City of the Absent Read online

  Philander now gesticulated like a wild baboon at his brother to Shut up and back up into the shadows!

  Domestic sounds from the windows of houses warmed by a hearth on either side floated on the air. And the hint of anyone who rode past in a cab came to the ear immediately and with such force as to spin Philander Rolsky, a man of instinct, to the next sound and the next opportunity.

  The report of approaching footfalls again seemed shockingly vivid to Philander’s ear. The sound of even the slightest, thinnest vermin could be heard as a result of so crisp a night.

  Philander settled in for a long watch below the shadows of McCumbler and Hurley’s law offices, old-world Polish or Austrian castlelike turrets forming overhanging window facings. Chicago’s architecture proved as varied and multifaceted as its population.

  Philander looked at the list again, his eyes and mind ticking off the anonymous names—people the good doctor had targeted for harvesting, people the good doctor felt contributed nothing to their families, their neighborhoods, their city, their world. Disposable people. People that Philander and his brother could watch and in a vulnerable moment snatch.

  From his vantage point, Philander—the smart twin—watched for a victim from the list, a Mr. Burbach, who frequented this street each night about this time to go through the garbage set out by the grocery and the restaurant beside the attorney’s office. Philander grimaced now, disapproving of Vander’s pacing, singing of all things, drawing attention to himself, while the men who’d dropped Vander coin had not even known that a second man was here. They’d gone right past him and never knew.

  His teeth began to hurt from the grinding caused by worries brought on by Vander. “My counterpart,” he muttered, “the one of us without patience or cunning or boldness. My broken, timid other self.” He flailed with both hands again to signal his disgust at his brother for being under a light and easily seen and recognized.

  “Let the fool be arrested and tossed into the Cook County loony bin,” he muttered to himself. “Deserves nothing better. Fool will get me caught as well.”

  The dead, Alexander, could’ve been me, he thought, else the thought was forced on me from my second and dead brother. Just as I could’ve been born Vander, and Vander could’ve been me. Just barely escaped being stillborn, then being Vander, and in a sense, I’ve not escaped either. Not at all.

  “Vander, oh…Vander,” he muttered. “He’ll never fly.”

  His dead brother’s creaky voice sounded a reply. “Yes, b-but he makes a g-good diversion t-to the real show.” Philander had become so accustomed to his third self, speaking from inside his head, that it never shocked or surprised him.

  They were born triplets, a rarity if only the third born had not died and the second hadn’t come out a brain-dented fool. So their mother had lamented all their lives. Who knows? Perhaps the trio might’ve been celebrated as a rarity. Perhaps mama wasn’t exaggerating, but what kind of a freak did that make him? Philander wondered.

  The dead one was Alexander, but even dead, Alex still had a voice—a sepulchral voice to be sure, but clear as a bell inside Philander’s head. The other one, across the street, surveying another direction for prey, Vander, couldn’t hear Alex’s voice. He hadn’t the imagination or element of empathy, Philander had decided years before. Mama had called the dead one simply It or Number Three, adding, Though it’d come out after Philander and before Vander.

  The stillborn one was never christened, except by his first-born brother years later when it made itself known inside him like a phantom limb or phantom frontal lobe.

  It was in fact a welcome entity, a welcome possession, and Philander knew that Alex wanted him, something he could not say of his mother and father.

  Strangely, oddly, Alex often told him that he wanted Vander to die off, even as children, warning that the big fool could come to harm in this world, that he’d ever be a burden to Philander, and that Vander would indeed be safer inside him, like Alex…safe and close as close gets.

  Guilt. It’s all just guilt, he told himself. Ignore it, he’d been telling himself for years. But Alex never gave up petitioning for Vander to join them, in a sense reuniting as one whole instead of three disparate parts.

  “How long’ve you asked for Vander to join you?” Philander muttered.

  “T-Too long.”

  “Since childhood.”

  “And tonight bears me out—yet again…” Philander, the normal one, had a wild imagination and bizarre, meaningless, chaotic dreams, all filled with horrors and curious creatures, and he imagined such things often. He decided it was due to his upbringing in the back woods of Germany—the Black Forest region—where as children he and his Polish brother were beaten until Alexander’s urgings that he kill his parents in their sleep came to pass. He’d placed a brick in a burlap sack, knocking his father and mother unconscious with two quick blows. Seeing the blood ooze over their pillows made the rest of the blows come easy, and he rained his anger on them until their faces were no longer recognizable as human. After that, he’d taken his slow-witted twin in hand and come to America—land of the free, where no one knew them, where they could all three begin life anew.

  They’d boarded a merchant marine ship, working their way to America. Once in the United States in a place called Boston, they’d drifted to Chicago by way of Syracuse, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; to Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; finally, Indianapolis, Indiana, riding the rails into Chicago in the company of hobos, whose existence meant nothing to anyone—and one whose death had meant nothing to anyone either. Philander had killed for a piece of bread and a scrap of potato for himself and Vander.

  Vander, Philander, and Alexander had all found Chicago a frightful place, huge as a monster and just as uncaring. Philander had never seen such tall buildings, reaching to twenty stories and beyond, with news of even taller ones in the works. He’d tried to find work in the brickyards, the stockyards, the cemeteries. Nothing, nothing, and nothing. He’d tried to find work in the garbage collection business. Nothing. His accent, he knew, held him back; he’d have to perfect talking like an Irishman to get anywhere in Chicago.

  He’d never seen such rampant community growth, and so much money in one place, and he unable to tap into the least of it. Still, he’d determined to have whatever share he could get. To this end, he began to watch things closely, to learn how things worked in the city. He hit upon a plan to make large sums by going into profitable business with a medical man in need of corpses. Garbage collection of another sort.

  With the help of Vander, he arranged nowadays to fill the doctor’s every needful prescription. This sent them out nightly and sometimes by day to stalk and eventually trap and harvest fresh bodies, and the fresher the body or organ, the more Doc paid for it. Disposable people, he’d called them. “I only want disposable people.”

  “Ahhh…disposable, sir?”

  “In the sense they contribute nothing to society, are a burden on the public trust fund, have no purpose, and…”

  “I understand your meaning, sir.”

  “…and they’ve no ties whatsoever.”

  “Ties, sir?”

  Vander piped in, repeating the question, “Ties? Neckties?”

  “No familial ties.”

  “Familial?” asked Philander.

  “No bloody family, no one who’s going to be filing a missing persons report.”

  “Ahhh…clever, sir, most clever.”

  “Then you do understand?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “And your hunchback strongman? What of him?”

  “Oh, not to worry, Doc, as I’ll drill it in his head.”

  “See that you do. Should you begin indiscriminately, ahhh…harvesting, then we’re all three sent to the gallows.”

  So here they were, continuing their hunt for the people on the list, who, once killed, went absolutely unmissed.

  “No ties…no ties…” Vander chanted during each hunt.

  “Jump ’
em, mug ’em, rob ’em, kill ’em, transport ’em, and collect a second fee,” Philander had told him. “It’s all too easy. And it’s good pay.”

  “No ties…no ties.”

  On hearing footsteps coming along Van Buren Street, Philander backed into the depths of an unlit alleyway. A short, hefty man with a bowler hat and a cane was approaching, an easy mark, but then another appeared alongside. Two drinking companions who’d come up to street level from the last ferry boat along the river that transported folk to and from the grand fair. Philander knew never to attack two men at once, and he’d drilled Vander about this as well. He let the boisterous fairgoers pass, while his stupid brother actually tipped his hat to them! Fool.

  Then Philander saw the slight figure of another person alone, not ten feet from him. He or she had a silent step and had come up along the crossroad yet to be paved in this section of town—where Dearborn met Van Buren. This waiflike figure could not see the body-thief in shadow, and so came staggering ever closer, obviously drunk or hung over. As the figure neared, Philander saw that indeed it was a woman alone…the perfect victim, except that she was not on the list.

  Perhaps he’d have more than her wallet, he thought now. He could not remember the last time he’d been with a woman.

  As she passed near, he allowed her to move on without disturbance. She absolutely reeked of alcohol, as if bathed in it. She looked the vile prostitute she was. Dirty and unkempt. Too dirty to rape, he decided, and no way to bathe her, for though her teeth appeared knocked out, and her face a mask of sourness, her body seemed lithe and curvaceous. Odd, that.

  In a handful of additional steps she was confronted by his deformed look-alike across the street. She immediately halted, taking in his brother. The street bitch was fishing for a proposition out of the idiot, his face glowing with utter confusion under the lamplight. Philander thought it a funny sight on the whole.

  The plucking of the woman for the doctor could not have been so well choreographed if he’d planned it himself, and Doc could bathe her after she was dead. Despite her not being on the list, she obviously contributed nothing to society, and if she had any ties, they must be loose tethers at best.

  He saw his dummy deformed twin leap at the woman, causing her to cry out, and then he feebly put the muzzle of his unloaded gun into her ribs and ordered, “Back into the alleyway.”

  She instead turned and spat in Vander’s face, shouting, “You go ta’ell!” while pulling forth her own pistol.

  Vander was stunned, unable to respond.

  “Have at it, ya bastard creature!” she shouted at the disfigured giant. “But you’ll end with a bullet to yer brain! Putcha outta yer misery!”

  Plucky Chicago whore, Philander thought as he moved serpent fashion to take her from behind.

  “If you mean to rape me, go ahead! Make a try!” she continued to taunt Vander, waving her large pistol. Vander, frightened, his hands in the air in response to her gun, kept saying, “No ties…no ties…”

  “Go on, throw down on me! You’ve got a gun!” she challenged.

  Vander, taking her words literally, responded by throwing down his weapon. Its thud sent up a little dirt cloud at her feet, causing her to cackle witchlike, as she looked the picture of a banshee—all her teeth gone, her face a mask of wrinkles like a badly treated dollar bill.

  Vander ran.

  She gave a few stomps and a laugh after him, before shouting to the rooftops, “I’ve chased off a giant hunchbacked weasel so’s people can sleep at night!”

  Still laughing, smiling, when she turned, she felt the blade slice open her abdomen as her eyes met a man with a gleeful grin that showed a set of perfectly white teeth and eyes that burned with a fiery hatred. But he was no one she knew, and yet he was strangely familiar, in fact identical to the figure she’d run off, save now his features were pleasant—at least normal in shape and form.

  Philander watched her eyes study him as she died, and he realized the nature of her confusion, that she hadn’t the strength now to pull the trigger, the weight of the gun too much to bear. As her firearm fell to the street, her eyes said, I’m to leave this world ciphering how the runaway weasel shape-changed into my killer. She must think him a supernatural creature, some sort of troll capable of disappearing in one direction and reappearing instantaneously in another. “The Brothers Grimm, madam,” he joked, his gravelly voice the last earthly sound she heard aside from a single long gurgling croak—her death rattle.

  “Vander! Vander, get the ’ell over ’ere and help out, idiot! Bring the cart!”

  Vander slowly meandered back with a four-by-four pushcart, still fearful, furtive, looking in every direction. His twin brother thought he looked every bit the weasel, just as the wench had said, regardless of his size. In fact, he looked like a Chicago wharf rat at the moment, and just as afraid. Damn him…damn him to Hell…but he is blood…he is brother…and we are twins, regardless of the physical deformities.

  With Vander’s help, Philander hefted the body onto the cart, when the revelation began to sink in. The prostitute had layers of theatrical makeup on. Spying the line about the throat, he checked her forearms—clean and smooth of wrinkles. “Jesus, she’s a young woman,” he said to Vander.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A young woman pretending to be an old street whore? What’s it mean?”

  He heard someone calling out, “Nell! Damn it, Nell! Where’ve you got offta? Nelly!”

  Footsteps and a handheld police lantern approached. Two men, one a blue-suited copper.

  Vander ran.

  Philander opened Nell from breastbone to abdomen and began scooping out any organ he might steal before the two men searching for Nell should see him. He then began placing whole organs into the jars that the doctor’d given him for such needs. He worked quickly, experienced at this. He flashed on how he’d cut open his mother before his father’s dead and bashed-in eyes.

  He left Nell splayed and lying as if she’d fallen from a great height, so twisted were her limbs. The men with the lantern must trip over her, so true was their path toward her, as if they could smell the blood.

  Philander rushed carefully along the stones, against the walls, at ease with the city shadows. In his ear he heard Alex whisper, “We did it. Well done, brother, well done.”

  CHAPTER 7

  A late night knock on a door in Chicago in 1893 was in itself cause for alarm, but nowadays Dr. Christian Fenger had a telephone, and its ringing at such an hour, on the heels of declaring the mayor of Chicago murdered by an assassin, felt doubly alarming. Who could it be now? Not enough mischief for one night? When will I be left in peace? Damn it, I’m only one man, after all.

  However, before he could lift the receiver, someone was pounding noisily at his door as if intent on breaking in. Someone using a cane. Alastair Ransom perhaps? At this hour? Drunk, drinking to the living, toasting to the dead, specifically the passing of the mayor? Sure, Alastair will most certainly have raised a pint too many by now.

  But the silhouette through the curtain was hardly Ransom. Whoever it was, the fellow appeared slight, dwarfish even.

  Fenger got his revolver first, a six-barreled old Winchester given him by Inspector Alastair Ransom to ostensibly “hold for a time.” That’d been several years before. Ransom had never come back to reclaim the revolver, so the surgeon had long since decided that he’d either forgotten about it or that the inspector had meant him to have it at his disposal for such intrusions as this.

  A surgeon garners many enemies, Ransom had told him, and this was an unfortunate truth. Some foes came with the price of a bill, waving it at him as if he’d fleeced them instead of having saved their lives. Some came with their wives, brothers, big-headed, muscular, large bicuspid cousins to beat him to a pulp for “botching” the job. So often, the surgeon, like the veterinarian, got the case days or even hours before there was anything humanly possible to be done. At which time the patient died. At which time the finger of blame was levele
d squarely at the doctor. As he’d told Ransom over a pint of dark ale on their last meeting, “Sometimes, but rarely, am I capable of creating gold from straw or a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Hafta leave such magic to the frauds and Rumpelstiltskins of the profession.”

  “We’re surrounded by the illiterate and unwashed,” Alastair had replied, toasting to the doctor’s health.

  “There exists so much misunderstanding and wrong-headedness about what surgery can and cannot do.”

  “Still…at the price, some miracle is in order,” joked Ransom.

  The phone was ringing, and Dr. Fenger now grabbed it, only to find it dead. Whoever it’d been, they’d given up.

  Again the incessant pounding at the door.

  “Damn it, man! I’m coming!” Gun in hand, Fenger pulled his door wide.

  On his porch, looking out over Lake Park and Lake Michigan, stood that ugly old gimp, peg-leg snitch Civil War veteran of Ransom’s, Henry Bosch, aka Dot ’n’ Carry. At the same time, the phone resumed its ringing.

  “Mr. Bosch, what is it?”

  “Aye, you’ve a good memory, Doctor.”

  “Hold here a moment. Let me answer that infernal ringing.” Fenger went to the phone, lifted it, but found it dead again. “Damn thing!” he cursed, and pounded the thing back on its cradle.

  Bosch had stepped into the foyer. “You’re wanted o’er on Van Buren and Dearborn, Doctor. There’s been a—a foul murder, sir.”

  “Two killings in one night? What’s this city coming to, Mr. Bosch?”

  “You know full well it’s goin’ to hell in a hand—”

  “I take it Inspector Ransom sent you?”

  “Indeed, sir. Says there’s extra in it for you.”

  “Extra? Extra how?”

  “Seems the victim is a Pinkerton agent.”

  “A Pinkerton agent, really? Is it a lunatic’s night?”

  “They’re all mad, one and the same, in my estimation, sir.”