“I never see you about. Is it workworkwork with you as well? When do you smile . . . I mean have fun . . . have a laugh, an afternoon in the park?”
“Me? Smile? I can smile even when screaming inside!”
“Then perhaps you ought to have been in the theater?”
“I meant only that I can sing when I wanna cry, and cry when happy.”
“Anything else I should know about you, Miss Jane?”
How much did he know? Had Dr. Fenger given her up?
What else but cloddish, male curiosity prompted these questions?
“If I may ask,” he added.
“I fight for my every belief . . . stand against injustice when I see it.”
“You sound a resolute woman, Miss Jane.”
They’d arrived at the Ferris wheel, and he purchased a ticket for each of them. Climbing into the enclosed gondola, designed like a train car berth, she replied, “Resolute?
Hmmm. Well, when I see a perfectly good solution going unused, yes, I can be resolute.”
“And I sense in you a caring, giving person just in seeing how you treat Dr. Tewes’s daughter—almost as your own.”
“I’d go without shoes if it’d help Gabby get through medical school. I love her unconditionally, and I cry when that child excels, and I cheer when she succeeds.”
This seemed at odds to him with what Gabby had imparted of her relationship with her aunt. “Then you have no children of your own?”
“I do not, but I’m happiest on hearing of a new birth or a new marriage in the family.”
“But you are not married?”
202
ROBERT W. WALKER
“No . . . I am not, sir.”
The gondola swept upward with them in it, creating an exhilarating, whirring breeze all about. It was a feeling of flight that neither had ever experienced.
“And what else can I learn of you tonight?”
She looked deeply into his eyes. “Well, I’m just a normal woman. My heart breaks when a family member or friend dies, yet I feel strong in the face of death—as I know certainly that death is no end.”
“Must be comforting, your certainty.” Ransom thought of Merielle’s awful end, still like a festering wound in his chest.
“I know of a certainty that a hug and a kiss can heal a wound,” she countered, “or a broken heart.”
“Is that so?” She reads minds, too, he thought.
“And I believe the heart of a woman can change this world, and is in fact what makes this world work.”
“Bully then for you, madam.”
“I know a woman can do more than give birth.”
“And what more is that, if I may play devil’s advocate—the vote?”
The wheel had brought them full circle and was up and away again. Her hair lifted in the wind.
“It is long, long overdue for women to have the right to vote in this country, sir, and the suffrage movement will one day triumph. Imagine it, men systematically withholding the rights of women because of their misunderstanding us, assuming tears a weakness of the heart, assuming emotion a faintness of character, making it a crime to have feelings, and to label emotion as somehow damaging.” “Please, I didn’t mean to start us on the wrong foot. I’m on your side.”
“Really? A rare fellow indeed.”
“I think it a just and fair cause.”
She nodded, a smile softening her features. “All true. Did you feel the same way about the labor movement when you had to stand against the protestors and agitators and anarchists?”
CITY FOR RANSOM
203
“Haymarket got completely out of control. A lot of unanswered questions still.”
“The explosion, you mean?”
“That and what led up to it. What happened at command, the orders we got, the bad timing of it all. We marched down there to our fate as if . . . as if it had been—”
“Scripted?”
“Exactly.”
“But isn’t all history from hindsight going to appear to us as having been fated or as you say, scripted? Do you really think anyone meant to set you up, I mean anyone within the ranks of the department—your own leadership?” “How do you know my thinking on this? Who’ve you gotten all this from? Dr. Tewes?”
“I keep my ear to the ground. Met your snitch the other day on Dr. Tewes’s back stair, sneaking around like a rat. I see why they call him Dot’n’Carry. That rattle he makes with his crooked little cane—” “He lost good use of the leg and an entire foot in the war.
Inside the man’s head there is more of Chicago than anyone I know. He is fascinating to listen to if someone takes the time.”
“Or puts him on the payroll? Perhaps you’re a softy, Mr.
Ahhh Inspector Ransom.”
“Please, call me Alastair.”
There was a silence between them, the sound of barkers and the fair music rising up to where they rocked in the gondola. She then broke into his thoughts. “Black men have had the vote since just after the Civil War. Women are only asking for the same rights as any man, and in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the term men in ‘all men are created equal’ is genderless and refers to all mankind!” “You’ll get no argument from me.”
“Well what fun is that?”
“You’re really quite the woman.”
“Really now?”
“Perhaps just the woman to bring the vote to Chicago.”
“As I said, I can do a lot more than be a . . . a . . . an incu
204
ROBERT W. WALKER
bator for some man’s seed. I have it within me to bring joy and hope and compassion and ideals into the world. Every man and woman does.”
He straightened at her words, quietly weighing each.
She continued, nonstop. “I can bring moral support to family, friends, and colleagues.”
“Then you have a lot to say and do in this life.”
“And too little time to do it in.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve a lot to . . . to give a man . . .
any man.”
“Nooo, no, no sir, not just any man will do for me, Inspector. Most men fail to appreciate a woman of intellect, opinions, and—”
“Again no argument from me.”
“You can be such a good listener, Alastair, when you sit long enough. This inventor, Mr. Ferris, perhaps the true purpose of his wheel is to make people stop and sit and talk.”
“To speak of things that otherwise would not get said?”
“Perhaps . . . to get things said and done.”
“Things like . . . like well . . . this!” Alastair surprised her with a kiss, and she surprised him by returning it, as hers was a long, hard, soft, changing kiss that meant to steal his breath away, and it did—just as the ride came to an end.
They disembarked the wheel, she laughing and stepping off ahead of him, leaving the big detective feeling awkward and unsure and a little self-conscious and guilty. All the things he’d wanted for Merielle . . . all the promises to ply her with attention. All of it he was doing now, so soon after Merielle’s death, with another woman—a woman he hardly knew. It’s police business is all, he kept telling himself.
He had as yet to make arrangements for Merielle’s burial, but he instinctively knew that Fenger was taking good care.
He worked to banish thoughts of Merielle for the time being, following after Jane instead.
She abruptly turned on him and breathlessly asked, “Can we go up again? It’s the most amazing feeling . . . like flying. So liberating.”
CITY FOR RANSOM
205
Ransom only partially frowned as he patted himself down for the change to purchase additional tickets.