City of the Absent (13 page)

Once again on the street, Alastair made his
rounds. He was not foolish enough to keep regular or meticulous rounds, but rather, to mix them up so no one knew he had a routine. No one knew better than he that a routine could get a cop—even a detective—killed.

He caught a ride to an area of the city where, at this time of morning, he imagined Henry Bosch was sitting about a cracker barrel, pontificating on the virtues and vices of the Civil War generals Grant and Sherman, both of whom he'd formed lasting and firm opinions of during his days as a private in the big blue monster called the Federal Army.

When Alastair arrived, he was not disappointed, finding Bosch at Reach's corner grocery, bait and tackle, laundry and bathhouse. Old Mr. Bowman was known as Reach, as there was nothing that exceeded his reach in the city should it be requested of him. Reach Bowman said once of his clapboard establishment with his apartments overhead that a man could find everything but liquor and loose women on the premises, and he meant to keep it that way. He'd been among the teetotalers who'd marched on Little Chicago and helped burn out “that rabble” a decade before. Now he hobbled about with one hand on his back, the other on his Shalala, the
crooked cane as gnarled as the crusty old shopkeeper. Reach and others huddled around the storyteller Bosch politely acknowledged Alastair as he came through the door, but Bosch paid no heed, continuing with his tale of Sherman.

“Swear…never seen a pair of eyes more striking.”

“Striking in what manner?”

“Mad…fierce as flame…burn right through a man. He couldn't find a uniform to suit his scrawny, sickly frame, that General Sherman, and being as he was a general in the Federalist Army, he saw to having a tailor come to his tent to fashion a perfect uniform for his build and peculiar measurements, 'cause fellas, I am here to tell youse there was nothing on the man that matched its counterpart. One arm seemed longer'n the other, one hand bigger. Sure his face was cockeyed and off center, but so was his whole body.”

“So he got himself a custom outfit at the army's expense?” asked one old duffer, tamping his pipe, his face as puckered and wrinkled as a raisin.

“He did indeed, and ordered several so as he could keep a cleaner appearance than Grant, which in fact was not hard for any soldier to do.” Bosch paused, awaiting a laugh from his audience, but it did not come. “You see, when Grant saw himself in the mirror or in a photograph, he only saw what he wanted to see, and was pretty satisfied with the results, but ol' William Tecumseh Sherman, he'd seen a photograph of himself, taken with one collar up, one down, his stern face turned to an odd angle, and those wild unsettled eyes cut him to the quick. The image scared even him!” This got a laugh. “He looked every bit the reincarnated madman John Brown, he did.”

Ransom leaned against the counter alongside Reach Bowman, taking a moment to hear Bosch out.

Bosch didn't skip a beat. “Sherman, he liked to tell folks he was a nice fella, a good fella.”

“Was he affable off the battlefield?” asked one of the men.

“Oh, yes! An affable man, but a practical man as well. It was him put the bug in Grant's ear that this prisoner exchange business must stop!”

“Is'at so?”

“I never knowed that!”

“Thought it was Grant's idée.”

“Thought it was Abe Lincoln's notion.”

“They mighta said it was them,” continued Bosch, “but it first come from Sherman. I tell you, the man was tough like a Jack Bull terrier, and smart like a fox. Some say that if he'd been in charge instead of Grant, the war woulda been won a year ahead.”

“Think so?”

“I know so!” finished Bosch, turning in his seat to face Ransom. “Sherman was a lot like Inspector Ransom here. He generally got exactly what he wanted when he wanted.”

“Like a set of custom uniforms,” commented Bowman.

“Every one of his uniforms were shot to hell soon enough, though, smudged, torn, creased by gunfire. Why, once his coat was smoking, and then by cracky, he damn sure looked the part of Satan, just like the Georgians say.”

This made them all laugh, and even Alastair joined in. “No one got a picture of that, heh, Bosch?” Alastair pushed off the counter.

“Not for lack of trying!” countered Bosch, standing and jamming his peg leg in tight and snug. “Sherman-the-German didn't take to the camera at all. Not many photos of 'im to be found, to my knowing, no.”

“We need to talk privately,” Alastair finally said, indicating a back room. Bowman nodded, and the general store crowd thinned, each man deciding he had something to attend to or somewhere to be. The bell on the door rang out repeatedly as Bosch's audience filed out.

“You sure can clear a room,” Bosch said a little sadly.

“What? Those loafers? Bowman, did a man jack of them buy a single item this morning?”

Reach frowned and slowly shook his head to say no.

“Then I'd say the place needed a good clearing out!” Ransom indicated with a single finger that Bosch was to follow him.

 

In a moment Alastair was alone with Bosch. He got right to the point. “What news have you about Nell Hartigan's murder?”

“None that I can strictly attest to, just rumors.”

“Then rumor away.”

Money exchanged hands.

“Rumor has it there's a medical man who's working with Madam DuQuasi. She liquors a man up, the doctor arranges for his disappearance, and it's all a totem pole. Everyone being paid off to keep mum.”

“How then did you come by the information?”

“One of Maude DuQuasi's girls.”

“Why did she tell you this?”

“That old bitch DuQuasi put her out on the street for reasons she would not say.”

“Then your informant has reason to lie, now, doesn't she?”

“I know when a common whore is telling me the truth and when she's lying, Inspector.”

“Do you now?”

“She'd be wringing her petticoat or her hands if she were lying, and she'd be unable to look me long in the eye.”

All techniques Alastair himself used in questioning a suspect. “All right then, let's assume she is telling the truth. Who is the doctor in question?”

“She didn't know his name, but she knows 'im by sight.”

“I see.” Alastair considered how he could use this information and possibly the prostitute to uncover the identity of this phantom doctor said to be harvesting people for his clinic. “There're hundreds of surgeons in the city.”

“Your man, he's one of 'em, sure.”

The ghoul theory was taking firmer shape in Alastair's head, as much as he wanted it to be untrue. “When and where did you meet with this lady of the night?”

“Early this A.M. She was wandering my alleyway just outside my window. She was in tears. I inquired from my basement window, and she dropped to sit, to get a better look at me and my place before agreeing to come down my stairwell and inside for warm bread and coffee.”

“So you're now keeping a woman?”

“I am.” Bosch beamed with pride in being able to convey this fact to Ransom. “I am.” He thrust out his chest like a bandy rooster.

“You are some fool, Bosch! She likely's told you precisely what she thought you wanted to hear.” Ransom snatched for the bill he'd handed Bosch, but Dot 'n' Carry, as he was called, reared back on his peg leg and jabbed Ransom in the gut with his cane. “I tell ya, the lass knows what she's talking about.”

“The lass? How old is she?”

“No telling, maybe forty.”

“Forty?”

“A good sight younger than myself, and so she's a lass. A spoiled dove, to be sure, but my spoiled dove.”

For a half second Ransom gave a thought to his Polly, a reformed prostitute, dead now because she'd become his woman, a ready target for the Phantom killer of the fair, a maniac who'd do anything to hurt him. The bastard had succeeded at it, too.

“I'll want to talk to this spoiled dove of yours direct.”

“Oh, no!”

“Bosch!”

“She's not going under no interrogation by the likes of you, Inspector.”

“I'll be gentle with her.”

“You mean you'll only singe her fingers and you won't burn off her eyebrows?”

“You know damn well I'll not harm her.”

“People learn she's talked to you, she could wind up dead.”

“What of you, Bosch? Why isn't that a worry for you, then?”

“It is a worry for me!”

“Oh? I hadn't noticed. I pay you, and you're at the races again, chasing a four-legged dream.”

“One of these days, a six-legged horse, a creature of beauty like some flying unicorn, is gonna be born! That'd
take the race, wouldn't it?” Bosch's eyes sparkled and his broken teeth shone whenever he spoke of the ponies.

“You ought to save up for the day they run a six-legged animal!” Ransom chuckled.

“But it's true, Inspector. I gotta be looking over my shoulder every second, even out at the racing meadow.”

“Set up a meeting with the woman, Bosch.”

“Where?”

“Where no one'll know or see or overhear.”

“It'll cost you double, for her and for me.”

“Done, just do it.”

“All right, you needn't yell.”

“You deaf old codger, how else am I to be heard?”

 

From Reach Bowman's place, Alastair made his way to the downtown headquarters of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, where he meant to locate William Pinkerton, son of the now famous Eye that Never Sleeps, now in perpetual sleep—Alan Pinkerton. Brothers William and Robert Pinkerton had inherited the old man's business on Alan's death in the spring of '84. These Chicago offices were housed in an old brownstone off Michigan Avenue in what amounted to a discreet building that might be taken for a bank except that a huge sign overhead shouted: the pinkerton agency: we never sleep. The trademark eye stared down from the center of the wording.

In the 1880s, bank robberies were normally the work of what Ransom and Pinkerton called “yeggs.” These yeggs hadn't the sense or ingenuity or finesse of criminals that gained the headlines, like Charley Bullard or Max Shinburn. They came out of hobo yards, the jungle of the disenchanted and the disenfranchised. Tramps often in desperate circumstances, they moved at night, selecting banks in small communities with few police if any. They used nitroglycerine or black powder on safes, and often with no criminal associates, they disappeared into the grim bleak world they'd stepped from. They proved near impossible to trace.

As a result of the rash of bank robberies popping up everywhere, Alan Pinkerton and his sons began their notion of charging banks for protection and placing their Eye Never Sleeps seal prominently in the window of any bank that paid for their services. Their guarantee of a centralized agency acting for all banks proved a powerful persuader. They took out ads and made it clear that they would run to ground
anyone
foolish enough to rob a Pinkerton Agency protected bank. And they had lived up to their word, their record most impressive. They were so successful, in fact, that soon banks without Pinkerton Agency representation became the softer targets and were robbed at a far more alarming rate. There were even stories of thieves returning money after the fact on learning the bank they stole from was a Pinkerton associated bank.

Ransom entered the Pinkerton building and found the elevator going up. He continued his reverie of Pinkerton accomplishments as he did so. Another profit business for the most famous private eye firm in the world was supplying watchmen for strikebound plants, rail yards, mines, and corporations like Pullman City. The notion longstanding was that in such matters as labor disputes, the law and government protect the lives and property of the owners and nonunion workers against the “anarchist” horde. If local law failed to do so, owners called in private armies for protection. Since 1859 the Pinkertons had hired men at an enticing five dollars a day to stand and protect property and people, and depending on the size of the plant, this could range from twenty to three hundred hired guards. In seventy-seven strikes in all those years, only three strikers were killed by Pinkerton agents.

William Pinkerton, however, once confided in Ransom, “We never looked for any strike work.”

“No, really?” Ransom asked at the time.

“It's just something that was thrust upon us, kinda grown around us.”

“You've a remarkable record nonetheless,” said Ransom.

In 1888, only five years before, the Pinkertons played a
major role in the great CB&Q—Chicago-Burlington & Quincy—railroad strike, one of the most stubbornly contested battles in the history of the labor struggles. The president of the Knights of Labor, much later at a Senate hearing on the matter, charged the Pinkerton operatives with inciting riots, murdering strikers, and setting dynamite charges, only to blame workers. Ransom had done an investigation of the charges for the senator from Illinois and found the charges leveled at the Pinkertons completely fabricated and unfounded—
at least in this case
.

“We act as watchmen,” Pinkerton had told the Senate during hearings, “guards only, and never has a Pinkerton ever sat down at a striker's job and done the work of a striker. We are not in the business of taking jobs and food out of the mouths of the workingman. In that sense, we are not strike breakers but mere policemen.”

Ransom knew the Pinkerton policy. Before they would send a single man into the danger zone, the local sheriff or high authority must swear every man jack-of-'em in as deputies, as the local peacekeepers. It was a stroke of genius. “For now we could,” as William had testified, “conduct ourselves in a lawful way.”

The elevator opened on a hallway and a door facing him, again with the big single eye staring him down.