City of the Absent

by Robert W. Walker

  “Make it pay…make it pay well,” said Thom Carmichael in his ear, like some mind reader, but it was a common enough saying here. “Word has it that Bathhouse John and the Dink have armed themselves and their men,” he continued, pulling on a fistful of chewing tobacco. “Armed whole regiments of rabble.”

  Ransom gave a thought to Bathhouse John Coughlin and Mike Kenna—also known as Hinky Dink Kenna, two former tavern owners, now aldermen, who’d made their fortunes by being in the right place at the right time, and with their hands at the right controls. The pair had separately risen to influence by backing the right candidates and purchasing the right properties after various questionable fires, as land prices had skyrocketed. They’d wisely bought out those who were burned out.

  Nowadays, the saying went, Bathhouse John and the Dink ran Chicago as they ran City Hall. And the pair of them represented success stories in Chicago and Chicago politics, one a former bathhouse operator in whose tubs people consumed more liquor and cigars than soap, the other a former saloonkeeper who came into money when both his wife and mother-in-law caught a scurrilous fever and died under his care. Hinky Dink Kenna had the foresight to take out large insurance policies on both ladies, whose untimely departure left no one to clean out spittoons, but enough money had rained down on Dink that he simply now rented out the place. Being a landlord suited his personality, especially when his cousin took care of the day-to-day while he raked in sixty percent of all proceeds.

  “Coughlin and Dink’ve armed their men?” asked Ransom. “But why?”

  “You of all people can ask that? After seeing Mayor Harrison gunned down tonight?”

  “OK, all right, but tell me, what trouble do they expect?”

  “Truth be told, the two of ’em fully expect to have assassins coming after them.”

  “Panicked, did they?”

  “Yes, why not, on hearin’ their ‘beloved’ mayor’d fallen to a murderer?” The two scoundrels had maintained a close, working relationship with the mayor they’d engineered into office.

  O’Malley, overhearing this, grunted. “Expected that lunatic Prendergast to hunt them down and kill ’em like he did Harrison?”

  “That’s the killer’s name, Prendergast?”

  In Alastair’s estimation, while Harrison was by no means perfect or without corruption when circumstances called for corruption, the man had done more for Chicago than all the previous mayors combined. And tonight at the close of the Great World’s Fair, October 28, 1893, Carter Harrison had been proclaimed the man of the hour, showered with accolades in speech after speech. Former President Benjamin Harrison had shared the stage with him, alongside Little Egypt and Wild Bill Cody, but the real man of the hour this night had been Mr. Chicago, the Mayor Himself.

  In fact, tiring of the speeches, it’d been near 10:00 p.m. that Ransom had made off with Jane for her cozy home on Belmont, where they had to sneak inside so as not to outrage the pastor at the Episcopal church next door.

  “God, how I’d like to have strangled the man who did this,” muttered Ransom, taking a final look at the inert body now laid out on a table under the half-light through the window back of Alastair. Below the sheet someone had laid over the mayor, all that remained of the lively, vivacious, loud, complex man amounted to a corpse. “Killed by some useless idiot coward,” muttered Ransom, his eyes fixed on the scene around the table, where the mayor’s closest relatives had gathered to give support to his widow.

  “Prendergast,” said the thin-lipped deputy mayor, “will be hung for sure.”

  “Unless he is proved insane by some shrewd lawyer like Malachi Quintin McCumbler,” said Carmichael. “In which case Prendergast may wind up one of Dr. Christian Fenger’s pet projects,” he added, ending with a hiccup.

  The noise of the crowd and the continual bells of more and more people riding up on bicycles added to the general noise of horse-drawn fire and police wagons.

  Amid the chaos and the now hundreds of standing mourners outside the Harrison home, Dr. James Phineas Tewes suddenly appeared. Jane, dressed as James, moved to Ransom’s side. “I came as soon as I heard.”

  “Too late…we’re all too late, sirrr.” Ransom made the sir sound like a slur.

  “We must do all we can for the family, for Mrs. Harrison,” Jane as Tewes said.

  “Prepare for the biggest funeral in the city’s history,” Ransom replied.

  “When you were so badly injured, and lying in pain of your injuries from the Leather Apron killers, Mayor Harrison asked for his congregation to pray for you, Alastair.”

  Alastair had heard this before from other sources, but it made him uncomfortable and he’d turn it into a joke, but not now. “He was a good man, when all is added up—a good man, despite what others think.”

  In Tewes’s deep voice, Jane firmly said, “Harrison’d want you to pray for the man who shot him.”

  “I’d as soon pray for the devil.”

  “Pray for the devil then!” Jane said and stormed off toward the Harrison residence.

  Alastair gave chase and stopped her. “They’ll want their privacy now, Dr. Tewes.”

  “Mrs. Harrison called for me; she wants Dr. Tewes at her side.”

  “Really?”

  “She and her son…they wish to attempt to reach him.”

  “Him? Him who? Reach who?”

  “Their husband and father, of course—before his spirit flies.”

  “Jane, you’re a medical professional. You can’t believe in spiritualism. Fraud is cause for arrest, you know.”

  She laughed at this. “Fraud in Chicago an arrest offense?” She pulled her arm from his hold. “I’ll do all I can to comfort Mrs. Harrison inside there.” She indicated the semidarkened window. “I can do no more.”

  Ransom grabbed her arm again, drawing attention to them, saying, “Don’t be a fool, Ja—James!”

  “Let go!” She again pulled away.

  Alastair was unaware he’d again taken hold of her, so upset was he with the notion of Jane conducting a séance for an orphan and a widow. It made him wonder, How cold can Jane be?

  It seemed every last police and fire wagon and official had turned out for this sad spontaneous gathering made up of human and mechanical cries. Alastair Ransom thought of the World’s Columbian Exposition as a thing that had set so much else in motion, and now it represented the first stone thrown into the pool as the causative factor in the mayor’s death. He gave some thought to this lunatic named Prendergast: likely alone and lonely, living apart, a Grendel creature holed up in some urban cave. The man was perhaps bedazzled by the cityscape, the cold streets, and finally the fantastically huge Grecian edifices created for the fair. He’d likely become both enchanted by it all and mad as hell by it all. As it all may well have combined to give him a false faith—the kind of obsession of an Ahab. An obsession that had convinced Prendergast that he deserved a seat at the table alongside Benjamin Harrison, Wild Bill Cody, Little Egypt, and Mayor Carter Harrison.

  Perhaps like so many thousands, the city itself had whispered promises in his ear, convincing Prendergast to never again take no for an answer, and that he should not be disenfranchised or alienated, not by man nor machine—and politics in Chicago was indeed a machine.

  Alastair became instantly angry with himself for rationalizing the assassin’s monstrous act. To shake it off, he relit his pipe, and he uselessly shouted for the mob that’d gathered at the mayor’s house to break up and move along. He may as well have been asking the trees lining Ashland Avenue to move along.

  The grand fair had brought greatness to the city, had brought refinery, had even brought world renown, establishing Chicago as a contender for trade and commerce around the world, able to compete with London, Paris, Moscow, and all across the globe. chicago bedevils new york as an upstart city had been a recent wishful Tribune headline, the subtitle: jobs galore here. The grand fair had gotten Chicago a big head of steam and pride up.

  However, the same fair had no
w ended in colossal tragedy and shame.

  How would the murder of the mayor play in the national press? What would it say about Chicago? That it remained a rough and tumble pioneer city and no safe place for women and children?

  Ransom told his own troubled mind that he didn’t even want to get into how the damnable fair had changed people he knew personally, how it had changed their politics and their perceptions of the world. Sure, he could accept the fact that he was no longer at ease with his city, and he could make adjustments as required, but others could not, while still others only wanted what they considered their “share” of the spoils. And make no mistake about it, Chicago crawling from the muck and mire of a mosquito-infested backwoods hovel to a world leader was a war, a war of economics and geography. And God help the poor sots who got in the way of progress, development, land speculation, growth, and the making of money hand over fist. Beneath the sheen and gilded exterior of the city, another world existed—a world as grim and poverty-stricken as Calcutta, Shanghai, or portions of New Orleans and New York from which men like Prendergast sought to save themselves, a world ignored by the rich and powerful. Perhaps one day poverty and illiteracy would be a thing of the past. Ransom certainly hoped so.

  The chief architect of the fair, Daniel H. Burnham, had become famous for the beautiful structures he’d built to grace the lakefront, and for his now famous quote, repeated on the lips of every Chicago businessman: “Make no little plans…as they have no magic.”

  CHAPTER 4

  As Alastair watched Dr. Tewes—Jane Francis—go off to mesmerize the grieving son, widow, and close-knit friends and family in another show of magic, he stooped to pick up one of the World’s Fair brochures off the dead man’s lawn. The pamphlets dotted the streets nowadays like leaves after a storm. This one was blood-splattered. Perhaps thrown into the mayor’s face moments before Prendergast pulled the trigger. Ransom even imagined the mayor clutching it as his last act in this life.

  The little brochure, handed to everyone at the fair entrances, seemed a sad and eerie tribute to Mayor Harrison’s sudden demise, and in Ransom’s hands, like a hymnal. The thin brochure recalled how, as a child in church, he’d collect the catechisms left in array and in all manner of places by people leaving after the final prayer, and how as a child he’d wondered at the hollowness of many people, and many things of this world.

  His grip tightened around the fair bill, but after a moment, with little to do and feeling useless where he stood on the mayor’s lawn, he opened the brochure and gazed down at it without reading the words he knew by heart:

  Visitor’s Guide to the World’s Columbian Exposition

  In the City of Chicago, State of Illinois,

  May 1 to October 26, 1893.

  BY AUTHORITY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

  Issued under authority of the World’s Columbian Exposition

  [ HAND BOOK EDITION. ]

  CHICAGO

  Ransom had read the brochure more than once, and now he absently turned a page, remembering the whole of it by his photographic memory. The brochure read in part:

  The first duty of the visitor who is desirous of obtaining the best possible results from a visit to the World’s Columbian Exposition, be his time brief or unlimited, is carefully to study the accompanying map. This is an absolute necessity to one who would not travel aimlessly over the grounds and who has a purpose beyond that of a mere curiosity hunter. It is presumed at the outset that the great majority of visitors are those who seek to enlighten themselves regarding the progress which the world has made in the arts, sciences, and industries. To him who enters upon an examination of the external and internal exhibit of this the greatest of all world’s fairs, a liberal education is assured. It is the aim of this volume to aid in such endeavor—to clear the way of obstacles—to make the pathway broad and pleasant.

  It has not been attempted to point out or to describe everything within the World’s Fair grounds. Such an attempt of necessity would prove futile. The visitor will find ample directions on all sides, nor will he suffer for want of information of a general or of a specific nature. Directing signs and placards will be found on the grounds as well as within the buildings. The employees of the exposition are instructed to answer pertinent questions, promptly and civilly. Guides may be employed by the hour or by the day. The Columbian Guard, acting as a semimilitary police force, provides against unusual or uncomfortable blockades.

  The Visitor’s Guide is an adjunct to all of the other wise provisions made by the exposition management, and with proper regard for the suggestions it makes, and the information it contains, the visitor cannot fail, it is hoped, in obtaining comprehensive and satisfactory results.

  “What sorta dribble’re you reading, Ransom?” asked Carmichael, at his side again. The reporter’d had a few too many whiskeys for one night, and he looked old to Ransom. The cynic amid a cynical city, Thom Carmichael found nothing lovely in the world, and in fact had remarked often in his paper that “a most innocent child at her cotillion—Chicago—is marked for ugly reality to befall her once the big party is over and the chips counted.”

  “It’s not the Her-Herald, I hope you’re readin’,” Carmichael now said, slurring his words. The man had been toasting the mayor’s death once too often.

  “Are you hallucinating, Thom?”

  “I’ve too much respect for you to believe you’d read that rag.”

  “You’re insulting your own rag, Thom, and you’re drunk. Best go home, sleep it off.”

  “Sleep it off, heh? Indeed, but it’ll be there tomorrow, Rance, and you know it as-well-as I.” Even drunk and slurring, Thom remained ever the proper grammarian.

  “Are you meaning the newspaper or the evil tales you typically cover?”

  “Tell enough crime stories and, and…well, it becomes a crime in itself perhaps.”

  This remark seemed far too philosophical to get into at the moment, Ransom thought. Perhaps over cigars, when the other man was sober. Most definitely another time.

  “It’s not safe being about here,” Ransom said now, “with so many pickpockets and thieves that’d kill you for the change in your pocket, Thom. Not in your condition.”

  “Nor sober as old Reverend Jabes either, I warrant!” Thom slapped his knee and laughed like a screeching banshee, drawing stares. “And how safe was ol’ Carter inside his little Ashland Avenue mansion?”

  “He’s dead, now you can call him by his first name.”

  “I never treated him ill unless he had it comin’, Rance. You know that.”

  “All the same, let’s get you a cab to haul your wobbly behind home.”

  “Home? Where is home for a man like me, Rance?”

  “Your place is on Byron Street, isn’t it?”

  “Fitting address for a man of letters, heh? Byron.” Thom’s laugh now came out hollow. “I can’t leave, Rance. Too much going on. Got to get the story.”

  “It’s cooled here, Thom. Nothing hot here.”

  “Ahhh…not here at the mayor’s, but you must’ve heard what’s on at the Plaisance.”

  “The Midway? What’re you talking about?”

  “Looting and rioting is the word. All hell’s broke loose since the mayor’s been shot dead.”

  “Just what we need.” Even as Ransom said it, he heard the deafening sound of bells on a number of police wagons dispatched to the fairway, where a French-styled, open-air beer garden sat amid exhibitors displaying and celebrating diversity in culture, dress, and color. Called the Plaisance, this huge area of the fair had become the gathering place of rowdy hoodlums and gangs of roving men. White City’s not so white, Carmichael had said, and he couldn’t have be more correct. A special police force called the Columbian Guard, acting as a semimilitary unit, had their hands full to overflowing tonight.

  “Are you going to investigate, Inspector?” asked Thom, sputtering now. “Isn’t it what you inspectors do, inspect?”

  Ransom looked from Thom, who tru
ly needed putting to bed, back to the window where Jane’s séance continued, and he knew he must get quickly to the Midway and the Plaisance.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ransom grabbed a sunken-eyed scarecrow of a man leaning against the mayor’s fence and made him an offer. “I’ve a job for you. Could you use some coin?”

  The sunken eyes lit up. “Sure could.” The man looked as if he’d not eaten in days.

  “Look here, friend, if you’ll hail a cab for Mr. Carmichael here and see he gets in it, there’s two bits in it for you. More than enough for a good meal at Rayburn’s or at the fair.”

  “Fifty cents,” the man haggled, “and I’ll do it right, sir.”

  Ransom frowned at the ante but nodded, doling out one recently minted quarter, explaining that the second would come once the job was done. Now the stranger frowned, but he rushed off to find Carmichael’s ride home.

  “Get yourself indoors, Thom. Else I’ll be reading about you in that rag of yours.”

  “It’s not my rag anymore.”

  “What?”

  “Fired…boss got orders from above.”

  “Mayor Harrison?”

  “Ironic, isn’t it? He as much as kills me. A political writer who can’t harangue and bluster as he sees fit is as useless as a corpse! No disrespect to the dead!”

  “I’m sure none taken.”

  The crowd around the mayor’s home had quelled in its desires, some singing mournful dirges, others beginning to leave the area. A grim pall cast a lead heavy sadness over those remaining, candles lit and waving as they sang “Amazing Grace,” followed by “Leaning on the Everlasting” and other hymns, led in prayer and song now by Father O’Bannion and Reverend Jabes, the two religious leaders taking polite turns.

  With a hansom cab secured, Alastair and the scarecrow forcibly placed Thom into it. Alastair had to pinch his nose against the stench coming off the homeless helper. He next paid the driver in advance and shelled out the second of two bits to the seedy-looking, sad-eyed fellow who’d jumped at the chance to earn it.