SEVEN

The Amazing Drextel Tark knocked hard on the door to Flip’s building at five-fifty the next morning. A third floor window raised, and Flip stuck his head out.

“Quiet, fool!” he whisper-shouted. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”

Tark shrugged to ask how else he should have approached the matter. Moments later, Flip came down and opened it for him. They walked back upstairs.

“We got a full day ahead,” Flip said as they passed into his rooms.

The interior of Flip’s apartment looked even more broken and disarrayed in the morning light. It also looked as though the policeman had been up for a while after Tark had left. Grisly photographs were arranged on Flip’s table, and the notepad—which had contained only four words at the time of Tark’s departure—now showed several pages of scribbling.

“What are we doing?” Tark asked.

Flip stepped to his stove and poured himself coffee in a tin cup like a miner might use. Then he poured a second cup and held it out to Tark. The magician accepted it.

“Someone is killing young Negro identical twins,” Flip said after a sip. “He’s killing them, and then mutilating their bodies.”

“Yeah,” said Tark. “I got that. Why’s he doing it?”

“We don’t know why,” Flip replied, “but knowing why doesn’t always matter when you’re trying to enforce the law. It’s enough to understand that when someone tends to do something . . .they’ll tend to do it again.”

“So?” Tark said, sipping his coffee and clearly finding it wanting.

“So identical twins—of any sort—don’t grow on no trees,” Flip said. “The first step to killing them would be finding them.”

Tark lifted his cup to his mouth, then lowered it again without sipping. His expression said ‘Yes. . . but . . .?’

“How would you do that?” Flip said rhetorically. “How would you do it if you were trying to find twins to kill? Would you just walk around town looking? Ask people you met on the street? That wouldn’t work too well. It would also arouse suspicion. Our killer’s not been caught yet, which means he’s not completely stupid. Last night, did I tell you what all of the murdered children also had in common? The other thing they shared?”

“What?” the magician asked, wishing he knew a spell to make Flip’s coffee taste better.

“They were all immigrants to Chicago,” Flip said. “All orphans come up from the South.”

“Fine,” Tark said. “So what?”

“This killer looked for twins, but I think he also looked for twins nobody in Chicago would miss. Where would you go to try and find people like that?”

“They’s places,” Tark said, thinking on it for a moment.

“Yes,” agreed Flip. “There are.”

The Greater Chicago Negro Settlement Alliance was just south of the Loop on the first and second floors of what had once been a small garment factory. The walkway in front of the building was paved, but the adjacent lawns (formerly green and verdant) had been entirely trampled to mud. The place was close to the rail yards, and easy to reach by foot after you disembarked. There were several organizations in Chicago like it, each aimed at improving the conditions of black folks, and many with a special emphasis on assisting those recently arrived from the South. Yet this one was the most conspicuous. The first one you’d find if you got off the train and just started walking.

There were three families camped on the muddy ground in front of the former factory. Men slept on bindles that probably contained all their worldly possessions. Women slept beside the men. Children slept piled together under makeshift pup tents, with their feet protruding like cords of wood. What did these families do in the cold, Flip wondered? He thought the answer was probably that they froze.

The front door was open. As Tark watched, Flip paused in front of it to open his coat.

“Should we say I’m police too?” Tark whispered.

“What?” Flip asked.

“It’s just, I ain’t got no gun or badge,” Tark said.

Tark wore only brown trousers, shoes, and a white dress shirt stained at the armpits.

“You don’t need those things,” Flip told him. “And if you got a magic wand somewhere on you, just keep it in your pocket.”

“I don’t use a wand,” Tark shot back, clearly insulted.

“Why not?” Flip said, amused.

“Because it’s not a hundred years ago,” Tark said firmly, as if it were a foolish question.

“Just let me do the talking,” Flip said. “Watch and listen, all right?”

Tark nodded. They went inside.

The Greater Chicago Negro Settlement Alliance had an administrative office at the front of the building, but was sizable enough that Flip could not guess what was kept in the back rooms or on the second level. Probably, on this morning, there were more people sleeping in those places. The building had the feel of a railway terminal, where many came and went.

There was a long wooden desk. A hand-drawn sign on the wall said ASK ME FOR HELP, and bore a long red arrow pointing over. There was a lone Negro man sitting at the desk. He looked half awake, but awake. He was middle aged, balding, and had a pencil-thin mustache. When he saw Flip and Tark, he smiled and stood. Then he rubbed his eyes and stretched. A small nameplate on his desk said he was Mr. Parr.

“Two sworn officers,” he said, regarding the contents of Flip’s open coat. “Welcome, welcome. What can I do for you?”

Tark gave Flip a sideways smile, then straightened himself until he stood erect as he imagined a true policeman might.

“Those families out front. . . they have permission to be sleeping on our property,” Parr added before Flip could say anything. “Alderman says it’s allowable. Normally, we house folks inside, but the heat gets mighty powerful this time of year.”

“I’m not here about the sleeping people,” Flip told him. “I’m here to ask you about identical twins. More specific . . .I’m here to ask about someone asking about identical twins.”

Parr smiled and stretched again. He had the look of a person whose responsibilities allowed his body remain sedentary most of the time, yet his mind was still well-exercised and lively. He seemed eager to talk.

“I knew that fool was up to something,” Parr said thoughtfully. “He just didn’t feel right. After a while, when you work with people all day, you’re able to get a kind of vibration from folks. The man seemed all prim and proper, but he vibrated bad. Can you tell me what he done?”

“Who vibrated bad?” Flip said. “Start from the beginning.”

“He just came in one afternoon,” Parr said. “Didn’t give his name. He was, oh, neither old nor young. Wore a grey suit. A fine gray suit. You know, like the Jewish tailors make?”

“He was Negro?” asked Flip.

Parr nodded.

“Did he speak with an accent?” Flip pressed.

Parr shook his head.

“But he was fine-spoken. Like. . . Like. . . A stage actor or an opera singer, I should imagine. That was the first way he set me at dis-ease. Something in his bearing was wrong. Was . . . fake. A man not being himself.”

Flip nodded carefully.

“When did this visit occur?”

“I should say it was, oh, some weeks ago,” Parr said, putting his chin into his palm like a daydreaming teenager. “Middle of June. Late June. Thereabouts. He came in and asked if we had had any identical twins come past recently. He was looking for twins as young as six or seven, and as old as thirteen or fourteen.”

Flip nodded.

“He never made any small talk,” Parr continued. “Never said he was anybody’s relation. He just asked about twins. He asked if there were records we kept, and if our records would say somebody was a twin. He was damn-near obsessed with the idea, if you pardon my language. After he understood I couldn’t help him, he still kind of hung around the building for an hour or so. Acted like he was waiting for someone. He struck up conversations with people. I could tell he was also asking them about twins. It’s very quiet here at the moment—because it’s so early, y’see—but this place is crowded like an Arab market most of the day.”

“I’m sure it is,” Flip said. “Did the man ever come again? Was that the only time you saw him?”

“That’s right,” said Parr. “He came only the once. I was glad when he eventually did leave. Made me uneasy.”

“And do you?” Flip asked.

Parr smiled gently, as though he had missed something.

“Do I what, officer?”

“Do you have any identical twins coming through?”

“No,” Parr said with a laugh. “No twins that I’ve ever seen. Not in five years working here.”

“All right,” Flip said.

“But I haven’t even told you the most remarkable thing!” Parr said suddenly. “I almost left it out, officer! Let me tell you. . . This man asking after twins. . . He was bald headed, and he had a divot in his skull—on the right side as you regarded him, so on his own left. Looked like a war-wound. Something awful. An inch deep if it was anything. A chunk taken out, clean gone.”

“I see,” Flip said.

“Yes,” said Parr. “You don’t forget a thing like that.”

“Was there anything else you remember about him?” asked Flip.

“No,” said Parr, searching his memory. “I reckon that’s it.”

Flip thanked Parr for his time. Flip and Tark exited the settlement agency. The families sleeping out on the lawn were stirring now. One had started a small campfire for making food, even though there was likely plenty to eat inside.

The newcomers to Chicago chatted softly. Accents from the deepest South caught Flip’s ear. It brought back sensations and memories so old and profound they seemed to come from the very marrow of his bones. Things he had fought for years to forget. Hard, deep things. Old things.

For a moment, he went weak in the knees.

Tark stepped in and skillfully caught the policeman under the armpit, just managing to keep him upright. Tark was immediately in awe of how little Flip weighed. It was, he thought to himself, almost like a magic trick in itself. One looked at the tall officer in the heavy leather jacket and simply assumed that he was substantial and solid. That there was something there.

But now Tark found that he was light and impermanent. He could be carried around like a hat rack.

Tark walked Flip away from the improvised campsite.

A few paces off of the property, Flip straightened and recovered his footing. He pushed Tark’s hands away, but did not look the magician in the face.

“There you go,” Tark said. “This morning air will do you good. It was stuffy in that old place. Too damn stuffy. You’ll feel better out here. Say, they have bars around here? We should get you a drink. Steady your nerves.”

Flip shook his head slowly. He desired no such thing.

After a few moments, as though the interval had never occurred, he returned his focus to the case at hand.

“A middle aged Negro man who shops at fine tailors and has a divot in his head,” Flip said, beginning to walk once again. “You ever see anybody like that, Tark?”

“No,” Tark said. “It doesn’t ring a bell. And that would be a pretty big bell.”

“Now I’m hopeful,” Flip said. “Even if you and I have no idea who this man is, it will be hard for him to hide. People will remember a person like that. We need to visit the other aid organizations. I’m sure our suspect did. But first I want to put in a question at the station, see if they know our divot man.”

“That word, divot. . .” Tark said.

“What about it?”

“It’s funny. I should work it into my routine somehow. You know, about ninety percent of a magic show is just banter—talking to the audience? Only about ten percent is doing the tricks.”

“Yes,” said Flip. “I’ve seen your act, remember?”

“Then here’s something else,” Tark said. “That man back there working the desk?”

“What about him?” Flip said.

“He thought I was police,” Tark said proudly.

Flip shook his head to say nothing could be done with some people, and steered their path deeper into the city.

The went westward, along the south edge of the Loop, passing several businesses just opening for the day. A man smoked a cigar on the stoop of a barbershop. The cigar gave off the pleasing aroma of tobacco and peach. The man had no hands, and held the cigar between small round stumps. Flip and Tark both silently wondered if he was the barber, and, if so, how he cut hair.

“You all right then?” Tark said to Flip after they had passed the barber shop. “You got faint back there, and now you ain’t talkin’.”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Flip said, his mind working. “I’m interested in the timing of these events.”

“Oh yeah?” said Tark.

“There’s four of these twin killings—four that we know of,” Flip said. “The first two—Washington twins in the alley, and the Horner boys by the Calumet—happen close to each other, early in June. Then there’s a pause for a month, month and a half. Then twins are killed again in the house of Miss Heloise, and then the Whitcomb triplets die last Tuesday. Our man with the divot was asking around back there sometime in the middle of June.”

Tark struggled to assemble the timeline in his head.

“It’s almost as if our man was looking for more targets,” Flip continued. “Like he aimed to kill young Negro twins, and—let’s say—he knew about the Washington twins and the Horner boys. But after he killed them, he needed more. Had to go searching. So he did. Took him over a month, but he found some.”

“And now he’s found me and my brother,” Tark said gloomily. “Looks that way,” Flip told him. “That’s why we got work to do. One reason, anyhow.”

In the precinct building, Flip gave his name and badge number to the officer at the desk and waited. There was a strange mix of people in the cramped, wood paneled entryway. It smelled like ten different things, most of them bad. There was a single bench completely filled with waiting petitioners. With no room to sit, Tark crossed his arms and leaned against a wall. Soon, he had fallen asleep standing.

Flip waited at the desk. After five minutes, a police matron came to greet him. She was fat and waddly, and had a crooked smile. She did not look happy to see him.

Flip gave his name a second time—slowly and clearly—and mentioned a project for the mayor. The matron’s expression changed. Immediately, she suggested they could go back to a private office, but Flip said he hadn’t the time and that it wasn’t necessary. Flip gave her the details of the man with a divot in his head. The matron said she would have the files checked, and pass along anything they found. Flip thanked her, knocked the drowsing magician awake, and stepped back out into the street.

“My hopes aren’t up,” Flip told Tark. “But you never know. Maybe they picked him up for something before. Could have a name and address. Even a photograph.”

“What if they do?” Tark asked.

“Then we go to where he lives and bring him in for questioning,” Flip said. “And then we tell the mayor.”

Flip and Tark visited seven more aid organizations before the day was out. There was the Chicago League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, the Alliance for Orphaned Children, and the Negro Community Development Association. They also stopped at two Negro churches and two white ones that had programs for orphans. At each, they asked about a middle aged Negro man who might have come around talking about twins. They took care to mention that he might have had a part missing from his head.

The best they got were a couple of “maybes” and one “What if he wore a hat?”

As they exited a Catholic orphanage staffed by skinny French Canadian nuns, Flip announced that they would cease for the day. The sisters had seen no Negro twins. Nor had they seen a man with a divot in his head. But they had recently baked some cakes, and did not let Tark and Flip leave before forcing them to accept slices of cherry clafoutis wrapped in red handkerchiefs.

Outside the Catholic charity, Tark sat down on a bench and immediately began to eat his portion.

“I don’t walk this much,” he explained to Flip. “My legs feel like two ropes. My feet feel like flapjacks.”

“It will mash your feet and toes, walking this much,” Flip said unsympathetically. “You must get used to it.”

“We put in a good day,” Tark said, wiping his brow.

“We’ve discovered nothing new since six-thirty this morning,” Flip pointed out.

Tark shrugged and went back to eating.

“We need to make careful notes of what we saw and heard,” Flip told the magician. “Then we should formulate a plan for tomorrow.”

“Are we gonna go around to the hospitals to ask doctors if they patched up a man with a scoop taken out of his head?”

Tark laughed to himself as he chewed.

Flip looked down his nose at the seated magician.

“You’re joking, but that’s the kind of thing that can break a case. Have you done this before, Tark? Do you have any damn idea what police work involves?”

“I know what I saw today,” Tark answered. “Us asking around in a lot of stinky, crowded charity places.”

There was a very long silence.

“I’m sorry,” Tark said. “That’s my tired feet talking. If it will get us closer to the man who came after my brother? Shit. I’ll talk to every doctor in Chicago. Whatever. Let’s do it.”

“In that case, come on with me,” Flip said. “We ain’t restin’ yet.”