“Just catching the view!” he shouted back. “Preparing for the Ferris wheel!” he joked.
“Ahhh, not a bad idea. It’d take an act of God to get me that high off the ground!” Griff’s voice grew louder with each footstep. “If God meant for us to fly, he’d’ve given us the equipment.”
“Give me time for a smoke, Griff. Wanted to see where they found the cigar butts.”
CITY FOR RANSOM
41
“Yeah, sure, Rance . . . sure.”
With Griff sufficiently persuaded to leave him in peace, Inspector Ransom stared from this six-story-high vantage point at the grand new buildings of the Columbian Exposition lining the coast of the largest lake in the Midwest. Most prominent was the Ferris wheel. Everyone asked these days, ‘Have you dared ride the wheel?’ and few people had for fear of its dizzying heights. Ransom had as yet to brave it. A marvel to behold, a symbol of what mankind had accomplished, along with all the other wonders of the fair, which had given law enforcement officials special headaches, as every day people were mugged by hoodlums and pickpocketed by street children. The complaints had kept the CPD
understaffed for over a month now, and for Alastair the fair could not come to a close soon enough, but not before he rode the wheel—perhaps while under the influence of his opiate.
But he had time, as the fair was slated to run through summer’s end. Everyone in Chicago—including off-duty police—had flocked to the exposition, the crowds enormous, just as they were this morning. Food vendors, merchants, and manufacturers showing their wares could not be more content. But rumors, reports, and leaks about a “Chicago Ripper” had begun to filter through, and people at the top like the governor, the mayor, his people, the architects of the fair feared the worst. No doubt, this new killing would alarm the entire city, and everyone would hear the fanciful epithet cops’d begun to whisper: The Phantom of the Fair—who wielded a garrote like a butcher with a de-boning knife.
Alastair pulled on the tobacco blend he’d mixed with mar-ijuana. He’d given some thought to marketing it as a healing smoke known to the ancients and rediscovered—make a buck or so on the side like that Tewes fellow. Food no longer tasted as good, but winters in Chicago seemed shorter. Fact of the matter, Alastair liked Chicago cold—more human hi-bernation and less crime in the cold.
Griffin had quietly come up the stairs after all, and he 42
ROBERT W. WALKER
called out from the landing below. “Thought . . . you gave up ta-ta”—he fought for breath, panting—“ta-bacco . . . for lent.”
“Lent? No . . .
“Oh, yeah.” Griffin made the final landing. He fell silent at the sunrise coming over the fair. “Weird paradox. They build this station so more people might come in for the fair, and now this.”
“We’re going to catch this son of Hades, but until we do, the bosses want us to somehow keep it out of the papers. So it won’t affect their precious fair.”
“But the reporters’re all over this.”
“The dyke will hold a bit longer, Griffin. Mayor Carter Harrison has his thumb on every publisher in the city.”
“All the English language papers’re going to go wild for sure.”
“No, they won’t. Any city editor stupid enough to print a word of it, and he’ll be handed his hat—unless they all wise up and decide to simultaneously print it in every paper at once.”
“What about Thomas Carmichael at the
“Carmichael, I’ll deal with Thom personally.” Ransom was beginning to like Griff’s calling him Rance.
“Whataya going to do? How can you stop his mouth?”
“The old-fashion way—”
“Politics!” They said it in unison. Then they laughed, the sound of it spiraling down the stairwell. Ransom took a long pull on the pipe.
Sniffing, Drimmer said, “Unusual odor that blend you’re smoking.”
The smoke created a halo over his head. He pointed to the fair. “At the moment, the party is all that matters. It’s the largest, most expensive blowout in history, Griff, rivaling Rome, twice the size of the Paris World’s Fair, and it will be protected at all costs.”
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“Three killings, the work of the same lunatic . . . can’t be hushed up for long.”
“You’re smart, but you’re new to Chicago politics. If the mayor and commissioner want it kept out of the papers, it’ll be kept out of the papers.”
“But the papers’re so critical of Commissioner Mc-Donoughue.”
“All for show. Keep the population believing they have a voice.”
“God, Rance, you’re cynical.”
“I’ve earned my cynicism, every poisonous drop of it.” He tapped his cane against his injured leg. “Not like I can escape it.”
“When is your injury not with you?”
“Rarely . . . rarely . . .”
“When you’re using opium or hemp, or both?”
“Ahhh, so you do know my secrets.”
“It’s no secret, my friend. Kohler has wind of it. Asked me to report on duty use.”
“He did indeed?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And will you? Report me, that is?” He indicated his pipe.
Griffin hesitated a moment. “I’ve only seen you smoke tobacco.”
“Good man.”
“A lot of people want to see you go the way of this Willard Birmingham fellow. You must take care.”
“I’m always careful, Griff, and not to worry unduly.
You’ll only get warts worrying o’er the likes of me.”
They watched the sunrise stream through the thousands of taut wires and metal slats making up Mr. Ferris’s giant wheel. Griff finally said, “You ever going to tell me exactly what happened at Haymarket Square that day in eighty-six?” “Maybe . . . one day.”
“This year?”
“Perhaps when all the evidence is in. . . .”
44
ROBERT W. WALKER
“But Kohler says there was a thorough investigation, inquests into the deaths, everything that could be done . . .”
“Let’s just say it was an official investigation—and all that entails.”
“Inquests are supposed to finish a thing.”
“Yes, inquests were done, but I would not use the word
Griffin studied the older man’s features while Ransom stared off into the distance, his eyes again drawn to the big wheel, its splendid synchronicity, its scientific perfection.
Of a sudden, Alastair had enough of the ornate clock tower window, feeling calmed. He and Griffin made their way back down the spiraling stairwell. “I want to thank you, Griff,” he said.
“For what?”
“For your kindness in not judging me too harshly. Gracious of you, actually.”
“Oh, not at all. I understand your addiction to the opiates, Rance, I do. We’ve all some bloody crutch or other.”
