“It coulda gone either way. The Hun coulda knocked the dude on his ass. But, by then, you know, Hun was feelin’ no pain. So he takes the dude in like a long-lost buddy. Even buys him a drink. God, Lieutenant, you’da thought the dude had died and gone to heaven.
“Next thing I know, the Hun is tellin’ this guy about his swank apartment in Detroit. The dude is, like, lappin’ it all up. But, Hun says, the only problem with this apartment is it’s got rats. ‘Can you imagine that?’ says Hun. ‘Payin’ all that money and havin’ to put up with rats!’
“‘Funny thing,’ says this dude. He happens to be, like, I think he said, something like a county agent for the state Department of Agriculture. He handles this poison that is just made for rodents: strychnine. Gets it from someplace in New York. Comes as some sorta chemical compound. They turn it into liquid form, pour it on bait, use it for, like, ground squirrels. Promised he would send the Hun some.
“Basically, Lieutenant, that’s how he got it: from some dude in Texas who could handle it legally.”
The interrogation was drawing to a close. No, Hoffer could not say for sure who else knew the strychnine was in the apartment. But he was pretty sure the others in the discussion group knew. As he recalled, Hunsinger had mentioned it once when they met at his apartment.
“One final thing,” said Ewing, “can you account for your time yesterday? Don’t leave any large unverifiable gaps, if you can help it.”
Did they imagine it, or did Hoffer seem to blanch? “Well, basically, I’m gonna have to start with a gap. See, I, like, got up about six-thirty. I tried not to wake my wife, and I don’t think I did. Then, after I got ready, I stopped off at church for a while, to, like, pray for good luck in the game.”
“You went to St. Anselm’s?” Ewing asked. He glanced at Koesler, who seemed surprised.
Hoffer nodded.
“What time was that?”
“It was about seven.”
“But, Kit,” said Koesler, “we don’t have early Mass until eight o’clock.”
“I know, Father, but the janitor opens the church just before seven. And I stopped in just to pray for good luck.”
“Did anyone see you there?”
“Afraid not. Wasn’t anybody around that early. The janitor just opens up and leaves.”
“He goes on his rounds checking all the other buildings,” Koesler corroborated.
“So then what happened?” asked Ewing.
“Well, after I got done praying, I left for the Pontiac Inn. But I misjudged the timing. I got there about eight- thirty, quarter to nine. I got the hell bawled out of me and, like, I woulda got it worse except Bobby Cobb was late too. He didn’t arrive until a little after nine. And he woulda got it worse than he did ’cept he’s one of the team’s pheenoms.”
“How about the rest of your day?”
“Well, there was the meal and taping and trip to the stadium and the game with the rest of the team and all. Then, you know, after the game I went with my wife to dinner with some friends. Then, like, the wife and I went home.”
“But there’s no one to attest for your time until eight-thirty or eight-forty-five. Which means you got to the hotel up to forty-five minutes after the rest of the team, after Hunsinger.”
“Excepting for Bobby Cobb.”
“Except Cobb.”
“That’s about it, Lieutenant.”
“One more thing,” Harris added. “Hunsinger’s death, it sort of opens the way for you, doesn’t it?”
Hoffer lowered his head. “Lieutenant, it’s a cryin’ shame that the Hun is, you know, dead. And I’m sorry it happened. But I guess you’d have to say that I, like, got lucky for a change.”
They advised Hoffer there would probably be more questions, then left to locate Cobb. If nothing else on the surface made Hunsinger’s death of interest to Cobb, there was that hour’s tardiness that might prove interesting.
As they walked down the tunnel toward the Cougars’ locker room, Koesler said, “That’s odd, Kit stopping in church the morning of the game.”
“What’s odd about it, Father?” Ewing asked.
“Just that Kit and his wife were at the four-thirty afternoon Mass on Saturday. That satisfied his obligation to attend church on Sunday. Catholics, generally can be depended on to attend Mass once on the weekend. And that generally is about how often they are involved in formal prayer of petition. I would expect Kit to pray for victory and survival when he attended Mass on Saturday. I wouldn’t expect him to repeat the process the next day, just because it was Sunday.”
“Are you sure he was there Saturday afternoon?” Harris asked.
Koesler chuckled. “I’d have to be blind to miss that hulk in church.”
That Koznicki and his hunches, Harris thought approvingly; having Koesler along is cutting neat corners on this investigation.
On June 11, 1963, Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama, attempting to bar two black students from registering. Governor Wallace proved himself no prophet by promising, “Segregation Forever! Integration Never!”
Years later, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, urging blacks to make optimal use of educational opportunities, and in allusion to Mr. Wallace’s symbolic blockade, observed, “Nobody is standing in the schoolhouse door now.”
Quite independently of the Reverend Mr. Jackson’s observation, Robert Leland Cobb spontaneously reached the same conclusion.
Born in 1956 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Cobb grew up in that city. His father taught English in Kalamazoo High. His mother was a homemaker. He was an only child.
From the beginning of his conscious life, he was essentially an introvert. As early as possible, his parents introduced him to the joys of reading. He took to literature quite naturally and readily. His love of reading, together with a contemplative bent, prompted him to measure his world with precocious maturity.
It did not take him long to experience and learn what it meant to be black in an essentially white town. For a small city, Kalamazoo was heavy with institutions of higher learning: Nazareth College, Kalamazoo College, Western Michigan University. There were an unusual number of hospitals and schools of nursing. It was almost literally worth one’s life to find a mere general practitioner; most medical doctors were specialists. The Upjohn Company was so objectively large and significant it was practically the only game in town.
When little Bobby Cobb first understood the significance of being black-skinned, he was uncertain what to do about it. This deferral of judgment set a pattern in his life. Seldom would he act precipitately.
Although neither of his parents was particularly large, Bobby gave every promise of becoming a giant of a man. His father could trace this promising physical development to his paternal grandfather, a onetime slave whose feats of strength were storied.
In keeping with his father’s respected position in the community, Bobby’s family lived in the comfortable northwest section of Kalamazoo. They were about the only blacks living in that area.
Bobby observed that as time passed and he grew to be so much larger and stronger than his friends and schoolmates, he became more accepted. Even those with racist tendencies treated him with a certain civility, even deference. It did not much matter to Bobby that their attitude might spring from fear. In any case, Bobby’s polite articulateness won him acceptance in the homes of his white friends.
Jackie Robinson’s years as major league baseball’s first black player were gone long before Bobby’s time. But, unlike so many of his contemporaries who knew nothing of what had preceded them, Bobby learned everything he could about Robinson, and also about Paul Robeson, the black athlete who had earned letters and a law degree at Rutgers and had gone on to electrify the world as singer, actor, and activist.
Cobb was good at sports, very good. And he would get better. If he applied himself assiduously, he could become a professional athlete, probably in the football arena. At that point, he could do as many of his brothers had: carve out an athletic career and have nothing to turn to when age put him on the shelf. But no, that would not be for Bobby; he lived, and would live, in a white man’s world. And no amount of blackspeak or adopting of African names would change that fact.
His athletic ability easily would win him a scholarship to most any university of his choice. Under normal
