THREE

Later that same morning, Flip made his way along 47^th Street—a Negro neighborhood of private homes, small stores, and even smaller honky tonks. He reached a large brownfield left undeveloped. Empty land in the middle of a city block—several acres—strewn through with trash and animal droppings. The droppings were days old, but some still smelled fresh in the summer heat. A tall green and white sign stood at the edge of the field. Flip saw that it had been recently updated.

“Property of Singling Brothers All-Negro Circus and Shows. No Trespassing. Jos. J. Singling, Proprietor.”

A week ago, “Singling” had read—in both cases—“Singer.”

Beside the field lingered a boy of ten or eleven, entirely naked except for a pair of dirty brown overalls. Flip had seen him work as a kind of freelance helper for the circus when it was home. His employment arrangement was certainly unofficial, if it existed at all.

Flip tried to remember the child’s name.

“Roscoe? Ralph?” Flip called, ambling over to where the boy sat.

“Rufus, sir,” he replied brightly, snapping to attention.

“What happened to your sign? Who is Singling?”

“Mister Joseph changed the name,” Rufus explained. “It sounds more like Ringling Brothers now.”

“But it’s not the Ringling Brothers,” Flip said. “This outfit has got nothing to do with the Ringling Brothers.”

“People don’t know that,” the boy said defensively. “Mister Joseph says so. Mister Joseph says people are dupes.”

Flip nodded.

“Where is the circus today?” Flip asked.

“Indianapolis,” said the boy. “Due back this morning. They late. Gonna show up . . . afternoon, I expect. What Mister Joseph done?”

“Nothing,” said Flip. “I’m just looking to ask some questions.”

“Try this afternoon,” Rufus said, sitting back down on the empty curb. “Trains from Naptown always late. Then they gotta move everything from the rail yard to here. Be after lunch, at least.”

“I’ll check back,” Flip told him, already walking away.

Deeper into the South Side, down along 71^st Street, Flip found the alley where the twin brother and sister had been discovered—the first murder in the series shown him by the mayor. It was a pleasant enough neighborhood, and the day around him was becoming pleasant too. The sky was clear and blue, and a welcome breeze now cut through the growing heat.

This part of the city had become a chessboard of Negro, Irish, and Jewish pockets—with the pieces moving around every time you turned your head. Negroes moved in. Irish moved around. Jews often stayed put—and looked as though they would remain forever—then suddenly vanished without a trace for the suburbs, abandoning their country clubs and temples wholesale. It was very clear to Flip as he strolled block to block that certain businesses were designed to welcome one—and only one—sort of customer. Landlords rented to a single kind of tenant alone. In their meeting, Big Bill Thompson had characterized the spot of the murder as being where Jew gave way to Negro. As he reached his destination, Flip realized the mayor had been extremely precise.

On one side of the street there were only white faces, and mezuzahs beside nearly every door. Businesses sold clothing, baked goods, and hardware supplies, with signs partly in Yiddish, which Flip could not read. More than one passerby on this side of the street eyed him suspiciously. Whenever this happened, Flip allowed his jacket to hang open to reveal his gun and badge. This did not stop the looking, but he was not hassled or questioned.

On the other side of the street, it was entirely Negro. Not just Negro, but recent arrivals from the South. These people had the look of outsiders. It was a kind of nervous astonishment, and a resolution to make good. Some still looked up as they walked, taking in the tall apartment buildings as though they had never seen such things.

These two sides of the street seldom interacted. They did not see each other—would not see each other, Flip understood—until the day when they would. . .

And then all hell would break loose. Flip knew this if he knew anything.

This neighborhood—and the others like it—were unexploded bombs waiting to go off. What would finally trigger them? A misunderstanding between neighbors? A false—or accurate—accusation of shoplifting by a small businessman? A fistfight between teenagers that got out of hand?

It would be something, Flip knew. All around him was brittle, parched forest. The lighting strike was just a matter of time. This fact was known to the mayor, the aldermen, and the police force. Flip understood it was one reason why the police had concealed the murders that had occurred in this alley. Negroes saw Jews as full of strange rituals, and it would be the tiniest of steps for a film-flam journalist to insinuate their rites extended to decapitation. The Jews, in turn, viewed the Negroes as outsiders and rubes who did not understand the city, and who brought the wild conventions and proclivities of the South up with them.

These were two flints. One day, they were going to spark.

Yet on this day, it was peaceful in the alley. The blood had been carefully washed away from the flagstones. Nothing indicated that a double decapitation murder had occurred here. Or, at least—thought Flip—that bodies had been found here. He reminded himself that where the heads had been severed was still technically a matter of speculation.

Flip opened the envelope in his jacket and looked at the photograph of the two dead ten year olds. The girl—or rather, the body beneath the boy’s head—wore a white dress. It was hardly smudged at all, and those marks were likely from mud and city grime, acquired in the course of play.

The other twins who had been killed in the photos—all had been identical. But the twins found in this alley had not been identical precisely. One had been male, and one female. Yet their faces looked very similar to Joe Flippity. Similar enough, he thought, to fool somebody who was looking to kill identical twins.

To the side of the alley, near to where the bodies had fallen, a stunted evergreen shrub grew from a flat strip of land that had somehow missed being paved. Flip tore off a few inches and put them into his pocket.

It would have to do.

Then he squatted on his haunches and looked again at the spot on the flagstones where the bodies had once lain. Flip looked hard. The mayor’s dossier said the call had come in at 11pm, but there was no telling at what hour the act might have been committed. This alley would be a very dark place when the sun went down. The kind of place that kept its secrets.

Across the street, a Jewish woman carrying groceries paused to regard Flip cautiously.

And there, he thought, the eternal riddle. There, the thing that could not be known—could never be known—ahead of time. By Flip, by the city, or even by God himself.

Were these groups right to have a little distrust for each other? Were these two sides going to kill each other one day, just a little bit? And did they perhaps have an inkling of that? Some foreknowledge of it? A feeling for what was coming?

Those in charge of Chicago’s wards seemed content simply to hope it did not happen on their watch. It would be somebody else’s problem then.

Flip felt again, acutely, that all around him stood a forest of dried tinder.

Flip stood to his full height and nodded once at the Jewish woman, in a way he hoped seemed friendly.

He did not let his gaze linger to see if she nodded back, but sauntered off immediately down the block.

He’d gotten what he’d come for.

A few blocks north, Flip had lunch at a neighborhood stand that sold meat stew. It was operated by a woman whose husband worked in the stockyards. Flip knew the stew meat was likely extra trimmings that had found their way home in the man’s shirt or trousers.

After lunch, he headed back to 47th Street and discovered that the circus had indeed returned. He smelled it before he saw it. It was a primal scent of animals and sweat. Singer—or was it Singling now?—kept an entire stable of horses, three manacled bears, and a tired old beast that might once have been some sort of jungle cat. (It was matted and lean, and mostly sat in its cage waiting to die. Flip believed that Singer administered a stimulant to the cat before each performance, giving the beast at least the appearance of half-life for the paying customers.)

The gutter beside the circus grounds had already begun to run with animal piss. With the great tent disassembled and loaded onto the backs of horse-drawn democrat wagons, the outfit looked less like a troupe of performers, and more like an army of grim frontier settlers encamped for the afternoon. Every person looked dog tired. There would be no unloading or unpacking of anything for a few hours. Some of the men had already made beds on the backs of carts, on the tops of crates, or simply on the ground itself.

Flip looked around for the boy, Rufus, and found him lingering at the side of a wagon. As Flip approached, Rufus suddenly took off sprinting down the street, wrinkled green bills clutched tight in his hand. Flip surmised he had been dispatched to buy the circus workers food.

Flip picked through the maze of carts until he found a man sitting on a low, three-legged stool. The man wore a white sleeveless shirt and tuxedo pants. His shined shoes and immaculate top hat had been placed carefully on the ground beside him. He looked postprandial or possibly postcoital. A smile of deep satisfaction spread across his weathered face. His eyes were closed, but Flip was not surprised when he spoke.

“Oh shit, it’s Officer Flip,” the man said in a jocular tone.

“Mister Singer,” replied Flip. “Or should I say Singling?”

The circus owner’s grin said Flip could call him anything he liked.

“We done so good,” Singer said. “They love us down in Naptown. Shows full enough we had to stop selling tickets. Did a midnight performance we ain’t even planned on. Still got it full up. Madame Walker herself came. Pulled up in her long, tall motorcar just as you say. Hell of a sight.”

“I need to have a word with one of your men,” Flip told him.

“We tired,” the circus owner said. “My men need to sleep. My animals need to sleep, Flip.”

“It won’t take but a moment,” Flip assured him.

“My men-” Singer began.

“Police business,” Flip said more aggressively. “I’m not here to jaw at you for nothing, Singer.”

The smile fell away from the ringmaster’s face.

“Fine,” he said. “It’s always something, ain’t it, with you damn po-lice? But tell me first. Who is it this time? Who done what?”

“Nobody’s in trouble, if that’s what you mean,” Flip told him. “I just need a couple words with your magician fella.”

The Amazing Drextel Tark had his own enclosed travelling caravan, an arrangement which gave him the extra space he required for his props and tricks, and also provided him with a private room for sleeping. It was a rare luxury. Most circus employees slept two or three to a bed on the road, if they had beds at all.

Tark’s caravan did not appear particularly magical to Flip. It was covered in grime and black soot, just like all the others. The caravan door was small and circular, almost like something a large dog would use. Yet Tark was diminutive, so there seemed to be no issue with this arrangement. (Flip had long ago guessed that the magician’s modest apportionment was the basis for more than a few of his tricks. Tark could conceal his small legs folded backwards as a blade seemed to shear him in half, or hunch his body into a compartment built into the stage floor to momentarily disappear. Tark was like a rat or cat that wanted to squeeze underneath a door. You’d swear the beast could never shrink itself to fit—until you watched it do exactly that.)

Singer walked to the door of Tark’s grimy caravan and knocked, softly at first.

“That the courtesy knock,” Singer explained. “He hit the bottle pretty hard on the way back up. That boy’s just skin and bones. It don’t take much to get him drunk.”

A beat passed. There was no sound from within. Singer and Flip exchanged a glance.

“Okay,” Singer said. “Enough with the courtesy, I s’pose.”

Singer laid onto the trailer door so hard Flip thought it might break. After a good ten seconds of knocking, there was a just-audible: “What . . . what do you want?”

Singer smiled at Flip. Then he did a showman’s flourish with his arm extended, indicating that the feat had been accomplished. Flip could take it from here.

Singer ambled back to his top hat and sat down beside it.

Flip leaned close to the grimy caravan door.

“Chicago police,” Flip said.

Another beat.

Then a voice, hoarse and mysterious as a confiding ghost.

“Flip? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Tark. Open up.”

“The demon gin. It bit me hard last night. And then again this morning. You come back in a day or two, all right?”

“Tark, this is some life or death shit,” Flip said. “I ain’t asking you to come out and run no marathon. Have a few words with me and you can go back to sleep.”

The magician seemed to consider this. Then Flip heard the noise of metal latches being undone on the other side of the door. Hinges swung and the caravan opened to reveal a desiccated young man, face down in a chaos of clothing and props. He was small and wiry and about twenty years old. He shrank back when the sunlight hit his face.

“Damn it,” Tark croaked. “What time of day is it?”

With great effort, the magician forced himself to sit upright. He fumbled inside his cloak until he located an old brass pocket watch. He brought it very close to his eyes, then held it to his ear. Shook it. Then held it to his ear again.

“It’s well after noon,” Flip said.

“Shit,” Tark said to himself. “It feels like it’s next week.”

“You got no magic spell for when the drink hangs over from the night before?” Flip asked.

The magician narrowed his eyes to say he was in no mood.

The interior of Tark’s caravan looked like the back of a closet into which items had been thrown willy-nilly for several years. There were layers of costumes and paraphernalia representing earlier eras in the magician’s career.

“It’s too crowded for me to come in there,” Flip said. “Why don’t you come out here and sit? We’ll just talk. I got something to tell you. Gonna sober you right up. Make you feel even better than magic could.”

Tark raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to the side. A cure, any cure, was a cause worth fighting for. O how the magician wanted to believe! He began to inch his skinny, dehydrated body toward the opening.

After a full minute, Tark had managed to exit the caravan and lean himself against a wagon wheel. When Rufus returned from a restaurant, Flip begged a few morsels from him and fed them to the magician. The desired effect was achieved, and the conjurer perked up enough to listen.

Flip told his tale. As he did, a mask of confusion and horror crossed Tark’s face.

When he had finished laying out the details of the final, triple beheading, Flip ended the recitation by saying: “So naturally . . . Tark . . . I thought of you.”

For a moment, the magician did not move. Then, very gradually, he lifted his bloodshot eyes up to meet Flip’s gaze. (Flip towered over the smaller man.) Tark searched Flip’s features carefully—disclosing, admitting nothing.

“I think you understand why,” Flip continued sternly. “But in case you don’t, I’ll put it like this. . . you a policeman and you want to catch a man stealing horses? You ain’t just look around the empty stalls where horses used to be. You watch where there are still more horses to steal.”

“The oldest of those twins was fifteen, you say?” the magician asked. “I see where you’re going with this. But Flip, I’m a grown-”

The policeman cut him off.

“You can pass for twenty-one with makeup on your face, your hat pulled down, and the lighting right. Twenty-one maybe. Other times, Tark—when the lighting ain’t right—you look like I should pick you up for cutting school on a weekday. Why you got to argue with me on this? I’m trying to keep you safe.”

The magician pushed himself up despite the weight of the gin. He leaned against the filthy caravan and stared into Flip’s eyes. His expression said that Flip had better not underestimate him. That he was a professional when it came to being underestimated. That getting others to underestimate him was how he made his living. Tark’s body language invited Flip to do the same.

“What you really here for?” Tark asked. “What do you want from me?”

“How long we known each other?” Flip countered, having long ago mastered the policeman’s secret of answering questions with questions. “How many times I help you out? Help out Mister Singer? How many times you get robbed and I get something back for you? Three times, I can think of. A year ago, another magician—a white magician—stole a trick from you, and I got it back. Remember that? I didn’t even ask how it worked.”

Tark said nothing.

“I ain’t saying I know how you do it,” Flip continued. “You know the one I mean. The one at the close of your act. Where you walk down into the audience, cover yourself up with a cape, and then, two seconds later, you appear all the way across the tent, back up on stage. But I’ve thought about it some, Tark. I’ve also thought how there’s a young man named Ike who works as a roughneck for Mister Singer. Look about your size. Always keep his hat low over his face. Wear that eye patch. Seem to be a little slow, like he got kicked in the head. But you take away that patch and hat? Have him stand up straight? I think he might look just like you. And I might not be the only one to notice it, Tark. That’s all I’m saying.”

Tark wore the expression of a man trying to determine if he should confess or not—and, if so, to what.

“Can. . . can we go somewhere else and talk?” the magician eventually said. “A little ways away from these caravans?”

Flip lifted his eyebrows and looked around. They were already virtually alone. Every member of the circus had to be asleep or close to it. The grounds were quiet and still.

“Trust me,” the magician said. “We won’t go far.”

Ten minutes later, they stood in an alley along 47^th Street that ran between a bar and a shuttered mom and pop grocery. Tark had picked his way through the sleeping circus employees and roused a man about his size—one who wore a low hat and an eye patch. The roughneck’s exposed eye seemed to rotate randomly in its socket every few moments, as though it were a constant strain for him to keep it under control.

“Ike’s my brother,” the magician said softly as the three men stood together in the alley. “He ain’t been totally right since we were children. Fell from a high window ledge when he was a baby. I don’t remember it happening, but it made him this way.”

Flip inspected Ike for a moment.

Ike allowed the inspection. Said nothing.

“He can do work around the circus,” the magician added. “Mister Singer likes him very much. Says he has a strong back and never complains. Plus, in addition to set up and tear down, there’s one more thing Ike helps with.”

Tark leaned in close and whispered into his brother’s ear. Ike’s eye flit nervously around the alley, then settled on Flip. “It’s okay,” the magician assured his brother gently. “We can trust this man. Go ahead.”

Obviously still uneasy, Ike removed his hat and coat. Then he took off the patch too, revealing an eye beneath that seemed perfectly functional, if also a bit spastic. Ike straightened his posture. He held a single finger to his nose, then slowly drew it away. As the finger moved, Ike’s eyes followed. And as they did, they both became uncrossed and still.

And this man, so revealed, was a dead ringer for Drextel Tark.

Ike cleared his throat.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!” Ike said in a carefully practiced voice. “You have been a wonderful audience. I am the Amazing Drextel Tark. Good night!”

Ike did a dramatic wave with his arm—manipulating an invisible cape, Flip guessed—and turned around. Then he began to walk back down the alley in measured, practiced steps.

“That’s him heading offstage,” the magician explained to Flip.

Tark intercepted his brother before he got too far, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. Ike smiled. He relaxed and his eyes crossed again, resuming their random spastic ticking like the exposed guts of two separate clocks.

“You have no idea how long it took me to teach him that,” the magician said, walking his brother back over to Flip.

“Can he talk normally?” Flip asked. “Like if I put some questions to him?”

“Sometimes,” the magician said with a shrug.

Flip watched as Ike carefully replaced his hat, coat, and patch.

“Do you like working for the circus, Ike?” Flip said, leaning close to the man.

Ike said nothing. He tilted his head like a cat that had been addressed—noticing, but not caring.

“He takes good orders from Mister Singer,” the magician insisted. “Ask him what he likes to eat, or his favorite color, and he won’t say much. But give him a task, and he does it just right. He can dig a ditch. Put up a tent. Shovel shit. When it comes time, he knows how to do his work. He ain’t mean to be rude to you, Flip. He just ain’t know how to be around people.”

Flip nodded thoughtfully.

“So you are identical twins,” Flip said matter-of-factly, turning back to Tark. “And that’s how you appear back across the tent so fast.”

“Except for Ike’s eyes,” Tark agreed. “He can keep them still for about ten seconds. We practice. And ten seconds is all it takes to finish the show.”

“How many people you think know?” the police officer asked. “Out of all the folks who work for the circus. . . how many really know?”

“You’d count ‘em on one hand,” Tark said after thinking on it. “Mister Singer, he know. A couple of the crew who work with Ike might have puzzled it out. . . . How he always goes missing when it’s time for my act. But that’s it. You’d be surprised by what people don’t see when they’re not looking for it.”

Flip was not surprised at all.

“What about audience members?” Flip pressed. “People who come to see the show? Any of them ever talk to you afterwards, tell you they figured out your trick?”

“We don’t have many regulars,” said Tark. “Circus is based here in Chicago because it’s a rail hub. The trains take us everywhere. We do homestands now and then, but not for long. If anybody besides you ever guessed how I do it, they never told me.”

Flip nodded. Tark sat down on a dented metal trash can, staggering anew under the weight of his hangover. His brother toed the wall of a building aimlessly. Both men clearly wanted to get back to the circus grounds to sleep.

“And you’ve never heard of someone wanting to kill twins?” Flip asked.

Tark shook his head vigorously no, then winced from the pain of it.

“Never,” he managed.

“And nobody’s threatened you—or your brother—in recent weeks?” Flip pressed.

“Naw,” the magician said. “Nothin’ like that. Do I need to worry?”

Flip put his hands into his jacket pockets and sighed.

“Not as long as you keep your secret a secret, I ’spect. You’re the only identical twins left on the South Side that I’m aware of. There’s no chance you know others, is there?”

Tark shook his head, more gently this time.

“I ain’t seen many others, ever,” he told Flip. “We played with a circus from New York City once. They had acrobats from China—two sisters who were identical—but they back east now. So beautiful, they were.”

Tark smiled at the memory of the women. He stared up into the clouds and seemed to daydream. His grin grew wider.

Flip turned away from Tark and fingered the envelope inside his coat. The smaller one. He opened it and found a single hundred-dollar bill. Then he hesitated, and slipped a second bill between his fingers.

When he turned around, Flip saw that Tark was watching him closely. There was caution in his eyes. The magician was wondering if Flip might be about to do a trick of his own. One involving a gun.

In Chicago, all things were possible.

Instead, Flip withdrew the bills. Tark looked back and forth between the twin Benjamin Franklins, then up into Flip’s eyes. They had crossed into territory that Tark had not been expecting. Flip was a straight shooter—maybe the straightest—but no straight police officer had that kind of scratch to throw.

Flip stepped forward and tucked the bills into the front pocket of the magician’s shirt.

“This is for you,” Flip said. “No conditions to it . . . save for one. You hear anything strange, you see anything strange—you even smell anything strange—you come and find me. Can you do that?”

“Absolutely,” the magician said. “You can count on me.”

Tark took the two bills out of his shirt pocket. He looked at them carefully, holding them up to the sunlight. Then, with a flick of his wrist and snap of his finger, he vanished them into the air.

He smiled proudly. Then he collected his brother and proceeded back across 47^th and into the circus grounds.

To sleep.