Robert Walker - City for Ransom

“Keep it down, Philo.”

Keane returned to work, placing a ruler beside the bloody handprint for scale. Escaping from him came an odd series of sound effects: “ Aha, ya-aha, mmm . . . uh-huh . . . ohhh . . . uhhh . . . bugger’at . . . gore-blimeyboy, whoa . . . ohhh-sheee-it . . .”

CHAPTER 2

Ransom recalled how an army of stone masonshad worked for over a year to build this massive Illinois Central Station, and how the marble had come out of the earth from a quarry near the Indiana state line. By contrast, the more recently completed World’s Columbian Exposition train terminal had been constructed of wood and covered over with staff—a form of stucco. Where the solid gray-stone Illinois Central was built to last, the Expo terminal was intended only as a temporary structure—as with almost all the world’s fair buildings.

Griff returned to stand alongside Ransom, now with Tewes’s note in hand. “Tewes playing musical brains with you fellows? Stuff that damn letter. It’s bloody three-forty a.m., Griff, don’t-cha see?”

“See what?”

“It’s a put-up job. Kohler’s put this Tewes on to spy on us.

He had to’ve called him in; how else would Tewes know to be here?”

“It’s that dirty, is it?”

“Once Philo Keane’s finished, Griff, call in the meat wagon. Get the corpse to Cook County morgue, ’way from all these vultures.”

“Where is Dr. Fenger? Did he send word? An assistant?”

14

ROBERT W. WALKER

“Christian’s facing several operations today.”

Griff nodded. “And his classes are so full.”

“Busiest man in the city,” Alastair replied. “Sure, Kohler will forgive him. After all, he can do his job from his morgue as well as here, so long as we cover the territory.”

“Autopsy, inquest—still, strange he didn’t make an appearance. Not like him.”

“Let’s just say the good doctor is adept and not eager to enter a crossfire between the chief and me.”

“You were warned about Dr. Tewes’s coming onto the case?”

“You’re catching on, Griff.”

“Nothing gets by you, does it, Ransom?”

“This is my city.”

“I’ve heard that. So, Dr. Fenger’s playing it safe?

Wouldn’t have anything to do with that Herald cartoon?”

“Damn fools . . . calling him a ‘Resurrection Man’!”

“Was kinda funny, putting a shovel in his hand beside a picture of a gold-filled coffin.” Griffin’s grin annoyed Alastair.

“The man received a raise! What’s wrong with that?

Christian Fenger deserves all he can get outta this city.”

“Did you cook this up with Dr. Fenger? Just to get the body away from . . . you know who that much sooner?”

They both glanced at Tewes, standing with O’Malley.

“How ’bout you, Griff? You think it’s right, what Kohler’s proposing?”

“Right?”

“A guy dies a brutal death, then along comes some bastard calls himself a wizard with magnetic hands. Just wants to turn a buck, pretending to read messages from the dead . . . from the contours of the skull. If it weren’t so sad, it’d be laughable.” “Now that’s an editorial cartoon.”

“That Tewes guy just rubs me the wrong way. Makes my skin literally creep!”

“Me too. Same as you, Rance.”

CITY FOR RANSOM

15

Ransom hesitated at this. Griff had never called him Rance. Why the sudden chumminess?

Griff pushed on while rocking on the balls of his feet. “All the same, it could be construed as an order, and if so, if you disobey—”

“Something’s just not right about Tewes.”

“All the same”—Griffin held up the note—“this note from Kohler is authentic, Rance.”

“Leave it be, Griff.”

“But Kohler’s just hoping you’ll foul up.”

“It’s all carefully orchestrated.”

“Like I said, a setup. You make a stink over this, it’s all he needs. So why not just let Dr. Tewes go through the motions?”

“Don’t you get it, Griff? It’s politics.”

“Not everything in the department is about politics.”

Ransom’s laughter filled the train station. “Griff, this is the Chicago PD we’re talking about. Everything in Chicago is about politics, especially the police force.”

“You sure you’re not being a little ahhh . . . overly ahhh suspicious?”

“Doc Fenger asked the same, except he called it ‘unrea-sonably mistrustful.’ Look, Drimmer . . . my friend and colleague . . . if I give in to Tewes, even if there is a note from my superior suggesting I do so, what happens to my investigation, one I am solely responsible for?” “I don’t follow you, Inspector.”

“The bloody investigation turns into a circus.”

“I see, a circus.”

“A three-ring one as only Chicago papers can conjure, and as for me? I get the ax for my part in it.”

“And if you should refuse that phrenologist?”

“Ahhh . . . a fine name for a charlatan, isn’t it? So scientific and such a magnetic personality he has, too.”

“Kohler’s already declared you uncooperative. Seems he has it in for you. Like it’s—”

“Personal, yes, but personal is political, Griff. Lotta water’s flowed ’neath the bridge for me and Kohler.”

16

ROBERT W. WALKER

“Goes back to Haymarket, doesn’t it?”

He raised one eye to Griff. No secrets in a police department. “Your interrogative technique has improved markedly since working with me, Inspector. But hell, Griff, what in this city doesn’t go back to Haymarket?” “Where you got your leg busted up, isn’t it? But they say a lotta good’s come of it, too. Better labor relations, best labor laws in the country bar none.”

“You’ve been reading old papers?”

“You and the chief see the Haymarket Square bombing quite differently.”

“Aye, he wants it—”

“Buried, I know, while you . . . some might say you’ve obsessed over it since eighty-seven.”

“Call me a student of history. And ’twas eighty-six, son, but enough down memory lane. We’ve plenty on our hands in the here-and-now.”

The flash of explosive gunpowder from Philo’s magic show now went off nearby, the acrid smell of the corpse’s burnt flesh meshing with the sulfur cloud. All of it conjured up unwanted memories of that day at Haymarket.

“This boy’s murder’s connected to the other two, isn’t it, Rance?” whispered Griffin, not wishing anyone else to hear.

Aside from the afflictions in his back and legs from that awful day in 1886, Alastair suffered from bad digestion, nosebleeds, headaches, and a low tolerance for administra-tive boobs who knew less than he did. And for the injustices abounding in Chicago from homelessness and joblessness to the inequities of political pork-barreling. He also had a low tolerance for the ignorance and tranquillity of youth. He secretly bemoaned his own lost youth, and he detested seeing youth wasted. And he worried about Griff’s doing just that.

“Of course, the killings are related.”

Ransom saw Dr. Tewes disappear into the stationmaster’s office, grateful to witness this obvious retreat until realizing that Tewes had gone in search of a telephone. Phones had been installed in many public places. No doubt the good CITY FOR RANSOM

17

doctor of phrenology meant to complain to Nathan Kohler about Ransom’s rank insubordination, and this counterfeit doctor’s inability to get past the inspector of record.

“Brace yourself, Griff, for a visit from the chief.”

“Count on it, I should think. The uniforms are taking odds, and Rance—did I mention that the note is more than a suggestion, but a direct order?”