Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  “Me? A groundhog, a copper penny, a ferret, a rat?”

  “You’ve all the talent for it, and it’ll put your considerable mind and experience and knowledge of the streets to good use,” Ransom had encouraged.

  Bosch thought about it for several days, then suddenly agreed but only if an advance of twenty dollars was made.

  Alastair quickly located a carriage and was soon west of the city. He found Bosch where he knew Bosch would be—at the racetrack—losing whatever money the leprechaun managed to gain from the ill-fated incident that almost got Ransom killed. After all, it was Sunday so the races were in full swing. With the beer garden open and ale mugs filled to spilling over, the crowd was as jovial as if at the World’s Fair. The numbers looked to be in the upper hundreds, perhaps a thousand, all in high spirits, save for the recent losers, who could be picked out at a glance. Bosch was not hard to find within this congregation; one need only listen for the familiar dot ’n’ carry sound of his peg leg and cane as he pushed along.

  “Canya advance me, Inspector?” Bosch immediately asked, astonishing Ransom with his sheer nerve.

  Ransom yanked him into the recessed area between two ticket booths not being used. Somewhere through a bullhorn speaker, a minstrel song played, the lyrics wafting over the track: “Dance boatman dance, dance all night till the broad daylight, go home with a gal in the morning. Dance boatman dance, dance boatman dance.”

  “You damn near got me killed, you gimp fool!”

  “Oh, that. Now, Rance…it tweren’t my fault in the least, you see—”

  “Dance boatman dance…”

  “It was Kohler set me up, wasn’t it?”

  “I only shouted that cause…cause I knew you’d jump.”

  “Dance boatman dance…”

  “Lying little weasel! I know it was Nathan Kohler, and you’re going to say so in a court of law.”

  He laughed at this. Ransom grabbed him roughly by the throat. A passing pair of friends in frock coats and bowler hats noticed the ruckus, but they quickly glanced away and moved off elsewhere to place their bets.

  “You think this is funny, Bosch? You see me laughing?”

  “I only laugh,” he choked out, “cause I’m sick with nerves at the thought. Me in a courta law. Imagine anyone believing me on a stack-a-Bibles!”

  “Are you saying Elias Jervis acted on his own? That Jervis himself paid you?”

  “Yes, but what would you’ve done at that instant if I’d’ve yelled out Jervis’s name instead of Kohler, you see? Human nature, see. I am a student of it.”

  “Dance boatman dance…”

  Ransom had not removed his hand from Bosch’s scrawny neck.

  “I saved your life, Inspector.”

  “And collected from both sides,” added Ransom.

  “Well ahhh yeah…I did collect both sides on the deal, but that’s the mark of a good businessman now, isn’t it?”

  “Bosch, I ought to crack your head open.”

  “H-hey, at first, I didn’t know anymore than you did.”

  “No?” Ransom had to remember this man weaved with words.

  “Elias was wantin’ to set up shop again in Chicago.”

  “Still buying and selling women?”

  “Still dealin’ women, like your Polly Pete once.”

  “Leave Polly to her grave, old man!”

  “But Jervis, he sent a woman to stand in as this young lady with a diary, knowing that I was your, ahhh…associate, see? I was fooled for a time, too, so you needn’t feel as if you were the only one made a fool of, Inspector.”

  “That’s a real comfort to me, Bosch.” Ransom released his hold on his “associate.”

  “If you’ve got something for me, you know, like a bonus for saving your hide, young man!” said Bosch as he straightened his clothes, his hand out. “I could use some wagerin’ capital.”

  “Something for you?” Ransome laughed now, thinking it weird someone calling him “young man.” “Damn it, Bosch, where’ve you been? Do you know another child’s been killed?”

  “Ohhh…it’s a horror, what’s happening on the streets, isn’t it? I mean children! I know, but it’s a stone-cold mystery, and nobody seems to know nothing whatsoever, but there is something in the wind.” Bosch looked about to be certain no one was near enough to overhear this. “Still, I can’t vouch for its validity, you see, only that it’s blowin’ ’bout.”

  Then Bosch heard the race begin, and he looked out longingly toward the gate, salivating. Ransom pushed him out of the booth area for the racetrack, following the old man as he ambled toward the free spectator’s area, his cane and wooden leg silent on the turf.

  They soon found a section of fence and Bosch’s horse came thundering by in a neck-to-neck with another animal. Bosch leapt onto the fence, disregarding his handicap, slapping the inside of the fence with his cane, shouting, “Come on! Damn you, nag! Come on!” A note of desperation created an edge to his screaming at the dumb animal he’d bet on. Only Ransom was close enough to hear his excitement over the noise of the crowd. He’d never seen Bosch truly happy at any time in their “association” until now, watching him cry out to “his” horse, and for the first time in his life, Ransom realized that for the duration of the race, a guy like Bosch “owned” a piece of that racehorse.

  “Do ya think the horse hears your prayers, Bosch?” Alastair asked.

  Bosch’s horse won.

  “Damn straight he heard that one!” shouted Bosch, jubilant, dropping from the fence and doing a jig to the delight of people all round them, drawing too much attention so far as Alastair was concerned.

  “All right, Bosch, so tell me now, what’s in the wind?”

  “I’ve got me winnings to pick up at the window, and that was a long shot. Twenty to one, Inspector. Twenty to one!”

  “Damn it Bosch, next week you will be looking for cash again, so tell me now what it is you’ve heard on the bloody wind!”

  “I am hearing the killer…well…he ain’t no he. He’s a she, and that it’s Bloody Mary gone so far off her rocker as to do this thing.”

  “Bloody Mary, heh? You’re a day late and a dollar short as usual,” he replied, slapping two singles into Bosch’s hands. “Get me something credible, will you? I know Bloody Mary. She’s quite incapable of being Leather Apron.”

  “The old battle-ax is daft!” Bosch’s frown shrank his entire face. “Makes her capable of anything.”

  “Half the population is daft, including you! Should I arrest you for being daft?”

  Bosch’s scrunched face now looked sour. “I didn’t say it was Bloody Mary what done it.”

  “That’s what you inferred for money, Bosch.”

  “You asked for what’s being touted ’bout the street. I only told you what is going round, what people’re whispering.”

  “All right, but it’s no use, man.”

  “Didn’t promise no great revelations, now did I?” He pouted.

  “Nor have you given any. Look, Bosch, I heard it was Mary from the homeless kids on the street days ago, and I put no more stock in it now as then.”

  “And I hear you’re paying homeless kids and cabbies to do my job! And I’m here to tell you that’s a waste of money. You won’t get no straight answer from a snot-nosed shelter kid or a lorry driver.”

  “Go claim your winnings, Bosch,” Alastair replied, taking in a deep breath of air. “I’m done with you.”

  “Done with me?” Bosch stood his ground, stunned, silent, a look of disbelief coming over his features like a cloud moving in from over the lake.

  “For the moment, man! Done for now, so please, just go—outta my sight!”

  Bosch smiled at this. “Ahhh…then our association is still intact?” Bosch grabbed his hand and pumped it.

  “Get the hell off.”

  “I’ll keep working on it, Inspector. I’ll get you something other than the nonsense about Mary.”

  “Do that! And in the meantime, work a litt
le harder to keep us both from being killed. You think you can manage that?” he shouted as Bosch disappeared into the crowd, going for the payout window.

  The music had resumed somewhere overhead. “Dance boatman dance…”

  Alastair made his way back into the city streets, his carriage ride solemn. He ordered the driver to take him down to the Levy district. It was time to confront Bloody Mary and possibly arrest her before the mob took it into its collective mind to hang her as Leather Apron. In fact, the madwoman might decide to tout this newly acquired reputation—Ransom would not put it past the crone to revel in the notoriety—to even go about in a leather apron. If so, she’d be ripped apart before the mob hung her by the heels and set her aflame.

  Alastair knew her as a dirty, lice-infested lunatic, addled and belonging in Cook County Asylum, but she’d proven even too much for officials there, who did not want her back, as she caused serious problems and upset other inmates due to her raw language and actions. She’d once created a riot there during which the inmates demanded better care and better food and better materials such as paper and wax crayons.

  Alone now in the back of the carriage, Alastair felt a great weight on his shoulders and chest as if some nightmare gargoyle or incubus had perched atop him, and he felt a great sadness for young Danielle and her orphaned little band. He tightened his grip on his wolf’s-head cane, and he said a silent prayer for help. A growing sense of urgency to locate the monster or monsters behind the Vanishings welled up and filled him with bile and hatred for Leather Apron and any others who conspired with him or her. Her…

  The notion it could be a woman recalled the caution of the London detective, Heise, who’d chased a similar killer for a decade to no avail. Alastair must consider the possibility, remote as it was, that Leather Apron could as well be Bloody Mary and that a woman could, as well as any man, butcher and consume the flesh of children.

  CHAPTER 14

  Instead of finding Bloody Mary in the Levy section, he found Samuel, the boy he’d paid for any information floating about regarding the vanishings. “I got some news for you, Inspector,” the boy informed him. “But you’re not going to believe it unless Sara tells it.”

  “Sara?”

  “She’s a friend of mine.”

  “Who is Sara, Sam?”

  “She’s got a place in the park.”

  “She’s a homeless?”

  “Yes.”

  They found the little black girl named Sara Victoria Meghan Walters in a five foot clearing amid thick brush in Lake Park. Sam guided Alastair to sit on the grass here, and he introduced the Chicago Police inspector. Sara, unlike Robin or Danielle, had no qualms about talking to an adult and a police inspector. She sounded like a grown-up, but Alastair guessed her age at perhaps fifteen, possibly sixteen. She had eyes that looked through people. She said, “I hate what is happening…children going missing and found cut apart.”

  “Do you know something about these happenings? Can you help us put an end to it?” Alastair asked.

  “First, let me tell you that Satan wears ratty human clothes that he finds in the trash, so he can go among us unseen or unnoticed.”

  “I see.” Alastair felt an instant disappointment. He hadn’t expected this to be about demons and angels, but rather about human forces. He had heard enough about celestial wars and God and Evil in battle. He so wanted to put a human face to the monster behind Leather Apron.

  “He uses his supernatural powers to make any human shirt, coat, or pants fit him. His clothes always fit him, or one of his little demons.”

  “Little demons?”

  “Satan likes to make babies.”

  “Ahhh…yes, yes, so I’ve heard.”

  “And the clothes for the little ones, it all helps the demons just fit right in. Who’s going to know?”

  “Smokes cigars, drinks brandy, he does,” said Sam.

  “None of you people in authority with all your money and power, none of you know how close he is, and how he wants to end the world come nineteen hundred.”

  “Really? Can you tell me where I can find him?”

  She laughed. “Can I? He’s dug a tunnel, and he’s found a big hole right here in Chicago.”

  She sounded on the one hand like a lunatic, but something about her conviction and those eyes kept Ransom wondering. Was there some sort of twisted truth to what she had to say? “Where,” he asked. “Where is this place?”

  “Under your feet most of the day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Under the street…in the sewers.”

  “They like the sewers,” added Sam.

  “Lives there with his wife and children,” said Sara. “The bad spirits come walking into our world right out of the tunnels below us.”

  “How do you recognize them?”

  “You don’t! That’s the problem. But they recognize you!”

  “They’re living off human flesh. They’re using knives forged in Hell and cutting off the flesh and cooking it with their fire-breathing, and then they eat it—eating little kids.”

  “Ahhh…but they cook it first.” Ransom didn’t mask his sarcasm.

  What Sara was saying harkened back to what Jane had said about Jonathan Swift’s sarcastic essay on how to rid London of the homeless. Could it be that someone had set out to do just that in real life and not simply in a book? Here and now in Chicago?

  “How does Bloody Mary figure in all this?” Alastair asked, wanting to bring odd Mary into the discussion before Sara did.

  “She shows the demons where we sleep, where to best grab children.”

  “She’s procuring for the demons?”

  “They’re like a family or a gang,” Sara clarified. “They only protect one another and feed one another. They hate everyone else, especially people who still pray to God and the angels for help.”

  “There’s no helping it,” Alastair said aloud. “I’ve got to locate Bloody Mary and take her in for questioning.”

  “She’ll give you a fight,” said Sara.

  “A big fight,” agreed Sam.

  “Come on, Sam, I’m a lot bigger than Bloody Mary.”

  “Yeah…you’re the Bear.”

  “The Bear?”

  “That’s what all the kids’re calling you.”

  “Do they think me a demon?”

  “Some do…but most don’t. Most think you’re a good Bear.”

  “So you think I can take down Bloody Mary?”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Then help me find her. I suspect she’s somewhere close.”

  “She naps in the sewer,” said Sara. “She could be there.”

  “Do you know exactly where she goes? Can you show me?”

  Sara visibly shook at the suggestion. “I do but I won’t go there.”

  “Draw me a map, then.”

  “She’ll know it was me.”

  “I’ll take you,” said Sam. “I ain’t afraid of no one, not so long as I’m with you, sir.”

  Alastair smiled at the boy, recalling the picture Philo had taken of him. “All right. Perhaps tomorrow, during the day, huh? You can lead the way then.”

  Alastair looked from Sara to Sam and then out into the night-blackened lake nearby. He spied a handful of people moving about the lanes here in the park where everything was slowly being engulfed in fog. Trees in the distance began disappearing as had anyone on a stroll along the lakefront. Soon the fog had even blotted out the gigantean lake only thirty or forty yards away.

  Alastair realized the full weight of his situation. Leather Apron and any followers of the madman or his cult might be as large as this now invisible lake, and he would not see it; he would miss it. He’d taken this overwhelming weight onto his shoulders alone, and he wanted some semblance of normalcy back, returned to his city. And he wanted to help them all—the Sams and Saras, the Audras and the Robins, and whole families like the one he’d just glimpsed out there in the gloom. But he could hardly do it alon
e. It would take a huge influx of money and effort put to a cause no one in this city wanted to even acknowledge much less set up a trust fund for unless…. Unless some profit could be had. Unless some scam motivated it—as had happened in 1871 with all those bogus charitable organizations collecting for the displaced victims of the Great Chicago Fire. It seemed only hoax and crookery worked here. Perhaps Jane Francis understood this even more than Alastair with her boundless optimism for change, and her James Phineas Tewes routine.

  Sara had gone silent as had Sam, and each had been watching the fog-bound family out on the edge of the lake.

  Sara, protective of her little hideaway, now asked that they leave by another direction. She had no more to impart.

  Alastair saw Samuel slip a few coins to Sara. The boy learns fast, he thought.

  Samuel then led Alastair out along the north side of the thicket. In the distance, they could see the masts and lights of private boats owned by Chicago’s elite in Belmont Harbor. Alastair handed Samuel a five-dollar bill, and Sam stared at it as if he’d handed him the key to the city.

  “What’s it for? I’ve not found Leather Apron for you.”

  “You’ve done your best, and you’ll continue doing your best.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Are you familiar with Henry Bosch, Sam?”

  “Bosch? No. Can’t say as I am, sir.”

  “Goes by Dot ’n’ Carry.”

  “Ahhh…yes, everyone knows ’im.”

  “He’s, ahhh…well…”

  “Says he’s your associate, he does. Is he a copper?”

  “Sam, steer clear of Bosch. He sees you as competition. He’ll see payment to you as coming outta his pocket, so be wary of him, all right?”

  “Will do, sir.”

  They had casually walked back toward the lights of the city when Alastair got the distinct impression they were being watched, followed even, perhaps stalked. He remained calm and sent Samuel off, back in the direction of the city. Seeing that Sam was safely away, Ransom spied a distant cabstand, and he made a show of a leisurely stroll toward it, half expecting some fool to attempt to mug a cop. But nothing happened.