Lake of Darkness

by Scott Kenemore

Tark said the word ‘border’ as though Indiana were a distant and savage land.

  “He’s with people I trust,” Tark continued. “There’s no reason to think he could be found.”

  “Is there any chance that Ike will return—or be returned—before tomorrow night?” Flip asked.

  Tark considered this carefully, looking like a card-player wondering whether to raise, fold, or call.

  “No,” he eventually answered. “You don’t need to worry about this so much, Flip.”

  “In that case, I have determined what we should do next,” the policeman declared.

  Sally and Tark looked on intently. Flip finished his soup silently before explaining himself.

  “Tomorrow morning I will go and do some things alone,” Flip said to them. “Then I’ll have to prepare for what we’re going to do tomorrow night . . . together.”

  Tark and Sally looked at one another.

  “With your day, Tark, you will go out and buy an eye patch and a floppy Irish hat like your brother wears. Use the money I gave you. Then you’re gonna spend time practicing. You know how to practice. If he can be you, then you can damn-straight be him. Buy yourself a mirror to practice in front of.”

  Tark cocked his head to the side.

  “You intend to-”

  “To use you as a lure?—as bait?—yes,” Flip said. “We’ll tell Singer what we’re going to do, and position you at the edge of his circus camp. Isolate that part of the field. Make it feel like it would be easy for our mystery man to come and find you. To prey on the one who is slower and duller. And then when he makes his move . . .”

  With a glance, Flip indicated his 1911.

  “I suppose I could do that,” Tark said thoughtfully.

  “What I don’t fully know is . . . if our killer will want to murder just one of you,” Flip said in a tone of distant, academic conjecture.

  Tark swallowed hard.

  “That’s to say, does it have to be both at the same time?” Flip continued. “So far, he’s killed people who looked identical together. I don’t know if that’s important. If he can kill Ike, but not you—or you, but not Ike—will he do it? Or, if he’s in a situation where he can kill both of you—but not cut off your heads—would he act then? I. . . I’m trying to figure these parts out.”

  Tark looked at Flip nervously and had a swig from his bottle.

  “Now Sally, what would be helpful from you-” Flip began.

  “Tomorrow is Saturday, yes?” Sally interjected.

  Flip nodded.

  She sighed.

  “I can help in the morning if you need, but. . . I will have to spend tomorrow night at the Palmerton. There is an upcoming engagement I cannot break.”

  “Fine,” said Flip. His tone, in that single word, reminded Sally that this was her choice. All of it. Sitting here, eating terrible soup in his apartment, drinking tenth-rate gin with a magician, was not something he needed her for. She could come and go as she pleased.

  “What else then?” asked Tark.

  “I suggest you go take a walk,” Flip replied. “Find a bed. There’s nothing else to be done. Prepare for tomorrow night. Get your mind right.”

  The next morning Flip skipped up the steps of the apartment complex that housed the Chicago Defender at seven o’clock sharp, and made his way inside. The interior smelled like newsprint and tobacco and coffee. He asked the first person he saw if Robert Sengstacke Abbott was yet in his office. The receptionist—young and new—nodded yes and waited for Flip to identify himself. She became alarmed when he merely brushed past into the crowded newsroom. Only the intercession of Abbott himself—opening the door to his office, coffee cup in hand—prevented her from raising her voice.

  “Bob!” Flip said brightly.

  “Hey, there he is,” Abbott said, a genuine grin stretching ear to ear. “Number one lawman on the South Side.”

  Robert Sengstacke Abbott, the editor and publisher of the Defender, was about forty-five years old. He wore a tidy mustache and was roundfaced. He favored felt bowlers and straw fedoras, and was seldom seen outside of a three-piece suit. He had short hair, very dark skin, and piercing eyes.

  “Step into my office,” Abbott said. “My warm-up can wait.”

  Flip followed Abbott back inside the converted bedroom that served as his office. Every inch of the large desk within was covered with typewritten pages, newspaper clippings, or handwritten notes. Manuscripts and copies of the Defender were stacked against the walls in piles tall as a man. Behind his desk hung a framed photograph of Booker T. Washington. On the wall opposite was a print of W.E.B. Du Bois.

  The front page of the Saturday issue was laid out on Abbott’s chair. The headline screamed: PHOTO-PLAY BOUND TO AROUSE RACIAL HATRED!

  “You seen this nonsense?” Abbott asked, catching Flip’s glance. “Birth of a Nation, they call it. A three-hour movie designed to make the audience feel in favor of clansmen.”

  “Must’ve missed it,” Flip said. “I go to comedies mostly. Charlie Chaplin. Fatty Arbuckle good too.” “Harold Lloyd, then?” Abbott asked, always enthusiastic to talk about the cinema. “If you like those two, you must like Lloyd.”

  Flip shook his head.

  “Naw. Not Lloyd. Face looks too much like a ghost. Makes me uneasy.”

  Abbott shrugged. Each had his tastes.

  “What can I help you with, Flip?” Abbott asked, moving aside the fresh issue of the Defender and plopping down in his chair.

  Flip understood Abbott was a busy man.

  “Were you here in the office yesterday?” Flip asked.

  “I was,” Abbott said.

  “And did you notice a pair asking to root through your archives?”

  Abbott smiled.

  “Uncommonly good-looking woman, if I recall. . . and then—if my memory also serves—a young man I’ve seen do tricks in Singer’s circus. Though, did you hear they’ve changed their name?”

  “I did hear that,” Flip told him.

  “Everything is positioning in the marketplace,” Abbott declared.

  “Would it surprise you to know that that woman was Sally Battle?” Flip said. “Of the Palmerton House?” Abbott nodded slowly and carefully, as if struggling to remain neutral about such a person and place.

  Abbott was that most uncommon strain of man—most uncommon in Flip’s world, at any rate—who seemed genuinely to have no vice. There was no battle going on inside of Robert Sengstacke Abbott. The endless, epic war between pleasure and temperance was not being fought on his soil. In fact, he seemed numb to just about everything not to do with publishing his newspaper.

  Flip did not necessarily see this as indicative of any moral merit. If you avoided vice simply because you lacked the receptors for it, did that really set you up to claim virtue? The fact that over on South State Street there was a building filled with the most beautiful Negro women in the world—and you could fuck them for money—might have registered for Abbott in the same way a cat would appreciate the architecture of a cathedral, or a dog might consider a Rembrandt.

  “I came here to tell you that they were working for me,” Flip told Abbott. “With me, I should say.”

  “What’s going on?” the editor asked.

  “I’ll tell you,” Flip said. “But do me a kindness. Let’s skip the part where I remind you of all the favors I’ve done you over the years. All the times I gave you information you needed for your stories. When I tipped you on who your reporters could press for answers, and where to find them. Not to mention all those times you’ve used me as an anonymous source.”

  “I feel such favors have been fairly repaid,” Abbott said stoically. “I don’t need to remind you of those instances, either.”

  “Good,” the policeman said. “Then we both have good memories. I sent them here because I hoped they would find things quietly, and I wouldn’t have to tell you what is happening in the city. What is truly happening. . .”

  There! Lo and behold!

  A spark s
hone in Abbott’s eyes. The hunger. The want. The way other men might have looked at a woman, or a tall glass of beer, or a steak dinner—now Abbott looked at Flip.

  The newspaperman did desire. He desired stories. He desired that things kept secret and safe from prying eyes should be neither. Yes, thought Flip. Robert Sengstacke Abbott now would come truly alive.

  “I’m surprised,” Abbott said thoughtfully, trying to conceal his evident interest. “I’d have thought I’d have earned that. We are fair and honest in our representations of law enforcement. We portray the Chicago Police in a sympathetic light whenever it is warranted. We have been careful to outline the unfairness endured by Negro officers, for example. You know what we do here, Joe Flippity. We’re not a mystery.” “No, you’re not,” Flip said. “But you didn’t let me finish. I said I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you . . . Not that I’m not going to.”

  As Abbott sat back in his chair, like a king in a paper-filled throne room, Flip described carefully the case before him. He included his personal meeting with the mayor, and even the budget he had been given. He discussed his conversation at the settlement charity, and the search for the man with the divot in his head. The lone detail omitted—as ever—was his consultation with Ursula Green.

  “You want it bad, don’t you Bob?” Flip said as he concluded. “I see it in your eyes.”

  “These are remarkable goings-on,” Abbott admitted, drumming his fingers very rapidly on his desk. “A Negro officer placed in charge of a case of this magnitude . . . with the potential to impact all Negro policing in the future. And. . . at the same time. . . Mutilation! Murder! An emergency in our community. An immediate risk to the welfare of citizens. Something that would be immoral to keep away from the public. . .”

  There he went.

  Flip sighed and shook his head.

  “Bob, first of all, he only kills identical twins. Second of all, if you run a story, it will make it more difficult for me to catch him. He’ll understand he is being pursued. That would be the immoral thing to do.”

  “Then. . . why have you come here?” Abbott asked, seeming genuinely puzzled.

  “Because you know better than anyone what is happening on the South Side of this city,” Flip said. “You have information nobody else does. You got more feelers than the Chicago Police for damn sure. There have been four killings of Negro twins, Bob. Four that I know of. I want to make certain there haven’t been others. To catch this beast, I have to know as much about him as I can.”

  Abbott rubbed his chin with fingers that were almost entirely covered with pen and printing ink.

  “Off the top of my head?” Abbott said. “No. Nothing. I can think of no story we’ve ever done about twins being mutilated, and my memory is what they call photographic. I can recall with great clarity from the present back to, oh, 1910 or thereabouts. Before that, if it’s not photographic, it’s still very good. And I tell you, I surely would have remembered something like this.”

  “What about twins, generally,” the policeman pressed.

  Abbott considered it.

  “Yes,” he finally pronounced, “I do seem to recall something involving twins and murder once upon a time. It does not meet the exact profile you are looking for, but. . .”

  “Good,” said Flip. “That’s something, anyhow. I’m going to need that information. Whatever you have.”

  A rapid and frantic knocking erupted at Abbott’s door. It was summarily thrown open before an answer could come. A young man stood on the other side. He had a pencil behind his ear and excitement seemed to pulsate out from him.

  “Mr. Abbott!” the young man cried. “The mayor’s forged an agreement with the rail workers. There will be no strike!”

  “He did what?” Abbott said, rising to his feet. “That strike was a sure thing.”

  “They met in secret—all night at the Congress Plaza,” the reporter said. “My source tells me the mayor didn’t let them leave until they’d hammered it out. Kept them there like prisoners ‘till morning.”

  “Very good,” said Abbott, as though praising a star pupil. “This is tomorrow’s front page. I want you to get in touch with Oscar De Priest and get a quote about what this will mean for folks on the South Side who take trains in to work.”

  No sooner did the reporter begin a retreat from Abbott’s office, than a middle-aged woman stuck her head into the doorway to replace him. She held up a newspaper.

  “Bob? The Tribune’s done it. In today’s edition.”

  “Done what, Cheryl?” Abbott asked.

  “Called the mayor ‘Kaiser Bill’,” she said. “You told us we had to wait for the Tribune to do it first, if we wanted to do it. Well they have. And I do.”

  The publisher rolled his eyes and shifted in his chair.

  “The mayor loves him some Germans,” Abbott said to Flip. “Won’t rightly say which side he supports in this war, leastways.”

  “We could do our own variation,” Cheryl suggested. “What about ‘Wilhelm Thompson’? Something like that.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Abbott said. “But try to come up with something better than that, eh?”

  “Fine, but you should read this,” Cheryl said, and tossed the Trib with practiced motion onto the mountain of paper on his desk.

  Abbott turned to Flip.

  “I should really attend to things,” Abbott said. “It’s like this all day. And once it gets going, it doesn’t stop ‘till the sun goes down.”

  “That’s fine,” Flip said. “We may have a line on this man—this killer—tonight. I have a plan. If it works, you’ll hear from me. You’ll get the full scoop. But in case it doesn’t, can you have somebody write up what you know about other twins? Have it delivered here.”

  Flip took out his notepad and jotted.

  “Surely, surely,” Abbott said, placing the note in the pocket of his vest.

  Flip thanked the publisher and turned to leave. Outside, other members of the newsroom had their eyes on Abbott’s door, waiting for a chance to pounce.

  “Should I leave it open?” Flip asked.

  “Might as well,” said Abbott. “And Flip?”

  The policeman bent an ear.

  “You will owe me. For not printing this now? Something this big? This wipes out all the other favor-accounts we ever had. We start over, with you in debt to me big. You got it?”

  “Fine,” said Flip. “Just send over what you have. And let me know if that ‘photographic’ mind of yours remembers anything more.”

  Flip left the offices of the Defender and headed down the block to a store called Percival’s Dry Goods. The sun rose above him. The morning, yet again, was unfolding stultifyingly clear and hot. As he walked, Flip allowed himself to consider the benefits of a position like Abbott’s. Namely, all of the thrill, and none of the risk. It was a safe job. Newspaper publishers had been shot in the Wild West, but never in Chicago. Never east of the Mississippi. If Abbott were to be assassinated for something he exposed, it would be a citywide scandal. If a policeman like Flip were to be shot, it would be nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  Flip reached Percival’s Dry Goods as it was opening and went inside. It was the worst, most disreputable store of its kind that Flip knew. Almost everything it carried was both dirty and stolen. (If you had stolen something in good shape, you didn’t take it to Percival.)

  The moment the proprietor behind the counter saw the lawman, he began to protest in a thousand different, simpering ways of his innocence.

  Flip waved a hand.

  “Ain’t here for that,” Flip said, not even bothering to look at the man. “You show me your dirtiest dungarees. Worst ones you got. If I look too tall for ’em, don’t you pay that any mind.”

  The proprietor moved cautiously, still searching for the trick or trap.

  He walked around his counter to help Flip find the clothes he needed. There were some thin choices on a crooked shelf in the back.

  Flip selected what he wa
nted, paid, and left the store.

  That evening, Flip and Tark arrived together at the fallow lot that held the Singling Brothers circus. Singer himself was waiting to receive them, Rufus by his side.

  “Holy cats!” the youngster said. “I thought you really was Ike when I seen you comin’. You got the eye patch, the crazy-eye, and even the walk!”

  “It is a fine counterfeit,” Singer offered, looking the young man up and down.

  “Wasn’t that hard to figure,” Tark said. “I been watching my brother all my life.”

  “And what are you supposed to be?” Singer asked, turning to Flip.

  Flip wore a pair of soiled blue jeans with the pockets straight in the front like a cowboy. He had ancient work boots that looked ready to sit up and start talking on their own; they were covered in mud and blood, and had almost certainly been worn in the stockyards. Flip’s workshirt was nineteenth-century, like something an Amish person would wear. It was also covered in mud.

  “I’m supposed to be precisely nothin’,” Flip told Singer, as if this should be obvious.

  “You early,” Rufus said. “He ain’t come ‘till past sunset.”

  “He could be watchin’ us now,” Flip cautioned. “I don’t think he is, but you never know.”

  Rufus looked around nervously. Flip smiled.

  “Show me where you saw him yesterday,” Flip commanded. “The very spot.”

  Rufus did, walking them to the side of the circus grounds.

  “Came out of those bushes and trees over there,” Rufus explained. “Then he walked directly up to me.”

  “All right,” said Flip, rubbing his jaw, guessing at the trajectory of it. “He must have approached through the empty lots past the trees. What we’re gonna do . . . Tark? There you are. What we’re gonna do is position ‘Ike’ by the edge of the bushes. Give him a stool to sit on. Maybe have him close his eyes—his eye—and look like he’s asleep. If the man comes again, he’ll see he doesn’t need to interact with the rest of the circus. If his goal is to get to Ike, he can do that without taking but a few steps out into the field.”

  Tark cocked his head to the side.

  “I’m waiting for the part where you say you’re gonna stop him before he kills me.”