“Really now…you will sweeten the pot too much.”
“I take a cut of course on each win.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“Nothing less than ten percent.”
“Like I said, Paddy, I’ll have to give it serious thought.”
“It could help you out after you retire from the force, Alastair. Think hard on it. Think of your future, man.”
“I can see you now shouting it to the ceiling, Muldoon: Last man standing from the Haymarket Riot, infamous Inspector Alastair Ransom, come one, come all to hear the Phantom Slayer regale you with story ’pon story of his exploits!”
“And why not? I also know a publisher who’d pay handsome for your life story if we could, between us, write.”
“Will you be setting me up with a tent over my table here, too?”
“I thought of a banner across the sign outside.”
Ransom glared at Muldoon, gulped down the last of his beer, stood and walked out to the music of “Callie Rose” being played by the banjo man. “You’re turning this place into a regular den of entertainment, Muldoon.”
“I’ll hold the table for you, old man!” Muldoon shouted over the banjo.
Standing in the thin gaslight, seeing clouds rolling in from over the lake, slowly turning the sky into a familiar black ash, Ransom could smell rain imminent. It was soon September, and August in Chicago always proved a bumpy ride where the weather was concerned. He glanced back at Muldoon’s and asked, “Why’re all mine enemies wanting to go into business with me all of a sudden?”
With cane in hand, not expecting an answer, he sauntered down the sidewalk back toward Des Plaines and the station house, at considerable distance, but he felt the need for air and time and exercise of his legs. He often walked the city streets too in order to feel in tune with his surroundings, but lately, at every street corner, he’d come upon another homeless person, male, female, adult, child. Chicago, always filled with scurrying rats, was now a breeding ground it seemed for the homeless. It had been coming on for a long time and nothing whatever had been done about it. The occasional politician shouted over the complacency of the merchants and aldermen and city fathers that something must be done about the problem, but as ever, nothing was done save in the private sector. Jane Addams’s Hull House and a few churches offered space to sleep and a soup kitchen, and they worked diligently to find jobs, but there simply were none unless you belonged to a union gang and the Democratic party.
At the moment, Alastair’s attention was taken off the homeless, drifting back to the singular idea of going into questionable partnership with Muldoon, making himself a kind of local attraction at the man’s tavern. The proposal coming from Muldoon, however absurd, he respected more than that offered up by Senator Chapman, Chief Kohler, and Dr. Fenger. At least with Muldoon there were no surprises; in fact, the man was, as always-transparent. He had but one bone to gnaw on, one purpose in life, to make more money each week than he did the week before. Such motive was easy to gauge, but when a man like Kohler used the same argument, that he was purely interested in the money, Alastair knew better. Somewhere in back of that fevered brain of Nathan Kohler’s, he had a plan, a plan to destroy Alastair even as he benefited from the outlawry he proposed. And make no mistake about it, Kohler, Fenger, Chapman, and Ransom would be engaging in illegal activity should they go through with this dark conspiracy to see Leather Apron turned over to the senator for his personal vengeance. It would be no less an act of outlawry as had been Alastair’s conspiring with Harry Stratemeyer and his two men to abduct and kill that weasel that had gone about the World’s Fair murdering innocent people in the vain hope of ultimately destroying Alastair Ransom.
No doubt remained in Alastair’s mind now; Kohler, in some Machiavellian manner, meant to enter into this agreement only to nab Alastair at the precise moment of ultimate vulnerability-and most likely to bring down Dr. Fenger in the bargain as well-in order to install new people around him in both the department and at County Morgue. Why Christian could not see this was beyond Alastair, but the doctor must be made to see. It dawned on Ransom that he must thank Muldoon some time for helping him clarify his feelings and instincts on this matter, but of course neither Muldoon-nor anyone-could know about the Chapman proposal or Christian Fenger’s part in it. Alastair wondered how he could counter whatever plot Kohler had in mind with his own and still keep Christian’s name out of it.
Life and chaos in Chicago had not changed noticeably since his return.
“Remember Haymarket, Nathan?” Ransom dropped into the seat the other side of Kohler’s desk. “If I am to agree to this deal you’ve struck with Chapman and Fenger, I want full access to all files on the riot at Haymarket turned over for my examination. Full disclosure.”
“That’s impossible, Alastair, and you know it.”
“Then we have no deal.” He stood to go, nothing to lose. At the door, he felt Kohler breathing down his neck and holding the door pinned against him.
“Wait.”
“We have nothing further to discuss. I have thought this over thoroughly, and it is all that will calm my mind about either situation.”
“Look…you are talking about sealed documents, locked away in places I have no access to. What in bloody hell do you expect to learn from digging up the dead past?”
“I won’t know that until I see it, now will I?”
“Are you sure, Ransom, there is nothing else I…we can offer you?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Bastard.”
Ransom pulled the door open, readying to leave. “Give it some thought; sleep on it as I did. Perhaps tomorrow, you may see it differently. Have a talk with your newfound friend, the senator. Hell, Prosecutor Kehoe. He is in a position to get his hands on those files.”
“Hiram would lose his job as a result, along with all of us.”
“Does the corruption go that high up?”
“Damn it, man, leave it in the grave!”
“My scars are not yet in the grave.”
“They can be, Alastair,” Kohler said with a curled smile. “There’s an old proverb goes something like ‘the scars of his past will determine his future,’ but in your case, they may determine you have no future.”
This stopped Ransom, whose stern eyes met Kohler’s in a cold duel. “Is that a threat, Nathan?”
“Call it what you will. Chicago remains a dangerous place, and everyone knows you have more enemies than friends.”
“Send my request on, Nathan. Send it on, and we’ll talk about the future on the other side.”
Kohler’s tough features scrunched in consternation, attempting to mine the depths of Ransom’s words. But Inspector Ransom walked away from his dumbfounded chief and closed the door behind him.
Kohler gnashed his teeth and muttered to his empty office, “Stubborn bastard’s like a g’damn Jack Bull with his teeth sunk deep.”
CHAPTER 10
Alastair found himself at his old wooden swivel desk chair and dropped into it with a heaviness that raised a resounding squeal. He sat for a moment, feeling extremely tired and as if every year of his life weighed heavy. He sat staring at the empty desk pushed against his own, Griffin’s desk. While others in the department pretended busy work, he sensed them watching him now. No one could miss the subdued anger spilling out of Chief Kohler’s office when Alastair had come down those steps.
Feeling like a bug here, Alastair located a pot of coffee kept on brew for Chicago’s finest on skeleton crew. The grand World’s Fair had siphoned off many a cop. Faithfuls were being asked to work double shifts, and why else hire on the first woman civilian in the department-Gabrielle Tewes?
Alastair was not about to give up his search for the truth surrounding what really happened that day at Haymarket, not for any avowed reason. The issue remained burning in his gut and in his heart; he couldn’t let got so easily as others. He had lost six fellow officers and friends that day to a bomb no one had taken credit for. Historians already called it a defining moment in Illinois and U.S. labor-relations history, but it was also a defining moment in exactly who Alastair Ransom was. Perhaps he was chasing ghosts, phantom information that did not exist, but by the same token, he could not let any chance to get at the records on the subject go by. Too many good men had died for this, one having pulled Ransom to safety before keeling over with a severed femoral artery.