For Charlie Chaplin, Nothing Amiss with This Miss
The popular moving picture actor made a surprise appearance at Essanay Studios in Chicago, where he made a new friend. Pretty Miss Maria Walewski, twelve years old, is an aspiring thespian. “I hope Maria might work with me someday,” Chaplin said. She will make her first appearance in a new Sweedie comedy starring comic Wallace Beery.
Chaplin took another bite of toast, then carefully tore out the clipping and put it in his pocket, further proof of his success and also a souvenir of the pretty child. I hope Maria might work with me someday. He’d said no such thing, knowing it was an impossibility. But he was accustomed to reporters putting words in his mouth.
And it was a good sign that the photograph ran prominently on page 3. People were tired of bad news. His most popular moving picture for Essanay, The Tramp, had been released four months earlier and was still playing in motion-picture theaters and storefront nickelodeons alike, along with a few others that had appeared since then. The studio also had several films in the can lined up for release, but these would be his last with the studio. He was holding off on breaking that bit of news to Spoor and Anderson.
The train whistle blew as they barreled through another dusty town, half a dozen derelict buildings with horses in a paddock, dogs lolling in the street, a group of children who ran shouting and waving as the locomotive steamed by. A wooden structure with a sign above its door:
ALPINE THEATER
SHOWING THE CAPTIVE
Cecil DeMille’s five-reeler, released about a week after The Tramp, and a flop. Still, here it was, all these months later, in the middle of a desert. He drew his face closer to the window, to grin and wave at the running kids. Maybe one of them would recognize him.
Chapter 37
LIONEL HATED SUNDAYS. The studio was closed, and while he got along well enough with the folks he worked with, no one had ever invited him to a picnic or Sunday supper. They thought he was strange—no girl, those bizarre scenarios and photoplays he wrote—and they were right. Beery had been warned off the young girls he toyed with at Essanay, but if Lionel’s colleagues knew more about his own predilections, he’d be fired in a heartbeat, or arrested.
So Sundays presented themselves as a wasteland. He woke sick and shaken by his indulgences of the night before, exacerbated by constant fear that someday he’d be caught. He knew his taste in stories—his own and others’—stemmed from his tormented desires, phantasmagoric fruit from a tree with twisted roots. He should never have left his room yesterday. He should never have left New York.
St. Olaf’s church bells pealed as he lay in bed, sharpening his hangover to a spike driven through his skull. With a groan he stood, pulled on his robe, and paced the room, trying to ignore the disturbing images that fed his thoughts, even now that he was awake. After a few minutes, he sat at his desk and calmed himself by smoking a hashish cigarette. He waited for the heaviness to seep through his body, then read through what he had revised in his latest scenario, hoping to placate Spoor.
Stripped of blood and fire and secrets, the photoplay was dull as wet newsprint. Spoor was wrong. What was the point of a story, or a life, without shadows and unseen things?
He turned to gaze at his reflection in the mirror. Other than his red-rimmed eyes, no one would ever guess what he got up to when he was alone. He ran a hand across his stubbled cheek. Most barbershops closed on Sunday, but he knew of one on the fringes of Bronzeville that catered to men, white and colored, whose business or pleasure demanded they look sharp seven days a week. He dressed in his usual summer attire: white shirt, seersucker suit, red bow tie. He popped his boater on his head, grabbed his pencil and notebook, and went to catch the L to the South Side.
“Settle yourself,” the barber said as Lionel walked in. A figure swaddled in steaming towels sat in the chair in front of him. “Be ten minutes. Maybe twenty.”
The small shop was crowded with men reading newspapers. Lionel counted six, all colored, along with the man in the chair. He assumed he was a Negro as well. But when the barber removed the towels from the man’s head, he revealed a white man in early middle age. Lionel took a seat near an elderly man perusing the Police Gazette and opened a copy of the Chicago Defender. The barber dropped the used towels into a receptacle, picked up a china cup and bristle brush, and whipped the shaving soap into a froth.
“In a minute, nobody going to know you been up all night, Mr. Demarest,” he said. “I couldn’t do what you do. I need my beauty sleep.”
“Me too, Morris,” replied the white man in the chair. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his expression was grim. “But I get the call, I gotta take it.”
“Terrible thing, what a ugly thing. Young girl like that.” Morris shook his head and began covering the man’s face with lather. “They catch him yet?”
“Not sure. The captain at Robey Street station’s supposed to talk to us this morning. Someone on the Riverview force told me they’d taken a Negro man into custody.”
Every head turned. “Do you know who?” the barber asked.
“No.”
Lionel suspected Demarest was lying. The others must have as well: they continued to stare at the man in the chair. The barber set down the shaving mug and picked up a straight razor. Demarest frowned.
“How’d you hear about it, Morris? They held the morning edition. Commissioner’s on vacation, but he telephoned and we all have to hold the story till tonight. They don’t want a panic.”
“I got my ways,” Morris said evenly. “Black man I know on the force came in this morning, he said this was almost as bad as when the Eastland went down. ’Cause it was purposeful.”
“No doubt about that,” agreed Demarest. “I talked to a fellow works at Riverview, but he didn’t know anything. No one knows anything except a kid’s dead.”
Morris stropped the razor. “Park open today?”
Demarest nodded, and the old man next to Lionel snorted in disgust. “Baumgarten don’t want to lose any revenue,” he said to a rumble of approval.
“Opening the park and holding the story just means we’ll sell out the evening paper in a hot minute,” said Demarest. “Bet they see a lot of ticket sales for that ride.”
Morris shook his head. “People are ugly. Now you turn to me just a little, Mr. Demarest, that’s it…”
Lionel pretended to read his newspaper until it was his turn in the barber chair. No one mentioned what had happened at Riverview again.
Chapter 38
SUNDAY WAS ALWAYS the busiest day at the park. Today there were cops everywhere, both Riverview’s and the city’s, acting as though this was an ordinary Sunday, and they all just happened to drop by for fun.
Pin didn’t want to run into any more goddamn cops. She wandered along the Pike in the direction of Fairyland, scowling as she dodged in and out of the crowd. She seldom made deliveries on the weekend, except occasionally to students. And Lionel, of course. Still, Max sometimes showed up on Sunday mornings, and there was always the chance he might have work for her. She kicked at spent cigars and paper cones sticky with pink threads of spun sugar, halting when she reached the tent with its lurid banner and hand-lettered sign warning away women and children.
She pulled aside the canvas flap and peered inside. No Max. Something lay on the flattened grass near the entrance, a snakelike twist of red. A neckerchief, the kind worn by the Sicilian men who lived in Little Hell. She picked it up, considered keeping it, then threw it aside. It was risky enough to disguise herself as a boy: she’d be tempting fate if she marked herself as one who might be involved with the Black Hand.
She turned and walked the few steps to Max’s shack, knocked on the door, and listened. “Max?”
There was no answer. She tried the doorknob. To her surprise, it turned. She cracked the door and peered inside, calling out again. Still no answer, and no sign of Max.
She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She knew this was risky—if Max
found her, he’d knock her across the room. But since finding the dead girl yesterday, she felt at once more wary and more reckless. She’d seen the worst that could happen to a girl, not once but twice: first her sister, now that dead kid in Hell Gate. But Pin herself was safe. Still, she tiptoed to the shelf where she’d left the French postcards the day before, picked them up, and shuffled through them.
None of the girls were as pretty as Glory. They all looked like they belonged in Armstrong’s Freak Show. She set the postcards aside, turned to glance at Max’s makeup table, the pots of cold cream and rouge, brushes and bottles of spirit gum arrayed haphazardly alongside the mirror, ashtrays and empty Helmar cigarette packets. A twist of brown hair lay beside a comb: a mustache, waxed and ready to be snipped in two to adorn half of the She-Male’s face. She picked it up, pressed it against her upper lip, and stooped so she could see herself in the mirror.
“Ugh,” she said aloud. With a grimace she replaced the mustache. Being a boy meant freedom; being a man meant joining an army of monsters and dingbats. She crossed quickly back to the door and left.
She walked toward the knoll where she’d seen Henry the day before. He might be a dingbat, but he was the only person who’d believed what she said about the girl in the tunnel. Didn’t just believe it: like her, he’d seen it.
The thought made her feel odd. The two of them were strangers, but they shared a secret. She had never shared a secret with anyone, except for her mother.
But that was a secret about herself, inside herself. This was a secret outside herself: it made her feel bigger, not smaller.
She walked to the top of the knoll, yanked off her cap. Up here the air didn’t torment her with the smells of sausages and frying potatoes and hot taffy. It smelled of sweet grass and leaves, dirt and clouds. She took off her socks and boots, luxuriating in the slippery feel of the long grass against her bare feet, then raised her arms, and for a moment it was as if she were flying.
She thought of Harriet Quimby flying over the English Channel and wondered if she’d felt like this. The world seemed to hold a mystery: Sometimes Pin thought it might be her sister, Abriana, in some far-off place never to be found but alive. Sometimes the mystery was inside her, a sensation as though her heart might explode with joy. Sometimes it moved through Glory, the way she laughed or leaned against the wall in the costume room. And sometimes she glimpsed it at the studio, in the machines that transformed drab brown ribbon into living things.
“Pin Drop.”
She turned. Henry stood there, staring at her, but quickly angled his head so that she couldn’t catch his gaze. He wore the same clothes as yesterday—too-big dark jacket, pants rolled at the ankle—but a different hat, a cap like her own.
“Did you find the girl?” he asked, and at Pin’s nod his eyes widened. “You saved her.”
“No. She was dead. I found her in Hell Gate.”
“Hate Hell Gate.” Henry knelt on the grass and started to pull it up. “Flyweight.”
He didn’t ask, but she told him everything. He listened intently and gave her the side-eye, as though it hurt to look at her head-on.
“I told them I talked to you, and they said maybe the girl was kidnapped and her family hired you to find her. You and that fella Willhie you talked about. The Gemini. Did someone hire you to find her?”
Henry’s brow furrowed. “Yes, they did.” He spoke slowly, as though he’d had to think about it first. “Her mother and father hired us to find her.”
“Well, why in hell didn’t you tell me?”
Henry’s face grew red. He clawed at the grass, throwing up handfuls. “Because it’s a secret!” he bellowed, and stumbled to his feet. “A secret, it’s a goddamned secret!”
Pin backed away as Henry shouted words she couldn’t understand—German or maybe just gibberish. He didn’t look like a detective: he looked like Morga the Deranged, the gaffed freak who only pretended to be crazy, though Morga really did eat glass.
“You’re not a detective,” she sneered. “You’re a damn liar. A goddamned liar.”
“Cursing’s a sin!”
“So’s lying! If you were a real detective, you would have saved her.”
Henry opened his mouth and shut it again. The crazy light in his blue eyes dimmed.
“You’re right.” His guttural voice broke. He let a fistful of grass trickle between his fingers to the ground. “But I am too a detective.”
Pin waited to see if he’d start shouting again. If he did, she’d leave and forget she ever saw him. She held her breath, counting to ten. Without a word, he pulled out his cardboard wallet, removed the Gemini card, and stared at it as though he’d never seen it before.
“We should find him,” she said at last. “The killer. You and me. I bet we’d get a reward. They arrested Clyde, the Negro magician—they’ll execute him if we don’t find the guy who really did it.”
Henry shook his head and stuffed the card back into his wallet. He started to breathe loudly through his nose, like he was going to begin shouting again. “They enslaved the Negroes. Now they are making slaves of children. This evil murderer is one of their generals.”
Pin made a face. “How could a general go into Hell Gate without anyone noticing? He’d be in uniform.”
“You don’t need special clothes to be a general. I was a general. Before I was a detective,” he added quickly. “And an evil general would be wearing different clothes.”
“He wasn’t a general!” Pin gestured impatiently at the park below them. “He’s probably down there right now.”
Henry’s eyes widened. “Then we should watch the Infant Incubators! A stake out. When you wait for a criminal.”
“I know what a stake out is.” Pin sighed. “Let’s go. You have grass on your head.”
“Grass, jackass.”
As they trudged down the hill, she asked, “Where do you live?”
“By the hospital, but just a little. St. Joseph’s. I work there.”
She nodded, only half listening. When they reached the Pike, she scanned the ground, looking for loose coins. No luck, but over by the incubators someone had left most of a wienie in a bun on a bench. Pin snatched it up.
Still warm. She took a bite and held it out to Henry, was relieved when he refused to touch it. She finished the wienie, wiped her hands on her knickerbockers, and noticed that Henry had already moved on.
He’d wandered off to stand behind a tree, half hidden so he couldn’t be seen as he stared at the little girls waiting in line for the Infant Incubators. Even from here she could see him quivering, the way that greyhounds did before they were released.
A sick taste filled her mouth. She thought of the man settling into the boat at Hell Gate, the way the girl in the yellow dress had slipped into his lap, how he’d stroked her hair ribbon. Pin watched as Henry leaned forward and his hands moved, not as though he were throwing a ball but like he held something, something he twisted as his mouth silently opened and closed, while a few yards away the children scampered back and forth, laughing in the sunlight.
Chapter 39
HE WALKED THE few blocks to the nearest L stop and caught a train destined for the Loop. He hopped off at a busy part of Lincoln Park. He’d steeled himself to hear newsboys shouting about the murder, but their singsong was all about the hurricane that had destroyed Galveston and a German ship sunk by an English submarine.
He bought the papers, and it was the same. Not a word about the Riverview murder. He felt more disconcerted than relieved. Surely someone would have found the body by now?
He tucked the papers under his arm and walked across Stanton Park, strolled along the sidewalk until he saw a druggist’s shop. Most shops closed on Sunday. But, judging by the A-K TABLETS sign propped prominently in front, this one was open.
He felt in his pocket for the gold ring that long ago had belonged to his wife and slid it onto the ring finger of his left hand. He entered the shop, removing his hat with a practiced, weary smile. B
ehind the counter, an elderly man in a white jacket glanced up.
“What can I do for you, sir?” he asked, with a nod at the open door. “Going to be a scorcher.”
“So I hear.” He made a show of yawning, covered his mouth so the gold ring caught the sunlight. “Do you carry Sydenham’s syrup? My wife’s been up all night. The little stranger’s teething.”
The druggist nodded. “Looks like you kept her company. No fun, no fun at all. Let me see…”
He examined the shelves behind him, frowning. “I know we had Sydenham’s, but I believe I sold the last of it. No, none left. I do have this…”
He turned and held up a bottle of Dr. James Soothing Cordial. “Purer than that other stuff—it’s made with heroin.”
He took the bottle from the druggist and gave it a cursory examination, gingerly stroking his mustache. “Thank you,” he said. “This will do just fine. Since you recommend it, could I have another bottle, please?”
“Of course.” The druggist retrieved a second bottle. “I used to sell a great deal of this, until the government got involved. Hard to find it these days. It’s a shame—babies still cry, don’t they? This is my last bottle. Will there be anything else?”
“Yes, please—some lemon drops. Two tins.”
He’d lost count of how often he’d had a transaction like this one, but every time it made him break out in a cold sweat. The druggist placed his purchases in a paper sack and handed it to him with a smile. “A nice day for a stroll along the lake with the missus and little one.”
Anxious to be gone, he dropped a few coins on the counter and grabbed the items. “What a fine idea. Thank you again.”
He hurried back out onto the sidewalk and walked to the end of the block, caught a streetcar, and went to a Weeghman’s for breakfast. Coffee, bratwurst, fried eggs. He found it difficult to concentrate. When he finished eating, he felt slightly ill. He considered returning to the druggist’s to buy some aspirin.
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