City of the Absent (19 page)

“Did you personally absolve him to this new height of redemption?”

“Do not mock the practices and teachings of Christ and his Church.”

“So you performed an exorcism on him?”

“I cast out his demons. Look, the lad is like a son to me! I know his nature!”

“Your fool's charity and religious fervor have left you blind, Father.”

“I am not so blind as I can't see your shortcomings, Inspector, nor that your soul is on the precipice.”

“Get off me, Father, and onto Jurgen. I've not molested innocent children!”

“Some of those so-called innocent children are not so innocent in all this, Alastair. Get your facts straight before you—”

“Ahhh
…I see, Father Jurgen's convinced you that he's the victim here, that these evil urchins like Sam lured him into it. That's classic…just typical, standard characteristic bullshit from a man who pets boys! You should've reported this crime against the children and had your junior arrested, Father.”

“I chose to handle the matter as discreetly as—”

“How many times have you seen me go past these doors, knowing a crime was being committed here?”

Their eyes locked.

“Just go!” O'Bannion pleaded. “Go now before I have you arrested!” Ransom knew his last remarks cut deep.

Still on the attack, Ransom replied, “You're being as unreasonable and totalitarian as…as the Pope in this, aren't you?”

“I handed him over to God!”

“Good God!”

“Rather than subjecting him to the humiliation and agony of men like you!”

“Excellent, Father, 'cause you just handed this child molester license to do it again.”

“Never!”

“Handed him more power than ever such a fevered brain can handle!”

“The decision's been made, Alastair. Calling me names and casting blame on me will change nothing.”

“I'm sorry, Father, but my estimation of you has fallen like a bag of bricks from one of those twenty-story buildings on Michigan Avenue. I'd heard that cops, firemen, lawyers, cover for one another, but I hadn't thought it possible that priests were as prone to lies.”

“How dare you! I've just told you the
truth!
Confided a confidence between a man and his spiritual advisor, and you have the temerity, the unmitigated gall, to stand in my church and dictate—”

Ransom pushed through the doors and rushed down the stone steps, while O'Bannion shouted after him from the top stair, “Pray for Father Jurgen! Pray for the man and his soul!”

Ransom heard the plea on the wind as a gust from off the lake nudged him along in his flight from St. Peter's. He'd heard a threat in O'Bannion's tone. He shook inside at the turn of events and having to swallow his anger when indeed a stout wind came off the lake to snatch at him, to pull him and his cane apart from one another as he muttered, “Yeah, sure, I'll pray for him all right; I'll praaaaaaaay Ransom fashion.”

“And pray for yourself, Alastair!” the old man's final parting salvo reached his ear as if O'Bannion somehow could send his voice on the wind.

“Not in your catechism, O'Bannion!” he shouted back, certain only the alley wags, the yeggs, and the homeless digging in trash cans heard his response.

Ransom's fingers wrapped about the concealed “weapon” he'd kept out of O'Bannion's sight. He could not recall a time when he'd been more furious, frustrated, and disappointed all at once.

While Ransom busied himself with how best to
get vengeance for Sam, Jane Francis, acting as Dr. Tewes, made the rounds so important to the nightlife of one Shanks and Gwinn. Two more deplorable people she could hardly imagine. They spent their money as fast as they received it; spent it on horse racing and other forms of gambling, spent it on liquor of every sort imaginable, and spent it on loose women of low stature and lower morals. They spent much of their time at Madame DuQuasi's on the river in the ill-reputed Levee District where painted women and red lights abounded.

Their other passion took them to the opium dens. Jane quickly came to the conclusion that the now somewhat respected Dr. James Phineas Tewes's already besmirched reputation could not withstand a charge stemming from this night's travels. Dr. Tewes simply could not be seen in or around such places as Maude DuQuasi's on the wharf. Not to mention an outright fear of contracting some horrid disease from leaning against a wall here. She decided this after tailing the reformed resurrection men this second night—which had felt more like an entire weekend.

Shanks and Gwinn seemed bent on living life to its fullest
every moment, as if their daily working with the dead dictated such a policy. This lifestyle said they must completely immerse themselves in Sin City—the city within the city—to enjoy life in the here and now, and to go out of this world having spent every dime they'd ever earned.

During their riotous and raucous bouts with the bottle, Shanks and Gwinn had seemed to share a kind of fright, a look of fear coming over each man. Like a pair of animals who know they are being stalked, they sometimes looked over their shoulders in tandem, as if of one mind, and as if at any moment someone or some thing would lurch from the shadows to swallow them up.

At first Jane thought they sensed her shadowing them, but their behavior was more complicated than any concern so mundane as learning that Dr. Tewes was watching. Whatever was stalking these two, it was greater, larger, and far more threatening than a small doctor.

Jane Francis as a man saw a side of Chicago that Ransom had only hinted at. She felt a sense of hedonism in the dark dens where she drank ale at a distance, watching Shanks and Gwinn, hoping to see them meet with the strange couple she'd seen outside Calvin Dodge's home the night her coach almost ran them down.

She could not help but think of the real James Tewes, Gabby's father, who, in France, had succumbed to such places as this. Men acted like pigs at a trough in such places. The only good coming of her surveillance effort appeared that she'd not run into Alastair or anyone else she respected in these dens.

Jane did not go into the brothel on the water. She drew the line at the wharf, and she felt extremely vulnerable here. Alone, a small person, she could easily be a target for a mugger or worse.

She bid Shanks and Gwinn a silent good-bye and good luck in their madcap search for whatever it was they sought. She'd never witnessed men so bent on self-destruction as these two since her first love, the real Dr. James Tewes, who'd died in a French jail.

When James came to mind, Jane knew she'd seen enough.

She sought out a cab and quickly made her way home, disappointed that her evening as a private eye had been a bust. Once safely in the cab, allowing herself some feeing of relief, she swore to never repeat this attempt again.

Her lonely ride home was filled with sadness and thoughts of the slow, unsteady march of evolution, the mental disorders of men in need of perversity and of perversely harming themselves. As a medical woman, Dr. Jane Francis wondered if there were some seed or seat in the brain where all things wicked resided like a dark god, luring men and sometimes women into a kind of euphoria that held sway until they wallowed in sin, became enveloped in it, enamored to it, lapping it up like a dog at the filthy river's edge.

She guessed now that it was death itself; that the two men, in order to cover their fear of the dead that they'd had no respect for, the dead they had desecrated—no matter their reform—stalked them in the nature of spirits, and not spirits of the sort bottled and labeled and competing for a ribbon at the fair, but spirits looming large inside their heads.

“Yes,” she quietly said to the sound of the cobblestone beneath the hooves outside her cab, “such men fear themselves, can't abide themselves, hate themselves and fight being alone with themselves.” So they hid inside noise and laughter and delusion and drink and the life of the flesh and materialism, she mused. They expected at any moment to be revealed as frauds, and to have their cushy new lives as Dr. Fenger's aides torn asunder. Little wonder that they feared and hated Alastair Ransom. He might take their new life from them, but worse still than Ransom was their own history. This past as ghouls must feed on their current lives! And their livers, and their hearts, and surely their souls that'd long ago fallen into all those open graves they'd left in their wake.
In a nightmare
,
how many open graves did it take to create the abyss?

“They fear that after their own deaths, someone will steal their bodies and sell them to a medical school. That one day they'd feel the ripping out of their own organs.” Foolish as
this sounded when she spoke it aloud, to her medical mind, somehow Jane knew the truth of it. Superstition remained the coin of the day, far more so than religion with promises of penance and redemption. Oddly, the pair acted in sync, as if of one mind, and together they suffered a fear beyond reason, despite their outward appearance of happiness.

It reminded Jane of something her father had instilled in her. He would say, “Success is getting what you want, Jane, but it's happiness that is illusive. Happiness is wanting what your success has won. Happiness is seldom established and firm and finally within your grasp. Happiness drives men insane.”

She gave a prayer to the now long dead, real Dr. James Tewes, a man who'd swept her up, a man whom she'd believed in need of her, and a man quite worth fixing, like Ransom now. If only there were such an animal; it never worked, going into a relationship believing you could fix another person.
If he needs fixing, he's no good for you. Run like hell,
she screamed silently inside the cab. She didn't want to be around when Alastair Ransom decided to destroy himself as James had.

Tears filled Jane's eyes.

It made her think of the passion and happiness she'd found with Alastair, and how damnably illusive it had proven to be. She gave a passing thought to all the promises they'd made to one another, or rather, all her promises, as he had been far more reserved. In fact, as the coach arrived at her home, she realized that it had all been rather one-sided, that she'd made a fool of herself over him, whispering all those sweet
nothings
in his ear there in bed, while he had literally kept mum. Alastair had whispered
nothing
in return.

 

Ransom found Hake the next day at Hake's filthy apartment, sleeping amid racing forms, spoiled food, dirty sheets, and an even dirtier woman. Ransom pulled him to his feet and instantly regretted it. Hake's scream sent horrid odors from his fetid throat into Alastair's nostrils. “God, man, you got
drunk and you passed out! You were supposed to find me last night! Three A.M., remember? Something about a file that likely doesn't exist!”

“I give it to yer boy!”

“What?”

“I got there a bit late, but I give it to the boy. Samuel, said he was yours. Nothing in the file about you having a kid.”

“He's a house guest, not my son! Damn you, Hake! You gave that file to Sam!” Ransom let the man slide back to his bed sheets and his woman.

“What 'bout the payment? Twenty more, you said.”

“The boy and the file are gone, fool! And I've no idea where.”

“You mean the kid'll sell it to the highest bidder?”

“What's the matter, Hake? You upset you didn't think of it first?”

“I got no love loss for Pinkerton.”

Ransom frowned at the man. It was obvious he wasn't going to his sister's, if he had one, and that he'd long ago spent all he had on the booze and the broad.

Ransom threw a twenty at him and said, “You find that boy, you give me a call.”

“Sure…sure. Sorry, I took him for—”

“And next time you assume I'm a father, let me know in advance, OK, so when we go to visit Dr. Fenger at Cook County, we can do it up right.”

“Cook County…Fenger? Hospital?”

“So they can get my foot out of your ass.”

“Look here!” shouted Hake's scar-faced woman. “Who do you think you are?” She was shit-faced drunk, too.

“Shut up, Dorcas! That's the man!”

She slapped Hake hard for his disrespectful tone.

Hake hauled off and slapped her back.

She hit him again, and he returned the favor as Ransom rushed for the door. As Ransom turned to pull it shut behind him, he saw that the two besotted souls had fallen into one another's arms and began renewing their passion.

He closed the door on the “lovers” and wondered where in the city Samuel might be at that moment with the file.

Scattered leaves intermingled with discarded
leftovers, fish heads, and other leavings conspired to stink up the Chicago wharves where boats and ships of every size, flag, stripe, and kind took up space like so many dinosaurs afloat. Amid the rubble and beneath the half-light of a world that might well've been conceived by Dante Alighieri in his
Divine Comedy
's Inferno, an old, wretched, bent-at-the-hip man collected bottles, rags, fish parts, often fighting off cats, seagulls, and wharf rats as he went, arguing with them in a loud brogue, arms flailing. Amid the squalor, the old man occasionally found something that delighted him, and he'd begin to hum and laugh aloud at his good fortune over a particular trinket or found coin. The old man looked up at one point to stare into a dirty, warped window at his reflection, taking it in as if his visage and appearance were that of a stranger. Then he stared into his reflected eyes and found himself—deep in the irises.

Just as he was about to turn from his reflection, another face, grotesquely distorted by the warped window, was beside the old man, and this big fellow with a hunchback grabbed onto the old man, holding him, pinning his arms, when a second man stepped from the shadows, a man who
looked peculiarly like the gargoyle seen in the reflection, but this fellow's features were not distorted.

“You two fools!” shouted the old man.

“Shut up!” cried the cleaner of the two, holding up a large blade. The blade itself shone like a third mugger, it was that large.

“Do we gotta do it?” asked the man who'd pinned the old man against the boards.

His thin partner replied, “We're going to take what we want from you, old man!”

“I got nothing but me rags and bottles to sell!”

“Oh, but you do have your rotten old flesh!”

Ransom, in disguise as the bottle and ragman, stomped hard on the foot of the man holding him, causing a pain so severe that he was instantly set loose. He snatched his revolver, but the knife man came at him so suddenly, he fumbled the blue-burnished steel .38 as he backed off, dropping it and watching it go over the side and into the Chicago River.

Ransom instantly brought up the large tool for castrating horses, which he'd kept hidden beneath the ratty clothes he wore. With all his might, he swung the cast iron pinchers, striking the knifer in the temple, sending him reeling back.

“Oooh, no!” cried the bigger one, going to the thinner one, concerned for his partner's bleeding temple.

“You damn fools! You're trying to mug a Chicago cop! Damn fools! I'm a CPD inspector!”

The lean one threw his knife at Ransom. It struck Ransom's thick coat and belt—all part of his disguise—but the blade did not penetrate. Instead, the knife fell away, chasing Ransom's gun into the dirty river. At this point the knifer raced off, leaving his accomplice behind.

Ransom stomped and shouted as he approached the dumb animal before him. The big man turned, grunted, and raced after his partner.

“Bastards! SOBs!” Ransom shouted after the pair. Few people on the darkened wharf took notice or wanted to be involved in any manner.

Ransom, as the ragman, went on his way, toward the destination he'd planned. As he did so, he again tucked the farm instrument beneath his coat.

He had bigger fish to fry than a pair of thugs.

 

Eventually Alastair got two of the three things he wanted that night. In fact, earlier in the day he'd gotten a lead on another strange doctor, a man who might be accepting body parts and whole bodies for dissection, paying ghouls at his back door. It was information he found in Nell Hartigan's cursory notes, notes that previously hadn't existed and were finally located and turned over via courier from William Pinkerton's office. The man was a Dr. Kenneth Mason. A check against the list Pinkerton had originally provided showed Mason crossed off.

Second, this night Ransom had learned that Father Franklin Jurgen was booked on a ship leaving from Lake Michigan to travel through the Great Lakes, up the St. Lawrence to Catskill Bay and the Atlantic, and finally on to Boston. There, Jurgen had passage on a ship crossing the Atlantic, a cushy, expensive berth on the Cunard shipping line, all paid for by the Church in its effort to relocate him and rehabilitate their man. Alastair had paid dearly for this information from Father O'Bannion's new secretary, who seemed to have caught an inkling of his keen interest in Father Jurgen and called him for a secret meeting. The bribe cost Ransom almost his entire month's pay, but he believed it well worth it—if the information proved true and timely.

The third thing he'd wanted so much to have but failed to achieve had been Jane's forgiveness. Alastair had gone to see her, but somehow bungled the whole apology. It began well enough, but she kept pouring on the guilt until he lost his calm, and it was all she needed to hear when he reminded her of her pillow talk.

“What happened to ‘the world can call me a fool, but I've got to be right with you?' and—and, ‘No matter what it is you want, I'll never say no to you,' and—and—”

That's when Jane slammed her door in his face—a loud “Ohhh!” escaping her lungs; the ultimate act of an angry woman at a loss for words.

Tonight it was first things first; he had to meet the ship taking Father Jurgen out of Chicago, else lose any chance to confront the skulking creep and exact some modicum of justice. So he'd put his personal problems on hold, along with any thoughts of going to see the private surgeon, Dr. Kenneth Mason and his dean, Dr. Nehemmia Conklin, names Pinkerton had crossed off the list—something about their having a contract for bodies of prisoners from the Joliet Penitentiary.

Nell's targeted ghoul-employer. Conklin kept coming up in Nell's notes, but Jurgen kept coming up in Ransom's brain. One thing at a time…first things first…

So here he lurked in disguise.

When he wreaked vengeance on the so-called man of God, he didn't want to be recognized. He had to act quickly without thinking, and to this end he'd been practicing all day with the heavy iron pinchers. The tool was a prong with powerful razor-sharp jaws that cut through metal cans in an instant. Flesh should be a quick zip-zip.

He gave a momentary thought to what Jane and Gabby might think of his level of anger and what he contemplated for the child-molesting priest. He gave a moment's thought to sleeping on it, but he knew by then the priest would be out of the city, untouchable.

More time passed with no sign of the priest or anyone from the church.

Ransom continued his tiresome lurking about the wharves, listening to the constant clatter of rigging against masts under a vigorous wind, which became monotonous and sleep-inducing. He had the ship under surveillance, and every passenger arriving by private or public coach. It still bothered him to know that Father O'Bannion was protecting this monster in vestments. And such thoughts kept his eyes open.

Soon he began to wonder if his information was worthless after all.

Ransom was not certain precisely how he would arrange for Father Franklin Jurgen's castration, but he'd figure it out as he went. He imagined that thinking too long and too seriously on the procedure would only hamper quick action. Like a mugging, he knew it must be done swiftly and with alacrity, without a moment's hesitation. He knew that fast action was good action, and that any bringing of this robed priest before a judge would be worse than useless, worse than slow, amounting to no action whatsoever brought against the perverse priest, this cretin.

At the moment only he and O'Bannion, along with Samuel, knew that he meant to personally mete out justice in this case, and O'Bannion could only surmise it as a possibility. So it must be done in such a manner that neither O'Bannion nor Samuel might be targeted as witnesses against him. He certainly didn't want Sam picked up for questioning or mixed up in any way with the disfiguring and maiming of a priest.

To this end, Ransom had donned one of his many disguises. Few people knew of his closet full with disguises, and fewer still knew of his habit of going about the city as someone else in order to gain and gather information, a foothold in an area, or simply to protect himself or a snitch.

“Where the hell're those priests?” he muttered, tiring of the wait, assuming O'Bannion would be on hand to be certain his man got aboard the
Lucienta Maria
, the ship Jurgen was supposedly booked on.

Again Ransom wondered at the quality of the report he'd paid so dearly for. Perhaps it'd been a ruse all along by O'Bannion; perhaps Father Jurgen was on a train for Boston—long gone. The thought made Ransom grit his teeth when he saw sailors come alive on the
Lucienta Maria
, making early preparations for a sunrise departure.

“Damn!” he cursed. “I've been buffaloed by O'Bannion!” Instead of getting the revenge he'd paid for, he had made a donation to the church.

Angry with himself, angry with O'Bannion and the little secretary who played her part so well, Alastair raised his
large right fist to the ship when he saw a man smoking a cigar and walking the planked deck, a man in the robes of a priest—Father Franklin Jurgen.

He'd been on board the whole time.

Ransom knew he had but minutes to get aboard, grab the man, excise his jewels using the horse pinchers, and get off the ship, or become stranded on Lake Michigan with the man he'd attacked and a boatful of Portuguese sailors.

Was it a sign he should forget about his rash plan? Was it the wiser to leave the man, as O'Bannion had pleaded, to God?

Twilight would soon be overtaking the wharf. A handful of the men had come down the walkway, still loading a few crates and bundles of cargo and supplies. Without further hesitation, Ransom made his way to the gangplank before it would be removed by the crew. As he slipped past these fellows, he found himself face-to-face with a young-looking first mate who demanded, “You, old man! Get down outta here! Off the ship.”

Alastair grunted and said, “Was mugged. Hurt.”

“We've no room for the likes of you, old man! No free rides! Off, off!”

As Ransom was contemplating knocking out the young fool standing in his way, the priest turned at the shouting and rushed to the old man's aide, saying, “Mr. Tate, sir, even though this poor retch has no money for passage, you must treat a fellow human with the love and dignity of his Maker. Charity, my friend—charity of language and deed is ever rewarded.”

The man named Tate rolled his eyes and replied, “This isn't the Salvation Army, Father.”

Father Jurgen looked long into Ransom's bloodshot eyes and disheveled features, a patronizing smile on his face. Jurgen then said in the softest, warmest voice Ransom could imagine, “Now tell me, old sir, are you in need of bread?”

Using his old man's voice, Ransom replied, “I've gone today now three day and night sir without food, save for the discarded cabbage and raw fish heads I find an' boil up.”

“Cabbage 'n' fish heads?”

“Some meat right 'round the jawbones.”

“Have we not time to feed this poor man, Mr. Tianetto?” asked Jurgen of another man who appeared—the captain. Jurgen's eyes widened with his good deed. Ransom summed him up as one of those people whose “good deeds” convinced him of his “goodness” no matter his most vile actions against the innocent.

Helping an old man to a meal straightened his halo.

An annoyed captain replied, “I am still not comfortable with you on board, Mr. Jurgen.”

“It's
Father
Jurgen, and I was put on this ship here and now in order to help this man!” He pointed to Ransom, unaware of the horse pinchers stitched to his inner lining.

“Ohhh
, I suppose, all right,” replied Captain Tianetto, “but you must see he gets off the ship in ten minutes.”

“Ample time for gruel and bread in the galley!” Jurgen took firm hold of Alastair and led him toward a ladder going down into the bowels of the cramped ship.
It must be fate
, Ransom thought,
fate that had Franklin Jurgen step out on deck for a walk about
,
to stretch and to have a smoke.

Condescending to the aged man, Jurgen guided Ransom to the ship's galley, noticing for the first time his cane and limp. He remarked on it.

“The one item I've not had to hock yet,” said Ransom in his most gravelly voice. “'Twas given me by a dear departed one.”

They passed other men, some sleeping in hammocks, some playing at cards, some scraping toes with huge knives, battling fungi and bunions, some chewing tobacco, while others sucked on lemons. The deeper into the hull he went with the priest, the surer Ransom felt it'd be impossible to escape or find the deck after he took care of Jurgen.

Finally, they came to a causeway, and overhead Ransom saw moonlight filtering through a hatch. A short ladder dangled here—a quick way abovedecks. A voice of experience and instinct shouted in Ransom's head:
Now!

Alastair instantly grabbed the unsuspecting priest who
meant to assuage his guilt and sin by feeding a homeless man. With one quick blow of the wrought iron grapplers given him by Philo, he opened up a gash in Jurgen's head. Blood painted his scalp and forehead and he went down in a daze. Ransom tore at the robes, having to lift them, tore away the man's underwear, and in the darkness of this hole, feeling like a mad incubi or gargoyle, perched over the priest, he applied the horse tool.

All Ransom had left to do was apply the pressure of his hands at the end of the monster mechanism.

He hesitated, swallowed hard, and realized that perspiration poured from him.

Jurgen cried out, “What in the name of God!”

Calling on God this way only made Ransom surer of what he'd contemplated. “In the name of the children you've molested!” he shouted in response.