Into the Suffering City

by Bill LeFurgy

  The two doctors put on white surgical gowns. Sarah washed her hands and put on surgical gloves while Anson stood by the sink. “Doctor,” she said, “how did you hurt your hand?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” He laughed and rubbed the gauze around his wound. “Perhaps not. I cut it on a cadaver’s cracked rib. I suppose I should wear those new gloves to lessen the chance of hurting myself again.” She made a mental note that, at the very least, his story about the hand injury remained consistent.

  The body was on the dissecting table, covered with a sheet. Anson pulled the drape back and drew a quick breath before looking away. A stout older nurse with a commanding air stood by with a clipboard. “Do you know the deceased, Doctor?” The nurse spoke in a high, dramatic voice.

  “No.” Anson removed his glasses and pinched his nose hard enough to leave angry red spots. “I have never seen this man before in my life. I swear.”

  Sarah scanned the body. The only sign of recent injury was a blackened hole in the right temple.

  “I suppose, sweetie, elephants stampeded the man to death?” She could barely make out the coroner sitting in the darkened amphitheater. “Let me state that I distinctly object to this woman’s involvement here.”

  “The way you’re slurring you ain’t in any condition to distinctly state a damn thing,” said the city detective, who was sitting nearby. “And by the way, that’s the carcass of Nick Monkton. I’ve run him into the station more than once.”

  “We have a white male, approximately twenty-five years of age, presenting with an apparent bullet wound to the right temple,” said Sarah.

  “Dr. Anson, may we please follow the proper procedure?” said the nurse while giving Sarah a baleful look.

  Anson nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes. We are in the habit of having the head nurse start autopsies by presenting known details about the decedent.”

  The nurse slowly lifted her pince-nez and put the lenses on her nose. She cleared her throat with her hand to her chest and moved the clipboard back and forth numerous times as she sought the best focus. Sarah clenched her fists and looked at the body until the nurse finally began reading in a mannered falsetto.

  “An anonymous telephone call received at the Eastern District police station at approximately one forty-five p.m. this afternoon reported the body of a deceased male—identified as Mr. Nick Monkton—located in a stable on Ann Street, in Fells Point, city of Baltimore. Responding officers found the body seated in a chair, expired. A pistol, thirty-two-caliber, was found under his right hand. One gunshot wound to the brain, fired at close range, is present on the right side of the deceased’s skull. This appears to be an obvious case of suicide.”

  “I insist upon holding all judgments as to cause of death in abeyance until the examination is complete.” Sarah didn’t look up from the body. “What other evidence was at the scene?”

  “Dr. Anson.” The nurse glared at Sarah. “If I may be allowed to continue without these rude interruptions.” She raised her chin, a hand on hip. With more nods from Anson, she slowly moved her gaze to the clipboard and cleared her throat with a series of audible hums.

  “For God’s sake, woman, you ain’t delivering the Gettysburg Address,” said the detective. “Spit it out.” The nurse shot an icy glare into the darkness of the amphitheater.

  “Nurse, please proceed,” said Anson in a pleading tone.

  “The police recovered no additional evidence at the scene,” said the nurse.

  “Wait—what about the suicide note?” Anson asked with a quaver in his voice. “Are you quite sure such a note was not found with the body?”

  “Doctor, did I not make myself clear?” The nurse glared over her pince-nez.

  “Well, yes, yes. But perhaps the police should recheck the scene? Suicides often leave a message behind.”

  “Forget it, Doc,” said the detective. “I’ve already wasted enough time on this riffraff. He did a gun croak, clear as day.”

  Anson twisted his hands together while mumbling under his breath.

  “If there is nothing else, then, Doctor.” The head nurse slowly removed her pince-nez, stood regally erect, and strutted away.

  “You heard what I said,” said the detective to Sarah. “We see lots of suicides every month and most of them don’t bother writing no farewell postcard. Let’s wrap this up.”

  “He’s right,” said the coroner. “Just cut him open if you need to and get this finished. I want to round up a jury and get the inquest form signed as quickly as possible.”

  “I will now proceed to examine the front and back of the body.” Sarah found nothing unusual apart from the gunshot wound. There were no major cuts or bruises. The limited lividity indicated a recent death. The fingernails held no blood or fibers. She opened the mouth and smelled whiskey. She made the abdominal incision and saw that the stomach was irritated and its contents limited—the man had not eaten recently. She emptied what there was in the stomach into a sample jar, noting a distinctive melon-like odor. Sarah cut the chest and cracked open the rib cage. The heart and lungs were normal. After sawing the skull and dissecting the brain tissue she declared that Nick had died from the gunshot. The amphitheater greeted her statement with derisive snorts.

  “I am not, however, prepared to declare this a suicide,” said Sarah. “I noticed something about the stomach contents that compels further testing.”

  “Yeah, he could’ve eaten a bad oyster that gave him such a headache he had no choice but to shoot himself. Manslaughter by seafood.” The coroner and the detective laughed.

  “Are you sure about the need for further testing?” Anson fidgeted with his glasses and caused them to slip down to the tip of his nose before ramming them back into place.

  “It is possible this man was drugged, immobilized, and then shot. That would make the case a homicide.”

  “Yes, yes—I suppose that’s possible.” Anson thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and jingled coins energetically. “Unlikely, however.”

  “I will also need to obtain fingerprints from the deceased. I can do it myself with the ink pad and sheets of notepaper I brought with me.”

  Anson blinked rapidly with his mouth silently opening and closing before walking off. As she listened to the coin-clinking recede, Sarah suppressed an urge to chase after and confront him about Nick, about Lizzie. The man would offer no useful information. He might even retaliate by telling Dr. Macdonald that she was growing more unstable. She must gather information about him in secret.

  As she lifted the body’s left hand to take fingerprints, she noticed the fingers and palm were heavily stained with what looked like dried India ink. The top knuckle of the middle finger also had a pronounced callus—the type produced by a pen or pencil—on the side next to the index finger. The right hand had no ink stains and no similar callus. Nick Monkton likely was left-handed. He would have written his music with that hand. More than likely he would have shot himself with his left hand—not the right, under which the pistol was found.

  Rushing back to her lab space, Sarah put a sample of Nick’s stomach fluid into a test tube. She added a single drop of ammonium sulfate. The solution turned a cloudy yellow, indicating the presence of chloral hydrate, commonly known as knockout drops. Since it wasn’t necessary to heat the tube to get this result, the amount of chloral hydrate was high—more than enough to render the man unconscious prior to the gunshot. She hurriedly wrote up her findings and took them to Dr. Anson. She presented the case for murder while he nervously shuffled papers on his desk and said little.

  Sarah wanted to do more work with the fingerprint evidence, but it was almost 9:00 p.m. She had to endure the Oyster Banquet tomorrow—and she needed rest to muster the necessary stamina. In addition, she needed to get to the hospital library before they closed. The librarian had promised to get her the writings of Dr. Eugen Bleuler on mental illness.

  Lizzie’s—and now Nick’s—deaths presented a puzzle that was far from solved. She tapped the w
orkbench with her finger, wondering what to do. The more she worked on this case, the more people around her thought she was deranged. But she was determined to solve Lizzie’s—and now Nick’s—murder. The only option left was to work fast. Very fast.

  Chapter 16

  Jack—Wednesday, October 13, 1909, 5:00 p.m.

  Leaving Johns Hopkins Hospital, Jack jumped onto a westbound streetcar.

  He was headed to Kernan’s Rathskeller, a place where dancers, musicians, and other self-styled bohemians liked to congregate. They rolled out of bed in the afternoon and ambled into the place for their first drink or first dose of whatever drug they preferred. Jack was comfortable with the crowd, for the most part. They didn’t like rules and they didn’t like cops.

  Soon he was on the Charles Street trolley headed north. The late afternoon sun brightly lit buildings on one side of the street and cast the other side into shadow. His eye kept falling on churches. Carvings of Christ and Moses—both looking far too otherworldly to notice traffic—sat on either side of the cloudy stained-glass window of St. Paul’s on Saratoga Street.

  Crossing Mulberry, he got a view of the massive Catholic cathedral. The cross-topped cathedral dome blocked out the sky behind the luxurious archbishop’s mansion, which ran the length of the block to his left.

  Stepping off the car at the corner of Franklin, the first thing that caught his attention was the blocky, blinding whiteness of the First Independent Christian Church. A carved angel holding a scroll stood out on the wall near the top. The scroll had writing in some foreign language—it probably said something like “fat chance you got without Jesus, pal.”

  A little farther down Franklin Street he passed the Maryland Academy of Sciences and then its next-door neighbor, Hazazer’s Hall. A block farther west across Howard put him on Kernan’s Corner, named after the guy who owned nearly all the property on the northwestern slice of the intersection.

  Kernan’s newest venture was a “million-dollar triple enterprise” featuring the hotel bearing his name, along with two nearby theaters. The Maryland Theater devoted itself to “classy vaudeville attractions,” while the Auditorium Theater offered “the best musical comedies and extravaganzas.” The old Academy Hotel sat square on the corner’s tip. A few doors north from that was the Maryland Academy of Music, where Clara had performed in her highbrow play.

  The entrance to the rathskeller was down a flight of stairs and through a dark wooden door studded with iron nails. Inside, the space was huge—easily more than eighty feet wide and a hundred feet deep. The ceiling was low and held up by four massive columns clustered in the center, making the place look like a hard-rock mine. The floor was a showy mix of colored stones set in mortar, and the walls held old-time engravings of famous politicians alongside chintzy chromolithographs of prancing circus animals. Big round tables and clusters of chairs filled the room. The most dominant feature was a sixty-foot-long bar carved from solid white marble.

  Jack spent a minute scanning the depths of the joint before heading to a table in a far corner where a dozen men and a couple of women were laughing it up. They had the right look—the men a mix of black and white, all dressed in flashy shirts and ties and wearing expensive hats. The women’s faces were bright with paint and powder. One gal had her legs across the lap of a guy who was massaging her calves. Most everyone had a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other.

  “Hey, I’m looking for anyone who’s talked with Nick Monkton lately.” The chatter stopped. Jack looked at the guy rubbing the girl’s legs. “What about you, Romeo—know the guy?”

  “Sheesh, you fly cops don’t fool anyone.”

  “I’m not an undercover cop. I’m a private dick looking into Lizzie Sullivan’s murder. And the murder of Nick, too.”

  That brought out gasps. “Nick’s dead?” asked a young woman with an enormous green feather in her hat.

  “Yeah. Bumped off a couple of hours ago.” The girl ran a hand over her mouth, smudging her blazing red lip paint.

  “Look. If any of you give a hoot about Nick or Lizzie, you need to talk with me. Otherwise you can bet nobody’s ever going to know who killed them. And, you know, that’s really just okay.” Jack pointed at the red-lipped girl. “Just have another drink and don’t bother wondering who’s going to give a rat’s ass after you get knocked off.”

  “What do you want me to say?” She pulled out a small mirror from her bag and inspected her mouth with disapproval. “Nick was always flapping his gums. I can’t hardly remember everything he said.”

  “I’m most interested in what he talked about within the past few days. Especially about a con or a get-rich-quick racket.”

  “Man, Nick got what was coming to him,” said a black man wearing a fancy fedora.

  “I’m listening.”

  The man stood up. “Let’s have a seat at the bar. You can buy me a highball.”

  They sat at the far end of the marble bar. “Always wondered about the point of a highball,” said Jack after managing, with some trouble, to get branch water. “Why thin your whiskey?”

  “I’m a buck and wing man with three shows to do tonight. Can’t dance if I’m all liquored up.” The man grinned. “And if you want to charm the ladies it pays to nurse a drink and stay on your game.”

  “Yeah? Water does the job even better. Why’d you say Nick had it coming?”

  “Saw him before dawn on Sunday. Hit me up for some cash—said he had to hide out for a while. Promised to pay me back soon.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “He was jagged as anything—flying on coke, yammering nonstop. Tells me he’s worked up because something got stolen that Lizzie was keeping for him. In the next breath he says Lizzie croaked under a john and that he planned to blackmail the man. I said something like, that’s hard-handed, cashing in on Lizzie’s death. Nick laughs like a maniac and says no, what’s hard is him putting a bullet into Lizzie’s dead body because some other guy will pay him for it big time. Evil dude.”

  “You willing to testify in court about that?”

  The man took a long sip of his drink. “Ridiculous question. ’Course not.”

  “Okay—what about Nick’s plans to get money from the two guys he mentioned?”

  “Didn’t want to hear any more from the man, so I walked away. What I can tell you is that a day earlier Nick was going on about how his slave great-granny died and left him proof that was going to make him a rich man. Maybe that’s what Lizzie was holding for him that got stolen. Just speculating.”

  “Proof? What kind of proof?”

  “Got no idea.”

  “Maybe evidence about some big shot with secret Negro blood?”

  The guy lit up a cigarette and spit out little pieces of tobacco. “Brother, you’ve got no idea how sore a subject that is. Every time you, a white man, walk around downtown you get respect. People treat you like you belong there. Like you’re a man. Now try and see it from my point of view. When I walk downtown, it’s a different story. Nobody wants me there. I either get avoided, or I get too much attention, especially from the cops. The whole idea is to treat me less than a man, less than human. It’s built into the system.”

  “Sure.” Jack shrugged. “I’m hep.”

  “I’m not calling you a liar, exactly. I’ll just say that I’ve never met a white man who really is hep to what I’m talking about.” He shook his head. “Nick was like a lot of light-skinned people. He passed as white because he wanted respect. He wanted a better shake. Don’t blame him for making that choice. But it takes a toll. You got to lie, got to reject your family, got to deny who you are. Eats away at your soul. And the whole time you’re worried that someone’s going to find out the truth and kick you in the ass. Personally, that’s why I think Nick turned bad. Nerves got to him.”

  Jack took a gulp of water. “You got any more ideas about what Nick was up to?”

  “Nope. How’d the man die?”

  “Made to look like he blew his brains o
ut.”

  The man shook his head. “No way he’d do that. Nick was way too vain about his looks.”

  “What about Lizzie? Know anything more about her or any of her other gentlemen friends? She chummy with any of the girls over there?” Jack gestured back toward the table.

  “Naw. But there’s another gal who was tight with Lizzie. Name’s Lulu LaRue.”

  “Come on.”

  “That’s what she calls herself. Lots of personality. Former high-kicker—was a headliner in burlesque theaters around town until she got herself in a little too deep with dope. Reduced now to whoring at Macy’s cabaret down on North Paca Street.” The man stepped away from the bar. “That’s it for me, sport.”

  “One more thing—know who won the Series this afternoon?”

  “Pirates, eight to four. Now it’s back to Detroit for game six. And game seven, if need be.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jack crossed the vast space and threw open the door to the stairs. He was ready to squint against the daylight, but it was getting dark outside. On the sidewalk he rubbed his chin, wondering how much cash it would take to convince the buck and wing man to testify. Right now, that looked like the only way to get the charges against Shaw dropped. And collect those five Gs.

  He asked for the time and learned it was 6:10 p.m.—late to meet Clara. Shady Clara who knew a whole lot more than she let on. Lucky the Hotel Kernan was right next door. Jack started going up the hotel steps two at a time when a gunshot sounded behind him on the street.

  He froze, anger and fear boiling as the spirits wailed all around him. There was that bloody little brown woman again, right in front of him holding out her hollering baby. He grabbed her brightly patterned jacket. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry—but you got to leave me alone!”

  “Come on now, son. Ease up. Cast off the demon.” The ghosts vanished, leaving him holding a thin old guy by his preacher lapels. Jack let go, and the guy edged away while smoothing the front of his come-to-Jesus frock coat. “Son, I was just asking you to join us at our next meeting at the Men’s Abstinence Tabernacle Mission. You got to renounce alcohol, and I mean now. Take this literature. Go on, take it. Come pray with us. Fill yourself with the love of God rather than whiskey.”