City for Ransom (20 page)

“The killer is mobile. Moves 'bout the city effortlessly. Likely means money, well-to-do family, I fear and so—”

“Yes, has his own carriage and driver.” Ransom brightened. “They theorized old Jack the Ripper did it that way.”

“Blends.”

“And is well versed on our city terrain.”

“He's cunning and quite possibly enjoys working with his hands. Perhaps likes to make things…as with his garrote. It is unique to him. He loves his weapon. It grants him power.”

“Ahhh…but it's not so unique after all.” Ransom held up the same garrote—crisscrossed with a diamond center.

“There is then something unique about this man's relationship with the weapon, I tell you. It's that twisted.”

“All right, perhaps he talks to it. I won't argue the point.”

“And one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“While he may be as well off as Mr. Field himself, he is small in stature.”

“How can you possibly know his stature, Doctor?”

“The angle of the garrote—the force—pulling downward. Polly was as tall as you, yet—”

“Yes, he'd pulled downward even on Purvis. It appears the killer is rather short. Clever of you to've noticed, and right.”

“I find the so-called investigation full of holes.”

“Ahhh…you would. Look, we'll soon have a break in the case. I get reports daily from Dot'n'Carry.”

“Dot and who?”

“My street snitch. My most reliable spy. If ever I write my memoir, my homeless friend will have to be acknowledged. The poor wretched gimp.”

“Gimp?”

“He has been with you for days, Doctor, so unobtrusive you've not noticed. Blends as you put it.”

Jane did a 360-degree turn, taking in everyone here and on the street through the window where Chicago's teeming life passed by. Commerce continued unabated. Vendors rolled portable carts, selling anything imaginable. A number of people with canes limped by, along with black hansom cabs rolling in and out of the window frame.

The fiddler in the corner had stopped to swill his ale, halving the glass before starting up a lively rendition of “Comin' Through the Rye.” The tune livened up the patrons all round, and even Ransom's toe began to tap, although he seemed unaware of this, as his thoughts remained on the killings, how the only witness they had said the killer was whistling this same popular tune.

Dr. Tewes was not unaware of Ransom's toe-tapping, as he was tapping on Tewes's shoe—a man's size seven, stuffed at the toes. A man with a harmonica joined in with the fiddler. Patrons began to clap as if clawing their way from a dull hell.

Young Waldo Denton entered and ordered up a bucket of beer. “Fetchin' for Philo, no doubt,” said Ransom to Tewes.

Waldo gave a glance in Ransom's direction and nodded at him and Tewes, grinned before rushing out again, the bucket of beer slopping along his pants leg. “Boy acts as if Philo might beat him if he dallies.” Ransom then looked with a mix of disdain and admiration at those having fun.

“Garroting's a cowardly method of dispatching someone, catching 'im from behind, not facing your victim, eye to eye,” he began. “And yet twice now he's killed victims before a mirror.”

“Ifyou're right…he likes to watch 'em die—”

“And to see himself in the act.”

“Behavior says something about who he is,” Jane explained.

“I believe a lot of what you say about the makeup of this monster is well…useful information.”

“Almost sounded like a compliment in there somewhere. Now…with whom do I speak about recompense?”

“Recompense?”

“Yes, I'm sure you've heard the word before. I expect pay as an independent consultant to you, Inspector.”

“Aha…like any other leech on the Chicago payroll.”

“Have you seen the cost of bread lately? Been to the fair?”

“I've no time for such trivialities.”

“Perhaps had you taken time…”

“Go on.”

“…you'd've been on that wheel in the sky with Merielle last night instead of pumping me for information.”

“Damn your hide, Doctor! What about your daughter, Gabrielle? Have you given a moment's thought to the possibility that she, rather than Purvis, could've been killed that night they were at the fair?”

“It has indeed kept me awake nights.”

“Perhaps had you bothered taking Gabby to the fair, she'd not've been with Purvis that night! And what about your sister, the one you treat like a housemaid?”

“Leave Jane out of this, and Gabby as well. They're none of your affair.” Jane sensed her ruse was finally up with him, but she could not be certain. She held her silence. She wanted so much to reveal her true self to Alastair, as she had Dr. Fenger,
before
he read about it in one of Chicago's twenty-six newspapers, or heard it from Fenger, or got it between the eyes from Kohler, or his snitch!

As if taking up a challenge, Ransom boldly replied, “I just may call on your sister, Dr. Tewes.”

“What?” Tewes was clearly stunned by this.

“She's new to the city. She must be curious about the fair.”

“Is this some sort of threat, Alastair?”

“Threat?”

“Worm information out of my sister to get—”

“I'm merely wondering if she's curious about the wheel, the fair, the pavilions?”

“Of course she is but—”

“But you've had no time to show Jane the city or the fair?”

“Yes…I mean, no, but—”

“Someone should.”

“She is seeing a fellow who intends just that,” Jane lied.

“
Ahhh
…that's good.”

“I will take my leave of you now, sir,” said a more composed Dr. Tewes.

Ransom watched the funny little doctor saunter from the tavern as if a sudden fear had overtaken him.

His father's name was Campaneua, his mother
Jarno, and together they straddled the earth, wreaking havoc in both Europe and America as anarchists. Mother had kept a scrapbook, clippings on train derailments, bombings, bank robberies, and even assassinations they'd carried out. They'd been lovers in a war against established government, communists of a sort, and they had a son born of their union, but wedlock in their estimation amounted to just another social contract meant to make sheep of people, right alongside religion and centralized government. Just another fabrication, a contract with myth—another tool of the enemy. They purposefully abstained from marriage as just another form of mind-slavery, a ritualized cultural iconoclastic opiate. As such, marriage looked, felt, tasted, sounded, and smelled like just another part of the cultural bag of tricks undermining true opinion and intellect. A conspiracy to keep the common man in place, from the Bible to the U.S. Constitution—all designed to keep a harmonious peace among the sheep.

His anarchist parents had named him Roberre Jarno-Campaneua the Second, and his mother had brought him up to believe in himself entirely and in the causes of anarchy. But anarchy appeared on the wane, and he could find no compatriots this side of the ocean—someone not brain
washed in the mores and values of capitalism, someone who might appreciate him—men willing to die for the cause, as his father had seven years ago at the hands of one small-minded, now crippled police detective here in Chicago. Another killer like himself—one he hated with all the venom inside him—Alastair Ransom.

Sleepeck Stumpf—a secret name given him by the ghost of his father—had met few men today to rival his father. He'd like to set a bomb in a busy thoroughfare or train station himself. Do the old man proud. But it'd have to wait until after his vendetta against Ransom was settled for good and all.

Times had gone sour for anarchy in America. While the movement of the anarchists thrived in Europe, dotting the continent, here in America, it'd quelled to a murmur—thanks in large measure to the enactment of labor laws resulting from Chicago's Haymarket Riot. The enemy had won that day.

Ransom had almost been killed by a bomb that his father may well have set, the same bomb that killed seven coppers at Haymarket. He'd no way to substantiate this. Nonetheless, no one among the anarchist communities had ever claimed responsibility for the Haymarket bomb, and as his father'd been murdered before the bomb went off, it could well have been his work. Several prominent labor leaders and a handful of anarchists had been arrested, given blanket injustice, tried quickly, and hung—seven all told. There ought to've been a world outcry at the injustice of it all, the quick
prairie justice
as some called it, but none came. Blood was required. One imprisoned anarchist managed to kill himself in his cell, cheating the citizenry of Chicago of their justice.

One anarchist, a woman, had slipped away; she'd gone all these years undetected, living a quiet retirement after learning of her common law husband's death. Roberre's mother.

He had memories of his father holding him, playing with him, caring for him, but it'd been too long and his features had faded. All he had was a worn, aged daguerreotype, what little Mother'd told him, the news clippings of his father's
doings, and a rough police sketch done as a wanted poster by some long-ago police artist created from faulty accounts. According to his mother, they had his nose too large, too flat, his ears exaggerated, along with his lips, and they displayed his eyes as wide and maniacal, along with an overhanging brow—all wrong. In fact, his father had mild features and could pass for a bank teller or accountant. “Put 'em in a suit and tie, and the man could step through any door,” Mother would say, a twinkle in her eye.

“You should've known your father, such passion,” she'd drummed into him. “Such a blazing fire in his soul. So inspiring, and all he wanted was a better life, not for himself alone, not even for just you and me, his family, but for the masses.”

Roberre heard this every day of his young life, from his mother, whose maiden name had been Stumpf.

And so he'd come to Chicago, where he'd dug up his mother from Potter's Field and buried her anew on the farmstead outside Chicago she'd called home until the bank had taken it from her. But he'd also come to avenge his father, and he meant to do it his way, and not by bomb—as it left too much to chance. He meant to serve up this vengeance against the man who'd executed his father by fire in the manner of cold vengeance, a vengeance that would bring that giant of a man to his knees before killing him outright.

He'd do it quietly, carefully. He'd made himself invisible to go about Ransom's damnable city freely, and he would strike viperlike with the garrote he'd made with his own hands when just a boy, when Roberre Jarno-Campaneua the Second, a.k.a. Stumpf began contemplating killing the man who'd turned his father into a human torch.

Across the city at Ransom's home and in his nightmare

It felt as if it were happening all over again; even the sounds in his ears on the day they'd cornered that Frenchy
bastard, who planned to set off a bomb. Ransom had tracked down the son-of-a-sow, and during a Chicago storm, deep inside a large warehouse, several coppers had worked the man over. He sat beaten and strapped to a chair. They tried to pry from him where he'd planted the bomb and the names of accomplices.

“I tell you nothing! I am French citizen. Have rights. You can't detain me like this,” he kept saying. “You are law in Chy-cago! So must obey rules. Is not so?”

Angry at his smugness, Ransom kicked out the chair, sending him toppling. Another uniformed cop named Nathan Kohler then doused him in the kerosene that Ransom had threatened to use, the fumes so powerful they made both Campaneua and Ransom choke.

Now Campaneua and Ransom stared wide-eyed from each side of the huge wooden match. Unlit for the moment. Neither man saw anything else—not the other men in the room, not one another, not their surroundings. Neither man saw the vegetable crates or the huge warehouse door that stood so near. Neither saw one another any longer as Ransom contemplated striking the match, the storm outside replaced by hollow silence in his ears.

Ransom didn't see Kohler, just back of him, strike a match either, and when Nathan tossed his lit cigar onto the man lying tied in the sawdust, all he heard was a
whoosh
. The flaming, flailing sight backed him off as the dying man cried out his name: “Roberre Jarno-Campaneua!” The last words he uttered as his body burned before the amazed eyes of the four Chicago policemen who'd been ordered to get information from him at any cost.

And Ransom sat bolt upright, awake, a feeling of Campaneua's ghost in the room, alongside all the garrote victims, including the unborn child and Cliffton and Merielle. They'd stalked him to his bed, each whispering some unintelligible gibberish understood only by the dead as Ransom broke into a blistering sweat.

The following day at the home of Dr. Tewes

The phone rang several times before Gabby picked up. She still felt tentative using the new invention, but the moment she heard it was Inspector Ransom, she calmed and brightened. They made small talk of the weather until finally Gabby broke down in tears, telling him how sorry she was over the news that he'd lost a friend as she had—“possibly to the same maniac roaming the city. And all while I pushed pastries on you the other night.”

He asked her not to cry, telling her all would be put right. Then he added, “I actually called to speak to your aunt.”

“My aunt?”

“Have it in mind to perhaps take her to the fair, if…if that is, you do not forbid her seeing me, Gabrielle.”

“The fair? Really? You and…Jane?” Gulping, she added, “I guess that'd be up to my aunt, although my father might have something to say.”

Suddenly, Tewes came on the line. “Jane is a grown woman. She can make her own decisions in such matters.”

“Good of you to say so, James.”

“I see no dependency issue that was the foundation of your and Merielle's relationship, Inspector. I suppose, if Jane Francis is of a mind, then by all means—”

“Then how early may I visit?”

Is he baiting me? Had his squirrelly, wooden-legged snitch, called Dot'n'Carry, seen me change from Tewes to Jane through a window sash? Does the detective know about Kohler and me? Play it out, she finally decided, wherever it goes
. “Ahhh…I should think seven, sevenish…after dinner.”

“Very good.”

“Then I shall
warn
Jane of your calling.” Jane fought off a feeling of confoundedness. Here was a man in mourning one day, brokering a courtship the next? It must be to unmask Tewes, part of the hunt.

“Then I shall soon come 'round.”

“G'day, Inspector.” Jane placed phone to wall cradle to find herself held prisoner by Gabrielle's disbelief. “You preach that I not play with fire! A man like—”

“This doesn't concern you, young lady. Get to your studies.”

“But only the other day…what was it you called him?
A thug with a badge!
”

“Keep thy enemies close.”

“You hypocrite.”

“Gabby!”

“Go then! Dance with the devil! Draw attention! Yet you shout at me with poor dead Cliff? What of your
precious
practice? What if Inspector Ransom sees through it all?”

“He won't.”

“He came damn close getting you drunk! He's notorious!”

“He's…that is, his asking me—
Jane
—out…it's—”

“A surprise?”

“He is unpredictability personified.”

Gabby looked at her mother anew. “Hold on…you're flattered, aren't you?”

“Why nonsense. I must take care is all. He's seen me. I must be…natural.”

“Ahhh…” Gabby paced off and returned. “All right, but if you're to do this right, we've got to do up your hair, and Mother, a little rouge and lipstick, please.”

“I'll not waste a moment primping for that man.”

“Really? Mother! You must lay a foundation, make some preparations. I'll help you. I've got new cosmetics from Carson's, so be here at six.”

“An hour before his arrival?”

“Right…more time's needed. Make it five.”

Gabby hugged her mother and whispered in her ear, “Still, I worry.”

“Stop it.”

“He's so darkly…”

“Mysterious?”

“Notorious.”

“Ten percent true, ninety percent bull-swallop.”

“Mother! Bull-swallop? Is that the same as bullshit?”

“Gabby!”

Gabby followed her mother into her bedroom. “Well…Inspector Ransom uses the term pig-swallop for—”

“
Gabby!
Watch your tongue! Is this what you're learning at Northwestern Medical? How to swear like a sailor?”

“I'm a liberated woman, a suffragette now. I think I can say
bullshit
when the need arises, and this is a time for—”

“You've been sneaking to meetings with that fanatical friend of yours, Lucy Wistera, haven't you?”

“Lucy talks sense! It's time we had a say-so in politics. Look at how G'damn awful the world is with men running things since Roman times!”

Jane sat at her makeup counter, carefully applying her mustache. “You, young woman, are going to get your mouth washed out with lye soap if you—”

“Oh, please, Mother!”

“I raised you a lady! Not a tramp of the streets!”

“You ought to be in the rally, Mother. You'd be a beacon to all women everywhere as Dr. Jane Francis, but no! You've gotta go about dressed as a man!”

“That is enough! Taking such a tone, young lady! What is happening with you?”

“You taught me to stand up for my rights! It's time you did! As for taking God's name in vain, if he's a man like
men
insist, then Lucy says it's time He got us the vote!”

Turning from her mirror, Jane stared Gabby in the eye. “Look here, I'm trying to make a life for us, to—to keep you in school, and you need to put all effort and con—”

“Concentration, I know, into my studies! But damn it what confounded good're studies when the end result is…well, look at you, Mother! Having to masquerade as a man in order to get equal pay and equal treatment? Do you plan to vote in the upcoming elections as Dr. Tewes as well, Mother?”

Jane's voice cracked when she replied, “I raised you a lady, groomed you a professional, not some pseudo
intellectual, Bible-thumping, horn-blowing brat with a cause and a flag made of bloomers! Do you have a notion what's to become of Lucy Wistera and her pack once they've been stoned and arrested and jailed?”

“Stoned and jailed by ignorance. People who haven't a clue as to what a suffragette is!”

“Well, you're right there. Most of the city can't read English! In fact, most can't read in any language!”

A huge silence came down around them, and as Dr. Tewes stared back at Jane in the mirror, the doorbell rang. “See to the door; if it's for Dr. Tewes, show them into the clinic.”

“Oh, it's just Waldo Denton. He's becoming a nuisance.”

“Where did you say you met him? At the university?”

“Not exactly, but yes.”

“What?” Jane's confusion was clear even through her makeup.”

“I catch his cab most days out to the school, and…he's made it his business to flirt.”

“I hope you have enough sense to not encourage it. A cabby!”

“He's apprenticing as a photographer and is trying to get me to sit for him.”

“Don't fall for it!” Jane bristled. “Get rid of him. Get your mind off the vote, photographic modeling, boys, and onto your studies!”