City of the Absent Read online

  William Pinkerton, however, once confided in Ransom, “We never looked for any strike work.”

  “No, really?” Ransom asked at the time.

  “It’s just something that was thrust upon us, kinda grown around us.”

  “You’ve a remarkable record nonetheless,” said Ransom.

  In 1888, only five years before, the Pinkertons played a major role in the great CB&Q—Chicago-Burlington & Quincy—railroad strike, one of the most stubbornly contested battles in the history of the labor struggles. The president of the Knights of Labor, much later at a Senate hearing on the matter, charged the Pinkerton operatives with inciting riots, murdering strikers, and setting dynamite charges, only to blame workers. Ransom had done an investigation of the charges for the senator from Illinois and found the charges leveled at the Pinkertons completely fabricated and unfounded—at least in this case.

  “We act as watchmen,” Pinkerton had told the Senate during hearings, “guards only, and never has a Pinkerton ever sat down at a striker’s job and done the work of a striker. We are not in the business of taking jobs and food out of the mouths of the workingman. In that sense, we are not strike breakers but mere policemen.”

  Ransom knew the Pinkerton policy. Before they would send a single man into the danger zone, the local sheriff or high authority must swear every man jack-of-’em in as deputies, as the local peacekeepers. It was a stroke of genius. “For now we could,” as William had testified, “conduct ourselves in a lawful way.”

  The elevator opened on a hallway and a door facing him, again with the big single eye staring him down.

  On the inside, once Ransom finally found his way to the hefty William Pinkerton’s office, he received a cool reception from everyone on the floor, including an Italian courier leaving with a sealed envelope, a lunch counterman carrying in sandwiches, and the black janitor with mop and bucket. Alastair nervously realized that any one of them—courier, counterman, janitor—could be incognito as a Pinkerton eye.

  CHAPTER 21

  Ransom had told Pinkerton that he’d want records on Nell’s current cases, to understand why she was on the street the night she was fated to die. But now, standing in Pinkerton’s line of fire, leaning in the doorway as Pinkerton paid the sandwich man, Ransom thought the look on his face was one of an animal caught off his territory, yet the man was in his office!

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said.

  “Oh, but it’s been two days and nights, and having not heard from you, sir—”

  “But I was told you’d been taken off the case; that they needed you for more pressing matters.”

  “Odd…no one’s told me so.”

  “Ahhh…I suppose I was being soaped then by someone.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Still…so soon, Inspector,” he said.

  “The sooner I see those records, the sooner I may find a lead and uncover who is behind Nell Hartigan’s murder.”

  “We all want that, yes, of course…” Pinkerton hesitated, coughing into a handkerchief, complaining of being under the weather. He stood, paced to the window, pulled a sash tight, tying it off, and next opened a window, jammed his hands out into the air and rubbed them together, nervously looking out, back in, around the room, until he spied a crooked picture and began fidgeting with this. It was a picture of his thick-bearded father, founder of the agency, beside a separate autographed photo of Abraham Lincoln with the American flag as backdrop.

  “Mr. Pinkerton, is there something troubling you?”

  “Why, no!” He put on a disingenuous smile before dropping back into his seat. “It’s just that the records you want…there is a sensitive matter attached, you see, and I can’t have just anyone privy to—”

  “I am not just anyone,” interrupted Ransom.

  “Of course not. You are perfectly right, sir.”

  “Where, then, are the records? Nell’s notes on her current cases?”

  “They’ve…quite frankly…It—It’s embarrassing, but they’ve disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Like smoke, yes, quite the mystery.”

  “Did you have a break-in? Were the notes stolen along with other files? Did you report it?”

  “No, nothing like that. Look, every agent has his or her own method of working, and Nell was known for working not out of the office but out of her head. Was a joke around here. Nell worked ‘outta her head’—get it?”

  “Funny.” But Ransom returned to the file. “An inside job, you think? Are you interrogating your people?”

  “I am, yes.”

  “Sounds like any ‘notes’ will go to Nell’s grave with her.”

  “We believe, that is, it’s possible she never filed reports on her current case, else it’s clerical error and in time they will surface.”

  “Clerical error?”

  He shrugged. “Wrong file, and if you look around, you see the extent of our files.”

  “The file is lost in the files?”

  “If it exists at all, yes. I’m sorry.”

  “Then speak to me. Tell me what’s in her notes. What was she working on when she died?”

  “All right, I’ll tell you what little I know, but first, you of all people, you must know it is both a boring and a precarious life, being a detective.”

  “What’s that got to do with—”

  “Nell did countless, countless jobs for us; I can’t begin to enumerate the many midwestern holes she traveled to where she infiltrated, living in the boardinghouse, playacting as a penniless drifter, having the occasional drink with strikers, learning their plans, usually with Frederick or another operative playing pool at the billiard table. She had never compromised her cover, not once. The chief duty of an undercover operative is to act as part of an intelligence group gathering information. She was in the early, early stages of this case, and pretty much on her own.”

  “Too premature to write down? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you must have some inkling of what she was working on, right?”

  “Ahhh…yes and no.”

  It seemed another hedge. Why isn’t Pinkerton leveling with me? he wondered. “Then just tell me as much as you know of her footsteps,” suggested Ransom, his frustration rising like a tide.

  “OK…all right…but you are sworn to secrecy.”

  “My right hand to the Bible, my sainted mother’s curse on my head if you wish.”

  “All right, but this can’t get out to the papers or the street.”

  “You have my word. Go on.” This better be good, Ransom thought.

  “Nell was on to a couple of interesting threads…. ahhh, leads. She was watching closely the firemen and the switchmen, expecting a strike any day.”

  “Firemen? Switchmen? They are a pretty settled group since the CB&Q settlement, aren’t they?”

  “There’s always discord with some groups.”

  Ransom jotted notes to himself. “You said she was on to a few leads. Anything else?”

  “She thought she was on to a series of strange disappearances.”

  “Really? Strange disappearances?”

  “People vanishing off the street, yes, but her partner, Frederick Hake, a good man with more experience, counted the so-called disappearances as simply disenchanted folk who had moved on, gone west.”

  “I see.” Gone west was a street term for gone south—six feet under south. “Do go on.”

  “Well…from all accounts, these were people not missed.”

  “Not missed?”

  Pinkerton pointedly replied, “Not-missed-by-anyone-whatsoever.”

  “If that were the case, Nell, Fred, you—now me—none of us would be speaking of them, now would we?” Ransom pointedly asked.

  “See Webster’s dictionary for derelict,” Pinkerton said with a smirk.

  “All of them derelicts?”

  “And strays.”

  “Deviants, perverts?” />
  “Exactly.”

  “The sort who’re invisible to City Hall and most of the population?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And the police commissioner? And Chief of Police Nathan Kohler? Do they know about this?” Ransom watched closely for any sign of Pinkerton’s reaction to the name, but either Pinkerton was cool or he had no hidden agenda involving Kohler.

  “I know of your difficulties with your chief, Inspector, that there is bad blood between you.”

  “Spilt blood is more apt, but that wasn’t the question.”

  “You have my word as a gentleman and a professional, sir, that I will not get between the two of you.”

  “Is that what you told Kohler?”

  “In more words and with more passion, yes. But he relates some horror stories about you, I must say.”

  Ransom wondered if this were the reason for Pinkerton’s extreme nervousness, but it did not fit with the man’s reputation to show the least fear. “You’ve something of a reputation yourself, William.”

  “I do, yes.”

  “Your having personally overseen that case out in Aurora, unearthing a huge cache of explosives meant to destroy tracks, bridges, and blow engines off the rails.”

  Pinkerton smiled for a brief moment. “Don’t leave out the kegs ’pon kegs of illegal whiskey!” He laughed raucously. “My, but I miss my time in the field, I do. I envy you that kind of…freedom.”

  “You put those bastards away for two years in Joliet.” Ransom continued to butter up the other man.

  “I did that, yes, and all the while the labor people charging us with fabricating the whole thing, of planting evidence!”

  “You were cleared of all the nonsense charges. Even the men you arrested testified on your behalf, that you got them fair and square.”

  “All true, but it didn’t stop the next rumor, that those men were paid to be complimentary. Then it evolved that they were in fact Pinkerton operatives paid to do jail time!”

  “Ridiculous the conspiracy theories that float ’round here.”

  “Hey, it is Chicago.”

  A long moment of silence settled between them. Pinkerton finally stopped tapping his desk with a pencil and said, “The worst thing on earth for a man like you and me is to be saddled to a desk all day. Where’s the success and freedom in that? Where’s the reward?”

  The man is as slippery as a wet eel, Ransom thought. Hard to pin down to specifics, for sure. Pinkerton had successfully avoided his more serious questions, and then the private eye had the audacity to ask, “Is it true that you doused a man with kerosene during a secret interrogation? An anarchist?”

  “That much is true.”

  “Then set the man afire?”

  “That’s the lie.”

  “OK, I can accept that, but more recently, did you literally drop a suspected garroter into that lake out there to drown alive?”

  “Wild speculation.”

  “Your chief has a vivid imagination?”

  “And a memory that picks and chooses amid the truth. It amounts to half-truth, and outright lie.”

  “Nothing substantial, heh? Nothing to hold up in a court of law?”

  “Look, I could ask you why there’s so much blood on the banks of the Monongahela, huh? But I won’t.”

  Pinkerton blanched white at the mention of last year’s botched strike job, the one that had made up the collective Pinkerton mind to once and for all get out of the strikebreaking business, thereby honoring his father’s last wish.

  “But I rather doubt,” continued Ransom, “you want to talk about that.”

  “Robert and I gave in our testimony and opened our records to the Senate and were cross-examined by the subcommittee. Homestead is over and so is our ever again hiring out watchmen in such a situation.”

  “Sounds like everyone at Homestead learned his lesson, but it takes cases that blow up in your face to prove the need for good records—detailed, written records.”

  “I doubt you could understand the depth of this agency’s sorrow over Monongahela. Why, we lost more operatives that day than in all our history.”

  “So…getting back to Nell’s project here in Chicago?”

  “Good call, ‘project.’ She chose to work on it against my wishes, against Fred’s judgment as well, on her own time.”

  Finally…a break in the man’s armor.

  CHAPTER 22

  Ransom paced about William Pinkerton’s office now, taking in the historic photos lining Pinkerton’s walls. “I have a photographer friend who would find these shots of great interest.”

  “Bring him ’round sometime.”

  Chummy all of a sudden. The man is hiding something, Ransom decided. “I take it Nell’s pet project didn’t bring in any revenue?”

  “None whatever.”

  “And your agency, is it paid, in certain instances, to look the other way?”

  “To remain in business in Chicago—any business—you know that is par for the course, that the city is for sale and all its services are for sale, including City Hall, or perhaps because the sales stem from the top.”

  “Then you are paying tithes to City Hall to operate out of here?”

  “Aren’t we all? Your paycheck, Inspector, where does it derive from? Graft is the heart’s blood of Chicago just as surely as New York.”

  “But Nell wanted to investigate anyway—after you gave her this or a similar lecture?”

  “You’re an astute man, Inspector.”

  “But you didn’t think she’d get far with it before you’d swamp her with directed work.”

  “But she surprised me, yes. Tenacious little Nell. Like a big cat on the scent.”

  “You had strong feelings for her?”

  “I did.”

  “Did those feelings translate into actions?”

  “That’s really none of your business, sir.”

  “In a murder investigation, sir, not answering a question speaks volumes.”

  “Yes, I suppose I know that.”

  “Tells me enough that I can surmise.”

  “All right, yes, I was secretly seeing her, but my family cannot know of it, do you understand?”

  Another layer of worry on the man, thought Ransom. “I do understand the need for discretion, and they’ll not hear it from me, but by the same token, we need to trust one another, Mr. Pinkerton, if we’re to be an effective team. I won’t harm you, your reputation, or your family, and you won’t go behind my back to Nathan Kohler.”

  “A fair deal, then, we’ve struck.”

  “Done. Now, tell me what Nell Hartigan was working on so…so diligently.”

  “And blindly,” he added.

  “You’re still saying nothing. Look, William—you asked me to find and put away Nell’s killer, but you tie my hands.”

  “As we discussed, th-the victims, she theorized, were of lowliest standing.”

  “I got that.”

  “Not only did they go unnoticed, even by law enforcement people like yourself, Inspector, but missed by no one.”

  “Ahhh…the sort of vermin no one wants in the city to—”

  “To begin with.”

  “—to begin with.” They finished in unison. “But William—Bill—you’re not of that opinion, are you?”

  “Of course not, but then again, are you going to stand here and tell me, Inspector, that you’ve never wished the…the vermin away?”

  “Is there some sort of involvement here between surgeons, ghouls who supply them with fresh cadavers, and…and City Hall? That Carter Harrison knew of these shenanigans along with others?”

  “Absolutely not! That is to say City Hall looks the other way on such matters, and…”

  “And like God, hasn’t time for details?”

  “It’s not a conspiracy toward genocide or racial cleansing as in the time of the Romans!”

  “And your agency, you were asked to pay no attention to the needs of the medical community here?”
r />   His silence was his answer. Alastair remained on the attack, pursuing this line of questioning. “But your own Nell strongly disagreed?”

  “That’s the gist of it, yes.”

  “I see, and you tried to get her to stop snooping into this matter?”

  “I threatened to fire her, yes, if she didn’t cease and desist.”

  “Looks like someone made sure she did—cease and desist, I mean.” Ransom thought of how often now he’d tried to convince Jane to end her Tewes act, and how resistant she’d become as a result. The more he argued, the more entrenched she’d become on the subject. Was it a woman thing? Was it like this between Pinkerton and Hartigan?

  “I’m committed to finding those responsible for Nell’s death,” Bill Pinkerton said. “Rest assured. I’m no longer taking payoffs on behalf of the city doctors or anyone else.”

  “That’s got to be a comfort to Nell.” It was a mean thing to say, and Ransom wished he’d snatched it back before it got said, but too late. The words floated between them, and William Pinkerton’s eyes glazed over with wet tears he now dabbed at. Ransom sensed his tears genuine. “I want a list of the doctors you had an arrangement with.”

  “You know,” he sadly said, “I loved her, but if this gets out, a lot of lives are ruined, and—”

  “I understand. Seems to me you’ve been influenced heavily to believe in the scientific need here—”

  “The advancement of science at all cost, yes! Isn’t it what that entire World’s Fair was about? The advancement of man’s knowledge, skills, tools, industry, medicine?”

  “Too bad it paid so little heed to our failure to advance in morality and the warding off of evil.” Ransom didn’t know what else to say; he understood how the man must feel over the loss of Nell. Alastair recalled how he’d himself fallen apart on seeing his Polly murdered by a fiendish monster when the big fair was hardly under way. But all he could offer the grieving William Pinkerton was, “By all accounts, she was a fine example of womanhood, Nell was.”