“Of course, the killings are related.”
Ransom saw Dr. Tewes disappear into the stationmaster’s office, grateful to witness this obvious retreat until realizing that Tewes had gone in search of a telephone. Phones had been installed in many public places. No doubt the good CITY FOR RANSOM
17
doctor of phrenology meant to complain to Nathan Kohler about Ransom’s rank insubordination, and this counterfeit doctor’s inability to get past the inspector of record.
“Brace yourself, Griff, for a visit from the chief.”
“Count on it, I should think. The uniforms are taking odds, and Rance—did I mention that the note is more than a suggestion, but a direct order?”
“No, you didn’t, and let’s keep it that way, shall we, Griff?”
Later Ransom found the wide corner concourse windows overlooking a black sky lit by thousands of lights creating a brilliance across The White City—the term everyone used for the temporary wood-and-stucco wonderland of Grecian and Roman edifices and architectural wonders of the as-toundingly huge Chicago world’s fair. This was the newly erected city within Ransom’s city—Burnham’s city, created almost single-handedly by the famous Chicago architect Daniel Hudson Burnham.
From the Illinois Central windows, Ransom saw a great deal more of the dark alleyways and shanties and the cut-throat Levee district than the extravagant fair. The two cities stood at odds—Burnham’s idyllic dreamland lit like a many-tiered chandelier seemed to float over the lake. Chicago was a city of beauty and deeply cut cynical currents, its bedrock.
Not even White City could hide the political expedience that formed her core darkness. Like a blinding chandelier, Ransom thought.
White City looked the dream, yes. Truth be told, however, it proved so much gilded illusion: a mirror of man’s highest achievements, yes, that—so well presented—lulled one into Burnham’s faith. One might for a brief moment, while walking the gas-lit stone paths garnished with flowers on either side and the lovely Lake Michigan as promenade, begin to believe in his fellow man, to believe naught a one of them capable of evil or murdering one another. That a man could 18
ROBERT W. WALKER
never again do a harsh act against his fellows. Not even in the wee hours of the night when so much crime took place in the shadows as God slept.
“Not bloody likely in this or the next century, I warrant,”
he muttered to himself. “Lights or no lights, Mr. Edison.”
In the distance stood the spinning lights of Mr. Ferris’s giant wheel that dared take people soaring to a height of 176
feet—gaiety and light and a kind of euphoric madness all framed in a Romanesque window from which Ransom gawked and shook his head and chewed on a tooth-scarred pipe. If he tried hard, he could hear the unclear but separate German, Polish, Ukrainian, and Irish music welling up from the countless beer gardens. Something of a Babel indeed, he thought. In fact, the sound of lakefront revelers penetrated the vaulted waiting room ceiling here, bounced off and re-verberated. By contrast, immediately behind Ransom, Keane’s little photographic explosions created a too familiar, melancholic drama of its own: click-whoosh, click-whoosh, click-whoosh.
Ransom turned from the window to face Dr. Tewes, a smug look creasing the features below the little dapper’s curled mustache. He stood rocking on his heels, flapping Kohler’s letter. “I am a determined man, Inspector.” “Good for you, Dr. Tewes, but I have the dignity of the de-ceased to consider. Your questionable magic is unheard of.
What do you think reporters’ll make of it—your absurd play?” Ransom pushed past the smaller man.
CHAPTER 3
His work required Ransom’s mind, but the old shrapnel wound to his leg, and ailments that’d plagued since the anarchist’s bomb—the cause of his most grueling physical and mental pain—threatened always to break him. Today, seeing this horror perpetrated on a third victim threatened to break his resolve to remain aloof and in charge. More than once, his thoughts wandered to his opium pipe and his bed. It represented what little solace he knew—opium—any way he could get it. But here he stood in Illinois Central, all eyes on him with the damnable Dr. Tewes and his equally damnable “order” from Kohler. The best he might do here would be his rolled cigarette laced with hemp.
Ransom felt a headache coming on now. He’d begun to perspire despite the coolness of the station. “Look, Dr. Tewes, we’ve danced long enough here with the devil. Time to salvage what little dignity the boy has left, get him to our morgue, and you can examine him there to your heart’s content. Deal?” “You don’t begin to understand, do you, Inspector?” Now Tewes sneered his title. “You’ve already wasted precious time.”
“We need to return the train station to normal, fill out the paperwork, try to determine who the victim is, and get on the trail of his killer before the bastard strikes again, Tewes.” “Precisely why I’m here!”
20
ROBERT W. WALKER
Ransom turned from Tewes, but this time the smaller man caught his arm and confronted Alastair. “Just hold on there, man!”
“What in bloody hell do you hope to accomplish here, Tewes?”
“I have an order allowing me to examine the cranial structure.” Tewes again held the letter up to Ransom’s eyes, the signature unmistakable. “Look, Inspector, I’m not interested in taking over your case or your territory, or whatever it is you fear losing. Shit, all I want—” “Fear? I don’t fear anything from you, Tewes, believe me.”
“If I can have a moment—just a moment—with the dead before all is lost—”
“Speak to the dead, is it? Through your gifted fingers, Doctor?” Alastair did not take the letter from Tewes but stared into the deep brown eyes of a man he’d been quietly investigating, a man he considered a consummate con artist.
Philo Keane stepped in when he saw Alastair reach both hands to his head, staving off a stabbing pain. “All right . . .
Doctor, is it?” began Keane. “Time now for you to leave the area to us professionals. You find the morgue as Inspector Ransom says. Tug-o-war it out with Dr. Fenger.”
Ransom put up a hand to Philo. “Allow me to introduce you, photographic wizard Mr. Philo Keane, Dr. James Phineas Tewes—”
“Dr. James Phineas Murdoch Tewes to be exact,” corrected Tewes.
“A man who likely needs all his names to cover his tracks,” added Ransom.
“Aliases?” asked Philo, taking Alastair’s lead.
Tewes looked strange, a pale, thin, dismal face, hardly ever given to smile. He made slow movements, and his voice—always deep—somehow never rose above a whispering growl.
Ransom put a hand on Philo’s shoulder, and spoke to him.
“Dr. Tewes is well known in Chicago, mostly from fliers posted on every street lamp and shop window.”
CITY FOR RANSOM
21
“Posters? Really?” asked Philo, squinting.
“The fliers propose that Tewes here can cure madness and depression. A new form of littering so far as I’m concerned.”
Ransom mentally flashed on the last such advertisement that he’d seen only that morning, tacked to a telegraph pole outside his police district house on Des Plaines.
Tewes gladly unfolded a bill now from his breast pocket and handed it to Mr. Keane. It read:
Phrenological & Magnetic Examiner
at his residence, 2nd house north
of the Episcopal Church.
DR. TEWES
May be consulted in all cases of Nervous or Mental difficulty. Application of the remedies will enable relief or cure any case of Monoma-nia, Insanity or Recent Madness wherein there is no Inflammation or destruction of the Mental Organs. Dr. Tewes’s attention to diseases of the nervous system, such as St. Vitus’s Dance and Spinal Afflictions has resulted in some remarkable cures. Having been engaged for the past ten years in teaching Mental Philosophy, Phrenology, together with numerous Phreno Magnetic Experiments enable Dr. Tewes to give correct and true delineations of Mental Dispositions of different persons. A visit to Dr.