you take your eyes off the field for very long you miss something. It’s a little unreal, almost like watching figures move around on one of those tabletop games. I’m not crazy about it and with my mind on Drake it was intolerable.

“Cover for me, will you?” I said and Brophy looked up, irritated as hell.

“After I write your story for you should I send it over or will you take care of that yourself?” he said.

“I’ll bring you a beer,” I said, and he mellowed a little.

“And a bag of peanuts!” he called after me.

I walked down the corridor to the press dining room, ordered a ham and swiss on rye and a beer. I spotted Joe Tyner, the Stars’ publicity director, lounging on a sofa talking to a couple of Cincinnati front-office people. I walked over, sat down, and said, “Joe, what’s this about Drake?”

“He didn’t show.”

“Hell, I know that. Any idea where he is?”

“If I had one I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“When was the last time anybody saw him?”

“Turk Macy and Tommy Hartsfeld had lunch with him. Nobody remembers seeing him after that.”

I stood up and walked over to the windows, saw a couple of more Reds circling the bases in eerie silence far below, got Brophy’s beer and peanuts, and went back. At that point it looked like I knew more than anyone else and it sure wasn’t much.

The game was a real yawner to the end. The Stars couldn’t have looked worse if Brophy and I had handled the batting. They were shut out on three hits while the Reds sent eight men across the plate. I made sure I was on the first elevator down to the clubhouse level. I wanted to be back upstairs by eleven so I could phone my paper at a time when everyone would be there.

When we unloaded I was the only one to turn right and head for the Stars’ clubhouse. I squeezed around the bus parked right in front of the door, crossed the tiny lobby, and pulled up short when a guard stuck the flat of his hand against my chest. “No reporters until McGann gives the word,” he said. “He’s called a meeting.”

There was nothing I could do but cuss, turn around, and go back the other way. I’d have to settle for whatever I could get down the hall. Winners are always ready to talk, but I was in too big a hurry to want to hear much of it.

The Cincinnati clubhouse is really plush, right down to the red wall-to-wall carpet. The elevator had already made its second run down from the press box so writers and broadcasters were lined up two deep in front of the winning pitcher’s cubicle. I made do with a few words of wisdom from a muscular outfielder who had hit one downtown and walked into Feisty Parker’s private office. The Cincy manager had a plate of chicken, another of sliced tomatoes, and a big glass of milk in front of him but he ignored them long enough to help me out with a few quick, pointed remarks about the trouble the Stars were having.

I rode back upstairs and called Ted Constable, my sports editor, and he got the managing editor, Ken Knight, on an extension. I explained the situation and Knight said the paper would pay the freight for Marchetti. Ted told me to get busy and send over a sidebar on Drake’s disappearance along with my game story.

When Brophy came back up, I wormed a couple of things out of him that McGann had said once he unlocked the door. I got my copy out in a hurry, sent it over on the teleprinter, and was back at the hotel by one o’clock and in the sack half an hour later.

Marchetti walked into the hotel dining room at seven-thirty in the morning. He wouldn’t say a word until he had gulped a cup of coffee, but he grinned when I told him he was working for the newspaper and not me personally. Brophy just about popped an eyeball when he came in and saw Marchetti with me and then shot a few daggers my direction when I shooed him away from the table. He sat down in a booth fifteen feet away. His right ear looked like the RCA Victor trumpet, but we made sure he couldn’t hear anything.

I filled Marchetti in on the little I knew. He thought about it a while and then told me his first move would be checking the car-rental outfits.

“He’s a troubled young man,” Marchetti said. “Five’ll get you ten he’s holed up in some small town to think over whatever it is that’s bugging him. He’d want to get away from the city to a place where he felt more comfortable. Any idea where he’d head?”

“Back toward Iowa, I’ll bet. But I doubt if he’d go very far.”

We walked up to the lobby and I bought a large road atlas at the newsstand. Marchetti crammed it in his flight bag in case we ran into Brophy again and we went on up to my room and looked it over.

“Indiana,” I said. “If your idea is right, he’d want to get away from metropolitan Cincinnati. I don’t think he’d go north or east, that’d keep him in Ohio, and I doubt if he’d head south into Kentucky. Indiana would seem more like home, so he’d drive west. And if he really started out for Iowa that would put him in Indiana too.”

Marchetti nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s look at Indiana.” I thumbed pages to the right map and then we studied it for a minute or two.

“Maybe he’d follow the river,” I said. “How about Lawrenceburg or Madison?”

Marchetti shook his head. “Naw, look at that road. It follows every bend in the Ohio. Not knowing the area, he’d take an interstate. Probably stop at the first place he came to with a motel or hotel that wasn’t too conspicuous.” He ran a finger along I-74 and said, “Batesville, Greensburg, or Shelbyville, I’ll bet.”

“That’s if he left town at all. He might be holed up right here in Cincy.”

“Not unless he’s got a friend who’d hide him out. Do you know of any?”

“No, and I doubt if Drake would have made any friends here. This would be — let’s see — only the sixth time he’s been in Cincinnati, and he isn’t the type to make friends in a hurry.”

We went back downstairs. Marchetti was going to check on car rentals while I went to the other hotel to see if Teresa and her friend were still there. They were. Marchetti didn’t come up with anything but he had rented a car and by nine-thirty we were cruising along the interstate toward Indiana.

We reached Batesville, our first stop, in an hour. We had seen several signs along the highway touting an old inn downtown so we headed for it, figuring Drake might have done the same thing. Sure enough, when I showed the woman at the desk a photo of Drake in street clothes, she said he was in Room 22.

Talk about luck. I guess Marchetti would have called it headwork.

We climbed the stairs. I knocked on the door and when Drake asked, “Who’s there?” Marchetti said, “Maintenance man.”

Drake’s jaw dropped when he opened the door and saw me standing there. He tried to slam it shut again but Marchetti was in the way. Drake shrugged his shoulders and said, “O.K., come on in.”

It wasn’t a situation where you’d start off talking about the weather so I said, “What’s the trouble, Tony?”

He slumped down in a chair, lowered his head, and shook it without saying anything.

“Something to do with that woman, right?”

He looked up at me, surprised. I guess farm kids aren’t as suspicious by nature as people like me. Of course newspapermen get paid for being nosy. “How’d you know?” he said.

I introduced Marchetti and said, “He checked up on her. She’s a con artist, Tony, and so is the guy with her.”

He shook his head again and said, “No, you’ve got her wrong. The man too. He’s her lawyer — Mr. Mendelbaum.”

Marchetti and I laughed. Schnell had given Tony a name that at least sounded like a lawyer’s.

“He’s no lawyer, buddy,” Marchetti said and went on to explain who Schnell really was and then told Tony about Teresa.

Tony sat there slack-jawed, moving his head from side to side. He had never encountered people like that before.

“They’re shaking you down, aren’t they, Tony?” I said. “What about?”

Tony looked guilty as sin. “It’s not the way you think. She’s pregnant. She’s a nice lady, but she says she has no choice but to file a paternity suit unless I can give her fifty thousand so she can get away someplace and have the baby. Mr. Mendelbaum has the papers all drawn up.”

Marchetti whistled and asked, “Could she be?”

Drake’s face was crimson. He nodded his head and stammered, “The first time we were in Chicago. You’ve got her wrong though. She’s real nice, but if Myra hears about this—”

Myra was the girl back in Iowa. He was right about what she’d think — not to mention Mom and Dad and everybody else in that little burg. Teresa had picked her man with care.

“Tony,” I said, “you don’t even make fifty grand a year, do you?”

He was staring at the floor. “Forty-seven,” he mumbled.

That was the one point where Teresa had gone wrong. She and Schnell must have heard about some of those inflated salaries the big names get and figured it applied to everybody. It doesn’t, not by a long sight. Another good season or two and Drake might be in the six-figure bracket, but if he slipped even a little more he never would be.

As for the paternity suit, it’s the big rage. A woman gets pregnant, claims a ball player or a movie star or a politician is responsible, and there’s a fair chance he’ll lay a settlement on her just to keep it out of the papers. Ball players are sitting ducks even more than the others because anybody who can read the sports pages can find out exactly where they are on any given day for seven or eight months out of the year. A wet-behind-the-ears kid like Drake would be especially vulnerable to the threat. If he’d had the money, you can bet he would have handed it over in a hurry.

I said, “Tony, she’s no more pregnant than I am. These aren’t a couple of people off the street, they’re convicted shakedown artists and the only way to deal with them is to call their bluff and put them back behind bars.”

His head came up, his face agonized. “But it’ll be in the papers!” he said. “Everybody’ll know about it!”

“It’ll be in the papers — there’s no way to keep it out — but there’s no proof if you deny it.”

“If they’re arrested, the details will come out at their trial.”

“No, they won’t,” Marchetti said, “because there won’t be any trial. They’ll cop a plea to a reduced charge. You can bank on it.”

Drake looked at me and I gave him a nod that was meant to be reassuring. “There’s no other way, Tony. Marchetti might be able to scare them off, but you’d still have to explain your disappearing act. Unless you were damn convincing it would make the writers more curious than ever. Somebody would dig out the story and it would sound worse than it actually is. This way you’ll be the good guy — the innocent, indignant victim who wouldn’t stand still for a shakedown.”

Drake thought about it a minute and said, “I guess you’re right.” You could see he was relieved to have someone else making the decisions. “So what do I do now?”

“First get back to Cincy and explain it to McGann,” I told him. “I’ll go with you and help out.”

“After that,” Marchetti cut in, “set up a meeting with them. Tell them you have the money. Set it up for late tonight in the restaurant at their hotel. In the meantime, I’ll make arrangements with the Cincinnati police and we’ll be at the next table.”

“And stay away from other reporters until it’s all over,” I added.

Drake grinned at that. It had been so long I was surprised he still remembered how. “You guys never quit, do you?”

“Not if we expect to keep drawing a paycheck. Now let’s go.”

I rode back to town with him and Marchetti drove back alone. I called McGann from a booth on the outskirts of town, told him I had Drake with me and to meet us at a coffee shop I could see down the road. An hour later he was there with Eldon Braniger, the Stars’ general manager.

Drake made three or four false starts that didn’t get beyond “I... uh—” so I took over and explained the situation. Braniger said Tony would be fined for missing the game, but it wasn’t in the same league with the figure Teresa was trying to pry out of him. He and McGann agreed it would remain confidential — a “no comment” deal — until the arrests were made that night.

It was a Saturday and the schedule makers hadn’t been able to decide between an afternoon and a night game, so they split the difference and settled on a twi-nighter. That was good. It should be over in plenty of time for me to get the story, since I’d be on the scene, but too late for the other papers to pick it up for their Sunday editions.

When we got to the hotel we hurried across the lobby and up to my room. I kept Drake there for the hour and a half before we’d have to leave for the stadium. He called Myra and his parents and I called Ken Knight at his home, made arrangements for a hole on Page One, and told him I might run a little past deadline. He countered with forty reasons why I shouldn’t. I had heard them all before.

After that, Tony called Teresa, and I could hear her sigh of relief clear across the room. She and Schnell must have been really uptight when Tony pulled his disappearing act. He gave her a trumped-up story about having to go somewhere to get the money, and the meeting was set for eleven o’clock. She wanted it right away but he told her he was ready to leave for the ball park. Then she wanted it earlier in the evening but he told her no, it might be an extra-inning game. I shuddered at the idea.

Marchetti called a few minutes later and said everything was set up with the Cincinnati police and all he needed was a time. I gave it to him and then Drake and I slipped out the service entrance and took a cab to Riverfront.

Pat McGann called the writers together while the Reds were taking batting practice. “Tony Drake missed last night’s game because of a personal matter which I can’t reveal,” he said, and was promptly bombarded with questions asking him to.

When they saw McGann meant it about not saying anything more, they rushed out of his office in search of Tony. He had outsmarted them and was in the trainer’s room, which is off limits to reporters. He skipped batting practice and stayed where he was until the writers were cleared from the field, then he hurried out to take infield with the team.

Drake started but McGann pulled him after four innings and sent Freddy DeAngelo out. Tony had been like a zombie out there, but his presence must have ignited the rest of the club, or something did because the Stars hit the ball all over the park and hammered the Reds, 10-2.

The game ended a little after eight, so I had all kinds of time to write my story before going to the restaurant. I cheated and went ahead and wrote the arrest story ahead of time, figuring how it was likely to go. I sent it over along with the game story and instructions to hold it until they heard from me.

Marchetti slipped Drake into the restaurant through the kitchen half an hour early so he would be waiting at the table they had picked for him when the others arrived. A Cincinnati detective and Marchetti were at the next one, but I was told to sit across the room in case Teresa or Schnell recognized me. Drake had an envelope with a stack of paper in it and a hundred-dollar bill at each end of the stack.

The con artists came in a couple of minutes before eleven and went straight to Drake’s table, all smiles. They made a real production of it. Schnell had some kind of a phony release he had Teresa sign and he handed it to Drake at the same time Tony passed him the envelope.

Schnell ran a finger under the seal but before he could open it the detective had a hand on his shoulder. Marchetti was standing behind Teresa in case she decided to play rough, but she didn’t. It was all over before I finished my salad. Drake joined me when the others had gone, shaky but happy.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t mention it. Keep an eye on things till I get back.” I went to a phone, called Ken Knight, and told him it was O.K. to go with the story the way I sent it over. Poor Brophy, I thought. He’d catch hell over the phone in the morning.

Drake was a terror the next afternoon. Three for four at the plate, a couple of runs batted in, three great plays in the field. Brophy sulked through the game, so I knew he had gotten that phone call. We were staying in Cincy overnight and catching a morning flight to Pittsburgh, so I told him dinner and drinks were on me at the Maisonette.

That snapped him out of it fast. Nobody appreciates good food and drink more than Brophy and, knowing his capacity, I figured the evening was going to set me back seventy-five or a hundred. I had that figured too. Since my expense voucher was going to be on the heavy side anyway, Ken Knight wouldn’t mind a little extra to buy dinner for a downhearted rival.

I was dead wrong about that part. But, hell, nobody bats a thousand.