Shadows in the White City (19 page)

Ransom's cane announced his approach, when another cane tapped out a familiar rhythm as well, its noise in syncopation with his own. It was Henry Bosch's wooden peg leg—the reason others rudely called him Dot 'n' Carry. But what was the old fool doing here, now, in the dark courtyard?

“Bosch? What're you—”

“Get out of here!” Bosch shouted across to Ransom. “It's all a setup!”

“Setup?”

“Just go, quickly!”

Ransom instead grabbed Bosch by his lapels. “What's really going on here, Bosch!”

“Kohler!”

The single name said it all. Kohler had set him up for an assassin's bullet. Ransom pulled out his gun and somehow managed to hold on to the squirming Bosch, who pleaded to let him go. Bosch added, “Soon as I figured it a hoax, I came rushin' to warn you!”

“How much did Kohler pay you, Bosch?”

“All right, I took money from him, but only to keep tabs on you, Inspector. I never knew he meant to cut you down!”

A shot rang out, the bullet ripping a hole in Alastair's coat where it flapped in a sudden breeze. A second shot followed immediately, and its thunderous result came so close to Alastair's ear that he dropped to the dirty unpaved alleyway, letting go of Bosch in the process. He looked to his right to find Henry Bosch's form disappearing over a fence, and it made him wonder how agile the old veteran was, peg leg, cane, and all.

Alastair lay in a mud puddle, imagining dying here in Hair Trigger Alley, a perfect cover for Kohler's plot, for if he were to die here as the result of a gunshot, any number of scenarios could be brought to bear as to why. What was Inspector Ransom doing here alone and without backup? Without telling his superiors of his purpose in a known danger zone? How many enemies did Inspector Ransom have in Chicago? How many secret deals had Alastair Ransom brokered? Had one come back to bite him in the ass? These theories of his assassination would go on unsolved forever, or until Chicago simply forgot the existence of one Alastair Ransom.

Such thoughts fueled his anger, but the notion that Nathan Kohler would live on and benefit from his disappearance truly fueled his desire to see this night out, and to see Nathan Kohler again at his earliest convenience. While all he had to go on was Henry Bosch's word that Kohler had set him up for murder this night, Ransom did not doubt it.

Another bullet pierced the earth in front of his eyes, and too late he turned his head away. Eyes stinging with dirt, unable to see clearly into the deep shadows and recesses of doorways and stairways and wooden fire escapes, Alastair could locate no one, and mysteriously, the entire area in all directions had become deserted. Three shots had come so suddenly that he'd not seen the source or direction, but from the result, each hitting so close, he surmised the approximate direction. He rolled over and crawled to prop himself
against a trash can, paper and debris raining round him. Another second and a fourth bullet hit the can, opening a hole beside him.

“Damn it!” he cursed, lifted and fired into a black hole ahead of him, then dropped behind cover again. Alastair knew it'd be the height of luck to actually hit someone, but as luck would have it, his single shot resulted in a cry. Someone was hit.

Alastair carefully inched his way to a standing position. There could well be two assassins as one, and the one he hit could still be alert enough to fire again. Alastair called out, “Chicago Police! Drop your weapon or I fire again!” As he did so, he walked, cane in one hand, gun in the other, searching the blackness of the hole into which the man he'd shot had fallen.

When he got within inches, he saw the man's hand reaching for the revolver he'd used, his fingers twitching, slithering still toward the weapon, still wanting only one thing—to kill Alastair Ransom. Ransom's eyes had adjusted to the darkness here, and people had begun materializing all around him, some shouting for police. Several uniformed cops rushed in with handheld lanterns, but even before the light hit the assassin, Ransom knew who he was:
Elias Jervis.
The slimy snake bastard.

Elias Jervis was Polly “Merielle” Pete's former boyfriend and, when the need arose, pimp. Watching the bottom-feeder die brought back images of the spoiled dove, whom Alastair had for a time loved. He'd desperately tried to clean her up after he'd cheated and “won” her in a card game during which he goaded Jervis to wager her “contract.” After “winning her over,” he'd made a show of burning the contract before witnesses, and his bravado intrigued Polly, a vivacious and wild woman. Alastair had then set himself the task of helping her get clean and clearheaded, so she might make something of herself. Meanwhile, he used her and she used him until he lost her to the murdering Phantom—that weasel, Denton.

Alastair now wondered if Jervis's motive for taking Ransom's life had to do with jealousy and Polly, or that Elias harbored the belief that Alastair's dangerous lifestyle had created a target of her, that Ransom had gotten her killed—and perhaps this was closer to the truth than Ranson wanted to admit. Or perhaps Elias Jervis acted true to form here, working as a paid assassin. Bosch had shouted the single name, Kohler. Had Kohler financed Elias? Was Jervis's motive a combination of all his pent up anger pushed to the edge by the right sum?

Ransom bodily lifted the wounded Jervis and began shaking it from him, causing two burly uniformed cops to pull Alastair off. Elias Jervis fell back like an empty gunnysack into the black hole painted now with his blood, looking purple in the CPD lantern light.

“Bastard took three or four shots at me before I laid him out!” shouted Ransom, tearing away from the cops holding him back. “An ambush! I was set up for a killing!” Alastair rushed Jervis's prone body and kicked it several times before he was again pulled away and advised to cool down. The man giving him the advice was his young friend, Mike O'Malley, with whom he'd lifted many a pint of ale. It was good to see a friendly face among this district's cops, someone he felt he could trust.

“Mikey, when did you get sent to this shithole to work?”

“I asked for it.”

“Asked to work Hair Trigger?”

“I asked for it by getting smart with Chief Kohler.”

“
Ahhh
…I see. You weren't by chance defending me at the time, were you?”

“You are such a great detective, Rance.”

“And you? When do you take your exams?”

“I have, but since I was disciplined…well, that's by the wayside for now.”

“That bastard, Kohler. One day…”

“Careful what you say. He has friends among these lads.” O'Malley indicated the others in uniform. “And down here your name's poison, Rance.”

“He just set me up for murder. I won't stand quiet for that! Search that bastard Jervis, and you'll find a wad of cash payment, you will.”

“Everyone knows Elias Jervis had it in for you, Inspector,” said another uniformed cop. “This looks like a personal matter to me.”

“It's personal, all right!” Alastair stormed off but was stopped by a pair of brawny coppers standing in his way.

“Your gun, sir! We'll need it,” said the cop who appeared in charge.

“What's your name, Officer?”

“Tenny, sir. Dane Tenny.”

“You think you can take my gun, Tenny?”

Mike stepped in. “Rance, it's standard procedure now in a police shooting down here in the Alley.”

“Your boss doesn't want my gun, Tenn,” replied Alastair. “He wants my badge and my hide. Isn't that right, Mike?”

“Whatever your suspicions, Inspector,” said Tenny, standing in military pose, feet set for a fight, “my job's to do the right thing here.” Tenny held out his hand for the gun, one eye warily awaiting Ransom's cane coming up. Once again, Alastair's reputation preceded him.

Frowning, with a nod to Mike, he lifted his blue gun out and handed it to O'Malley. Alastair then started off. He had a houseful of guns at home, including another exactly like the one confiscated.

While all of this was transpiring, Ransom had also swallowed the fact that there never was any daughter of the riot with a mother's diary, that this was vintage baiting. Next Ransom became angry with himself for being so easily led into a trap that almost cost him his life here in this mud-hole.

“I'm aware that there'll be a review of the shooting,” Ransom said. “Let me know when and where, will you, Mike?” He refused to acknowledge Tenny.

“Sure…sure, Rance. You go on home, get cleaned up. You smell of mud and slop.”

“Thanks…I think.”

Ransom made his way out of the alley and onto the street where he hailed a hansom cab. All the way home, he sat angry as hell with himself, with Bosch, with Jervis for being such an easy mark, but he reserved his lethal hatred for Chief Nathan Kohler, and the incident only increased his suspicion that Kohler had a hand in all that had gone wrong in 1886 during the Haymarket Riot.

“And one day, by God, I'll prove it and put the bastard on trial for it.”

The cabbie thought he'd barked some new order, and he shouted through the slot, “Sir? Another destination, sir?”

“No! One twenty-nine Des Plaines!”

Shaken from just having killed a man, and angry over circumstances that'd led him into a trap, Ransom felt the fool—Nathan Kohler's fool. A stronger emotion gripped him however. One he could not fend off. Alastair felt a cold grim vulnerability overtaking him, and he realized this naked raw feeling had all to do with his empty shoulder holster. It was brought on by his confiscated blue gun, which normally pressed against his heart.

The following night

“Yes, spirits appear as you remember them,” Dr. James Phineas Tewes was saying when Ransom quietly entered Jane Francis's parlor, and as quietly stood in the entry, listening to the spiel of this new con. He felt a disappointment not so much in Tewes but in Jane, and it felt like a lump of calcified stone in his gut.

Jane as Tewes in trance was unaware of Gabby's having answered the doorbell. Tewes was saying, “Yes, the dearly departed come to us just as they looked when alive, even wearing favorite clothes, but they are surrounded by faint, colored light. And while the newly dead speak, it is difficult to make out. While the spirit's lips move, no sound is
heard. But I have perfected the art of reading lips, you see.”

The séance was in full swing when Alastair rested on his cane, thinking,
Jane's got to've heard the doorbell ring, must know the law is on hand, and that everyone else in the room had begun to fidget—séance-interruptis.

Dr. Tewes had advertised that he could contact the dead, and this “new assertion” in all of Dr. Tewes's most recent flyers, was bringing in business and money for Dr. Tewes's bank account. Alastair wondered when and how Jane planned to empty Tewes's account and put it into her name. While women did not have the vote, and while most married women had no bank account whatsoever, some businesswomen and independent singles held bank accounts. Banks would take anyone's money regardless of sex, unless a husband forbade it.

Ransom had seen the new flyer tacked to a police phone box, and had read the new promises of contacting a loved one from the other side. The notion alone would typically outrage Alastair, but he'd not think of raiding such a party of fools who deserved what they got. Still, this being Jane in her getup as Tewes proved a double disappointment.

He'd come to demand to know what was going on in her head to make such outrageous claims in the name of Tewes or anyone else.

When Gabby had cautiously answered the door, her fingers to her lips, he'd allowed her to guide him by the hand into the darkened parlor.

Once in the darkened room, Ransom had immediately begun studying the faces to ID the family members sitting about a rippling candle throwing off shadows across the center table. Jane's bejeweled glass chandelier dangled low over this same center, creating a mesmerizing effect like none Ransom had ever seen.

Meanwhile, Dr. James Phineas Tewes held court. In gruff voice, “he” pontificated on the nature of the dead, launched into a sprig of philosophy followed by theology. Before Alastair had arrived, Tewes had undoubtedly insisted that
everyone join hands in harmony and unity, so as together they might create a bridge and a bond with the other side, and so that Tewes had the energy to ask help of “his” spirit guide—a lost and wandering soul named Mariah, who had nothing better to do than make continued contact with Dr. Tewes. And today, this moment in fact, Mariah was going to bring Grandfather Nichodemus Pelham to his assembled heirs and assigns.

They were chanting this request of Mariah in no time at all.

Jane did not acknowledge Alastair as she was in a trance—or rather wanted the others to believe Dr. Tewes was in a deep trancelike state.

Alastair remained standing beside Gabby, his stare a study in disbelief. At the same instant that Alastair cleared his throat, one of the ladies in the group around the table swooned and said, “That's him! I'd know that snort anywhere. He was a tobacco man, you know. Chewed Red Man.”

Jane as Tewes now said, “The spirits must learn to speak across the chasm between the living and the dead. Grunts, snorts…coughing is a simple matter for them, but words…words are as difficult for them as for any animal.”

“Grandfather spoke in grunts and snorts; he never used words,” said a young fellow at the table. “It's him, all right.”

“Spirits have a unique function,” Dr. Tewes informed his guests. “They provide dispatches from the other side. In fact, I met one once who was a fighting angel in a war for God and his throne. And like demons, once spirits have seen your face, they can always find you. So beware…be careful, vigilant at all times.”

“That's precisely what the old bastard said he'd do,” chimed in the older man at the table. “That he'd haunt me from the grave.”