City of the Absent

by Robert W. Walker

  “Nor I, Inspector!” shouted Gabby, now kneeling on the other side of Ransom.

  “Nor I, Inspector,” repeated Mike O’Malley, who’d overheard.

  “Don’t be fools!” shouted Ransom, blood streaking his face. “Go to the Devil, the lot of ya! But get as far from me as you can.”

  “Are you confessing?” asked Shorendorf. “Hold on! I’ll get a stenographer out here! Somebody get a stenographer!”

  “Shut up, Ben! I’m confessing nothing!”

  Gabby regained her feet, and she now pummeled Shorendorf, shouting, “Haven’t you done enough damage?”

  “This man needs more medical attention than I can give him here!” shouted Dr. Tewes. “He should be transported to Cook Country immediately.”

  Then Bosch crawled from the shadows deep within the wagon, and everyone gasped at his appearance. “I c-c-c-could use a few b-b-bandages myself, heh-heh.”

  “What in the name of Solomon is going on here?” demanded Nathan Kohler, rushing into the foray. “Shorendorf! Take charge of your prisoners and get them to where they belong—under lock and key. There’ll be no hospital stays for these two brigands.”

  Cook County was notorious among criminals and police as a stopover before an escape.

  “You’ve got me on my knees, Nathan,” said Ransom, who’d remained on one knee, Tewes and Gabby holding onto him. “Win at all costs, even if you have to lie, cheat, steal, and protect Senator Chapman?” Ransom rose to his full height as he spoke until his eyes were level with Chief Kohler’s.

  “You brought this all on yourself Alastair.” Kohler tore Ransom’s gold shield from his disheveled clothing. “Consider yourself a citizen in need of a lawyer in the suspicious death of one Father Franklin Jurgen, and the questionable disappearance of one Waldo Denton.”

  “Father Jurgen?” asked Jane, her voice cracking.

  “We have solid evidence now that Ransom here castrated Father Jurgen, which led to his death by infectious complications.”

  “Murder? Murder of a priest? It’s a bogus charge!” Jane could not fathom it.

  “The only proof you have is the proof of lies,” added Ransom, nose-to-nose with Kohler now. “Fabricated lies that you may convince others of, but no thinking person, Nathan.”

  “We have your own snitch here, the veteran of the great war, Mr. Henry Bosch, confessing knowledge of the crime.”

  “A confession beaten from him by your thugs.”

  “And we have your associate, Mr. Philo Keane, making a statement as we speak.”

  “No doubt coerced!”

  “Regarding the day after, when you discussed the matter with him at a coffee shop, witnessed by O’Malley here!”

  Mike stood shaking his head. “I heard no such confession, ever.”

  Kohler was not slowed by this. “And…and we have a witness who places you at the scene, Alastair.”

  “A witness can’t exist to a crime that wasn’t committed.”

  Kohler smiled like a snake. “You know better than that, Alastair.”

  “All you have are lies and half-truths.” Ransom prayed the so-called witness was not Samuel.

  “Captain, take your prisoner into lockup!” ordered Kohler.

  “Hold on! Who’s your witness?” asked a commanding voice from back of the crowd. It was the lawyer, Malachi Q. McCumbler. “I have been retained to represent Inspector Ransom in this matter, and we expect that a list of his accusers be presented to us immediately.” McCumbler came to the forefront, a man without the slightest idea of fashion, his crookedly perched eyeglasses his trademark. He held a small box camera in hand. He took several photographic shots of Henry Bosch and Alastair in their current condition while Nathan Kohler and Ben Shorendorf looked on. While photographing, McCumbler said to Alastair, “Dr. Tewes retained me on your behalf the moment he learned of this series of unfortunate events.”

  “Called McCumbler when I learned what the tolling of the bells meant,” added Jane.

  Jane’s eyes met Alastair’s and the two exchanged a troubled, wane smile. Alastair wanted to explain in detail every minute of that night, and he began with, “I didn’t do what they say, Jane. I wanted to…came close to it, but—”

  “Not another word, Inspector,” ordered McCumbler. “If you wish to beat back these heinous charges against you, sir, from here out you speak only through me and only to me. Understood?”

  “Understood, but this frame-up is looking—”

  “Zip it, Inspector.”

  “Understood.” Ransom’s mind raced with all that he wanted to tell Jane and Gabby; he didn’t care what others thought, but he desperately needed these two to believe him.

  “Now go peacefully with Captain Shorendorf, Inspector,” finished McCumbler. “And I will be along shortly.”

  Alastair did so, but he yelled over his shoulder for Gabby and Jane to believe in him. “They’ll never prove these outlandish charges.”

  “Zip it!” shouted McCumbler as Shorendorf and his men escorted Alastair inside for booking and lockup.

  McCumbler proved true to his word. He was quickly inside after a few whispered words to Jane and Gabby. He now accompanied Ransom, step for step, through the process, and at one point he said in Alastair’s ear, “They have your friend, the photographer Keane, Ransom, and they’re taking his statement this moment. How much can it hurt us?”

  Ransom gritted his teeth. “As you might recall when I retained you to help him last spring, Philo doesn’t do well with pain and the sort of interrogation techniques that go on inside here.”

  “Yes, I recall, but we beat the ridiculous charge against him.”

  “Still, Philo might tell them anything if they sweat him long enough.”

  As Ransom was marched off to a cell, his mind played tiddledywinks with the dire and strained possibilities lying ahead.

  For a moment he heard Bosch’s words echoing inside his head. …reputation come back to haunt you…check-mate.

  CHAPTER 40

  Shortly, the efficient lawyer, McCumbler, had arranged for privacy with the most infamous client he’d ever represented aside from a certain private eye and once a certain senator. McCumbler came straight to the point, leaping right into this “unfortunate state of affairs,” as he called the circumstances Alastair found himself in: charged with murdering a priest and possibly a harmless hack driver at an earlier time.

  “I wish to God we could prove that Waldo Denton is alive and well and living someplace, so we might at least dispense with that charge.”

  “They’ve no proof I harmed a hair on his head.”

  “The fire chief, Stratemeyer, might say otherwise.” McCumbler pushed the witness list across the table at Ransom. Alastair read the names in solemnity:

  Father O’Bannion

  Frederick Hake

  Samuel O’Shea (not yet located)

  Philo Keane

  Henry Bosch

  Dr. Christian Fenger

  CFD Chief Harry Stratemeyer

  William Pinkerton

  CPD Chief Nathan Kohler

  “Just before you were arrested, I managed to get a name of my own,” said McCumbler with a grin, his thick glasses lifting with his cheeks.

  “Hold on…whataya mean before I was arrested?”

  “My services were drafted, sir, on the day before Father Jurgen died.”

  Ransom’s face pinched in confusion. “Who hired you? I was under the impression it was Dr. Tewes.” Jane Francis, he thought. “And that it was after my arrest.”

  “Dr. Tewes did approach me after your arrest, yes, but I was hired before then by someone else.”

  “Who retained you, sir? I have a right to know.”

  “Miss Gabrielle Tewes.”

  “Gabby indeed.” He thought about why Jane’s daughter would have hired McCumbler when she did. She’d anticipated his arrest for what’d happened to Jurgen. Gabby saw it coming. She had foresight. Else, she’d hired McCumbler to investigate him. God, how many people
were investigating him? “And so you’ve been investigating the death of Jurgen since Miss Tewes hired you, then?”

  “I have, sir, and I must say I was beginning to believe you guilty as sin until I came across a certain bit of evidence that might exonerate you, Inspector.”

  “The name you mentioned?”

  “Yes.”

  “Father Jurgen’s true killer?”

  “I wish, but nothing so dramatic. I don’t believe we can count on a confession from anyone else.”

  “Then who? What name is it?”

  “Norman Vincent Freemantle.”

  Ransom grimaced. The name meant nothing whatsoever to him. He could only stare at McCumbler’s glasses reflecting a gray haze about his wrinkled eyelids. “Do you know the man?”

  “I’ve known of him for years. He’s a personal secretary.”

  “That doesn’t help me, sir.”

  “Secretary to an old friend of yours, Inspector.”

  “Quit playing games, man!”

  “Normal Vincent Freemantle does the bidding of Senator Chapman.”

  The sudden silence in the bare lockup meeting room made Ransom’s ears ring. “Harold J. Chapman…the senator put up bail for a ghoulish killer?”

  “He did.”

  “But why?”

  “Perhaps the senator has a stake in this matter? And has all along?”

  “His secretary put up bail for—”

  “Freemantle used an alias to throw everyone off, but yes, he did.”

  “And someone tipped you off?” Ransom leaned in over the table, close to McCumbler’s face, studying his inscrutable features, wondering if the lawyer knew what he was talking about.

  “Some two persons tipped me off.”

  “Two? Then I have two—”

  “Witnesses for the defense, yes, but I fear one is a most unreliable sort. The sort who could get himself killed before a trial date is even set.”

  “Who is he?”

  “And a second fellow who is far more reliable a person, not likely to flee the jurisdiction or to get himself killed in a bar fight.”

  “Two men corroborating the evidence for our side? Who are they?”

  “Frederick Hake, who wants to see William Pinkerton’s reputation tarnished—rather obsessive about it, actually—and the other man—”

  “Pinkerton himself?”

  Malachi McCumbler smiled at Alastair’s beating him to it. “Clever of you, Inspector.”

  “And you, sir, are full of surprises. But hold on.” Alastair jabbed his index finger onto the paper lying between them. “Both these men, Hake and Pinkerton, are on the prosecution’s witness list.”

  “The one man secretly wishes to drag the other through the mud for his having fired him, while Pinkerton himself secretly held, ahhh…let us say genuine feelings for Ms. Hartigan.”

  “I knew there was fire there, but I thought him too entangled, shall we say, to pursue her killers to wherever the trail might lead.”

  “On that score, you were right, but he’s had time to have, shall we say, a change of heart.”

  “His word carries a lot of weight.”

  “Inspector, Pinkerton admires you. Apparently has for some time, but particularly for your bull terrier attitude in pursuing Nell’s killer, for pursuing those he has had a reluctance to pursue—for obvious reasons.”

  “Not so obvious to me.”

  “Chapman has been a Pinkerton client for decades.”

  “I still want to know why Bill Pinkerton has a sudden conscience.”

  “Let’s just say he does, and while the prosecution thinks him a star witness…well, he and I have other plans, as does Mr. Hake and I.”

  “Then you’ve discussed the coming testimony with both men?”

  “We’ve had separate conversations, yes.”

  “And you feel no compunction of setting these dogs against one another? No attorney-client privilege problems? All that?”

  “It doesn’t hold. They have not hired me. I am your client and yours alone in this matter.”

  “You’re a genius, McCumbler. You persuaded Pinkerton to go down this path, didn’t you?”

  The man frowned. “No, no, no. I’m just a prairie city lawyer with a passion for justice, and I’ve known you long enough to know you’ve been framed.”

  “Pinkerton didn’t hire you on my behalf?”

  “I told you. It was Miss Gabby Tewes.”

  “By way of Pinkerton?”

  “All right, all right, so what if Pinkerton put her up to it?”

  “I like to know where I stand, Malachi, and with whom.”

  “Why hell, Pinkerton knows that Nathan Kohler has been after your skin for how many years now?” He laughed loud and long. “Pinkerton and I would love to get Kohler and Chapman, and we think it’s time to blow the lid off their dirty secrets.”

  “You’ve never held any love for either man, have you?”

  “Together, Inspector, I believe one day you and I will prove it was a plan hatched by Chapman that convinced Kohler to throw that bomb at Haymarket Square.”

  Ransom thought of his scarred leg and the six police officers killed that day, and the execution of seven suspected anarchists. Kohler’s plan to stir up sentiment against the workers had backfired. The police had been sent in too soon by a Sergeant Ben Shorendorf.

  “How much do you know of it?” Alastair asked McCumbler.

  “I’ve done some digging, but that is for another time. Right now we concentrate on keeping you from the gallows.”

  “Deal…agreed.” It was the first glimmer of hope in learning the truth of Haymarket that Ransom had had in several years.

  “So it was through both Hake and Pinkerton that you learned of this man Freemantle?”

  “This is how I learned who bailed out Rolsky, yes.”

  “Pinkerton wanted a different outcome, apparently. What alias did Freemantle use?”

  “Frederick Hake, of course! Who ostensibly had been working for you, you see, at the time.”

  “Ahhh…I see, meant to be another nail in my coffin. What a tangled web, heh?”

  “Now you catch on. Quite a web of deceit. One that may unravel if and when we have an opportunity to cross-examine the state’s witnesses, and to examine the senator himself.”

  “That would be something. To see Chapman grilled under oath, not that he’d do anything but lie his heart out.” Ransom recalled how vicious Chapman had been toward those he suspected of murdering his granddaughter during the Leather Apron case. “The man is himself a multiple murderer. I’m duty bound to warn you, Malachi.”

  “To be forewarned is to be armed.”

  “McCumbler, do you know just how shark-infested these waters are?”

  “Take me through the shoals, Alastair.”

  Ransom recounted all he knew of Chapman’s heinous crimes and what he’d seen firsthand at the Chapman estate in Evanston, Illinois.

  Once he finished, the aged lawyer calmly said, “I represented the man in an action once. He is a frightening adversary, but if someone doesn’t nail him soon for one or more of his crimes, he’ll die quietly in his sleep at that bloody estate of his. I’d like to be the man who brings him down. How about you?”

  “And with him Nathan Kohler?”

  “Perhaps…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In proving your innocence, many another man will be looking guilty of collusion, Kohler included.”

  “Then let’s have at it.”

  “Easy, my friend. In legal matters, the tortoise wins the day.”

  Ransom nodded. “I place myself in your hands.”

  “Yes, one step at a time. No rock left unturned, all that. Now tell me, will you attest to everything you saw at the Chapman estate that day? And what about Jane Francis Tewes, since you say she was with you there?”

  Ransom recalled the man’s huge pigs that’d fed on the remains of the senator’s enemies—both real and imagined. After detailing every death on the senator’s es
tate that he knew of, with McCumbler taking notes, he balked at the lawyer’s question about Jane.

  “We must keep Jane out of this at all costs, Mr. McCumbler.”

  McCumbler looked up at Ransom and shook his head, hardly able to believe it. Still he said, “Truth…stranger than fiction. You and she are intimately involved, aren’t you?”

  “Keep her out of it.”

  “If it can be helped, of course.”

  “Promise you’ll keep Jane and Gabby Tewes off the stand at all cost.”

  “I’ll do all in my power.”

  “Either you do or I plead guilty.”

  The lawyer grimaced and gritted his teeth. “You tie my hands, Alastair, and—and we’ve not even got to court yet.”

  “The ladies’re to stay out of it and above the dirt, understood?”

  “But the ladies think they are paying my fee.”

  “Not any longer. Return any payment either has made you.”

  McCumbler shook his head, stood and paced. “All right, we have a deal.”

  “Now back on point. If Freemantle acted on Chapman’s behalf to get Rolsky out of lockup, and I presume out of the city…”

  “Then the senator has some connection with the medical people who hired the Rolsky brothers.”

  Ransom nodded, his smile wry. “And if so, little wonder Bill Pinkerton and Nathan Kohler did all they could to dissuade me from following up on Nell’s case, you see?”

  “I see. Indeed, I see.”

  “Nell was onto this same trail, perhaps tailing Rolsky when…and had she blown the case open…had it hit the Tribune’s pages, it would’ve indicted the senator.”

  “And possibly those who’d looked the other way.”

  “And no doubt Chapman’s a shareholder in a medical school.”

  “And I suspect it means a tidy sum. Look, Inspector, I’ve many leads yet to follow. I’ve learned that Senator Chapman is in fact a trustee of a school.”

  “Which school are you referring to?” Ransom thought of how Pinkerton had stirred him toward Insbruckton’s institute.

  “You know very well which school. The one Pinkerton did his best to stir you away from.”

  “The one supposedly has an agreement with Joliet Prison?”

  “Which I’ve learned via a phone call to Joliet is a lie. The so-called deal fell through.”