Third in a series of posts following events occurring in 1932. The events are taken from my book: (Part one) (Part two)
The Hotel Carlos
After finishing his paper route, Otto Pohl walks to the Carlos Hotel, where the shooting of Chicago Cub starting shortstop, Billy Jurges, had happened the day before. A mob of newspaper reporters surrounds the entrance and two policemen guard the door. Otto quickly realizes that there is no way he can get into the hotel through the front entrance.
Police have also sealed off the alley behind the hotel. Otto has an idea. His friend, Chicky Pollanato’s apartment is right behind the Carlos, sharing an alley with the hotel. Chicky’s mother is barely awake when Otto rings her apartment buzzer. She is also dubious of his story that he had left his bike in the alley and could not get to it because the cops had cordoned off the alleyway.
“You left your bike in our alley? I don’t think so. You’re lying. You just want to get into the Carlos. Just before you came, a stranger—togged to the bricks, I must say—rang the buzzer, and probably everyone else’s buzzer. He wanted the same thing. He offered me twenty bucks. What’s your offer?”
“Gee, Mrs. Pollonato, I can’t come up with that kind of bacon. I…”
“I was kidding. OK come on through. If you happen to run into that Polansky slut who nearly killed our Billy, poke her eyes out for me. È una puttana del cazzo.” Otto did not know what una puttana del cazzo was, but he was pretty certain it was not a compliment. He thanked Mrs. Pollonato and left through the back door. He crossed the alley to the service entrance of the Carlos Hotel. As expected, it was locked.
Otto sees an open window on the third floor that gives onto a fire escape. The bottom section of the escape is folded up. Otto contemplates climbing a drain pipe to get onto the fire escape when the service door opens. Otto grabs the door before it can slam shut and starts to go inside.
“Hey, kid! Where’re you goin’? What’re you up to?”
Ach du lieber Gott, Otto thought, his limited German kicking in instinctively. He recognized the gentleman as Hazen Shirley Kiki Cuyler, another another of his Cub heroes whom he had met several times in the course of doing chores at Wrigley Field.
“Hey, Mr. Cuyler. I was just…you see I am supposed to interview for a job that I need very much and accidentally locked myself out. Now I can’t get back in because of the police.”
“Hmm, I think that’s one helluva load of horse manure, but…you look familiar. Do you hang out at the ballpark?”
“Yes, almost every day. I subbed in the clubhouse one day, and you autographed a baseball for me. I can’t thank you enough. I really…”
“OK, I don't know what you’re up to, kid, but you can’t be any more of a nuisance than all of those other sons-of-bitches in there. So, go ahead and good luck on whatever it is you’re trying to do. And be careful. The house dick doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.”
“Thanks, Mr. Cuyler, and good luck today.”
“Thanks, but we need more than luck with Jurges out…..”
Otto finds himself in the furnace room and janitor’s quarters. He grabs a pail and mop and takes the service stairs to the fifth floor. He sees two uniformed policemen guarding the door to Jurges’s room 509. He decides to brazen it out. He starts through the open door. One of the cops grabbed Otto by his collar.
“And where might you be going, kid?” he said in a tone of voice intended to intimidate Otto, as if snatching him by his shirt collar was not enough to raise goose bumps.
“My boss sent me up here. Said I needed to clean the bathroom floor.”
“O’Gara, did you call for a janitor to clean the bathroom? This kid here says he’s supposed to mop the floor.”
“I din’t call no one,” O’Gara said. “But maybe it’s not such a bad idea. I think we’re through in there.”
“OK, kid, have at it,” the cop at the door said, letting Otto pass.
Otto could hear the conversation among the three officers in Jurges’s room, one of whom Otto recognized as James P. Allman, Commishioner of police. He is thrilled at hearing the police in an unguarded moment when they are talking off-the-record. No one will know what is being said except those in the room and their confidantes.
“Do you believe this bull crap abour ther coming to his room to commit suicide, and he was wounded trying to stop her?” said one of the detectives, Lenny Capriano.
“Oh sure,” said Bernie Connolly. “She was disconsolate over the end of their beautiful love, don’cha know? Just wanted to see him one last time. Judging by the empty booze bottles strewn around this place, I would be surprised if she could see anything.”
“Kind of a tempting dish, though, you have to admit,” Capriano said.
“Ah, she was let out for a spell by her kip-keeper (pimp). She’s spoiled meat. Mark my words,” Connolly said, “She’s a juicy filet, but beware of food poisoning.”
Another cop arrives and tells his colleagues that Jurges’s shooter had written a letter to her brother, who was staying at the Division Street YMCA, confessing that she had intended to kill Jurges then shoot herself.
“To me life without Billy isn’t worth living,” she had written, “but why should I leave this earth alone? I’m going to take Billy with me.”
Otto was thrilled to be taking this all in. It reinforced his ambition to be a reporter. Being in on the scoop about the note from Val to her brother thrilled him. Maybe he would change his mind and be a crime reporter instead of a sportswriter.
“Hey kid, are you cleaning that bathroom or renovating it? I think it’s about time to move on.”
“OK, just finishing up.”
“I tell you, these ballplayers have quite the life,” Connolly said. “Different broad in every city just oh so willing to toss them a juicy gopher ball.”
“More like a hanging curve,” Capriano said.
Otto grabs his mob and pail and scadaddles. He has no trouble pulling off the same trick to get into the alleged shooter’s room. The cops there are distracted. They tell Otto to go ahead and clean the bathroom. The evidence had all been collected.
Two men in rumpled suits, probably plainclothesmen (and the clothes were very plain and very rumpled), sat on the bed drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. They paid little attention to the newcomer.
“Yeah, they say she was buttering the biscuit with Cuyler, too,” one of them said. “Tip her canoe and Cuyler too?” said the other.
“You’re a poet and you don’t know it,” said a man coming out of the bathroom. He was well dressed in an expensive-looking pin-striped black suit and spit-polished black wingtips. He wore a trilby hat pulled low over his forehead.
Otto proceeds to the bathroom to do his faux cleaning routine. He notices the well-dressed suit rummaging about the room, opening drawers and peeking in cabinets. He opens a desk drawer and takes out a Gideon Bible that he opens.
The Bible does not look right to Otto. Then he sees why. The book has been hollowed out. The stranger takes out a stack of letters held together by a rubber band that had been hidden in the Bible. The stranger puts the bundle of letters in his suit jacket pocket. As he is doing so, he notices that Otto has seen what he had done. Otto grows nervous, even more so when he notices that the letter purloiner is wearing iron. The man moves twoard Otto preemptively.
“I’m Mr. Behrendt ,” the man said as he approached Otto. “Who might you be?”
Otto contemplated giving him a false name, but he was afraid the stranger might be a flatfoot. “My name’s Otto Pohl, sir.”
“Pohl…hmm. German? You speak German?”
“Actually, my father came from Alsace. Muttersholtz was the name of his hometown. He speaks German and French, but at home, he speaks German only with my mother. I understand some but don’t speak much anymore.”
“You seem like a nice, hard-working kid with some skills that I could use. Of course, what I would require most is absolute loyalty. You like baseball?”
“I like the Cubs. I’m at Wrigley almost every day they’re home, but I don’t necessarily get to see the game.”
“How would you like to see the game today? I’ve got an extra box seat ticket, eight rows back from home plate on the third base side. You look right down the first baseline. You’d be able to call foul balls better than the umps.”
Unbelievable, Otto thought. Usually he was either working at Wrigley, trying to sneak in or fighting for a prime viewing spot high in a tree across the street. He almost never had an actual ticket. Now, he effectively had two for one game.
Otto is thrilled. He was hoping to get into the game as a day laborer, but now he could actually watch as a fan with no responsibility to clean up after the game was over. One of the most common day jobs was to be assingned a row of seats and clean the aisle from one end of the stadium to the other. For that, he would get a pass to a future game. Otto asks Mr. Behrendt if his offer is for real.
“It’s for real if you play by the rules.” Mr. Behrendt motioned to Otto to move into the bathroom with him. He closed the door. “And the rules are that you watch the ball game. Win or lose, good game or bad, remember what you see so you can tell your grandchildren all about it. Other than that, forget everything else you saw today. Verstehen?”
“Verstehen,” Otto said.