Three Strikes You're Dead

Chapter 8

A week passed, then another, and more, with no word from State Representative Daley. Not that I really expected to hear anything; I figured the guy had tolerated me — even humored me — down in Springfield because of my role in helping the Killer sweep that larcenous police lieutenant out of his life. But I was far too much of a realist to have illusions that Daley would do any serious poking around inside his own party in search of the murderer of a potential Republican mayoral candidate.

The calendar now claimed we were in April, although a snowstorm the first week made it feel more like February. Interest in the Martindale murder, both in the Police Headquarters pressroom and around town, had dwindled so that it ranked somewhere between curling and field hockey. The prevailing opinion was that the syndicate had been responsible, which meant by logical extension that the case was effectively closed — or permanently open if you viewed it from the Police Department’s perspective, based on their past successes at solving mob rub-outs.

The Crime Commission made periodic grumblings, but that was hardly news. And I was still intrigued myself, in large measure because of my enforced joyride with Monk and Mel and the hoarse-voiced hood who seemed to be their leader. But there was plenty else keeping me occupied, both on the job and in the world at large.

Like for instance the pissing contest between the Police Department and the State’s Attorney’s office. It started when two detectives from the Town Hall station house on the North Side gave a pair of suspects a “pass” — let them go free in the holdup of a driver of a horse-race handbook — because, as the dicks later claimed, “we didn’t believe they were guilty.”

Courtney, the State’s Attorney, blew his stack because he had to learn about this in the papers, not from the police. He countered by subpoenaing four of the city’s top cops, including John Prendergast, chief of the uniformed force, and Commissioner Allman himself, to explain why they allowed bookies to operate freely.

Courtney, already angling to take on Ed Kelly in the Democratic mayoral primary in ’39, wasn’t about to stop there. To further embarrass the Police Department, he got his own force to raid downtown handbooks. Among his catch were John “Chew Tobacco” Ryan and Hymie “Loud Mouth” Levin, the latter a long-time hood who’d been one of Capone’s bagmen before Al got sent off on his federally funded vacations in Georgia and California.

All this, plus Allman’s limp denial that the police frequently gave passes to suspects, kept the pressroom crew at Headquarters busy filing stories that more often than not ended up on the front pages of our respective papers — sometimes as the headline story. But that kind of play was soon to end, courtesy of one Adolph Hitler.

The Fuehrer’s troops had marched into Austria, seized Vienna, “annexed” (Hitler’s word) that land to Germany, and begun the Nazi harassment of Austrian Jews in what later was recognized as the de facto beginning of World War II. And, although nobody knew it at the time, that invasion — along with the Spanish Civil War and Japan’s takeover of China — marked the rise of international news to the extent that local stories, particularly those about police and crime, would never again command the headlines and dominate the front pages as they had over the previous two decades.

But to those of us who covered the police, the courts, and other areas of city government, such faraway events seemed as inessential and transitory as they appeared in the grainy newsreel footage on Movietone News preceding the feature films in the theaters.

“Hell, this’ll all blow over now that Hitler’s got Austria,” Anson Masters pronounced, dismissively tapping the front page of his own newspaper, which shrilled the invasion in three-inch capital letters. “That tin-pot Napoleon just wants all the heinie-talkers together in one country. Seems reasonable enough.”

“Following that line of reasoning, he’ll also be wanting chunks of Switzerland and Czechoslovakia — they’ve got German-speaking regions, too,” said the City News kid, who as the weeks passed had grown bolder and had started challenging the wisdom and the pronouncements of his elders.

Masters waved the comment aside. “Not likely, my young friend. The guy may love uniforms and parades and be power-hungry, but he’s not stupid. He knows when to stop pushing.”

I wondered if the kid wasn’t right, however. I’d read an article somewhere, maybe in Time magazine, about Hitler’s interest in Czechoslovakia. The writer suggested that his intentions went well beyond that little country’s Sudeten German population. The Fuehrer was said to covet the Czech industrial might, not all of which lay in what was being termed Sudetenland. I thought about my father’s sister over there, Aunt Hana, who he wrote to every month and whose sepia bridal photograph from the ’20s or earlier was framed in oval on the mahogany table next to the Tiffany lamp in the living room of my parents’ Pilsen apartment. And there were my mother’s cousins and nephews and nieces in Brno to whom she sent money and candy every Easter and Christmas.

But to be honest, I didn’t think long about them. To me, what was going on over in Europe was only mildly troubling, like reading about an earthquake in Japan or a revolution in Central America. I was swept up in my own life — seeing Peter on weekends, trying to figure out whether there was any way to get back together with Norma, and taking my enjoyment where I could find it, which more often than not was on a barstool at the Killer’s.

One Friday, Leo Cahill from the Trib sports copy desk rang me at headquarters to say that he had an extra Annie Oakley in the fourth row for the heavyweight title fight at the Chicago Stadium between the new champ, Joe Louis, and some pug from Minnesota named Harry Thomas.

I’d never been much interested in boxing, but there was a lot of excitement centering on Louis — the “Brown Bomber” as the sportswriters had tagged him — and what a fighting machine he was. Plus I’d never seen a championship bout, so I shoveled down a fast supper at a Pixley & Ehlers cafeteria in the Loop after work and met Cahill at one of the Stadium gates.

Leo and I were a long way from being close friends — if he had any close friends, I wasn’t aware of it. He was a needler, always looking for ways to rile people, particularly Cub fans (like me), Republicans (unlike me), suburbanites, and Protestants. He was that relative rarity, an Irish teetotaler, a member of a group that called itself the “Pioneers” — Irishmen who had taken the pledge. Leo knew about my own drinking history; nothing about private lives on a newspaper ever stays confidential for more than forty-eight hours. And he found frequent occasion to bring up what he liked to call my “little Achilles heel,” always in a patronizing manner laced with pity and overly solicitous sympathy.

Maybe that’s why the moment we were settled into our seats at the Stadium, I ordered a Schlitz from a vendor and winked at Leo. “Coke man’ll be along in a minute,” I told him. “I’ll treat.” He didn’t smile.

The big barn looked to be less than half-filled, with almost nobody up in the rafter levels. The next day’s papers reported the crowd at ten-grand-plus, but they had to be counting the Andy Frain ushers, vendors, janitors, and cockroaches — none of whom saw much of a fight.

From the opening bell, it was clear even to my uneducated pugilistic eye that the champion was in total charge. He pounded Thomas all over the ring, knocking him down a half dozen times, four of them in the fourth round alone, before finally putting the poor outclassed lug away at the end of the fifth.

“Louis was carrying him,” I told Leo on the way out of the Stadium, doing a little jabbing of my own. “He must’ve been told that the fight had to go five.”

He wheeled on me. “You’re full of garbage,” he spat, causing heads to turn. “There was no fix — Louis is straight as they come. Snap, your problem is that you just don’t like Negroes.”

“Now it’s you who’s full of garbage,” I fired back in genuine anger. “Boxing’s been filled with white bums for years, like that Primo Carnera guy. Hell, I got no beef with Louis, he’s the best around, by far. I’m just saying that the fight could have been over in the first round, and you damn well know it. Be interesting to know why it lasted as long as it did.”

Surprisingly, Leo had no comeback, only a shake of the head, and I went home with the satisfaction of having out-needled the needler. I should have known, though, that he’d find a way to counterpunch. A couple of weeks later, my phone rang on a Sunday morning around 8:00. I rolled over in bed, groaning and reaching for it on the nightstand. My effort was rewarded with Leo’s voice.

“Hey, Snap, seen today’s Final?”

“Not yet, why?” I croaked irritably.

He chuckled. “I tried to call you last night, but got no answer. I suppose you were out on the town, eh?”

“Dammit, Leo, quit beating around the bush. You got me up, now what do you want?”

Another laugh. “It’s a fine, fine day, Snap. I been up for two hours, been to Mass, and had a good breakfast. Now I’m just rereading the sports section and thinking I ought to call my old Cub fan buddy Snap Malek and see what he thinks about his team’s latest batty move.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Snap, guess who the Cubs traded for yesterday. Go on, guess.”

“Leo, I’m not in the mood for guessing games.”

“Go on, just take a guess.”

“Leo, I got no idea. Mel Ott maybe?”

This time he roared. “Now that would have been smart, but the Cubs aren’t smart, are they? Or any good, either, for that matter.”

“They beat your South Side warriors ten out of sixteen out in California this spring,” I reminded him.

“Sure, but that’s just exhibition stuff and you know it. Wait till they play in the City Series this fall, when it really counts for something; it’ll be the same old script — Sox in five games, six at most. Now, got another guess on who your boys picked up off the scrap heap?”

“No, tell me before I pass out from the suspense.”

“The once-great Dizzy Dean, believe it or not, my poor misguided friend. And you know what they gave up to get that tattered, battered arm of his? Davis, Shoun, and Stainback, that’s who. Plus close to a hunnert thou. Just about the biggest deal in baseball history, and by far the stupidest.”

“For the Cardinals, that is,” I put in gamely, still stunned by what I had just heard.

“Poor old Snap, ever the optimist in the face of disaster,” Leo clucked. “If Diz had been any good, Branch Rickey woulda never peddled him. He won’t win five games this year — hell, he’ll be lucky if he even pitches in five games. Care to make a small wager on where your Wrigleys finish this season?”

I drew in air, letting it out slowly and working to keep my voice even. “Sure, Leo, I’ve got fifty bucks that says they’ll win the pennant,” I told him, listening to my own words as if someone else were mouthing them.

That shut him up for two heartbeats. “Snap, I don’t want to take advantage of, well... that Achilles’ heel of yours.”

“Stuff it, Leo. You’re the one who was so hot to make a bet. As they say on the street, put up or shut up.”

“What kind of odds you want?”

“Who said anything about odds?”

“Even up? You’re kidding!”

“Try me, Leo.”

“Geez, Snap, that’s a lot of jack,” he said, lowering his voice, probably so Marie couldn’t hear him.

“I’m surprised. I figured that you’d jump at such easy money,” I pressed on. “After all, we both know that ol’ Diz is through, right?”

“You’re on, but as the Good Lord is my witness, you’re givin’ cash away,” Leo replied stiffly. For a few seconds after we hung up, I felt a surge of exhilaration, but it dissolved when the rational part of my brain reminded me that I had just laid out more than a week’s gross pay on a nag — make that a team — that might just finish out of the money, behind the Giants, Cards, Pirates, and maybe even the Reds.

I felt a little more confident about the bet a few days later, though, when Dean was the winning pitcher against Cincinnati in the second game of the season, although he gave up four runs. And I felt a whole lot better about it the next Sunday. I was one of 35,000 — a large turnout for a gray day in April — at Wrigley Field to see Dizzy go the distance and throw a four-hit shutout against the Cardinals — the very bunch whose uniform he’d worn just nine days earlier. The fastball I remember from his St. Louis glory days was gone, as the whole league had begun to realize last season. But his slow stuff — and it was really slow — seemed to fool his former mates, which had to delight him. And by the late innings, chants of “Diz... Diz... Diz” were breaking out all over the park. That must have spurred Dean on, because he retired the last nine Cardinal batters.

After walking back along Clark Street to my apartment from the game, I suppressed the urge to call Leo and gloat, and I’m glad I did. I might have been on the line and missed the call from State Representative Daley.