“You believe any of those?”
“Who knows, Mr. Kelly? Who really knows?” Randolph threw the remains of his banana in the trash, folded his lunch bag up into a neat brown square, and slid it inside the pocket of his jacket. Probably made of tweed.
“In my business, you are now talking about one of the Holy Grails: exploding the O’Leary myth. Finding out, definitively, who or what started the fire. It’s the dream of every curator who’s ever sat in this chair.”
Randolph leaned back in said chair and arched his eyebrows to the right, sort of like Groucho Marx. “You see that?”
I could only assume he was talking about the painting hanging on the wall. It showed an afterthought of a man from a bygone era, captured in thin oil and what appeared to be an even thinner light. His mouth was curved in a small smile, as if he knew the joke was on him, even in the nineteenth century.
“That’s Josiah Randolph. My great-granduncle. Original curator of the society. Wrote the book for this job.”
“Big shoes to fill.”
“Indeed. Josiah was curator at the time of the fire.”
Randolph swiveled in his chair and gestured to a small leather-bound volume in a glass case behind his desk.
“I donated his diary to the historical society. It describes how the building that housed this institution burned to the ground. Josiah was the last man out and tried desperately to save a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln’s final version, handwritten by the great man himself and the only one of its kind. Alas, Josiah failed.”
We had a moment of silence for Lincoln’s lost Proclamation. Then I pushed us back to the present.
“Let’s say, just for kicks, that you solved the mystery. Proved beyond a doubt who started the Chicago Fire.”
“Then, Mr. Kelly, I believe I might rate a painting of my own.” Randolph picked up the clipping file again. “This article, however, is a joke. John Julius Wilson was our mayor’s great-great-grandfather, not to mention his namesake. Charles Hume was publisher of the old Chicago Times and helped to rebuild this town. Two of Chicago’s giants. The idea that they conspired to actually start the fire—”
“According to this article, it was part of a land swindle. Maybe a mile or so worth of city real estate.”
“I can read, Mr. Kelly. The idea is pure fantasy.” Randolph dropped the clip file on his desk. “If it were possibly true, even a shred of it, don’t you think someone such as myself would have put it together by now?”
“Have you ever talked to the reporter who wrote the article?” I took a look at my notes. “Rawlings Smith.”
“No, I haven’t,” Randolph said, and got up to go.
“Might be worth a phone call,” I said, and got up with him.
The curator opened the door to his office and stood aside.
“As you might imagine, Mr. Kelly, I’m an exceedingly busy man. Now, if you don’t mind.”
I walked out the door, Lawrence Randolph close behind.
“You think this is all crazy, don’t you, Randolph?”
I walked quickly and spoke softly, allowing the words to drowse back over my shoulder. The curator struggled to keep up. Not really wanting to listen, but even more afraid of what he might miss.
“A waste of time might be a more apt description.”
I stopped and turned. Ready to set the hook a final time.
“But what if it were true?”
“The article?”
“Yeah. What if it were. What if you discovered who really started the Chicago Fire. And what if it was our mayor’s great-great-grandfather. Make you pretty famous, wouldn’t it?”
The curator shook his head and continued walking toward the front. But not before I saw the gleam again. The bite I was looking for. Ambition, fame, fortune. The lure was universal. The flame burned hot. Even down the hallowed hallways of history.
TWO MINUTES LATER, I was standing in front of the historical society, a copy of the old Sun-Times article in my pocket. I wasn’t especially hopeful. In fact, I wasn’t hopeful at all. Timothy Sheehan’s history was just that: a history; the Sun-Times article, as Randolph put it, pure fantasy. Still, there was no bigger, no more smug lion in the zoo than the right honorable mayor of Chicago. And I, for one, could never pass up the opportunity to reach between the bars and poke a stick in his well-insulated ribs.
CHAPTER 13
I grabbed the Red Line downtown. Got off at Lake and walked a handful of blocks to the corner of Clark and Randolph. Some people would call the pile of bricks you find there City Hall. Others might call it the County Building. Only in Chicago could they both be right. And wrong.
The east side of the building carried a Clark Street address. Inside, it was tastefully lit and quiet, full of dignified men and women in business suits, smiling and nodding, walking down mostly empty hallways. This was the center of business for Cook County, also known as the County Building.
The west side got its mail delivered to a LaSalle Street address. Inside, it was full of garish light and noise, lawyers in cheap suits with a lot of hair gel and even more cologne, entire families camped out on benches, children screaming, women arguing, hustlers hustling, the mayor’s men on the muscle, a bit of shaving cream still peeking out from under the occasional ear, ducking into an elevator and retreating upstairs. This was John J. Wilson’s domain, also known as City Hall.
I entered the building on the county side. An old man in a blue security guard uniform and a plastic-looking white shirt was slouched just inside the door. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, a gun on his hip, and was snoring lightly.
“Land Records,” I said.
“Staircase on the left, two flights down.”
The man talked around the cigarette without opening an eye. I tipped a hat I didn’t have and headed in. The hallway was deep and quiet, the staircase made of cold cracked marble. Everything felt old, nothing more so than the county’s Bureau of Land Records. It was actually three stories underground and had, as best I could tell, avoided that bane of society called the computer. For the most part, that is. There were two or three crowded up against a wall. Other than that, it was large canvas-covered books, row after row of them, documenting the comings and goings of every parcel of property in the great city of Chicago, not to mention the rest of Cook County. I wandered down one aisle, then up the next.
“They are cross-divided by section and parcel number, then organized by year. Do you have a parcel number?”
The man who spoke to me was slightly built with thin shoulders, tapered fingers bordering on delicate, and a face that looked too fragile for its own good. He had black hair with a vein of pink running through it. He wore black jeans and a shirt that fit my vague notion of turquoise. He had a gold earring in each ear and a tattoo of a yellow star on the side of his neck. He was twenty years younger than everyone else in the place and wore his air of bored indulgence like a badge of honor.
“Actually, no, I don’t have a parcel number.”
“Have to get a parcel number before we can help you,” my soon-to-be friend said. “Top of the stairs, two doors down. Room 206. Give them the address. They’ll get you a parcel number.”
“I’m thinking this piece of property is not going to be in your system. At least not with a parcel number.”
“All property in Cook County has a parcel number.”
“I believe you,” I said. “It’s more a matter of when. What’s your name?”
“Hubert.” He said it with an edge, daring anyone to comment.
“Hello, Hubert.”
I sidled him a bit out of the aisle so his boss couldn’t see us. She had blue hair, gold mascara, and gold glasses on a string around her neck. She wore nothing less than a muumuu and was snapping gum and pretending to index property books two aisles away. She wasn’t fooling me, however. Hubert and I were up to no good and she was determined to find out exactly what kind of no good it might be.
“Listen,” I said, dropp
ing my voice just enough to get him interested without being scared. “The listing I’m looking for is old.”
Hubert was nonplussed. “Our records cover the entire twentieth century.”
“Eighteen hundred sort of old.”
“Before the fire?” I caught the ghost of a gleam in the young man’s eye. This was sexy stuff. Relatively speaking, that is.
“Exactly.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t.”
For Hubert, that was even better. He pushed me down the aisle toward a gray door in the back. The last thing I saw was the lady with the blue hair, looking our way and picking up the phone.
CHAPTER 14
Through the doorway was a set of black iron stairs climbing two flights up and back, to another door of government gray. Hubert found the key and opened it. The air was like the inside of a closed coffin—if the inside of a closed coffin had any air, that is.
“This is our historical section, 1890 and before. Don’t come in here too often.”
Hubert found a switch and pulled it. Pale light dropped down from a single forty-watt bulb. I tried to get my bearings. Hubert was already whipping into the darkness.
“Come on. The bitch out front will wonder what we’re about in here.”
It was like the main room but even older. Shelf after shelf of property books, creaky and yellow. We took two lefts, a right, and then straight into a wall.
“Sorry,” Hubert said. “Back this way.”
We backtracked down one aisle and then across to a sagging set of shelves that ran from the floor to just below the ceiling. Above that was a long thin window, covered in wire mesh and set at what I figured to be about sidewalk level. Dirty light filtered in from the street, along with the smell of what I could only imagine to be Panda Express on a very bad day.
“Sorry. Chinese takeout has their Dumpster in the alley right outside.”
I ran my finger down one of the bindings. It was covered with spider scrawl in what appeared to be quill ink.
“Not a problem,” I said. “At least we can see. What does this say?”
Hubert bent down and took a closer look. “It says Shortall and Hoard. Then it gives a plat number and date.”
“Who is Shortall and Hoard?”
“John Shortall,” Hubert said. “Basically saved Chicago’s property record system.”
“Really?”
“Sure. The fire destroyed all of Cook County’s official real estate records.”
“Everything?”
Hubert snapped his fingers. “Gone. Shortall ran a title abstract company. Kept copies of almost all Cook County conveyances in his office.”
“Convenient.”
“Yeah. As the fire approached, Shortall commandeered a wagon at gunpoint, loaded up his records, and got them out of town.”
“If he hadn’t?”
“No one would have legally owned anything.” Hubert shrugged. “Chaos.”
“And these are the records?”
“This is them.”
I pulled out a book and opened it up. Felt the creak of time as pages and ink pulled apart.
“Careful.” It was Hubert, peeking over my shoulder.
“I got it, Hubert.”
“Yes, but the ink is brittle. And these are the only copies.”
Hubert slid the book from my hands and started peeling the long pages apart. I caught the flash of a date: 1858.
“Sorry, Hubert. This is too early for me, anyway.”
“No reason not to handle it just as carefully.”
“Yes, Hubert.”
I hung my head for the appropriate moment of penance and reflection. Then I pulled some books from 1870 off the shelves.
“These are the ones we want,” I said.
“This is the time period?”
“It’s a start.”
“And the location?”
“The city.”
“No kidding. In 1870 there wasn’t much else outside the city. Property-wise, that is.”
“Just south of the Loop,” I said. “Near Roosevelt and Canal.”
Hubert bit the ring he had pierced through his lower lip and ran his finger along the parched spines of Chicago history.
“That’s still a lot of ground. More specific?” Hubert handed me a look he probably figured passed for coy. I let him play.
“You got it right,” I said. “The Irish quarter. O’Leary’s barn and the whole neighborhood.”
“DeKoven Street,” Hubert said.
“Number 137, Hubert.”
“Yes, yes. But here it will be listed by property number. Not a high property number in 1870. But they did still have them.” Hubert dug a little deeper into the shelves and came up with four long books. “This covers O’Leary’s barn and ten blocks on either side.”
I reached for the book, but Hubert held up a hand. “We take them apart a page at a time. Each page, a moment at a time.”
Four moments later, we had skimmed across forty property transfers in O’Leary’s neighborhood. Fourteen of them were sold to the same person. Or, rather, to the same set of initials: J.J.W.
“Did they always use initials back then on deeds?” I said.
Hubert shrugged. “Don’t know. Seems sort of weird.”
The kid pulled the property register closer and squinted at the scrawl. “Actually, I think this is a company.”
He pointed to a squiggle of ink. “I think that’s a Co. at the end. Could stand for company.”
I took a look. The kid was right.
“I don’t suppose John Shortall kept any corporate records from back then?” I said.
Hubert shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Burned in the fire?”
Hubert nodded. “All the corporate records were completely destroyed. Everyone who had a business basically had to reincorporate. Start all over again. Records-wise, that is.”
“Corporate chaos?”
“I’d think so.”
Hubert ran a long nail down the property register, swallowed up some courage, and posed the question I knew was coming.
“If you don’t mind me asking, these initials. Do they ring a bell?”
Hubert danced his fingers off the page as I slammed the register shut. “Shut up, kid.”
“Yes, sir.”
I slid the book back to its place on the shelf. “And forget about those initials. Make your life a whole lot nicer.”
“Yes, sir.”
I looked at the dark wall of books surrounding us. Thought about John Shortall. Getting his wagon loaded up at gunpoint. Saving Chicago’s real estate market. Probably making himself a bunch of dough in the process. Seemed just about right. Then I thought about the initials I’d found scattered throughout the old property records: J.J.W.—as in John Julius Wilson. Also known as the mayor’s great-great-grandfather.
“Let’s go back downstairs,” I said. “Before your boss misses us.”
“Okay.”
Hubert began to pick his way back down the dark aisles.
“FYI…”
“Yeah?” I said.
“My boss…she’s the mayor’s cousin.”
“The lady with the blue hair?”
“That’s what they say.”
“And she runs this place?”
“Yep.”
I scratched the side of my head. “You gonna lose your job, Hubert?”
“Nah. I’m gay, so she’s scared stiff of me.” The young man’s words floated back on a cloud of nonchalance. “I’ll tell her you made a pass at me or something. She’ll love that.”
“Thanks, Hubert.”
“Don’t worry. She won’t believe it. Just give her something to talk about. That’s all it takes. Besides, working in Land Records isn’t exactly my life ambition.”
“Let me guess. You take classes at Second City.”
Hubert turned and smiled. “Stereotype. No, I’m a hacker.”
“Computers?”
“Really?”
“Scary real. You want to buy stuff online, let me set up your computer first. Save your credit cards from getting scammed.”
The kid slipped me a business card, red with yellow stars: hubert russell. “Gotta get back,” he said.
“Thanks, Hubert. Name’s Michael Kelly.”
“No problem, Mr. Kelly. It was fun.”
We shook hands. Hubert went back downstairs. I waited a minute and followed. I could feel Hubert’s boss tracking me as I walked through the bureau. The kid fell in step halfway across the room and spoke in a voice plenty loud for anyone who wanted to listen.
“Sorry I couldn’t help you, sir. The property you want was actually not even platted back in 1840. Chances are no one technically owned it. At least, not anyone who could produce a legal deed. Like I said, if you want to find out more, you might try the Chicago Historical Society.”
Hubert winked and opened the door to let me out. Then I was alone again, in the cold marble corridor, walking back in time. To 1871 and a gang of land thieves, also known as Chicago’s founding fathers.
CHAPTER 15
How did you get in here?”
I wandered back to my office on Broadway at a little after two in the afternoon. The girl sat in the same chair her mother had. She had the same hair touched in red. Same elegant lines for nose and chin. Same pale skin, stretched tight over high cheekbones with dusky points of fatigue underneath. Like her mom in just about every way. Except she didn’t have the black eye. Not yet, anyway.
“You left the door open,” the girl said, and threw a look behind her.
“I don’t think so.”
She smirked, in a way that made me feel suddenly slow. Suddenly old. “Okay, so I’m good with locks.”
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