City for Ransom ar-1

by Robert Harris Walker

  They’d arrived at the Ferris wheel, and he purchased a ticket for each of them. Climbing into the enclosed gondola, designed like a train car berth, she replied, “Resolute?

  Hmmm. Well, when I see a perfectly good solution going unused, yes, I can be resolute.”

  “And I sense in you a caring, giving person just in seeing how you treat Dr. Tewes’s daughter—almost as your own.”

  “I’d go without shoes if it’d help Gabby get through medical school. I love her unconditionally, and I cry when that child excels, and I cheer when she succeeds.”

  This seemed at odds to him with what Gabby had imparted of her relationship with her aunt. “Then you have no children of your own?”

  “I do not, but I’m happiest on hearing of a new birth or a new marriage in the family.”

  “But you are not married?”

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  “No . . . I am not, sir.”

  The gondola swept upward with them in it, creating an exhilarating, whirring breeze all about. It was a feeling of flight that neither had ever experienced.

  “And what else can I learn of you tonight?”

  She looked deeply into his eyes. “Well, I’m just a normal woman. My heart breaks when a family member or friend dies, yet I feel strong in the face of death—as I know certainly that death is no end.”

  “Must be comforting, your certainty.” Ransom thought of Merielle’s awful end, still like a festering wound in his chest.

  “I know of a certainty that a hug and a kiss can heal a wound,” she countered, “or a broken heart.”

  “Is that so?” She reads minds, too, he thought.

  “And I believe the heart of a woman can change this world, and is in fact what makes this world work.”

  “Bully then for you, madam.”

  “I know a woman can do more than give birth.”

  “And what more is that, if I may play devil’s advocate—the vote?”

  The wheel had brought them full circle and was up and away again. Her hair lifted in the wind.

  “It is long, long overdue for women to have the right to vote in this country, sir, and the suffrage movement will one day triumph. Imagine it, men systematically withholding the rights of women because of their misunderstanding us, assuming tears a weakness of the heart, assuming emotion a faintness of character, making it a crime to have feelings, and to label emotion as somehow damaging.” “Please, I didn’t mean to start us on the wrong foot. I’m on your side.”

  “Really? A rare fellow indeed.”

  “I think it a just and fair cause.”

  She nodded, a smile softening her features. “All true. Did you feel the same way about the labor movement when you had to stand against the protestors and agitators and anarchists?”

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  “Haymarket got completely out of control. A lot of unanswered questions still.”

  “The explosion, you mean?”

  “That and what led up to it. What happened at command, the orders we got, the bad timing of it all. We marched down there to our fate as if . . . as if it had been—”

  “Scripted?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But isn’t all history from hindsight going to appear to us as having been fated or as you say, scripted? Do you really think anyone meant to set you up, I mean anyone within the ranks of the department—your own leadership?” “How do you know my thinking on this? Who’ve you gotten all this from? Dr. Tewes?”

  “I keep my ear to the ground. Met your snitch the other day on Dr. Tewes’s back stair, sneaking around like a rat. I see why they call him Dot’n’Carry. That rattle he makes with his crooked little cane—” “He lost good use of the leg and an entire foot in the war.

  Inside the man’s head there is more of Chicago than anyone I know. He is fascinating to listen to if someone takes the time.”

  “Or puts him on the payroll? Perhaps you’re a softy, Mr.

  Ahhh Inspector Ransom.”

  “Please, call me Alastair.”

  There was a silence between them, the sound of barkers and the fair music rising up to where they rocked in the gondola. She then broke into his thoughts. “Black men have had the vote since just after the Civil War. Women are only asking for the same rights as any man, and in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the term men in ‘all men are created equal’ is genderless and refers to all mankind!” “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  “Well what fun is that?”

  “You’re really quite the woman.”

  “Really now?”

  “Perhaps just the woman to bring the vote to Chicago.”

  “As I said, I can do a lot more than be a . . . a . . . an incu

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  bator for some man’s seed. I have it within me to bring joy and hope and compassion and ideals into the world. Every man and woman does.”

  He straightened at her words, quietly weighing each.

  She continued, nonstop. “I can bring moral support to family, friends, and colleagues.”

  “Then you have a lot to say and do in this life.”

  “And too little time to do it in.”

  “Sounds to me like you’ve a lot to . . . to give a man . . .

  any man.”

  “Nooo, no, no sir, not just any man will do for me, Inspector. Most men fail to appreciate a woman of intellect, opinions, and—”

  “Again no argument from me.”

  “You can be such a good listener, Alastair, when you sit long enough. This inventor, Mr. Ferris, perhaps the true purpose of his wheel is to make people stop and sit and talk.”

  “To speak of things that otherwise would not get said?”

  “Perhaps . . . to get things said and done.”

  “Things like . . . like well . . . this!” Alastair surprised her with a kiss, and she surprised him by returning it, as hers was a long, hard, soft, changing kiss that meant to steal his breath away, and it did—just as the ride came to an end.

  They disembarked the wheel, she laughing and stepping off ahead of him, leaving the big detective feeling awkward and unsure and a little self-conscious and guilty. All the things he’d wanted for Merielle . . . all the promises to ply her with attention. All of it he was doing now, so soon after Merielle’s death, with another woman—a woman he hardly knew. It’s police business is all, he kept telling himself.

  He had as yet to make arrangements for Merielle’s burial, but he instinctively knew that Fenger was taking good care.

  He worked to banish thoughts of Merielle for the time being, following after Jane instead.

  She abruptly turned on him and breathlessly asked, “Can we go up again? It’s the most amazing feeling . . . like flying. So liberating.”

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  Ransom only partially frowned as he patted himself down for the change to purchase additional tickets.

  They sat atop the Ferris wheel once more, staring down at the dizzying lights of Chicagoland from the spiraling buildings of downtown along the waterfront and Michigan Avenue to the rustic old homes and the worst, lowliest hovels of the South Levee district. The multitude of lights and burning fires blinked like stars aground. It was made the more magnificent by the gas-lit street lamps.

  He began pointing out the tallest downtown structures, giving each a name. “There is the Studebaker Building. Four hundred ten South Michigan. Built by Mr. Beman in eighteen eighty-five.”

  “Where they make all the fine carriages?” she asked.

  “That’d be it, yes, and there, see the Auditorium?”

  “Yes, but what is going up beside it?”

  “Across Congress Street, an annex hotel to the Auditorium.”

  “Yes, yes . . . so amazing from up here.”

  “Bit farther south is the Richelieu Hotel, also built in

  ’eighty-five.”

  “And the tri
m building beyond?”

  “Chicago Athletic Association—just gone up this year.

  Beyond that the Smith, Gaylord & Cross Building—old at

  ’eighty-two.”

  “I suppose every inch of Michigan Avenue will have been cleared and sold and a building put up to reach to the stars.”

  “So-called progress. Land speculation and real estate development.”

  “You disapprove?”

  “Ahhh . . . it’s not all to the good, no.”

  “Larger isn’t necessarily better, you mean?”

  “I know I’m in the wrong business, but the sorta money worship that’s swept the city . . . it’s just not for me.”

  “Still, way up here it all looks beautiful. The lights at the Art Institute and along the boulevard.”

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  “I warrant it’s the best way to see the city—day or night.”

  “And the pavilions of our magnificent White City.”

  “The city spared no expense on the fair.”

  “Mind-boggling, how huge it is,” she agreed.

  “A nightmare for a small police force to cover.”

  Despite the wheel’s having filled with people as it made its 270-foot arch above the city and lake, the couple felt alone, unable to see any other passengers from their gondola cocoon.

  Below, the fair crowds moved like schools of fish: coming and going, darting here, chasing there, the fairways teeming.

  Alone yet every gondola occupied, and in one of them sat a killer, a killer who with eyes closed relived his murders, particularly his last two life-taking adventures. In his mind’s eye he again killed Polly Pete, tightening his fists around the garrote that now dangled between his knees.

  As if happening this moment, he brings the garrote to its full cutting power through his hands, the daydream so vivid, so real, so fulfilling—made the more so by holding tight to Polly’s ring while riding the Ferris wheel he’d shared with her so recently. He smiled, eyes closed, as he calmly reminisced about this night . . . a 270-foot above-ground dream.

  Just as he feels Polly’s life in his hands, under his complete dominion, slipping away, just as he becomes the god who decides she dies, on that eclipse of time during which he might’ve allowed her sorry life continuance, or not . . .

  Stumpf too had had a good time with Polly—he and Stumpf—as when Polly had taken her last gasp, tasted her blood spewing from both sides of her mouth, deepening that faint provocative tincture painted in her cleavage. It’d all made Stumpf and him giddy and wet.

  From high atop the Ferris wheel, the killer stared down at the gathering crowd around the lagoon boat rides. Uniformed police’d converged on the Lover’s Lane Canal.

  Appears Stumpf’s been a bad boy again, he thought, knowing that he and Stumpf were one and the same—like two men inside one brain.

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  Other passengers on Mr. Ferris’s wheel noticed all the to-do at the lagoon, seeing a strange fire on the water. While Stumpf appeared a gentleman alone on the wheel, he’d in fact begun the evening with two lovely companions. They’d taken two boats out on the lagoon—double the pleasure.

  His friends remained in the lagoon far below. One in the water, at least in part, the other in a now flaming rowboat; both dispatched by the Phantom.

  Through the trees, flames winked, and Stumpf watched authorities hook and drag the fiery craft ashore. Desperately, men doused his latest victim.

  The killer saw from this moving position, every second another perspective. Interesting altogether, each separate moment of the ride as if sitting inside one of those handheld daguerreotype machines people paid to watch at the 3

  Penny Opera on Lincoln and Fullerton.

  Around him, he heard others speculating from the safety of their perch on the excitement below. A series of gasps, whispers, cooing like pigeons, and the sound of giggling and kissing.

  A slight scent of kerosene adhered to him, and his nails had become ragged at having scaled the bridge abuttment from the lagoon. But he had soaked a handkerchief before then to swipe at the larger, noticeable blood splotches on his boots, pants leg, and cape.

  He gave more thought to the girl in the flaming boat.

  Most assuredly as lurid an image as anything created by Edgar Allan Poe. It must garner front-page attention and eclipse the Columbian Exposition. As the giant wheel lifted up and up again, he braced himself and watched the activity he’d set in motion below. When the wheel stopped with him atop it, he stood to open a small window. He shouted into the wind as he had that night with Polly Pete, perhaps in this very gondola, crying against the wind, “I’m King of the Fair!”

  *

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  The Ferris wheel continued its rise and fall. Above the killer in black, Ransom and Jane Francis peered out over their gondola to get a look at the noisy fellow some six or seven cars below. Ransom stood, giving the gondola a start backward in reaction to his weight. Jane gasped, but in a moment she, too, was standing to see the man who’d been shouting from below, now coming round, lifting as they descended. “He looks like Dr. Jeykll, I think,” she commented.

  “You mean Hyde, don’t you?” They faintly heard the wheel operator at the bottom shouting up. “In your seats! Sit the bloody hell down!” They did so and rocked the gondola more as a result. Then Alastair again craned to see all he might, and she thought him so childlike in his enthusiasm, and so she began rocking and rocking the gondola in a madcap fashion she believed he’d enjoy, when suddenly the suspended car holding them began to sway too dangerously for comfort.

  He threw his arms round her, pulled her into his chest, and she felt safe there, no matter what, while below them in rotation, the single man’s rantings had only increased with maniacal laughter.

  “You bitch, you’ve just laughed your last,” the killer shouted and backhanded the spectral image of Polly Pete whose eyes opened on him despite her head wobbling near off. His erection came with her pain even if she wasn’t really present.

  Still she sat here bleeding and whimpering, and the more she bled out, the tighter the garrote and the more sexually excited he became. Who on this planet could possibly understand this, he wondered. Sherlock Holmes perhaps, but the man was himself a fiction. Perhaps Stumpf and I oughta submit to Tewes’s magnetic therapy—witchcraft he calls phrenology. But a part of Stumpf feared the idea that Tewes might see right through him, to know his innermost thoughts.

  “We should make love right here!” Polly’s ghost whispered in his ear.

  “There isn’t time . . . or space!” As beautiful and wild as CITY FOR RANSOM

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  Polly’d been, he knew he could not keep her. He could not keep any of them.

  She persisted, grabbing his crotch. “What? Are you afraid? You’re not one of those who can’t get hard in a woman?”

  “Shut up! You don’t know what you’re bleedin’ talking about! Shut up!”

  “What are you in real life, heh? A lawyer, a professor, a doctor, perhaps?”

  “I’m none. Now, Polly, be a good girl, least till we’re at your place.”

  She pouted. “You’re as boorish as Ransom, wantin’ me to be a cultured lady till we’re in bed!”

  In the end, the gondola and Polly both settled down, and they sat safe and secure in their seats, and he stared at her, thinking she had a death wish. She needed Stumpf to kill her. She wanted it; begged it. Right, right?

  “Yes and I want it again,” her spirit said in his ear.

  He regained himself—in the here and now place—and watched the building excitement he’d created below. Stumpf had given him a quota, and he always demanded more blood; always from the back of his head came Stumpf’s voice. Not even lively Polly had been able to drown out that voice.

  With their ride over, he and Stumpf and the ghost of Polly stepped from the gondola to an angry operator who failed to a
ppreciate his antics. A tip shut him up, and as the killer joined the maddening crowd on the fairway, he heard the operator also shake down Ransom for a tip.

  He soon sat on a bench deep in shadow, nerves raw and exhilarated at once. Polly had been right. He’d never enjoyed normal relations with a woman. Born incapable. Withered testicles and deformed penis. Nothing whatever doctors could do. Despite the efforts of his mother to take him to the best surgeons on two continents, including Christian Fenger.

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  miracle any more than God himself might. No one could induce feeling in the lump of flesh he carried between his legs.

  That came only with the kill, only in taking life. What defense would he and Sleepeck Stumpf have if ever they were apprehended and tried?

  He’d spent countless years in and out of hospitals, as Mother refused to accept his condition as irreversible. How many silent nights he’d spent with Stumpf—as his mother insisted on calling it, a name from his nursery, from his sleep murmurings. Mother was the only one on the planet who’d unconditionally loved him. When she’d died, penniless, he’d had to bury her in that damned Potter’s Field. Although starving, he’d refused to sell her body to the medical men. After that something snapped inside him. He ran. Only months after this, he killed that first prostitute at the fair.

  Polly made three, Chesley four. Four Chicago women, and now two young men, as well as one unborn child made the total seven. Chesley had proven a quite humorless thing compared to the vivacious Polly. And as for Purvis and now Trelaine . . . each beautiful in his way and so filled with life and love and happiness as it spilled from them with their blood. “Have all to live for,” Trelaine had once confided to the very man who had, this night, taken his life.

  He’d shut Trelaine’s joy down with a delight of his own.

  As he’d felt with Polly and the others . . . and again with young Chesley Mandor, who’d so wanted to ride in that boat with Trelaine on her arm here at the fair . . . and ’twas a flaming good time she had. . . .

  CHAPTER 19