City for Ransom (16 page)

“It'd be behind Father's back.”

A way to get back at Tewes,
Ransom thought. “Ahhh…once you've established yourself with Dr. Fenger, how can your father balk? No one has a greater reputation as a surgeon.”
Complicate Tewes's blackmailing effort.

“I'll visit him at his office tomorrow!”

“You'll never catch him in an office. Does everything afoot. Go by County Hospital at exactly ten
A.M
. He'll be there. Tell him two things.”

“Yes?”

“That Inspector Ransom sent you, and that your father is Dr. Tewes.”

“But with my father's reputation as a mentalist, Dr. Fenger'll toss me out.”

“Not so. Your father enjoys a good relationship with Dr. Fenger,” he lied, “and I am sure that if Christian finds you as determined a pupil as you seem, why then he'll side with you.”

“Imagine it…Dr. Christian Fenger in my corner.”

“Stranger things've happened.”

She looked at the prone figure of Tewes, who was out and had no need of water or coffee.

“Will you have more coffee and stay longer, to tell me harrowing tales of cases you've worked on, Inspector?”

“It grows late, and I fear we'll wake your aunt.”

“Oh,
poooh
on her! She sleeps like a stone a way off in the other part of the house. You must tell me of your cases!”

“Really, it is late.”

“But the coffee, and I made cookies earlier.”

“Hmmm…you can be persuasive, young lady.”

“Then you'll stay awhile?”

“One cup of coffee, two cookies—”

“And three lurid tales?”

“Let's make it my
most
lurid case.”

Fire alarms from several directions sounded a
distress that would wake the entire city. Still, Ransom ignored the Chicago Fire Department at work in the black of night, instead launching into the story of how he'd almost single-handedly caught Morgan Nels and his equally deadly wife, Nellie “the Hawk” Nels, a twosome who'd begun as flamboyant con artists, but had graduated to murder when a con went bad. “Found contract killing far more to their liking—faster results—so they embarked on a career as a tag team.”

He was in midsentence when the phone rattled to life in the other room.

“You have a telephone?” he asked.

“We do. It's needed in a medical practice.”

“A most helpful new tool for the police as well.”

“So I've read.”

“Read?”

“I know a young policeman who sneaks the police news to me whenever he can.”

“I see…the
Police Gazette.
”

“I love it.”

“You really do have the blue bug then, don't you?”

“Is that what they call it?”

The phone continued to ring. “I'd best get going,” he said.

“But you didn't finish. How precisely did the Nels do their murdering?”

“I suspect you've already read of the case.”

“I have, but to have you, the man who brought them to justice to tell it…this is such an…an honor.”

Am I blushing
, he wondered.

“I did some checking up on you; learned a lot about you, Inspector, and I'm not ashamed to say it, but”—she had begun a blush now—“I so admire you, sir.”

“Why thank you.”

“So few people…so few men could possibly be as brave as you.”

He swallowed hard at this. “I cannot remember a time when anyone has said as much to me. I don't know what to say, except…well…thank you, Miss Tewes.”

“Gabrielle or Gabby…you must call me Gabby, yes.”

“All right, Gabby. I take it as an honor.”

“But for now…we must keep our alliance between us. Should Father learn, he'd scalp me, and most certainly send me to convent.”

“Really?”

“He says you're not to be trusted, that you're a scoundrel, and that he suspects you have, on occasion, crippled or killed men to make them talk.”

“I had no idea he held so high an opinion of—”

“Is it true?”

“True enough.”

“I'm not sure I believe either of you.” She threw one of her cookies at him, making him laugh.

The sound of sirens continued closer now
. The phone had stopped rending apart Ransom's head, but it'd left a throbbing. His contorted features telegraphed the depth of pain he entertained.

“Are you all right, Inspector?” she asked.

“Have this headache, you see. Should be off to bed.”

“You ought to've had Father diagnose your problem 'stead of spending the evening drinking, the two of you.”

“So right.” He stood to leave.

“I suspect the headache is the tip of the iceberg,” she hazarded a guess.

“You're going to make a fine doctor.”

She escorted him to the front door. A red glow against the sky in the distance made them both stare in wonderment.

“Whataya suppose?” she began. “Fireworks at the fair?”

“Another fire. They break out routinely. So many of the original homes built substandard before the new laws were enacted, and when they go up in flame, well the way they are atop one another over there on Broadway, Clark, the Lincoln Park area…” he paused, giving a thought to Merielle. She lived in the area in question.

“Can you imagine someone calling here at this hour?” she asked.

He banged the floor with his cane. “By my word, perhaps the doctor is being called to assist at the fire?”

“I think not, but who knows.”

“If it should ring again, answer it. If they need him, get that coffee into him and get him there.”

“Are you going to see the fire? Would you take me with you?”

“No,” he lied and grimaced. He did indeed mean to determine its origin and extent, but he certainly did not want her on his arm at the scene of a fire.

“You really should take care of your health, sir, that headache.”

“I've tried all cures.”

She nodded. “All but my father's. Come by for it. He does good work, despite what people think.”

“If it'll afford me the pleasure of your company, Gabrielle, then I may just do that.”

Ransom said good night, his body silhouetted against the red sky. She called out as he grabbed a passing cab, “Do take better care of yourself, Inspector. Chicago needs men like you! Many more I'm afraid.”

“Make for the fire, my good man!” he shouted to the cab
bie as he boarded. Out one cab window, he saw Gabby waving him off; out the other, he saw an oddly shaped black plume of choking smoke rising over Chicago. He cursed the fool who'd fallen asleep over his stogie, or the overturned lamp, or the careless fellow with one of those newfangled gas stoves kicked over at the foot of a bed.

 

The devastating fire reached beyond the London Royale Arms Tavern, threatening to destroy other tenement houses around it. Most builders at this time, having learned the lessons of the Great Fire of '71, used brick and mortar and the new concrete, especially in high-rent districts and for the high-rise structures of Michigan Avenue and other downtown locations. In such places, the city upheld new fire standards, but here on Clark new construction followed old paths: payoffs and graft to aldermen and building inspectors allowed substandard housing to again flourish.

After the debacle of flame that leveled Chicago, headlines had read:

 

FIRE DEVASTATES CHICAGO…

CITY TO NEVER RECOVER…

GREAT LOSS OF LIFE AND PROPERTY…

END OF GREAT RAIL HUB!

GONE THE WAY OF ASH…

 

Such headlines abounded in the few newspapers whose presses the Great Fire hadn't silenced. People who'd lived through the fire in '71 now stood in shock and fear at the sight of
any
conflagration that even appeared to have the possibility of becoming the next Great Fire. Tonight's inferno looked far too familiar; older citizens standing and watching the rain of ash and cinder trembled at the prospects while blood orange, red, and blue flames licked at all surrounding structures. Nearby trees and fences ignited. Was
1893 to be the next year of the failure of the Chicago Fire Department?

As Ransom's cab neared, all about the street, people ran shouting and pointing and trying to steer clear of the hooves of racing horses pulling the latest in fire fighting equipment—which remained inadequate to the task. Antiquated equipment, too little, too late. The images and sights and sounds of the fire numbered so many, no one could see or hear them all: multiple fire wagons descending on the scene from three directions. Firemen appeared in chaos, hauling out axes, picks, hoses, buckets. Some worked the hoses, others the ladders. It took some to quell the terrified horses that'd supposedly been trained for fire emergencies.

Ransom felt a stomach gnawing sense of a losing battle. No lessons whatsoever learned since '71 save those of graft and fraud and phony land speculation. When it'd come time for the displaced families of the Great Chicago Fire to collect on all those many “church” and benevolent society funds, there were no funds. They'd all been systematically disposed of by the shrewd promoters who'd thought up these fine-sounding benevolent “societies.” The funds had gone into the purchase of ash-strewn downtown lots on streets of loss, where nothing but a lone charred and blackened water tower and firehouse made of native limestone sat forlornly at the end of Michigan Avenue. A boon and a lure as it happened for those with deep pockets. Men with both vision and selfishness in mind, greed and glory all balled up in one idea of a phoenix rising from the ashes, making the Gem of the Prairie shine again. But tonight only one thing mattered to the firemen whose very skin was seared and scorched and blackened by the fire at hand.
Save the block
…lose the whole tavern and entire building, the outbuildings, possibly the building to the immediate right and left, but stop it here and with no more loss of life than might already have occurred. An entire heavy oak bureau drawer with mirror, and a four-poster bed, mattress and springs had fallen through
with fire-blackened flooring. The cross beams held longer, but as more and more became compromised these heavy beams—forming the crisscross support that made up the second floor—tore away in groaning complaint; the insatiable flames had licked at this area for too long now.

To the untrained eye, it might appear the flames had begun on the bottom floor, but not so with Chief Harold Stratemeyer, whose experience told him just the opposite, and this belief was given more credence when all the upper stairways caved in from the center. And now after this small explosion of debris amid the flames, Stratemeyer could see the result after the smoke cleared a bit.

Ransom stood alongside Stratemeyer unbelieving. Sitting atop the charred bar…like a mockery of Alastair's former love nest, the bedsprings and still burning mattress precariously balanced. This was art of the devil.

Harry Stratemeyer was acting as the new fire marshal—old Warrick having been found floating in the Chicago River's north branch. Death by what was being called an accidental drowning helped along by alcohol, but there remained the curious part—no wallet or money in his pockets. At any rate, Stratemeyer, who'd been Warrick's second in command, ordered men to water down surrounding buildings, having long since given up on the clapboard two-story and its surrounding outhouses. Chicago firefighters had in fact evolved greatly since the devastating fire in 1871. While still in need of more and better equipment, they did have far better access to water, as sewers now carried needed supplies to hydrants throughout the network of streets. And their tanks were larger and their horses faster and generally—but not always—better trained on chaos. His men were also better trained and outfitted.

Strateymeyer grabbed Ransom the moment he saw the big inspector wandering in a daze toward the flames, pointing and shouting about someone he called Merielle. But it was no easy grab; Stratemeyer had had to subdue Ransom with the help of several of his men. Otherwise, Alastair would've
surely rushed into the flames—flames in their acme, rabid, licking, unstoppable.

Stratemeyer, a large man himself, had thrown a massive bear-hug onto Ransom, and with the two others, had wrestled his friend Alastair into a sitting position below the cinders that rained down around them all like searing fireflies discovering freedom.

Finally, two large firemen now sat on Ransom where he beat the earth with both fists.

 

Alastair Ransom had sat all night on the street corner, feeling his life going off into the night sky with the smoke that discolored the moon. Head in hands, eyes arched and watching, Alastair said a prayer for Merielle as the final boards caught flame, only to fall into the center of the gutted two-story. The place had housed the old London Royale Arms Tavern, a pretentious title for a pub, and his Merielle's rooms above, now no longer above.

Stratemeyer would not let him set foot onto the scene until one hundred percent certain that first the fire was under control, and until he could determine if it were arson or an unfortunate accidental occurrence. Two burly firemen stood guard over Ransom where he sat while Harry kicked through the rubble in a methodical going over.

As it'd been a large, sprawling thing that went far back of the yards, a number of other apartments rented by the owner of the Arms had also burned. But everyone living in the building was accounted for, all but Polly Pete.

Now at daybreak, the fire under control, Ransom stood to shake off the weary firemen guarding him. He began a strange tiptoe amid the squalor and fumes and blackness of the gutted house, working to remain in Harry's footsteps so as to disturb as little as possible of Stratemeyer's possible arson investigation, and he thought of the last time he'd spoken to Merielle.

The second floor had caved in on the bar below, and all of
Polly Pete's frilly adornments had gone up in smoke, along with her trunk, her bureau drawer, the mirror blackened with smutty, grimy smoke now atop chairs and tables in one corner—somehow miraculously intact, a still-life painted in fire meant to mock Ransom, to rend his heart. Peering into her eerily intact mirror was a look into a bottomless abyss of smut. Nothing reflected from it save a single eye—his eye, reflecting where a single dewy quarter-sized square remained somehow unblemished. Satan winking at him. Then he saw the bed again—
their bed
—straddled atop what was left of the bar, the mattress gone save for the seared, hoary black tufts of it. Black spider webs clung to rails, to exposed conduits for the gas burners, pipes, leftover standing boards, leftover standing glasses half melted, to an array of exploded bottles of rye, rum, whiskey, gin, vodka and other spirits. Only the bedsprings remained of their bed, and the coiled springs, like the mirror, painted in satanic abandon.

“Where is she? If not here…where?” he asked. A glimmer, like a fleeting bird from his deepest recesses of—hope for Merielle—rose in him.

A completely ash-covered Stratemeyer looked him in the eye. “Alastair, you should go home…go home, now.”

“Where the bloody hell is she?”

Stratemeyer gritted his teeth. “You're a hard man to stay liking, Alastair. You should take a friend's advice!”

He pushed past Harry, searching, tearing at boards, cutting hands on debris in his mad hunt for Merielle, but he found nothing when he came around a wall on his right side that'd somehow grotesquely remained standing, as a magician's trick…like the trick of the intact mirror. Still, no body.