City of the Absent

by Robert W. Walker

  “Please heed my advice, Gabby. Keep your eye on one goal—your medical studies—and steer clear of men! They have but one aim in mind, to bed you like a mare! They fear a woman of intelligence, and this Swift boy, isn’t his father a common butcher? Mr. Armour’s chief rival?”

  “Well yes, the Swift Company’s bigger than Armour, but please, while the family is rich from the slaughter, my Jeremiah, his eyes are set on human anatomy and surgery. He wants none of the business.”

  “That’ll change should his father fall ill, should the family business need him.”

  “You’ve become cynical, Mother. Why, Jere has a sensitive soul, I believe, and—and—”

  “We’ll take this up later. For now, I must catch up with Alastair…see what all the fuss is about.”

  Gabby came closer, blocking her mother’s way. “Why don’t you wait to see if there is a call for Dr. Tewes before you further upset Alastair?”

  “Upset Alastair? I don’t run my life round that man’s fulminations!”

  “Oh…I see, but Mother, do you really see him as an explosion?”

  “One ready to detonate, yes.” She applied a few finishing touches.

  “I suppose he can be, ahhh… fulminating, but more so with you and Dr. Tewes than with me.”

  “Smart aleck. Listen to me, if that man can inspire anything, it is fumes and fiery damnations, so allow me this much.”

  “Fine, Mother, but he has a point.”

  “I’ll thank you to back away and allow me to stand!”

  Jane had transformed herself into a male doctor before the looking glass. Gabby thought her transformation remarkable—as complete as the actor Herrick changing from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde at the Lyceum theater a few nights ago. Suppressing the Jekyll and Hyde comparison, Gabby instead asked, “What do you suppose all the alarms are about? Here on the last night of the great fair?”

  “I haven’t the faintest.”

  “I pray it’s not another dreadful fire.”

  “If city officials don’t enforce the fire laws, and allow the building codes to be sold to the highest bidder, one day we’re sure to have another major tragedy here.”

  But Gabby spoke of tonight’s sirens. “It’s likely one of those warehouses along the wharves.”

  “Or a sweatshop, or a dance hall, or a theater.”

  “Or a factory over on Hubbard.”

  “Or all of the above.”

  The telephone rang, its patter in ominous harmony with the cacophony going on in the streets.

  “Who at this hour?” asked Jane.

  “Perhaps it’s to do with the alarm?” asked Gabby.

  “I suspect so, yes. Calling for Dr. Tewes.”

  “Rather regularly these days.”

  The phone continued its jarring alarm. As she went for it on the foyer wall, Jane, trying out her baritone voice, asked Gabby, “Do you recall what Mr. Oscar Wilde said at the Garden Theater about the telly?”

  “No, refresh me.”

  “The value of the phone is only the value of what two people have to say to one another.”

  Gabby laughed but stopped short when she read her mother’s face as Jane responded to the news that Mayor Carter Harrison had been assassinated in front of his home and would Dr. James Tewes come to comfort Mrs. Harrison.

  “Murdered, our mayor?” Gabby had gone white at the suggestion. She could hardly take it as news, as fact, as in her mind it must be some nasty, awful joke someone was pulling on Dr. Tewes. It simply must be.

  “But Mother, why…why call Tewes? I mean, if the mayor is indeed dead, murdered? What can you or your Dr. Tewes possibly do for a dead mayor?”

  “It’s not for the mayor I am called, but for his wife.”

  “The mayor’s wife?”

  “In her grief, she’s called for Dr. Tewes, and she wants him—me—immediately. Lock the door behind me, and I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  “But what does the sudden widow want with Dr. Tewes?” asked Gabby, her words cut off as the heavy front door closed between them.

  CHAPTER 3

  When Alastair came on the scene of the shooting death of Mayor Carter Harrison, he immediately saw the crowd milling around the mayor’s porch, lawn, and gate. Quickening his step, his cane firing against the bricks, he next saw the body lying below a bloodstained sheet on flagstones between house and gate. Ransom froze. He stared in disbelief, uncomprehending, not wanting it to be true—the report he’d heard all along the way. But it appeared horribly so.

  At his feet lay what had been a vibrant man with a spring in his step, a wave and a smile for all of Chicago, and a strong personality and a vision for the city’s future, a man who’d believed himself destined to drag Chicago, kicking and screaming, into the next century—only seven years away. Mayor Harrison’d had plans for what he termed “my city.” In fact, Ransom had learned of the mayor’s burning desire to be reelected again, despite having served for two consecutive terms. Harrison had quietly been working to alter the election law that prohibited him from running for a third term. He so wanted to be mayor at the turn of the century.

  It hardly would be the worst law that’d been “altered” in Chicago for reasons of expediency. But now Harrison lay dead. He’d never see the twentieth century, not as mayor, not as husband, not as a father.

  “He died instantly,” said the tall, blond-headed Officer Darren Callahan, one of the first police on scene, a friend to Ransom. “The assassin placed the gun through the bars.” Callahan pushed the gate closed behind Ransom. “And the sick bastard shoved it into the mayor’s heart and fired three successive shots.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “Harold Baumgartner.”

  “Who is?”

  “The butler.” Callahan pointed to a man with his head in his hands, half collapsed on the mayor’s steps. “Baumgartner was looking on from the open doorway,” he continued. “The assassin had been bathed in light flooding from the open door, easily recognized.”

  “The butler’s identified the shooter?”

  “The man made no attempt to conceal his identity. Bell rang. As was his habit, Mr. Mayor comes out to answer it personally.”

  Harrison, who had a great love of the city and its people, made it his habit to confer with any concerned citizen, or anyone with a scheme to bring jobs to the city, and by extension, his constituency. This time the habit proved fatal. All had happened in the blink of an eye.

  “Damn you, Carter,” muttered Ransom. “Why didn’t you let the butler handle it?”

  Callahan gauged Ransom’s pained features and realized he was a personal friend to the mayor.

  Ransom began telling Callahan what he already knew. “The mayor’s bell gate was well used. He’d had it installed for anyone in the city to ring to answer the least question.”

  Callahan nodded. The story of how accessible Chicago’s mayor was had long become legend. “Baumgartner says this madman had been hanging about all day, waiting for the mayor’s return. Told him he’d be busy with the fair closing, so he disappeared, and the butler thought nothing of it again until he saw the mayor go out to the gate.”

  “Damn fool bell,” muttered Ransom. “I suspect Carter was still excited over the closing ceremonies.”

  “Baumgartner said the mayor knew the man, his killer. Called him by his first name. Obviously thought him harmless.”

  “Is he in custody?”

  “Not as yet, but we know who he is and where he lives.”

  “Name, then, and address.”

  “It’s taken care of, Inspector.”

  “Who was the guy?” Ransom stomped the fieldstone he stood on.

  “Seems he was an irate election official who believed Mr. Harrison owed him a government job.”

  “You’re determined not to tell me the man’s whereabouts and name, Darren?”

  “I am. For your own good, Inspector, sir.”

  The young officer was polite, concerned, and infuriating.

 
And still Ransom couldn’t believe events had led to Carter Harrison’s murder. Even now as he again stared in blank, dumbfound confusion at the prone mayor at his feet.

  Some fool at the gate behind him began ringing the offending bell. His rage getting the best of him, Ransom shouted to no one in particular, “Stop ringing that bloody bell!”

  He straightened his shoulders, and his eyes fixed now on the mayor’s home, a small plush mansion compared to all the more pretentious homes surrounding the mayor’s manor.

  Ransom, a man who thrived on instant gratification, wanted to murder the murderer, here and now. To this end, he rushed the butler, Baumgartner, asking the killer’s name, frightening the demoralized man as he took hold of him.

  Callahan pulled Ransom away, surprising Alastair with his strength. Ransom stepped off but felt sick to his stomach over the assassination.

  “Harrison didn’t deserve an end like this,” he muttered to those standing around.

  “Three shots! He took three bullets at point-blank range!” the cry had gone out to be repeated like a mantra throughout the growing crowd.

  “Who killed Carter and why?” asked Thom Carmichael of the Herald News, who’d bribed his way into the crime scene and now stood in shock over the body. “Why, Alastair?”

  The deputy mayor, Leland Crawford, stepped up to Ransom and Carmichael, his eyes tear-stained. “There’s been a man coming ’round City Hall, repeatedly threatening us all, but chiefly the mayor.”

  “Why the hell wasn’t he arrested? Why the hell didn’t I hear of it?” asked Ransom, teeth grinding.

  “He was arrested—repeatedly so!”

  “Not at Des Plaines station.”

  “No, elsewhere. Does it matter? He was released, only to do this filthy, cowardly deed.”

  “Give me his name.”

  “What’ll you do with the information, Ransom?” asked Carmichael, ever fascinated with the things he’d heard Alastair capable of, and the things he’d witnessed firsthand.

  “I will have every inch of ’im before they hang ’im.”

  “Then I can be no part of it,” said Crawford.

  “Just a name is all I ask.”

  “The man’s a lunatic, and he’s hallucinating!”

  “Doesn’t matter. Not to me! A name, sir!”

  “The fool was under the mistaken notion that the mayor made promises to him,” continued Crawford. “He’s off his head.”

  “Off his head?” asked Carmichael. “A candidate for the asylum?”

  “Mentally off, yes.”

  “What sort of promises did he believe the mayor made him?” pressed the reporter, Carmichael.

  “Says the mayor should’ve crowned him corporation counsel to the city!”

  “Corporate counsel? Then he’s a lawyer?”

  “No! Only a foolish accountant who thinks he could fake it.”

  “A bean counter?” asked Ransom, listening in. “A bean counter killed Carter Harrison?”

  “Yes, a bean counter nutcase.”

  “His name, damn it!” Alastair’s rage looked as if it might send him into the deputy mayor.

  “He’s already under lock and key, Alastair,” came a voice from behind him. It was big Mike O’Malley, no longer in a Chicago blue uniform, now a plainclothes detective. “Some of the boys got hold of ’im and bloodied him up good, you needn’t worry on that score.”

  “How many people knew about this lunatic?” asked Ransom. “And why didn’t I know about him?”

  “Everyone who works out of the Hall,” said the deputy mayor.

  “And that includes the cops who work the Hall,” added O’Malley. “You may’s well stand down, Alastair.”

  “And the mayor? He knew this creep might be dangerous, and yet he walks straight out to him?” asked Ransom.

  “You know Carter,” said Crawford. “He believed he could talk a mad dog or a bull into a peaceful resolution.”

  Ransom looked at the bulging shape below the shroud. “A peaceful resolution indeed.”

  “The surgeon, Dr. Fenger, was called,” replied Deputy Mayor Crawford, “but Carter succumbed instantly to his wounds. The whole thing happened no more’n fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”

  “How do we know this isn’t some conspiracy? That this lunatic wasn’t put up to it?” asked Ransom.

  “Not everything bad that happens in Chicago is a conspiracy, Inspector.”

  Ransom heaved a sigh and gave a thought to precisely where he had been—in Jane’s warm embrace—when the mayor had sustained the mortal wounds that took him from this place. He turned to see the swelling crowd as it pushed in against the mayor’s wrought-iron fence here on wide Ashland Avenue. The crowd felt like a single animal, threatening to topple the delicate decorative metalwork displaying leaves and birds at play in a world as black as coal. The pushing and shoving caused the gate bell to ring on and off, further upsetting Ransom.

  The crowd shrugged this way and that, its weight and girth building, growing, swelling to ominous proportion. Ransom thought the crowd a well-fed heifer and about as mindless. Still, he had a gentler thought about the mob here, for all in the crowd mourned and wailed, some calling the dead man’s name, others calling him the King of Chicago…“Long live the King.” Still others cried out, “The work of our Carter is done!”

  Then additional disturbing news began filtering about the crowd. One, that it had been a well-planned, well-executed assassination, the work of savage, armed-to-the-teeth, militant union men spurred by bloodthirsty anarchists who disagreed with Harrison’s politics, ways, and means. Two, that he was killed to end talk of an investigation into Chicago police corruption from Haymarket Riot days to present. And three, that he was killed by a jealous suitor for his beautiful wife’s hand. Rumors piled themselves thick as they came out of the mouth of the mob.

  A police line was hastily thrown up to guard the shaking fence and house. The mayor’s body, which had lain out on the flagstones next to the front lawn so indecorously for the past hour, was now lifted by four able men looking the part of pallbearers as they moved Harrison’s remains to the interior, where his son and wife looked on in stunned terror. The mob, too, remained in stunned disbelief and terror; they wanted to see Harrison, as if still in denial, as if expecting it all to be a big mistake or final element of the carnival atmosphere tonight, a joke in the worst imaginable Chicago taste.

  Others, late arrivals in particular, wanted to see the body with their own eyes, and this circulating group, rowdy and boisterous from drink, felt cheated to learn that the mayor’s corpse had been removed from view—from the street.

  News of this made its way through the police barricade and into the mayor’s home, where his wife made a conscious effort to deal with this strange problem atop her husband’s murder before things should get out of hand. She ordered the body placed on a dining room table at a window so the remains could be seen from the other side of lacy, see-through curtains.

  A precursor to lying in state, Ransom thought.

  He merely shook his head at the beast before him, the demanding mob. He then realized that Thom Carmichael had disappeared from his side, and the reporter now awkwardly pushed and pulled his way through the maddening crowd where he’d gone “to get the pulse of the city,” as he’d put it. So wrecked did Carmichael appear once he managed to get back to this side of the fence, Ransom thought he’d been in a brawl. In fact, he appeared dizzy from having been hit in the head or trampled, his clothes in disarray. Ransom found the reporter on his right and O’Malley on his left, when Carmichael asked, “Didja hear what’s afoot on the Midway, Alastair?”

  “No more than what has been afoot there since the mayor and the bigwigs decided to have a White City.”

  “Never been pure white, has it, now?” asked the journalist.

  “Whoever imagined it a fairyland didn’t have the sense God gave a turnip,” suggested O’Malley, drawing a laugh from Carmichael.

  “No, they just live in anot
her world, men like Burnham.” Alastair gave a moment’s thought to the architect of the fair, and then lit a pipe. He’d stopped and started smoking so many times, he’d lost count. Smoke curled about his features when he exhaled. “People with so much ready money, they dream of a place like something out of Dante’s rendition of heaven, and they begin to think they’ve enough money and imagination to recreate it on Earth.”

  “Like the Palmer House.” Thom nodded. “And they think it’ll change men…change the bedrock of all mankind, along with the arts, and how people think. But when you’re hungry, who has time for the ballet?”

  “Turn us all into dreamers, heh, Thom?”

  “Dreamers, politicians, philosophers, land developers, saloon owners, shopkeepers, and architects, I suppose.” Thom laughed. “Tell it to the jackals and rats among us.” He sneered. “H-H-Here…in Chicago of all places,” he ended, sputtering, as if spitting hair from his teeth.

  But Ransom’s thoughts were on Thom’s remarks about the Midway. The fairway had been rampant with thefts, hoaxes, even murders since the inception of the fair. The “low-downs” as some called the thugs, prostitutes, pimps, and petty thieves, had quickly moved in to fill every conceivable void, which only led to territorial squabbles, gang activity, terrible knife and fistfights, and, too often, murder that went unwitnessed in a city that once knew no such violence, at least not on this scale.

  Every knowledgeable cop in Chicago had predicted as much when first learning of a gigantic months-long world’s fair in the name of mankind’s progress since Christopher Columbus to be raised and held in the city. Immediately, every rat and snake within the city limits and beyond had gone into the plan-making stage of how best to make big bucks off the fair and fairgoers. How to build a machine, for instance, that could convert ordinary sandstone to gold after a year’s processing; a device to change air to water, and water to dirt, and dirt to electric power. Sure…why not? Why not make human advancement and science and art and human endeavors—all celebrated by the fair exhibits—pay out in green? God made man, and man made money, Alastair silently reasoned.