“Those men gave their lives,” said Ransom. “And now they’re stickin’ it to old Birmingham.”
“Birmingham, sir?” O’Malley had asked.
“Oh, Jesus, don’t get ’em started on Birmingham!” Philo shouted.
Ransom gathered O’Malley and other young coppers to him. “I was aged thirty-two in eighty-six. Birmingham, he’d been a veteran forever.”
Philo, ever the artist, added, “Birmingham posed for the statue commemorating those killed at Haymarket.”
“A good man working toward a pension till they got something on him,” continued Ransom. “Some nonsense
’bout dereliction of duty. You know what he does today?”
“No sir, what?”
“He guides folks from the White City fair yonder to Haymarket Square; shows ’em sites of the running battle and riot. Gives ’em a firsthand account.”
“Makes most of it up as he goes in that sotted mind of his and—”
“Philo!”
Philo raised a glass. Laughter erupted, but Ransom didn’t join in. “And study the man well, Ransom,” Philo kiddingly warned, again toasting, “because you’ll be guiding the tour one day if you keep at things so stubborn!” Ransom ignored these remarks. Too much truth therein.
Instead, he’d continued talking to Mike and Griff and the younger men. “Old Willard Birmingham’s come a long journey from Liverpool to Chicago. A bloody good man, but he’s sure on his way to pennilessness in his old age. We’re getting up a fund for him, boys, so pony up—come along, every one of yous.” Griffin Drimmer gave up a silver dollar to begin the pool CITY FOR RANSOM
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and curry favor. As Griff then worked the crowd for Willard’s pitiful pension, he asked Ransom, “How well did you know the men killed at Haymarket, Inspector?”
“We were all of us two-year men. Of the seven killed, only Thomas Redden was more than two year on. None of the killed held supervisory positions, that’s sure. Degan had hold of me, helped me from the blast when he collapsed and died, poor bugger—a severed artery killed ’im. A good patrolman of the Lake Street district, he was, a fixture . . . and the first to go.” Philo, as old as Ransom, piped in. “Got some great shots, but all were confiscated during the drawn out inquest. Never got them back.”
“Part of the cover-up, I warrant,” said Ransom, beginning to slur his words.
“Cover-up indeed?” asked Griff.
“I tell you, boys! Maybe those pictures show something they don’t want no one to see. After the bomb hit . . . over the next twelve days in hospital I was. Cook County, where George Miller succumbed to his wounds, then John Barrett with his family looking on, and next Timothy Flavian, Nels Hansen, and Nicholas Sheehan. Degan and another of our men died on the street.” “Must’ve been hell losing so many comrades,” said O’Malley, Griffin agreeing to a chorus of other cops.
“And a helluva big Irish wake,” added Philo.
“Boys, I don’t want to talk about it, not without sufficient drink.” And then they all became sufficiently drunk.
Now a sober Inspector Alastair Ransom, leaning on his cane, contemplated a baffling murder spree. Three dead. All since the opening of the fair on May first. The fingers found lying about the men’s room in a pool of blood, two in the porcelain basin, Philo had photographed. Griff held them up in a glass vial to Ransom’s eyes.
“You know, Griff . . . O’Malley,” he quietly said. “I once knew a fellow who’d auction off items like these.”
32
ROBERT W. WALKER
“What kind of a ghoul was this guy?” Griff erupted.
“A cop. . . . Unfortunately, all too human. We called him The Reaper.”
“Jesus God.”
Griffin shook his head, hardly believing.
“You know, famous case and all, souvenirs, relics.”
“You’d never do anything like that, sir,” said young O’Malley, his boyish eyes filled with anxious curiosity about the infamous Inspector Ransom, anxious anew to tell his friends on the force what he’d witnessed here—how Ransom had literally handed Tewes a handful of what he’d deserved! And to brag that for a few pints the other night that he could now call himself Alastair Ransom’s drinking comrade— the Alastair Ransom, a man famous for tracking down all manner of muggers, burglars, rapists, maniacs, killers, and anarchists.
“You really ought to keep a safe distance from the likes of me, Mike,” Ransom whispered in his ear. “I go down, they’ll likely go headhunting for what few friends I have.”
“I’ll not be a fair-weather friend, sir.”
“But you will likely be fearful one day at having to explain our connection to your superiors.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“You’re a good cop, Michael Shaun O’Malley, but you ought to be more careful. And why aren’t you using your head instead of that nightstick?”
“Yes, sir. I’m going to put in to take the detective’s exam like you said.”
“Good . . . good for you, O’Malley,” said Griff, slapping his back. “How did this fella you spoke of who took the valuables, sir,” continued Griff, “just how’d he ever get away with it?”
“Promoted.”
“What?”
The department got ’im off the street and behind a desk, and today . . . well, today there he stands.” Ransom’s segue CITY FOR RANSOM
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pointed to the chief of police, who rushed for the stationmaster’s office.
“No! Kohler himself, is it?”
“That’s me story, and I’d not lie about a thing like that.”
“You two go way back then,” said O’Malley.
“For a time, he was my training officer. Till I could stomach him no more.”
“How could the department let a thing like that go on and then promote someone so lacking in morals?” asked Griff.
Ransom smiled at his young partner. “You’ve still a lot to learn about the department, Griff.”
“Did things differently in those days, hey?”
“It still goes on, Griff. For Kohler at a higher level. Things don’t reform in Chicago so much as they permutate.”
“They didn’t have evidence manifests in those early days?” asked O’Malley.
“Oh, sure, but they could be doctored, you see, palms greased. Didn’t have photography on every case either, not like they do now. The eyes of the brass are upon you, son.”
“If it’s in Keane’s photos,” added Griff, “it’d better be in a lab or in lockup.”
Alastair laughed. “But if it ain’t in the frame . . . well, then it don’t exist, boys.”
“The fingers . . .” began O’Malley. “None can be mislaid or lost or else, sure, but tell me, what good are they?”
“If our boy here,” he punctuated with his cane, “if he dug his nails in during the struggle, even got hold of the killer‘s wrist or pinky finger and laid a bite on him . . . well, I’ve solved cases by matching a scratch line to the size of a victim’s nails or his dental impression. Fenger claims there’re no two alike.” Griffin objected. “That’s not very scientific. Sounds impossible to prove.”
“Not if the killer thinks it can be proved. Call it voodoo detection.”
“Voodoo?”
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ROBERT W. WALKER
“Hell, I tell ’em we’re in the new scientific age . . . I show
’em a vial of animal blood and a vial of human blood . . . I declare which is which by running ’em through a series of tubes and whamo! The guilty fellow confesses, because he is found out.” “But there’s no such science separates animal from human blood, sir.”
“No . . . not anywhere but in my head, but when I shove the evidence down their throats, they confess, I tell you.”