Shadows in the White City

CHAPTER 12

Dr. Jane Francis had fully recovered and had even managed to help with the cooking tonight. She now looked across the dinner table at her daughter, Gabrielle, whose sullen and somber mood over Audra and the other street children had only deepened. She barely touched her meal, and the mother in Dr. Francis could not help mentally comparing her daughter’s sheltered life to that of the homeless children of the streets, unable to do otherwise.

She theorized that in many ways the homeless children wore safer shields against evil than those who’d grown up like Gabby, under constant protection. The homeless, as sad as their plight was, were, in effect, more cautious and suspicious of others than those not living on the street, and this perhaps could keep them, at some distance from such predators as Leather Apron. But for how long?

As curiously logical as this theory was, Jane Francis wondered what this might portend. Was it just that the street kids were alert, more capable of smelling danger before it got hold of them? Perhaps. Again the fleeting thought, But for how long?

Jane studied the fine, graceful lines of her daughter’s countenance, so angelic, so lovely, so perfect in its French and Irish refinement. Like one of those dolls sold at the World’s Fair. For one so young and so Americanized as Gabby, she carried herself with a haughty self-esteem and an arrogance born of confidence, born of knowing who she was and what strengths she possessed and how intelligent she was and how sure of her future she felt-and most important that she was loved. Perhaps all her strength of character, indeed all her strengths, derived from this sure knowledge of unconditional and unequivocal love, showered on her daily. And yet she could be such a little brooder, as now, and a spoiler as when she was on the picket line with those insufferable suffragettes, shouting for equality for women. Yes, Gabby had been so sure of herself before, but today, the experience with Audra, seeing how other children lived, perhaps the nobler cause was beneath her nose all along and getting the vote seemed somehow less important to doing something for the homeless children in the overcrowded shelters. Then again, if women ever got the vote, would they use it for reform or for the same reasons men did? It was nearing thirty years now since American slaves had been given the right by legislators who saw a quick, dirty, and expedient use for a “black vote” during the Carpet Bagger years after the war. Would women only succeed in getting the vote if one or other of the National Parties deemed their numbers a way to gain the White House?

Jane felt she’d given Gabby all the advantages that a caring single mother could possibly provide in this so-called democracy that repressed the “weaker” sex on all fronts dealing with decision-making in law and government and business and medicine and education. Jane believed she’d done all in her power to shield Gabby from such realities. As a result, Gabby didn’t accept being boxed in by this man’s world. Now Gabby had seen children small, frail, and innocent in hopeless plight. How could Gabrielle Tewes share their pathos and their folklore with her colleagues at Rush Medical College, at Cook County, and on the suffragette front? What could a woman in American society in 1893 do about a damn thing? Then again…if women had the vote and enough trumpeted the cause of the indigent, homeless, and illiterate, perhaps one day women could effect sweeping changes in political priorities. Perhaps 1900 would see the suffragettes win equal rights for every woman. Now, that surely would be a Second Coming, now wouldn’t it, she thought, a sad half smile gracing her features now.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Gabby, who’d smelled the rich tea and joined Jane.

“You do? Surprise me, regale me with your powers, my sweet.”

“You’re thinking that you ought to’ve kept me from going with you down into the ghetto today; that you ought to’ve sheltered me from that, but Mother, I’m doing rounds at Cook County now on Dr. Fenger’s surgical staff, and in his morgue. I’ve seen terrible human suffering there. Amputees, TB, bursting hearts, swollen bodies. Why, I’ve even seen two victims of the Vanishings.”

“My God…what is Christian exposing you to?”

“Life…well, death…reality…whatever one care’s call it, it’s there at Cook County every day, every hour.”

“As I am well aware.” Jane drew in a deep breath and pushed her empty teacup aside. “Gabby, just know that I love you so much.”

Gabby reached a hand across and squeezed her mother’s. “I never realized just how protected and in luxury we are, able to afford the rent on this place, thinking of purchasing now that Dr. Tewes is raking in so much…but I do now. I also appreciate all that you and your Dr. Tewes have done for me, Mother.”

“Children shouldn’t have to spend a single night with hunger, cold, and discomfort gnawing at them, or have to create mythological underpinnings out of fear, need, and self-preservation, both physical and mental.”

“I wish there were something we could do for the children.”

“Perhaps we can start a fund…raise awareness. You could make it an offshoot of what the suffragettes do, maybe?”

“I will certainly propose it at our next meeting.”

Jane had long ago given up any opposition to Gabby’s participation in the suffragette cause, accepting her daughter’s wishes and opinions on the matter, rethinking it altogether again after today.

“Look, dear, we can’t allow a sense of guilt at our own comfort to overtake us either.”

“As we sit here eating a sumptuous meal in the warm glow of a fire and candle-lit table with music on the phonograph?” asked Gabby. “What have we to feel guilty about? Isn’t it the Chicago way? Every man, woman, and child for himself? And money is our religion?”

“Please, Gabby, I pray you’ll not become bitter and angry over this.”

“Frankly, I’d like to see the herd get a little bitter and angry over this.”

“The herd?”

“All of us, Mother, including the big shots, the politicians and the merchants, the mayor, the city councilmen. Why are such matters considered unworthy of serious attention by the men running this city?”

“They are rather busy making money, I am afraid.”

“It’s the dark underbelly of this place no one wants to take a hard look at, isn’t it?”

“Are you going to start a campaign? If you don’t, Gabby, who will? Jane Addams and other reformers like her need more people, but you have your studies, and now your rounds, and time in at the morgue, and atop that, you’ve taken a civilian job with the Chicago Police Department as some sort of researcher. So…when do you find time to interview with the likes of Jane Addams?”

“The woman is a saint, and perhaps I am not,” replied Gabby.

“Oh, but you are, dear, in your own way. You do so much good every day. Christian tells me he is so pleased to have you working with him.”

This was met by silence from Gabrielle Tewes.

A single word of mirth from my daughter, a half-smile please, Jane thought.

Gabby dropped her gaze; still said nothing. Finally, sobbing, she erupted, “It’s so…so sad…so strange but also so sad and…and awful.”

“It is sad and awful.”

They sat in silence, pouring more tea, sipping.

“How do you think things are going between you and Inspector Ransom?” Gabby asked, surprising Jane with such a departure.

“How indeed is that your business?” Jane smilingly replied.

“Well, it is conceivable, is it not, that one day I may be calling him Dah…or Daddy…or Father.”

“Wait up now! I might have something to say in all this, and I for one am not contemplating a holy union with the notorious Inspector Ransom.”

Gabby laughed. “Then some juicy unholy union is in mind?”

“Stop that this minute, young woman!”

The laughter spilling from the Tewes dining room wafted gently out over the evening breeze. In the gaslight glow below a streetlamp, young Audra stared at the Tewes home for only a moment longer before she turned and started away. Opposite side of the street, coming in her direction was none other than Bloody Mary. Audra darted ratlike from sight down a narrow passageway and through an alley. She located the deepest black recess and hid in shadow. Slinking to the ground, Audra grabbed some rosary beads given her by Danielle and she chanted, as in a mantra, one name. “Blue Lady, Blue Lady, Blue Lady keep me safe.”

Once finished relating to Philo Keane what Danielle, Robin, Audra, and the other children had imparted, Ransom downed the brandy that Philo had poured for him. Philo explained that the brandy manufacturer had hired him to do some photography for their advertisements of the product, and as partial payment, he had been given a case of the stuff-a suspect brew from another overnight company, this one calling itself Gray Jack Distillery, makers of fine sour mash whiskey right here in Chicago. Philo had been attracted by the terrible labeling job and advertising.

“What is it, like two days old?” asked Ransom after choking. “I predict it’ll win zero ribbons at the fair.”

“I’m unsure how long they’ve aged it, but it’s a modern miracle-mass produced to keep the price down for quick sale.”

“I’m sure, and violating between six and ten laws.”

Philo added, “I don’t expect them to remain in business long.”

“There oughta be a law against vile-tasting liquor,” Ransom said, wincing as he drank up. “So what do you think of my story of the children?”

“Dreadful…disgraceful…. As I recall, it tore William Stead up to see the little beggars about the streets when he was here writing his book.”

“‘Buggars,’ he called ’em. Any news on when that exposé of his will be published, if at all?”

“Who has the guts to publish a work so explosive? The very title itself-If Christ Came to Chicago is-”

“Intended to raise awareness,” finished Ransom. “And he was toying with a subtitle…”

“Really?”

“A Cold Day in Hell.” Alastair laughed. “Said Chicago was colder’n Russian Siberia so far as social consciousness was concerned.”

“I just know he spent a lot of time on the homeless and indigent problems we ‘natives’ ignored here for too long.”

“Still, you’ve skirted my question.”

“Which was?” asked Philo.

Alastair shifted in his seat. “In all of the discussion with the homeless children, what’ve I to show for my case?”

The two men were surrounded by leather, wood, and books, Philo’s phonograph softly playing a Viennese waltz. “I’ve a good mind to make you take me among these street urchins.”

“You?”

“Yes, to photograph them in their natural habitat.”

“Photograph them? What possible good could come of it? Certainly no one I know would pay you for-”

“You miss the point. It’d be for art not money, and maybe…perhaps, if I could get a showing at a gallery downtown, who knows…perhaps we can get Thom Carmichael to cover the gallery showing. Shed light on the problem.”

“I doubt it could happen. Not here.”

“You doubt everything, Rance. Even your own feelings about Jane Francis.”

“Look, now that you’ve heard it, tell me what you think. Do you think there could possibly be a connection between the street myths and the killer?”

Philo shook his head. “That’s right-change the subject.”

“You, sir, changed the subject! Now, back on track, please.”

“I couldn’t say for a certainty either way.”

“I need input on this damned Vanishings thing.” Again, if Dr. Fenger were not one of the conspirators, he’d have told Philo in a heartbeat about Kohler and Senator Chapman’s deal.

Philo finally settled into a chair opposite Ransom. His eyes narrowed, his face pinched, he took a long moment to respond, his hands opening and closing.

Alastair laughed. “Damn it, man, if I were interrogating you, I’d have to assume you are hiding something or guilty over some matter. Why so uncomfortable?”

“I find this so…so strangely coincidental.”

“How so, my friend?”

“A group of us artists in the city have recently discussed this very phenomena. Allandale Wolfson, in fact, has gathered some numbers.”

“The painter?”

“Yes, and as a result, I have formed some opinions, and these street religions you speak of are no surprise to me. Wolfson calls it polygenesis.”

“Poly-genesis as in many a Genesis?” Alastair asked.

“Precisely. Those few people in little cubby-holes inside colleges and universities who study folklore use the term for the simultaneous appearance of vivid, similar tales in far-flung locales.”

Alastair chewed on his lower lip and asked, “Are you referring, Professor Philo, to the similar themes running through all these homeless shelter stories?”

“Professor! That’s funny, Rance. However, it’s not similar but rather identical themes; and, yes, you’re correct.”

“Hmmm…” Ransom scratched at his chin. “The same overarching themes.”

“Each linking the myths of thirty-five homeless children in Cook County facilities alone; facilities operated by the Salvation Army. And we suspect other U.S. and Canadian city shelters also spawn like religions.”

“I’m impressed, professor.”

“These children…they range in age from six to twelve, and when asked what stories, if any, they believe about heaven and God, it’s nothing they’ve learned in formal religion or in any church.”

“So you are chronicling the folklore?”

“Most of these kids don’t write or don’t know how to write, so they are asked to draw pictures for their stories with chalk and slate.”

“I noticed they used the term spirit a lot.”

“It’s a biblical term for revenants, and they seldom to rarely use ‘ghost.’”

“Why is that?”

“Ghosts are for little kids, babies, not tough guys. Ghosts are not real to them. Not like spirits. Spirits are real and dangerous.”

“I see,” replied Alastair, digesting all of this.

“In their lexicon, they always use demon to denote wicked spirits.”

Alastair took a long moment to sip his refill of bad brandy, and to allow these facts to sink in. “Their folklore appears to cast them as comrades-in-arms, regardless of ethnicity.”

Philo stared long into Ransom’s Irish green eyes. “You are a quick student, Inspector, and I am amazed that you somehow made these skittish street kids comfortable enough to share their most guarded, secret stories with you. That is in itself no small feat, remarkable in fact.”

“Thank you, but it was Gabby and Jane who accomplished it.”

“Most people can get nothing from them without a significant bribe.”

“Sure…this is Chicago, and kids learn from adults.”

“For these kids, the secret stories do more than explain the mystifying universe.”

“I see.”

“Do you? They impose meaning upon the world in the telling and retelling of the stories.”

“Story has power, always has,” Ransom mused. “And this gives purpose to their lives.”

“You’ve got it.”

“I do?”

“As you’ve learned, this unusual belief system is cherished by white, black, Ukrainian, Polish, Portuguese, and Latin children, for the homeless youngsters see themselves as outgunned allies of the valiant angels in their battle against shared spiritual adversaries.”

“Not too terribly different from African-American folklore and songs, created right through the horrors of slavery, heh?” suggested Alastair.

“Now you catch on.”

“Bravo to the student.”

Philo grew serious again. “Folktales are the only work of beauty a displaced people can keep,” he explained. “And their power transcends class and race lines, because they address emotional questions.”

“What kind of questions?” asked Ransom.

“Questions like…well…like, why side with good-or even God-when evil-or this Zoroaster, that is, Satan-is winning-”

“-or willing to reward you immediately-this moment?”

“Preeecisely, Detective.”

“Yeah…I see what you mean. Our own lifestyles might be examples.” Ransom had lost his parents at an early age to an epidemic, and Philo had never known his father and had lost his mother to pneumonia.

Philo then shrugged and sipped at his drink. “Here is what the children of the street think, Alastair, if you wish to know.”

“I do. Go on.”

“If I’m homeless, and I am killed, how then can I make my life resonate beyond the grave?”

“You make it sound like a sense of mission,” countered Ransom.

“Damn it, it is a mission for them!”

“Some would say that is ridiculous. These kids know what’s what. They know they’re making up shit as they go.”

“This shit, as you call it, keeps them anchored, Inspector Ransom. You’re likely familiar with Cajun beliefs, right? Superstitions out of Barbados? Haiti? West Virginia coal mines? Alastair, a belief system and a culture is necessary to well-being. It provides a sense of mission.”

“I agree but I am also reminded daily of reality-what our own religious leaders push along with the merchants and money men of this city.”

“Fools. Look at it this way, these kids have nothing but their beliefs, and their beliefs may explain why some children in crisis-and perhaps the adults they become-are brave, decent, and imaginative, while others more privileged”-Philo thought of someone he knew-“can be callous, mean-spirited, and mediocre, and lacking any sense of mission.”

Alastair only now realized that Philo spoke from experience, and in a moment of realization, Philo saw that Alastair knew this. Alastair said, “I grew up here in inner-city Chicago, Philo, and let me tell you, there was very little sign of God on the landscape then as now.”

“Same in Montreal where I grew up, but I wish I’d had half what these kids had in the way of a spiritual leaning or anchor.”

Alastair nodded. “I begin to see.” A series of words flashed through his mind: homeless, violence, death, commonplace. “Often highly advantageous to grovel before the powerful and shun the weak, and where adult rescuers are no place to be found.”

“Ahhh,” countered Philo Keane, “but the ability to grasp onto ideals larger than oneself and exert influence for good-a sense of mission-is nurtured in these eerie, beautiful, shelter folktales as sure as they were in Beowulf, which tales were encouragement to men to go out and slay dragons, giants, and beasts.”

Ransom sat silent a moment, his cane at his side. “I’m sorry, professor, but regardless of any good intentions you or I or our friends may have for the homeless, their numbers are just too great for us alone to make much of a dent, wouldn’t you say?”

Philo dismissed this, saying, “In any group that generates its own legends-whether in a business office, a police department, an agency like the Salvation Army, or a remote Amazonian village-the most articulate member becomes the semi-official keeper of the secrets. The same thing happens in homeless shelters. You’ve done well to gain even a temporary hold on these kids.”

“So this is what I was actually being told by the street children, that their secret stories lay down the rules of spiritual behavior.”

“The most verbally skilled children-such as this Robin and Danielle, and this Audra you describe-impart the secret stories to new arrivals. Ensuring that their truths survive regardless of their own fate. It’s a duty felt deeply by these children, including one ten-year-old chap I met named Myles. After confiding and illustrating secret stories on a slate for me, Myles created a self-portrait for me.”

“Really?”

“A gray charcoal drawn gravestone, meticulously and carefully rendered, inscribed with his own name and the year nineteen-o-six-thirteen years hence.”

“How sad…. Listen you must never relate this to Jane or to Gabby.”

Philo ignored this. “There is something more…something far more disturbing coming out of our few shelters, Alastair.” Philo absently knocked over his now empty glass.

“And what is that?”

“Well…simply put,” he began, righting the empty glass, “the children may have trusted you and Jane and Gabby, but only up to a point where they draw the line on first meetings.”

“I got that loud and clear.”

Philo raised a hand to silence his friend. “The bottom line in their theocracy, Alastair, is quite strange and disturbing.”

“Trust me. All of us have been disturbed by all this, especially young Gabby.”

“They did not get that far with you, so trust me! You’ve not yet heard the real disturbing stuff coming outta these kids.”

“Tell me, then.”

“As…as happens, there are Bloody Mary and the mother of Christ, Mary, but in essence they are one and the same.”

“One and the same? What are you saying?”

“Mary laid down with Satan to beget another child-”

“How blasphemous do you intend being, Keane?”

“Hold on! Don’t scream at the messenger! I’m only passing along the facts of reality according to the general belief of the shelter child.”

“Sorry…go on.”

“It’s become a tenet of their faith, Rance, that Satan’s child, born of Mary…not some stand-in but Mary Mother of God will carry on Zoroaster’s evil plans throughout eternity.”

“Such a horrid worldview.”

“Agreed, yet there is more and worse.”

“Worse than Mary pregnant with the Devil’s seed?”

“Worse, yes, since it was Mary herself who killed her son.”

Somewhere in the back of his head, Ransom seemed to recall how Bloody Mary in a drunk tank screamed out at him that she’d killed babies. “Killed Christ, you mean?”

“To replace him on the throne with Satan’s son, the Anti-Christ.”

“Damn…”

“And Mary abandoned God on His throne. In fact, it’s as always, that woman Eve did it-this woman betrayed not Adam but all of Heaven itself, showing and leading the way for Satan’s minions to overthrow God’s throne. A kind of Joan of Arc for the dark side, so to speak.”

“We didn’t hear any of this from the children, and it is so outlandish, Philo, that quite frankly, I’m not at all sure I believe you.”

“This is their secret of secrets. They trust no one in authority because of this; they know that no one wants to believe it! That no one will believe them. This is what they hold back. I can show you my documentation of this belief.” He began rummaging through a brown valise lying in a pile on a nearby table. “I have it all right here.”

Ransom examined Philo’s notes and looked closely at the boy in the photographs who had purportedly told Philo the secret of secrets among the homeless and shelter children. The smiling, grimy face looked familiar. It was Samuel, the boy who Ransom had paid to keep his eyes and ears open.

“It’s all such a perversion of Christianity.”

“I know. It’s the reason I’ve not shared it with anyone else, not Dr. Fenger, not Dr. Francis. It’s difficult for men like you and I to swallow, men of the world, so to speak, but a lady?”

Ransom took another drink and lit his pipe.

“Thought you were getting off tobacco-that cough of yours.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll quit again tomorrow.”

Philo returned to his subject, adding, “What this means to the average homeless child out there,” Philo paused and pointed out the window, “is that the forces traditionally in Heaven, all the powers of God’s throne overhead, are now under Satan’s hand. That we are in the midst of an apocalyptic war, and our angels are not only on the run and bedraggled but losing, and losing badly, and why are they losing? Largely because they are abandoned. Abandoned by an embittered God who has seen His son killed by his mother, who has slept with Satan to spawn-”

“The Anit-Christ, I see.”

“Sounds like enough to put God off His throne, but it also comes off as unbelievable balderdash.”

“Claptrap, drivel, tripe? Not to someone facing death on the streets in a daily battle to survive, and at the same time, remain good and pure.”

Shaken, Alastair returned the pages and photos offered up as evidence. “Philo, thank you for discussing this with me so openly.”

“Not at all. I am pleased someone is showing an interest in the shelter children.”

“You mean someone not wanting anything from them-especially their hides?”

“Someone in authority, you.”

“Haven’t seen you worked up over any cause ever, my friend. Have to tell you this takes me by surprise.”

“One can sink his teeth into this cause and get attached by the jaw,” replied Philo, his eyes alight with fervor.

Alastair instantly knew that Philo would one day create the photo array of the homeless he spoke of, but he wondered if anyone owning a gallery would support such a showing. He doubted it but would say nothing to quench Philo’s thirst for his plan. Not even William Stead with all of his contacts and influence as a correspondent for the London Times had made a dent, unable to get his book into print, so far as Alastair knew.

“Do what you can to end this predator’s life-the one they’re calling Leather Apron, will you, Alastair?”

“Count on it.”

“And I will do what I can to expose the city’s disgrace in all this.”

“It’s a pact.”

Ransom still felt that this mythology of the street children had little to nothing to do with his investigation, and now it’d interfered with his drink, his smoke, and his relaxation.

As if reading his thoughts, Philo said, “You always trust your first instinct, Alastair. What does it tell you?”

“Aye, I do trust myself…my intuition. Sometimes with your back to the wall, it’s all you have, and there is a bit of naggin’ about this Bloody Mary.”

“And in matters of the heart? How goes it with Jane? Has she put your back to the wall, yet?”

“Police investigation is easy compared to mysteries of the heart.”

“Perhaps, Alastair, you could remedy that.”

“Oh? And how’s that?”

“If you’d just tell Jane exactly how you feel about her, old man.”

Bosch got word to Ransom through Muldoon that the meeting between Ransom and the daughter of the seamstress, who’d been on hand during the Haymarket Riot, was set. The inspector must go to the lady. Bosch supplied the time and place, an address in the worst part of the city, a place infested with the flotsam of human life here in Chicago. There were more homeless and destitute on the streets in Hair Trigger Alley than in all the rest of the city combined. Oddly, it would seem to be the easiest and best hunting grounds for Leather Apron or anyone wishing to abduct a child, but this had not been the case; in fact, this was the only area in the city where children suspected of being victims of this maniac had remained untouched. Something to be said for street smarts and street myths, Ransom thought.

As Ransom moved among the crowds here, as he took one alleyway to gain another while searching out the address, he theorized that homeless people-especially those on the street for any length of time-had developed street savvy: the intuition and instinct to respect their own first impulse, to pay heed to their first fear. As a result, in a sense, such people, men, women, and children, knew who was and who was not violent, who was and who was not dangerous, who was and who was not conning them. Like an evolved animal in the wild, an “evolved” street-smart person’s intuition and experience might well have kept a whole segment of the city safe from Leather Apron.

Ransom’s cane announced his approach, when another cane tapped out a familiar rhythm as well, its noise in syncopation with his own. It was Henry Bosch’s wooden peg leg-the reason others rudely called him Dot ’n’ Carry. But what was the old fool doing here, now, in the dark courtyard?

“Bosch? What’re you-”

“Get out of here!” Bosch shouted across to Ransom. “It’s all a setup!”

“Setup?”

“Just go, quickly!”

Ransom instead grabbed Bosch by his lapels. “What’s really going on here, Bosch!”

“Kohler!”

The single name said it all. Kohler had set him up for an assassin’s bullet. Ransom pulled out his gun and somehow managed to hold on to the squirming Bosch, who pleaded to let him go. Bosch added, “Soon as I figured it a hoax, I came rushin’ to warn you!”

“How much did Kohler pay you, Bosch?”

“All right, I took money from him, but only to keep tabs on you, Inspector. I never knew he meant to cut you down!”

A shot rang out, the bullet ripping a hole in Alastair’s coat where it flapped in a sudden breeze. A second shot followed immediately, and its thunderous result came so close to Alastair’s ear that he dropped to the dirty unpaved alleyway, letting go of Bosch in the process. He looked to his right to find Henry Bosch’s form disappearing over a fence, and it made him wonder how agile the old veteran was, peg leg, cane, and all.

Alastair lay in a mud puddle, imagining dying here in Hair Trigger Alley, a perfect cover for Kohler’s plot, for if he were to die here as the result of a gunshot, any number of scenarios could be brought to bear as to why. What was Inspector Ransom doing here alone and without backup? Without telling his superiors of his purpose in a known danger zone? How many enemies did Inspector Ransom have in Chicago? How many secret deals had Alastair Ransom brokered? Had one come back to bite him in the ass? These theories of his assassination would go on unsolved forever, or until Chicago simply forgot the existence of one Alastair Ransom.

Such thoughts fueled his anger, but the notion that Nathan Kohler would live on and benefit from his disappearance truly fueled his desire to see this night out, and to see Nathan Kohler again at his earliest convenience. While all he had to go on was Henry Bosch’s word that Kohler had set him up for murder this night, Ransom did not doubt it.

Another bullet pierced the earth in front of his eyes, and too late he turned his head away. Eyes stinging with dirt, unable to see clearly into the deep shadows and recesses of doorways and stairways and wooden fire escapes, Alastair could locate no one, and mysteriously, the entire area in all directions had become deserted. Three shots had come so suddenly that he’d not seen the source or direction, but from the result, each hitting so close, he surmised the approximate direction. He rolled over and crawled to prop himself against a trash can, paper and debris raining round him. Another second and a fourth bullet hit the can, opening a hole beside him.

“Damn it!” he cursed, lifted and fired into a black hole ahead of him, then dropped behind cover again. Alastair knew it’d be the height of luck to actually hit someone, but as luck would have it, his single shot resulted in a cry. Someone was hit.

Alastair carefully inched his way to a standing position. There could well be two assassins as one, and the one he hit could still be alert enough to fire again. Alastair called out, “Chicago Police! Drop your weapon or I fire again!” As he did so, he walked, cane in one hand, gun in the other, searching the blackness of the hole into which the man he’d shot had fallen.

When he got within inches, he saw the man’s hand reaching for the revolver he’d used, his fingers twitching, slithering still toward the weapon, still wanting only one thing-to kill Alastair Ransom. Ransom’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness here, and people had begun materializing all around him, some shouting for police. Several uniformed cops rushed in with handheld lanterns, but even before the light hit the assassin, Ransom knew who he was: Elias Jervis. The slimy snake bastard.

Elias Jervis was Polly “Merielle” Pete’s former boyfriend and, when the need arose, pimp. Watching the bottom-feeder die brought back images of the spoiled dove, whom Alastair had for a time loved. He’d desperately tried to clean her up after he’d cheated and “won” her in a card game during which he goaded Jervis to wager her “contract.” After “winning her over,” he’d made a show of burning the contract before witnesses, and his bravado intrigued Polly, a vivacious and wild woman. Alastair had then set himself the task of helping her get clean and clearheaded, so she might make something of herself. Meanwhile, he used her and she used him until he lost her to the murdering Phantom-that weasel, Denton.

Alastair now wondered if Jervis’s motive for taking Ransom’s life had to do with jealousy and Polly, or that Elias harbored the belief that Alastair’s dangerous lifestyle had created a target of her, that Ransom had gotten her killed-and perhaps this was closer to the truth than Ranson wanted to admit. Or perhaps Elias Jervis acted true to form here, working as a paid assassin. Bosch had shouted the single name, Kohler. Had Kohler financed Elias? Was Jervis’s motive a combination of all his pent up anger pushed to the edge by the right sum?

Ransom bodily lifted the wounded Jervis and began shaking it from him, causing two burly uniformed cops to pull Alastair off. Elias Jervis fell back like an empty gunnysack into the black hole painted now with his blood, looking purple in the CPD lantern light.

“Bastard took three or four shots at me before I laid him out!” shouted Ransom, tearing away from the cops holding him back. “An ambush! I was set up for a killing!” Alastair rushed Jervis’s prone body and kicked it several times before he was again pulled away and advised to cool down. The man giving him the advice was his young friend, Mike O’Malley, with whom he’d lifted many a pint of ale. It was good to see a friendly face among this district’s cops, someone he felt he could trust.

“Mikey, when did you get sent to this shithole to work?”

“I asked for it.”

“Asked to work Hair Trigger?”

“I asked for it by getting smart with Chief Kohler.”

“Ahhh…I see. You weren’t by chance defending me at the time, were you?”

“You are such a great detective, Rance.”

“And you? When do you take your exams?”

“I have, but since I was disciplined…well, that’s by the wayside for now.”

“That bastard, Kohler. One day…”

“Careful what you say. He has friends among these lads.” O’Malley indicated the others in uniform. “And down here your name’s poison, Rance.”

“He just set me up for murder. I won’t stand quiet for that! Search that bastard Jervis, and you’ll find a wad of cash payment, you will.”

“Everyone knows Elias Jervis had it in for you, Inspector,” said another uniformed cop. “This looks like a personal matter to me.”

“It’s personal, all right!” Alastair stormed off but was stopped by a pair of brawny coppers standing in his way.

“Your gun, sir! We’ll need it,” said the cop who appeared in charge.

“What’s your name, Officer?”

“Tenny, sir. Dane Tenny.”

“You think you can take my gun, Tenny?”

Mike stepped in. “Rance, it’s standard procedure now in a police shooting down here in the Alley.”

“Your boss doesn’t want my gun, Tenn,” replied Alastair. “He wants my badge and my hide. Isn’t that right, Mike?”

“Whatever your suspicions, Inspector,” said Tenny, standing in military pose, feet set for a fight, “my job’s to do the right thing here.” Tenny held out his hand for the gun, one eye warily awaiting Ransom’s cane coming up. Once again, Alastair’s reputation preceded him.

Frowning, with a nod to Mike, he lifted his blue gun out and handed it to O’Malley. Alastair then started off. He had a houseful of guns at home, including another exactly like the one confiscated.

While all of this was transpiring, Ransom had also swallowed the fact that there never was any daughter of the riot with a mother’s diary, that this was vintage baiting. Next Ransom became angry with himself for being so easily led into a trap that almost cost him his life here in this mud-hole.

“I’m aware that there’ll be a review of the shooting,” Ransom said. “Let me know when and where, will you, Mike?” He refused to acknowledge Tenny.

“Sure…sure, Rance. You go on home, get cleaned up. You smell of mud and slop.”

“Thanks…I think.”

Ransom made his way out of the alley and onto the street where he hailed a hansom cab. All the way home, he sat angry as hell with himself, with Bosch, with Jervis for being such an easy mark, but he reserved his lethal hatred for Chief Nathan Kohler, and the incident only increased his suspicion that Kohler had a hand in all that had gone wrong in 1886 during the Haymarket Riot.

“And one day, by God, I’ll prove it and put the bastard on trial for it.”

The cabbie thought he’d barked some new order, and he shouted through the slot, “Sir? Another destination, sir?”

“No! One twenty-nine Des Plaines!”

Shaken from just having killed a man, and angry over circumstances that’d led him into a trap, Ransom felt the fool-Nathan Kohler’s fool. A stronger emotion gripped him however. One he could not fend off. Alastair felt a cold grim vulnerability overtaking him, and he realized this naked raw feeling had all to do with his empty shoulder holster. It was brought on by his confiscated blue gun, which normally pressed against his heart.

The following night

“Yes, spirits appear as you remember them,” Dr. James Phineas Tewes was saying when Ransom quietly entered Jane Francis’s parlor, and as quietly stood in the entry, listening to the spiel of this new con. He felt a disappointment not so much in Tewes but in Jane, and it felt like a lump of calcified stone in his gut.

Jane as Tewes in trance was unaware of Gabby’s having answered the doorbell. Tewes was saying, “Yes, the dearly departed come to us just as they looked when alive, even wearing favorite clothes, but they are surrounded by faint, colored light. And while the newly dead speak, it is difficult to make out. While the spirit’s lips move, no sound is heard. But I have perfected the art of reading lips, you see.”

The séance was in full swing when Alastair rested on his cane, thinking, Jane’s got to’ve heard the doorbell ring, must know the law is on hand, and that everyone else in the room had begun to fidget-séance-interruptis.

Dr. Tewes had advertised that he could contact the dead, and this “new assertion” in all of Dr. Tewes’s most recent flyers, was bringing in business and money for Dr. Tewes’s bank account. Alastair wondered when and how Jane planned to empty Tewes’s account and put it into her name. While women did not have the vote, and while most married women had no bank account whatsoever, some businesswomen and independent singles held bank accounts. Banks would take anyone’s money regardless of sex, unless a husband forbade it.

Ransom had seen the new flyer tacked to a police phone box, and had read the new promises of contacting a loved one from the other side. The notion alone would typically outrage Alastair, but he’d not think of raiding such a party of fools who deserved what they got. Still, this being Jane in her getup as Tewes proved a double disappointment.

He’d come to demand to know what was going on in her head to make such outrageous claims in the name of Tewes or anyone else.

When Gabby had cautiously answered the door, her fingers to her lips, he’d allowed her to guide him by the hand into the darkened parlor.

Once in the darkened room, Ransom had immediately begun studying the faces to ID the family members sitting about a rippling candle throwing off shadows across the center table. Jane’s bejeweled glass chandelier dangled low over this same center, creating a mesmerizing effect like none Ransom had ever seen.

Meanwhile, Dr. James Phineas Tewes held court. In gruff voice, “he” pontificated on the nature of the dead, launched into a sprig of philosophy followed by theology. Before Alastair had arrived, Tewes had undoubtedly insisted that everyone join hands in harmony and unity, so as together they might create a bridge and a bond with the other side, and so that Tewes had the energy to ask help of “his” spirit guide-a lost and wandering soul named Mariah, who had nothing better to do than make continued contact with Dr. Tewes. And today, this moment in fact, Mariah was going to bring Grandfather Nichodemus Pelham to his assembled heirs and assigns.

They were chanting this request of Mariah in no time at all.

Jane did not acknowledge Alastair as she was in a trance-or rather wanted the others to believe Dr. Tewes was in a deep trancelike state.

Alastair remained standing beside Gabby, his stare a study in disbelief. At the same instant that Alastair cleared his throat, one of the ladies in the group around the table swooned and said, “That’s him! I’d know that snort anywhere. He was a tobacco man, you know. Chewed Red Man.”

Jane as Tewes now said, “The spirits must learn to speak across the chasm between the living and the dead. Grunts, snorts…coughing is a simple matter for them, but words…words are as difficult for them as for any animal.”

“Grandfather spoke in grunts and snorts; he never used words,” said a young fellow at the table. “It’s him, all right.”

“Spirits have a unique function,” Dr. Tewes informed his guests. “They provide dispatches from the other side. In fact, I met one once who was a fighting angel in a war for God and his throne. And like demons, once spirits have seen your face, they can always find you. So beware…be careful, vigilant at all times.”

“That’s precisely what the old bastard said he’d do,” chimed in the older man at the table. “That he’d haunt me from the grave.”

“But he is at peace now and holds no animosity toward anyone,” said Tewes.

“He said that?” asked the elder son.

“He wants you all to be at peace as he is at peace.”

“You mean dead?” asked the younger man.

“You’ve got it all wrong Tewes,” said the elder son. “What he’s saying is he’d as soon see us all dead as to find that will of his!”

“Charles! You’ll frighten his spirit off!” chastised the woman.

“I’m afraid it is too late,” announced Tewes, breaking the chain of hands and standing. “I have lost his presence. He is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Just like that?”

“Afraid we will have to try again, perhaps at another time,” said Tewes as Gabby lit a gas lamp, and the disgruntled family began leaving, accusing one another of lousing up the reading and getting them nowhere.

Some of the family members recognized Ransom as they filed out, one asking if he were here to arrest “that charlatan Tewes.”

“Oh, but we can appeal to the spirits again, Mr. Pelham, Mrs. Pelham?” said Dr. Tewes to his clients. “Do not despair. Call again.”

With a good deal of grumbling, the Pelhams were gone. Jane dropped back into the cushioned chair and let out a long breath of air as she pulled away her mustache, ascot, and wig.

“Are you mad?” Alastair asked her.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Jane…spiritualism? Atop phrenology and magnetic healing?”

“Hey, my therapy worked on you, didn’t it?”

“Don’t change the subject. You seem bent on getting yourself thrown into jail or shot as a flimflam artist.”

“Oh, please! You can be as dramatic as Mrs. Pelham!”

“And how long do you think your disguise would fool anyone behind bars? Ever hear of a strip search?”

“Tewes serves a purpose, Alastair, both for me and the community.”

“Yes, to line your pockets while revealing lost wills of testament for ingrates.”

“I don’t know that they are ingrates, or that they won’t use newfound wealth to, say, contribute to Hull House or the Salvation Army, now do I?”

“Either way Tewes gets his fee?”

“Yes, and why not? He performs a service.”

“It’s fraud, Jane, pure and simple.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“Are you a mentalist now, a medium, a gifted who speaks to the dead? No, you are a highly educated woman taking advantage of the less educated.”

Gabby had vacated the moment voices were raised, but now she’d returned with steeping hot tea. “There’s no arguing with her, Inspector. I’ve tired of trying.” Gabby poured tea into cups as she spoke. “She means to have the capital at all cost.”

“It’s the only way to see you through Rush, young lady. They don’t give women scholarship funds, I assure you.”

“All I have…all you’ve given me, Mother, since…well, since meeting Audra and her street family, I feel guilty.”

“For what?”

“For all we have, and all they will never have.”

“And it is my avowed purpose in life, Gabrielle Tewes, to make sure you never become one of them! Do you understand? Do both of you understand?”

“Noble reasons for duping others out of their money, Jane.”

“I carefully screen my clients in the séance end of things, Alastair, and those who get this far, as you saw, deserve a good fleecing.”

“Then you admit to fraud?”

“What merchant in the city isn’t a fraud? Have you seen the costs of medical insurance recently?”

“Call it what you will, it appears very bad.”

“We are at a crossroads, and we’re not to discuss it since none of us will agree,” said Jane. “Besides, I’m exhausted.”

“I’m sure after a long day, and now this business with Grandfather Pelham.”

Gabby piped in. “It takes a great deal out of one to hold a séance, results or no.”

They sipped at tea in silence, each lost in thought.

“I’ve spoken to Philo Keane about what we learned from the street children,” Ransom said to the ladies between sips.

“Oh? And did he find it amusing?” Jane asked.

“On the contrary. He is and has been planning an unusual move with regard to the sheltered and homeless children. Contemplating it for some time, in fact.”

“Would you care to give us some details?” Jane asked.

“Yes, do,” added Gabby, curious.

Alastair related all that had transpired between Philo Keane and himself on the subject. The ladies were duly impressed with Keane’s insights and his desire to help the children through his art.

“It’s this sort of thing that restores my faith in the human heart,” said Jane. She then stood and began pacing before turning to the others. “All right, I have a confession to make regarding the séances.”

“What is it, Mother?”

“Go on, Jane.”

“I’m setting aside all proceeds from Dr. Tewes’s forays into the supernatural for a sizable donation, I hope, to Jane Addams’s settlement community.”

Gabby smiled wide. “For the shelter children, oh, Mother, how wonderful.”

Ransom dropped his head and shook it from side to side as Gabby embraced her mother. “Isn’t she wonderful, Alastair?” Gabby said.

“Aye, she is that and bravo, Jane. I’ll have to come in and have you contact my uncle Faraday sometime so’s I can contribute.”

“Do that, Alastair. You do that.” She toasted his health with an upraised teacup.