Max Allan Collins

Strike Zone

My buddy Bill Veeck made many a mark in the world of big league baseball, owning his first club at twenty-eight, winning pennants, setting attendance records. Two of Bill’s teams beat the Yankees in their heyday — the ’48 Cleveland Indians and the ’59 White Sox; only one other team managed that feat, the ’54 Indians, which was mostly made up of Veeck’s former players.

And, of course, Bill Veeck was a character as colorful as his exploding-paint-factory sport shirts — one of his many trademarks was a refusal to wear coat and tie — a hard-drinking, chain-smoking extrovert with a wooden leg and a penchant for ignoring such quaint customs as doctors’ orders and a good night’s sleep. Veeck thought nothing of commuting from Cleveland to New York, to hang out with showbiz pals like Frank Sinatra and Skitch Henderson at the Copa, or to fly at the drop of a cap out to Hollywood for a game of charades with Hope and Crosby.

“Baseball is too grim, too serious,” he liked to say. “It should be fun. Most owners are bunch of damn stuffed shirts.”

Many of Veeck’s stunts and promotions and just plain wild ideas indeed had irritated the stuffed shirts of baseball. During World War Two, when the draft had drained the game of so much talent, Veeck told Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis that he planned to buy the Phillies and fill the team with black ballplayers (another buyer was quickly found). Still, Veeck did manage to put the first black player in the American League, Larry Doby, and even brought the legendary Negro Leagues pitcher, Satchel Paige, into the majors.

Nonetheless, Bill Veeck was resigned to the fact that — no matter what his other accomplishments, whether noble or absurd — he would go down in baseball history as the guy who brought a midget into the majors.

Back in June of ’61, when Veeck called the A-1 Detective Agency, saying he had a job for me, I figured it would have something to do with his recent resignation as president of the White Sox. A partner had bought out both Bill and his longtime associate, Hank Greenberg, and I wondered if it’d been a squeeze play.

Maybe Bill needed some dirt dug up on somebody. Normally, at that stage of my career anyway, I would have left such a shabby task to one of the agency’s many operatives, rather than its president and founder — both of which were me.

I had known Veeck for something like fifteen years, however, and had done many an odd job for him. And besides, my policy was when a celebrity asked for Nate Heller, the celebrity got Nate Heller.

And Bill Veeck was, if nothing else, a celebrity.

The afternoon was sunny with a breeze, but blue skies were banished in the shadow of the El, where Miller’s nestled, an undistinguished Greek-run American-style restaurant that Veeck had adopted as his favorite Loop hangout, for reasons known only to him. Any time Veeck moved into a new office, his first act was to remove the door — another of his trademarks — and Miller’s honored their famous patron by making one of Veeck’s discarded doors their own inner front one, with an explanatory plaque, and the inevitable quote: “My door is always open — Bill Veeck.”

At a little after three p.m., Miller’s was hardly hopping, its dark front windows adding to the under-the-El gloom. Bill was seated in his usual corner booth, his wooden leg extended into the aisle. I threaded through the empty Formica tables and, after a handshake and hello, slid in opposite him.

“Well, you look like hell,” I told him.

He exploded with laughter, almost losing his corner-of-the-mouth cigarette. “At last an honest man. Everybody else tells me I look in the pink — I’m getting the same kind of good reviews as a well-embalmed corpse.”

Actually, a well-embalmed corpse looked better than Veeck: his oblong face was a pallid repository for pouchy eyes, a long lumpy nose, and that wide, full-lipped mouth, which at the moment seemed disturbingly slack. His skin — as leathery and well-grooved as a catcher’s mitt — hung loose on him, and was startlingly white. I had never seen him without a tan. Though I was ten years older, Veeck in his mid-forties looked sixty. A hard sixty.

“It’s a little late to be looking for dirt on Allyn, isn’t it?” I asked him, after a waitress brought Veeck a fresh bottle of Blatz and a first one for me.

Arthur Allyn had bought the White Sox and was the new president.

“This isn’t about that,” Veeck said gruffly, waving it off. “Art’s a pal. This sale clears the way for Hank to relocate in LA. When I get feeling better, Hank’ll take me in as a full partner.”

“Then what is this about, Bill?”

“Maybe I just want to hoist one with you, in honor of an old friend.”

“Oh... Eddie Gaedel. I guess I should have known.”

We clinked beer bottles.

I had seen Eddie’s obit in yesterday’s paper — and the little story the Trib ran in sports. Eddie had died of natural causes, the coroner had said, and bruises on his body were “probably suffered in a fall.”

“I want you to look into it,” Veeck said.

“Into what?”

“Eddie’s death.”

“Why? If it was natural causes.”

“Eddie’s mother says it was murder.”

I sipped my beer, shook my head. “Well, those ‘bruises’ could have come from a beating he got, and deserved — Eddie always was a mouthy little bastard. A week after that game in St. Louis, ten years ago, he got arrested in Cincinnati for assaulting a cop, for Christ’s sake.”

Veeck swirled his beer and looked down into it with bleary eyes — in all the years I’d known this hard-drinking S.O.B., I’d never once seen him with bloodshot eyes... before.

“His mother says it’s murder,” Veeck repeated. “Run over to the South Side and talk to her — if what she says gets your nose twitchin’, look into it... If it’s just a grieving mother with some crazy idea about how her ‘baby’ died, then screw it.”

“Okay. Why is this your business, Bill?”

“When you spend six months bouncing back and forth between your apartment and the Mayo Clinic, you get to thinking... putting your affairs in order. Grisly expression, but there it is.”

“What is it? The leg again?”

“What’s left of it. The latest slice took my knee away, finally. That makes seven operations. Lucky seven.”

“Semper Fi, mac,” I said, and we clinked bottles again.

We’d both been marines in the South Pacific, where I got malaria and combat fatigue, and he had his leg run over by an antitank gun on the kickback. Both of us had spent more time in hospitals than combat.

“My tour was short and undistinguished,” he said. “At least you got the Bronze Star.”

“And a Section Eight.”

“So I lost half a leg, and you lost half your marbles. We both got a better deal than a lot of guys.”

“And you want me to see what kind of deal Eddie Gaedel got?”

“Yeah. Seems like the least I could do. You know, I saw him, not that long ago. He did a lot of stunts for me, over the years. Last year I dressed him up as a Martian and ran him around the park. Opening day this year, I had midget vendors working the grandstand, giving out cocktail wieners in little buns, and shorty beers.”

“And Eddie was one of the vendors.”

“Yeah. Paid him a hundred bucks — same as that day back in ’51.”

That day when Eddie Gaedel — 3'7'', sixty-five pounds — stepped up to the plate for the St. Louis Browns, batting for Frank Saucier.

“Funny thing is,” Veeck said, lighting up a fresh cigarette, “how many times I threatened to kill that little bastard myself. I told him, I’ve got a man up in the stands with a high-powered rifle, and if you take a swing at any pitch, he’ll fire.”

“You got the mother’s address?”

“Yeah... yeah, I got it right here.” He took a slip of paper out of his sport shirt pocket but didn’t hand it to me. “Only she’s not there right now.”

“Where is she?”

“Visitation at the funeral home. Service is tomorrow morning.”

“Why don’t I wait, then, and not bother her...”

The gravel voice took on an edge. “Ю’Cause I’d like you to represent me. Pay her and Eddie your respects... plus, your detective’s nose might sniff something.”

“What, formaldehyde?”

But I took the slip of paper, which had the funeral home address as well as Mrs. Gaedel’s.

He was saying, “Do you know the New York Times put Eddie’s obit on the front page? The front goddamn page... And that’s the thing, Nate, that’s it right there: my name is in Eddie’s obit, big as baseball. And you know what? You know damn well, time comes, Eddie’ll be in mine.”

I just nodded; it was true.

The pouchy eyes tightened — bloodshot maybe, but bright and hard and shiny. “If somebody killed that little bastard, Nate, find out who, and why, and goddamnit, do something about it.”

I squinted through the floating cigarette smoke. “Like go to the cops?”

Veeck shrugged; his wrinkled puss wrinkled some more. “You’re the one pitching. Hurl it any damn way you want to.”

Of course this had all begun about ten years before — in the summer of ’51 — when Veeck called me and asked if I knew any midgets who were “kinda athletic and game for anything.”

“Why don’t you call Marty Craine,” I said, into the phone, leaning back in my office chair, “or some other booking agent.”

“Marty’s come up blank,” Veeck’s voice said through the long-distance crackle. “Can’t you check with some of those lowlife pals of yours at the South State bump-and-grind houses? They take shows out to the carnivals, don’t they?”

“You want an athletic midget,” I said, “I’ll find you an athletic midget.”

So I had made a few calls, and wound up accompanying Eddie Gaedel on the train to Cleveland, for some as yet unexplained Bill Veeck stunt. Eddie was in his mid-twenties but had that aged, sad-eyed look common to his kind; he was pleasant enough, an outgoing character who wore loud sport shirts and actually reminded me of a pint-size Veeck.

“You don’t know what the hell this is about?” he kept asking me in his high-pitched squawk, an oversize cigar rolling from one corner to the other of his undersize mouth.

“No,” I said. We had a private compartment and Gaedel’s incessant cigar smoking provided a constant blue haze. “I just know Bill wants this kept mum — I wasn’t to tell anybody but you, Eddie, that we’re going to Cleveland to do a job for the Browns.”

“You follow baseball, Nate?”

“I’m a boxing fan myself.”

“I hope I don’t have to know nothing about baseball.”

“Veeck didn’t say you had to know baseball — just you had to be athletic.”

Gaedel was a theatrical midget who had worked in various acrobatic acts.

“Ask the dames,” Gaedel said, chortling around the pool-cue Havana, “if Eddie Gaedel ain’t athletic.”

That was my first clue to Eddie’s true personality, or anyway the Eddie that came out after a few drinks. In the lounge car, after he threw back one, then another Scotch on the rocks like a kid on a hot day downing nickel Cokes, I suddenly had a horny Charlie McCarthy on my hands.

I was getting myself a fresh drink, noticing out the corner of an eye as Eddie sidled up to a pair of attractive young women — a blonde and brunette traveling together, probably college students, sweaters and slacks — and set his drink on their little silver deco table. He looked first at the blonde, then at the brunette, as if picking out just the right goodie in a candy-store display case.

Then he put his hand on the blonde’s thigh and leered up at her.

“My pal and me got a private compartment,” he said, gesturing with his cigar like an obscenely suggestive wand, “if you babes are up for a little four-way action.”

The blonde let out a yelp, brushing off Eddie’s hand like a big bug. The brunette was frozen in Fay Wray astonishment.

Eddie grabbed his crotch and grinned. “Hey doll, you don’t know what you’re missin’ — I ain’t as short as you think.”

Both women stood and backed away from the little man, pressing up against the windows, pretty hands up and clawed, their expressions about the same as if a tarantula had been crawling toward them.

I got over there before anybody else could — several men stood petrified, apparently weighing the urge to play Saint George against looking like a bully taking on such a pint-size dragon.

Grabbing him by the collar of his red shirt, I yanked the midget away from the horrified girls, saying, “Excuse us, ladies... Jesus, Eddie, behave yourself.”

And the little guy spun and swung a hard sharp fist up into my crotch. I fell to my knees and looked right into the contorted face of Eddie Gaedel, a demented elf laughing and laughing at the pitiful sight that was me.

A white-jacketed conductor was making his alarmed way toward us when my pain subsided before Eddie’s knee-slapping laughter, giving me the window of opportunity to twist the little bastard’s arm behind him and drag him out of the lounge, through the dining car, getting lots of dirty looks from passengers along the way for this cruelty, and back to our compartment, tossing him inside like the nasty little rag doll he was.

He picked himself up, a kind of reassembling action, and came windmilling at me, his high-pitched scream at once ridiculous and frightening.

I clipped him with a hard right hand and he collapsed like a string-snipped puppet. Out cold on the compartment floor. Well, if you have to be attacked by an enraged horny drunken midget, better that he have a glass jaw.

He slept through the night, and at breakfast in the dining car apologized, more or less.

“I’m kind of an ugly drunk,” he admitted, buttering his toast.

“For Christ’s sakes, Eddie, you only had two drinks.”

“Hey, you don’t have to be friggin’ Einstein to figure with my body size, it don’t take much. Anyway, I won’t tell Mr. Veeck my bodyguard beat the crap out of me.”

“Yeah. Probably best we both forget the little incident.”

He frowned at me, toast crumbs flecking his lips. “‘Little’ incident? Is that a remark?”

“Eat your poached eggs, Eddie.”

In Veeck’s office, the midget sat in a wooden chair with his legs sticking straight out as the Hawaiian-shirted owner of the St. Louis Browns paced excitedly — though due to Bill’s wooden leg, it was more an excited shuffle. I watched from the sidelines, leaning against a file cabinet.

Suddenly Veeck stopped right in front of the seated midget and thrust an Uncle Bill Wants You finger in his wrinkled little puss.

“Eddie, how would like to be a big-league ballplayer?”

“Me?” Eddie — wearing a yellow shirt not as bright as the sun — squinted up at him. “I been to maybe two games in my life! Plus, in case you ain’t noticed, I’m a goddamn midget!”

“And you’d be the only goddamn midget in the history of the game.” Tiny eyes bright and big as they could be, Veeck held up two hands that seemed to caress an invisible beach ball. “Eddie, you’ll appear before thousands — your name’ll go in the record books for all time!”

Eddie’s squint turned interested. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Eddie, my friend... you’ll be immortal.”

“Immortal. Wow. Uh... what does it pay?”

“A hundred bucks.”

Eddie was nodding now — a hundred bucks was even better than immortality.

“So what do you know about baseball?” Veeck asked him.

“I know you’re supposed to hit the white ball with the bat. And then you run somewhere.”

Veeck snatched a little toy bat from his desk; then he crouched over as far as his gimpy leg would allow, and assumed the stance.

“The pitcher’s gotta throw that white ball in your strike zone, Eddie.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s the area between the batter’s armpits and the top of his knees... Let’s see your strike zone.”

Eddie scrambled off the chair and took the toy bat, assuming the position.

“How’s that, Mr. Veeck?”

“Crouch more. See, since you’re only gonna go to bat once in your career, whatever stance you assume at the plate, that’s your natural stance.”

Eddie, clutching the tiny bat, crouched. His strike zone was maybe one and a half inches.

Then he took an awkward, lunging swing.

“No!” Veeck said. “Hell, no!”

Eddie, still in his crouch, looked at Veeck curiously.

Veeck put his arm around the little guy. “Eddie, you just stay in that crouch. You just stand there and take four balls. Then you’ll trot down to first base and we’ll send somebody in to run for you.”

“I don’t get it.”

Veeck explained the concept of a walk to Eddie, whose face fell, his dreams of glory fading.

“Eddie,” Veeck said pleasantly, “if you so much as look like you’re gonna swing, I’m gonna shoot you dead.”

Eddie shrugged. “That sounds fair.”

On a hot Sunday in August, a crowd of twenty thousand — the largest attendance the chronically losing Browns had managed in over four years — came out to see Bill Veeck’s latest wild stunt. The crowd, which was in a great, fun-loving mood, had no idea what that stunt would be; but as this doubleheader with the Tigers marked the fiftieth anniversary of the American League, the fans knew it would be something more than just the free birthday cake and ice cream being handed out.

Or the opening game itself, which the Browns, naturally, lost.

The half-time show began to keep the implied Veeck promise of zaniness, with a parade of antique cars, two couples in Gay Nineties attire pedaling a bicycle-built-for-four around the bases, and a swing combo with Satchel Paige himself on drums inspiring jitterbugging in the aisles. A three-ring circus was assembled, with a balancing act at first base, trampoline artists at second, and a juggler at third.

Throughout all this, I’d been babysitting Eddie Gaedel in Veeck’s office. Gaedel was wearing a Browns uniform that had been made up for Bill DeWitt, Jr., the nine-year-old son of the team’s former owner/current advisor. The number sewn onto the uniform was actually a fraction: 1/8; and kid’s outfit or not, the thing was tent-like on Eddie.

We could hear the muffled roar of the huge crowd, and Eddie was nervous. “I don’t feel so good, Nate.”

The little guy was attempting to tie the small pair of cleats Veeck had somehow rustled up for him.

“You’ll do fine, Eddie.”

“I can’t tie these friggin’ things! Shit!”

So I knelt and tied the midget’s cleats. I was getting a hundred bucks for the day, too.

“These bastards hurt my feet! I don’t think I can go on.”

“There’s twenty thousand people in that park, but there’s one whose ass I know I can kick, Eddie, and that’s you. Get going.”

Soon we were under the stands, moving down the ramp, toward the seven-foot birthday cake out of which Veeck planned to have Eddie jump. Big Bill Durney, Veeck’s traveling secretary, helped me lift the midget under the arms, so we could ease him onto the board inside the hollowed section of the cake.

“What the hell am I?” Eddie howled, as he dangled between us. No one had told him about this aspect of his appearance. “A stripper?”

“When you feel the cake set down,” I said, “jump out, and run around swingin’ and clowning. Then run to the dugout and wait your turn at bat.”

“This is gonna cost that bastard Veeck extra! I’m an AGVA member, y’know!”

And we set him down in there, handed him his bat, and covered him over with tissue paper, through which his obscenities wafted.

But when the massive cake was rolled out onto the playing field by two of the fans’ favorite Browns, Satch Paige and Frank Saucier, and plopped down on the pitcher’s mound, Eddie Gaedel rose to the occasion. As the stadium announcer introduced “a brand-new Brownie,” Eddie burst through the tissue paper and did an acrobatic tumble across the wide cake, landing on his cleats nimbly, running to home, swinging the bat all the way, eating up the howls of laughter and the spirited applause from the stands.

Then Eddie headed for the dugout, and the various performers were whisked from the field for the start of the second game. The fans were having a fine time, though perhaps some were disappointed that the midget-from-the-cake might be the big Veeck stunt of the day; they had hoped for more.

They got it.

Frank Saucier was the leadoff batter for the Browns, but the announcer boomed, “For the Browns, number 1/8 — Eddie Gaedel, batting for Saucier!”

And there, big as life, so to speak, was Eddie Gaedel, swimming in the child’s uniform, heading from the dugout with that small bat still in hand, swinging it, limbering up, hamming it up.

Amazed laughter rippled through the crowd as the umpire crooked a finger at Veeck’s manager, Zack Taylor, who jogged out with the signed contract and a carbon of the telegram Veeck had sent major league headquarters adding Eddie to the roster.

By this time I had joined Veeck in the special box up on the roof, where visiting dignitaries could enjoy the perks of a bar and restaurant. Veeck was entertaining a crew from Falstaff Breweries, the Browns’ radio sponsors, who were ecstatic with the shenanigans down on the diamond. Newspaper photographers were swarming onto the field, capturing the manager of the Tigers, Red Rolfe, complaining to the umpire, while pitcher Bob Cain and catcher Bob Swift just stood at their respective positions, occasionally shrugging at each other, obviously waiting for this latest Bill Veeck gag to blow over.

But it didn’t blow over: after about fifteen minutes of discussion, argument, and just plain bitching, the umpire shooed away the photogs and — with clear reluctance — motioned the midget to home plate.

“Look at the expression on Cain’s puss!” Veeck exploded at my shoulder.

Even at this distance, the disbelief on the pitcher’s face was evident, as he finally grasped that this joke was no joke: he had to pitch to a midget.

“He can’t hurl underhand,” Veeck was chortling, “’cause submarine pitches aren’t legal. Look at that! Look at Swift!”

The catcher had dropped to his knees, to give his pitcher a better target.

“Shit!” Veeck said. His tone had turned on a dime. All around us, the Falstaff folks were having a gay old time; but Veeck’s expression had turned as distressed as Cain’s. “Will you look at that little bastard, Nate...”

Eddie Gaedel — who Veeck had spent hours instructing in achieving the perfect, unpitch-to-able crouch — was standing straight and, relatively speaking, tall, feet straddled DiMaggio-style, tiny bat held high.

“Have you got your gun, Nate? That little shit’s gonna swing...”

“Naw,” I said, a hand on Veeck’s shoulder, “he’s just playing up to the crowd.”

Who were playing up to him, cheering, egging him on.

Then pitcher Cain came to Veeck’s rescue by really pitching to the midget, sending two fastballs speeding past Eddie before he could even think to swing.

“I wouldn’t worry now,” I said to Veeck.

Cain had started to laugh; he was almost collapsing with laughter, which the crowd aped, and he could barely throw at all as he tossed two more looping balls, three and then four feet over Eddie’s head.

The littlest Brown trotted to his base as the crowd cheered and cameras clicked; then he stood with one foot on the bag as if he were thinking of stealing, which got a huge, roaring laugh.

Finally pinch runner Jim Delsing came over and Gaedel surrendered the base to him, giving the big man a comradely pat on the butt.

The crowd was going wild, Veeck grinning like a monkey, as I made my exit, to go down and meet my midget charge in Veeck’s office. Eddie had his clothes changed — he was wearing a bright green and yellow shirt that made Veeck’s taste seem mild — and I warned him that the reporters would be lying in wait.

“Veeck says it’s your call,” I said. “I can sneak you out of here—”

“Hell no!” Eddie was sitting on the floor, tying his shoes — he didn’t need any help, this time. “It’s great publicity! Man, I felt like Babe Ruth out there.”

“Eddie, you’re now what most every man in the country wishes he could be.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“A former major-leaguer.”

Since Veeck had been talking about using Gaedel again, the little guy really warmed up to the reporters waiting outside the stadium, telling them “two guys I’d really like to face on the mound are Bob Feller and Dizzy Trout.”

But it didn’t work out that way. First off, despite the midget ploy, the Browns lost 6–2 to the Tigers, anyway. And before Veeck could put Gaedel into a White Sox game in Eddie’s hometown of Chicago a month later, the baseball commissioner banned midgets from baseball.

Veeck had responded to Commissioner Harridge by saying, “Fine, but first you gotta establish what a midget is — is it three foot six, like Eddie? If it’s five six, great! We can get rid of Phil Rizzuto!”

The commissioner’s ban was not only complete, but retroactive: Eddie didn’t even make it into the record books, the Gaedel name nowhere to be seen in the official 1951 American League batting records — though the base-on-balls was in Cain’s record, and a pinch-running appearance in Delsing’s.

Nonetheless, this stuffed-shirt revisionist history did no good at all: record book or not, Eddie was immortal over Bill Veeck’s stunt, and so was Bill Veeck.

Immortal in the figurative sense, of course. Their fame didn’t stop Veeck from staring death in the face, nor, apparently, had it spared little Eddie Gaedel from murder.

The Keurtz Funeral Home was one of those storefront numbers, with a fancy faux-stone facade in the midst of pawnshops and bars. This was on the South Side, Ashland and 48th, the business district of a working-class neighborhood of two-flats and modest frame houses, a hard pitch away from Comiskey Park.

I left my car three blocks down, on a side street, mulling over what I’d learned from several phone calls to contacts in the Coroner’s Office and the Homicide Bureau. The death had never been considered a possible homicide, so there’d been virtually no investigation.

A midget had died in his sleep, a not uncommon occurrence, considering the limited life expectancy of little people. Yes, there’d been some bruises, but Gaedel was known as a rough customer, a barroom brawler, with several assaults on his record. The unspoken but strongly implied thread was that if Gaedel hadn’t died of natural causes, he’d earned whatever he’d gotten.

The alcove of the funeral home was filled with smoke and midgets. This was not surprising, the smoke anyway, being fairly typical for a Chicago storefront funeral parlor — no smoking was allowed in the visitation areas, so everybody crowded out in the entryway and smoked and talked.

Seeing all those small, strange faces turned toward me, as I entered, was unsettling: wrinkled doll faces, frowning at my six-foot presence, the men in suits and ties, the women in Sunday best, like children playing dress up. I took off my hat, nodded at them as a group, and they resumed their conversations, a high-pitched chatter, like half a dozen Alvin and the Chipmunks records were playing simultaneously.

The dark-paneled visitation area was large, and largely empty, and just inside the door was the tiny coffin with Eddie peacefully inside. He wore a conservative suit and tie, hands folded; it was the only time I hadn’t seen Eddie in a loud sport shirt, with the exception of that kid-size Browns uniform. Quite a few flowers were on display, many with Catholic trappings, a horseshoe arrangement ribboned MY FAVORITE BATTER — BILL VEECK prominent among them.

The folding chairs would have seated several hundred, but only two were occupied. Over to the right, a petite but normal-sized woman in black dabbed her eyes with a hanky as a trio of midgets — two men and a woman — stood consoling her. Eddie’s mother, no doubt.

The female midget was maybe four feet and definitely quite lovely, a shapely blue-eyed blonde lacking pinched features or ungainly limbs, a miniature beauty in a blue satin prom dress. She was upset, weeping into her own hanky.

In the back sat a human non sequitur, a slim, rangy mourner in his late thirties, with rugged aging-American-boy good looks — anything but a midget. His expression somber, his sandy hair flecked with gray, he looked familiar to me, though I couldn’t place him.

Since Eddie’s mom was occupied, I wandered back to the full-size mourner and he stood, respectfully, as I approached.

“Nate Heller,” I said, extending a hand. “I take it you were a friend of Eddie’s, too. Sorry I can’t place you...”

“Bob Cain,” he said, shaking my hand.

“The pitcher!”

His smile was embarrassed. “That’s right. You’re a friend of Bill Veeck’s, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I’ve done a number of jobs for Bill... including body-guarding Eddie for that stunt, way back when.”

Cain smiled again, a bittersweet expression. Then he moved over one and gestured to the empty chair, saying, “Sit down, won’t you?”

We sat and talked. I was aware that Cain, after a contract squabble shortly following the midget incident, had been traded at Veeck’s request to the Browns. Cain played the ’52 and ’53 seasons for him.

“Bill’s a great guy,” Cain said. “One owner who treated the players like human beings.”

“Even if he did embarrass you?”

“That’s just part of the Veeck package. Funny thing is, in the time I played for him, Bill never mentioned the midget thing. But I always wondered if he’d traded for me to make it up to me, or something. Anyway, I had a fine career, Mr. Heller.”

“Nate.”

“Beat the Yankees fifteen oh, in my first major league start. Pitched a one-hitter against Feller. I had a lot of good experiences in baseball.”

“But you’ll be remembered for pitching to a midget.”

“At least I’ll be remembered. It’s part of baseball history, Nate — there’ll never be another midget in the game... just Eddie.”

“Did you stay in touch with the little guy?”

“Naw... I haven’t seen him since I pitched against him. But when I read about this, I just had to pay my respects, as a good Christian, you know — to a man who was so important in my life.”

“Are you still in the game, Bob?”

“Not since ’56... got a calcium deposit on my wrist, and couldn’t get my pitch back. I drove up from Cleveland for this — felt kind of... obligated.”

I didn’t hear anything but sincerity in his words and his voice; but I would check up on Cain’s whereabouts — and see if he’d driven up from Cleveland before or after Eddie’s murder.

The petite blonde was standing at the casket, lingering there, staring down at Eddie, weeping softly into her hanky. The two men had gone back out to the alcove.

This left Mrs. Gaedel free, and I went over to her, introducing myself.

“Mrs. Gaedel, Bill Veeck sends his condolences,” I told her, taking the seat next to her.

A pleasant-looking woman of sixty, salt-and-pepper hair in a bun, Mrs. Gaedel sat and listened as I told her how I’d been involved with Eddie in his famous stunt. I left out the part about the college girls in the lounge car.

“Mr. Veeck was wonderful to Eddie over the years,” she said, her voice bravely strong. “Gave Eddie so much work. Eddie supported me, after his father died, you know.”

“Eddie kept busy.”

“Yes. TV, movies, stage... He lived with me, you know — had his little apartment with its little furnishings in the attic... ceiling so low I had trouble cleaning up there, but he loved it. That’s where I found him... in bed...”

I slipped an arm around her as she wept.

Then after a while I said, “You spoke to Mr. Veeck on the phone, I understand.”

“Yes — this morning.”

“I’m a private investigator, Mrs. Gaedel, and Bill asked me to talk to you about these... doubts you have, about the circumstances of your son’s death.”

“Oh! Are you willing to look into that for me?”

“Bill has hired me to do that very thing, as long as we have your blessing.”

“Of course you have my blessing! And my eternal thanks... What do you want to know, Mr. Heller?”

“This is hardly the time, Mrs. Gaedel. I can come to your home, after the service sometime, in a day or two perhaps—”

“No, please, Mr. Heller. Let’s talk now, if we could.”

I was turning my hat in my hands like a wheel. “Actually, that would be wise, if you’re up to it. The sooner I can get started—”

“I’m up to it. Start now.”

We were interrupted several times, as Eddie’s friends paid their respects. But her story was this: Eddie had been drinking heavily lately, and running with a rough crowd, who hung out at the Midgets’ Club.

I knew this bar, which was over on Halstead, and dated back to the ’40s; it had begun as a gimmick, a bar where the customers were served by midgets, mostly former members of the Singer Midgets who’d played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. An area was given over to small tables and short stools, for midget clientele, and eventually the midgets essentially took over. But for the occasional tourist who stopped by for the oddity of the joint — to pick up the trademark half-books of matches, see a few framed Oz photos, and get some Munchkin autographs — the Midgets’ Club became the cultural center of midget activity in Chicago.

“I thought the Midgets’ Club was pretty respectable,” I said.

“It is — Elmer St. Aubin and his wife still run the place. But a rough element — carny types — hang out there, you know.”

“That blonde you were talking to. She doesn’t seem part of that element.”

“She isn’t, not all. That’s Betsy Jane Perkins... she worked with Eagle’s Midget Troupe, does a lot of television, personal appearances, dressed and made up like a doll... the ‘Living Doll,’ they call her.”

“Were your son and Miss Perkins good friends?”

“Oh yes. He’d been dating her. She was wonderful. Best thing in his life... I was so hopeful her good influence would wrest him away from that bad crowd.”

“Do you suspect anyone in particular, Mrs. Gaedel?”

“No, I... I really didn’t know many of my son’s friends. Betsy Jane is an exception. Another possibility are these juvenile delinquents.”

“Oh?”

“That’s what I think may have happened — a gang of those terrible boys may have gotten ahold of Eddie and beaten him.”

“Did he say so?”

“No, not really. He didn’t say anything, just stumbled off to bed.”

“Had he been robbed, mugged? Was money missing from his wallet?”

She shook her head, frowning. “No. But these juveniles pick on the little people all the time. If my son were inebriated, he would have been the perfect target for those monsters. You should strongly consider that possibility.”

“I will. Mrs. Gaedel, I’ll be in touch with you later. My deepest sympathies, ma’am.”

She took my hand and squeezed it. “God bless you, Mr. Heller.”

In the alcove, I signed the memorial book. The crowd of midgets was thinning, and the blonde was gone.

Nothing left for me to do but follow the Yellow Brick Road.

The Midgets’ Club might have been any Chicago saloon: a bar at the left, booths at the right, scattering of tables between, pool table in back, wall-hung celebrity photos here and there, neon beer signs burning through the fog of tobacco smoke, patrons chatting, laughing, over a jukebox’s blare. But the bar was sawed-off with tiny stools, the tables and chairs and booths all scaled down to smaller proportions (with a few normal-sized ones up front, for tourist traffic), the pool table half-scale, the celebrity photos of Munchkins, the chatter and laughter of patrons giddy and high-pitched. As for the jukebox, Sinatra’s “Tender Trap” was playing at the moment, to be followed by more selections running to slightly dated swing material, no rock or R & B — which suited me, and was a hell of a lot better than “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead.”

I had known the club’s proprietor and chief bartender, Pernell “Little Elmer” St. Aubin, since he was, well, little — a child entertainer at the Midget Village at the Chicago World’s Fair back in ’33. He’d been tap dancing and I’d been busting pickpockets. Elmer had been in his teens when he appeared in The Wizard of Oz, so now — as he stood behind the bar, polishing a glass, a wizened Munchkin in an apron — he was probably only in his mid-thirties. But as was so often the case with his kind, he looked both older and younger than his years.

I selected one of the handful of somewhat taller stools at the bar and said to Elmer, “For a weekday, you’re doing good business.”

“It’s kind of a wake,” Elmer explained. “For Eddie Gaedel. People coming over after visitation at Keurtz’s. You knew Eddie, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I was over there myself. Paying my respects, and Bill Veeck’s.”

Elmer frowned. “Couldn’t Veeck make it himself?”

“He’s pretty sick. So was Eddie ornery as ever, up to the end?”

“Christ yes! I hated serving that little bastard. Sweet enough guy sober, but what a lousy drunk. If I hadn’t been secretly watering his drinks, over the years, he’d have busted up the joint long ago.”

“I hear he may have been rolled by some juvies. Think that’s what killed him?”

“I doubt it. Eddie carried a straight razor — people knew he did, too. I think these young punks woulda been scared to get cut. Funny thing, though.”

“What is?”

“His mama said that straight razor didn’t turn up in his things.”

I thought about that, then asked, “So how do you think Eddie died?”

“I have my own opinion.”

“Like to share that opinion, Elmer?”

“The cops weren’t interested. Why are you?”

“Eddie was a friend. Maybe I’m just curious. Maybe there’s a score to settle.”

“Are you gonna drink something, Heller?”

I gave the Munchkin a ten, asked for a rum and Coke and told him he could keep the change, if he stayed chatty.

“Eddie was playing a puppet on a local kids’ show,” Elmer said, serving me up. “But he lost the gig ’cause of his boozing. So lately he was talking to some of my less classier clientele about going out on the carny circuit. Some kinda sideshow scam where they pretended to be Siamese triplets or something.”

“Work is work.”

“See that little dame over there?”

Every dame in here was little, but Elmer was talking about Betsy Jane, the Living Doll in her blue satin prom dress. I hadn’t spotted her when I came in — she was sitting alone in a booth, staring down into a coffee cup cupped in her dainty hands.

Elmer leaned in conspiratorially. “That’s Betsy Jane Perkins, the actress — Eddie was crazy about her, and she felt the same about him. She was trying to straighten him out, and I think she might’ve succeeded, if it hadn’t been for that ex-husband of hers.”

“Yeah?”

“Guy named Fred Peterson. He’s a shrimp.”

“A midget?”

“No, a shrimp — a ‘normal’-size guy who stands just under five feet. He’s a theatrical agent, still is Betsy Jane’s agent; specializes in booking little people. Makes him feel like a big man, lording it over us.”

“He is a regular?” I swiveled on the stool and glanced around. “Is he here?”

“Yes, he’s a regular, no, he’s not here. He wouldn’t pay his respects to Eddie, that’s for goddamn sure.”

“Why?”

“Lately Fred’s been trying to get back in Betsy Jane’s good graces, among other things. Why don’t you talk to her? She’s a sweet kid. I think she’d do anything to help out where Eddie’s concerned.”

I took Elmer’s advice, and my rum and Coke and I went over and stood next to the booth where the painfully pretty little woman gloomily sat. She looked up at me with beautiful if bloodshot blue eyes; her heavy, doll-like makeup was a little grief-smeared, but she was naturally pretty, with a fairly short, Marilyn-ish do.

“Miss Perkins, my name is Nate Heller — I was a friend of Eddie Gaedel’s.”

“I don’t remember Eddie mentioning you, Mr. Heller,” she said, almost primly, her voice a melodic soprano with a vibrato of sorrow.

“I’m an associate of Bill Veeck’s. I escorted Eddie to that famous game in St. Louis back in ’51.”

She had brightened at the mention of Veeck’s name, and was already gesturing for me to sit across from her.

“I saw you at the funeral parlor,” she said, “talking to Helen.”

“Helen?”

“Mrs. Gaedel.”

“Yes. She feels the circumstances of her son’s death are somewhat suspicious.”

The blue eyes lowered. “I’d prefer to reminisce about Eddie and the fun times, the good times, than...”

“Face the truth?”

“Mr. Heller, I don’t know what happened to Eddie. I just know I’ve lost him, right when I thought...” She began to cry, and got in her purse, rustling for a handkerchief.

I glanced over at Elmer, behind the bar, and he was squinting at me, making a vaguely frantic gesture that I didn’t get. Shrugging at him, I returned my attention to the Living Doll.

“You’d been trying to help Eddie. Encourage him to stop drinking, I understand. Not run with such a rough crowd.”

“That’s right.”

I’d hoped for elaboration.

I tried venturing down a different avenue. “I understand some j.d.s have been preying on little people in this neighborhood.”

“That... that’s true.”

“Eddie might have been beaten and robbed.”

“Yes... he might have.”

“But you don’t think that’s the case, do you?”

Now she was getting a compact out of her purse, checking her makeup. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Heller — I look a fright.”

And she went off to the ladies’ room.

I just sat there and sipped my rum and Coke, wondering if I would get anything out of Betsy Jane except tears, when an unMunchkin-like baritone growled at me.

“You got a fetish, pal?”

I turned and looked up at the source of the irritation, and the reason for Elmer’s motioning to me: he was short, but no midget, possibly five foot, almost handsome, with a Steve Canyon jaw compromised by pugged nose and cow eyes; his hair was dark blond and slicked back and he wore a mustache that would have been stylish as hell if this were 1935. Deeply tanned, his build was brawny, his hairy, muscular chest shown off by the deep V-neck cut of his pale green herringbone golf shirt, his arms short but muscular.

I said, “What?”

“You got a scratch to itch, buddy?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He leaned in, eyes popping, teeth bared, cords in his neck taut; he reeked of Old Spice. “You some kind of pervert, pops? Some kinda letch for the midget ladies?”

Very quietly, I said, “Back off.”

Something about how I’d said it gave him pause, and the clenched fist that was his face twitched a couple times, and he and his Old Spice aura backed away — but he kept standing there, muscular arms folded now, like a stubby, pissed-off genie.

“And you must be Fred Peterson,” I said.

“Who wants to know?”

Not offering a hand to shake, I said, “My name’s Heller — friend of Eddie Gaedel’s, and Bill Veeck’s.”

He blinked. “What, you were over at the funeral home?”

“That’s right.”

“Paying your respects.”

“Yes. And looking into Eddie’s murder.”

He frowned; then he scrambled across from me into the booth, where Betsy Jane had been sitting. “What do you mean, murder?”

“He was beaten to death, Fred. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Fred’...?”

His hands were folded, but squeezing, as if he were doing isometrics. “The cops said it was natural causes. Why’s it your business, the cops say it’s natural causes?”

“I’m a private investigator, working for Veeck. When I get enough evidence, I’ll turn it over to the cops and see if I can’t change their minds about how ‘natural’ those causes were.”

He leaned forward, hands still clasped, a vein in his forehead jumping. “Listen, that little prick had a big mouth and a lot of enemies. You’re gonna get nowhere!”

I shrugged, sipped my rum and Coke. “Maybe I can get somewhere with Betsy Jane.”

The cow eyes flashed. “Stay away from her.”

“Why should I? She seems to like me, and I like her. She’s a cute kid. She interests me... kind of a new frontier.”

“I said stay away.”

“Who died and appointed you head of the Lollipop Guild? I’m going to find out who killed Eddie Gaedel, and have myself some tight little fun along the way.”

And I grinned at him, until he growled a few obscenities and bolted away, heading toward the rear of the bar, almost bumping into Betsy Jane, coming back from the restroom. She froze seeing him, and he clutched her by the shoulders and got right in her face and said something to her, apparently something unpleasant, even threatening. Then he stalked toward the rear exit.

Her expression alarmed, she took her seat across from me and said, “You should go now.”

“That was your agent, right?”

“...right.”

“And your boyfriend?”

“No... husband. Ex-husband. Please go.”

“Jealous of you and Eddie, by any chance? Did you go to him with the idea for a new act, you and Eddie as boy and girl livin’ dolls?”

She shook her head, blonde bangs shimmering. “Mr. Heller, you don’t know what kind of position you’re putting me in...”

I knew that her ex-husband didn’t want any man putting this doll in any position.

But I said, “I think for a little guy, your ex-husband and current agent has a tall temper. And I think he’s goddamn lucky the cops didn’t investigate this case, because he makes one hell of a suspect in Eddie’s death.”

She began to weep again, but this was different, this was more than grief — there was fear in it.

“What do you know, Betsy Jane?”

“Nuh... nothing... nothing...”

“Tell me. Just tell me — so that I know. I won’t take anything to the police without your permission.”

Damp eyelashes fluttered. “Well... I... I don’t know anything, except that... on that last night, Fred was... nice to Eddie and me.”

“Nice?”

“Yes. He’d been furious with me, at the suggestion that Eddie and I would work as a team, livid that I would suggest that he, of all people, should book such an act... We had two, no three, terrible arguments about it. Then... then he changed. He can do that, run hot and cold. He apologized, said he’d been a jerk, said he wanted to make it up, wanted to help. Sat and talked with us all evening, making plans about the act.”

“Go on.”

“That’s all.”

“No it isn’t. I can see it in those pretty eyes, Betsy Jane. The rest... tell me the rest.”

She swallowed, nodded, sighed. “They... they left together. Eddie lived close, you know, easy walk home to his mother’s house — Fred was going to talk business with him. They went out the back way, around midnight. It was the last time I saw Eddie alive.”

The alley behind the bar, bumped up against the backyards of residences, would be as good a place as any for an assault.

She was saying, “But I can’t imagine Fred would do such a thing.”

“Sure you can.”

She shook her head. “Anyway, Eddie was no pushover. He carried a straight razor, you know.”

“So I hear. But I also hear it wasn’t among his effects.”

“Oh, Eddie had it that night. I saw it.”

“Yeah?”

“He emptied his pocket, looking for change for the jukebox... laid his things right on this counter, razor among them. We were sitting in this very booth... this was... our booth.”

She began to cry again, and I got over on her side of the booth, slid an arm around her, and comforted her, thinking that she really was a cute kid, and midget sex was definitely on my short list of things yet undone in a long and varied life.

But more to the point, what had become of that razor? If Fred had attacked Eddie out back, maybe that razor had been dropped in the scuffle — and if it was back there, somewhere, I’d have the evidence I needed to get the cops to open an investigation.

“Betsy Jane,” I said, “we’ll talk again... when you’re feeling up to it.”

“All right... but Mr. Heller... Nate... I am afraid. Terribly afraid.”

I squeezed her shoulder, kissed her cheek. “I’ll make the bad man go away.”

She put her hand on my thigh — her little bitty hand. Christ, it felt weird. Also, good.

Nodding to Elmer, I headed toward the rear exit, and stepped out into the alley. The night was moonless with a scattering of stars, and the lighting was negligible — no street lamps back here, just whatever scant illumination spilled from the frame houses whose backyards bordered the asphalt strip. A trio of garbage cans — full-scale, nothing midget about them — stood against the back of the brick building, and some empty liquor and beer cartons were stacked nearby.

Not much to see, and in the near-darkness, I would probably need my flashlight to probe for that missing straight razor. I had just decided to walk the several blocks to the side street where my car was parked, to get the flash, when a figure stepped out from the recess of an adjacent building’s rear doorway.

“Looking for something?” Fred Peterson asked, those cow eyes wide and wild, teeth bared like an angry animal, veins throbbing in his neck, one hand behind his back. Though he stood only five foot, his brawny frame, musculature obvious in the skintight golf shirt, made him a threatening presence as he stepped into the alley like a gunfighter out onto the Main Street of Dodge.

I was thinking how I should have brought my gun along — only usually, attending midget funerals, it wasn’t necessary.

“Get some ideas,” he said, “talking to Betsy Jane?”

He was standing there, rocking on legs whose powerful thighs stood out, despite the bagginess of his chinos.

Shrugging, I said, “I thought Eddie mighta dropped something when you jumped him.”

Peterson howled as he whipped something from behind him and charged, it was a bat, he was wielding a goddamn baseball bat, and he was whipping it at me, slicing the air, the bat whooshing over me as I ducked under the swing. Screw baseball, I tackled him, taking him down hard, and the bat fell from his grasp, clattering onto the asphalt. I rolled off him, rolling toward the sound, and then I had the bat in my hands, as I got up and took my stance.

That’s when I found that straight razor I’d been looking for, or rather Fred Peterson showed me what had become of it, as he yanked it from his pocket and swung it around, the meager light of the alley managing to wink off the shining blade.

I didn’t wait for him to come at me: I took my swing.

The bat caught him in the side of the head, a hard blow that caved his skull in, and by the time Peterson fell to his knees, his motor responses were dead, and so was he. He flopped forward, on his face, razor spilling from limp fingers, blood and brains leaching out onto the asphalt as I stood over him, the bat resting against my shoulder.

“Strike zone my ass,” I said to nobody, breathing hard.

Finally I went back into the Midgets’ Club, carrying the bloody bat, getting my share of my looks, though Betsy Jane had gone. I leaned on the bar and told Elmer to call the cops.

But the little bartender just looked at me in amazement. “What the hell did you do, Heller?”

“Somebody had to go to bat for Eddie. Call the goddamn cops, would you, please?”

No charges were brought against me — my actions were clearly in self-defense — and Eddie Gaedel’s death is listed to this day as “natural causes” on the books. Though I shared with them everything I knew about the matter, the police simply didn’t want to go to the trouble of declaring Eddie a murder victim, merely to pursue a deceased suspect. Poor Eddie just couldn’t get a fair shake in any of the record books.

A few days after the cops cleared me, Veeck spoke to me on the phone, from a room in the Mayo Clinic.

“You know, ten years ago, when I sent Eddie Gaedel into that game,” he said, reflectively, “I knew it would be that little clown’s shining moment... what I didn’t know was that it would be mine, too! Hell, I knew it was a good gag, that the fans would roar, and the stuffed shirts holler. But who coulda guessed it’d become the single act forever identified with me?”

“We’re any of us lucky to be remembered for anything, Bill,” I said.

“Yeah. Yeah. Suppose Eddie felt that way?”

“I know he did.”

For years after, Helen Gaedel remembered me at Christmas with cookies or a fruitcake. Betsy Jane Perkins was grateful, too.

Veeck expressed his gratitude by paying me handsomely, and, typically, fooled himself and all of us by not dying just yet. The man who invented fan appreciation night, who provided a day-care center for female employees before the term was coined, who was first to put the names of players on the backs of uniforms, who broke the color line in the American League, and who sent a midget up to bat — and who also bought back the Chicago White Sox in 1975 — lived another irascible fifteen years.

And wasn’t that a hell of a stunt.

Content

Max Allan Collins
Strike Zone