Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  “Yeah…I see what you mean. Our own lifestyles might be examples.” Ransom had lost his parents at an early age to an epidemic, and Philo had never known his father and had lost his mother to pneumonia.

  Philo then shrugged and sipped at his drink. “Here is what the children of the street think, Alastair, if you wish to know.”

  “I do. Go on.”

  “If I’m homeless, and I am killed, how then can I make my life resonate beyond the grave?”

  “You make it sound like a sense of mission,” countered Ransom.

  “Damn it, it is a mission for them!”

  “Some would say that is ridiculous. These kids know what’s what. They know they’re making up shit as they go.”

  “This shit, as you call it, keeps them anchored, Inspector Ransom. You’re likely familiar with Cajun beliefs, right? Superstitions out of Barbados? Haiti? West Virginia coal mines? Alastair, a belief system and a culture is necessary to well-being. It provides a sense of mission.”

  “I agree but I am also reminded daily of reality—what our own religious leaders push along with the merchants and money men of this city.”

  “Fools. Look at it this way, these kids have nothing but their beliefs, and their beliefs may explain why some children in crisis—and perhaps the adults they become—are brave, decent, and imaginative, while others more privileged”—Philo thought of someone he knew—“can be callous, mean-spirited, and mediocre, and lacking any sense of mission.”

  Alastair only now realized that Philo spoke from experience, and in a moment of realization, Philo saw that Alastair knew this. Alastair said, “I grew up here in inner-city Chicago, Philo, and let me tell you, there was very little sign of God on the landscape then as now.”

  “Same in Montreal where I grew up, but I wish I’d had half what these kids had in the way of a spiritual leaning or anchor.”

  Alastair nodded. “I begin to see.” A series of words flashed through his mind: homeless, violence, death, commonplace. “Often highly advantageous to grovel before the powerful and shun the weak, and where adult rescuers are no place to be found.”

  “Ahhh,” countered Philo Keane, “but the ability to grasp onto ideals larger than oneself and exert influence for good—a sense of mission—is nurtured in these eerie, beautiful, shelter folktales as sure as they were in Beowulf, which tales were encouragement to men to go out and slay dragons, giants, and beasts.”

  Ransom sat silent a moment, his cane at his side. “I’m sorry, professor, but regardless of any good intentions you or I or our friends may have for the homeless, their numbers are just too great for us alone to make much of a dent, wouldn’t you say?”

  Philo dismissed this, saying, “In any group that generates its own legends—whether in a business office, a police department, an agency like the Salvation Army, or a remote Amazonian village—the most articulate member becomes the semi-official keeper of the secrets. The same thing happens in homeless shelters. You’ve done well to gain even a temporary hold on these kids.”

  “So this is what I was actually being told by the street children, that their secret stories lay down the rules of spiritual behavior.”

  “The most verbally skilled children—such as this Robin and Danielle, and this Audra you describe—impart the secret stories to new arrivals. Ensuring that their truths survive regardless of their own fate. It’s a duty felt deeply by these children, including one ten-year-old chap I met named Myles. After confiding and illustrating secret stories on a slate for me, Myles created a self-portrait for me.”

  “Really?”

  “A gray charcoal drawn gravestone, meticulously and carefully rendered, inscribed with his own name and the year nineteen-o-six—thirteen years hence.”

  “How sad…. Listen you must never relate this to Jane or to Gabby.”

  Philo ignored this. “There is something more…something far more disturbing coming out of our few shelters, Alastair.” Philo absently knocked over his now empty glass.

  “And what is that?”

  “Well…simply put,” he began, righting the empty glass, “the children may have trusted you and Jane and Gabby, but only up to a point where they draw the line on first meetings.”

  “I got that loud and clear.”

  Philo raised a hand to silence his friend. “The bottom line in their theocracy, Alastair, is quite strange and disturbing.”

  “Trust me. All of us have been disturbed by all this, especially young Gabby.”

  “They did not get that far with you, so trust me! You’ve not yet heard the real disturbing stuff coming outta these kids.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “As…as happens, there are Bloody Mary and the mother of Christ, Mary, but in essence they are one and the same.”

  “One and the same? What are you saying?”

  “Mary laid down with Satan to beget another child—”

  “How blasphemous do you intend being, Keane?”

  “Hold on! Don’t scream at the messenger! I’m only passing along the facts of reality according to the general belief of the shelter child.”

  “Sorry…go on.”

  “It’s become a tenet of their faith, Rance, that Satan’s child, born of Mary…not some stand-in but Mary Mother of God will carry on Zoroaster’s evil plans throughout eternity.”

  “Such a horrid worldview.”

  “Agreed, yet there is more and worse.”

  “Worse than Mary pregnant with the Devil’s seed?”

  “Worse, yes, since it was Mary herself who killed her son.”

  Somewhere in the back of his head, Ransom seemed to recall how Bloody Mary in a drunk tank screamed out at him that she’d killed babies. “Killed Christ, you mean?”

  “To replace him on the throne with Satan’s son, the Anti-Christ.”

  “Damn…”

  “And Mary abandoned God on His throne. In fact, it’s as always, that woman Eve did it—this woman betrayed not Adam but all of Heaven itself, showing and leading the way for Satan’s minions to overthrow God’s throne. A kind of Joan of Arc for the dark side, so to speak.”

  “We didn’t hear any of this from the children, and it is so outlandish, Philo, that quite frankly, I’m not at all sure I believe you.”

  “This is their secret of secrets. They trust no one in authority because of this; they know that no one wants to believe it! That no one will believe them. This is what they hold back. I can show you my documentation of this belief.” He began rummaging through a brown valise lying in a pile on a nearby table. “I have it all right here.”

  Ransom examined Philo’s notes and looked closely at the boy in the photographs who had purportedly told Philo the secret of secrets among the homeless and shelter children. The smiling, grimy face looked familiar. It was Samuel, the boy who Ransom had paid to keep his eyes and ears open.

  “It’s all such a perversion of Christianity.”

  “I know. It’s the reason I’ve not shared it with anyone else, not Dr. Fenger, not Dr. Francis. It’s difficult for men like you and I to swallow, men of the world, so to speak, but a lady?”

  Ransom took another drink and lit his pipe.

  “Thought you were getting off tobacco—that cough of yours.”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll quit again tomorrow.”

  Philo returned to his subject, adding, “What this means to the average homeless child out there,” Philo paused and pointed out the window, “is that the forces traditionally in Heaven, all the powers of God’s throne overhead, are now under Satan’s hand. That we are in the midst of an apocalyptic war, and our angels are not only on the run and bedraggled but losing, and losing badly, and why are they losing? Largely because they are abandoned. Abandoned by an embittered God who has seen His son killed by his mother, who has slept with Satan to spawn—”

  “The Anit-Christ, I see.”

  “Sounds like enough to put God off His throne, but it also comes off as unbelievable balderdash.”

 
; “Claptrap, drivel, tripe? Not to someone facing death on the streets in a daily battle to survive, and at the same time, remain good and pure.”

  Shaken, Alastair returned the pages and photos offered up as evidence. “Philo, thank you for discussing this with me so openly.”

  “Not at all. I am pleased someone is showing an interest in the shelter children.”

  “You mean someone not wanting anything from them—especially their hides?”

  “Someone in authority, you.”

  “Haven’t seen you worked up over any cause ever, my friend. Have to tell you this takes me by surprise.”

  “One can sink his teeth into this cause and get attached by the jaw,” replied Philo, his eyes alight with fervor.

  Alastair instantly knew that Philo would one day create the photo array of the homeless he spoke of, but he wondered if anyone owning a gallery would support such a showing. He doubted it but would say nothing to quench Philo’s thirst for his plan. Not even William Stead with all of his contacts and influence as a correspondent for the London Times had made a dent, unable to get his book into print, so far as Alastair knew.

  “Do what you can to end this predator’s life—the one they’re calling Leather Apron, will you, Alastair?”

  “Count on it.”

  “And I will do what I can to expose the city’s disgrace in all this.”

  “It’s a pact.”

  Ransom still felt that this mythology of the street children had little to nothing to do with his investigation, and now it’d interfered with his drink, his smoke, and his relaxation.

  As if reading his thoughts, Philo said, “You always trust your first instinct, Alastair. What does it tell you?”

  “Aye, I do trust myself…my intuition. Sometimes with your back to the wall, it’s all you have, and there is a bit of naggin’ about this Bloody Mary.”

  “And in matters of the heart? How goes it with Jane? Has she put your back to the wall, yet?”

  “Police investigation is easy compared to mysteries of the heart.”

  “Perhaps, Alastair, you could remedy that.”

  “Oh? And how’s that?”

  “If you’d just tell Jane exactly how you feel about her, old man.”

  Bosch got word to Ransom through Muldoon that the meeting between Ransom and the daughter of the seamstress, who’d been on hand during the Haymarket Riot, was set. The inspector must go to the lady. Bosch supplied the time and place, an address in the worst part of the city, a place infested with the flotsam of human life here in Chicago. There were more homeless and destitute on the streets in Hair Trigger Alley than in all the rest of the city combined. Oddly, it would seem to be the easiest and best hunting grounds for Leather Apron or anyone wishing to abduct a child, but this had not been the case; in fact, this was the only area in the city where children suspected of being victims of this maniac had remained untouched. Something to be said for street smarts and street myths, Ransom thought.

  As Ransom moved among the crowds here, as he took one alleyway to gain another while searching out the address, he theorized that homeless people—especially those on the street for any length of time—had developed street savvy: the intuition and instinct to respect their own first impulse, to pay heed to their first fear. As a result, in a sense, such people, men, women, and children, knew who was and who was not violent, who was and who was not dangerous, who was and who was not conning them. Like an evolved animal in the wild, an “evolved” street-smart person’s intuition and experience might well have kept a whole segment of the city safe from Leather Apron.

  Ransom’s cane announced his approach, when another cane tapped out a familiar rhythm as well, its noise in syncopation with his own. It was Henry Bosch’s wooden peg leg—the reason others rudely called him Dot ’n’ Carry. But what was the old fool doing here, now, in the dark courtyard?

  “Bosch? What’re you—”

  “Get out of here!” Bosch shouted across to Ransom. “It’s all a setup!”

  “Setup?”

  “Just go, quickly!”

  Ransom instead grabbed Bosch by his lapels. “What’s really going on here, Bosch!”

  “Kohler!”

  The single name said it all. Kohler had set him up for an assassin’s bullet. Ransom pulled out his gun and somehow managed to hold on to the squirming Bosch, who pleaded to let him go. Bosch added, “Soon as I figured it a hoax, I came rushin’ to warn you!”

  “How much did Kohler pay you, Bosch?”

  “All right, I took money from him, but only to keep tabs on you, Inspector. I never knew he meant to cut you down!”

  A shot rang out, the bullet ripping a hole in Alastair’s coat where it flapped in a sudden breeze. A second shot followed immediately, and its thunderous result came so close to Alastair’s ear that he dropped to the dirty unpaved alleyway, letting go of Bosch in the process. He looked to his right to find Henry Bosch’s form disappearing over a fence, and it made him wonder how agile the old veteran was, peg leg, cane, and all.

  Alastair lay in a mud puddle, imagining dying here in Hair Trigger Alley, a perfect cover for Kohler’s plot, for if he were to die here as the result of a gunshot, any number of scenarios could be brought to bear as to why. What was Inspector Ransom doing here alone and without backup? Without telling his superiors of his purpose in a known danger zone? How many enemies did Inspector Ransom have in Chicago? How many secret deals had Alastair Ransom brokered? Had one come back to bite him in the ass? These theories of his assassination would go on unsolved forever, or until Chicago simply forgot the existence of one Alastair Ransom.

  Such thoughts fueled his anger, but the notion that Nathan Kohler would live on and benefit from his disappearance truly fueled his desire to see this night out, and to see Nathan Kohler again at his earliest convenience. While all he had to go on was Henry Bosch’s word that Kohler had set him up for murder this night, Ransom did not doubt it.

  Another bullet pierced the earth in front of his eyes, and too late he turned his head away. Eyes stinging with dirt, unable to see clearly into the deep shadows and recesses of doorways and stairways and wooden fire escapes, Alastair could locate no one, and mysteriously, the entire area in all directions had become deserted. Three shots had come so suddenly that he’d not seen the source or direction, but from the result, each hitting so close, he surmised the approximate direction. He rolled over and crawled to prop himself against a trash can, paper and debris raining round him. Another second and a fourth bullet hit the can, opening a hole beside him.

  “Damn it!” he cursed, lifted and fired into a black hole ahead of him, then dropped behind cover again. Alastair knew it’d be the height of luck to actually hit someone, but as luck would have it, his single shot resulted in a cry. Someone was hit.

  Alastair carefully inched his way to a standing position. There could well be two assassins as one, and the one he hit could still be alert enough to fire again. Alastair called out, “Chicago Police! Drop your weapon or I fire again!” As he did so, he walked, cane in one hand, gun in the other, searching the blackness of the hole into which the man he’d shot had fallen.

  When he got within inches, he saw the man’s hand reaching for the revolver he’d used, his fingers twitching, slithering still toward the weapon, still wanting only one thing—to kill Alastair Ransom. Ransom’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness here, and people had begun materializing all around him, some shouting for police. Several uniformed cops rushed in with handheld lanterns, but even before the light hit the assassin, Ransom knew who he was: Elias Jervis. The slimy snake bastard.

  Elias Jervis was Polly “Merielle” Pete’s former boyfriend and, when the need arose, pimp. Watching the bottom-feeder die brought back images of the spoiled dove, whom Alastair had for a time loved. He’d desperately tried to clean her up after he’d cheated and “won” her in a card game during which he goaded Jervis to wager her “contract.” After “winning her over,” he’d made a show of burning
the contract before witnesses, and his bravado intrigued Polly, a vivacious and wild woman. Alastair had then set himself the task of helping her get clean and clearheaded, so she might make something of herself. Meanwhile, he used her and she used him until he lost her to the murdering Phantom—that weasel, Denton.

  Alastair now wondered if Jervis’s motive for taking Ransom’s life had to do with jealousy and Polly, or that Elias harbored the belief that Alastair’s dangerous lifestyle had created a target of her, that Ransom had gotten her killed—and perhaps this was closer to the truth than Ranson wanted to admit. Or perhaps Elias Jervis acted true to form here, working as a paid assassin. Bosch had shouted the single name, Kohler. Had Kohler financed Elias? Was Jervis’s motive a combination of all his pent up anger pushed to the edge by the right sum?

  Ransom bodily lifted the wounded Jervis and began shaking it from him, causing two burly uniformed cops to pull Alastair off. Elias Jervis fell back like an empty gunnysack into the black hole painted now with his blood, looking purple in the CPD lantern light.

  “Bastard took three or four shots at me before I laid him out!” shouted Ransom, tearing away from the cops holding him back. “An ambush! I was set up for a killing!” Alastair rushed Jervis’s prone body and kicked it several times before he was again pulled away and advised to cool down. The man giving him the advice was his young friend, Mike O’Malley, with whom he’d lifted many a pint of ale. It was good to see a friendly face among this district’s cops, someone he felt he could trust.

  “Mikey, when did you get sent to this shithole to work?”

  “I asked for it.”

  “Asked to work Hair Trigger?”

  “I asked for it by getting smart with Chief Kohler.”

  “Ahhh…I see. You weren’t by chance defending me at the time, were you?”

  “You are such a great detective, Rance.”

  “And you? When do you take your exams?”

  “I have, but since I was disciplined…well, that’s by the wayside for now.”

  “That bastard, Kohler. One day…”

  “Careful what you say. He has friends among these lads.” O’Malley indicated the others in uniform. “And down here your name’s poison, Rance.”