Lake of Darkness

by Scott Kenemore

  “I’ll be right over there, by the edge of the caravans,” Flip said.

  “What you gonna do if he makes a sudden move on me?” Tark asked emphatically. “What if he tries to cut my head off? Can you shoot him from there with your gun?”

  Flip looked from the edge of the field over to the circus caravans.

  “Probably not,” he said. “Liable to hit you just as soon as him.”

  Tark crossed his arms to show this was not satisfying.

  “But here’s the thing . . .” Flip continued. “I don’t think he’s going to attack you. From what I’ve seen, that’s not how he works. What I think he’ll do is try to talk to you. I think he’ll ask if he can come back later in the evening, when Drextel Tark is also around. Or maybe he’ll ask if you and your magician brother will go meet with him somewhere. He might even offer you money to do it.”

  “So he can cut off our heads,” Tark said.

  Flip looked left and right in a way that said this should be obvious.

  “How long until sunset?” Tark asked.

  “A while still,” said Flip. “Couple hours at least.”

  “Can I drink gin while I wait?” asked Tark.

  “Does your brother drink gin?” Flip asked.

  “My brother drinks everything,” Tark said.

  Flip indicated it would be acceptable.

  Tark produced a clear glass bottle from his brother’s clothes and took his first sip of the evening.

  They waited for hours. Tark found a small circular podium—like a lion might sit on in an animal act—and placed it near the edge of the field. He took a seat upon it, partook heavily of his juniper beverage, and appeared to fall into an authentic doze. Heavy, crepuscular rays cut between buildings and lit up the brownfields orange and red. The sun moved low and large in the sky.

  Flip sat in the shade of a broken wagon wheel. It was the furthest from Tark that he could sit and still trust his eyes on the trees and scrub. He would not, at this distance, be able to rescue Tark from an assailant with any surety, yet he felt unconcerned for the magician’s safety. His killer was a man who planned carefully and who struck only when the stars were right. And these stars were decidedly wrong.

  If the killer approached from the wooded place as he had before, he would hesitate at the treeline upon encountering Tark (so unexpectedly close and vulnerable). It would be startling. Then, probably, he would sense that something was off and back away. (He was smart. Flip knew this if he knew anything.) But by then it would be too late, and Flip would move on him easily. The sleeping magician, though? No, he was safe. Hundreds of people in Chicago were at risk of being assaulted or worse this night. Flip did not think Drextel Tark was one of them.

  Flip watched the treeline carefully. He looked hard and unerringly, but saw not so much as a city rat. Certainly, Flip glimpsed no man with a fine suit and a divot in his head peeking through the trees.

  As the sun dipped lower, Flip sensed footsteps approaching from behind. The circus workers had been warned to stay away, but had not been told precisely why. Flip glanced back and saw Singer approaching. The ringmaster held a thermos.

  “Thought you might like some soup,” Singer said.

  Flip accepted the metal container.

  “We takin’ bets on what gon’ happen,” the circus proprietor informed him.

  Flip raised an eyebrow as he sucked down hot broth.

  “Two to one is he falls over,” Singer explained. “But Tark falls over all the time when he’s in his cups. That’s easy money. Three to one is somebody shows up—anybody. Five to one, the man from yesterday shows. Ten to one, there’s some kind of rumpus—a fistfight, like. And twenty to one is . . .you shoot somebody.”

  Flip lowered the soup.

  “Only twenty to one?” he asked.

  Singer nodded and smiled.

  “I didn’t say shoot him dead,” Singer clarified, looking out across the darkening field to where the magician dozed. “Just that you shoot him. Truth is—between the animals and the men—violence tends to go down on this here corner. And it’s been quiet for a while. Too quiet. We due.”

  Flip handed the thermos back to Singer.

  “’Course, the other half of it is—a lot of my people would like to see some violence on Tark. Not too much, now. . . Just a little. He don’t do no heavy lifting, and he gets his own caravan. Lot of folks jealous of that. I don’t know that I’m exempt.”

  “I thought you liked Tark,” Flip said.

  “He’s a draw. Good at magic, and only gonna get better. But. . . Damn. I don’t know. Something about somebody that good that young. . . It just make you want to see them get knocked around. Nothing fatal. But if Tark could end the night with a black eye, there’d be lots of smiles around here tomorrow, I tell you that.”

  “I don’t think anyone is going to visit us tonight,” Flip said, repositioning himself beneath the wagon wheel. “I think the only way your boy gets a black eye is if he falls off that animal stand.”

  “So you’re saying it could happen?” Singer said with a grin.

  Flip smiled back.

  “I’d give it even money.”

  Tark did not fall, and neither did a strange man appear. The closest Flip got to excitement was when a cluster of seagulls from the lake swooped down and buzzed Tark. Yet the magician was in too great a stupor even to notice.

  When the sun had set completely and the stars began to come out, Flip resigned himself fully to the operation’s failure. He stood from under the wheel and stretched his legs. His right knee gave an audible crack, as it sometimes did when the weather changed. He stalked over to where the magician sat.

  Tark looked dead asleep, but opened a careful eye when Flip drew near.

  “Nothing?” Tark asked.

  “Nothing,” Flip answered.

  Tark relaxed and let his legs dangle off of the stand.

  “I ain’t sure he’s real.”

  “What’s that?” Flip replied.

  Tark stood up and began to do his own stretching and bending. He winced several times, probably just from the gin.

  “I don’t know for certain,” the magician said to the policeman. “I just get this feeling, now, that maybe he’s not real.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Flip told him. “People saw him. He talked to Rufus.”

  Tark waved this detail away as if it were inconsequential.

  “I had a dream just now,” Tark said. “Scary one. I was sitting right here in the dream—just like I done—and you were right over there underneath the wagon wheel.”

  “Are you sure it was a dream?” Flip asked, giving the line of trees one last, hopeful scan. “Because if the next part is a bunch of birds flew in your face, then it wasn’t.”

  “I’m sure it was a dream,” the magician insisted. “There was a thing in it, like a monster. It looked like bugs you see crawling through the grass—the little critters—only it was a hundred feet high. Two hundred. Real tall, Flip. Standing over me. It was coming in from the lake, walking on land.”

  “That’s a big critter,” Flip said.

  “Yes,” agreed Tark. “With its head like a triangle pointed down. And triangle eyes, too. And it was doing what you were, Flip. It was looking at me. Watching over me. And it was hoping the man with the divot in his head would show up.”

  “It was hoping?” Flip said. “You could tell that?”

  Tark nodded.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much,” Flip told him.

  “Why that got to be the first thing people say whenever I have a dream? Or my back hurts? Or my tooth aches? Shows what people know. A drink will make a dream like that go away, not the other way around.”

  From the corner of his eye, Flip noticed Singer sauntering out onto the field. The circus owner sensed that the evening’s affair was at an end.

  “No bites?” he asked as he drew near the pair. “Didn’t catch your fish? My magician’s kind of puny. Maybe you need bigger bai
t.”

  Tark sneered.

  “No, we didn’t see him,” Flip conceded. “I don’t know how you wagered, but I hope you won.”

  “You kidding?” Singer said with a toothy grin. “The house always wins. Just a matter of how much.”

  Tark paced about like a long-legged bird, getting the blood back in his extremities. Flip surveyed the horizon intently. Singer shook his head, as if this were all very strange.

  Then, suddenly, Singer grew still. His eyes locked onto something.

  Without warning, the circus owner raced to the edge of the treeline.

  The spot to where Singer galloped looked dark and filthy—but, most importantly, empty. Flip wondered if the man would be bitten by rats.

  “Now what’s this?” Singer called.

  Flip and Tark jogged over.

  There were no rats, but there was, lost in the high grass, a halfcrushed hat. A homburg. The crown looked trampled by a single footfall. Singer bent down to pick it up.

  “Let me,” said Flip.

  “There could be rats underneath,” Singer warned. “These trees are full of them.”

  “I know that,” said Flip, carefully grasping the hat.

  The policeman examined the homburg in the small light there was left. No maker’s mark. It was fine but old. Well-worn. Plenty of dried sweat on the band inside.

  “That’s him,” Singer said. “That belongs to the man who came by yesterday.”

  “You sure about that?” asked Flip.

  Singer nodded enthusiastically. He went for Rufus, and a moment later returned with the boy. Rufus was keen to make the identification.

  “That’s the man’s hat!” Rufus adjudged. “Sure as I know anything!”

  “Thank you,” Flip said.

  Flip tucked the hat under his arm for safe keeping.

  “I bet he was watching from the trees tonight, and a rat came up and scared him,” Rufus opined. “His hat fell off and he couldn’t find it again.”

  Flip tried to gauge the position of the hat in relation to the wagon wheel. A blind spot, perhaps, where Flip could not have seen a visitor? He could not be sure. Had the killer come after all?

  “What if the hat fell off earlier?” Flip wondered. “Remind me, where did he leave—the strange man—when he went away yesterday?”

  “Right though here,” Rufus said. “Right where we’re standing now.”

  “Man could have left his hat before,” Flip said. “Or tonight.”

  Singer looked around.

  “Hmm,” Singer said. “Let’s keep this between us then, yeah? I ain’t sure how it affects the betting pool.”

  They began to head back toward the circus tents.

  “You think I’m gonna get my magician back anytime soon?” Singer asked.

  “Too early to tell,” Flip answered. “Way too early to tell.”

  TEN

  The feeling stayed with him. The feeling that Ursula Green was animated by something larger and stronger than herself. Something that existed outside her small, frail body. Something that hid in the darkened rooms, and waited alongside her. That the tentacles of a powerful leviathan extended up into her dress or shawl (or whatever the matted rags she wore had once been), and that only their slithering manipulations allowed her to speak and move and perform her magicks.

  Something other. Something beyond.

  Flip counted out another thousand dollars and put it on the table. He lifted the crystal scrying ball, using it like a paperweight, and brusquely slid the green bills underneath. Then he exhaled in a single, frustrated sigh.

  Ursula’s marine-animal laughter began almost immediately.

  “It’s only been three days!” she croaked.

  “A man with a divot in his head,” Flip said. “Start talking.”

  He looked back down to where he had placed his money. Money which, he now saw, had already vanished. Because of course it had.

  Ursula could not have had the strength to lift the ball, much less to do so deftly and silently.

  But something had.

  “Divot right here,” Flip continued, pointing to his own pate. “He’s Negro. He’s middle aged. He shops at fancy tailors. Yeah?”

  “There are men like that all over this city,” Ursula stated.

  “I suppose,” Flip told her.

  “But perhaps there are not so many,” Ursula said mysteriously. “One is two. Two is one. How many men can there be, really?”

  “You tell me,” Flip said. “This is your racket, remember?”

  “O Joe Flippity . . . you have no idea,” Ursula croaked distantly.

  “Don’t start with that again,” Flip said sternly. “I might have more of an idea than you think.”

  The rocking chair moved slightly underneath Ursula. Her head lolled like an automaton losing power.

  “Why has this muddy, cold place beside Lake Michigan been the site of so much murder, Joe Flippity? Why are there so many secrets here? Why so much blood? Why will there be so much blood a hundred years from now? And a hundred years hence, and a hundred years after that too?”

  Flip was silent.

  “Relax yourself,” Ursula said. “You’re not the only one who knows nothing.”

  Flip opened his mouth to object, but thought better of it.

  “One man can be confused for another,” Ursula continued. “The living can be confused with the dead. But what does it matter? All humbug. All mirror. All nonsense.”

  Flip waited a moment longer.

  When Ursula did not continue, he said: “What have I confused, Ursula? The woman upstairs, the one who runs this building where you live, she has twin babies. You don’t start to be precise with me, something could happen to them one day. This isn’t street criminals killing each other. This involves a woman we both know. Your damn landlord.”

  Ursula’s chair rocked once more.

  “This place—only for a moment is it a city—is part of a cycle of things. That is what you fail to understand. What has happened here has already happened, and will happen again. The mayor who called for you—he is mayor now, and, later, he will be mayor again. This war in Europe—it will be now, and then later, it will be again. The killer who takes these people. . . He kills now, and then later he will come again. And again. And all because you cannot see behind the mirror. You can see only your own face in it. But to another, it is a window. And he reaches through. He reaches through and searches for what has been taken.”

  Flip’s stark frustration mounted.

  “I have brought you the man’s hat,” Flip said loudly and deliberately. “It is stained with years of his sweat. Other times, I’ve brung you something a man only touched once or twice, and your words have told me where to find him. And those times, I paid you a whole lot less than I just did.”

  Again, Ursula Green laughed like an ocean beast with something stuck in its blowhole.

  “O it’s got you now, Joe Flippity,” she cackled with amusement. “It’s too late for you. You stuck in the jaws and don’t even see it. You just squirming back and forth. And the pity of it? You ain’t even what it’s tryna eat! You’re just the only one dumb enough to wander right into its mouth!”

  Flip tried to be patient with the teetering old woman. They sat in silence for some time. Flip heard the ticking of his pocket watch. Occasionally, the cry of a reveler on the street outside could be heard. Flip looked up into the dark ceiling above them. It was unseeable and might go to infinity.

  “You don’t even know what he did. . . ” Ursula eventually whispered. “Even that, you have not puzzled.”

  Flip’s eyes flit over to the conjure woman, though he hated to look straight at her. He took a deep breath, summoning all his resolve.

  “All right,” Flip said, staring straight into her face. “What did he do?”

  “This is different,” Ursula said. “It searches for him. It searches for what was taken. You must see that. It is old. Older than Chicago. I remember, because I am older than C
hicago. It is older than the Indians, even. It searches for what he took.”

  Flip put his chin in his hand.

  “You’re not going to shoot straight with me tonight, are you Miss Green?” he said.

  “To the contrary, Joe Flippity,” she croaked. “This is the one night when I have said much more than I ought.”

  Flip walked immediately home. Two things were on his stoop. The first was a small paperboard box from the Chicago Defender, with what sounded like news clippings inside when you shook it. Abbott’s people had worked fast.

  Placing the box under his arm, Flip turned to the second thing—a note pinned to his door. The script that said “Joe Flippity” was in a flowing hand—almost womanly.

  Flip knew that hand. Salvatore Crespo.

  He opened and read.

  Flip,

  Some people need to meet you. Come tomorrow noon. Grand Army of the Republic room in the downtown library. Dress presentably.

  Crespo

  Flip laughed. Then he frowned. He could not think of any way this summons could be good.

  In his rooms, he opened the package from the Defender. Inside, carefully organized by date, he found every issue of the Defender containing stories about or relating to twins. Birth announcements. Awards and scholarships. Death notices. All the salient parts had been marked to bring them immediately to the reader’s attention.

  There was also a note. It read:

  Flip,

  I got you one. June 1, 1910.

  Bob

  To this note had been appended a single newspaper clipping, separated from the others. Flip unfolded the newsprint and read.

  NO MOTIVE IN HAYMORE CASE

  Police Fail to Find Clew in Slaying of Twin Brothers

  The Murder is a Mystery

  After a week of investigation, police say they are no closer to solving the murders of Cornelius and John Haymore—negro men aged 24—at their home at 32nd Street and Prairie Avenue. The men were identical twin brothers employed at the Johnson Foundryworks. It is reported that the bodies were mutilated, but police would provide no further specifics.

  Two of the three suspects taken into police custody on the day of the murder have been released. One, a demented man, remains in custody held on connection to a separate charge of public lewdness. He has not been found to have any involvement in the murders. No witnesses have come forward. A police precinct captain confirmed to Defender reporters that the other men taken into custody had been seen fighting with the Haymore brothers in Dirk’s Alehouse on 59th Street one week prior. However, the suspects have been able to confirm their whereabouts on the night of the murders.