A Conspiracy of Fear Page 16

  I said, “Did you run into Fulham or McMullen?”

  “Both and neither.”

  I raised an eyebrow. He said, “They were fighting.”

  “In front of you?”

  “In Fulham’s room with the door open. I happened to have time to spend listening in the hall.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.”

  I smiled for what felt like the first time since the shots began. I said, “Forty-two.”

  He gave me a smile in return. “I’m afraid that’s not going to do it. No, as far as I could figure, it was about getting him to go over and edit what they’ve written so far, and it was about you.”

  “Me, again. Those people are obsessed with me.”

  “I think they’re obsessed with themselves, and you’re kind of in the way, or at least McMullen thinks so. He didn’t like Fulham confiding in you and told him so.”

  “They’re afraid I’ll cut in on their profits?”

  “And their fame. That you and by the extension of your connection with me, somehow you or we will steal their work.”

  “I should reassure him although I doubt if he’ll listen.”

  “Probably you should try.”

  “Did you hear any more about the investigation?”

  “Nothing on the Internet and nobody’s called.”

  “How’re Arnie and the gallery people?”

  “Arnie is barely holding it together. I talked to Ayrfield briefly. The gallery is currently planning to reopen the day after the President visits. I’ve heard he may stop in to the gallery itself.”

  “That would be great.”

  “I sat with Sean’s parents and then with Edmund. With the parents mostly we talked about what he’d planned for the future and for college. They hoped to have grandkids some day.” He shook his head. “Edmund is another story. Remember how shitty his parents were about him being gay?”

  “The mom especially.”

  “They threw him out of the house last night. He went home in the middle of the day today to get some of his things. He’s staying with Sean’s parents for now.”

  “At least he’s got a roof over his head.”

  “He talks and he cries.”

  “Kind of like the rest of us.”

  “The love of his life could have been gone, and is most likely changed forever. I don’t know many adult relationships that could handle what’s happened to them.”

  “Poor, poor kid.”

  “I saw Pilcher for a minute. He knew McMullen, the owner of the gay press.”

  “He find out anything yet?”

  “Not so far. He’s working with O’Rourke, the old reporter.”

  I spent another restless night dozing and waking.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Sunday - 7:14 A.M.

  The next morning my head throbbed. I took more pain pills. Scott said that his new wound had begun to itch.

  Over breakfast he said, “I want to go to St. Louis with you. I don’t want to stay around here. It’ll most likely be another parade of press conferences where I’m standing in the back. I don’t want to be in front or speaking, but I’m going to stop being a prop, and I want to be with you. I missed you too much yesterday. If there’s some kind of danger I want to be with you.”

  “Your publicist will be pissed.”

  “He’s tough. He can handle it.”

  “You’ve got rehab.”

  “You’re more important than rehab.”

  “That’s your career.”

  “Let’s try this. I’ll go to rehab early, and we can be in the air by ten. The flight to St. Louis is little more than an hour.”

  “They’ll open early for you on a Sunday?”

  “Yes, dear, as we both well know, for the million dollar baseball player, accommodations can be made, and they will be, but remember, it’s also a health club that opens at six. That’s when one of my trainers comes on duty today. If there’s going to be danger, I want to face it by your side.”

  I went with him to rehab. Afterward we drove directly to the airport. Since we’d be back home that night, except for a laptop, we didn’t need to pack although this time I remembered pain pills. Yes, the little spray can of WD-40 was still wedged in the bottom of my pocket, still under the phone and now under the little bottle of pain pills as well. On the plane down I showed Scott all the pictures I’d gotten from Millicent.

  After we rented a car, we took I70 into downtown St. Louis where we could pick up I55 going south. We could have taken the I270 loop around the city, but I’d seen faceless suburbs before, and I preferred to go through downtown past the Arch and glimpse the old Federal Court House where the Dred Scott decision had been handed down.

  Forty-five minutes south of downtown, we were in the area that was once downtown Ste. Anne de Isle where Fulham had claimed he committed his murder. All the old buildings along the river were gone. It was now mostly a vast sweeping levee with a few trees in a park that stretched along the top.

  We stared out the front window of the car at the Mississippi River. Scott asked, “Why are we here looking at a place that we pretty much knew before we showed up wouldn’t exist?”

  “Because this, according to Fulham, was where a gay romance died. Where he killed someone, supposedly. The relationship ended and that’s sad. That it is or was connected to a crime is a horror. I can only imagine what it must have been like to be young, gay, and in love in a world so hostile.”

  Scott said, “We were part of a massacre in that supposedly less hostile world.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You don’t think it’s gotten better?”

  “Well, sure, I didn’t mean that. Sorry. I guess I mean frightened in a different way. We have reason to be wary. I know you know that, it’s just, well, sad, is all I’m saying.”

  We left the river to its rolling along and headed back to downtown St. Louis and the newspaper office near the corner of Washington and Fourteenth Streets. In the archives for the St. Louis Courier Tribune, it was a tedious business. Articles that had some relation one to another had been clipped, physically, from the old paper and put into folders. Much of it was aged and brittle.

  We hunted for hours through hundreds and hundreds of articles. At least they had yearly sports categories, teams, players. I found the name, Huey Kemmler, nicknamed Hubie, on a spring training roster for several teams, but not on any Major League roster. I checked through the Internet on my phone and found no listing for him. Scott found nothing.

  Early that afternoon after scrubbing newsprint off our hands in the washroom, Scott’s name got us in to see the sports editor of the Courier Tribune. Stan Grotchla was a portly man in his fifties. He chomped on gum the whole time we talked. “Are you guys okay?” he asked. He glanced at the bandage on the side of my head.

  “Nothing serious for either of us. We were lucky.”

  He said, “The Internet says it looks like the rest of the injured will pull through.” He sipped from a Starbucks cup, chomped his gum, then said, “I heard you were down in the archives. Anything I can help with?”

  “We were looking for information on Peter Fulham and Huey Kemmler.”

  “Peter I’ve heard of, of course. He was wounded as well in the shooting. He must be in his nineties. How is he?”

  “He’s still in the hospital. The wound isn’t necessarily life threatening, but with someone that old, they’re being extra careful.”

  He nodded.

  I said, “We’re tracking down a rumor that he was denied getting into the Hall of Fame because of a smear campaign.”

  “Long before my time. I was old enough to remember the sensation when he pitched his last game, but I was a kid, maybe ten, eleven years old. His picture was all over. I remember he had that stupid belt buckle, all gold and shiny, an outsized thing that was kind of ridiculous. I remember because it was shiny. I know nothing about Hall of Fa
me voting connected with him. I didn’t get my first job as a reporter until years later. What did you hear?”

  “Colton Zalachis made calls back at the time telling a number of baseball reporters that Fulham was gay. I’ve talked to Zalachis. He admitted doing it.”

  He took out a pen and began writing notes. “This off the record or is this for print?”

  “Is it a story?”

  “Could be with all the gay stuff in the headlines.”

  “I’m still investigating.”

  “You get more, I’m interested. Off the record, what did Zalachis say?”

  “Just that he’d called reporters around the country. He hated Fulham.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was gay.”

  “Colton Zalachis has a reputation as a real shit. A misogynist, racist prick. He’d cut anyone to get a story. I heard three people went to his retirement party. Mostly to celebrate that he was gone, but Fulham’s reputation wasn’t stellar either. He was no prize. Supposedly a difficult guy to manage. He did get traded a lot.”

  “You ever heard of Huey Kemmler?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell. Let me search my personal database. Last year I went back and had all my articles and columns since when I started out scanned and put on computer.” He tapped at the keys for a minute. “I got nothing here.” He punched a couple numbers on his cell phone. A skinny kid in his late teens or early twenties with a ragged goatee hustled into the room. Grotchla waved a hand from the kid to us and made introductions. The kid grabbed Scott’s hand and shook it. “I’ve never met a big star. This is cool.” He shook my hand as well, perhaps not as enthusiastically. Not the first time that’s happened.

  Grotchla said, “Franky’s my research guy. He remembers everything even without a computer.” He turned to the kid. “We got any records of a Huey Kemmler?”

  The kid shook his head. “We got a Harold Kemmler who played baseball for St. Louis South Community College back a couple years ago. They thought he might have gone in one of the late rounds of the draft, but he got hurt. That was the last I heard of him.”

  We thanked Grotchla. Franky led us to his computer. In a few clicks he had a phone number and an address on Lindell Blvd.

  We got our rental car and headed out. No one that I could see was following us.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Sunday - 3:02 P.M.

  In the car I said, “Friday, while waiting for you at rehab, I looked up Kemmler in the central valley of California. I looked in every town from Redding to Fresno. I got nothing.”

  “He wasn’t from there?”

  “Fulham lied to us?”

  “Or Kemmler lied to Fulham. Remember this was the early forties. Lots of gay guys used fake names or only first names. Many, if not most of them, lived their lives as lies.”

  “But Fulham knew Kemmler’s name.”

  “Just an example.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What else did the guy lie to Fulham about or did Fulham lie to you about?”

  “I guess we’ll find out. If it’s even the same family. There’s a bunch of Kemmlers listed around the country.”

  “It’s a lead, vague as it is, and maybe a justification for coming down here.” He shook his head. “Or to get away from the circus that is Chicago. I think I’d prefer my grief and recovery in private at this point.”

  While we grabbed a sandwich at a little place on Euclid just north of Lindell Boulevard, Scott looked up the Kemmler family in St. Louis, plus anything connected with Huey Kemmler and marriage in the area. He had to join several sites, but he found birth records. A Huey Kemmler had a child in 1940, just months before he died. I’d never thought to look up kids and marriages for Kemmler. I should have gone back on his life as I had on Fulham’s. Then again, I did not have the resources of the police, and nerd though I am, there’s only so much I can do. Plus I was looking in the wrong damn place.

  I asked, “Would Fulham send me on a wild goose chase? Just lie about the whole thing?”

  “To what end?”

  I had no answer to that.

  Scott spent several minutes hunting and said, “I don’t have a marriage.”

  “Who’s listed as the parents in the birth record?”

  “Huey and Ann Kemmler. If they were married, it wasn’t in St. Louis. It could have been in Timbuktu for all we know.”

  Back on Lindell Boulevard going west, after we passed Kingshighway with the Chase Park Plaza on our right, the landscape changed from urban ordinary to Forest Park on our left and the mansions of the city’s elite on our right. The address we wanted was on Lindell, a long half block east from the tree-shaded entrance to Washington University.

  We pulled into the driveway of a Tudor style mansion. Two vast wings spread out from a center arch. By the time I turned off the car and we walked to the door, a white car with the words security in beige emblazoned on the side cruised by on Lindell Boulevard at five miles an hour.

  A butler answered our knock. I said, “Mr. Grothchla from the Courier Tribune said he would call ahead.”

  The butler sniffed as if we’d just mentioned soiled toilet paper. “You are expected. Young Mister Kemmler is this way.” He led us across a marble foyer to a den with deep upholstered chairs in muted paisley patterns with an 18th-century Dutch mirror over a white fireplace, Italian paintings on the walls, and an Indian rug on the floor. I couldn’t tell if the sofa was an original Robert Kline velvet or a copy. On the wall to the right was an 18th-century Venetian console flanked by Louis XV armchairs. Photos covered one of the walls.

  Harold Kemmler was in his mid-twenties. He had a toothy smile, long blond hair, huge shoulders, and narrow hips. He grinned at us and shook our hands. “You guys are married.” He pointed to Scott. “I’ve seen you pitch all kinds of times.” He prattled on. “I never met Mr. Grotchla, but the paper was always nice to me.”

  Scott said, “I heard you had an injury. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Ripped apart my shoulder.” He shrugged. “It’s not as if I don’t have a lot of other opportunities in life.”

  The surroundings indicated that this must be so.

  “But how’s your injury?” Kemmler asked.

  “Getting better.”

  “You guys were in that shooting in Chicago. That must have been awful.”

  I said, “We were lucky.”

  Kemmler said, “I can’t imagine how frightening that must have been.”

  The butler coughed discreetly then entered with a tray filled with accoutrements for coffee. Kemmler thanked him and he left. As we sat, he served us.

  I said, “Mr. Grothchla said you might be able to help with some questions I had about your family.”

  “I wasn’t sure about that.”

  “I met Peter Fulham. He was also caught in the massacre. Do you know who he is?”

  “Some kind of old time baseball player? He played in St. Louis for a few years, maybe in the forties.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But that’s all I know about him.”

  “Mr. Fulham is trying to piece together memories from way back then. He’s in his nineties, and his memories are sometimes not what he’d like them to be. He’s asked us to help with research. It’s the baseball section from back then that you or someone in your family might know about. I think he knew someone in your family, Huey Kemmler.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Sure, my great grandfather, Huey. He died a way long time ago.”

  I pointed to the pictures on the wall. “Is your great grandfather in one of these?”

  The three of us stood and moved to get a closer look. I gazed at them. The earliest seemed to be at the top left and progressed through the years. A third of the way down there were men in World War I uniforms. Half way down they were in World War II uniforms. Just before World War II were pictures of groups of men in baseball uniforms.

  Kemmler pointed. “The last one on the right in the third row from the bottom. The one with all those bas
eball guys. My great grandpa is the kind of short one on the right.”

  I leaned in close. It was of a bunch of guys on a sandlot baseball field. And there was that damn belt buckle again on a very skinny young man who could have been Peter Fulham. He had his arm around the shoulder of the man next to him. That’s who Harold said was his great grandfather. I said, “I think the man next to your great grandfather might have been Peter Fulham.”

  Scott and Harold both leaned in close to look. Harold stood back and shrugged. “I guess it could be. We don’t have the names on all of these. My grandma went over them with me one time, but that was a while ago.”

  Scott said, “We found the birth notice for your grandfather in the papers, but we couldn’t find a marriage announcement for the parents.”

  “Yeah, see, that’s the thing. Great grandma and great grandpa weren’t married.”

  “But it had both their names as your parents.”

  “Great grandpa’s dad fixed that.” He glanced around the room. “Great grandma told me somebody deserved to.” He paused and shut his eyes for a few seconds thinking back. “I remember what she said exactly. Somebody ‘deserved to know the truth.’ She said something about doctoring marriage and birth certificates, just anything that needed to be fixed. We’ve had a lot of money for a long time. Huey’s dad squared it with the papers.”

  “Why’d they acknowledge the woman and the baby?”

  “They didn’t want scandal. They wanted everything hushed up. They wouldn’t countenance an abortion, if the subject ever came up. He was their only son. This was their only grandchild. It was before World War II. They knew her and her parents.” He swept his arm toward the windows. “They were neighbors. She was from what they called ‘old family stock’. Her parents threw her out. She had nowhere to go. They took in my great grandmother and pretended she and great grandpa Huey had been married. Great grandpa was always away with baseball, and so they made it up. He never had much of a career, and then he died before grandpa was born. It’s an old family scandal.”

  “Their social set must have noticed.”

  “I think it was one of those things that if you gave a plausible enough explanation everybody could pretend nothing bad had happened.”