Lake of Darkness

by Scott Kenemore

  And Flip suddenly understood that his reputation for relying upon clues from a soothsayer—something he did not advertise, and had shared with few beyond Crespo—was probably why he had been selected for the assignment. For this as much as for his superlative track record of closing cases.

  He also understood that these rich men were scared. And they were men accustomed to fearing nothing. Now, fear united them. Fear had brought them here in person. It was fear of a danger that might come from the beyond. More specifically, thought Flip, it was fear that even though they’d had their rogue fixer executed, he could still reach out from the beyond and kill them back.

  Little wonder that they employed guards at the door.

  It was not the lives of twin Negro children that concerned them. They feared for their own skins. (And, Flip supposed, at an outside shot, the skins of their immediate families.) Nothing more, nothing less.

  From the back of the group, McCormick spoke up.

  “I daresay, if there are additional resources you require—officer—beyond what the city has been able to provide, you shall have them. Anything at all.”

  “I have always made it a point to employ Negroes in my processing plants!” Oscar Mayer enthusiastically chimed through his heavy German accent. “The Negro community is practically my community. And if there are ways I could serve it further. . .”

  “The city has been very helpful,” Flip assured them. “At the moment I have everything that I need. Leads are being followed. Some identifications are being made. There are certain things that are consistent between descriptions. And I am close—I believe—to making a break in the case.”

  “You have a suspect then?” another of the rich men cried, all mustache and monocle. “Who? Where? Does he look like the man in that photo?”

  Again, the mayor piped up.

  “The officer’s methods are trusted, and he will make an arrest at the correct time. Not before or after. However well intentioned, prompting the police to act hastily can cause the criminal to get wind and flee. I’ve seen it too many times, gentlemen.”

  Big Bill Thompson had seen nothing, and Flip knew it. Yet the industrialist appeared mollified by the mayor’s words, and nodded until his mustache-ends shook.

  Then Wrigley spoke again.

  “You see the gravity of what is happening here. Alive or dead, Durkin must be stopped. Too many lives stand to be affected by this madness. Whoever he is—whatever he is—you must put him down.”

  Flip nodded somberly and reiterated that he believed there would be a resolution very soon. Then he looked over to the mayor with an expression that asked if there would be anything else.

  “But we have taken you away from your investigation for too long,” the mayor said. “It is the Lord’s day, after all. But villains do not pause to observe it, and so neither may we.”

  The mayor looked up, heavenward, into the largest glass dome in the world.

  “May I have a picture of him?” Flip asked as they prepared to depart. “It doesn’t have to be the one of him dead.”

  Oscar Mayer reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a different photo of Durkin. He held it out to Flip. In this image, the henchman wore a fine pinstripe suit. His hair had been oiled and slicked back. He smiled rakishly.

  Flip accepted it, and thanked the man.

  The mayor raised his arm, almost like a Roman saluting. His expression said that they should understand that—voila!—it was now well in hand. Being taken care of by an expert. Only a matter of time.

  Then, as Flip turned to depart, the mayor’s eyes flit in his direction for the quickest instant.

  And in that instant, Flip understood wholly and completely, that, if he failed, it would surely mean his life.

  “Never seen him before,” Tark said as they rode in the first trolley that would take them back to South State.

  He returned the photo to Flip, who tucked it into his coat.

  “Neither have I,” Flip said. “I know a few high-level operators in this city, but I’ve never heard of this one. ‘Durkin.’ No. I don’t know him. Then again, that’s how you get to work for all the wealthiest men. You keep your name out of policemen’s mouths.”

  “They were all really there?” Tark asked. “Every one you said? All in one room?”

  “Yes,” Flip confirmed.

  “I only know those names,” Tark admitted. “I can only imagine how they’d look in person.”

  “Keep imagining,” Flip told him. “The real thing would disappoint you.”

  The streetcar left the Loop and passed a group of feral dogs, starved and barking so loudly for scraps that the men were forced to raise their voices.

  “Strange kind of position for a man to have!” Tark said as he leaned against the side of the streetcar.

  “What is?” Flip asked, looking at a snapping, brindled mutt, all ribs and teeth.

  “You know!” Tark shouted. “Someone who works for so many rich men! Kills people for them!”

  Flip was silent for a moment. The busty woman reading a newspaper beside them turned her page noisily, as if it would retroactively cover the magician’s unsavory words. Tark looked around in a tight circle and hung his head. The sound of the barking dogs fell away.

  After a moment, Flip cleared his throat.

  “What a man like that is, really, is a man who can go between worlds,” Flip said softly, just audible above the trolley’s clatter. “Beyond any specific service he provides, that is how he is useful to them.”

  “Between worlds?” asked Tark.

  “Between rich men and poor men,” Flip said. “Between the law abiding and the lawless. Between those protected by politicians and police and lawyers . . . and those who are hunted by them. That is the rarest kind of man. If you can do that—go between worlds on someone’s behalf, and sell that service—you can become almost as rich and powerful as those you serve.”

  Flip adjusted his voice down further. Tark had to lean in close.

  “If Mr. Wrigley or Mr. Rosenwald, say, want somebody killed—well, they have the money to pay for it a few thousand times over, don’t they? But what they don’t have is the first clue about how to find somebody to do it. And if they do chance to talk to a hired killer? They won’t even speak the same language. Not really. They won’t be able to connect, to trust each other. It will be awkward for everyone. Rich men don’t like to feel awkward.”

  “So a guy like Durkin does it all for them,” said Tark, nodding.

  “Yes, he does. But of course . . . there’s a problem with a man who can go between worlds. And that is: you never know in which world you’re going to find him. A man like Durkin could be anywhere. Anywhere at all.”

  An hour later, Flip and Tark arrived back in front of the Palmerton House.

  “Sally been putting you up all right?” Flip asked. As was so often her custom, Sally was standing on the front balcony, relaxing with a pair of her girls.

  “It’s a nice place, I suppose,” Tark said as they approached. “She gives me a little room to sleep in, up on the top floor. Makes me stay up there, though. I can’t go down to the lounge. I think she doesn’t want me looking at the girls.”

  “Yes,” said Flip. “She also doesn’t want any of the guests thinking they can fuck you.”

  Tark’s expression revealed that this possibility had not occurred to him.

  As Flip and Tark climbed the front steps of the Palmerton, Sally sent her girls back inside. Flip saw immediately that Sally had a strange glow about her. A sheen. She wore a thin robe of spun silk. It tied in front and went all the way down to her toes. She smoked from a long jade cigarette holder. A thin gloss of sweat covered her forehead. Her makeup was slightly disarranged. Flip could tell that she had been awake most of the night.

  “This okay?” Flip said, meaning their visit.

  “Yeah, come on,” Sally said, turning to conduct them inside. “Why are you dressed like that?”

  “Police business,” Flip told
her.

  Sally steered them straight to the lounge. Even this early, even on a Sunday, the Palmerton was not empty. A few customers lazed about on couches. A lone tuxedoed attendant hovered behind the bar. Sally dismissed him with a glance. Then she took down three glasses and poured—Jack Daniel’s for herself and Flip, Gordon’s for the magician. Tark downed his quickly, and immediately wandered off.

  Flip placed the photograph of Durkin on the bar.

  “Seen this man before?”

  Sally lifted an eyebrow.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Maybe?” Flip asked. His tone said this was not the time to be coy.

  “That’s right,” Sally said. “Maybe. He feels familiar. Looks like he’s been here before, but. . .”

  “But what?” Flip pressed.

  “But I don’t know,” Sally said, averting her gaze.

  “What does that mean? You’ve seen him or you haven’t.”

  “He hasn’t been here as a customer,” Sally explained. “I’d remember that detail. But he seems like he might have come around with one of my clients. Like he worked for them. Who is he? A driver? A hired gun?”

  “Yes,” Flip answered. “The last one.”

  He gave Sally a quick report on what he had learned on the top floor of the library. Sally listened intently.

  “Then I’ve seen him,” she confirmed. “I can’t recall anything he said or did. So many like him pass through.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t expect you to remember every detail. But there’s something more. Something I’ve learned since we talked last. Back in 1910, there was another twin murder. Two brothers were killed in their own home. Bodies mutilated. No motive. No arrest.”

  Flip told Sally all he’d read in the Defender clipping, and then of his unsuccessful sting with Tark.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there,” Sally said.

  “You have a business to run,” Flip answered. “Besides. . . You’re welcome to help if you want to, but you don’t have to. I’ll say it one more time; your being involved in this is all your own idea.”

  Sally took a sip of her Jack. She glanced around for Tark and found him in a corner of the bar, admiring a painting of a reclining nude in a gilded frame.

  “The reason I had to come back last night. . . is a count,” she said.

  “A count of your money?” Flip asked. “People can do that for you.”

  Sally shook her head.

  “A count from Europe. Comes to see me whenever he crosses the Atlantic. Says he wants to marry me one day, if you can believe it. When all this silliness—that’s what he calls the war—when this silliness is over and the fighting stops, he says he wants to take me away to his castle. Make me a countess.”

  “That’s more of an offer than I’ve had lately,” Flip told her.

  “I couldn’t do it, Flip,” she confided.

  “No?” he asked. “Live with a rich man in a more enlightened country? In a castle? Never have to work again a day in your life?”

  “But I would be so dreadfully bored,” Sally said, shaking her head. “I would miss my old ways. I would miss my girls. I would be so listless and unhappy. And that would break the poor man’s heart. I can see that a mile away. So it’s out of love, ultimately, that I tell him no. Out of care for him, you see? Yet . . . he will not relent.”

  Sally glanced down at her own hand as it rested against the bar. Flip followed her gaze and saw that a new bracelet of shining emeralds encircled her wrist.

  “Well,” Flip said with a shrug, “least you always got options.”

  Sally laughed.

  She lifted her glass to toast the policeman. There was a sadness to it, it seemed to Flip. A genuine mournfulness to the toast. Nonetheless, he lifted his own glass and touched it to hers. They downed their drinks.

  Flush from the previous evening, Sally ordered a late lunch to be delivered from a steakhouse in the Loop. They ate outside, on a back balcony of the Palmerton that Flip had never before visited. It had a fine floor of Italian tile, and Sally had a proper dining table brought out.

  Tark ate as though he had not had food in several days.

  “This is the best steak I ever tasted,” he told Sally. “And I ate at St. Elmo down in Indy.”

  “We get ’em fresher here,” she reminded him. “It was probably mooing this morning.”

  Tark liked that.

  Flip only picked at his meat.

  A thought occurred to Tark: “So then, we spent that day at the Defender for nothing?”

  “You might have found something,” Flip answered. “It was worth a try before I went to use up a favor with Bob Abbott. It’ll take a lot to keep him from printing a story. That concerns me. His nature won’t let him do otherwise. He’s like a dog who needs a bone.”

  Tark finished his steak and turned on his potatoes.

  “It’s nice to see this boy eat,” Sally said. “Tark, the way you drink, and then not eating?”

  She shook her head, perishing the thought.

  “We have to consider trying again at the circus grounds,” Flip told them.

  He placed his steak knife and fork back onto the table.

  “What?” said Tark. “Didn’t everything just change? Because of what those rich men told you?”

  “Did it?” Flip asked.

  As though it involved great effort, Flip took up his fork and began stabbing at a slice of tomato.

  “Yeah,” Tark said. “Doesn’t it mean we’re looking for a white man named Durkin instead of a Negro man with a hole in his head? I mean, what proof do we even have that it’s the man with the divot? A desk clerk says a man with hole in his head once asked after twins, and suddenly that’s all we can see? What if that desk clerk was having us on? It was early in the morning. Maybe he didn’t have nothing else to do. Maybe he read that word ‘divot’ in the dictionary and was wanting to use it, and so he made up a story. And maybe the man with the homburg coming to the circus was part of a misunderstanding, yeah? Maybe he’s just a fan who wants my autograph.”

  Flip nodded distractedly, looking down at his tomato piece.

  “Why ain’t you talking more about Durkin?” Tark pressed. “He’s the one the mayor wants you to follow.”

  “Mostly, because I think he is dead,” Flip said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “The photo they showed me. Not the one in my pocket, but the other one. That was real, and he was dead. I know a dead man when I see one. Another reason I’m not talking about Durkin is that I didn’t get the whole story back there. I can also tell when I’m being told half a tale, Tark. And that was half a tale. And finally, I don’t see the connection between Durkin and the twins. How do they know it was him? Why would he kill them? Does he think it will embarrass them—embarrass the rich and powerful men—to kill Negro twins? Does he think it will besmirch the character of this city, where they have all made their fortunes? No. There are better, more direct ways of doing that.”

  There was a knock and one of Sally’s men—a liveried butler of advanced years—stepped onto the balcony.

  “Ma’am, a gentleman to see you . . . and also to see the officer,” the butler informed them. “He says he is from the Defender.”

  Flip spat a piece of tomato onto his plate.

  “Dog got to have his bone,” Tark observed. “Like you say.”

  Sally turned to Flip. The policeman gave a gesture that said she might as well let it happen, because now it was bound to.

  “Please send him up, Conroy,” Sally told her man.

  The butler left. A short minute later, he returned with Bob Abbott right behind him, clutching his bowler hat tight by the brim. Abbott looked up in a strange way, like a tourist taking in the tall buildings downtown. Flip wondered if Abbott were trying to physically prevent himself from spotting anything prurient while inside the Palmerton.

  Flip was seated closest to the door, and received Abbott first. The men shook hands. Flip smiled, but also gave Abbott a look that aske
d what the fuck he was doing there.

  “May I join you?” Abbott began, ignoring Flip’s expression and nodding warmly across the table to Sally.

  “Conroy, another chair,” Sally ordered before Flip could object, and so it was brought. Abbott sat and fished himself a roll from the basket, as if the luncheon were his own. “Don’t I recognize you two?” Abbott said, winking at Sally and Tark as he buttered up his bread.

  “What is this, Bob?” Flip pressed. “You know you’ll endanger this investigation if you print anything. Letting the killer know he is being hunted is the worst thing to-”

  “Calm you down,” Abbott said like a preacher. “I’m not here for a story, Flip. You said I should be in touch if I remembered anything else. Well, this morning, something struck me. I ought to have thought of it before, frankly. I directed all my recollections to stories of twins in our newspaper, and so overlooked a thing that was right under my nose. A woman who works for me—name of Janice Collins—once mentioned that a neighbor of hers was an identical twin. Back when she first came to Chicago, this was. Would have been 1905 or ‘06. She rented the upper floor of a house from him. During this time, Janice told me the man was assaulted. Beaten up. This is a secondhand story, now. But I if I recall, Janice said this neighbor. . . he got him a look at the man who attacked him. He was a Negro man, and—again, this is me recollecting from some years ago—but she said there was a way in which this man was . . . deformed in the head.”

  Flip could not contain his smile.

  Abbott smiled right back and reached for another roll.

  “I don’t think Janice knew why the attack happened,” Abbott continued. “Could have been random street violence. No meaning to it. And I only have on secondhand that he—her landlord, the victim—was an identical twin. But it sure did make me think. Made me think I ought to share this with my friend Joe Flippity.”