City of the Absent (20 page)

Several of the sailors poured into the small area, hearing the final exchange before Jurgen's horrid, pained scream, coming with the realization of what the old man intended as the cold steel of the pinchers telegraphed the old man's desire. “Please, please! No!”

Alastair realized something, too, at this moment; he realized he couldn't go through with it. He instead lifted the huge pinchers overhead and brought them down hard between the priest's legs.

The priest thought himself castrated, and out of his lungs came the scream of a wounded animal. The sound filled the belowdecks, lifted to the surface, and wafted like the echoing cry of a bobcat out over the water.

Ransom immediately pulled himself up the ladder to the half-moon peeking through the open hatch. As he did so, he felt someone grab onto his leg in an attempt to pull him down into the black cargo hold. A quick kick sent this fellow hurtling over the screaming priest and his bloody robes.

Ransom climbed like a big-shouldered beast from the hold, struggling as his shoulders caught on the small hatchway. The ship's captain and his young first mate rushed at him and the sound of Jurgen's cries.

“What'd you do, old man!” shouted Tianetto as Jurgen's continued wail cut into everyone's bones.

“That priest you have aboard is an imposter!” shouted Ransom.

“Imposter how?”

“He is a bloody child molester!”

“That's an awful charge!”

“And a grandfather has just taken revenge for the boys he's so badly used.”

“If that's true, you may be sure the authorities will handle the matter. Now hand over yourself to me, ship's custody, and we'll sort this out.”

“I'm no stranger to the law here. Chicago will bury me in a cell, and they'll make a hero of that ugly man you have below.”

“From the sound of him, he's likely to die.”

“I only gave him a head wound. A surgeon can sew him up. He won't die. In the meantime, I am walking off this ship.”

The first mate pulled his pistol and pointed it at Ransom. “You'll do what Captain Tianetto decides and nothing else.”

Ransom saw a man in nightshirt and cap standing on the bridge—the ship's doctor. The screams aboard had awakened him. “Bring all injured parties to my chambers!” he shouted with authority.

Ransom stood like a bull opposite Captain Tianetto, a Portuguese man with dark features. He sensed from the man's very posture the type of self-inflated, self-important little captain he was. Captains aboard these small ships that plied the Great Lakes tended to enjoy holding court and typically loved applying maritime law. He half imagined himself being tied to the mast and flogged until his skin had been peeled off as “just punishment” for his crime, or worse, that they would turn his weapon of choice, the pinchers, on him! Regardless of the fact he hadn't gone through with his plans.

“All right, I'm sure your captain's a fair man,” began Ran
som, speaking to Tate, the English-speaking first mate, “and—and perhaps he has children? Grandchildren perhaps? Little ones, and that he must guard against deviant toads like Jurgen who'd molest them?”

“He has many children, he's fair, but quite the Catholic,” warned the younger man, his gun pointed.

One of the sailors came up the ladder with the castrating pliers in his outstretched hand, blood still dripping from them. “The priest, he…he cut himself…badly!”

“You mean he castrated himself?” asked Ransom.

“We thought you did it,” replied the sailor.

Alastair believed this was going very bad very quickly, and with the speed of a viper, he reached out and wrenched the horse grippers out of the sailor's hands, striking the first mate in the jaw, sending him and his gun skidding across the deck.

Instantly, three other sailors leapt at Ransom and a brawl ensued. Ransom's cane brought one down, his fist wrapped around the iron pinchers slammed into another. The third man decided he hadn't enough invested in the priest, so he backed off, his hands going up in the air. The ferocity of Ransom's fighting had instilled a fear in all three, and so unchallenged further, he made for the gangplank when, inches from his hand, a gunshot splintered the wood. Ransom looked over his shoulder and his eyes met those of the white-bearded ship's doctor, who, no doubt, had been well paid to safeguard Jurgen.

“I left the bastard unharmed!” Ransom cried out.

Ransom then turned his back on the unarmed, shocked Captain Tianetto and walked slowly down the remainder of the gangplank, disregarding the captain's cries to stop and the doctor's threats of again firing.

It was a gamble, and Ransom inwardly flinched, half expecting to feel a bullet rip through him. But he gambled that the captain would prefer a quick, clean end to this matter; that Tianetto didn't want his departure held up by an inquest, one in which he'd have to explain the entry wound in Ransom's back. Shooting a man in the back, even in a situation
like this, remained an act of cowardice in the collective mind. It would not serve the captain well to read about himself as a back shooter in the Chicago press.

Jurgen's screams and the gunshot had brought people out, and the wharves were suddenly busy with onlookers, so the captain must know there'd be multiple witnesses to anyone aboard shooting him in the back. The gamble worked.

Cane in hand, the old man moved unmolested by anyone, and Ransom hurriedly disappeared in the gloom of night beyond the lights of the wharf, but only after tossing the Montgomery Ward's castration pliers into the Chicago River.

The following day, Samuel could be found nowhere,
and the newspapers had eyewitness accounts and sketches of the old man who had, in a maniacal and unprovoked attack, “disfigured a priest who'd merely extended a helping hand to the beggar.” The exact nature of the disfigurement could not be openly discussed in the papers for fear of scandalizing ladies and all refined gentlemen—so shocking, horrifying, and horrendous was the mutilation. Women in particular would be outraged, and one reporter feared that if he described the extent of Father Jurgen's injuries, people might faint outright.

The Chicago Police Department chief, Nathan Kohler, swore that he would put his best people on the case, and that the CPD would not rest until the fiend who'd mutilated this poor man of God was apprehended and punished to the full extent of the law. He finished by saying that every witness and anyone who'd come into contact with the mystery man who'd attacked Jurgen were being questioned for every detail, and as they'd pieced the event together, a clear picture emerged of an insane white-bearded, heavyset maniac in their midst, a madman who might strike again at any citizen of the city.

The papers did describe the weapon that had been used on the priest—the horse grippers. In fact, a sidebar described the instrument in detail, virtually trumping the story itself and making clear the nature of the injuries to Father Franklin Jurgen.

The thinking went that if the attacker could find fault with a saintly priest, God forbid he should ever attack a guilty man—meaning no one was safe—man, woman, or child in the city. Therefore, anyone who might've seen the old rag and bottle collector hanging about the wharf, wolfing down raw fish heads, was asked to contact police and come in for a statement.

 

When Alastair read about the circumstances and that Father Jurgen had been rushed to Cook County Hospital for surgery, he wondered who among the crew had reason to hate the priest or want him dead.

He thought of the two muggers who'd accosted him with a knife. As he folded the morning paper and had his coffee and pastry at the shop he frequented most mornings, he quietly chuckled at the notion of all the wharf rats showing up on Kohler's doorstep to assist in the investigation, and to collect a reward for doing a civic duty.

Just then a shadow blotted out all light across Alastair's table, and he looked up to find Philo Keane staring wide-eyed at him, slapping a hand against the paper he held. “
You
bloody did it!”

“Shhh
…sit and calm down!”

“And you used my pinchers.”

“Technically, the
item
belongs to Montgomery Ward, and secondly, I didn't do it.”

“Somehow, Rance, your saying so doesn't ease my mind.”

Ransom shook his head in disbelief. It never failed to amaze him that the truth was so often harder to believe than a lie. “Sit and have some coffee.”

Philo dropped into the seat opposite him. “I never imagined you'd actually go through with it.”

“I didn't.”

“I thought you'd threaten him, terrify him, but Rance, this…this is unbelievable.”

“Again, I tell you I did not go through with it, and no one can trace the weapon—someone else used on the priest—back to you, so stop blubbering.”

“I see. So that's how we will play it. Where is
the weapon
?”

“The river.”

“Thanks for that much. Nothing goes in there ever comes out.”

“Are you calmed down?” Alastair asked. “Look, my friend, no one's going to put it together, and honestly, I failed to go through with it in the end.”

“How can you be so sure no one will piece it together?”

“All right, no one's likely to put it together.”

Philo said it slower, enunciating each word as he would to a dote. “How-can-you-be-so-sure?”

“No one saw me. They saw old Jack Ketchum.”

“Your favorite disguise. How sweetly ironic…so Jack did it, and you couldn't. That's how you live with it? Rationalizing it away as the work of Ketchum?”

“Weathered ol' Ketchum didn't do it either, but he's gone to rest eternal now.”

“Yes, he must forever remain dead and gone if you are to survive this! The fervor gotten up in the press, if old Jack were caught, he'd be burned at the stake.”

“Not before they castrated him,” teased Alastair, smirking.

“I'm glad you can joke about this! And aye, for what you did to a spiritual leader, if they catch Jack or you, you might be castrated.”

“Sad old Jack comes out the pervert instead of the pervert coming out the pervert.”

“Be smug and jolly 'bout it, but just suppose Nathan Kohler were to put it together, Alastair? He knows your disguises, and he knows you're after Nell's killer, that you could well've been on that wharf as Ketchum. And if he puts it together, Rance, you can kiss your real self good-bye.”

A waiter entered Philo's peripheral vision, asking for his order.

“Coffee, black, with a Danish.”

“Yes, sir. And you, Inspector? Anything else?”

“Another coffee, yes.”

“How did you do it?” Philo asked after the waiter moved away. “And why aboard the ship?”

“I'd like to share the details of every moment with you, but Philo, I suspect you and I are both safer if I keep it
entirely
to myself.”

Philo pouted. “Are you implying that you can't trust me, your confidant and best friend?”

Ransom glared at him, realizing how backward this entire conversation was. “It's not that I don't trust you, Philo.”

“After all we've meant to one a—”

“I've seen you wilt under interrogation, remember?” Ransom said, cutting Philo off. “Besides, drink loosens your tongue.”

Philo sat back in his chair. “
Hmmmpf
…I see.”

“Don't give me that look. You know full well I'm right.”

“And the boy, Samuel, when he learns of all this?” Philo jammed his index finger into the newspaper lying between them. “How tight-lipped do you think he'll be when he gets among his fellows?”

“He's a good kid. Reminds me of me.”

“That's a horrid thought.”

“He'll do as I say and acquit himself well.”

“If he doesn't come under Kohler's thumb! Or if he doesn't get it in his head to collect a reward.”

“He'll do neither.” Ransom shook his head. “Have you no trust in human nature left, Philo?”

“Bosch does sometime work for Kohler.”

“I'm aware of Bosch's burning both ends.”

“At the very least, the kid'll want to brag to his friends how Inspector Ransom did him a good turn.”

The waiter returned with Danish and a coffeepot. After a moment, Philo sipped at his steaming coffee and tore into his pastry. “It's human nature that I worry about; it's natural the boy would want to talk about you, his hero.”

Ransom, for the moment, worried more about what Samuel was planning with that Pinkerton dossier. But he calmly replied, “You always fret over the wrong things, Philo.”

“A boy his age can hardly keep this to himself and not drop your name. If you're not careful, you'll find yourself behind bars, facing a judge on charges of—”

“All right, point taken. Enough. You're like a washerwoman sometimes!” But Alastair thought how right Philo was; that in fact Philo had no idea just how right he was.

The waiter returned with more coffee and something on his mind. The thin, sallow man in an apron looked jaundiced from years of drink and his voice was gruff. “Horrible isn't it?” he said to the seated gentlemen, jabbing an index finger at the headline lying between them. “How even a priest in this city can be targeted by a maniac. First the mayor, and now a priest! This city's going the way of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“Yeah…whataya going to do?” asked Ransom.

“What're you coppers gonna do, Inspector?” asked the waiter. “A mayor and a lady Pinkerton agent killed, and now a priest castrated, and what's done about it? Nothing's done about it.”

The sallow-faced waiter made his way back to the counter, picked up a rag and began wiping down. Philo commented, “The prevailing belief from the man on the street, Ransom. So what are you going to do about Nell's murder, now that you've got this other
matter
out of your way?”

“Ever hear of a surgeon named Conklin? Dr. Nehemmia Conklin?”

“No, can't say I have, but this city has as many surgeons as pigeons.”

“Nell had the fellow under watch.”

“Ahhh
…then you've finally gotten some cooperation out of Pinkerton?”

“Bill Pinkerton, yes.” He chose not to mention Hake.

“And are you going to hammer Conklin…or cut his nuts off?”

“Shhh
…Philo, do you want me hauled in for ending the
career of a child molesting rat when in fact I did not carry through with it?”

“All right…all right, you'll not hear another word of it from me, but I fear, Rance, that one day this action of yours will come back to haunt you or bite you in that big arse of yours.”

“Thanks for your advice, my friend, and for agreeing to speak of it no more.”

“Rance, the man wound up in Cook County.”

“Under whose care?”

“Dr. Fenger's care.”

“Fenger, heh?”

“Yes, but there was little he could do but close the wound and hand the priest his testicles in a formaldehyde-filled jar.”

“Perhaps Jurgen can make money showing the jar at a traveling carnival,” quipped Ransom.

“Would make a helluva an exhibit, all right, as in exhibit number one in the case against you, if you're not careful.”

“I thought we agreed to end talk of it, since I did not clip the man's jewels.”

“We did agree, but you asked about Fenger's involvement.”

“I did, didn't I?”

“Fenger, too, has condemned the man who could do this to another man. Called him a bestial creature likely from Hades itself, likely with horns and a bifurcated tail, complete with pitchfork.”

“He said all that?”

“I had to take pictures of the man's mutilated parts, Rance. Hardest thing I've had to photograph since…since Chelsey's murder.”

“You feel pity for this disgusting pig?”

“Here, damn you!” Philo discreetly pulled forth a photo he'd made. “Your handiwork. Take a good look.”

The shot of the mutilated center of the attack made Ransom turn his eyes away. “All the same, Philo, for the last time, I didn't do this to the man. I came damn near it, but I couldn't.”

“Are you serious? Are you really innocent this go round?”

“Innocent, yes.”

“Rance, crimes against children—”

“Just get thrown out of court. Kids don't vote; they've no rights!”

“OK, you're right,” replied Philo. “We both know it.”

“Just would've been swept under and tossed out had I gone through the system. No one wants to deal with this particular societal cancer.”

“All right…end of discussion.” Philo lifted and put away the bloody crotch photo. “Just be careful. Kohler gets wind of the truth, whatever it is, you've had it.”

Just then the shop doorbell rang, its lilting sound announcing Mike O'Malley, who stood near the door, scanning the room. When he saw Ransom and Philo Keane huddled over a photo, he rushed toward them, waving.

“Mike!” said Ransom

Philo secured the photo.

“Ahhh
…I see Mr. Keane's shown you that awful photo!” Mike replied, pulling up a seat.

For Ransom, looking at young Mike O'Malley amounted to looking back through time at himself twenty years earlier. “What's the word, Mike? You looking for me?” he asked.

“Matter of fact, yes. Kohler sent me to locate you.”

“Really?”

“Wants me to haul your ass in,” Mike said, laughing.

“Haul 'im in?” asked Philo.

“What does that balding blowhard want, Mike?”

“He wants you to head up the investigation.”

“But
I am
heading up the investigation. Where've you been, Mike?”

“No, not the Hartigan case, the Jurgen case!”

“The Jurgen case? Me?”

“Yes, wants you to locate and put the collar on the man who attacked the good priest.”

“Why Inspector Ransom?” asked Philo, amazed.

“How ducky,” said Ransom. “Why is it that Nell's case is
taking a back seat to this attack on a priest? Why do you think, Mike? What lesson does it send?”

“Ahhh…
Kohler's conscious of the media attention given the priest as opposed to Nell?”

“Exactly. Anybody ask why this old man attacked the priest to begin with?”

Mike shrugged. “Witnesses say some sort of sudden loss of control. The priest offered him bread and drink, and he just, for no reason at all, attacked Father Jurgen.”

“Anyone question Father Jurgen yet?”

“I did, yes.” Mike ordered a coffee.

“And what was Father Jurgen's explanation?” Ransom made the word “Father” sound like a sneer. While Mike failed to notice, Philo rolled his eyes.

“He says the attack came when he asked the man to pray with him.”

“Really?”

“To help a stranger overcome vile, inner demons, he said.”

“He said all that after being castrated?”

“Word for word.”

“Wonder who's to help Jurgen overcome his demons?”

“Well, Father O'Bannion's sitting with him.”

Ransom and Philo exchanged a look, Alastair enjoying the irony of his being put on a case in which he'd literally be in pursuit of himself as the number one suspect. “Frankly, Mike, I can almost guarantee that we'll never locate this insane old madman who attacked Jurgen.”