Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

Ransom had not been inside Moose Muldoon’s since the night he had cracked its proprietor-Muldoon-in the head with his wolf’s-head cane. Through the grapevine that snaked about Chicago’s streets, Alastair had gotten word that Muldoon had forgiven him and all was square between them now that Alastair was a hero again, now that the Phantom had as mysteriously disappeared as he’d come on the scene. In fact, it was rumored that Muldoon had created an Inspector Ransom drink and had cordoned off a table now designated as the Inspector’s, at which no other man could sit unless invited by Alastair himself.

It was too much to ignore.

Ransom felt moved to learn how much was true and how much embellishment. Among the riffraff that hung about Muldoon’s, Ransom had spotted all levels of criminal and down-and-out, and he was grudgingly acknowledged as their best adversary. Where they called Muldoon the Moose, Ransom was the Bear to such fellows, and to this day they talked of the confrontation between Moose and Bear, their last exchange going to Ransom. Alastair knew the clientele wanted to see a return engagement, and he would not put it past the cursed bunch to have put out these lies just to entice him back into Muldoon’s lair.

All the same, he was drawn to it-moth to flame. The place was, after all, a hotbed of information about what was afoot in the city. He rationalized a visit on these grounds alone. Besides, it was another diversion from taking a straight course into #13 Des Plaines to face off with Kohler.

As the cab stopped before Muldoon’s tavern, the sign swaying in a breeze coming in off the lake, he admitted, “I’d rather face Moose than Nathan right now.”

The idea of dispatching the Phantom to Lake Michigan without compunction was one fine notion and well accomplished, but this matter with the senator’s bargain that Fenger and Kohler had gone into and wanted him to administer, this was an entirely different matter. In the case of the Phantom, no money had changed hands; no one paid him to kill Waldo Denton. It was just a thing needing to be done, no less true than Jack Houston must kill that horse before skinning and dismembering the carcass, as a matter of survival for himself and his family. Chicago was Ransom’s only family, his job, all he knew. The Phantom had repeatedly harmed his family, and he’d threatened Ransom’s life. The same could be said of the monster or monsters behind the Vanishings, except for the idea of special payment. Had it come in the legitimate way of a bonus, a raise, he would not balk, but this secret, closed-door deal smacked of its own kind of evil and left a stench no less than the yards in his craw. Perhaps if the senator had come to him alone, and they had really secretly worked out a deal, then perhaps he’d be more inclined to take it. However, a conspiracy of this size, involving three other men, all of whom were far more prominent and less expendable than he, simply was not the way Alastair cared to operate.

He could not definitively say why, but a good deal had to do with climbing into bed with the man he most hated in the city-Chief Nathan Kohler. A man who had worked tirelessly to get dirt on Ransom in an effort to discredit him, to see him off the force, and now a man bowing and scraping to a senator. Even in the way Nathan’d handed the senator’s hat to him, dusting it off first, spoke volumes. Money motivated people in strange ways. Take the respectable Dr. Christian Fenger, he thought now. How he could climb into such a morass with Kohler was beyond Ransom’s comprehension. Fenger was the most ethical and moralistic man Alastair had ever known…and now this. It felt like a betrayal, a blow to the chest, despite Christian’s excuses of debt and desperation.

Music spilled out onto the street from inside Muldoon’s when Alastair opened the door, a minstrel fellow strumming a banjo and singing about an Ohio steamboat called the Glenn E. Burke running down to New Orleans-“ When the Glendie Burke comes down again…bound to leave this town now…take my duds and throw ’em on my back…when the Glendie Burke come down again. Banjo and harp made the bluesy lyrics as lively as a cockfight, and Ransom caught his toe tapping to the melody.

The music man playing both instruments at once did not slow for Ransom, as new to the city, he’d no idea who Alastair was. Muldoon’s this time of night was, for the most part, just another den of losers and down-and-outs, most at the bar, on their feet, smoking and drinking and talking and thinking and planning and plotting-most with minds always in a state of disarray, confusion, and a mix of anger and fear. Anger at the world for having lost the race, fear at the world that it’d become too late to ever score big. The confusion came in the wonderment of how life had so quickly beaten them down. Some were no older than late twenties, early thirties. Yet they held longing, clinging memories for what might have been. To a man they were gamblers of one sort or another.

Those familiar to Muldoon’s fell silent when they realized who’d walked in. Alastair represented a diversion from their sore, sordid lives, and to some he represented another hope. After all, hope dies hard, and hope has a place in a dreamer’s heart, even a man who simply dreamed of betting for once on the right horse out at the racetrack.

The races proved a second home for most of these men, and each Sunday they went out to the course and laid their money on a horse in much better prime than the one Alastair had seen Jack Houston working over.

Alastair was given to a horse race himself on occasion, but it had not become the driving force in his life. Such a life is what Alastair Ransom feared, an end that left him daily standing before some bar and talking of past adventures to people he didn’t like.

He momentarily thought of what Philo, his only true friend, would think of this new turn of events-him being enthroned at Muldoon’s, if talk on the street were to be believed.

Due to his reputation and the rumors now abounding, he had indeed become a topic of interest in every bar in the growing prairie city. Stepping in from the light and finding himself striding toward the bar in the semi-darkness of this seedy place, Ransom realized that he was indeed an object of fascination for the regulars. Some had been on hand the night he’d smashed his cane into Muldoon’s temple, knocking the owner senseless. How strange the turn of events now.

So when it became clear around the room that Inspector Ransom was indeed in their midst, the buzz went about the room, and all eyes turned on him.

Some few lifted their glasses, a salute to his having rid the city of the Phantom. When Moose Muldoon, busy behind the bar, realized that Ransom had come through the door, he set up a free beer-something Muldoon was not known for, giving beer away, waiving the usual five cents. “Look here, boys!” Muldoon shouted, his voice silencing the banjo man and every conversation remaining. “By God, it’s our own Inspector Ransom it is, in Muldoon’s, boys! I told you he and I were thick as brothers-hey, Inspector?”

“Muldoon…how’ve you been?” Alastair asked. “You’re head clear these days on the drinking laws?”

“Aye, Inspector-Alastair-Rance, old friend. I’ve a special on for the whiskey-sarsaparillas concoction you like. Calling the drink a Whiskey Ransom. The boys here’ve taken to it, chasing it with ale and beer.”

“So I hear on the street.”

“And look there in the corner back booth,” said Muldoon, pointing to a cordoned-off table. “Reserved for you alone, Inspector, so’s you can conduct your own special business outta Muldoon’s whenever you’re moved to it.”