Into the Suffering City

by Bill LeFurgy

  “That true, Mr. Patterson, sir?” the detective asked.

  “Yes, the whole thing was just an unfortunate mishap.” Patterson was on the floor with a gold silk pillow under his head and his hands pressed over a pile of bloody gauze. “I’m just so grateful no children were nearby when it happened. My interest in firearms was clearly misplaced. I’m going to quit politics and redouble my efforts to serve poverty-stricken youth.”

  Sarah clenched her fists tightly as she listened to the man lie without any apparent compunction. Her body trembled with the effort to keep quiet.

  “Well. How about that, now.” The detective turned to Sarah. “The boys were just playing with a gun and then it went bang, all innocent-like?”

  She gave a stiff nod.

  “Can’t hear you, sugar pie.”

  She crossed her arms. “The pistol was displayed and then discharged. Fortunately, I was able to stanch the resulting wound. Detective, Mr. Patterson must be transported to a hospital in short order so that surgeons may examine his injury.”

  “Got a meat wagon on the way.” The detective snorted and turned to Jack. “I know something fishy’s going on here. You can bet I’m going to tell Snake Eyes all about it. He’ll be wanting to pay you another visit. Keep that one peeper peeled while you still got it, hear?”

  “Tell O’Toole to take a bath before he shows his ugly mug again.” Jack put his handkerchief to his nose and blew. The detective tromped off.

  Sarah went to Jack, fingers waggling in a blur. “You need a change of dressing and immediate bed rest.”

  “No more hospital for me. And my landlady don’t permit female visitors. Not sure she’s ever heard of a lady doctor. Or a lady detective.” He gave her a half-witted smile. “I like sitting here. Getting cold, though.”

  “You are slipping into shock. I will take you to my residence and have my housekeeper prepare a room for you.”

  “Take me—I’m all yours.” Jack tried to stand without success. Sarah checked his pulse. It was alarmingly weak.

  “Ambulance is here!” called the large woman as two attendants walked in with a stretcher.

  “Take this man to my residence,” said Sarah, pointing to Jack. “I will accompany him.”

  “What about Mr. Patterson?” asked the woman.

  “He can wait. Call another wagon.” She supervised Jack’s placement onto the stretcher and walked with the attendants to the ambulance, providing directions to her home. He was babbling nonsense and blood was trickling freely from the gauze over his eye.

  Sarah knew it was a serious risk to take him to her house rather than to Hopkins, yet she was afraid to go to the hospital. Not of the facility itself—but of one of its most eminent doctors.

  Chapter 26

  Jack—Saturday, October 16, 1909, 9:00 a.m.

  A clobbering headache kept him company as he sat with Sarah outside Commissioner Lipp’s office.

  Thanks to her, he was in the best shape possible. He’d rested at her house, eaten well, and had a clean bandage put over his eye. While passed out, someone had shaved and bathed him. Even though the housekeeper was an old woman with a withered arm, Jack told himself that she must have been the one to scrub and put him in a new union suit. At least he would leave a clean corpse if he couldn’t pay Knucks later that afternoon. Everything depended on how their meeting with Lipp went.

  Sarah pulled strings to get the appointment. Lipp wasn’t happy about seeing them, a fact made clear by the presence of Snake Eyes O’Toole in a nearby chair.

  The dick was there for intimidation, maybe worse. At the moment he was thumbing through a National Police Gazette. A beautiful woman showing lots of skin looked out with a smoldering gaze from the cover. The caption was “Fatal Beauty’s Husband on Trial for Killing Her Wealthy Lover.” Now, that was a story that had everything going for it.

  “Snake,” said Jack, “game seven’s later today in Detroit. Last chance for your man Cobb to prove he’s a winner.”

  “Got his spikes sharpened and ready to plant in krauthead Wagner’s shin.” O’Toole didn’t look up.

  Sarah was reading a medical journal, leaving Jack to wish there was another issue of the Gazette handy. All he could do was look around the office at the lounging clerks, beat-up furniture, and framed pictures of bygone cops.

  There was a potted palm in a corner. Somebody had been taking decent care of it, and some new leaves were sprouting. “Heard something funny about Lizzie,” he said to Sarah, who seemed to ignore him. “A friend of hers told me she saw colors when she heard words. Like when someone said ‘dance’ she saw the same color green as those new palm leaves.”

  Sarah stared at his forehead with the most intense look he had ever seen from her. “Do you know if it was common for Lizzie to see colors when hearing words?”

  Jack sat up a little straighter. “The friend said Lizzie talked about hearing colors since she was a kid. Strange, huh?”

  “This is highly significant. It likely indicates that—”

  Lipp appeared at his door, eyes shooting daggers. “I will give you five minutes to explain yourselves. You are lucky I can spare that much time.” They went into his office. Lipp sat in an expensive-looking leather chair behind an enormous oak desk with a mirrorlike finish. The only things on it were a fancy clock and a gilt-framed portrait of a light-haired girl standing next to an older woman.

  “The wife and daughter?” Jack asked, pointing to the portrait. “Handsome pair.”

  “My family has nothing to do with you.” Lipp leaned forward on his elbows with his brow low over his small eyes. “Tell me what you have to say and get out.”

  Jack heard Sarah’s hands tapping against the underside of the desk. One of her legs was jiggling so hard the fabric of her long skirts rustled like a sail in a fair wind. “I know you’re a busy man, Commissioner. And given you’re now running unopposed in the election, you’ll be our next mayor. Both Dr. Kennecott and I are grateful for your time.”

  “Enough. I insist that you—”

  Jack held up his hand. “After all, why should you bother with us? I’m a nobody, and you’re not a fan of Dr. Kennecott. Could it be that you wonder if we have a certain Bible in our possession?”

  Lipp sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “I live my life according to the Bible. I have naught to fear from the Good Book.” His mouth flattened into a diagonal white slash as a vein in his forehead began throbbing.

  Jack dropped Annie Monkton’s Bible on the desk. “You know this is your great-granny’s, don’t you?” Lipp stared at the book for a while before pulling it toward him and flipping to the handwritten pages in the back. The vein on his forehead pulsed like a snake in a sack. “I’m guessing you’ve known for a long time that your great-grandma was black,” said Jack. “That makes you one-eighth Negro, or as some put it, an octoroon. The law says you’re passing as a white man. Your pull with the white supremacist crowd will take a hit when this gets out.”

  Lipp snorted. “This proves nothing. An old colored woman makes up a story. Who’s going to believe it?”

  “Most everyone if it’s backed up by the big casino Reverend Charles Lombard, who wrote down what Annie told him. He took it as the gospel truth.” Jack pushed the Bible closer to Lipp. “I’m sure Lombard will confirm this if push comes to shove.”

  The commissioner raised a finger as if he were about to call down divine wrath, but said nothing. Slowly, he dropped his hand as his jaw quivered. “My father told me the secret when I announced my engagement, just as his father told him. About the chance of having children with Negro features. In the end, we put our faith in God and He rewarded us.”

  Sarah slammed her hand down on the desk. “It has nothing to do with religious faith. You have no excuse whatsoever for your appalling hate and hypocrisy.”

  “I have prayed so hard,” said Lipp in a shaky voice. “And, for a long time, the sin was hidden. My great-grandfather had his only living heir with his slave. The child
was fair enough to substitute for the son who died with his mother in childbirth. There was talk, but that was common on plantations. One learned to evade, to deny, to believe what one wanted to be true. My grandfather and father both had children that, for all appearances, were white. I also have a child, and as you see, she is as pale as snow.”

  “Not according to your racial belief system,” said Jack. “Imagine how shocked your daughter would be to know she’s mixed race. That’s not all—according to the law your marriage to a white woman was illegal and you could get tossed in jail.”

  “Stop!” Lipp shook his raised fists.

  “You thought your secret was safe,” said Jack. “You didn’t know that your black great-granny got that preacher to write what she knew about her family in the Bible. Then she dies, and the Bible gets sent to her favorite great-grandson, Nick. He reads the family tree, sees your name, and figures out you two are cousins. Since Nick was a natural sleaze, he tries to blackmail you. The guy was no genius, yet he was bright enough not to keep the Bible on him. You had O’Toole pick up Nick to make him talk, but Patterson’s lawyer interfered. O’Toole finds Lizzie’s place tossed and suspects Clara got the Bible. Cops tail her until she slips me the fake book.”

  “That woman.”

  “I hear you. Anyway, you discover she gave me a fake—it was pretty clever on her part to substitute Shaw’s name for yours, by the way. You needed to find her again, but she’s dropped out of sight. Since Patterson’s still in the mayor’s race, and since he’s loaded, it makes sense to you that Clara plans to sell the Bible to him. Problem is that he’s too rich and important for you to intimidate directly. So, you have cops watching Patterson’s office with orders to snare Clara before she gets to him. She’s too smart for you. Again.”

  Lipp sank even lower in his chair. Jack stood and leaned over the desk. “You know what’s too bad, Lipp? If your boys had done a competent investigation of Lizzie’s murder you would have found out that Nick shot her. Then you could have cut an easy deal with the guy—no muss, no fuss.”

  Lipp’s sour look returned. “What do you want?”

  “Let’s talk about what you’re not going to do. You’re not going to have us bumped off or arrested—I assume that’s why O’Toole’s waiting outside. I’ve made photographs of your family tree here and left instructions that they go to the press if anything happens to us.”

  “I’m not a rich man, but I can offer you some money.”

  “Don’t want your money.”

  “You want a city job. Just name it.”

  “Here’s what we want: you drop charges against Horace Shaw. Immediately.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And you let Dr. Kennecott write up the official cause of death for both Lizzie and Nick. You’ll have both reports accepted as official.”

  “All right.” His voice was faint.

  “Also, the cops will use Dr. Kennecott’s evidence to investigate Lucas Patterson for killing Nick and Lizzie.”

  “No,” said Sarah.

  “I beg your pardon?” Lipp shot her a cranky look.

  “I strongly suspect that Lucas Patterson did not kill Nick,” said Sarah. “Or Lizzie.”

  Jack leaned over to her. “Wait a minute. What about your evidence on the guy?”

  “I have reason to believe someone else killed Nick. That same person also likely inflicted Lizzie’s fatal head injury.”

  “Who?”

  “This a matter requiring discretion. Ensure no one is listening at the door.”

  Jack sat with his mouth open for a bit before going to the door and looking back into the waiting area. O’Toole still had his nose in the pink sheets of the Gazette. “All clear.”

  “Very well,” she said. “Let us now have further discussion with Police Commissioner Adolph Lipp.”

  The rest of the morning and early afternoon went great. Jack met with Horace Shaw at the Rennert Hotel and never saw a guy happier to fork over a fat bankroll.

  “Fine work, Harden.” Shaw was back in his throne-like chair, chewing a big wad of tobacco and surrounded by men who were again eager for his approval. “You can bet I’m going to tell everyone what a good detective you are. Should get some work out of that. And when I get elected mayor in four years—the good citizens of Baltimore will have long forgotten my involvement in this little dustup by then—you’ll have more business than you can handle.”

  Next came a visit to Knucks Vogel at his saloon over in the Butchers Hill neighborhood. The loan shark took his eleven hundred dollars and graciously invited Jack to sit at his table along with four pretty girls. Jack politely declined.

  Walking out of the joint, he saw a newsie hawking papers with the World Series results. Two cents bought more happiness—Pittsburgh won game seven, 8–0, to take the Series. Wagner hit a triple and knocked in two runs while Cobb did zilch. Jack wished he could needle Snake Eyes about that, but the city detective had a bigger problem to deal with.

  Jack knew he had plenty of time to walk across town to Johns Hopkins Hospital. He’d rather go almost anywhere else. The place represented sickness and death—never more so than right now.

  Chapter 27

  Sarah—Saturday, October 16, 1909, 3:45 p.m.

  Avoiding Dr. Anson in the Pathological Building was easy—she hid in an alcove when he passed by, a book open inches from his nose.

  Gathering her long skirts, she rushed up the stairs to the landing outside Dr. Macdonald’s office. He had agreed to meet at a time set for ten minutes later. Anxiety drove Sarah to arrive early—but she did not want to see him just yet. She turned to go back downstairs and froze when Macdonald called to her.

  “You’re eager to meet,” he said. “Excellent.”

  She followed him into his office, and when he began to close the door she asked him to leave it slightly ajar, stating a fear of closed space.

  He agreed with a smile and gestured to a couch raised at one end and covered in a spread featuring colorful geometric shapes set against a bright coral background. A blue-green patterned pillow with a head-shaped dimple in the middle sat on the elevation. A small Smyrna rug with a red and gold floral pattern lay at the opposite end to protect from patient shoes.

  Sarah perched on a chair opposite while Macdonald sat in a massive wooden armchair set just behind the couch’s lifted section. “Laying on the couch helps,” he said in his soft, soothing voice. “Want to try it?”

  “No. I prefer to sit where I am.”

  “Fine. I am just pleased to have you here at last, lass.” He opened a thick notebook and lifted a pencil.

  Sarah noticed two small ceramic creatures displayed on a nearby table. “Those are curious figures,” she said, pointing. “A hedgehog and a snake.”

  “They were given to me by a friend, Professor Carl Jung, after we worked on a case together. The patient was a woman struggling with nightmares about those two animals. Her problem was sexual repression—the hole-forming hedgehog and the phallic snake represented her forbidden desires. Casting off restraint and relishing sex is the key to good mental health.”

  Sarah looked around the room, wanting to move their conversation to a subject other than sex. She considered asking him about a collection of antique bronze amulets hung from strings on a nearby wall, but noticed the objects were all shaped like phalluses.

  “You’re here to discuss your illness,” said Macdonald. “Correct?”

  “You say Dr. Anson first alerted you to the seriousness of my supposed condition?”

  “He was worried about your deluded investigation. I told him you showed signs of mental illness, we compared notes, and I suggested that Bleuler’s concept of schizophrenia might possibly apply. He urged me to visit you in the lab.”

  “Did Dr. Anson first come to you with his concern after I spoke with him on Monday afternoon? That was when I told him of my investigation into Lizzie Sullivan’s murder.”

  “Aye.” Macdonald pressed his fingertips together. “Anson came
to me that afternoon. He cares for you and was worried that you were having a break with reality. And when I visited you in the lab I agreed—your condition had gotten much worse since we first met.”

  “I have read Dr. Bleuler’s paper on schizophrenia and disagree that I have the disorder. My mind is not fragmented, nor am I in any way broken with reality.”

  Macdonald wrote in silence after she finished. “My dear, denial of the condition is a cardinal sign of the illness.” He spoke calmly and slowly. “I once had a patient who believed she was Marie Antoinette. When I didn’t believe her, she pointed to her paper crown and asked if I was blind. When I said her crown was not real she ordered me guillotined. Now, your illness is just emerging. You are quite lucky—you may have periods of lucidity.”

  “You are well acquainted with Dr. Anson, are you not?”

  “Aye. He is a good friend.” Macdonald continued to write.

  “When you worked with Dr. Bleuler, I assume you shared his interest in synesthesia—known colloquially as ‘hearing colors’?”

  Macdonald’s pencil hovered over his notebook. “Aye. Dr. Bleuler is a leading authority and we had many discussions on the topic. Synesthesia is fascinating, and anyone writing about it is assured of a large audience. Sarah, your questions make no sense.”

  “When Dr. Anson told you he had found a subject presenting with robust synesthesia you arranged for her to come here for an interview. Correct?”

  “You are now paranoid, my dear.” Macdonald lowered his pencil. “Your condition is even farther along than I suspected.”

  “I have a hypothesis about how events unfolded when you met with Lizzie Sullivan in this office last Friday. She laid upon this couch while you asked about her synesthesia. She was very happy that a man was interested in her mind—that was likely a unique and thrilling experience for her. You took notes with the idea of compiling a case study and found Lizzie to be a cooperative subject. But she was an attractive young woman and you found yourself aroused. You demanded sex, she refused. A struggle ensued, and she scratched you through the pinkish cashmere throw on the couch. You retaliated and threw her to the floor. She hit her head—likely on the leg of the chair in which you now sit.”