City for Ransom

him, but the absolute gall the man had displayed, in a bizarre way, held Ransom in check. “Hmmm, that Tewes fella, Griff, has more backbone than I’d’ve guessed.”

CHAPTER 4

Griffin Drimmer had pushed back the police line to a chorus of questions from reporters, most of them wanting to know who Tewes might be. O’Malley had located a tarp, and crossing himself, the big Irish cop sent the canvas over the now headless, still smoldering corpse. The heavy cloth cascaded over the grim sight and made it disappear, save for the gnarled left hand and foot. Using his police issue boot, O’Malley nudged the errant telltale hand beneath.

“You can’t cover it, O’Malley!” complained Philo. “I’ve still shots to get.”

Ransom by contrast had returned to the body with his pipe lit, puffing calmly, and using his cane, he lifted the tarp for a final look at the dead boy.

“I thought, Rance, what with your having torn off the head . . . the tarp a good idea,” said O’Malley. “Thought Tewes would wet his pants.” O’Malley’s laugh sounded hollow as it resonated off the vaulted ceiling.

“Not so much as a blink outta the little weasel,” replied Ransom, “but his damn teeth chattered a bit.”

Ransom kneeled, holding the tarp up with the scrimshaw tip of his wolf’s-head cane. He stared anew at the once fair-skinned boy’s bony body, imagining a child, hardly past a schoolboy, anxious for the bell to ring. “You did the right CITY FOR RANSOM

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thing, O’Malley. Now keep those reporters at bay so Philo can take his cuts.”

“I mean should Chief of Detectives show up . . . it being unseemly, sir, what with the head off. Not to mention, maybe Keane intends selling that shot of you and Tewes with that ghastly head between yous.” Ransom imagined staring at the scene in the Trib or the Herald. “I’ll see to Philo Keane,” Ransom shot back. “I think I know his game by now.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Still nothing of the young victim found in any nearby trash bin?”

“ ’Fraid not, sir, but our boys’re still on it.”

Ransom knew that a certain amount of deference was paid him simply for being a detective on the force, but men like young, round-faced O’Malley foolishly respected him for his part—so-called—in the Haymarket Riot. “God writes plays for each of us, O’Malley,” he’d drunkenly said to Mike at the bar the night before, “and in my script, he gave me Haymarket to suffer through.” Then he’d shouted to the entire pub, “Who remembers the dead I served with?” No one in the bar could name any of the fallen police at Haymarket.

“They erected a statue to them gallant fellows, do you know?” He lifted his glass. “A toast to ’em now! Erected their statue long ’fore your start of service, lads! Do you know where that statue to the common police officer is, O’Malley?” “No, sir. ’Fraid not, sir.”

“Relocated from its dedication pedestal. Buried amid the city’s sprawling buildings and thriving commerce . . . outside the police station door at the intersection of Jackson and Taylor, where only cops and lowlifes hauled in and out might happen on it. Like a hydrant for dogs to piss on. Like they are ashamed of our boys. From the beginning, top brass, the mayor’s office, didn’t want it on Michigan Avenue, for sure, not in eighty-nine . . . and not now. “Ransom had 30

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heaved a sigh. “Dedicated May fourth in a downpour with a handful of us cripples like me on hand.”

“No one wants reminding of Haymarket, old stick,” said Philo at the end of the bar. “No heroes that day.”

“Those men gave their lives,” said Ransom. “And now they’re stickin’ it to old Birmingham.”

“Birmingham, sir?” O’Malley had asked.

“Oh, Jesus, don’t get ’em started on Birmingham!” Philo shouted.

Ransom gathered O’Malley and other young coppers to him. “I was aged thirty-two in eighty-six. Birmingham, he’d been a veteran forever.”

Philo, ever the artist, added, “Birmingham posed for the statue commemorating those killed at Haymarket.”

“A good man working toward a pension till they got something on him,” continued Ransom. “Some nonsense

’bout dereliction of duty. You know what he does today?”

“No sir, what?”

“He guides folks from the White City fair yonder to Haymarket Square; shows ’em sites of the running battle and riot. Gives ’em a firsthand account.”

“Makes most of it up as he goes in that sotted mind of his and—”

“Philo!”

Philo raised a glass. Laughter erupted, but Ransom didn’t join in. “And study the man well, Ransom,” Philo kiddingly warned, again toasting, “because you’ll be guiding the tour one day if you keep at things so stubborn!” Ransom ignored these remarks. Too much truth therein.

Instead, he’d continued talking to Mike and Griff and the younger men. “Old Willard Birmingham’s come a long journey from Liverpool to Chicago. A bloody good man, but he’s sure on his way to pennilessness in his old age. We’re getting up a fund for him, boys, so pony up—come along, every one of yous.” Griffin Drimmer gave up a silver dollar to begin the pool CITY FOR RANSOM

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and curry favor. As Griff then worked the crowd for Willard’s pitiful pension, he asked Ransom, “How well did you know the men killed at Haymarket, Inspector?”

“We were all of us two-year men. Of the seven killed, only Thomas Redden was more than two year on. None of the killed held supervisory positions, that’s sure. Degan had hold of me, helped me from the blast when he collapsed and died, poor bugger—a severed artery killed ’im. A good patrolman of the Lake Street district, he was, a fixture . . . and the first to go.” Philo, as old as Ransom, piped in. “Got some great shots, but all were confiscated during the drawn out inquest. Never got them back.”

“Part of the cover-up, I warrant,” said Ransom, beginning to slur his words.

“Cover-up indeed?” asked Griff.

“I tell you, boys! Maybe those pictures show something they don’t want no one to see. After the bomb hit . . . over the next twelve days in hospital I was. Cook County, where George Miller succumbed to his wounds, then John Barrett with his family looking on, and next Timothy Flavian, Nels Hansen, and Nicholas Sheehan. Degan and another of our men died on the street.” “Must’ve been hell losing so many comrades,” said O’Malley, Griffin agreeing to a chorus of other cops.

“And a helluva big Irish wake,” added Philo.

“Boys, I don’t want to talk about it, not without sufficient drink.” And then they all became sufficiently drunk.

Now a sober Inspector Alastair Ransom, leaning on his cane, contemplated a baffling murder spree. Three dead. All since the opening of the fair on May first. The fingers found lying about the men’s room in a pool of blood, two in the porcelain basin, Philo had photographed. Griff held them up in a glass vial to Ransom’s eyes.

“You know, Griff . . . O’Malley,” he quietly said. “I once knew a fellow who’d auction off items like these.”

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“What kind of a ghoul was this guy?” Griff erupted.

“A cop. . . . Unfortunately, all too human. We called him The Reaper.”

“Jesus God.”

Griffin shook his head, hardly believing.

“You know, famous case and all, souvenirs, relics.”

“You’d never do anything like that, sir,” said young O’Malley, his boyish eyes filled with anxious curiosity