Lake of Darkness

by Scott Kenemore

  For a moment, he went weak in the knees.

  Tark stepped in and skillfully caught the policeman under the armpit, just managing to keep him upright. Tark was immediately in awe of how little Flip weighed. It was, he thought to himself, almost like a magic trick in itself. One looked at the tall officer in the heavy leather jacket and simply assumed that he was substantial and solid. That there was something there.

  But now Tark found that he was light and impermanent. He could be carried around like a hat rack.

  Tark walked Flip away from the improvised campsite.

  A few paces off of the property, Flip straightened and recovered his footing. He pushed Tark’s hands away, but did not look the magician in the face.

  “There you go,” Tark said. “This morning air will do you good. It was stuffy in that old place. Too damn stuffy. You’ll feel better out here. Say, they have bars around here? We should get you a drink. Steady your nerves.”

  Flip shook his head slowly. He desired no such thing.

  After a few moments, as though the interval had never occurred, he returned his focus to the case at hand.

  “A middle aged Negro man who shops at fine tailors and has a divot in his head,” Flip said, beginning to walk once again. “You ever see anybody like that, Tark?”

  “No,” Tark said. “It doesn’t ring a bell. And that would be a pretty big bell.”

  “Now I’m hopeful,” Flip said. “Even if you and I have no idea who this man is, it will be hard for him to hide. People will remember a person like that. We need to visit the other aid organizations. I’m sure our suspect did. But first I want to put in a question at the station, see if they know our divot man.”

  “That word, divot. . .” Tark said.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s funny. I should work it into my routine somehow. You know, about ninety percent of a magic show is just banter—talking to the audience? Only about ten percent is doing the tricks.”

  “Yes,” said Flip. “I’ve seen your act, remember?”

  “Then here’s something else,” Tark said. “That man back there working the desk?”

  “What about him?” Flip said.

  “He thought I was police,” Tark said proudly.

  Flip shook his head to say nothing could be done with some people, and steered their path deeper into the city.

  The went westward, along the south edge of the Loop, passing several businesses just opening for the day. A man smoked a cigar on the stoop of a barbershop. The cigar gave off the pleasing aroma of tobacco and peach. The man had no hands, and held the cigar between small round stumps. Flip and Tark both silently wondered if he was the barber, and, if so, how he cut hair.

  “You all right then?” Tark said to Flip after they had passed the barber shop. “You got faint back there, and now you ain’t talkin’.”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Flip said, his mind working. “I’m interested in the timing of these events.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Tark.

  “There’s four of these twin killings—four that we know of,” Flip said. “The first two—Washington twins in the alley, and the Horner boys by the Calumet—happen close to each other, early in June. Then there’s a pause for a month, month and a half. Then twins are killed again in the house of Miss Heloise, and then the Whitcomb triplets die last Tuesday. Our man with the divot was asking around back there sometime in the middle of June.”

  Tark struggled to assemble the timeline in his head.

  “It’s almost as if our man was looking for more targets,” Flip continued. “Like he aimed to kill young Negro twins, and—let’s say—he knew about the Washington twins and the Horner boys. But after he killed them, he needed more. Had to go searching. So he did. Took him over a month, but he found some.”

  “And now he’s found me and my brother,” Tark said gloomily. “Looks that way,” Flip told him. “That’s why we got work to do. One reason, anyhow.”

  In the precinct building, Flip gave his name and badge number to the officer at the desk and waited. There was a strange mix of people in the cramped, wood paneled entryway. It smelled like ten different things, most of them bad. There was a single bench completely filled with waiting petitioners. With no room to sit, Tark crossed his arms and leaned against a wall. Soon, he had fallen asleep standing.

  Flip waited at the desk. After five minutes, a police matron came to greet him. She was fat and waddly, and had a crooked smile. She did not look happy to see him.

  Flip gave his name a second time—slowly and clearly—and mentioned a project for the mayor. The matron’s expression changed. Immediately, she suggested they could go back to a private office, but Flip said he hadn’t the time and that it wasn’t necessary. Flip gave her the details of the man with a divot in his head. The matron said she would have the files checked, and pass along anything they found. Flip thanked her, knocked the drowsing magician awake, and stepped back out into the street.

  “My hopes aren’t up,” Flip told Tark. “But you never know. Maybe they picked him up for something before. Could have a name and address. Even a photograph.”

  “What if they do?” Tark asked.

  “Then we go to where he lives and bring him in for questioning,” Flip said. “And then we tell the mayor.”

  Flip and Tark visited seven more aid organizations before the day was out. There was the Chicago League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, the Alliance for Orphaned Children, and the Negro Community Development Association. They also stopped at two Negro churches and two white ones that had programs for orphans. At each, they asked about a middle aged Negro man who might have come around talking about twins. They took care to mention that he might have had a part missing from his head.

  The best they got were a couple of “maybes” and one “What if he wore a hat?”

  As they exited a Catholic orphanage staffed by skinny French Canadian nuns, Flip announced that they would cease for the day. The sisters had seen no Negro twins. Nor had they seen a man with a divot in his head. But they had recently baked some cakes, and did not let Tark and Flip leave before forcing them to accept slices of cherry clafoutis wrapped in red handkerchiefs.

  Outside the Catholic charity, Tark sat down on a bench and immediately began to eat his portion.

  “I don’t walk this much,” he explained to Flip. “My legs feel like two ropes. My feet feel like flapjacks.”

  “It will mash your feet and toes, walking this much,” Flip said unsympathetically. “You must get used to it.”

  “We put in a good day,” Tark said, wiping his brow.

  “We’ve discovered nothing new since six-thirty this morning,” Flip pointed out.

  Tark shrugged and went back to eating.

  “We need to make careful notes of what we saw and heard,” Flip told the magician. “Then we should formulate a plan for tomorrow.”

  “Are we gonna go around to the hospitals to ask doctors if they patched up a man with a scoop taken out of his head?”

  Tark laughed to himself as he chewed.

  Flip looked down his nose at the seated magician.

  “You’re joking, but that’s the kind of thing that can break a case. Have you done this before, Tark? Do you have any damn idea what police work involves?”

  “I know what I saw today,” Tark answered. “Us asking around in a lot of stinky, crowded charity places.”

  There was a very long silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Tark said. “That’s my tired feet talking. If it will get us closer to the man who came after my brother? Shit. I’ll talk to every doctor in Chicago. Whatever. Let’s do it.”

  “In that case, come on with me,” Flip said. “We ain’t restin’ yet.”

  EIGHT

  They took a streetcar back to Flip’s neighborhood. The sun began to set. Flip thought the shadows crept oddly over Tark, seeming to linger and settle on him. Cloaking him.

  Despite consuming the rich cake, Tark looked dried out and b
eat. Flip wondered if gin were needed, or if that would only make things worse. Whichever it was, Flip knew the tonic would almost certainly be applied vigorously within the hour.

  Flip still felt alert and focused. He was thinking about the man they had to find.

  When they reached the building where he lived, they saw two people waiting out front. Flip had never had so many visitors in a 24-hour period. One visitor had been his previous record, and that had been tied last night.

  Curious neighbors peered furtively out at the waiting pair from behind ratty curtains or—if they didn’t have curtains—unabashedly and straight through window glass. One of the visitors was a uniformed police officer. A white man, tall and broad in the shoulders. The other was a Negro woman in a fine hobble skirt. She wore no cosmetics on her face, and her hat was large and ornate. Still, it took Flip only a moment to recognize her as Sally Battle.

  “Officer?” the policeman said.

  Flip nodded and showed his badge.

  “She came to the station,” the policeman explained. “Said she had something that would help with your case. Said she knew you. Normally, we wouldn’t do this, but the captain said the mayor-”

  “It’s all right,” Flip told him. “You did right. I know her.”

  The officer was visibly relieved. He excused himself and hurried up the block as the shadows lengthened. Flip said nothing until the cop was out of earshot.

  “You can leave a message for me at the precinct,” Flip said. “I’ll get it. You don’t have to come to my damn house.”

  Sally was silent.

  “And if you wanted to know where I lived, you could have just asked,” Flip added.

  “You wouldn’t have told me straight,” Sally said.

  “No,” Flip said. “Probably not. What do you need?”

  Sally eyed the young magician.

  “First of all, it is something to be discussed in private,” she said. “It concerns your investigation.”

  “Which investigation is that?” Flip said.

  “Twins,” Sally said. “Dead twins.”

  “Which you know about how?” Flip asked sternly.

  Sally did not respond. She glanced at the magician again.

  “This man is Drextel Tark,” Flip said, indicating the faded conjurer. “I don’t think anybody could have a more relevant connection to this case than he does. Now tell me why you are here.”

  Sally reached into her purse and carefully withdrew a photograph. It was small—the kind family portrait studios produced to be placed inside a locket. She handed it to Flip. He looked it over carefully.

  “I think we all need to go inside,” he said.

  “Are they yours, or do they belong to one of your girls?” Flip asked, tossing the photo of the swaddled twin newborns onto the table beside his notes.

  Sally said nothing, and looked around his dingy apartment doubtfully.

  “Yours then,” Flip declaimed, and sat down at his table.

  Sally and Tark also reluctantly found seats.

  Tark immediately magicked a glass bottle. He took small sips straight from the mouth, and a smile slowly spread across his face. Then he looked at the photo on the table.

  “Hey, they are twins, aren’t they?” Tark said. “Took me a second.”

  Flip leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

  “I’ll help you Sally, but first you have to reveal how you know about this,” Flip said to her.

  Sally sat up straight. Her jaw became hard and firm. Her eyes narrowed.

  “What don’t I know?” she said. “At the Palmerton House, we hear more than at any police station. And we keep files on customers just like the police do.”

  “You keeping a file on me?” Flip asked, half-serious.

  “Maybe,” Sally said. “We keep all sorts of information on men. What they like. What they don’t. What job they have. What they’ll pay extra for. Some of the Palmerton’s clients work for the mayor, and maybe they heard about a special meeting between you and the big man. Maybe they even had an idea of what you talked about at that meeting. You’d be surprised what a man will tell when he’s buttoning up his shirt and pulling his socks back on. It’s more than he’ll say when the boys in blue are beating on him down at the station, that’s for sure.”

  Flip smiled at Sally. He did not take his eyes off her, but at the same time leaned over to Tark and made a “gimmie” motion with his right hand. Tark surrendered the bottle. Flip took it and brought it up to his lips, eyes still on Sally’s. He had two good swallows, then passed it back.

  “I thought I was a man who noticed things,” Flip told her, “but I’ll be damned if I ever noticed you were with child. And I visit with you at least once a month. Twice, probably.”

  “I know as many tricks as your magician,” Sally said. “And just like him, a lot of mine involve costumes.”

  Flip was genuinely astounded. Sally had never seemed to be the slightest bit pregnant.

  As Flip mulled his recent oversights, Sally took her turn motioning for the bottle. The magician carefully passed it, and the madam took a dainty sip.

  “That is horrible,” she pronounced. “Come to my place one day—when you’re old enough and can afford it—and I’ll set you up with some proper gin, like the British drink.”

  Sally turned back to the policeman.

  “Why is he even here, Flip? You said before that he had something relevant?”

  Flip informed her, in broad strokes, of Tark’s connection to the case. Sally knit her brow as Flip told the tale, and her jaw became softer.

  “Then I’m sorry,” Sally said when Flip had finished. “My babies have me thinking a bit selfishly. I’m not the only one with something at stake, am I? You love your brother.”

  It was not a question.

  “I’m all he has,” Tark said softly. “He can’t function on his own.”

  Sally turned back to Flip.

  “Well then,” she said to the policeman, straightening the front of her hobble skirt with flattened palms.

  “Well then, what?” said Flip.

  “Well then I also want to help you,” Sally told him.

  “You can help . . . by telling me how you know what you know,” Flip said. “Who your leaky sources are that work with the mayor.”

  “You know what I mean,” Sally said. “People saw you asking around today. Asking at the settlement agencies. I heard about that too! Please? I want to be a part of this.”

  “You got a business to run,” Flip reminded her.

  “My place can run itself for a while,” Sally said. “If there’s people aiming to stop this killer—and I don’t help out?—I’ll never forgive myself, Flip. Never ever.”

  Flip considered.

  “I don’t know what you think you can do for us,” he told her. “I already have resources. If I needed more men, the department would give them to me in an instant.”

  “This is for me, Flip,” she said, pleading now. “You don’t got babies. You don’t know what it is to imagine a thing in the world waiting to kill them . . .. You can’t know Flip. You have to trust me.”

  “Sally, when I asked you to keep an eye out for things, I didn’t mean-”

  “It’s too late, Flip,” she said. “I’m here. I’m involved whether you like it or not.”

  Flip sighed.

  “Sally. . . I . . . Yes, then. You can come along and help. . . if you truly want to. But. . . This is not going to be nice.”

  “Nice?” she said. “Nice? What world you think I live in?”

  Flip nodded silently. He had, perhaps, forgotten just a little bit.

  They sat and drank gin. Even Sally had more. At one point, it occurred to her to ask the magician: “Young man, if you can simply make this beverage appear from out of the ether—as it appears you can—then why not prestidigitate finer quality stuff?”

  Tark smiled but did not reply.

  They discussed what Flip and Tark had discovered so far
. Flip wrote the details of every location they had visited, and all the people they had talked to. Tark and Sally conjectured further.

  “You ain’t never seen a customer with a lump taken out of his head?” the magician asked.

  “We’ve seen men with all sorts of injuries, of course,” Sally replied thoughtfully. “But none like what you are describing. How about you? Have you ever seen that?”

  “Fewer circuses like to have a freak show these days,” Tark said. “More of an east coast thing. Once, I saw ‘The Man with No Brain.’ His skull stopped right above his eyes. But he seemed otherwise like you or me. Could walk and talk and everything. We played a game of poker. He had a deck of cards with full naked women on the backs—real photos, not drawings. I-”

  Tark suddenly clammed up, as if remembering a lady was present.

  Sally smiled.

  “Oh dear boy, you’re blushing?” she said. “How darling!”

  “I think. . .” Flip said, sitting up and staring intently into his pad of notes. “I think . . . we have two stops tomorrow. One is the Illinois State Penitentiary. The other is the Chicago Defender. I don’t have to tell you that the latter is the more dangerous.”

  “Former, you mean,” said Sally.

  “No,” said Flip.

  The Chicago Defender was the largest Negro newspaper in Chicago, and probably the United States. It was the paper Negro train porters most frequently distributed throughout the South. Its editorials urged Negroes from everywhere to move to Chicago at all costs, to come and make the city their home. Its role in fomenting the new migration to Chicago could not be overestimated.

  “That newspaper office involves more danger to our investigation, and, therefore, to the city,” Flip said. “We are stalking big game. One of the only advantages we have is that the killer does not know we are looking for him. But the killer will know if the Defender begins to connect the twin murders and prints something. I want to look in their archive for anything about twin murders previous to this summer. Have you two ever been there? It’s run out of a converted apartment building. They don’t have a proper newsroom like the Tribune or the Daily News, but they do keep an archive in a couple of closets by the back stair. They’ll let you go poking around if you’ve got a reason.”