Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  “War of angels, the one you’ve been told about.”

  “He’s lingering here so he can fight back?” asked Jane.

  “Now he has the power, yes.”

  “So where now is your mother, Robin?”

  Robin looked about the cab at all the expectant faces. It was a secret he had not told anyone; he informed them now, prefacing what he wanted to unload. “Mum is in county hospital.”

  “Cook County?” asked Gabby.

  “Sick…sick she is…up here.” Robin pointed to his head.

  A chubby Polish boy piped in, his name Stanley. “My dead cousin told me that as soon as water touches the Devil’s skin, it turns deep burgundy and…and horns, they grow from his head. The river itself turns into blood; spirit screams and the bones of murdered children float on the water.”

  “And just when the angels think they’ve convinced Good Streets—people like us—that they are in as much danger as Bad Streets, Satan vanishes through a secret gateway beneath the river, or lake, or pond, or ocean depending where you are.”

  “I see,” said Jane, her heart silently sobbing for these children.

  “Now he’s coming your way,” Audra warned.

  Robin quicky added, “You’ll need to learn how to fight.”

  “Teach me,” replied Jane.

  At the same time Gabby asked Stanley why he was carrying a ratty old school book that’d been torn and beaten.

  “I can’t go to school,” replied Stanley.

  “But you carry school books?”

  “Only cause Robin got them for me. He ought to grow up to be a teacher.”

  “Perhaps he will.”

  Stanley dropped his wide-eyed gaze in a gesture of sadness.

  “‘Study hard,’ Robin tells us all,” said another of the children.

  “Stay strong and smart so’s you count on yourself, no one else, is what he always says,” added Audra.

  “And he taught us to never stop watching out for one another,” added little Stanley, his blond hair wispy and wild.

  “To watch our backs,” said Audra.

  “For Bloody Mary, you mean?” asked Gabby.

  “And Satan?” added Jane. “Zoroaster?”

  “I tell them what I’m telling you now, ladies,” Robin said, his voice ominous. “Bloody Mary is coming with Satan. And she’s seen your face. She’s picked you out for a no good end.”

  Jane placed a hand on Gabby’s shoulder at this warning.

  “What about this predator, the one the police and the press are after, the child killer?” Jane asked Robin point-blank. “How does he figure into this war of angels and with Bloody Mary?”

  “How do you know that Leather Apron is a he?” Robin asked in return.

  “Guess I’ve assumed it a statistical probability.”

  “I think Bloody Mary is Leather Apron,” replied Robin.

  “What makes you say so?”

  “At least, she is directing his movements.”

  “Why do you say so?” asked Jane.

  “I saw her with Danny a couple of times lately.”

  “Why do you think Danny’d go off with Bloody Mary, if she feared her so?” asked Gabby.

  “Nothing goes on here on the streets without Bloody Mary having a hand in it,” added the sullen Noel.

  Jane’s frustration filtered through in her voice. “Zoroaster, Satan…and the Blue Lady?”

  “God, she works for God.”

  “And where are God and the Angel Warriors and the Blue Lady?”

  “Hiding out. Lickin’ their wounds…”

  “Hiding out where?”

  “Hiding out in plain sight. In hospitals, banks, schools. Here on the street. Danielle was an angel, and for all I know, you and your daughter, you could be warrior angels.”

  “That’s sweet of you to say.”

  “It’s not sweet. It’s instinct.” Robin then looked her hard in the eye and added, “You…you remind me of my mother before…before she got sick.”

  She reached across the carriage to hug him, but Robin pulled back, saying, “Look…I have nothing to give you beyond the facts of life on the street, but soon maybe…maybe I will know something. I have my eyes open and my ears to the ground. If you two are willing to pay in goods or coin.”

  “We’re budgeted to pay for information that leads to this killer, sure.”

  “All right, then you’re going to hear from me again…soon.”

  “No, not if it places you in danger, Robin—any of you,” insisted Jane.

  The carriage had pulled to a stop at Chicago’s famous Hull House, where Jane Addams herself stood on the steps awaiting their arrival. Dr. Jane Francis had contacted her long-time friend and confidant, asking her to help out and offering a generous check for Hull House in the bargain. Jane had thought about the homeless children since the first day Audra had introduced them, and she’d sat down and asked herself a series of questions: Who would care to know about the homeless children? Who would want to create a program of hope for them? Who would already know that kids need love and perhaps pets as well as books and schooling to help save them from everyday fears and horrors, traumas and the exigencies of life on the street, life without a daily routine, life without a bed and a roof and four walls and a lock on the door?

  Who indeed. The revelation coming in at her felt so horrible, so distasteful that she wanted to scream out its impossibility even as it formed in her mind. Chicago, her city, had helped greatly a madman by letting these children down. The Vanishings were nothing new; in a quieter but just as awful way, kids had been vanishing before their eyes since the city’s inception.

  Jane Addams had become the fulcrum for the settlement movement that preached for shelter communities in every neighborhood. She was always at the center of anything dealing with destitute women and children. If there were a program in place to put homeless children in physical touch with orphaned and impounded puppies, to give them a warm meal and a place to lay their heads at night, this was the place. If there was any chance whatsoever of finding good foster care for such as Robin, Audra, Stanley, and the others, it was Hull House, as Jane Addams had a sixth sense about people.

  Dr. Jane Francis realized that Alastair had a job to do, and must end this slaughtering of the innocent, but it was increasingly clear to her that these children were not a direct path to the killer. They were the lure but could not be used as the bait.

  It was possible, yes, that the killer had knowledge of the morbid “religion” professed by the homeless, and used its precepts against them along with enticements, no doubt—food, money, toys, the promise of a pet…or immortality as a follower of Zoroaster!

  It was a wild, anxiety-ridden bird of a notion, which now fluttered insanely inside Jane’s brain, and perhaps ought to remain there. She saw herself trying to sit astride the back of this “fowl” idea that had invaded her mind. The idea that Dr. Christian Fenger, Nathan Kohler, and she—as she had entered into a deal with the others—might benefit from all of this horror by delivering up the killer to Senator Chapman’s idea of justice.

  Christian had told her of the secret only the day before. She’d been told that Alastair had flatly declined Senator Chapman’s “kind and generous offer,” and she respected him for taking the higher, moral ground, but to her mind there was a difference in her own notions of getting hold of a share of this treasure. How much good it could do in the hands of the caretakers of Hull House to feed and clothe these children. Still, she remained removed from any direct connection even as she’d quietly provided Christian with information gleaned from Audra and the other children.

  Jane had not been comfortable with the role that Christian had placed her in, but unlike Alastair, she had no compunction about how this monster they called Leather Apron would meet justice, so long as he did! And if she could cash out a dramatic winner thanks to Chapman’s deep pockets, so be it. Like Christian and Kohler, she could use the money, but now she’d begun thinking any such
funds must go to these homeless—these daily survivors.

  Still the godawful gnawing at the pit of her stomach and around the edges of her soul about this deal continued inexorably to erode away sane notions and to taunt her. So often good things were done in the name of humanity, religion, love, brotherly concern, fatherly passion, a mother’s love, for god and country, and this for a grandfather’s vengeance. But so often it proved a complete lie, a fabrication, a distortion, an illusion. It was one of life’s tragic comedies, and largely due to her experience and training—she must pay close heed to her instincts and suspicions.

  She watched the children line up at the order given them by a stern Jane Addams, whose very tone, icy and firm, the children seemed to welcome, even Robin, as though he would gladly relinquish his crown if someone else, an adult, would please take it.

  Jane and Gabby climbed last from the carriage, waving at the heavyset woman on the steps with the unforgettable smile and commanding presence. At the same time, Jane Francis glanced at the topmost coach seat for Robin’s brother, imagining him just there.

  “What’d you make of Robin’s story about his dead brother?” Gabby asked in her ear as if reading her thoughts. “You think it true?”

  “I’ve no doubt that soldiers, who die a traumatic, violent, and sudden death often are left in limbo. They sometimes send out messages—confusing and vexing and conflicting images, yes, but images nonetheless.”

  Gabby and Jane helped settle the children in at Hull House, and once this was accomplished, Jane Addams gave them the full tour and a brief history of her work here. As she listened to the indefatigable Miss Addams, Dr. Jane Francis offered up her services as a physician to bring health care on a regular basis to Hull House.

  Miss Addams stared for a moment at Jane Francis, a single tear appearing in the older woman’s eye. The tear swelled and slipped down her cheek. Addams brushed it away. “So good of you, Dr. Francis.”

  The following night

  Alastair was on a crawl tonight, but not a pub crawl—rather an information-gathering crawl in search of Bosch. Ransom the Bear was afoot, exercising his feet and hips and sweating off some pounds and getting nowhere.

  Police work was like that. Hours upon hours of simple hard work leading to nothing, and sitting idle, and making rounds, and asking question after question with little result, and then came the explosion in the face. Some event or happening bursting on the scene to give a shock to the system.

  Thus far no shock had come, only an interminable bore amid a lot of filth.

  “Where the hell is Bosch?” he must have repeated the question a hundred times in a hundred permutations in a hundred venues tonight.

  “’Ave ya seen Bosch?” he addressed the drunks in one alley.

  “Seen that gimp, Bosch, tonight?” he inquired at Muldoon’s.

  “Heard Dot ’n’ Carry comin’ or goin’ tonight?” he asked at the Red Lion.

  “If you fellas see or hear that peg leg, tell ’im I’m looking for him.”

  No one had seen him. No one knew where he might be. He failed to appear at any of his normal haunts. It spelled only one thing: fear.

  The tune from the racetrack played in Ransom’s brain: Dance boatman dance…dance boatman dance.

  Henry Bosch had gone into hiding like a frightened animal, and his brief stint at the track was a bid for much needed cash. Now that he had money, he’d become difficult to find. Normally, he showed up like a bad penny and Alastair did not have to go looking, but the game pieces on the board had changed significantly. With Jervis being shot dead by Alastair Ransom in an old-time gun battle in Hair Trigger Alley—despite a ruling of self-defense—rumors abounded. Rumors surrounding various notions having to do with Ransom’s idea of vengeance; it was a vengeance that’d gone too far, spilled over the brim as it were, and next the rumors had Alastair drunk at the time (drunk with vengeance), despite his requiring a single shot to take down his man. Still, some felt that he had taken down the department with his street hooliganism. A lot of people suddenly liked Elias Jervis as next in line for sainthood. Perhaps Ransom ought be more than reprimanded; perhaps he should be made an example and stripped of his badge and placed on trial for murder.

  Another rumor, this one circulating among authorities and whispered in his ear by both Behan and Logan had County Prosecutor Kehoe working late nights to put a case against Alastair on the docket.

  Should this occur, a sheared, declawed Ransom would be a prized sight for a lot of Chicagoans, and it would be a large feather in Nathan Kohler’s cap. Sadly, if it should ever come, Ransom had but one witness, and a lousy one at that, Henry T. Bosch. How else might he prove a setup? How else might he cast a dark light on Nathan Kohler, should authorities above the police review board call for Ransom’s head?

  So far as Alastair was concerned, it’d been a conspiracy that definitely involved Nathan Kohler, a dangerous man indeed. The circumstances and his inability to turn up Bosch again since the racetrack made Ransom wonder if Bosch hadn’t simply taken his winnings and made for Indianapolis or Davenport or Kankakee, if not farther from Chicago and Ransom. And it all made Ransom doubly suspicious that the wily old Civil War veteran indeed harbored damning information that Alastair could use against Nathan Kohler. Still, Bosch was correct about his sitting in a witness box. The image sent up red flags. Nonetheless, the more he stewed about it, the more Alastair meant to at least privately know everything. To this end, he meant to drag or beat the facts from Bosch. The sawed-off gimp knew what really happened the night Ransom was nearly killed by Elias Jervis.

  Perhaps if he’d agreed with Kohler and Fenger, to throw in with their plan to turn over this Leather Apron killer to Senator Harold J. Chapman, then perhaps he’d not have Kohler on his back now. Kohler had to be sweating Ransom’s decision to remain aloof from the money and the corruption suggested by Senator Chapman. Kohler surely saw it as yet another threat to his power base.

  While Bosch failed to find Ransom, young Samuel did not, and Sam, eager to earn more money, offered to guide Ransom to a location where he suspected the Leather Apron gang might be hiding out.

  “Leather Apron gang?” he asked Sam where they stood back of Muldoon’s.

  “Talk on the street is that there’s more than one, maybe a gang of ’em.”

  “Where are you hearing this, Sam, from whom?”

  “Sara for one, the girl you met the other night? She said the lot of them were following us that night, that they went right past her. She counted, like, sixteen of ’em.”

  “Sixteen?” Alastair was skeptical.

  “Yes, sir…according to Sara.”

  “All right, do we need a carriage to get to this location?”

  “Ahhh…I don’t but it’s pretty far for an old man.”

  “Thanks, Sam, for thinking of me. Let’s go.”

  They were soon approaching Michigan Avenue, and it recalled to mind that the senator’s granddaughter had been abducted not far from here. Sam announced that they needed to exit the cab and go on foot from here, the corner of Michigan at Wacker, and Ransom checked his weapon, seeing that it was loaded. Then he climbed out behind Samuel.

  They were soon making their way down a series of ladders taking them into underground Chicago, passageways below Michigan Avenue and Wacker, an area used primarily by delivery wagons and drams coming and going, loading and unloading on docks built at the basement level—block upon block of businesses stretching from here to State Street.

  The area was dirty, the roads here unpaved, cow paths originally to move beef on the hoof from railhead to slaughterhouse to market outlets, and finally to such establishments as Delmonico’s and The Palmer House. The underground network of roads here were nowadays used by any number of downtown businesses for deliveries and intakes. Workmen used the roads as a trash heap, it seemed. The wind blew through here like a monstrous force, sending up dirt devils and trash in small tornadoes. “There’s nothing down here,” complained Ransom. “Sam, a
re you just yanking my chain?”

  “You gotta go deeper, sir.”

  Ransom began to hear the tune again in the back of his head: Dance boatman dance…Is this kid playing me for a fool, he wondered.

  After going down yet another level, finding an underground cavern, Ransom heard human voices ahead of them in the darkness. “We shoulda brought a lantern,” said Ransom.

  “No, a lantern would only warn the Leather Aprons, and they’d be running off like rats in every direction.”

  There was no need of a lantern because fires were burned in barrels ahead of them. They moved toward the light.

  Samuel’s shadow crept ahead of them, and Ransom’s huge shadow foretold his coming, and it did appear a horror moving along the wall toward those huddled around the fire down here. They all began shouting at once:

  “It’s Bloody Mary!”

  “Zoroaster!”

  “Satan’s come!”

  Samuel shouted, “No! It’s Inspector Ransom! He’s come to kill the Aprons!”

  “Please! Help me!” shouted one of the children in the grainy darkness where Alastair and Sam had stopped.

  “I know Bloody Mary got Danielle, and I know I’m next!” shouted another.

  This child was joined by the others. “You’ve got to hide me! Hide me!”

  Alastair’s companion, Sam, shouted, “Don’t be fooled! Some of the Aprons have pretended to be like the rest of us, but they’re pimps, luring kids to Zoroaster, and then they all jump ’em and stab ’em all at once.”

  “Sam’s right!” shouted King Robin, who’d asserted his authority and had recently led any of his band willing to follow him from the safety of Hull House to this so-called hiding place. “But we don’t know who’s the traitor.”

  “But this time Zoroaster is dealing with me and not some child,” countered Alastair.

  “They’re their own gang. There’re a lot of ’em,” warned Robin.

  “Where’re they hiding? Where, Robin?” implored Ransom. “Tell me! Tell me now, Robin!”

  “Deeper in,” he indicated the blackness of this underground passage.