It was nearly midnight when Flip reached the dark, quiet block he called his own. It had been a long day, and he looked forward to his bed.
Forty yards out from his building, Flip detected a distinctly human-sized heap on the porch. This was not a spot where a vagrant had ever slept before, at least not that he could recall. The figure was doing nothing to conceal itself. Flip could not tell if it was alive.
Flip received very few visitors, and almost nobody outside the police department knew his address.
Flip surveyed the nearby alleys as he drew closer, but did not slacken his pace. Doing so would reveal he had seen something. One neighbor kept a pile of bricks in his yard, tall enough to conceal a man or men. Flip eyed the pile and fingered the gun inside his coat. He shifted the poker to his left hand, preparing to use it for close combat. There were still lights in a few windows, but no foot traffic that he could see.
Twenty yards from his front door, the human-sized bundle began to move. It sat up, straightened itself, and rose. Flip noticed there was a clear bottle on the ground beside it. Empty.
A voice called hoarsely: “Flip, is that you?”
Flip took his hand away from his 1911 and lowered the poker.
“Tark?” Flip said soft enough that neighbors might not awaken. “Why are you sleeping on my stoop? Are you three sheets to the wind again?”
“No,” said Tark, adjusting his own voice down. “One sheet at most. What you smell is just a little hair of the dog. I was waiting for you.”
Flip approached.
“For a while I sat here and practiced card tricks,” Tark explained. “Then some children came and wanted to watch. But I didn’t feel like having an audience, so I just put my head down and pretended to sleep until they went away. Then I guess I fell asleep for real.”
“Why are you at my house?” Flip asked.
“Something bad happened after you left,” Tark said, his nervous eyes rolling the moonlight. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, all right,” Flip said. “You better come up.”
Flip unlocked the front door and they climbed the bare wooden staircase to the third floor. Flip took out a second key and unlocked the door to the private rooms where he lived alone. The residence was humble and not maintained with visitors in mind. Even so, Flip was able to wrangle some chairs around a table and move the dishes over to the sink. When Flip sat down next to Tark, he saw that another bottle of gin—as if by magic—had appeared in the magician’s hand.
“Ain’t a man I told to go easy on that stuff ever listened,” Flip said. “But you ain’t quite a man yet. Ought to try and break your taste for it while there’s still time.”
Tark smiled, but looked weary. His expression said that they could talk about his drinking at a later date. More pressing things weighed on his mind.
“What you got to say, then?” Flip asked. “Spit it out.”
It was warm in Flip’s rooms. Tark took out a handkerchief. Flip anticipated some act of wizardry, but the magician only mopped his brow.
“Well,” Tark began, “broadly, I’m here because I aim to help you.”
“Help me?“
“I aim to help you catch whoever is after Negro twins,” Tark said.
Flip wrinkled his brow. Then he stood up. He made his way to his half-broken kitchen cupboard. He pulled out a cracked teacup emblazoned with the logo of the 1893 World’s Fair. Then he ambled back to his seat. He took the bottle firmly from Tark and poured some gin into the teacup. He took a sip. It was not good. He forced himself to swallow.
“Why?” Flip said after he’d fought through the grimace. “Why would you want to help all of a sudden? What’s changed?”
Tark stared straight ahead. His eyes became unfocused. He was remembering.
“This afternoon, after you left, a man came looking for Ike,” the magician said. “I was a few blocks away, talking to a girl. I wasn’t gone that long. The girl didn’t want anything to do with me. When I got back, Ike was telling the story to some of the men on the crew. Trying to, anyway. Doing the best he could. He saw me, and he ran up to tell it all over again.”
“And the story was?” Flip said, sipping more awful gin from the teacup, not quite knowing why.
Tark shrugged.
“Ike can be hard to understand, but I made out that a man came out of the trees—the eastern row of trees bordering the circus field—and he wore a nice suit and a homburg hat, and he was Negro . . . and he asked Ike if he was a twin.”
Flip nodded dispassionately from above the teacup.
“Then the man asked about Ike and me specifically, if we were twins. Then he started to manhandle Ike. I think they fought rough. Ike had a gash over his eye, and his face was bruised some. I couldn’t get Ike to say if he’d fought the man, or the man had just struck him down and left. Ike knows he’s not supposed to fight, so he won’t talk about things like that.”
“Nobody else saw this happen?” Flip asked.
“No,” Tark said. “Most everybody was still asleep. Ike was only awake because you came to see us. But I believe him. He’s never told a lie in his life.”
“Where is Ike now?” asked Flip.
“Somewhere safe,” Tark said cagily. “I put him on a train. We have some acquaintances down in Indiana. People who could take him in for a few days, and not ask questions.”
“Who?” Flip pressed. “Where in Indiana?”
Tark looked down at his toes, then up at Flip—just once, very quickly—then back down at his toes.
“I don’t want to tell you,” Tark said. “It’s better if you don’t know. It’s better if no one knows.”
“You don’t trust me?” Flip said. “After all I’ve done for you? You’re one of my best customers when it comes to needing things returned, and you think-”
“What am I supposed to think?” Tark shot back angrily, tears abruptly welling in his eyes. “You show up and talk about this twin killer. Then my brother is beat up by a man asking if we’re twins.”
“But-” Flip began.
“The less anybody knows, the better,” Tark insisted. “I’ll tell you something that being a magician teaches you. It’s that there is never an advantage to telling anybody more than you have to, Flip. Ever.”
“If you want to help me catch this person-” Flip tried again.
“What?” Tark said aggressively. “What would Ike tell you that he hasn’t already told me, his own brother!?”
Flip rose once more from his chair. This time he made his way over to a desk—nearly as broken as his cupboard. After some jimmying, he opened it and found a fresh notebook and a pencil.
He wrote Male, Negro, Suit, Homburg.
It was a start.
“I would really like to talk to Ike,” Flip said.
“You’re not going to talk to Ike until we figure out what is happening,” Tark replied, adamant.
Flip sat back down. He tossed the notepad on the table before them. Then he took the teacup and drained the rest of its brackish contents.
“You realize you probably aren’t safe either,” Flip said after a final swallow. “Not in light of what you’ve just told me.”
The magician nodded soberly.
“So what are we going to do?” Tark asked.
Flip sighed.
“I’ve had a busy day, and I need to think on it some. Think on everything I’ve seen and heard.”
Tark nodded.
“I do my best thinking alone,” Flip added sternly.
Tark looked down.
“I can’t go back to my caravan,” he said. “If they’re looking for me, that’s where they’ll look.”
“I seem to recall giving you two hundred dollars earlier today,” Flip said. “You can get yourself a room somewhere for the night. Come back here at six in the morning—six sharp—and we’ll have some work to do then.”
Tark rose uneasily.
“Where should I-”
“I don’t care where you stay,” Fl
ip said. “Just be back at six.”
Tark said he would. He let himself out of Flip’s apartment, and the policeman locked the door.
After the magician had left, Flip walked to his front window and looked out on the street. He watched the magician walking away in the moonlight. He had taken the gin along with him. Flip saw him tip the bottle up to his lips just as he passed out of sight.
Flip sat back down at his table and began to work.
SEVEN
The Amazing Drextel Tark knocked hard on the door to Flip’s building at five-fifty the next morning. A third floor window raised, and Flip stuck his head out.
“Quiet, fool!” he whisper-shouted. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”
Tark shrugged to ask how else he should have approached the matter. Moments later, Flip came down and opened it for him. They walked back upstairs.
“We got a full day ahead,” Flip said as they passed into his rooms.
The interior of Flip’s apartment looked even more broken and disarrayed in the morning light. It also looked as though the policeman had been up for a while after Tark had left. Grisly photographs were arranged on Flip’s table, and the notepad—which had contained only four words at the time of Tark’s departure—now showed several pages of scribbling.
“What are we doing?” Tark asked.
Flip stepped to his stove and poured himself coffee in a tin cup like a miner might use. Then he poured a second cup and held it out to Tark. The magician accepted it.
“Someone is killing young Negro identical twins,” Flip said after a sip. “He’s killing them, and then mutilating their bodies.”
“Yeah,” said Tark. “I got that. Why’s he doing it?”
“We don’t know why,” Flip replied, “but knowing why doesn’t always matter when you’re trying to enforce the law. It’s enough to understand that when someone tends to do something . . .they’ll tend to do it again.”
“So?” Tark said, sipping his coffee and clearly finding it wanting.
“So identical twins—of any sort—don’t grow on no trees,” Flip said. “The first step to killing them would be finding them.”
Tark lifted his cup to his mouth, then lowered it again without sipping. His expression said ‘Yes. . . but . . .?’
“How would you do that?” Flip said rhetorically. “How would you do it if you were trying to find twins to kill? Would you just walk around town looking? Ask people you met on the street? That wouldn’t work too well. It would also arouse suspicion. Our killer’s not been caught yet, which means he’s not completely stupid. Last night, did I tell you what all of the murdered children also had in common? The other thing they shared?”
“What?” the magician asked, wishing he knew a spell to make Flip’s coffee taste better.
“They were all immigrants to Chicago,” Flip said. “All orphans come up from the South.”
“Fine,” Tark said. “So what?”
“This killer looked for twins, but I think he also looked for twins nobody in Chicago would miss. Where would you go to try and find people like that?”
“They’s places,” Tark said, thinking on it for a moment.
“Yes,” agreed Flip. “There are.”
The Greater Chicago Negro Settlement Alliance was just south of the Loop on the first and second floors of what had once been a small garment factory. The walkway in front of the building was paved, but the adjacent lawns (formerly green and verdant) had been entirely trampled to mud. The place was close to the rail yards, and easy to reach by foot after you disembarked. There were several organizations in Chicago like it, each aimed at improving the conditions of black folks, and many with a special emphasis on assisting those recently arrived from the South. Yet this one was the most conspicuous. The first one you’d find if you got off the train and just started walking.
There were three families camped on the muddy ground in front of the former factory. Men slept on bindles that probably contained all their worldly possessions. Women slept beside the men. Children slept piled together under makeshift pup tents, with their feet protruding like cords of wood. What did these families do in the cold, Flip wondered? He thought the answer was probably that they froze.
The front door was open. As Tark watched, Flip paused in front of it to open his coat.
“Should we say I’m police too?” Tark whispered.
“What?” Flip asked.
“It’s just, I ain’t got no gun or badge,” Tark said.
Tark wore only brown trousers, shoes, and a white dress shirt stained at the armpits.
“You don’t need those things,” Flip told him. “And if you got a magic wand somewhere on you, just keep it in your pocket.”
“I don’t use a wand,” Tark shot back, clearly insulted.
“Why not?” Flip said, amused.
“Because it’s not a hundred years ago,” Tark said firmly, as if it were a foolish question.
“Just let me do the talking,” Flip said. “Watch and listen, all right?”
Tark nodded. They went inside.
The Greater Chicago Negro Settlement Alliance had an administrative office at the front of the building, but was sizable enough that Flip could not guess what was kept in the back rooms or on the second level. Probably, on this morning, there were more people sleeping in those places. The building had the feel of a railway terminal, where many came and went.
There was a long wooden desk. A hand-drawn sign on the wall said ASK ME FOR HELP, and bore a long red arrow pointing over. There was a lone Negro man sitting at the desk. He looked half awake, but awake. He was middle aged, balding, and had a pencil-thin mustache. When he saw Flip and Tark, he smiled and stood. Then he rubbed his eyes and stretched. A small nameplate on his desk said he was Mr. Parr.
“Two sworn officers,” he said, regarding the contents of Flip’s open coat. “Welcome, welcome. What can I do for you?”
Tark gave Flip a sideways smile, then straightened himself until he stood erect as he imagined a true policeman might.
“Those families out front. . . they have permission to be sleeping on our property,” Parr added before Flip could say anything. “Alderman says it’s allowable. Normally, we house folks inside, but the heat gets mighty powerful this time of year.”
“I’m not here about the sleeping people,” Flip told him. “I’m here to ask you about identical twins. More specific . . .I’m here to ask about someone asking about identical twins.”
Parr smiled and stretched again. He had the look of a person whose responsibilities allowed his body remain sedentary most of the time, yet his mind was still well-exercised and lively. He seemed eager to talk.
“I knew that fool was up to something,” Parr said thoughtfully. “He just didn’t feel right. After a while, when you work with people all day, you’re able to get a kind of vibration from folks. The man seemed all prim and proper, but he vibrated bad. Can you tell me what he done?”
“Who vibrated bad?” Flip said. “Start from the beginning.”
“He just came in one afternoon,” Parr said. “Didn’t give his name. He was, oh, neither old nor young. Wore a grey suit. A fine gray suit. You know, like the Jewish tailors make?”
“He was Negro?” asked Flip.
Parr nodded.
“Did he speak with an accent?” Flip pressed.
Parr shook his head.
“But he was fine-spoken. Like. . . Like. . . A stage actor or an opera singer, I should imagine. That was the first way he set me at dis-ease. Something in his bearing was wrong. Was . . . fake. A man not being himself.”
Flip nodded carefully.
“When did this visit occur?”
“I should say it was, oh, some weeks ago,” Parr said, putting his chin into his palm like a daydreaming teenager. “Middle of June. Late June. Thereabouts. He came in and asked if we had had any identical twins come past recently. He was looking for twins as young as six or seven, and as old as thirteen or fourteen.”
> Flip nodded.
“He never made any small talk,” Parr continued. “Never said he was anybody’s relation. He just asked about twins. He asked if there were records we kept, and if our records would say somebody was a twin. He was damn-near obsessed with the idea, if you pardon my language. After he understood I couldn’t help him, he still kind of hung around the building for an hour or so. Acted like he was waiting for someone. He struck up conversations with people. I could tell he was also asking them about twins. It’s very quiet here at the moment—because it’s so early, y’see—but this place is crowded like an Arab market most of the day.”
“I’m sure it is,” Flip said. “Did the man ever come again? Was that the only time you saw him?”
“That’s right,” said Parr. “He came only the once. I was glad when he eventually did leave. Made me uneasy.”
“And do you?” Flip asked.
Parr smiled gently, as though he had missed something.
“Do I what, officer?”
“Do you have any identical twins coming through?”
“No,” Parr said with a laugh. “No twins that I’ve ever seen. Not in five years working here.”
“All right,” Flip said.
“But I haven’t even told you the most remarkable thing!” Parr said suddenly. “I almost left it out, officer! Let me tell you. . . This man asking after twins. . . He was bald headed, and he had a divot in his skull—on the right side as you regarded him, so on his own left. Looked like a war-wound. Something awful. An inch deep if it was anything. A chunk taken out, clean gone.”
“I see,” Flip said.
“Yes,” said Parr. “You don’t forget a thing like that.”
“Was there anything else you remember about him?” asked Flip.
“No,” said Parr, searching his memory. “I reckon that’s it.”
Flip thanked Parr for his time. Flip and Tark exited the settlement agency. The families sleeping out on the lawn were stirring now. One had started a small campfire for making food, even though there was likely plenty to eat inside.
The newcomers to Chicago chatted softly. Accents from the deepest South caught Flip’s ear. It brought back sensations and memories so old and profound they seemed to come from the very marrow of his bones. Things he had fought for years to forget. Hard, deep things. Old things.
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