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.