It all conspired to swell the streets of the city with an out-of-control transient population beyond the municipality’s capacity to cope. Chicago, the Gem of the Prairie, was like a beacon to all comers. Stories of land speculation and endless work and new construction and a better life according to advertisements in national magazines had brought about a deluge until the population numbers outstripped any hope of a newcomer making a living here. Many a family went straight to the few churches and shelters about, and many slept on the floor of City Hall, and many wound up in lockups all across Chicago. Meanwhile, the number of police remained woefully inadequate, and many on the force secretly worked for private companies-moonlighting-despite new laws enacted against this.
“Has Christian promised you any, ahhh…unusual bonus…or special remuneration for working on the Vanishings case with him?” Ransom finally asked the question burning inside.
“No…no more than normal.”
“Ahhh…I see.”
“See what?”
“I just mean that…ahhh…” Ransom did not want to tell her about Christian’s meeting with Kohler and Chapman, and if Fenger hadn’t offered to cut her in on the scheme, he certainly did not wish to spill it to her this way. “It’s going to take some time, perhaps a lot of time, away from your-from Tewes’s-practice, so a bit additional seems not out of line, you see.”
“Perhaps I’ll push him on it…next time.”
They arrived at Jane’s door, the sign still proclaiming it to be the clinic and residence of Dr. James Phineas Tewes. She climbed down, and he walked her to the door where, with a glance back at the bored cabbie who was digging out a pipe and feeding an apple to his horse, Alastair kissed her, mustache or no and said, “There…good afternoon and a pleasant good night, then, Doctor.”
“You really know how to charm a girl,” said Jane.
“Get some rest, and we’ll put our heads together on this case tomorrow.”
“Pray there’s not another abducted child by then.”
“Trust me, in some back rooms, Chicago oddsmakers are banking on it. And we both know the Vanishings won’t stop until we put the mad dog down.”
Another good-bye kiss, and Alastair returned to the cabbie, who’d given up on his pipe and had opted for chewing tobacco instead, remaining so intent on his tin that he remained completely oblivious to two kissing men on Tewes’s porch, unlike Gabby at the window.
“Horrible thing, Inspector,” said the cabbie when Alastair began to reboard.
Alastair did a double take, thinking that the man had witnessed him kissing Dr. Tewes after all, and Ransom’s face flushed as red as a Santa Claus advertisement. “Horrible?” he repeated the single word.
“This Vanishing business,” replied the cabbie, scratching his pockmarked face.
“Yes…yes it is horrendous indeed. Look here, you see a lot going about, hear a lot.”
“I do…and am sure this is worse even than the Phantom, I say. I mean this madman’s victims are mere lil’ knickers.”
Ransom pulled forth a five-dollar bill and held it up to the man.
“What’s this?”
“Beyond your charge, Joseph is it?”
“Yes, ’tis my name, but what’s the large tip for?”
“It’s no tip.”
“Then what be it?”
“You’ll have more if you bring me any information you hear on the street regarding these murders.”
“Ahhh…I see, and sure it’s a deal. Where are you off to now?”
“Moose Muldoon’s, just down the-”
“Aye, I know Muldoon’s, Inspector.”
“You’ve learned my habits. Watch the habits of others for me.” Ransom climbed in for the short ride to Muldoon’s, where he intended to drink until midnight to blot out the sight of Alice Cadin’s body so that he might find sleep somewhere in the labyrinth of a horrible struggle going on inside his mind.
CHAPTER 9
Ransom had not been inside Moose Muldoon’s since the night he had cracked its proprietor-Muldoon-in the head with his wolf’s-head cane. Through the grapevine that snaked about Chicago’s streets, Alastair had gotten word that Muldoon had forgiven him and all was square between them now that Alastair was a hero again, now that the Phantom had as mysteriously disappeared as he’d come on the scene. In fact, it was rumored that Muldoon had created an Inspector Ransom drink and had cordoned off a table now designated as the Inspector’s, at which no other man could sit unless invited by Alastair himself.
It was too much to ignore.
Ransom felt moved to learn how much was true and how much embellishment. Among the riffraff that hung about Muldoon’s, Ransom had spotted all levels of criminal and down-and-out, and he was grudgingly acknowledged as their best adversary. Where they called Muldoon the Moose, Ransom was the Bear to such fellows, and to this day they talked of the confrontation between Moose and Bear, their last exchange going to Ransom. Alastair knew the clientele wanted to see a return engagement, and he would not put it past the cursed bunch to have put out these lies just to entice him back into Muldoon’s lair.
All the same, he was drawn to it-moth to flame. The place was, after all, a hotbed of information about what was afoot in the city. He rationalized a visit on these grounds alone. Besides, it was another diversion from taking a straight course into #13 Des Plaines to face off with Kohler.
As the cab stopped before Muldoon’s tavern, the sign swaying in a breeze coming in off the lake, he admitted, “I’d rather face Moose than Nathan right now.”
The idea of dispatching the Phantom to Lake Michigan without compunction was one fine notion and well accomplished, but this matter with the senator’s bargain that Fenger and Kohler had gone into and wanted him to administer, this was an entirely different matter. In the case of the Phantom, no money had changed hands; no one paid him to kill Waldo Denton. It was just a thing needing to be done, no less true than Jack Houston must kill that horse before skinning and dismembering the carcass, as a matter of survival for himself and his family. Chicago was Ransom’s only family, his job, all he knew. The Phantom had repeatedly harmed his family, and he’d threatened Ransom’s life. The same could be said of the monster or monsters behind the Vanishings, except for the idea of special payment. Had it come in the legitimate way of a bonus, a raise, he would not balk, but this secret, closed-door deal smacked of its own kind of evil and left a stench no less than the yards in his craw. Perhaps if the senator had come to him alone, and they had really secretly worked out a deal, then perhaps he’d be more inclined to take it. However, a conspiracy of this size, involving three other men, all of whom were far more prominent and less expendable than he, simply was not the way Alastair cared to operate.
He could not definitively say why, but a good deal had to do with climbing into bed with the man he most hated in the city-Chief Nathan Kohler. A man who had worked tirelessly to get dirt on Ransom in an effort to discredit him, to see him off the force, and now a man bowing and scraping to a senator. Even in the way Nathan’d handed the senator’s hat to him, dusting it off first, spoke volumes. Money motivated people in strange ways. Take the respectable Dr. Christian Fenger, he thought now. How he could climb into such a morass with Kohler was beyond Ransom’s comprehension. Fenger was the most ethical and moralistic man Alastair had ever known…and now this. It felt like a betrayal, a blow to the chest, despite Christian’s excuses of debt and desperation.
Music spilled out onto the street from inside Muldoon’s when Alastair opened the door, a minstrel fellow strumming a banjo and singing about an Ohio steamboat called the Glenn E. Burke running down to New Orleans-“When the Glendie Burke comes down again…bound to leave this town now…take my duds and throw ’em on my back…when the Glendie Burke come down again. Banjo and harp made the bluesy lyrics as lively as a cockfight, and Ransom caught his toe tapping to the melody.