City for Ransom

“Kohler has something on Tewes, and I done told you what it is!”

“Mark me, if this turns out to be one of your silly fabrications,” began Ransom, fuming even as he thrust two silver dollars at the man, the coins falling to the dirt, “I’ll find you and skin you alive.” “I’d expect so from a man of your repute, Inspector.”

“Now be gone and no more peeking into any bloody windows.”

“But ’twas on your say-so! How else to see a lady in Tewes’s bedroom?”

“Scat as fast as that stump and cane will allow. Go!”

He made off with his coins, an habitual look back over his gnarled shoulder—a ratlike habit he’d picked up over years on the streets after his medical discharge from the Union Army.

“Damn fool . . . damn old fool,” Ransom muttered as he turned and started back toward the busier Belmont Street out front of Tewes’s home where he might more readily hail a carriage. He wanted to get home, bathe, shave, get spruced up, look in on Philo, and see Jane again.

He dismissed Bosch’s contention that Jane and Dr. Tewes were one and the same as ridiculous. No way he wouldn’t’ve known. He’d spent time with both, hadn’t he? He had downed beer with Tewes, drank him under the table, which had been no surprise, and then he’d carried him home. So light he was, yes. And then when measuring the man, he came out even slighter in all lengths than Ransom would have guessed, and the man’s ankle had been so thin and fragile, and his waist nonexistent, and on occasion his voice cracked like a youth.

What if Bosch had not seen Jane Francis Ayers disrobing but had watched Tewes disrobe instead? Was he a woman posing as a man, or a man posing as a woman? Jesus! The CITY FOR RANSOM

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thought electrified him. Bosch’s second contention, that Tewes was being blackmailed by Nathan Kohler seemed unimportant to the first mystery.

It boggled the mind . . . boggled the imagination. If any of it were true, then who had shared a kiss in the gondola on the Ferris wheel with Alastair Ransom? Dr. Tewes or Jane or both?

And then he thought anew of the touch of Tewes’s hands, how he’d reacted to that touch, and how his every instinct had recoiled at the thought of a man capable of creating such feelings in him. But suppose . . . it made better sense that . . .

possibly . . . but then how could he have been so damnably blind if it were so?

He stood on the street down from Tewes’s shingle, recently repaired and rehung, as it’d been hit by a clean bolt of lightning during a storm, he’d been told. Someone stood on Tewes’s porch, trying to gain his attention. It was Jane, waving him to return. He had so liked her, but now his head had begun to swim with the sharks of doubt and suspicion. If Jane were Tewes, and Tewes were Jane, what possibly could he do with this information? How to react?

He must respond to Jane now. Must return to the home and see the doctor and his sister side-by-side, something he’d not seen in all their association. And as he moved back toward the home, he looked for the third bedroom. He could make out the windows of only one bedroom this side of the house, and Gabrielle’s room he’d surmised was on the other side of the house. So where did Jane keep? Which window had Bosch been staring through when he saw a woman disrobing? And could it simply have been Gabby that the little pervert had seen?

“Jane!” he called out.

“I was preparing a breakfast for you, and next I know, you’re gone!” she said, all smiles. “Besides, I must talk to you this morning.”

“Actually, I really need to speak to your brother. Is he having breakfast with us?”

258

ROBERT W. WALKER

“I . . . I can arrange it, yes, if . . .”

“If he’s not slipped from the house?”

“F-for Cook County.”

“Ahhh . . . to view the bodies of the two unfortunates found in the park last night?”

“Unless he’s still in.”

“Shall we find out if the doctor is in? Does he have any appointments today?”

“I think not in clinic; perhaps a house call or two.”

“His work for Chief Kohler has been a help, no doubt. I’m sure the chief can be a generous man.”

“Not with Dr. Tewes, I fear.”

“I see.”

“Shall we go inside?” A horse-drawn trolley went by, a man shouting about rags and bottles to buy and sell— the noise of Chicago awakening. Ransom followed her to the kitchen, where Jane sat him before a sumptuous breakfast.

“Eat,” she commanded. “Dr. Tewes says you work too hard, you’re not getting enough sleep, and that your eating habits are abominable.”

“Once again, your brother’s right.” He ate while Jane watched, pleased, her smiling eyes not at all like Tewes, yet similar. “You and James, Jane . . . you weren’t . . . I mean, were you born twins? Your features, particularly the eyes are so strikingly similar.” “Born a year apart.”

“Really, a year apart. Seems it’ll be a year before I see the two of you not apart.”

“You mean together, don’t you? He acts my guardian, and it is stifling at times, ’though he has my best interests at heart.”

“So now, where is your older brother, is it?”

“I think you’re being coy with me, Alastair, and I don’t appreciate it. Either say what is on your mind regarding myself and the doctor, or get off the subject.”

“Where is this coming from?” he asked, dropping his fork.

“I saw you with that ratty little man who’s been on our CITY FOR RANSOM

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back stair, not to beg food but to peek through windows. You hired him to spy on us, didn’t you?”

“I did not authorize him to come to your home and beat about your windows, no!”

“Oh, wonderful, nice consolation, but he came, and he saw, and he told you what you wanted to learn, that I am Dr.

Tewes!”

“I did not . . . that is . . . I failed to believe Bosch.”

“But you’re here to corroborate—” she began, affecting Tewes’s mannerisms now. “Well perhaps it is all for the better that you know.”

“I wanted to believe in . . . in you, in some future we might have, but this . . . this . . .”

“Changes things, I know. You should go now, Alastair.”

“Go? Go? I have this boulder drop on me, and all you can say is go? Ha!” He near whispered, “What’ll the lads make of it? Chicago’s greatest detective, Inspector Ransom, could not decipher a woman in drag!” “The sum total of your concern? What other cops’ll think?”

“If the press got wind of—”

“Kohler’d have a good day.”

“—and what hooks has Kohler in you, anyway? What goes on between you two? He knows, right? God, he must be having a laugh. Is this all that he has on you?” “It is enough . . . along with the story of how Gabby’s father died, but last night, I told Gabby everything, so I’m done with lies,” she lied, “finished, and I intend, sir, to end all ties with Nathan, this case, and most of all you, sir.” “I see . . . I see . . .”

“I . . . hope you understand.”

“It becomes apparent. Right between the eyes, in fact.

What a fool I’ve been. All the things I said to you at the wheel, all the thoughts I had for—”

“For us? You came for Jane only to gather information on James!”