Terror at the Fair

Chapter Thirty-Two

The next morning I left the house almost an hour earlier than usual, first destination: Tribune Tower, to return the clippings Hazel had assembled for me. The paper, and by extension, the morgue, had a rule that clips under no circumstances could be taken from the building, and the last thing I wanted was to get Hazel in trouble. So at 8:35, I placed the envelope in her hands with profuse thanks, then passed through the local room, waving to a few colleagues whom I rarely saw and stopping to give my regards to Day City Editor Hal Murray.

Back in the fair’s pressroom, where I remained the only occupant, I thumbed through the bulky Chicago phone directory and found the name I wanted: Zack Yeager.

Zack had been an intrepid Trib police reporter for more than thirty years before retiring in the early 1940s. Not only was he a tiger once he got onto the scent of a story, he also had a memory rivaling that of Catherine’s late father, the legendary City News Bureau reporter Lemuel “Steel Trap” Bascomb.

“Yeager at this end,” he answered in a gravelly tone on the second ring.

“Hello, Zack, this is a ghost from your past.”

“I’m pretty good with voices, and I’ve gotta say this sounds a hell of a lot like the one and only Steve ‘Snap’ Malek, boy reporter. How’m I doing?”

“As good as ever, Zack. Tell me what’s going on with you these days?”

“Arthritis, for one thing, but it’s not about to stop me from getting out to Sportsman’s and Hawthorne to watch the ponies run and put down a small wager now and again.”

“Are you winning?”

“Now and again.”

“Do you miss the exciting world of the daily deadlines?”

“You know, I did at first, Snap. The first year after I left got really tough, actually tougher on Maggie than on me, because I became such a bear around the house, a real pain in the butt. If she had bumped me off then, any jury would have ruled it justifiable homicide.”

I laughed. “It couldn’t have been so bad as that, Zack.”

“It was pretty bad, but I adjusted. It helps that the grandkids are nearby. Our daughter, Amy, lives in Evergreen Park, so we see them all pretty often. And then there’s Sportsman’s and Hawthorne, as I mentioned. But how about you? Bring me up to date.”

“Right now, the paper has me doing feature stuff out at the Railroad Fair.”

“Oh yeah, come to think of it, I’ve seen a few of your bylines. Some strange things happening out there, eh?”

“I’ll say. Before I get back to the fair, on a personal note, you may know I got divorced a few years back.”

“Yeah, I think I had heard on the grapevine. Sorry to hear it.”

“Don’t be. The story has a happy ending. I’m married again, and I like to think I’m a better man this time around. My wife is Steel Trap Bascomb’s daughter.”

“I’ll be damned! I’ll be goddamned! Good for you, Snap. Now ol’ Steel Trap, there was a man. We’ll never see his likes again.”

“Yeah, and although I had met him a few times in earlier years, I really got acquainted with him toward the end, which is how I met Catherine. Of course by then his mind was going, but he still had moments when the old brilliance showed through.”

“God, I remember one time when he and I covered a fatal down near the Stockyards in ’21 or ’22, I think. The stiff had been trying to rob a little ma and pa store and got outdrawn by the grocer, who plugged him as he pulled out his own gun. We walked in, and Steel Trap must have been at least thirty feet away from the body, lying facedown on the floor of the store, when he said, ‘That’s Two-Bits Tomassini, I’d know him anywhere.’

“When I asked where he had run into this Two-Bits character before, he told me it was back in 1907, when he covered the courts, they had hauled Tomassini in for kiting checks. A minor thing like that fifteen years before, and damned if Steel Trap didn’t remember it—even the month in ’07 when it happened, April! I’m surprised he didn’t remember the exact date.”

“Incredible story, Zack.”

“Yeah, but I have a feeling you didn’t call up just to hear me reminisce about the great old days chasing down stories and finding ways to screw the opposition out of scoops.”

“I seem to recall you’ve got a damned good memory yourself.”

“Nothin’ like Steel Trap, though. Like I said, with him, they threw away the mold.”

“Well, let me test you, if you don’t mind. Do you happen to remember a railroad engineer named Josef Schneider?”

I could hear a deep exhale at the other end. “Oh yeah, Snap, I remember very well, too well. A sad, sad story. Does this have anything to do with your Railroad Fair?”

“Maybe, but I’m not sure. Tell me about Schneider.”

“Well, do you know about the three kids who got hit by his train?”

“Yeah, I do now. I vaguely remember when it happened, but my own memory got a jogging when I read the clips yesterday about the whole business, including the inquest and the suicide. Can you fill in some blanks for me?”

“A few of them, anyway. I was at the inquest, and it got nasty, Snap, I mean really nasty. The parents of these kids, they were damned near out of control, particularly when the deaths got ruled an accident.”

“They thought he should have been able to stop the train, is that it?”

“Yeah, but others on the scene said it was impossible; the train was just going too fast. The kids apparently had waited until the last possible moment to race in front of the engine. It sounds like they were playing some sort of ‘chicken.’”

“Well, it also sounds like it pretty well ended Schneider’s life, too.”

“Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It didn’t help matters that he was a German immigrant who spoke with a heavy accent. As you probably remember, residual resentment of Germans because of the First War lingered in a lot of neighborhoods, and there were more bad feelings by the late thirties, what with Hitler on the scene by then.”

“That all adds up to a formula for trouble,” I said.

“Sure does, and the trouble started right there at the inquest. After the ‘accident’ verdict, the kids’ parents shouted things like ‘Dirty Kraut’ and ‘You bloody damned Heinie.’ Somebody even called him a Nazi, which of course made no sense whatever. The bailiff and a couple of cops had to clear the room. The screaming continued in the hall and even out on the street.”

“I gather the hatred followed the poor bastard for the rest of his life.”

“You gather right. I didn’t follow what happened next real closely—I had a lot of other stuff to keep me busy at the time—but I do know Schneider left the Rock Island just to get away from all the hassle he got, not only from the parents of the dead kids but from their neighbors as well. They all made him a scapegoat for what happened.”

“Then what?”

“After a year or so, he tried to get his old job back, but apparently the Rock Island worried about his mental condition, possibly with some justification, and they turned him down cold. Next, he tried to catch on with several other railroads in the area, I think the Santa Fe, the C&EI, the Monon, the Milwaukee Road, and maybe even a few others, too. I’m fuzzy on the details.

“But it was no dice. Apparently the word had gotten around the railroads about him being unstable. Also, or so the story went at the time, these other lines were worried if they hired him, they’d catch all manner of crap from the families of those kids.”

“Sort of an informal blackball, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s a good way to put it, and I guess you know the rest.”

“The suicide?”

“He hanged himself in the basement of his house. I didn’t go to the funeral, but Don Haggerty did.” Zack referred to a longtime Trib police reporter who had died a few years back.

“Did you ever talk to Haggerty about it—the funeral, I mean?”

“I did, because I had been curious about the whole situation over the years. Sort of an American tragedy, you know?”

“Uh-huh. Somebody could sure write a novel about it, all right. Did Haggerty find out anything at the funeral?”

“Yeah, he talked to the widow, who said her husband’s life for the last several years had been a nightmare; he’d lost weight, started hitting the bottle hard, which according to her he had never done before.”

“Did Schneider have any kids?”

“Haggerty never said, as far as I can remember. The only other thing I’m sure about is the widow moved again after her husband’s death.”

“Tried to disappear?”

“I suppose so,” Zack said.

“A lot of lives ruined.”

“For sure. Do you figure Schneider’s ghost is bumping ’em off out at the Railroad Fair?”

“I’m not quite there yet.” I laughed. “But it’s possible there could be some sort of a connection.”

“Well, be careful, huh, Snap? I’ve read about some of your exploits the last few years, and I know you have a tendency to take chances. Don’t go doing anything foolish, now, y’hear?”

“I hear. Good talking to you, Zack, and I’ll keep you posted.”