Shadows in the White City (18 page)

“It's a biblical term for revenants, and they seldom to rarely use ‘ghost.'”

“Why is that?”

“Ghosts are for little kids, babies, not tough guys. Ghosts are not real to them. Not like spirits. Spirits are real and dangerous.”

“I see,” replied Alastair, digesting all of this.

“In their lexicon, they always use
demon
to denote wicked spirits.”

Alastair took a long moment to sip his refill of bad brandy, and to allow these facts to sink in. “Their folklore appears to cast them as comrades-in-arms, regardless of ethnicity.”

Philo stared long into Ransom's Irish green eyes. “You are a quick student, Inspector, and I am amazed that you somehow made these skittish street kids comfortable enough to share their most guarded, secret stories with you. That is in itself no small feat, remarkable in fact.”

“Thank you, but it was Gabby and Jane who accomplished it.”

“Most people can get nothing from them without a significant bribe.”

“Sure…this is Chicago, and kids learn from adults.”

“For these kids, the secret stories do more than explain the mystifying universe.”

“I see.”

“Do you? They impose meaning upon the world in the telling and retelling of the stories.”

“Story has power, always has,” Ransom mused. “And this gives purpose to their lives.”

“You've got it.”

“I do?”

“As you've learned, this unusual belief system is cherished by white, black, Ukrainian, Polish, Portuguese, and Latin children, for the homeless youngsters see themselves as outgunned allies of the valiant angels in their battle against shared spiritual adversaries.”

“Not too terribly different from African-American folklore and songs, created right through the horrors of slavery, heh?” suggested Alastair.

“Now you catch on.”

“Bravo to the student.”

Philo grew serious again. “Folktales are the only work of beauty a displaced people can keep,” he explained. “And
their power transcends class and race lines, because they address emotional questions.”

“What kind of questions?” asked Ransom.

“Questions like…well…like, why side with good—or even God—when evil—or this Zoroaster, that is, Satan—is winning—”

“—or willing to reward you immediately—this moment?”

“Preeecisely, Detective.”

“Yeah…I see what you mean. Our own lifestyles might be examples.” Ransom had lost his parents at an early age to an epidemic, and Philo had never known his father and had lost his mother to pneumonia.

Philo then shrugged and sipped at his drink. “Here is what the children of the street think, Alastair, if you wish to know.”

“I do. Go on.”

“If I'm homeless, and I am killed, how then can I make my life resonate beyond the grave?”

“You make it sound like a sense of mission,” countered Ransom.

“Damn it, it is a mission for them!”

“Some would say that is ridiculous. These kids know what's what. They know they're making up shit as they go.”

“This shit, as you call it, keeps them anchored, Inspector Ransom. You're likely familiar with Cajun beliefs, right? Superstitions out of Barbados? Haiti? West Virginia coal mines? Alastair, a belief system and a culture is necessary to well-being. It provides a sense of
mission
.”

“I agree but I am also reminded daily of reality—what our own religious leaders push along with the merchants and money men of this city.”

“Fools. Look at it this way, these kids have nothing but their beliefs, and their beliefs may explain why some children in crisis—and perhaps the adults they become—are brave, decent, and imaginative, while others more privileged”—Philo thought of someone he knew—“can be callous, mean-spirited, and mediocre, and lacking any sense of mission.”

Alastair only now realized that Philo spoke from experience, and in a moment of realization, Philo saw that Alastair knew this. Alastair said, “I grew up here in inner-city Chicago, Philo, and let me tell you, there was very little sign of God on the landscape then as now.”

“Same in Montreal where I grew up, but I wish I'd had half what these kids had in the way of a spiritual leaning or anchor.”

Alastair nodded. “I begin to see.” A series of words flashed through his mind:
homeless, violence, death, commonplace
. “Often highly advantageous to grovel before the powerful and shun the weak, and where adult rescuers are no place to be found.”

“Ahhh,”
countered Philo Keane, “but the ability to grasp onto ideals larger than oneself and exert influence for good—
a sense of mission
—is nurtured in these eerie, beautiful, shelter folktales as sure as they were in
Beowulf,
which tales were encouragement to men to go out and slay dragons, giants, and beasts.”

Ransom sat silent a moment, his cane at his side. “I'm sorry, professor, but regardless of any good intentions you or I or our friends may have for the homeless, their numbers are just too great for us alone to make much of a dent, wouldn't you say?”

Philo dismissed this, saying, “In any group that generates its own legends—whether in a business office, a police department, an agency like the Salvation Army, or a remote Amazonian village—the most articulate member becomes the semi-official keeper of the secrets. The same thing happens in homeless shelters. You've done well to gain even a temporary hold on these kids.”

“So this is what I was actually being told by the street children, that their secret stories lay down the rules of spiritual behavior.”

“The most verbally skilled children—such as this Robin and Danielle, and this Audra you describe—impart the se
cret stories to new arrivals. Ensuring that their truths survive regardless of their own fate. It's a duty felt deeply by these children, including one ten-year-old chap I met named Myles. After confiding and illustrating secret stories on a slate for me, Myles created a self-portrait for me.”

“Really?”

“A gray charcoal drawn gravestone, meticulously and carefully rendered, inscribed with his own name and the year nineteen-o-six—thirteen years hence.”

“How sad…. Listen you must never relate this to Jane or to Gabby.”

Philo ignored this. “There is something more…something far more disturbing coming out of our few shelters, Alastair.” Philo absently knocked over his now empty glass.

“And what is that?”

“Well…simply put,” he began, righting the empty glass, “the children may have trusted you and Jane and Gabby, but only up to a point where they draw the line on first meetings.”

“I got that loud and clear.”

Philo raised a hand to silence his friend. “The bottom line in their theocracy, Alastair, is quite strange and disturbing.”

“Trust me. All of us have been disturbed by all this, especially young Gabby.”

“They did not get that far with you, so trust me! You've not yet heard the real disturbing stuff coming outta these kids.”

“Tell me, then.”

“As…as happens, there are Bloody Mary and the mother of Christ, Mary, but in essence they are one and the same.”

“One and the same? What are you saying?”

“Mary laid down with Satan to beget
another
child—”

“How blasphemous do you intend being, Keane?”

“Hold on! Don't scream at the messenger! I'm only passing along the facts of reality according to the general belief of the shelter child.”

“Sorry…go on.”

“It's become a tenet of their faith, Rance, that Satan's child, born of Mary…not some stand-in but Mary Mother of God will carry on Zoroaster's evil plans throughout eternity.”

“Such a horrid worldview.”

“Agreed, yet there is more and worse.”

“Worse than Mary pregnant with the Devil's seed?”

“Worse, yes, since it was Mary herself who killed her son.”

Somewhere in the back of his head, Ransom seemed to recall how Bloody Mary in a drunk tank screamed out at him that she'd killed babies. “Killed Christ, you mean?”

“To replace him on the throne with Satan's son, the Anti-Christ.”

“Damn…”

“And Mary abandoned God on His throne. In fact, it's as always, that woman Eve did it—this woman betrayed not Adam but all of Heaven itself, showing and leading the way for Satan's minions to overthrow God's throne. A kind of Joan of Arc for the dark side, so to speak.”

“We didn't hear
any
of this from the children, and it is so outlandish, Philo, that quite frankly, I'm not at all sure I believe you.”

“This is their secret of secrets. They trust no one in authority because of this; they know that no one wants to believe it! That no one will believe them. This is what they hold back. I can show you my documentation of this belief.” He began rummaging through a brown valise lying in a pile on a nearby table. “I have it all right here.”

Ransom examined Philo's notes and looked closely at the boy in the photographs who had purportedly told Philo the secret of secrets among the homeless and shelter children. The smiling, grimy face looked familiar. It was Samuel, the boy who Ransom had paid to keep his eyes and ears open.

“It's all such a perversion of Christianity.”

“I know. It's the reason I've not shared it with anyone else, not Dr. Fenger, not Dr. Francis. It's difficult for men like you and I to swallow, men of the world, so to speak, but a lady?”

Ransom took another drink and lit his pipe.

“Thought you were getting off tobacco—that cough of yours.”

“Tomorrow. I'll quit again tomorrow.”

Philo returned to his subject, adding, “What this means to the average homeless child out there,” Philo paused and pointed out the window, “is that the forces traditionally in Heaven, all the powers of God's throne overhead, are now under Satan's hand. That we are in the midst of an apocalyptic war, and our angels are not only on the run and bedraggled but losing, and losing badly, and why are they losing? Largely because they are abandoned. Abandoned by an embittered God who has seen His son killed by his mother, who has slept with Satan to spawn—”

“The Anit-Christ, I see.”

“Sounds like enough to put God off His throne, but it also comes off as unbelievable balderdash.”

“Claptrap, drivel, tripe? Not to someone facing death on the streets in a daily battle to survive, and at the same time, remain good and pure.”

Shaken, Alastair returned the pages and photos offered up as evidence. “Philo, thank you for discussing this with me so openly.”

“Not at all. I am pleased someone is showing an interest in the shelter children.”

“You mean someone not wanting anything from them—especially their hides?”

“Someone in authority, you.”

“Haven't seen you worked up over any cause ever, my friend. Have to tell you this takes me by surprise.”

“One can sink his teeth into this cause and get attached by the jaw,” replied Philo, his eyes alight with fervor.

Alastair instantly knew that Philo would one day create the photo array of the homeless he spoke of, but he wondered if anyone owning a gallery would support such a showing. He doubted it but would say nothing to quench Philo's thirst for his plan. Not even William Stead with all
of his contacts and influence as a correspondent for the London
Times
had made a dent, unable to get his book into print, so far as Alastair knew.

“Do what you can to end this predator's life—the one they're calling Leather Apron, will you, Alastair?”

“Count on it.”

“And I will do what I can to expose the city's disgrace in all this.”

“It's a pact.”

Ransom still felt that this mythology of the street children had little to nothing to do with his investigation, and now it'd interfered with his drink, his smoke, and his relaxation.

As if reading his thoughts, Philo said, “You always trust your first instinct, Alastair. What does it tell you?”

“Aye, I do trust myself…my intuition. Sometimes with your back to the wall, it's all you have, and there is a bit of naggin' about this Bloody Mary.”

“And in matters of the heart? How goes it with Jane? Has she put your back to the wall, yet?”

“Police investigation is easy compared to mysteries of the heart.”

“Perhaps, Alastair, you could remedy that.”

“Oh? And how's that?”

“If you'd just tell Jane exactly how you feel about her, old man.”

 

Bosch got word to Ransom through Muldoon that the meeting between Ransom and the daughter of the seamstress, who'd been on hand during the Haymarket Riot, was set. The inspector must go to the lady. Bosch supplied the time and place, an address in the worst part of the city, a place infested with the flotsam of human life here in Chicago. There were more homeless and destitute on the streets in Hair Trigger Alley than in all the rest of the city combined. Oddly, it would seem to be the easiest and best hunting grounds for
Leather Apron or anyone wishing to abduct a child, but this had not been the case; in fact, this was the only area in the city where children suspected of being victims of this maniac had remained untouched.
Something to be said for street smarts and street myths,
Ransom thought.

As Ransom moved among the crowds here, as he took one alleyway to gain another while searching out the address, he theorized that homeless people—especially those on the street for any length of time—had developed street savvy: the intuition and instinct to respect their own first impulse, to pay heed to their first fear. As a result, in a sense, such people, men, women, and children, knew who was and who was not violent, who was and who was not dangerous, who was and who was not conning them. Like an evolved animal in the wild, an “evolved” street-smart person's intuition and experience might well have kept a whole segment of the city safe from Leather Apron.