Sighing, Pin turned and walked back toward Hell Gate. She’d borrow that magazine from Larry and go find a quiet place to read. As she drew near the pavilion, she glanced reflexively up at the knoll where she’d sat earlier.
Someone stood there, watching her. A man, short, wearing a boater, his head tilted to one side. Was he really looking at her? After a moment he raised his hand, like a cigar-store Indian. Pin looked over her shoulder but saw no one. Tentatively she raised her hand, squinting to get a better look.
Now she recognized him: the dingbatty little guy she’d seen at the Infant Incubators that morning, with his straw boater and mustache that looked like it’d been stuck on with spit. Did the man at Hell Gate with the girl have a mustache? She couldn’t remember.
Then he was pointing to a grassy spot a short distance from the Pike, protected from view by a stand of poplars. He nodded at her, turned, and hurried down the little knoll toward the grass. Pin hesitated, then ran to meet him.
Chapter 20
HE LOOKED LIKE Charlie Chaplin. Not the handsome actor she’d glimpsed at Essanay but the Tramp, the weird little fellow Chaplin played in the movies. Though this man wore a boater, not a bowler. Apart from his straw hat, his clothes were all blue. Indigo pants, a heavy cambric work shirt, canvas jacket, everything well worn. A grimy bow tie. He’d wrapped twine around one battered shoe, tying it in a filthy knot. He had very pale, round blue eyes—bug eyes—and ruddy skin. His ears stuck out. He was even shorter than she’d first thought, not much over five feet. Barely taller than she was. She could knock him down, easy.
She waited for him to speak; he looked away uneasily, his gaze sliding sideways. She continued to stare at him, but still he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Annoyed, she finally demanded, “What do you want?”
“She’s gone.” He still wouldn’t look at her.
“Who?” He moved his hand, drawing a strange pattern in the air, and Pin felt her neck prickle. “You mean the girl?”
He nodded, gaze fixed on the Hell Gate pavilion. Pin expected him to go on, but he said nothing. Maybe he wasn’t just dingbatty but a moron.
Or perhaps he’d been the man who’d taken the girl into Hell Gate. She stared at his hands, which were big, the skin chapped raw, the fingernails broken and dirty. He smelled strongly of sweat and Bon Ami soap. She tried to determine if there were any bloodstains on his cuffs, but the blue fabric was too dark.
It could be him.
She took a deep breath. “At Hell Gate. There was a girl, I saw a girl go in with…someone. A man,” she added, watching to see how he reacted.
And yes, one of his eyelids fluttered. He blinked rapidly before nodding. “I saw her, too.”
He grunted, like he was imitating a frog. He was much younger than she’d first thought: not more than twenty-two or twenty-three. The scruffy mustache was to make him appear older, but close up it had the opposite effect. He seemed unaware of how odd he appeared: flapping his hand in the air, making those weird noises.
Was he a jackroller? She glanced down to see if he had a blackjack in his pocket. He lifted his head and, for the first time, met her gaze.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said.
She edged backward as he slid his hand into a pocket. But instead of a knife or a blackjack, he withdrew a handmade cardboard wallet, bound with more twine. He opened it with great care and sorted through a wad of news clippings, cigarette cards, scraps of dirty paper. At last he pulled out a small card and handed it to her:
GEMINI CHILD PROTECTIVE SOCIETY
BLACK BROTHERS LODGE
HENRICO DARGERO, PRES.
She read it, puzzled. “Gemini? Are you with the freak show?”
“No!” The man shouted so loudly that she jumped. “Are you an idiot?”
He tried to snatch the card back, but she yanked her hand away. “Henrico Dargero? That’s you?”
“It is.” Hearing the name seemed to calm him. He nodded solemnly. “I am from Brazil.”
“Brazil?” She shot him a doubtful look. The words on the card looked like they’d first been written in pencil, then traced in black ink. “You a detective?”
He nodded. “We keep them safe. Girls. Curls. Because.”
“‘We’?”
“Me and Willhie. Silly.”
“Who’s Willhie?”
“My friend the night watchman. He’s gone to Decatur. Later.”
She recalled the tall man she often saw with him, the other half of Mutt and Jeff. She glanced at the card again. Gemini Child Protective Society. “Is your name really Henrico?”
He scowled and murmured something she could barely hear. It sounded like Henry.
“Who are you?” he demanded, as though it had been her idea to meet, and not his.
She hesitated. “Pin.”
“Pin?” Henry laughed in disbelief. His deep voice grew shrill as a woman’s. “Pinprick? Pinhead? Pinhole? Pin—”
“Just Pin,” she snapped. “So you and this night watchman—you’re the Gemini? And you find them? Missing kids?”
“Yes. Did you see where he took her?” She shook her head. “Are you sure?”
She shrugged. “I guess. I looked around afterward, but I didn’t see her anywhere. Or him. Did you?”
“No.” He seemed disappointed, like he regretted having signaled her to join him. “I need to go.”
He gestured at the card. Reluctantly, she returned it, and he slid it back into the cardboard wallet. He didn’t notice as a scrap of newspaper fell to the ground.
“Do you ever find them?” she asked. “The missing children? “My sister—”
Henry raised a finger to his lips, turned, and broke into a shambling run, his head jerking back and forth as though arguing with someone. When he’d disappeared into the crowd, Pin stooped to retrieve the scrap of newspaper that had fallen from his wallet. One side was an advertisement for Cream of Wheat. The other was an article about Iolanda Vasilescu, an eleven-year-old Gypsy girl who’d gone missing a year ago:
When she did not return from the washhouse where she worked, her mother contacted the police. Members of the Gypsy camp immediately began to search for the girl. Iolanda’s father, Constantine Vasilescu, berated the police captain, who accused the Gypsies of kidnapping the child and did not organize a police search for two days…
Pin’s stomach clenched. She remembered this. The girl had been only a year older than her sister. And, like Abriana, she’d never been found.
Chapter 21
FRANCIS HAD NO luck tracking the pickpocket at the Infant Incubators. No one working there recalled seeing anyone suspicious, except for that same queer little man who was there a few times a week. Francis knew him by sight—shabby and probably touched in the head, always talking to himself. Sometimes he was with another man, tall and gangly as a scarecrow. One of the nurses thought the two guys might be chesters, the way they watched the children in the park. But you couldn’t haul off a guy for looking, and anytime the little man saw Francis coming, he took off.
Francis returned to the station house and spoke to the lady who’d lost her reticule. She was obstreperous and middle-aged—he pegged her for a suffragist.
“I don’t know what you’re getting paid for, if you can’t find a common criminal,” she exclaimed, smoothing her expensive skirts as she stood. “I’m going to write Mr. Baumgarten a letter of complaint.” Karl Baumgarten was the amusement park’s owner.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Francis replied, and steered her toward the station-house door. “He’ll be very interested in what you have to say, I’m sure.”
He returned to his rounds, keeping an eye out for trouble. There were seven midways at Riverview, all linked by the Pike, and almost a hundred concessions, nearly every one rigged. You’d think people would know better by now, yet fights still broke out when men realized they’d been taken. But today it was too hot for fighting in the late-afternoon heat, and too early for the serious drunks to emerge from the bee
r garden or Woodland Cabaret.
Sunset found him by Hell Gate. Not many people in line, so he took advantage of the lull to stand in the shade of a pin oak and remove his helmet. He looked around absently—balloon man, hokeypokey cart, lots of high-school kids. No sign of that hooligan Mugsy, who’d end up in prison if he didn’t find a job in the stockyards once summer ended.
He set his helmet back on his head and headed for the path that led to the adult attractions—Salome’s tent, the She-Male, the Woodland Cabaret, the booth that specialized in art postcards. Past a grassy clearing, the path forked. To the right, you’d end up in Fairyland, the woods frequented by picnickers and trysting couples.
Two small figures stood in the clearing. Francis shaded his eyes and squinted to make them out: here was the strange little man who hung around the incubators, standing beside the Gypsy fortune-teller’s kid, Pin. Skinny as a rail, he looked like he hadn’t had a meal since Christmas. Francis had heard that he worked as an errand boy for Max, but he’d never known the kid to get into any serious trouble. His mother was skinny, too, but pretty, olive skinned and dark haired. She also worked as a dance teacher at the park; Francis had gone to the ballroom one night in hopes of dancing with her, but she already had a knot of men waiting by her table. She looked barely old enough to have a kid Pin’s age.
Francis waited to see if the weird fellow laid a hand on the boy. But they seemed to be merely talking. Then the man handed something to the kid. Dope? That could explain why the man behaved like a lunatic. They talked for a few more minutes, the kid handed whatever it was back to the little man, and they went their separate ways.
Francis frowned. What had been exchanged? If it really was dope, the boy was smart enough not to hang on to it. Still, Francis could think of other things that might be almost as dangerous to a kid—money, dirty pictures, a deck of poker cards.
And chesters didn’t prey just on young girls. Last year there’d been a notorious string of murders in Wisconsin, four boys gutted like fish at a remote hunting camp. Francis watched as the little man made his way along the Pike, feinting at unseen attackers. Few men acted furtive without a reason—Francis knew that from his days at Robey Street—but such men were clever. Apprehending them was like engaging in a game of poker where bodies could be cast aside, rather than cards.
He recalled the gun he’d had to turn in when he was fired from the department, and the one that had taken its place, bought for seventeen dollars from a pawnbroker and hidden in his bureau back at Mrs. Dahl’s boardinghouse. He’d no cause to carry it with him here at Riverview. That was about to change.
Chapter 22
AT A WIENIE stand, Pin bought a frankfurter loaded with sauerkraut, sat on a bench, and ate while she brooded.
If that dingbat Henry hadn’t confirmed what she saw, Pin could almost have convinced herself that she hadn’t actually glimpsed the girl from Essanay enter Hell Gate. Or that she might have seen a different girl, and misremembered what she looked like, and the man with her. Thousands of girls crowded Riverview every day, most with their families or girlfriends. They didn’t roam freely the way that boys did. A girl on her own was likely a lost girl, one who could fall prey to the mashers who lurked around the park, especially in the late afternoon.
Yet the girl in yellow hadn’t been on her own. That man didn’t appear old enough to be her father, but he could have been her brother. Maybe she’d left the studio and come to the park to meet him.
Had she then gotten lost in the dark ride? But a lost kid would be brought to the park’s police station and kept there until her parents came to claim her. A brass bell outside the building was rung only when a child was lost, or found. In the hours since she’d seen the girl enter Hell Gate, Pin hadn’t once heard the bell.
She wondered if Clyde might have been working Hell Gate that afternoon—he often filled in as Satan. With four kids and an adult son attending Wilberforce University, he needed the extra cash.
She followed the Pike toward the Ten-in-One and saw Bernie the watermelon man. He had no customers, so she sidled up to him and asked, “Hey Bernie, you hear of anyone looking for a lost kid?”
“People’s always looking for a lost kid.” Bernie turned to yell at a middle-aged woman and her husband, “Good evening, madam! Sir! Ice-cold watermelon, right here!”
In the distance, the giant cuckoo clock began to chime. Seven o’clock. It had been around four when the girl and man entered the dark ride. Clyde’s first performance was always at eight sharp—unlike Max, Clyde never missed a show due to drink or anything else.
The clock’s last chime faded. From somewhere far away came the strains of a barrel organ, “After the Ball.” Pin’s mouth went dry. She fought a wave of nausea and hurried toward the building that housed the Ten-in-One shows.
Chapter 23
IT WAS DARK when he arrived back at the Workingmen’s House. He trudged upstairs to the third floor, then down the long corridor to his room. His nostrils burned as he inhaled the scent of the same lye cleanser he used to mop the hospital floors. For the last few years, he’d lived here. Before that, save for a few stints at the Cook County Insane Asylum, he’d spent much of his life at the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children in Lincoln.
But he wasn’t feebleminded or insane. Pinhead had thought so; he could tell by the way the boy had stared at him.
DON’T YOU LOOK AT ME I TOLD YOU NOT TO WATCH
And he’d shown Pin the Gemini card! He’d thought he would understand! The others were fools, no one knew how powerful Henry was, how he’d saved all those children.
DON’T YOU LIE I SAW YOU I KNOW EVERYONE KNOWS
He’d seen him before, Pinhead. He knew the boy watched him. And he didn’t behave like the other boys he ran with. Pinhead paid too much attention to how they acted, like he was looking for clues. He watched them the way Henry watched little girls.
Henry loved children. Yet as a boy he’d hated small girls, especially babies! When he was four, his mother died while giving birth to his sister. He never knew what happened to the baby.
YOU KILLED HER NO I GAVE HER AWAY NO I DIDN’T SHE RAN AWAY NO SHE DIDN’T DON’T YOU LIE TO ME I SAW HER FOLLOWING YOU THEY STOLE HER I SAW WHAT YOU DID I SAW WHAT YOU DID I SAW SHE WAS JUST A LITTLE BABY I SAVED HER
He’d spent the last nineteen years imagining her face in that of every pretty child he saw.
Other children were afraid of him. In the classroom he twitched and made frog noises and invented rhymes, trying to be funny so the other children would like him. He pretended to throw things, snowballs and baseballs that no one could see. Sometimes he forgot he was pretending. His classmates yelled when they saw him coming.
“Crazy Daisy, Crazy Daisy!”
He’d chase them, throwing real rocks or brandishing the long-bladed knife he kept hidden in a pocket of his dungarees. He skipped school, roaming the streets on his own. He started fires in vacant buildings just to watch them burn.
Finally, when he was twelve, his father had him committed to the Lincoln asylum.
He ran away repeatedly but only escaped for good when he was seventeen. He walked one hundred and sixty-five miles back to Chicago, where his aunt and uncle took him in for a few weeks. His godmother got him the janitor job at St. Joseph’s Hospital, mopping floors, cleaning sinks and toilets, emptying pails full of blood-soaked bandages and bits of skin. Every morning, he’d start in the basement and work his way to the top floor. Most days no one spoke to him at all. Not one word.
DON’T YOU LOOK AT ME WAS I TALKING TO YOU COME HERE NOW I’LL BEAT YOU BLACK AND BLUE
There was an elevator at the hospital, but he was forbidden to use it. So he lugged the heavy metal bucket and wringer and a rope mop taller than he was up and down eight flights of stairs. He emptied filthy water in the utility sink on each floor, filling the bucket again on the next. The lye soap burned the skin on his hands until his knuckles bled. At night he’d toss and turn on his thin mattress, strugglin
g to sleep because of the pain in his back and shoulders.
Only Sister Dymphna ever showed him any kindness. An obese woman with a feathery birthmark on one cheek, she was named for Saint Dymphna, virgin martyr and patron of the insane. Sister Dymphna had given Henry a scapular of her namesake. The holy card showed a dainty red-haired girl with a halo. A bloody line indicated where her head had been cut off, then miraculously reattached, as if with red thread. Henry wore the scapular beneath his undershirt, even when he was asleep.
Inside, his room was small and hot as a bakery. A large crucifix on the wall, a single narrow iron bedstead, a small wooden desk and chair. The only window was narrow and overlooked an air shaft. An electrical bulb hung from the ceiling, but it was too bright; it hurt his eyes. He stepped to his desk, opened the drawer, and removed a handwritten manuscript bound in string. He’d salvaged the yellow paper from trash bins on the third floor, where the doctors had their offices.
PUT THAT BACK I TOLD YOU NEVER TO TOUCH THEM I DIDN’T TOUCH HER I SAVED HER DIDN’T I SAW YOU YOU LITTLE BASTARD
He clutched the manuscript to his chest and kicked out at the bad men until they disappeared. Panting, he sat at his desk, set down the manuscript. He waited until he was calm, waited for calm to bloom into anticipation, then expectation. The dim room seemed to brighten as he gazed at the stack of pages, each one a door poised to open.
HERE WE ARE! HERE WE ARE WAITING HERE WE ARE WE WAITED JUST LIKE WE PROMISED!
His breath quickened, no longer anxiety but eagerness. Brave girls, brave General Dargero! He would save them as he always did!
He leaned over the table. His outstretched hands hovered a few inches above the manuscript, the way he’d seen the colored magician conjure white doves from a brick at the freak show. He’d written the title in meticulous block letters, using a thick pencil he’d pilfered from a nurse’s desk:
Curious Toys Page 5