Michael Harvey - The Fifth Floor

Randolph just stared.

“Didn’t go to Catholic school, huh?” I said.

“The material here is extremely fragile. Delicate. And some of it, highly sensitive.”

“That’s what I want. The highly sensitive part.”

Randolph had a head that could have passed for a thumb had it not been for the ears. He plucked a pair of spectacles off the bridge of what he most likely called a nose and began to polish.

“I really don’t see this working,” he said.

“It’s about a murder.”

It usually does the trick. Most likely does the trick. In this case, definitely did the trick. The glasses went back on the nose and the flat expanse of face drew down just the slightest hue of pink.

“A real murder?”

“Sure.” I flipped out my ID. “I lied to your assistant. I’m actually a private investigator. Working a case. Dead guy’s name was Allen Bryant. Did a lot of research on the fire. Maybe you heard of him?”

Randolph shook his head.

“Not your century, huh?”

Another shake of the head.

“Okay. Anyway, this book popped up. Sheehan’s History of the Chicago Fire.”

“Timothy Sheehan?” Randolph scuttled down an aisle. Rows of books towered on either side. I scuttled after him.

“The definitive work on the fire,” he said, and stopped before a particularly imposing shelf. “Move out of the way.”

I barely had time before a ladder, set into a metal track on the floor, came whirring down the aisle. Randolph had summoned it via a button built into the framework near my head.

“Pretty neat there,” I said.

Randolph clambered up the ladder and came down with the tome. It was old and blue with gold lettering on the cover: Sheehan’s History of the Chicago Fire by Timothy Sheehan.

“You got a lot of copies of this?” I asked.

“That’s a first edition.”

“Tell me what’s so special about a first edition?”

“Nothing. Just worth more money.”

The private investigator in me caught the faintest whiff of a motive.

“How much money?” I intrepidly asked.

“Sheehan’s was published in 1886. They offered a very limited first printing.”

The curator flipped open the cover. On the inside was the number 12 embossed in red.

“Each one is numbered. One through twenty.”

“Just twenty of ’em, huh?”

“That’s right. There is at least one other first edition in the Chicago area. Not entirely sure about ownership, but I believe it’s in private hands.”

I didn’t tell Randolph that his private hands were now dead. Might make him nervous, and I didn’t need that.

“The scarcity of copies,” Randolph said, “obviously makes each first edition worth a considerable amount.”

Randolph talked about money like it was a dirty secret. I figured I’d do the same.

“What’s considerable?” I whispered.

“Two, three hundred dollars.”

My motive suddenly didn’t smell so good.

“You think someone got killed over a first edition of Sheehan’s History of the Chicago Fire?” Randolph said.

“You don’t buy it either.”

“I don’t see why,” he said.

I considered the book, then moved my eyes back to Randolph.

“If you were me, what would you do?”

The curator looked at the book. Then he looked at me. “I’d read it.”

So that’s what I did. I was on page fifty when Randolph was there again. At my shoulder. The smell of fine and dusty typeface was heavy upon him. Or maybe it was just booze.

“You been drinking?” I said.

Randolph blinked.

“I just got to the part about the watchman,” I said.

Two blinks. I took that as a good sign and continued.

“Mathias Shafer, age forty. He’s sitting up in the city’s watchtower on the night of the fire. Sees a bit of smoke. Rings down to the boy. Let’s see…”

I consulted my Sheehan’s.

“Boy by the name of Billy Brown. Stop me if you already know all this. Billy is down in the business part of the tower. The part where all the alarms are. He’s got his girl down there. Playing the guitar for her and-well, you can figure out the rest.”

Randolph took off his bifocals and wiped them down.

“That’s right, you got it,” I said. “Billy pulls the wrong alarm and continues with the wooing. That’s what they called it back then. Wooing. Same deal, just a better name. Anyway, a half hour or so goes by and Shaffer notices the bit of smoke is now a lot of smoke and a bit of fire. He calls down to Billy again. Tells him he pulled the wrong alarm. Billy zips himself up and says, No worries, boss, I’ll get right to it. Except he doesn’t get right to it. Another half hour goes by before the city gets its fire engines where they need to be. By then-hell, it was too late, wasn’t it?”

Lawrence Randolph blinked three times, picked up the files I had been looking at, and left. Tired from my lecture, I sat back in the green leather reading chair and rested my eyes. My Sheehan’s hit the floor with a definite thud. I started, swore, and went to pick up the book. Beside it was a folder the curator had left behind. It was labeled theories on the fire’s cause and origin. I picked it up and started to read. Three articles deep, I found the first feather in what I was certain would be a wild-goose chase. Still, I couldn’t resist and began to take notes.

W hat do we know about this?”

I had made my way back to Randolph’s office. Inside I found a shapeless collection of wood and leather covered in books and papers. Behind a large desk was the shapeless man himself, eating lunch from a brown paper sack and not especially happy to see me darkening his door.

“About what?” he said.

“This Sun-Times article.”

Randolph put down a pretty nice-looking banana, picked up the clippings file I had dropped on his desk, and gave it a look. Then he put the file down, picked up the yellow fruit again, and slowly began to peel.

“Rubbish,” he said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

The article was written by a reporter named Rawlings Smith. It was a weekend magazine piece from 1978, speculating on who might have actually started the fire.

“Did you notice the day the piece ran, Mr. Kelly?”

It wasn’t included on the copy I had read.

“April first,” Randolph said, and took a delicate bite of his banana.

“April Fool’s Day,” I said.

“Precisely, Mr. Kelly. April Fool’s Day. This article was a joke, played on the city and two of its most illustrious families.”

“So you don’t believe a word of it?”

“Not a word.”

“You sure?”

Randolph offered a look to the heavens, as if in silent prayer for the small tortures sent his way each and every day. Then he steeled himself and returned to schooling the great unwashed. Also known as yours truly.

“There are any number of theories as to how the fire started,” Randolph said. “There’s O’Leary’s neighbor, Peg Leg Sullivan. Alleged to have started the fire with his pipe and an errant bit of lit tobacco. There’s O’Leary’s drunk tenants, the McLaughlins. Had a party that night. Supposedly a couple got, shall we say, amorous in the barn, knocked something over, and started the fire. Then there’s the supernatural: a meteor hit Chicago. Lit the whole place up like a Christmas tree.”

“You believe any of those?”

“Who knows, Mr. Kelly? Who really knows?” Randolph threw the remains of his banana in the trash, folded his lunch bag up into a neat brown square, and slid it inside the pocket of his jacket. Probably made of tweed.

“In my business, you are now talking about one of the Holy Grails: exploding the O’Leary myth. Finding out, definitively, who or what started the fire. It’s the dream of every curator who’s ever sat in this chair.”