Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“Then trade me,” he said.

The words surprised him. They definitely surprised Johnny Igoe and Harry Frazee. Babe stared back into Frazee’s face, let him see a resolve that appeared (Babe hoped) twice as strong because of the effort it took to contain the fear that lay behind it.

“Or, you know what?” Babe said. “Maybe I’ll just retire.”

“And do what?” Frazee shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“Johnny,” Babe said.

Johnny Igoe cleared his throat again. “Gidge has been approached by various parties who believe he has a big future on the stage or in the flickers.”

“An actor, ” Frazee said.

“Or a boxer,” Johnny Igoe said. “We’re fielding a lot of offers from them quarters as well, Mr. Frazee.”

Frazee laughed. Actually laughed. It was a short, donkey-bray of a sound. He rolled his eyes. “If I had a nickel for every time an actor tried to hold me up with stories of other offers during the middle of a show’s run, why, I’d own my own country by now.” His dark eyes glittered. “You’ll honor your contract.” He took a cigar from the humidor on his desk, snipped the end, and pointed the cigar at Ruth. “You work for me.”

“Not for coon wages, I don’t.” Babe stood and took his beaver-fur coat from the hook on the wall by Kat Lawson. He took Johnny’s, too, and tossed it across the room to him. Frazee lit his cigar and watched him. Babe put his coat on. He buttoned it up. Then he bent over Kat Lawson and gave her a loud smooch on the kisser.

“Always good to see you, doll.”

Kat looked shocked, like he’d run his hand over her Hoover or something.

“Let’s go, Johnny.”

Johnny walked toward the door, looking as shocked as Kat.

“You walk out that door,” Frazee said, “and I’ll see you in court, Gidge.”

“Then you’ll see me in court.” Babe shrugged. “Where you won’t see me, Harry ? Is in a fucking Red Sox uniform.”

In Manhattan, on February 22, officers of the NYPD Bomb Squad and agents of the Secret Service raided an apartment on Lexington Avenue where they arrested fourteen Spanish radicals of Grupo Pro Prensa and charged them with plotting the assassination of the president of the United States. The assassination had been planned for the following day in Boston, where President Wilson would arrive from Paris.

Mayor Peters had called for a city holiday to celebrate the president’s arrival and taken the necessary steps to hold a parade, even though the president’s route from Commonwealth Pier to the Copley Plaza Hotel was classified by the Secret Service. After the arrests in New York, every window in the city was ordered closed and federal agents armed with rifles lined the rooftops along Summer Street, Beacon, Charles, Arlington, Commonwealth Avenue, and Dartmouth Street.

Various reports had placed the location of Peters’s “secret” parade at City Hall, Pemberton Square, Sudbury Square, and Washington Street, but Ruth strolled up to the State House because that’s where everyone else seemed to be going. It wasn’t every day you got a chance to see a president, but he hoped if anyone ever tried to kill him someday, the powers that be would do a better job keeping his movements private. Wilson’s motorcade rolled up Park Street at the stroke of twelve and turned left onto Beacon at the State House. Across the street on the lawn of the Common, a bunch of bughouse suffragette dames burned their girdles and their corsets and even a few bras and shouted, “No vote, no citizenship! No vote, no citizenship!” as the smoke rose from the pyre and Wilson kept his eyes straight ahead. He was smaller than Ruth would have expected, thinner, too, as he rode in the back of an open-air sedan and waved stiffly to the crowd — one flick of the wrist to the left side of the street, one to the right, back to the left again, his eyes never making contact with anything but high windows and treetops. Which was probably good for him, because Ruth saw a dense mob of rough-looking, grimy men being held back by police along the Joy Street entrance to the Common. Had to be thousands of these guys. They held up banners that identified them as the Lawrence Strike Parade and shouted obscenities at the president and the police as the coppers tried to push them back. Ruth chuckled as the suffragettes rushed behind the motorcade, still screaming about the vote, their legs bare and raw in the cold because they’d torched their bloomers, too. He crossed the street and passed their burning pile of clothing as the motorcade rode down Beacon. Halfway across the Common, he heard fearful shouts from the crowd and turned to see the Lawrence strikers going at it with the cops, lots of stumbling and awkward punches and voices pitched high with outrage.

I’ll be damned, Ruth thought. The whole world’s on strike.

The motorcade appeared in front of him, rolling slowly down Charles Street. He kept a leisurely pace as he followed it through the throngs while it snaked around the Public Garden and then along Commonwealth. He signed a few autographs as he went, shook a few hands, but it was nice how his celebrity diminished in light of much larger star power. Folks were less clamorous and clingy with him that afternoon, as if, in the bright sun cast by Wilson’s fame, Babe was just one of the common folk. He might be famous, but he wasn’t the reason rifles were pointing down at their heads. That was a mean kind of famous. His was a friendly kind of famous, a regular famous.

By the time Wilson climbed a podium in Copley Square, Babe had grown bored, though. The president might have been powerful and book-smart and all, but he sure didn’t know much about public speaking. You had to give them a show, a little razzle here and some dazzle there, tell a few jokes, make them think you took as much pleasure in their company as they did in yours. But Wilson looked tired up there, old, his voice a thin, reedy thing as he droned on about League-of-Nations this and new-world-order that and the great responsibilities that come with great might and great freedom. For all the big words and big ideas, he smelled of defeat, of something stale and weary and broken beyond fixing. Ruth worked his way out of the crowd and signed two more autographs on the fringe of it and then walked up Tremont and went looking for a steak.

He came home to his apartment a few hours later and found Harry Frazee waiting for him in the lobby. The doorman went back outside and Ruth pushed the button and stood by the brass doors of the elevator.

“I saw you at the president’s speech,” Frazee said. “I couldn’t reach you through the crowd.”

“Sure was thick,” Ruth said.

“If only our dear president knew how to play the press like you do, Mr. Ruth.”

Babe swallowed the smile that threatened to creep up his face. He had to hand it to Johnny Igoe on that one — Johnny had sent Babe out to orphanages and hospitals and old-lady homes, and the papers ate it up. Men had flown in from Los Angeles to give Babe screen tests, and Johnny talked up the offers he’d told Babe were coming in from the flickers business. Actually, just about the only thing that could have pushed Babe off the front pages this week was Wilson. Even the shooting of the Bavarian prime minister went under the fold when Babe’s deal to star in a short flicker called The Dough Kiss was announced. When reporters asked if he’d be going to spring training or not, Ruth kept saying the same thing, “If Mr. Frazee thinks I’m worthy of a fair wage, I’ll be there.”

Spring training was three weeks off.

Frazee cleared his throat. “I’ll meet your price.”

Babe turned and met Frazee’s eyes. Frazee gave him a curt nod.

“The papers have been drawn up. You can sign them at my office tomorrow morning.” Frazee gave him a thin smile. “You won this round, Mr. Ruth. Enjoy it.”