One sultry August afternoon I went out to Arlington and put a thousand on a long shot to win the third race. I did crazy things as a matter of routine back then, and when the colt came in by half a length at forty to one, I knew there was a God in heaven and that he was smiling down at my craziness.
The winnings provided me with the clout to do the thing I most wanted to do, and I promptly set out to turn my dream into reality. I requested a private counsel with Bingo Walsh in his penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Michigan. Bingo was right-hand man to Boss O’Malley, who had one of the largest setups in Cook County. Gambling parlours, numbers operations, whorehouses, protection squads, slot machines–Bingo managed all these enterprises with a firm hand, accountable to no one but the boss himself. I was lucky to have him as my mentor.
Once I laid out the plan to him and he got over his initial shock, he grudgingly gave me the green light. It wasn’t that he thought the proposition was unworthy, but I think he was disappointed in me for setting my sights so low. He was grooming me for a place in the inner circle, and here I was telling him that I wanted to go my own way and open a nightclub that would occupy my energies to the exclusion of all else. I could see how he might interpret it as an act of betrayal, and I had to tread carefully around that trap with some fancy footwork. Luckily, my mouth was in good form that evening, and by showing how many advantages would accrue to him in terms of both profit and pleasure, I eventually brought him around.
‘My forty grand can cover the whole deal,’ I said. ‘Another guy in my shoes would tip his hat and say so long, but that’s not how I conduct business. You’re my pal, Bingo, and I want you to have a piece of the action. No money down, no work to fuss with, no liabilities, but for every dollar I earn, I’ll give you twenty-five cents. Fair is fair, right? You gave me my chance, and now I’m in a position to return the favour. Loyalty has to count for something in this world, and I’m not about to forget where my luck came from. This won’t be any two-bit cheese joint for the hoi polloi. I’m talking Gold Coast with all the trimmings. A full-scale restaurant with a Frog chef, top-notch floor show, beautiful girls slithering out of the woodwork in skin-tight gowns. It’ll give you a hard-on just to walk in there, Bingo. You’ll have the best seat in the house, and on nights when you don’t show up, your table will sit there empty–no matter how many people are waiting outside the door.’
He haggled me up to fifty per cent, but I was expecting some give-and-take and didn’t make an issue of it. The important thing was to win his blessing, and I did that by jollying him along, steadily wearing down his defences with my friendly, accommodating attitude, and in the end, just to show how classy he was, he offered to kick in an extra ten thousand to see that I did tip the place right. I didn’t care. All I wanted was my nightclub, and with Bingo’s fifty per cent subtracted from the take, I was still going to come out ahead. There were numerous benefits in having him as a partner, and I would have been kidding myself to think I could get along without him. His half would guarantee me protection from O’Malley (who ipso facto became the third partner) and help keep the cops from breaking down the door. When you threw in his connections with the Chicago liquor board, the commercial laundry companies and the local talent agents, losing that fifty per cent didn’t seem like such a shabby compromise after all.
I called the place Mr Vertigo’s. It was smack in the heart of the city at West Division and North LaSalle, and it’s flashing neon sign went from pink to blue to pink as a dancing girl took turns with a cocktail shaker against the night sky. The rhumba rhythm of those lights made your heart beat faster and your blood grow warm, and once you caught the little stutter-step syncopation in your pulse, you didn’t want to be anywhere except where the music was. Inside, the decor was a blend of high and low, a swank sort of big town comfort mixed with naughty innuendos and an easy, roadhouse charm. I worked hard on creating that atmosphere, and every nuance and effect was planned to the smallest detail: from the lip rouge on the hat-check girl to the colour of the dinner plates, from the design of the menus to the socks on the bartender’s feet. There was room for fifty tables, a good-size dance floor, an elevated stage and a long mahogany bar along a side wall. It cost me every cent of the fifty thousand to do it up the way I wanted, but when the place finally opened on 31 December 1937, it was a thing of sumptuous perfection. I launched it with one of the great New Year’s Eve parties in Chicago history, and by the following morning Mr Vertigo’s was on the map. I was there every night, strolling among customers in my white dinner-jacket and patent leather shoes, spreading good cheer with my cocky smiles and quick-tongued patter. It was a terrific spot for me, and I loved every minute I spent in that raucous emporium. If I hadn’t messed up and blown my life apart, I’d probably still be there today. As it was, I only got to have those three and a half years. I was one hundred per cent responsible for my own downfall, but knowing that doesn’t make it any less painful to remember. I was all the way at the top when I stumbled, and it ended in a real Humpty Dumpty for me, a spectacular swallow-dive into oblivion.
But no regrets. I had a good dance for my money, and I’m not going to say I didn’t. The club turned into the number-one hot spot in Chicago, and in my own small way I was just as much a celebrity as any of the bigwigs who came in there. I hobnobbed with judges and city councilmen and ball players, and what with all the showgirls and chorines to audition for the flesh parades I presented at eleven and one every night, there was no lack of opportunity to indulge in bedroom sports. Dixie and I were still an item when Mr Vertigo’s opened, but my carryings-on wore her patience thin, and within six months she’d moved on to another address. Then came Sally, then came Jewel, then came a dozen others: leggy brunettes, chain-smoking redheads, big-butted blondes. At one point I was shacked up with two girls at the same time, a pair of out-of-work actresses named Cora and Billie. I liked them both the same, they liked each other as much as they liked me, and by pulling together we managed to produce some interesting variations on the old tune. Every now and then, my habits led to medical inconveniences (a dose of the clap, a case of crabs), but nothing that put me out of commission for very long. It might have been a putrid way to live, but I was happy with the hand I’d been dealt, and my only ambition was to keep things exactly as they were. Then in September 1939, just three days after the German army invaded Poland, Dizzy Dean walked into Mr Vertigo’s and it all started to come undone.
I have to go back to explain it, all the way back to my tykehood in St Louis. That’s where I fell in love with baseball, and before I was out of diapers I was a dyed-in-the-wool Cardinals fan, a Redbird rooter for life. From April to October I never missed a box score, and I could recite the batting average of every player on the squad, from hot dogs like Frankie Frisch and Pepper Martin to the lowest journeyman scrub gathering splinters on the bench. This went on during the good years, and it continued during the bad years that followed. No matter how dark things got for me, I still kept up with my team. They won the pennant in ’30 and ’31, and those victories did a lot to buck up my spirits, to keep me going through all the trouble and adversity of that time. As long as the Cards were winning, something was right with the world, and it wasn’t possible to fall into total despair.
That’s where Dizzy Dean enters the story. The team dropped to seventh place in ’32, but it didn’t matter. Dean was the hottest, flashiest, loudest-mouthed rookie ever to hit the majors, and he turned a crummy ball club into a loosey-goosey hillbilly circus. Brag and cavort as he did, that cornpone rube backed up his boasts with some of the sweetest pitching this side of heaven. His rubber arm threw smoke; his control was uncanny; his windup was a wondrous machine of arms and legs and power, a beautiful thing to behold. By the time I got to Chicago and settled in as Bingo’s protégé, Dizzy was an established star, a big-time force on the American scene. People loved him for his brashness and talent, his crazy manglings of the English language, his brawling, boyish antics and fuck-you pizzazz, and I loved him, too, I loved him as much as anyone in the world. With life growing more comfortable for me all the time, I was in a position to catch the Cards in action whenever they came to town. In ’33, the year Dean broke the record by striking out seventeen batters in a game, they looked like a first division outfit again. They’d added some new players to the roster, and with thugs like Joe Medwick, Leo Durocher and Rip Collins around to quicken the pace, the Gas House Gang was beginning to gel. ‘Thirty-four turned out to be their glory year, and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a baseball season as much as that one. Dizzy’s kid brother Paul won nineteen games, Dizzy won thirty, and the team fought from ten games back to overtake the Giants and win the pennant. That was the first year the World Series was broadcast on the radio, and I got to listen to all seven games sitting at home in Chicago. Dizzy beat the Tigers in the first game, and when Frisen sent him in as a pinch runner in the fourth, the lummox promptly got beaned with a wild throw and was knocked unconscious. The next day’s headlines announced: X-RAYS OF DEAN’S HEAD REVEAL NOTHING. He came back to pitch the following afternoon but lost, and then, just two days later, he shut out Detroit 11-0 in the final game, laughing at the Tigers hitters each time they swung and missed at his fastballs. The press cooked up all kinds of names for that team: the Galloping Gangsters, River Rowdies from the Mississippi, the Clattering Cardinals. Those Gas Housers loved to rub it in, and when the score of the final game got out of hand in the late innings, the Tiger fans responded by pelting Medwick with a ten-minute barrage of fruits and vegetables in left field. The only way they could finish the series was for Judge Landis, the commissioner of baseball, to step in and pull Medwick off the field for the last three outs.
Six months later, I was sitting in a box with Bingo and the boys when Dean opened the new season against the Cubs in Chicago. In the first inning, with two down and a man on base, the Cubs’ cleanup hitter Freddie Lindstrom sent a wicked line drive up the middle that caught Dizzy in the leg and knocked him down. My heart skipped a beat or two when I saw the stretcher gang run out and carry him off the field, but no permanent damage was done, and five days later he was back on the mound in Pittsburgh, where he hurled a five-hit shutout for his first win of the season. He went on to have another bang-up year, but the Cubs were the team of destiny in 1935, and by knocking off a string of twenty-one straight wins at the end of the season, they pushed past the Cards and stole the flag. I can’t say I minded too much. The town went gaga for the Cubbies, and what was good for Chicago was good for business, and what was good for business was good for me. I cut my teeth on the gambling rackets in that series, and once the dust had settled, I’d manoeuvred myself into such a strong position that Bingo rewarded me with a den of my own.
On the other hand, that was the year when Dizzy’s ups and downs began to affect me in a far too personal way. I wouldn’t call it an obsession at that point, but after watching him go down in the first inning of the opener at Wrigley–so soon after the skull-clunking in the ’34 series–I began to sense that a cloud was gathering around him. It didn’t help matters when his brother’s arm went dead in ’36, but even worse was what happened in a game against the Giants that summer when Burgess Whitehead scorched a liner that hit him just above the right ear. The ball was hit so hard that it caromed into left field on a fly. Dean went down again, and though he regained consciousness in the locker-room seven or eight minutes later, the initial diagnosis was a fractured skull. It turned out to be a bad concussion, which left him woozy for a couple of weeks, but an inch or so the other way and the big guy would have been pushing up daisies instead of going on to win twenty-four games for the season.
The following spring, my man continued to curse and scuffle and raise hell, but that was only because he didn’t know any better. He triggered brawls with his brushback pitches, was called for balks two games in a row and decided to stage a sit-down strike on the mound, and when he stood up at a banquet and called the new league president a crook, the resulting fracas led to some fine cowboy theatre, especially after Diz refused to put his signature on a self-incriminating formal retraction. ‘I ain’t signin’ nothin’,’ was what he said, and without that signature Ford Frick had no choice but to back down and rescind Dean’s suspension. I was proud of him for behaving like such a two-fisted asshole, but the truth was that the suspension would have kept him out of the All-Star Game, and if he hadn’t pitched in that meaningless exhibition, he might have been able to hold off the hour of his doom a little longer.
They played in Washington, DC, that year, and Dizzy started for the National League. He breezed through the first two innings in workmanlike fashion, and then, after two were gone in the third, he gave up a single to DiMaggio and a long home run to Gehrig. Earl Averill was next, and when the Cleveland outfielder lined Dean’s first pitch back to the mound, the curtain suddenly dropped on the greatest right-hander of the century. It didn’t look like much to worry about at the time. The ball hit him on the left foot, bounced over to Billy Herman at second, and Herman threw to first for the out. When Dizzy went limping off the field, no one thought twice about it, not even Dizzy himself.
That was the famous broken toe. If he hadn’t rushed back into action before he was ready, it probably would have mended in due time. But the Cardinals were slipping out of the pennant race and needed him on the mound, and the dumb-cluck yokel fool assured them he was OK. He was hobbling around on a crutch, the toe was so swollen he couldn’t get his shoe on, and yet he donned his uniform and went out and pitched. Like all giants among men, Dizzy Dean thought he was immortal, and even though the toe was too tender for him to pivot on his left foot, he gutted it out for the whole nine innings. The pain caused him to alter his natural delivery, and the result was that he put too much pressure on his arm. He developed a sore wing after that first game, and then, to compound the mischief, he went on throwing for another month. After six or seven times around, it got so bad that he had to be yanked just three pitches into one of his starts. Diz was lobbing cantaloupes by then, and there was nothing for it but to hang up his spikes and sit out the rest of the season.
Even so, there wasn’t a fan in the country who thought he was finished. The common wisdom was that a winter of idle repose would fix what ailed him and come April he’d be his old unbeatable self again. But he struggled through spring training, and then, in one of the great bombshells in sports history, St Louis dealt him to the Cubs for 185,000 dollars in cash and two or three warm bodies. I knew there was no love lost between Dean and Branch Rickey, the Cards’ general manager, but I also knew that Rickey wouldn’t have unloaded him if he thought there was some spit left in the appleknocker’s arm. I couldn’t have been happier that Dizzy was coming to Chicago, but at the same time I knew his coming meant that he was at the end of the road. My worst fears had been borne out, and at the ripe old age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, the world’s top pitcher was a has-been.
Still, he provided some good moments that first year with the Cubs. Mr Vertigo’s was only four months old when the season started, but I managed to sneak off to the park three or four times to watch the Dizmeister crank out a few more innings from his battered arm. There was an early game against the Cards that I remember well, a classic grudge match pitting old teammates against each other, and he won that showdown on guile and junk, keeping the hitters off-stride with an assortment of dipsy-doodle floaters and change-ups. Then, late in the season, with the Cubs pushing hard for another pennant, Chicago manager Gabby Harnett stunned everyone by giving Dizzy the nod for a do-or-die start against the Pirates. The game was a genuine knuckle-biter, joy and despair riding on every pitch, and Dean, with less than nothing to offer, eked out a win for his new home town. He almost repeated the miracle in the second game of the World Series, but the Yanks finally got to him in the eighth, and when the assault continued in the ninth and Harnett took him out for a reliever, Dizzy left the mound to some of the wildest, most thunderous applause I’ve ever heard. The whole joint was on its feet, clapping and cheering and whistling for the big lug, and it went on for so long and was so loud, some of us were blinking away tears by the time it was over.
That should have been the end of him. The gallant warrior takes his last bow and shuffles off into the sunset. I would have accepted that and given him his due, but Dean was too thick to get it, and the farewell clamour fell on deaf ears. That’s what galled me: the son of a bitch didn’t know when to stop. Casting all dignity aside, he came back and played for the Cubs again, and if the ’38 season had been pathetic–with a few bright spots sprinkled in–’39 was pure, unadulterated darkness. His arm hurt so much he could barely throw. Game after game he warmed the bench, and the brief moments he spent on the mound were an embarrassment. He was lousy, lousier than a hobo’s mutt, not even the palest facsimile of what he’d once been. I suffered for him, I grieved for him, but at the same time I thought he was the dumbest yahoo clod on the face of the earth.
That was pretty much how things stood when he walked into Mr Vertigo’s in September. The season was winding down, and with the Cubs well out of the pennant race, it didn’t cause too much of a stir when Dean showed up one crowded Friday night with his missus and a gang of two or three other couples. It certainly wasn’t the moment for a heart-to-heart talk about his future, but I made a point of going over to his table and welcoming him to the club. ‘Pleased you could make it, Diz,’ I said, offering him my hand. ‘I’m a St Louis boy myself and I’ve been following you since the day you broke in. I’ve always been your number-one backer.’
‘The pleasure’s all mine, pal,’ he said, engulfing my little hand in his enormous mitt and giving a cordial shake. He started to flash one of those quick, brush-off smiles when his expression suddenly grew puzzled. He frowned for a second, searching his memory for some lost thing, and when it didn’t come to him, he looked deep into my eyes as if he thought he could find it there. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said. ‘I mean, this ain’t the first time we’ve met. I just can’t place where it was. Way back somewhere, ain’t I right?’
‘I don’t think so, Diz. Maybe you caught a glimpse of me one day in the stands, but we’ve never talked before.’
‘Shit. I could swear you ain’t no stranger to me. Damnedest feeling in the world it is. Oh well.’ He shrugged, beaming me one of his big yap grins. ‘It don’t matter none, I guess. You sure got a swell joint here, mac.’
‘Thanks, champ. The first round’s on me. I hope you and your friends have a good time.’
‘That’s why we’re here, kid.’
‘Enjoy the show. If you need anything, just holler.’
I’d played it as cool as I could, and I walked away feeling I’d handled the situation fairly well. I hadn’t sucked up to him, and at the same time I hadn’t insulted him for going to the dogs. I was Mr Vertigo, the downtown sharpie with the smooth tongue and elegant manners, and I wasn’t about to let Dean know how much his plight concerned me. Seeing him in the flesh had broken the spell somewhat, and in the natural course of things I probably would have written him off as just another nice guy down on his luck. Why should I care about him? Whizzy Dizzy was on his way out, and pretty soon I wouldn’t have to think about him any more. But that’s not the way it happened. It was Dean himself who kept the thing alive, and while I’m not going to pretend we became bosom buddies, he stayed in close enough contact to make it impossible for me to forget him. If he’d just drifted off the way he was supposed to, none of it would have turned out as badly as it did.
I didn’t see him again until the start of the next season. It was April 1940 by then, the war in Europe was going full tilt, and Dizzy was back–back for yet another stab at reviving his tumbledown career. When I picked up the paper and read that he’d signed another contract with the Cubs, I nearly choked on my salami sandwich. Who was he kidding? ‘The ol’ soup bone ain’t the buggy whip it used to be,’ he said, but Christ, he just loved the game too damned much not to give it another try. All right, dumbbell, I said to myself, see if I care. If you want to humiliate yourself in front of the world, that’s your business, but don’t count on me to feel sorry for you.
Then, out of the blue, he wandered back into the club one night and greeted me like a long-lost brother. Dean wasn’t someone who drank, so it couldn’t have been booze that made him act like that, but his face lit up when he saw me, and for the next five minutes he gave me an all-out dose of herkimer-jerkimer bonhomie. Maybe he was still stuck on the idea that we knew each other, or maybe he thought I was somebody important, I don’t know, but the upshot was that he couldn’t have been more delighted to see me. How to resist a guy like that? I’d done everything I could to harden my heart against him, and yet he came on in such a friendly way that I couldn’t help but succumb to the attention. He was still the great Dean, after all, my benighted soulmate and alter ego, and once he opened up to me like that, I fell right back into the snare of my old bedevilment.
I wouldn’t say that he became a regular at the club, but he stopped by often enough over the next six weeks for us to strike up more than just a passing acquaintance. He came in alone a few times to eat an early supper (dowsing every dish with gobs of Lea & Perrins steak sauce), and I’d sit with him shooting the breeze while he chomped down his food. We skirted baseball talk and mostly stuck to the horses, and since I gave him a couple of excellent tips on where to put his money, he began listening to my advice. I should have spoken up then and told him what I thought about his comeback, but even after he muddled through his first starts of the season, disgracing himself every time he stepped on to the field, I didn’t say a word. I’d grown too fond of him by then, and with the sad sack trying so hard to make good, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth.
After a couple of months, his wife Pat persuaded him to go down to the minors to work on a new delivery. The idea was that he’d make better progress out of the spotlight–a frantic ploy if ever there was one, since all it did was support the delusion that there was still some hope for him. That’s when I finally got up the nerve to say something, but I didn’t have the guts to push hard enough.
‘Maybe it’s time, Diz,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s time to pack it in and head home to the farm.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, looking about as dejected as a man can look. ‘You’re probably right. Problem is, I ain’t fit for nothin’ but throwin’ baseballs. I flunk out this time, and I’m up shit’s creek, Walt. I mean, what else can a bum like me do with hisself?’
Plenty of things, I thought, but I didn’t say it, and later that week he left for Tulsa. Never had a great one fallen so far so fast. He spent a long miserable summer in the Texas League, travelling the same dusty circuit he’d demolished with fastballs ten years before. This time he could barely hold his own, and the rinky-dinks and Mickey Mousers sprayed his pitches all over the lot. Old delivery or new, the verdict was clear, but Dizzy went on busting his chops and didn’t let the rough treatment get him down. Once he’d showered and dressed and left the park, he’d go back to his hotel room with a stack of racing forms and start phoning his bookies. I handled a number of bets for him that summer, and every time he called we’d jaw for five or ten minutes and catch up on each other’s news. The incredible thing to me was how calmly he accepted his disgrace. The guy had turned himself into a laughingstock, and yet he seemed to be in good spirits and as gabby and full of jokes as ever. What was the use of arguing? I figured it was only a matter of time now, so I played along with him and kept my thoughts to myself. Sooner or later, he was bound to see the light.
The Cubs recalled him in September. They wanted to see if the bush-league experiment had paid off, and while his performance was hardly encouraging, it wasn’t as dreadful as it might have been. Mediocre was the word for it–a couple of close wins, a couple of shellackings–and therein hung the final chapter of the story. By some ditsy, screwball logic, the Cubs decided that Dean had shown enough of his old flair to warrant another season, and so they went ahead and asked him back. I didn’t find out about the new contract until after he left town for the winter, but when I did, something inside me finally snapped. I stewed about it for months. I fretted and worried and sulked, and by the time spring came around again, I understood what had to be done. It wasn’t as if I felt there was a choice. Destiny had chosen me as its instrument, and gruesome as the task might have been, saving Dizzy was the only thing that mattered. If he couldn’t do it himself, then I’d have to step in and do it for him.
Even now, I’m hard-pressed to explain how such a twisted, evil notion could have wormed its way into my head. I actually thought it was my duty to persuade Dizzy Dean that he didn’t want to live any more. Stated in such bald terms, the whole thing smacks of insanity, but that was precisely how I planned to rescue him: by talking him into his own murder. If nothing else, it proved how sick my soul had become. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he’d pitched for some town other than St Louis. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if our nicknames hadn’t been so similar. I don’t know. I don’t know anything, but the fact was that a moment came when I couldn’t tell the difference between us any more. His triumphs were my triumphs, and when bad luck finally caught up with him and his career fell apart, his disgrace was my disgrace. I couldn’t stand to live through it again, and little by little I began to lose my grip. For his own good, Dizzy had to die, and I was just the man to urge him into making the right decision. Not only for his sake, but for my sake as well. I had the weapon, I had the arguments, I had the power of madness on my side. I would destroy Dizzy Dean, and in doing so I would finally destroy myself.
The Cubs hit Chicago for the home opener on 10 April. I got Diz on the horn that same afternoon and asked him to stop by my office, explaining that something important had come up. He tried to get me to come out with it, but I told him it was too big to discuss on the phone. If you’re interested in a proposition that will turn your life around, I said, you’ll come. He was tied up until after dinner, so we set the appointment for eleven o’clock the next morning. He showed up fifteen minutes late, sauntering in with that loose-jointed stride of his and rolling a toothpick around on his tongue. He was wearing a worsted blue suit and a tan cowboy hat, and while he’d put on a few pounds since I’d seen him last, his complexion had a healthy tint after six weeks in the Cactus League sun. As usual, he was all smiles when he walked in, and he spent the first couple of minutes talking about how different the club looked in the daytime without any customers in it. ‘Reminds me of an empty ballpark,’ he said. ‘Kinda creepy like. Still as a tomb, and a helluva lot bigger.’
I told him to take a seat and fixed him up with a root beer from the ice box behind my desk. ‘This will take a few minutes,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want you getting thirsty while we talk.’ I could feel my hands starting to shake, so I poured myself a shot of Jim Beam and took a couple of sips. ‘How’s the wing, old timer?’ I said, settling back into my leather chair and doing my best to look calm.
‘Same as it was. Feels like there’s a bone stickin’ out of my elbow.’
‘You got knocked around pretty hard in spring training, I heard.’
‘Them’s just practice games. They don’t mean nothin’.’
‘Sure. Wait till it really counts, right?’
He caught the cynicism in my voice and gave a defensive shrug, then reached for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket. ‘Well, little guy,’ he said, ‘what’s the scoop?’ He shook out a Lucky from his pack and lit up, blowing a big gust of smoke in my direction. ‘From the way you talked on the phone, it sounded like a matter of life and death.’
‘It is. That’s exactly what it is.’
‘How so? You got a patent on a new bromide or somethin’? Christ, you come up with a medicine to cure sick arms, Walt, and I’ll give you half my pay for the next ten years.’
‘I’ve got something better than that, Diz. And it won’t cost you a cent.’
‘Everything costs, fella. It’s the law of the land.’
‘I don’t want your money. I want to save you, Diz. Let me help you, and the torment you’ve been living in these past four years will be gone.’
‘Yeah?’ he said, smiling as if I’d just told a moderately amusing joke. ‘And how you aimin’ to do that?’
‘Anyway you like. The method’s not important. The only thing that counts is that you go along with it–and that you understand why it has to be done.’
‘You’ve lost me, kid. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.’
‘A great person once said to me: “When a man comes to the end of the line, the only thing he really wants is death.” Does that make it any clearer? I heard those words a long time ago, but I was too dumb to figure out what they meant. Now I know, and I’ll tell you something, Diz–they’re true. They’re the truest words any man ever spoke.’
Dean burst out laughing. ‘You’re some kidder, Walt. You got that wacko sense of humour, and it don’t never let up. That’s why I like you so much. There ain’t no one else in this town that comes out with the ballsy things you do.’
I sighed at the man’s stupidity. Dealing with a clown like that was hard work and the last thing I wanted was to lose my patience. I took another sip of my drink, sloshing the spicy liquid around in my mouth for a couple of seconds, and swallowed. ‘Listen, Diz,’ I said. ‘I’ve been where you are. Twelve, thirteen years ago, I was sitting on top of the world. I was the best at what I did, in a class by myself. And let me tell you, what you’ve accomplished on the ball field is nothing compared to what I could do. Next to me, you’re no taller than a pygmy, an insect, a fucking bug in the rug. Do you hear what I’m saying? Then, just like that, something happened, and I couldn’t go on. But I didn’t hang around and make people feel sorry for me, I didn’t turn myself into a joke. I called it quits, and then I went on and made another life for myself. That’s what I’ve been hoping and praying would happen to you. But you just don’t get it, do you? Your fat hick brain’s too clogged with cornbread and molasses to get it.’
‘Wait a second,’ Dizzy said, wagging his finger at me as a sudden, unexpected glow of delight spread across his face. ‘Wait just a second. Now I know who you are. Shit, I knowed it all along. You’re that kid, ain’t you? You’re that goddamned kid. Walt . . . Walt the Wonder Boy. Christ almighty. My daddy took me and Paul and Elmer out to the fair one day in Arkansas, and we seen you do your stuff. Fuckin’ out of this world it was. I always wondered what happened to you. And here you are, sittin’ right across from me. I can’t fuckin’ believe it.’
‘Believe it, friend. When I told you I was great, I meant great like nobody else. Like a comet streaking across the sky.’
‘You were great, all right, I’ll vouch for that. The greatest thing I ever saw.’
‘And so were you, big man. As great as they come. But you’re over the hill now, and it breaks my heart to see what you’re doing to yourself. Let me help you, Diz. Death isn’t so terrible. Everybody has to die sometime, and once you get used to the idea, you’ll see that now is better than later. If you give me the chance, I can spare you the shame. I can give you back your dignity.’
‘You’re really serious, ain’t you?’
‘You bet I am. As serious as I’ve ever been in my life.’
‘You’re off your trolley, Walt. You’re fucking looped outta your gourd.’
‘Let me kill you, and the last four years will be forgotten. You’ll be great again, champ. You’ll be great again, forever.’
I was going too fast. He’d thrown me off balance with that Wonder Boy talk, and instead of circling back and modifying my approach, I was charging ahead at breakneck speed. I’d wanted to build up the pressure slowly, to lull him with such elaborate, airtight arguments that h e’d eventually come round on his own. That was the point: not to force him into it, but to make him see the wisdom of the plan for himself. I wanted him to want what I wanted, to feel so convinced by my proposal that he would actually beg me to do it, and all I’d done was leave him behind, scaring him off with my threats and half-baked platitudes. No wonder he thought I was crazy. I’d let the whole thing get out of hand, and now, just when we should have been getting started, he was already standing up and making his way for the exit.
I wasn’t worried about that. I’d locked the door from the inside, and it couldn’t be opened without the key–which happened to be in my pocket. Still, I didn’t want him pulling on the knob and rattling the frame. He might have started shouting at me then to let him out, and with half a dozen people working in the kitchen at that hour, the ruckus surely would have brought them running. So, thinking only about that small point and ignoring the larger consequences, I opened the drawer of my desk and removed the gun. That was the mistake that finally did me in. By pointing that gun at Dizzy, I crossed the boundary that separates idle talk from punishable crimes, and the nightmare I’d set in motion could no longer be stopped.
But pulling out the gun was no more than a desperate attempt to save face. I talked him back into the chair, and for the next fifteen minutes I made him sweat a lot more than I’d ever intended to. For all his swagger and size, Dean was a physical coward, and whenever a brawl broke out he’d duck behind the nearest piece of furniture. I already knew his reputation, but the gun terrorized him even more than I thought it would. It actually made him cry, and as he sat there moaning and blubbering in his seat, I almost pulled the trigger just to shut him up. He was begging me for his life–not to kill him but to let him live–and it was all so upside down, so different from how I’d imagined it would be, I didn’t know what to do. The standoff could have gone on all day, but then, just around noon, someone knocked on the door. I’d left clear instructions that I wasn’t to be disturbed, but someone was knocking just the same.
‘Diz?’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Is that you in there, Diz?’
It was his wife, Pat; a bossy, no-nonsense piece of work if there ever was one. She’d come by to pick up her husband for a lunch date at Lemmele’s, and of course Dizzy had told her where she could find him, which was yet another potential snag I’d neglected to think of. She’d barged into my club looking for her henpecked better half, and once she collared the sous-chef in the kitchen (who was busy chopping spuds and slicing carrots), she made such a nuisance of herself that the poor sap finally spilled the beans. He led her up the stairs and down the hall, and that was how she happened to be standing in front of my office door, pounding on the white veneer with her angry bitch knuckles.
Short of planting a bullet in Dizzy’s head, there was nothing I could do but put away the revolver and open the door. The shit was sure to hit the fan at that point–unless the big guy came through for me and decided to play mum. For ten seconds my life dangled from that gossamer thread: if he was too embarrassed to tell her how scared he’d been, he’d keep the imbroglio to himself. I put on my warmest, most debonair smile as Mrs Dean stepped into the room, but her snivelling husband gave the whole thing away the instant he set eyes on her. ‘The little fucker was gonna kill me!’ he said, blurting out the goods in a high-pitched, incredulous voice. ‘He was holdin’ a gun to my head, and the little fucker was gonna shoot!’
Those were the words that knocked me out of the nightclub business. Instead of keeping their reservation at Lemmele’s, Pat and Dizzy tramped out of my office and headed straight for the local precinct to swear out a complaint against me. Pat told me they were going to do as much when she slammed the door in my face, but I didn’t stir a muscle. I just sat behind my desk and marvelled at how stupid I was, trying to collect my thoughts before the bulls showed up to cart me away. It took them less than an hour, and I went off without a peep, smiling and cracking jokes when they put the cuffs around my wrists. If not for Bingo, I might have done some serious time for my little stab at playing God, but he had all the right connections, and a deal was struck before the case ever came to court. It was just as well that way. Not only for me, but for Dizzy too. A trial wouldn’t have been good for him–not with all the flak and scandal-mongering that would have gone with it–and he was perfectly happy to accept the compromise. The judge gave me a choice. Plead guilty to a lesser charge and do six to nine months at Joliet, or else leave Chicago and enlist in the army. I opted to walk through the second door. It wasn’t that I had any great desire to wear a uniform, but I figured I’d outstayed my welcome in Chicago and that it was time to move on.
Bingo had pulled strings and paid bribes to keep me out of the can, but that didn’t mean he had any sympathy for what I’d done. He thought I was nuts, ninety-nine-point-nine-per-cent nuts. Bumping off a guy for money was one thing, but what kind of dimwit would go after a national treasure like Dizzy Dean? You had to be stark raving mad to cook up a thing like that. That’s what I probably was, I said, and didn’t try to explain myself. Let him think what he wanted to think and leave it at that. There was a price to pay, of course, but I wasn’t in any position to argue. In lieu of cash for services rendered, I agreed to compensate Bingo for his legal help by signing over my share of the club to him. I was nobody special now. Just my old ordinary self again: Walter Claireborne Rawley, a twenty-six-year-old GI with a short haircut and a pair of empty pockets. Welcome to the real world, pal. I gave my suits to the busboys, I kissed my girlfriends goodbye and then climbed aboard the milk train and headed for boot camp. Considering what I was about to leave behind me, I suppose I was lucky.
By then, Dizzy was gone, too. His season had consisted of one game, and after Pittsburgh shelled him for three runs in the first inning of his first start, he’d finally called it quits. I don’t know if my scare tactics had knocked some sense into him, but I felt glad when I read about his decision. The Cubs gave him a job as their first-base coach, but a month later he got a better offer from the Falstaff Brewing Company in St Louis, and he went back to the old town to work as a radio announcer for the Browns and Cardinals games. ‘This job ain’t gonna change me none,’ he said. ‘I’m just gonna speak plain ol’ pinto-bean English.’ You had to hand it to the big clodhopper. The public went for the folksy garbage he spewed out over the airwaves, and he was such a success at it that they kept him on for twenty-five years. But that’s another story, and I can’t say that I paid much attention to him. Once I left Chicago, it had nothing to do with me any more.
Photograph © Baseball Hall of Fame
