Murder at Fenway Park (9 page)

Macullar paused, and I prodded him along in his reverie, “What position did you play?”

“Oh, we used to play wherever they needed us pretty much. Usually a team only had one extra player. Mostly I played shortstop, and a fair amount of outfield.”

“Where did you go after Syracuse?”

“Nowhere for a while. I was out of the big leagues ’eighty and ’eighty-one. Longest years of my life. I thought I’d never get picked up again. Seemed like my life would be over if I didn’t get back in the big leagues. I played semipro those two years. It was still baseball, and I did love to play the game, but it’s just not the same after you’ve had a taste of the major leagues. Then I got lucky. They started the American Association, and I got signed by Cincinnati. I was a big-league baseball player again. Five more years. Two with Cincinnati and three with Baltimore.”

I felt guilty about interrupting his memories—especially since I enjoyed hearing them—but I had to bring him around to the present eventually, so after a sufficient silence I asked, “How did you come to be working for the Red Sox?”

The expression on Macullar’s face became grimmer as he responded, “Well, playing baseball doesn’t leave you with a lot of useful skills when your career is over. From the first time I picked up a ball and bat, all I ever wanted to do was play baseball. Then when they started paying ball players, that’s what I wanted my career to be. It didn’t much matter what would happen afterward, so I never gave any thought to it—didn’t plan for anything else.” Macullar sighed. “But, I had my time in the big leagues and I was satisfied. I felt like I got to live a dream playing baseball with the greatest players in the game.

“I was born in Boston, so I moved back there after Baltimore let me go. I picked up work with semipro teams wherever I could. Each year, I got older and it got harder to find a spot as a player. Then when Boston started an American League team, I took a job as a gate attendant. That’s when we were still at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. I’ve been with the club ever since. And now I work for Mr. Tyler.” With his last sentence, Macullar grimaced slightly.

Okay, time for the big question: “You remember when I first came to Fenway?”

Macullar nodded, but didn’t face me.

“Well, I was wondering what happened. The police never asked me any more questions. And I haven’t seen anything at all in the papers or anything. Did they find out who the dead man was? Did they catch who did it?”

Macullar sat silently, still staring straight ahead. Eventually he answered, slowly and carefully, “As far as I am aware, the case has not yet been solved.” Then he looked at me and asked, “Have you spoken to anyone else about this?”

I didn’t want to mention Peggy, so I came up with an answer that was partly true. “No, you’re the first man I’ve talked to about it.” I quickly went on, “It’s just that Mr. Tyler told me I was a suspect. I was getting worried... I’d just like to know what’s going on.”

Macullar looked thoughtful and then said matter-of-factly, “You don’t have anything to worry about. Not from the police.”

“I don’t?”

“No.”

We both sat in silence for a while, neither looking at the other. Then he spoke up again, “That—what happened at Fenway Park—it never happened.”

“Huh?”

“Well... You are not going to discuss this with anyone else.
Anyone.
Right?”

“Okay.”

“Well... you have to understand that the Red Sox’s financial situation is not very strong. Mr. Tyler and his partners are not millionaires. And they put a lot of money into the new ballpark. If attendance isn’t good, they could be out of business—”

“But the stands are
filled.
We’re in
first place.
”

Macullar held a hand up and shook his head at my interruption. “Yes. Everything is going our way right now. People are coming to the games... Mayor Fitzgerald and the Royal Rooters have adopted us ... we should be on our way to the World Series. But what do you think would happen if there was publicity about a fan being killed at a game? There’d be a scandal... people would think it wasn’t safe to come to the ballpark... attendance would drop... the city would be embarrassed....”

I couldn’t help interrupting again. “But it
did
happen.”

Patiently, Macullar answered, “No, not officially. Officially, nothing happened at Fenway Park.” Then, with a low, flat voice, he said, “The body was moved. To another part of town. Dorchester. It was found there. So ... officially, nobody was killed at Fenway Park.”

“The body was
moved?”

Macullar turned his head to look back out the window. His response was barely audible. “I moved him. The police officer and I moved him. We put him under a railroad bridge. Mr. Tyler said to. He said it couldn’t matter to the dead man where his body was found—it wouldn’t bring him back to life. But if people knew it was at Fenway Park, that
would.
matter, and it wouldn’t be good for anyone.”

I was speechless.

Then I made the connection, and gasped out, “The dead man was Red Corriden!”

Macullar shook his head, “We didn’t
know
that at the time. Nobody knew it was a ball player. We all assumed some fan got into a fight or got robbed... there are some rough sporting types who come to the games—and after nine innings of beer, they can be trouble. We didn’t know who it was until after he was found in Dorchester.”

“Jeez. That was Red Corriden.” I felt queasy thinking of what his face looked like when I found him.

I had expected that learning something about the nameless man I discovered would make me feel better somehow. It didn’t. Attaching an identity to him made it worse. Hell, he was a ball player. A rookie baseball player. It could have been me. I suddenly felt a tingly spasm shoot through my legs.

Neither Jimmy Macullar nor I said another word. After I recovered enough from the shock to get to my feet, I walked off to another car to sit alone. And suddenly wondered, what did he mean,
Not from the police?

T
he day after the Red Sox returned from the West, I went to see Peggy to report on my talk with Jimmy Macullar. She was again out of town, but had left a note for me at the theater. Helen handed it to me saying, “Peggy’s down on the Cape. Her aunt took sick, so she went right down to take care of her. Wonderful girl that Peggy is.”

“Mmm,” I agreed.

“Make a mighty fine wife for some lucky fellah.”

“Uh. Did she say when she’ll be back?”

“No... I suppose it depends on when her aunt gets better. Why don’t you read the note? Maybe she says there.”

There was no additional information in the note. Peggy did include her aunt’s address in Hyannis, however. Was that supposed to be some kind of hint?

Unable to tell Peggy what I’d found out about Red Corriden, was left to pursue my own thoughts on the matter. They were muddled conjectures, and I couldn’t assess what was realistic and what was farfetched. I felt I needed to bounce my ideas off somebody if only to hear them spoken and see them take shape. By myself, I couldn’t get a grasp on the ramifications of Macullar’s information.

His revelation had one surprising effect on me. For six weeks, I’d been trying to forget the sight of the facial remnants I had seen in Fenway Park. But once I knew whose face it was, I had an inexplicable impulse to revisit the tunnel under the park. To look at the place where Corriden had been killed, and bring the vision back before me. Perhaps there was something I had seen or heard that hadn’t registered before. As much as I dreaded reliving the experience, I decided to check out the scene of Red Corriden’s death.

But I’d have to be careful. I didn’t want anyone to see me wandering under the ballpark. Certainly not Tyler. Nor his minions—Macuttar, the stadium cop, whoever else might be in his command... Besides, it was like paying respects at a gravesite, the sort of thing that should be done alone.

After a game against the White Sox, I claimed a sore shoulder and had the team trainer give me a rubdown while my teammates showered and changed. Then a long shower of my own, shivering in the cold water that was left me, and when I’d finished the clubhouse was empty. There would still be stragglers and cleaning people in the park, so I dressed in my street clothes and ducked into the equipment room to bide some more time. I sat amid the bats and balls and bases for about an hour, until I figured everyone would be gone.

To get my bearings, I first headed out to the main hallway that circled the park. Dusk had come, and few minutes of daylight remained. I quickly strode the hallway, my shoe leather clacking on the concrete floor. I stopped briefly at the entrance of each passageway and glanced at each view of the field. I remembered my first sight of the Fenway field, how the clay arc of the infield cut across the bottom left of the outfield grass, and looked for the same picture.

I finally spotted it—dimty, but the layout was right.

I walked into the passage, toward the field. Last time, the tunnel invited me in and drew me gently; now it repelled me. The walls squeezed together, and I had to force myself to keep stepping forward against their suffocating grip.

A turn to the right, into the hallway where I’d found Corriden. It was almost completely black, and I preferred leaving it that way. Not until I thought I was close to the actual murder scene did I try to find a light. I felt a doorway—was this the one? And a light button; I punched it in.

The bright yellow glare showed nothing but empty hallway. No body, no crusty patches of blood, no bat. Of course they would have all been removed. I wondered what happened to the bat... Tyler had it burned, probably. In the dressing room stove maybe? The Red Sox could have been warmed by the heat of a murder weapon.

A closer look revealed one trace of what had happened here. A patch of wall adjacent to the doorway had an extra coat of whitewash. It was thicker and brighter than the rest of the paint on the wall. I squatted down, and could barely make out faint dark splotches under the white. I had no doubt they were splatters of Red Corriden’s blood.

I stood, and looked back up the hallway, trying to remember exactly what I’d seen and heard the last time I was here. Then I closed my eyes and let memory take over. It was all in my mind, more durable than movie film. I replayed the entire episode, stopping at different points to study particular frames, rewinding to look at earlier scenes.

When I was first approaching the field that April day, I’d heard a noise—the
thunk.
What caused the sound? The bat being tossed down by the killer? Then the killer must have evaporated—he couldn’t have walked away without me hearing his footsteps clomping in the corridor. It wasn’t the bat.

I focused on the way Corriden had been slumped: legs stretched out, bent over at the waist, head down on the floor. The head. That was it.

Corriden is standing, perhaps facing his attacker, when the beating starts. He staggers back to the wall, is hit again, and slides down. He’s sitting now on the floor, head and back balanced against the wall. His face is an easy target for the bat and the attack continues. Finally, the killer stops, his rage spent or his cruelty satisfied. He drops the bat and leaves. But is Corriden dead? No, there’s some life still in him, life that flickered out about the time I entered Fenway Park. Then a last gasp of breath or first spasm of death upsets his balance. He slumps down to his left, his head bouncing on the concrete floor.
Thunk!

That could be how it happened. I opened my eyes, and again scanned the wall for any signs that would indicate otherwise.

The whitewashed patch of wall suddenly went black. An explosion roared at me through the runway and a delicate shower sprinkled my head. I ran my hands through my hair; it was dry. Then I felt wetness on my palms and biting pain. It was shards of glass that rained on me.

I didn’t grasp what had occurred. The order threw me: black, boom, shower. But that’s how it happened... Somebody shot out the light!

I hit the floor, ignoring the broken glass that crunched on impact, and rolled to the wall opposite the doorway. I laid face down in just about the spot where I’d found the bloodied bat.

The thunderous gunshot had filled the tunnel—I couldn’t tell how far back it had originated, how close the shooter was. I remained motionless, listening. No sound of approaching footsteps, no more explosions.

My planning skills could use some work. Staying late after the game ensured that fewer people would be around to see me, but it also left me isolated. If somebody was keeping an eye on me, I had put myself in easy view. And now no crowd remained to hear any gunshots. No one to come to my aid.

My instinct was to crawl further into the tunnel, away from the shooter. I raised my body off the floor to make less noise on the broken glass. With my weight resting on knuckles and toes, I awkwardly began to crawl forward.

After fifteen feet of walking like a crab, I stopped. My instinct was wrong again: I should head to the open, not further into the winding depths. I wasn’t sure where these passages led; going deeper could just get me into a corner. With the gunman following behind. And the sound of a shot kept muffled within the tunnel walls.

I had been in a passage facing the field when I’d made a right turn into this one. So the next left should take me out to the field. That’s it. The shooter would expect me to head directly away from him. Maybe by doing the opposite, I could fool him and get away in the dark.

I veered off to the left-side wall and scampered ahead on my knees, still keeping low. I dragged the fingertips of my left hand along the wall, feeling for a corner.

About twenty more feet, and my hand lost contact with the wall. I almost keeled over from the loss of balance. Crawling around the corner, I breathed with relief. I was out of the line of fire.

I plunged forward—and rammed my head into a door. The wooden bang sounded even louder than the earlier explosion. Idiot! This was no escape. And I’d just signaled the gunman where I was.

No reason for silence now. I stood and felt my way back out of the doorway. From behind me, I heard the soft grate of a footstep on broken glass.

I quickly continued in the tunnel until I felt the next gap in the wall. This time, I kept my hand out and walked straight to feel the width of the gap. It was wider than a doorway. I turned into it, a hard left. I walked steadily forward, my hands out in front like a bug’s antennae. Ten steps with no obstructions, then I felt a gentle draft on my face.

I came out into the park along the right field foul line. Into fresh air that I inhaled deeply. Onto soft grass that quietly cushioned my footsteps.

I trotted toward center field, feeling safe in the open. Nobody’s going to fire a gun out here—somebody in the neighborhood would hear the shot and call the police.

A growling rumble came from the tunnel I’d exited. I hit the ground and hugged the turf to my chest. Grass blades stabbed the open cuts in my palms.

I was wrong again. Bullets travel: the shooter could stay in the tunnel and fire out to the field—where his idiot target was standing in open view.

At least this bullet wasn’t ctose—Ididn’t hear it hit anything. Or maybe it was—what sound does a bullet make when it strikes turf? It might
schplat
as softly as a shot of Clyde Fletcher’s tobacco juice.

I lifted my head. There was light from a handful of stars and a quarter moon. It didn’t shine strongly, but I was sure I could be seen. Fortunately, wispy clouds rolled across the moon and cast wavering shadows on everything below. Even laying motionless, I would be a moving target, harder to hit.

I remained near the middle of the park, resisting a temptation to get out of view. I might feel more protected along the sidelines or the outfield wall, but I could end up putting myself in closer reach of the gunman there. With my elbows, I dragged myself behind second base, to a spot more nearly centered in the field. If he came after me here, I could run away from him no matter from which direction he came.

I lay on my stomach for some time, then propped myself up on my elbows and looked around the perimeter of the park. No one approached me, there were no more shots. Finally, I seemed to have made the right choice.

The night air was getting cooler. I estimated that I’d been on the field for an hour. But it could have been three hours—or ten minutes. Everything was distorted. Everything.

Fenway Park wasn’t even a baseball field now. A ballpark was a place of warmth and sunshine, where even in the chill of early April the summer game could be played before thousands of cheering fans.

This stadium was haunted. The passing clouds filled the seats with mute darting ghosts. The grass felt dank, the air clammy. I wanted to sleep and dream—to see sunlit bleachers filled with straw hats and white shirtsleeves, to hear kids rooting, even hecklers taunting.

It occurred to me that I could be stuck here all night. Assuming the shooter was gone, could I find my way to an exit? Would the gate be open if I did? The answers were “Maybe,” and “Unlikely.” And the assumption about the gunman might not be a wise one. I would spend the night here.

I wasn’t going to sleep in the middle of the field, though. The dugout bench was a possibility. No, stay away from the sidelines—too accessible to the gunman. I looked around, and made my choice: I’d go into the stands and join the ghost crowd. And I saw my exit route: the hill in left field.

I curled into a crouch position, then bolted for the left field wall. No shots followed my sprint. I hit the incline fast, and scooted up to the peak. With a leap and a stretch, I grabbed the top of the fence and swung my body over into the first row of seats.

If the gunman was watching, he would have seen me. But he also would have shot, and he didn’t, so he must be gone. I took added precautions anyway. Keeping low, I crawled away from the spot where I’d gone over the wall. When I reached the middle of the center field bleachers, I stretched out between two rows of seats.

Averting my eyes from the eerie shadows of Fenway Park, I stared up at the stars and moon and clouds. I lay with my hands over my head, palms up to bathe them in the night air. It must have looked like I was on the wrong end of a celestial stickup.

I watched the stars glitter white and yellow, some steady, some blinking on and others fading out. Clouds washed over the face of the moon in dark blue streaks.

Eventually, like a piece of film stuck before a hot bulb, the scene before me glowed red, melting into oblivion. Then the stars were gone, banished by the sun, and the sky was blue.

When the sun was at about nine o’clock, I staggered my way through the stands and out to the main gate. Jimmy Macullar was there, stocking the concession stand with scorecards and pencils.

He looked surprised to see. “You’re here early,” he said.

“Uh, shoulder’s still bad. I want to ice it down before practice.”

“Ice is no good.
Dr. Pritchard’s Snake Oil,
that’s the thing. Mix it with some liniment and rub it in good. Then throw. Lots of throwing. You’ve got to work out a sore shoulder.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. I’ll try that.” I walked off in the direction of the clubhouse. Now I’d be stuck in the ballpark until game time.

I went to the dressing room and cleaned the cuts and scratches on my hands. Then I stripped off my clothes and napped on the rubbing table until batting practice.