City of the Absent

by Robert W. Walker

  “Ahhh… Kohler’s conscious of the media attention given the priest as opposed to Nell?”

  “Exactly. Anybody ask why this old man attacked the priest to begin with?”

  Mike shrugged. “Witnesses say some sort of sudden loss of control. The priest offered him bread and drink, and he just, for no reason at all, attacked Father Jurgen.”

  “Anyone question Father Jurgen yet?”

  “I did, yes.” Mike ordered a coffee.

  “And what was Father Jurgen’s explanation?” Ransom made the word “Father” sound like a sneer. While Mike failed to notice, Philo rolled his eyes.

  “He says the attack came when he asked the man to pray with him.”

  “Really?”

  “To help a stranger overcome vile, inner demons, he said.”

  “He said all that after being castrated?”

  “Word for word.”

  “Wonder who’s to help Jurgen overcome his demons?”

  “Well, Father O’Bannion’s sitting with him.”

  Ransom and Philo exchanged a look, Alastair enjoying the irony of his being put on a case in which he’d literally be in pursuit of himself as the number one suspect. “Frankly, Mike, I can almost guarantee that we’ll never locate this insane old madman who attacked Jurgen.”

  “Why not?” asked the kid.

  “Yeah, why not?” asked Keane, curious how Ransom would answer.

  Philo downed his coffee as Ransom slowly replied, “He’s a yegg, a transient, described as an old man with a cane, a limp, and an ungodly pair of horse castrators! No doubt once a farmer who lost his place, now bummin’ about, all he owns on his stooped back.”

  “You make ’im sound like he’s the victim,” said Philo.

  “Kinda sad, really, the old duffer losin’ his farm.”

  “And so,” added Philo, “this miscreant yegg has likely hopped a freight and’s many hundreds of miles from Chicago by now?”

  Opening his pocket watch and staring at the time, Ransom exploded. “Oh, my! Gotta go. It’s late. But that is a fine assessment of the situation, Mr. Keane. You have it right, no doubt!”

  “Yeah,” agreed Mike, “if he’s a yegg, he’s on the move for sure.”

  “Perhaps, Inspector O’Malley, you should head up this ballsy investigation.”

  “I’ve not your experience, Rance.”

  Philo piped in with, “Besides, Rance, you have the knack of cutting to the chase.”

  “But Mike here’s got the stamina. He’s young and will stay on the scent.”

  “Quit putting me on, Rance,” replied Mike.

  Philo added, “But you’ll have to look under every rock, Mike!”

  “Yeah,” agreed the young inspector, “Kohler expects results or else.”

  “Or else what?” asked Ransom.

  “Heads’ll roll, he says. He made promises to Father O’Bannion and Jurgen at his hospital bed before newspaper reporters.”

  Ransom flinched at the name O’Bannion. “Kohler always knows a photo opportunity when he sees it.”

  “Come, man,” said Philo, “the sensationalism alone of someone accosting a priest equates to front page news, but to mutilate the privates of a man of the cloth! Surely, you don’t think Kohler can control such news.”

  “I suppose you’re right again Philo.”

  “I know.”

  “Mike, you’ll learn that Philo here knows everything, and I know the rest,” Ransom teased.

  “Stop it with that!” Philo chastised, and turned to Mike. “Inspector Ransom is joking—mimicking Mark Twain’s stage words on Kipling and himself.”

  “Ahhh, a performance I missed.”

  “Sounds like I am up for my own performance before Kohler and O’Bannion,” said Alastair, getting up to go.

  Philo stood and placed a hand on Ransom’s shoulder. “Take all due care, my friend, that your performance go well.”

  Lifting his wolf’s head cane in salute, Ransom departed with Mike at his side. In his wake, Ransom left the shop bell atop the door ringing as if it would never stop.

  Remaining at the table, having another cup of coffee, Philo Keane pulled out the photo and stared once more at what he feared his friend Ransom capable of, even if he did push it off on an alias. In the back of his mind he began plotting out a course of action of how best to whisk Alastair from Chicago and into Canada against the day he must flee, a wanted man.

  CHAPTER 31

  Early in the day, news had gotten out that Dr. Christian Fenger would be performing an extremely delicate and highly unusual operation. Dr. Fenger had made a call specifically to inform Jane Francis Tewes that while no female medical personnel could be on hand at the request of the man being operated on—a Father Franklin Jurgen—he, Christian, saw no reason why a certain Dr. James Phineas Tewes could not be on hand.

  In other words, be there, she thought, and she had been on hand to watch Fenger perform his surgical magic.

  As a result, Jane had seen firsthand the awful result of mutilation done to the priest, and she’d wondered what kind of world was it that brought about such suffering. Thank God for Christian Fenger. While he could not reattach that which had been severed, he could sew the man up and ease his pain.

  The greatest problem Jane had in viewing the ghastly wound and procedure was keeping her breakfast down, as she’d been up the previous night.

  She had, as Tewes, begun to get more and more work at Cook County, and it never ceased to amaze her the bizarre and wild cases that walked in the door or were carted in by Shanks and Gwinn.

  She needed sleep now, and to that end had returned home. Waiting in the empty lot amid the birds and the bushes, however, crouched Henry Dot ’n’ Carry Bosch. She’d used Henry Bosch’s dubious services in the past, and now she had set him loose on her problem of the strange pair that seemed known only to Shanks and Gwinn. Instead of attempting to tail the ambulance men any further, she’d hired Bosch to do her slumming and report back.

  “What’ve you got for me, Mr. Bosch?” she asked from the swing on her porch, still in her Tewes getup, as Bosch had long before informed her that he’d learned of her dual identity before anyone else. The little wrinkled man had taken great pride in his determination. In fact, it’d been Bosch, the ferreting snoop, who first informed Alastair of this fact, at a time when Ransom had refused to believe it, so certain was the inspector that Tewes was Tewes and Jane was Jane.

  “I know where that pair you’re looking for lives. I got that much!”

  “You have an address on them?”

  “Did I not tell ya I’m good at what I do?”

  “Have you written down the address for me?”

  “I have, ma’am.” He passed a crumpled, dirty piece of torn paper through the bars of her porch fence, and she passed him several bills in response. When she looked again, Bosch was gone as if he’d slipped below her porch, a regular leprechaun.

  She read the note in Bosch’s tight little script:

  400 Atgeld Avenue, go to back apartment, first fl.

  Names are Vander and Philander Rolsky.

  “They’re related?” she asked the night.

  “Cousins perhaps?” Bosch was back as if by magic.

  “Maybe uncle and nephew?” she offered.

  “Could e’en be brothers…can’t say for sure.”

  “Determine the relationship, Mr. Bosch, and I’ll pay you more,” she replied, but no way Bosch could hear, as now she saw him and his stick rushing off down the alleyway. Even with a wooden leg, the man moved as swift as any four-legged creature.

  Now that she had this information, she wondered if it might not be prudent to share it with Alastair. Perhaps it was time to get help on this matter, share her suspicions of these two men named Rolsky.

  “Was it that vile little man Bosch again?” asked Gabby the moment Jane stepped through the door. “And, Mother, you look extremely fatigued.”

  “You can see that even in Dr. Tewes?”

 
“I can. You’d best get some sleep.”

  “But I have patients beginning at ten.” The clock read 9:10 a.m.

  “Wow, Mother, do you really mean to give yourself a whole half hour, fifteen minutes maybe?” Gabby’s facetious reply was not lost on her mother. “Look, I know a few things. I’ll take care of Tewes’s patients today. I’ll give ’em what they want to hear, sell them a bottle or two of Tewes’s Terrific Tonic—the cocaine-laced stuff that makes everyone feel better, and I’ll send ’em on their way with a promise to see you tomorrow!”

  “Got it all covered, do you?”

  “I do.”

  “They’ll insist on seeing a man—me…ahhh, Dr. Tewes.”

  “And I will insist it is impossible. Go to bed, Mother! Now!”

  Jane, who needed no second telling, had taken Gabby’s suggestion and gone to her room, where she now lay in Tewes’s clothes across the bed, seeking a brief respite from the world. Closing her eyes, her mind played over the difficult surgery of the religious man, and she could see Fenger’s every cut to make the jagged edges as clean as possible. She relived every stitch, realizing that she could well have done the surgery herself.

  The operation itself was a success, but as with any surgery, infection could set in as rampant as a swarm of locusts. For this reason, Jane feared poor Father Jurgen might well find himself in the hospital for weeks, and months should his wound become abscessed. If so, he’d need round the clock, constant care and the vigilance of someone, perhaps Dr. Tewes, to stave off death.

  Sadly or mercifully, Jurgen had slipped into a coma. According to Father O’Bannion, on hand at the bedside, the injured priest would be unable to take charge as head priest over a church in Greenland, of all places. “Such dedication,” she’d said, “to go to such a desolate place to give of himself.”

  “Yes…yes,” O’Bannion had replied, clearly unhappy with the turn of events.

  “What kind of a fiend could do such a thing?” Tewes had asked Father O’Bannion.

  “A misguided man, someone who thinks himself capable of doing the work of God, I suppose.”

  This unexpected reply confused her. “Of God? Don’t you mean Satan?”

  “Yes, Satan, of course Satan.”

  With her eyes still closed, Jane said a silent prayer for the injured priest, and the condition of the world flowed from her thoughts moments before she fell asleep.

  When Alastair and Mike arrived at the Des Plaines station house out of which he normally worked, a waiting sergeant ushered them into Nathan Kohler’s second floor office. There, Ransom came face-to-face with Father O’Bannion. “I understand you two know one another, Inspector Ransom,” said Kohler. “Father O’Bannion’s brought me a disturbing report.”

  Alastair raised his chin and with his eyes focused on O’Bannion asked, “And what might that be, Chief?”

  “Inspector Ransom,” began Kohler, unclenching his teeth, “Is it true that—”

  “That I threatened Father Jurgen the night before he was attacked?”

  “What?” asked Mike, confused. If his wide eyes were any indication, his mind raced with strange scenarios.

  “Then you don’t deny showing up intoxicated at St. Pete’s and looking to harm the priest, and that O’Bannion here sent you away?” Kohler’s eyes pinned him like daggers.

  “All true, except that I wasn’t drinking.”

  “You only deny being intoxicated?” pressed Kohler.

  “I was intoxicated on anger, not liquor.”

  “He was drunk, I tell you, and threatening,” O’Bannion firmly said.

  “I was soberly angry,” countered Ransom.

  “All right, even sober, you’re confessing that you were upset enough to harm Father Jurgen?” Nathan led with his next question.

  “I was pretty damned angry, yes.”

  “So when Father O’Bannion heard that I meant to put you in charge of locating and punishing the man guilty of this atrocious attack, he naturally came to me.”

  “To protest my leading up the investigation?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I will step aside for Mike here, or for any other detective of Father O’Bannion’s choosing. Will that please one and all?”

  “That’s a first step. Care to explain why you were looking to crack the father’s skull with that cane of yours?”

  “Actually, it had to do with a gambling debt,” Alastair lied.

  “Do priests gamble?” asked Mike.

  O’Bannion frowned at this.

  “Father O’Bannion tells another story,” countered Kohler, ignoring Mike. “Says you accused his priest of molesting boys in his care. Is there any truth to these, ahhh…allegations?”

  “All right. I was trying to be tasteful, keep such filth out of the press.”

  “You mean when you attacked Father Jurgen?” asked Kohler point-blank, and it became immediately clear to Ransom that the chief had already made up his mind.

  “That’s preposterous!” shouted Mike.

  “I’ll handle this, Mike,” said Ransom, putting up a hand to calm the junior detective. “You know me well enough, Nathan, to know that had I attacked this lowlife bastard hiding behind robes in order to manhandle and fondle children, he would not have come away alive.”

  “We’re all familiar with your notions of justice and retribution, Alastair,” returned Kohler, getting to his feet. “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth—”

  “And in this case?” Ransom asked. “Do you really think me foolish enough to risk my position and career on a man of such low character once I calmed down?”

  “Besides which,” put in Mike, “all the witnesses agree it was an old man in rags.”

  “An old fellow, yes, with a wolf’s head cane,” said Kohler, indicating Ransom’s cane.

  “That’s a bald-face lie!” objected Alastair, knowing he’d not used the distinctive cane the night of the incident aboard the Lucienta.

  “An old man with the strength and agility of a much younger man, it would seem”—Kohler didn’t skip a beat—“taking on three or four burly sailors at once. Sounds to me like a bear of a man.”

  “Some older guys are tough as nails,” offered Ransom.

  “Why, me own grandfather could beat that wharf rabble any day,” added Mike.

  “Wore one of your disguises, did you, Alastair?” asked Kohler. “Perhaps the Jack Ketchum get up?”

  “If you think it so, then I will stand a lineup with four other men in similar garb, and if I am picked from among them, you may hang me as you see fit from the nearest bloody flagpole!” It was a challenge and a bluff.

  “Quite the poker face.” Kohler rose to the bluff. “Arrange it, O’Malley.”

  A red-faced Mike shouted, “But, Chief, sir, such a step is a slap in the face of every detective on your force!”

  “Damn you, man! Arrange it!”

  Mike seethed a moment, Alastair nudged him, and finally he nodded, saying, “All right, but this will win you no points with the lads, sir.”

  “Are you satisfied with this arrangement, Father O’Bannion?” asked Alastair.

  “Well…yes then.”

  “In the meantime, with all this wasted effort,” began Alastair, picking at lint on his coat, “the real culprit is likely sitting in a boxcar on his way to parts unknown as we play games.”

  “And Father Jurgen fights for his life in a wretched state, and if and when he comes to, God knows how he will react to the realization that he’s been…that his, ahhh…”

  “Dick is in a jar?” asked Alastair.

  “No, his penis is intact,” countered O’Bannion.

  “You mean…” began Mike, “whoever did this knew precisely to take the testicles alone?”

  “And was the cut precise?” asked Alastair.

  “Quite…precise, yes.”

  “Then we should be seeking someone who’s had experience at this sort of thing,” shouted Mike. “Experience…and the right tools, say a—a pig farmer,
or a horse knacker from the yards.”

  “A slaughter man?” shouted Kohler, facetiously adding, “Of course, he’d be another Leather Apron killer on the loose? Hey, Alastair?”

  Ransom raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Look, sirs, Mike makes complete sense, and he’s ahead of all of us on the case. Just listen to him! I nominate Inspector O’Malley as lead investigator since all my energy and focus is at the moment on the Hartigan murder.”

  “I’m honored that you’d entrust it to me, Inspector Ransom,” said Mike.

  “O’Malley!” exploded Nathan. “Ransom hasn’t yet gained the authority to give you anything of the sort!”

  “But it makes sense!” shouted Ransom.

  Meanwhile, Mike’s Irish white face blanched red with passion.

  “No one said this job has to make sense,” countered Kohler.

  “God forbid it should,” replied Ransom. “Perhaps, Father O,” he continued, turning to O’Bannion, “your giving a blessing over the investigation might help, and one for Nell Hartigan while you’re at it.”

  “Both of you out, and O’Malley, arrange for the lineup that your senior partner proposes, and once done, you’re to head up the investigation into who slashed Father Jurgen and why.”

  “Start with the parents and grandparents of each choirboy,” suggested Ransom. “And for the sake of propriety, for goodness sakes, don’t let the press get wind of the why.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The lineup arranged at the Des Plaines Street station proved something of an embarrassment for Alastair when he learned that Gabrielle Tewes, Jane’s daughter, had done all the clerical work to make it happen. He tugged at Mike’s arm when they brought him and the others in, whispering, “What’s Gabby doing here?”

  “Kohler’s idea. He put her on it.”

  “Bastard,” muttered Ransom.

  More and more, Gabby had gotten involved in police work and at as many levels as she could manage to breach. She’d been instrumental in the final phases of ending the career of the Phantom of the Fair. She was an anomaly, and her being headquartered at the Des Plaines station was not without friction. Still, the situation, at least in her mind, seemed to be working out just swimmingly. She had an eye for detail, and alongside her medical schoolwork, and working with Dr. Christian Fenger as his special assistant to the police, she’d shown herself capable. Gabby meant to become his mentored replacement someday—a full-fledged autopsy expert, rather than what her mother had hoped—a surgeon to the living.