A Long Fly Ball: Adventures of Lisa Fuls, #2

A LONG FLY BALL

By Alan Jenkins

A Long Fly Ball copyright © 2017 by Alan Jenkins.  All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover designed by:

Beth Basista

techni-graphicsinc.com

Beth Basista Paintings

Reviews of Author’s Prior Book, $TEEL DREAM$:

Steel Dreams represents a combination of solid storytelling and intense archival research. The Metro Monthly, Youngstown, OH (Dec. 2009).

The story opens a window on early 20th century Youngstown ... an engrossing tale.  I wholeheartedly recommend this book. B. Magaziner, lawyer - Zanesville, OH

I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it hard to put it down. C. Tuttle, Senior VP, San Francisco, CA

An engrossing novel that left me wanting more!  K.C. Walker, Sales Manager, Roswell, GA

www.facebook.com/steeldreams

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

Three Cities

Looking For Work

A Tempting Diversion

Captain Richard Allgood

Two Beauties in an Old Model T

Fresh Produce on the Strip

Shantytown

Striker

Public Enemy No. 1

Three Soldiers in a Diner

Thirty Dollars

Baseball at Greenlee Stadium

Dancing at the Crawford Grill

Burnt Fabric

PART TWO

Back Home

Sunlight on the Tionesta

Back Against the Wall

A Frustrated Cop

A Riddle

Time For Some Research

Dizzy and Satch

Lost in the Woods

Ellen’s Farm

Surrounded by the FBI

A Tricky Job

A Terrifying Day at Idora Park

Going in Circles

A Crate of Guns and Ammo

Setting the Trap

Waiting in the Dark

Chipped Chopped Ham and Vernor’s Ginger Ale

Father Cox

Loose Ends

Playing the Numbers

Mayor McNair

Taking Action

Cops on the Take

Stirring up Trouble

Going For a Ride

A Leninist in Youngstown

Shots in the Dark

Blood Everywhere

Where Am I?

Some Answers

Some Questions

PART THREE

Riding With the Lone Ranger

Talking to the Boss

The Family Business

In the Crosshairs

Above the Allegheny

Much Appreciation

A Tasty Sandwich and Pop

Many Plans

Plan B

More Shots in the Dark

Underwater, Sinking

Cleaning up a Mess

Tracking Down Answers

Very Dangerous Territory

Staring Into the Flames

Right Out of the Park

Rain, Sleet and Snow

EPILOG

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS and AUTHOR’s NOTE

INTRODUCTION

By the time World War I ended in 1918, the 130-mile stretch from Cleveland, Ohio to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania had developed into the industrial heart of America.  The wealth of jobs attracted potential workers from around the world.  Cleveland stood at one end of this stretch.  Well-situated on Lake Erie shipping lanes and key rail lines, Cleveland became an important manufacturing, refining and shipping center.  Its population in 1930 had grown nearly six-fold in the prior 50 years to almost one million people making Cleveland the sixth largest city in the United States.  Pittsburgh stood at the other end of this stretch.  Situated at the junction of three important rivers that ultimately fed into the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico, Pittsburgh had quadrupled in size since 1880 and stood as the nation’s tenth largest city.  And midway between these two cities stood Youngstown, Ohio.  Its burgeoning steel industry had allowed Youngstown to grow even faster than Cleveland and Pittsburgh.  By the 1930 census, Youngstown’s population had risen to 170,000, up 30 percent from 10 years earlier, and a full 12 times larger than its population had been just a half century before.

But the fall of 1934 marked the fourth anniversary of the stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression, which had hammered U.S. manufacturing.  To protect American jobs, the U.S. government slapped high tariffs on imports, but that provoked a similar response from other countries crippling the ability of American manufacturers to compete overseas.  Meanwhile, over-extension of credit during the Roaring Twenties left lenders in a precarious position once the economy slowed and stock valuations dropped.  Banks closed across the country and millions of depositors lost their life savings.  The cycle fed itself and many ill-conceived government policies sped up the cycle instead of slowing it down.  U.S. manufacturing was cut in half and production at Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel plants plummeted from 100 percent capacity in 1929 to 14 percent in 1932.  Unemployment, homelessness and despair followed.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took office and assured Americans that better days were ahead.  And indeed, the economy stabilized somewhat.  Nevertheless, unemployment stubbornly remained above 20 percent.  For certain segments of the population, the situation was even worse.  Ten percent of Americans were African Americans, hundreds of thousands of whom had followed job growth north during the first part of the 20th century.  But when manufacturing output plummeted, African Americans were often the first to be fired and the last to be rehired.  As a result, perhaps half of all eligible African American workers in urban areas were unemployed.

And yet as bleak as things were, and perhaps because things were so bleak, American culture flourished.  The 1930s began in the Golden Era of Radio.  Americans crowded around their radios to hear the rhythmic beat of bands led by Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Count Basie, as well as the comforting sound of Franklin D. Roosevelt promising that better days were just ahead.  The 1930s ended in the Golden Age of film-making.  Americans couldn’t get enough of the new talking films whose quality steadily improved through the decade.  Stars like Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, Joan Crawford and Jimmy Stewart headlined cinema boards.  Americans also couldn’t get enough of sports.  Lou Gehrig, Dizzy Dean, Satchel Paige, Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski and Joe Louis thrilled Americans on the baseball field, on the football field and in the boxing ring.  In the Great Depression, life moved on.

PART ONE

Three Cities

Lisa Fuls Jones smiled contentedly as David’s right arm wrapped gently across her bare breasts.  She nestled her hips closer into the warm fold of her husband’s body and pressed the soles of her cool feet against his legs.  With David in her bed and their young son Daniel asleep in the next room of their home in Cleveland, Lisa had all she wanted.   Tomorrow they might have to face rising bills and shrinking income, but not tonight.  Tonight, Lisa had the warmth of the man she loved and the joy of knowing their young son slept peacefully, oblivious to the world's problems.  Fatigued from a long day (and the night’s lovemaking), Lisa fought off sleep to make the moment linger as long as it could.  But finally, comfort and contentment wrapped her senses and carried them away.

A hundred miles away from Cleveland, a man known to his associates only as Striker sat in near darkness.  He tapped the end of a smoldering cigarette into an empty glass.  From the flat he rented on Troy Hill in Pittsburgh, Striker stared across the Allegheny River at the sprawl of the Strip and the Hill district.  The lights were on at Greenlee Field on Bedford, where Josh Gibson and the Crawfords had just finished a night baseball game.  In Striker’s mind, the Strip - with its produce stands and shantytown - and the Hill - with its jazz bars and baseball - were the heart of Pittsburgh.  There, the unemployed and marginally employed forged a life from the most meager material.  The steel mills and the commerce buildings downtown and to the right of Striker’s gaze - that’s where the real crooks were, extracting profits from men and earth before casting them both onto the scrap heap.  Tomorrow his team would strike back against the money-grabbers.  Striker went over the plan once more.  He couldn’t think of anything wrong with it.  But no plan could overcome the randomness of the universe, and so he fretted and tapped more ash into the glass.

At the same time, halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Sam Whetstone stood in blood-splattered shoes next to a bullet-riddled body.  Whetstone had barely seen the body in the dim light in the warehouse district on the west side of Youngstown, Ohio.  Now he wondered whether he should see if there was a wallet with money on the body.  He could use some dough.  But before he could make up his mind, a harsh voice roared in the night, chilling the sweat streaming down his back.  Stay right where you are and raise your hands to the sky or you’ll end up the same way.  Three hours later at the city police station, Whetstone was still sweating while he waited to be interrogated by police captain Dick Allgood. He had ample reason to sweat.  Being caught red-shoed at the scene of a grisly killing, when combined with a prior conviction for assault and battery, added up to serious trouble.  It didn’t matter that the blood was from a rabbit Whetstone had butchered earlier that night.  And it didn’t matter that he had only been walking toward the scene when the killing occurred.  As he figured it, those two good facts didn’t stand much chance of offsetting the two bad facts.  Allgood had locked Whetstone up for two years on the assault charge with a lot less evidence.  The veteran police captain could make this stick if he wanted and send Whetstone away for a long time.  What rotten luck.  For his part, Allgood knew what Whetstone was thinking, and made him sweat even longer.  He liked his fruit ripe before he picked it.

Looking For Work

The next day, Lisa Fuls Jones dialed her old boss at the Youngstown Vindicator, Ron Walzer.  Four years before, Lisa had reported for the Vindicator – first on the society pages and then on the great merger trial in Youngstown that had captivated the nation in 1930.  Walzer had to fire Lisa after she was caught by police in a sting at a local speakeasy.  But he would have let her go anyway because of the sinking economy.  News of the surprising merger of Bethlehem Steel and Youngstown Sheet & Tube and the trial that ensued had kept the newspaper companies afloat through the first year of the Depression.  But it was now 1934.  Those spirited days had floated far downriver, replaced by the continued gloom of the greatest depression the country had known.

Lisa, what a wonderful surprise!  Despite letting her go, Lisa was one of Walzer’s favorites.  She had more personality than five other reporters combined.  And somehow or other, she always got a story.  What do you need?

Now why can’t I just call my favorite boss and chat?

Walzer chuckled.  He knew Lisa had only lasted at one job, and not for long at that.  And so, that also made him her least favorite boss.  But he liked the sound of favorite boss better.  I guess not hearing from you for over three years tips me off.

That’s funny, my phone has a receiver too and I don’t remember hearing it ring all these long years either.  Anyway, since you intend to be hard on me, here’s the bottom line.  Work’s been slow for David at the firm.  Although he still puts in a lot of hours, they’re really only paying him for part-time work.  So with three mouths to feed, I figured I’d see if there is any freelance work available.

Lisa, I’m afraid I get calls all the time for the same thing.  And I don’t have a budget to do anything.

"So if I stumble across a real hot story I should just send it to the Telegram or Plain Dealer instead of to you?"

Wait a minute, I didn’t say that.  Of course you should send it to me and I’ll see what I can do.  I just mean I don’t have anything set up and can’t guarantee anything.  He drummed a pencil on his desk and Lisa waited.  She had a lot of experience with Walzer, a good man but he took a while to get into gear.  Finally, Walzer swiveled his chair around so his back was to the door and lowered his voice as if he had secret information: Lisa, between you and me, I hear the emergency relief folks are investigating fraud on relief checks.  They might have some government money for somebody who can get to the bottom of things, and I’d be happy to give you a good reference. It may not be much but that’s all that comes to mind.

Lisa jotted down the phone number Walzer had given her and replied: Well boss, thinking fast was never your strong suit and that’s helped you survive when so many have not.  I appreciate the tip.

When Walzer hung up the phone, he still wasn’t sure whether Lisa had complimented him or taken a swipe at him.  He had forgotten how easily Lisa could get him off-balance.  He shook his head, chuckled again, and went back to editing the evening edition.

A Tempting Diversion

The same morning, a driver stepped out of a ’29 Model A Ford and checked his watch.  When it was precisely 11 AM, he nodded his head indicating that Joey Tepsick should get moving.  Tepsick walked quickly into the train station near Bethlehem Steel’s Lackawanna plant in western New York.  The wind off Lake Erie caused Tepsick to press his hat down to keep it from blowing off his head.  Striker had told Tepsick the 11:05 would carry a money bag for delivery to Bethlehem’s administrative office.  How Striker knew that, Tepsick couldn’t guess.  But Striker seemed to know everything.  And yet, in two or three years of working with Striker, Tepsick knew almost nothing about Striker – not where he lived, anything about his past, nor even his real name.  All Tepsick knew was that Striker’s plans worked.  As a result, Tepsick made money and stayed out of jail.

Tepsick spotted the unloading point and glanced quickly about for guards.  Just as he had been told, there were four of them, two at the unload point and two outside the depot office.  In minutes, the train arrived and its wheels ground to a stop.  At that same moment, a gorgeous blonde in a flattering sky blue dress sauntered across the station.  Her dress gently swept up to reveal a glimpse of long, smooth, perfect legs.  Every eye in the station latched onto her, an incongruous but pleasing sight in the sooty mill station.  She walked ever so slowly past the two guards that stood near the train and stopped to adjust a small flowered hat that accented her blonde hair.  Chuckling at Striker’s latest creation, Tepsick slipped to the other side of the guards and onto the train. They were admiring the view and didn’t notice him.  Once on board, Tepsick stepped ahead to the mail car where a Pinkerton guard waited, also momentarily distracted by the blonde outside the car window.  She stopped to apply a fresh cover of rose red lipstick to a pair of tempting lips before continuing her slow, seductive stroll across the station.

Inside the train, Tepsick smacked the guard’s shoulder.  McAninch, get your mind on your job and give me the dough.  The guard handed Tepsick a small mail bag and a change of clothes that Tepsick hurriedly put on.  He then crouched down behind a pile of boxes.

As the blonde sauntered slowly away from the train and past the station office, the two guards outside the train came again to their senses, returned to their duty and boarded the train.  Looking left and right, the guards saw that all was in order and walked slowly to the mail car.  You got the bag? shouted one guard to McAninch.

Yep, right here.  But I ain’t handing it to you; it’s heavy and I don’t get paid to move bags.

Signing the receipt, the same guard laughed and said to his friend: You see what I mean by the lip on these guys?  They think because they ride the trains that they’re better than we are.  As the second guard stooped to pick up the heavy bag, the first guard suddenly said to McAninch: Hey, I thought this was Roy’s run today.  What happened to him?

McAninch’s heart beat faster but he responded coolly.  I dunno, I suppose he called in sick.  All’s I know is that I got stuck on this run and I’m missing tomorrow’s Pitt game.

Yep, Sutherland’s got them playing so well everybody’s almost forgotten about Pitt’s last coach, Pop Warner. I don’t think my Syracuse boys would match them this year.  Well, we’d better check this bag just to be sure.  McAninch’s heart almost jumped out of his chest but he made no move.

The first guard opened the bag, grabbed a stack of bills and flipped through it before throwing it back into the bag.  It would be counted later inside Bethlehem’s office.  Looks in order.  Sam, close it up while I sign the receipt, and let’s get moving.

Both McAninch and Tepsick breathed a sigh of relief as the two guards exited with the money bag.  Good thing Striker had us remove only part of the dough and leave the rest on top!  Just then the mailman arrived.  Tepsick, dressed now in the clothes of a train worker, was loading boxes onto a cart.  The mailman glanced at Tepsick who had his back turned while he lifted another box.  All the better – one less cart for me to load.   When the mail man headed toward the Bethlehem mailroom, Tepsick winked at McAninch and pushed the cart of boxes toward the train car door.   When no one was looking, Tepsick removed a mailbag from between the boxes and headed out a side door to where the Model A was waiting for him.  By the time Bethlehem office personnel counted the money and found a discrepancy, Tepsick was long gone, as was the blonde.

Captain Richard Allgood

Captain Richard Allgood walked past the Mahoning County Courthouse and onto Boardman Street.  It was a beautiful late summer day in Youngstown, Ohio, the clouds giant and puffy.  And for once, the air was relatively clear of the heavy sulfur smell from the steel mills. The mills were operating at only 25 percent capacity, although that was twice what they had been doing in ’32.  Allgood lifted his police hat and brushed his hand back over the remainder of what had once been a fine head of brown hair.  Allgood had been on the beat in Youngstown for 20 years, 4 before the Great War and 16 more since returning from the trenches of northern France.  He survived the new fiends of war – machine guns, nerve gas and barbed wire – as well as the old fiends - bayonets, bombs and disease.  He did so by being careful, lucky, and ruthless.  Most of his friends hadn’t been as careful, lucky or ruthless, and didn’t survive.  The lesson wasn’t lost on Allgood.  Returning to Youngstown, the job Allgood thought he could still handle best was being a cop.  And he wasn’t wrong.  Over the years, Allgood’s superiors recognized that Allgood’s best quality was that he was dependable.  He wouldn’t run ahead and try and score the big arrest or big headline.  But if a tough job needed done, Allgood would do it, no questions asked.  And if he strayed across the line to do the job, Allgood wouldn’t be asked about that either.

Allgood was in his element during the labor unrest following the end of the War.  As the war machine turned off, industrial production plummeted, as did employment.  Workers had streamed to the Midwest from the South or Europe to meet surging work orders during the war.  This made the steel region the fastest growing region in the country.  And those workers still wanted to work after the war.  But so did all the soldiers returning from war.  There weren’t enough jobs for all of them and that fueled strife.  Richard Allgood didn’t mind cracking a few heads to restore order.  It was child’s play compared to the trenches.  Eventually the unrest subsided and steel began to be produced for automobiles and bridges instead of army vehicles and bombs.  Prohibition took center stage, and police work became more complicated.  But Allgood found a smart cop could make ten times as much keeping the peace for a crime family while still keeping general law and order in the city.  Sure, a few people might get hurt in the process but overall, people wanted booze and good times and getting them kept things more peaceful.  That’s what Allgood thought, when he thought about it at all.  For him there was one rule: survive.  It worked in the trenches and it worked in Youngstown.

Today, Allgood was thinking about the interrogation he had done of a two-bit crook the night before.  Allgood didn’t care about Whetstone.  He wasn’t worth the time of day.  Besides, Allgood knew Whetstone had nothing to do with last night’s killing.  A hit man from a family that paid Allgood to overlook its activities had collected a debt and protected its business.  The dead man paying the debt in blood wouldn’t attract anyone’s sympathy.  But the blood on Whetstone’s shoes had given Allgood an unexpected opportunity to turn Whetstone into an asset.  How he’d use him, the captain wasn’t yet sure; but he certainly would.  Whetstone had nearly wet his pants when Allgood had read him the riot act and shown him what trouble he was in.  Finally, to Whetstone’s astonishment, Allgood had let him go.  But he did so only after telling him he’d better stay in town and wait to return the favor to Allgood.  Whetstone had walked down the station steps with nothing on his feet but drops of cold sweat.  The shoes remained as evidence – in case Allgood needed it.

Allgood walked into Ferranti’s Downtown.  A man at the counter hurriedly vacated his seat, slapped some coins onto the counter and walked quickly away.  A group of lawyers looked up from their table in the corner.  So did a few mill workers who had finished the first shift and come in for a bite before catching a transfer bus home from downtown.  Ferranti’s served a meal of spaghetti and meatballs washed down with a glass of 3.2 beer, all for 40 cents.   Prohibition had ended the past December, and that suited the mill workers.  It was some consolation for fewer hours and less pay.

Allgood wasn’t there to eat.  He wanted to see the owner.  Where’s Jimmy? Allgood growled at the waitress.

"He’s not here.