Shadows in the White City (22 page)

“Something for
you
?” Ransome laughed now, thinking it weird someone calling him “young man.” “Damn it, Bosch, where've you been? Do you know another child's been killed?”

“Ohhh…it's a horror, what's happening on the streets, isn't it? I mean children! I know, but it's a stone-cold mystery,
and nobody seems to know nothing whatsoever, but there is something in the wind.” Bosch looked about to be certain no one was near enough to overhear this. “Still, I can't vouch for its validity, you see, only that it's blowin' 'bout.”

Then Bosch heard the race begin, and he looked out longingly toward the gate, salivating. Ransom pushed him out of the booth area for the racetrack, following the old man as he ambled toward the free spectator's area, his cane and wooden leg silent on the turf.

They soon found a section of fence and Bosch's horse came thundering by in a neck-to-neck with another animal. Bosch leapt onto the fence, disregarding his handicap, slapping the inside of the fence with his cane, shouting, “Come on! Damn you, nag! Come on!” A note of desperation created an edge to his screaming at the dumb animal he'd bet on. Only Ransom was close enough to hear his excitement over the noise of the crowd. He'd never seen Bosch truly happy at any time in their “association” until now, watching him cry out to “his” horse, and for the first time in his life, Ransom realized that for the duration of the race, a guy like Bosch “owned” a piece of that racehorse.

“Do ya think the horse hears your prayers, Bosch?” Alastair asked.

Bosch's horse won.

“Damn straight he heard that one!” shouted Bosch, jubilant, dropping from the fence and doing a jig to the delight of people all round them, drawing too much attention so far as Alastair was concerned.

“All right, Bosch, so
tell
me now, what's in the wind?”

“I've got me winnings to pick up at the window, and that was a long shot. Twenty to one, Inspector. Twenty to one!”

“Damn it Bosch, next week you will be looking for cash again, so tell me now what it is you've heard on the bloody wind!”

“I am hearing the killer…well…he ain't no he. He's a she, and that it's Bloody Mary gone so far off her rocker as to do this thing.”

“Bloody Mary, heh? You're a day late and a dollar short as usual,” he replied, slapping two singles into Bosch's hands. “Get me something credible, will you? I know Bloody Mary. She's quite incapable of being Leather Apron.”

“The old battle-ax is daft!” Bosch's frown shrank his entire face. “Makes her capable of anything.”

“Half the population is daft, including you! Should I arrest you for being daft?”

Bosch's scrunched face now looked sour. “I didn't say it was Bloody Mary what done it.”

“That's what you inferred for money, Bosch.”

“You asked for what's being touted 'bout the street. I only told you what is going round, what people're whispering.”

“All right, but it's no use, man.”

“Didn't promise no great revelations, now did I?” He pouted.

“Nor have you given any. Look, Bosch, I heard it was Mary from the homeless kids on the street days ago, and I put no more stock in it now as then.”

“And I hear you're paying homeless kids and cabbies to do my job! And I'm here to tell you that's a waste of money. You won't get no straight answer from a snot-nosed shelter kid or a lorry driver.”

“Go claim your winnings, Bosch,” Alastair replied, taking in a deep breath of air. “I'm done with you.”

“Done with me?” Bosch stood his ground, stunned, silent, a look of disbelief coming over his features like a cloud moving in from over the lake.

“For the moment, man! Done for now, so please, just go—outta my sight!”

Bosch smiled at this. “
Ahhh
…then our association is still intact?” Bosch grabbed his hand and pumped it.

“Get the hell off.”

“I'll keep working on it, Inspector. I'll get you something other than the nonsense about Mary.”

“Do that! And in the meantime, work a little harder to keep us both from being killed. You think you can manage
that?” he shouted as Bosch disappeared into the crowd, going for the payout window.

The music had resumed somewhere overhead.
“Dance boatman dance…”

Alastair made his way back into the city streets, his carriage ride solemn. He ordered the driver to take him down to the Levy district. It was time to confront Bloody Mary and possibly arrest her before the mob took it into its collective mind to hang her as Leather Apron. In fact, the madwoman might decide to tout this newly acquired reputation—Ransom would not put it past the crone to revel in the notoriety—to even go about in a leather apron. If so, she'd be ripped apart before the mob hung her by the heels and set her aflame.

Alastair knew her as a dirty, lice-infested lunatic, addled and belonging in Cook County Asylum, but she'd proven even too much for officials there, who did not want her back, as she caused serious problems and upset other inmates due to her raw language and actions. She'd once created a riot there during which the inmates demanded better care and better food and better materials such as paper and wax crayons.

Alone now in the back of the carriage, Alastair felt a great weight on his shoulders and chest as if some nightmare gargoyle or incubus had perched atop him, and he felt a great sadness for young Danielle and her orphaned little band. He tightened his grip on his wolf's-head cane, and he said a silent prayer for help. A growing sense of urgency to locate the monster or monsters behind the Vanishings welled up and filled him with bile and hatred for Leather Apron and any others who conspired with him or her. Her…

The notion it could be a woman recalled the caution of the London detective, Heise, who'd chased a similar killer for a decade to no avail. Alastair must consider the possibility, remote as it was, that Leather Apron could as well be Bloody Mary and that a woman could, as well as any man, butcher and consume the flesh of children.

Instead of finding Bloody Mary in the Levy section
, he found Samuel, the boy he'd paid for any information floating about regarding the vanishings. “I got some news for you, Inspector,” the boy informed him. “But you're not going to believe it unless Sara tells it.”

“Sara?”

“She's a friend of mine.”

“Who is Sara, Sam?”

“She's got a place in the park.”

“She's a homeless?”

“Yes.”

They found the little black girl named Sara Victoria Meghan Walters in a five foot clearing amid thick brush in Lake Park. Sam guided Alastair to sit on the grass here, and he introduced the Chicago Police inspector. Sara, unlike Robin or Danielle, had no qualms about talking to an adult and a police inspector. She sounded like a grown-up, but Alastair guessed her age at perhaps fifteen, possibly sixteen. She had eyes that looked through people. She said, “I hate what is happening…children going missing and found cut apart.”

“Do you know something about these happenings? Can you help us put an end to it?” Alastair asked.

“First, let me tell you that Satan wears ratty human clothes that he finds in the trash, so he can go among us unseen or unnoticed.”

“I see.” Alastair felt an instant disappointment. He hadn't expected this to be about demons and angels, but rather about human forces. He had heard enough about celestial wars and God and Evil in battle. He so wanted to put a human face to the monster behind Leather Apron.

“He uses his supernatural powers to make any human shirt, coat, or pants fit him. His clothes always fit him, or one of his little demons.”

“Little demons?”

“Satan likes to make babies.”

“
Ahhh
…yes, yes, so I've heard.”

“And the clothes for the little ones, it all helps the demons just fit right in. Who's going to know?”

“Smokes cigars, drinks brandy, he does,” said Sam.

“None of you people in authority with all your money and power, none of you know how close he is, and how he wants to end the world come nineteen hundred.”

“Really? Can you tell me where I can find him?”

She laughed. “Can I? He's dug a tunnel, and he's found a big hole right here in Chicago.”

She sounded on the one hand like a lunatic, but something about her conviction and those eyes kept Ransom wondering. Was there some sort of twisted truth to what she had to say? “Where,” he asked. “Where is this place?”

“Under your feet most of the day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Under the street…in the sewers.”

“They like the sewers,” added Sam.

“Lives there with his wife and children,” said Sara. “The bad spirits come walking into our world right out of the tunnels below us.”

“How do you recognize them?”

“You don't! That's the problem. But they recognize you!”

“They're living off human flesh. They're using knives
forged in Hell and cutting off the flesh and cooking it with their fire-breathing, and then they eat it—eating little kids.”

“
Ahhh
…but they cook it first.” Ransom didn't mask his sarcasm.

What Sara was saying harkened back to what Jane had said about Jonathan Swift's sarcastic essay on how to rid London of the homeless. Could it be that someone had set out to do just that in real life and not simply in a book? Here and now in Chicago?

“How does Bloody Mary figure in all this?” Alastair asked, wanting to bring odd Mary into the discussion before Sara did.

“She shows the demons where we sleep, where to best grab children.”

“She's procuring for the demons?”

“They're like a family or a gang,” Sara clarified. “They only protect one another and feed one another. They hate everyone else, especially people who still pray to God and the angels for help.”

“There's no helping it,” Alastair said aloud. “I've got to locate Bloody Mary and take her in for questioning.”

“She'll give you a fight,” said Sara.

“A big fight,” agreed Sam.

“Come on, Sam, I'm a lot bigger than Bloody Mary.”

“Yeah…you're the Bear.”

“The Bear?”

“That's what all the kids're calling you.”

“Do they think me a demon?”

“Some do…but most don't. Most think you're a good Bear.”

“So you think I can take down Bloody Mary?”

“I'd like to see it.”

“Then help me find her. I suspect she's somewhere close.”

“She naps in the sewer,” said Sara. “She could be there.”

“Do you know exactly where she goes? Can you show me?”

Sara visibly shook at the suggestion. “I do but I won't go there.”

“Draw me a map, then.”

“She'll know it was me.”

“I'll take you,” said Sam. “I ain't afraid of no one, not so long as I'm with you, sir.”

Alastair smiled at the boy, recalling the picture Philo had taken of him. “All right. Perhaps tomorrow, during the day, huh? You can lead the way then.”

Alastair looked from Sara to Sam and then out into the night-blackened lake nearby. He spied a handful of people moving about the lanes here in the park where everything was slowly being engulfed in fog. Trees in the distance began disappearing as had anyone on a stroll along the lakefront. Soon the fog had even blotted out the gigantean lake only thirty or forty yards away.

Alastair realized the full weight of his situation. Leather Apron and any followers of the madman or his cult might be as large as this now invisible lake, and he would not see it; he would miss it. He'd taken this overwhelming weight onto his shoulders alone, and he wanted some semblance of normalcy back, returned to his city. And he wanted to help them all—the Sams and Saras, the Audras and the Robins, and whole families like the one he'd just glimpsed out there in the gloom. But he could hardly do it alone. It would take a huge influx of money and effort put to a cause no one in this city wanted to even acknowledge much less set up a trust fund for unless…. Unless some profit could be had. Unless some scam motivated it—as had happened in 1871 with all those bogus charitable organizations collecting for the displaced victims of the Great Chicago Fire. It seemed only hoax and crookery worked here. Perhaps Jane Francis understood this even more than Alastair with her boundless optimism for change, and her James Phineas Tewes routine.

Sara had gone silent as had Sam, and each had been watching the fog-bound family out on the edge of the lake.

Sara, protective of her little hideaway, now asked that they leave by another direction. She had no more to impart.

Alastair saw Samuel slip a few coins to Sara.
The boy learns fast,
he thought.

Samuel then led Alastair out along the north side of the thicket. In the distance, they could see the masts and lights of private boats owned by Chicago's elite in Belmont Harbor. Alastair handed Samuel a five-dollar bill, and Sam stared at it as if he'd handed him the key to the city.

“What's it for? I've not found Leather Apron for you.”

“You've done your best, and you'll continue doing your best.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Are you familiar with Henry Bosch, Sam?”

“Bosch? No. Can't say as I am, sir.”

“Goes by Dot 'n' Carry.”

“
Ahhh
…yes, everyone knows 'im.”

“He's,
ahhh
…well…”

“Says he's your associate, he does. Is he a copper?”

“Sam, steer clear of Bosch. He sees you as competition. He'll see payment to you as coming outta his pocket, so be wary of him, all right?”

“Will do, sir.”

They had casually walked back toward the lights of the city when Alastair got the distinct impression they were being watched, followed even, perhaps stalked. He remained calm and sent Samuel off, back in the direction of the city. Seeing that Sam was safely away, Ransom spied a distant cabstand, and he made a show of a leisurely stroll toward it, half expecting some fool to attempt to mug a cop. But nothing happened.

At the carriage, he stopped and scanned the park. Little rustling noises larger than those of squirrels or rats came to his ears. It was almost as if Sara had followed them to see where they might end up, stalking amid the brush. Definitely sounds of small feet scurrying about. Then all went silent.
Nothing.

“Something amiss, sir?” asked the coachman, looking out over the park and the lake beyond, as if to see what Alastair could not see.

“No, nothing,” Ransom replied and climbed into the cab, giving the driver his destination—home to Des Plaines. He sat back in the cushions and parted the window sash just as several dirty little animals scurried off northward in the direction Samuel had gone. It was not so much that these homeless looked dirtier and poorer than most that attracted his attention and worried him, but that they moved so low to the ground, like a hunting pack—three in all that he could see, one a female from her more catlike pose. Were they playing at war games? Something in their stealth, something in the way they stopped and started, such wolf packlike crouching and darting of heads, the directing of their eyes, and something he could not put his finger on said these toughs were a nasty bit of a gang bent on robbing Samuel of the money that had changed hands. No doubt, they had seen the transaction.

Alastair's cane shot up and with the knocking, the driver peered down through the message slot and asked after the disturbance. Alastair said, “Never mind Des Plaines for now. Go slowly northward. I am looking for a boy about eight, maybe nine.”

“Oh, indeed, sir, and will there be a tip in it for me?”

“What? G'damn you, man! The boy is
working
for me.”

“Yes, sir…I am sure, sir.”

“Pull your mind from the gutter and search for him!”

“'Tis hard seein' anyone on a night like this, sir.”

“I just left him. He may be in danger!”

The confused cabbie decided he'd best remain silent on the subject. Ransom pushed up the window and scanned for any sign of Samuel, but the boy had disappeared into the night as effectively as had the family of homeless.

It appeared Samuel knew how to make a quick exit and how to take care of himself.
Needlessly worrying,
Ransom told himself.

The following night

The train yards in Chicago lay out in broad mass across a large portion of the South Levy district, some said like the spinal column of the city. Others called the yards at least as great a blight on the South Lakefront area as the stockyards they fed. But it was money hand over fist, as a thousand trains entered or left the city every day.

Getting a late start, Inspector Alastair Ransom, along with his latest investment, young Samuel, started out for the deepest, darkest depths of the Levy district, moving toward the train tracks, where yet another man had only this morning been killed by a passing freighter. Those who kept records on such accidents informed the press that Joseph Adair, a part Indian, on an early drunk, had not seen the train when he'd driven a mule lorry loaded with Hall's Bitterroot Cider kegs across the expanse of track; he'd just let one train pass when he slapped his reins and sent himself and the animal into the path of a train going in the opposite direction. Theory had it that he thought the sound of the second train was the echo of the retreating first. It proved a fatal assessment.

Adair represented the sixty-fourth victim of a train in the Chicagoland area this year, and once again the debate to force train companies or municipalities to foot the bill for crossings and alarms raged. But “civic improvements,” railroad tycoons argued were the purview of civic leaders, not railroad barons. They all gave lip service to safety provisions, agreeing to the dangers inherent in speeding trains flying through, but it remained a loggerhead.
Just not at our expense…a “local” problem requiring a local tax measure that must be dealt with by each community the railroads served.
Meanwhile, the city council considered it an expense that ought to be borne by the railroad companies, which they “allowed” to flourish within their boundaries. Lost in all this were the over six hundred killed in the United States through train mishaps.

Beyond the giant washboard of tracks laid side by side over a hundred yard width, Alastair was joined by Sam. To
gether they passed into a fenced-off area that meant to keep people out of Chicago's intricate underground tunnels, blasted out years before. A train ran below ground on one level, but even farther down were tunnels and retired tracks. Samuel led him down and down.

Alastair began to feel like he'd found Dante's Inferno below the city. The walls here were alive with dampness and reflected light—as torches lined the area. All around them were homeless people huddled in groups, fearful of the well-dressed intruder who obviously did not belong.

“I'd heard rumors the homeless were using the underground, but I had no idea it'd become so widespread.”

“This is nothing,” began Sam. “Since the Vanishings began, a lotta people've had enough and they've left the tunnels and some have left the city. Gone westward.”

This kid's got a future,
Alastair thought,
so long as he doesn't vanish.

Alastair attempted asking questions of the inhabitants here. Most were living in cardboard boxes, a few lucky ones had wooden crates. One man said to Alastair, “This is my place! This is my crate, and I will fight you to the death for it.”

“I don't want your crate, sir.”

“Sir?” He laughed. “No one calls me sir. Did you hear that, Mother?” he asked a sleeping woman behind him. The wife only grunted and turned over.

“I am looking for Bloody Mary; have you seen her?”