THIRTEEN

Tark went with Sally to the Palmerton, and both enjoyed long baths—at different times—in the same large, claw-footed tub. Tark applied unguents and perfumed soaps usually reserved for women, vigorously and without hesitation. Anything to scrub the lingering awfulness of the stockyards from himself.

Sally had a meal brought, but—true to her own forecasting—touched almost none of it. Tark managed an appetite, but avoided pork. (He stared angrily, wordlessly at a plate of chops when they were proffered.)

Flip caught up with them at six on the dot. He had also bathed and changed clothes. He still wore his leather jacket, but his trousers and shoes were different and shabby. His shirt had a frayed collar and a large nonspecific stain extended down the left side. Several buttons were missing. He stood in the lobby of the Palmerton and waited until Sally and Tark came downstairs.

When Sally saw him, she froze.

“We’re not.”

Sally looked Flip up and down in horror.

“I was thinking we might be, from what that man said, but please tell me we’re not. . .”

Flip’s face told her that, indeed, they were.

“What?” Tark asked, looking back and forth between Sally and Flip like a confused child. “What’s happening?”

“We’re going to the Bucket of Blood, is what’s happening,” Sally said, placing a very annoyed hand on her hip. “And if we are, I’m not ruining another of my better dresses. You two can wait ten minutes for me to change into something I don’t damn care about. Stay here.”

She stalked up to her rooms with great commotion. Flip and Tark seated themselves beside the golden piano. Girls milled past and smiled politely. The front door to the brothel was open, and the air that evening had an energy to it. The house would do good business, Flip felt sure. It was that kind of energy.

“You been to the Bucket before, Tark?” Flip asked without looking over at the magician.

Tark shook his head no.

“That’s good,” Flip said matter-of-factly. “I’ve been trying—all afternoon—to think of a way that we don’t have to go there. But I can’t. Tomorrow my week is up. I’m due to report to the mayor. Tell him what I have. And I got to be able to look that man in the eye and say I checked under every rock.”

“What do you have?” Tark asked.

“I’ll know more about what I have—and what I don’t have—if I can talk to Rotney Nash tonight,” Flip told him. “No use trying to do a full accounting of what you know until you’ve followed all the leads. As far as I can tell, there’s still one left.”

“What’re you gonna ask him?” Tark wondered. “Sounds like he’s the sort of man liable to be too drunk to talk.”

“There’s an art to questioning a drunkard,” Flip told him.

“And you know it?” asked Tark.

“I got you interested in this bullshit, didn’t I?”

Tark waved a hand, dismissing any similarity.

“I got myself interested,” Tark insisted.

“Rotney Nash surely has enemies, and it’s likely he’s been attacked at various points,” Flip continued. “Stumblebums, drunks—they often are, sometimes for no reason. Part of me is surprised Rotney has survived this long without a fatal beating.”

Sally reappeared. Half of her makeup was gone, and she wore a long dress with a high collar that had been in fashion about fifteen years prior. It was as old and as frayed as Flip’s shirt.

“Oh my,” the policeman said.

Sally took out a handkerchief and dipped it in a golden spittoon in the lobby corner. Two of her girls passed, and did their best not to gawk as Sally blotted at the front of her dress until there were heavy, deep stains that looked as though they would never come out.

Then Sally dropped the handkerchief into the spittoon.

“Let’s do this,” she said.

They did.

The Bucket of Blood was a short walk north along State Street and then a little bit west, to the corner of Nineteenth and Federal. A small distance from the Palmerton, but worlds away in terms of character and feel. The Levee District. Or what remained of it after the reformers had got done. That great shuttered wonderland of vice. It held the air of a boardwalk carnival closed for the season, though everyone knew it was likely gone for good.

Nearly all the bars, brothels, and gambling dens in the district had been put out of business during the anti-vice sweep a few years prior. The Bucket, however, survived, albeit in diminished form. (The campaigners had seemed to accept this. Perhaps, Flip thought, they realized the Bucket was a particularly stubborn carbuncle—one that would require multiple treatments to eradicate entirely).

Amidst a string of boarded-up bordellos and casinos, the Bucket operated as the lone remaining outpost of sin. The chaos and mayhem and nudity that might have spilled from its doors onto the street in prior years—even on a Monday night—were now safely contained inside. But Flip knew that most of this change was cosmetic only. The Bucket might have dimmed its lights, but they still burned just as hot.

“I heard they used to call this Bedbug Row,” Tark said, examining the shuttered flophouses. “Maybe this is what happens when the bedbugs are finally through with you. When you’re all et up.”

“So help me, if either of you bring actual bedbugs inside the Palmerton. . .” Sally said, trailing off into a fury. “Well, I was going to burn this dress anyway. Just see that the both of you burn your clothes as well.”

“But I like my clothes,” Tark said.

“I’ll buy you some new ones,” Sally snapped.

“But these are special, magician’s clothes,” Tark objected, glancing down at his seemingly unremarkable duds. “There’s a hole for a cord to run from my wrist, down my trousers, all the way to my big toe. You wouldn’t understand, but it can put something in my hand that’s not in my hand, even when my sleeves are rolled up.”

“New ones can be had,” Sally said. “I will purchase them for you. I presume there is some sort of specialized catalog for such clothing, yes?”

Tark shrugged sheepishly.

Apparently, there was.

Sally nodded in satisfaction.

The Bucket glowed in the darkness ahead of them, red light spilling out from under its shuttered windows. They approached the front door. A kind of a doorman—bald and enormous and mightily crazed from the heat—tottered outside, shifting back and forth. He seemed to be concentrating on a spot on the wall just a few inches above his head. He thrummed in the heat. For the life of him, Flip could not figure out what the doorman was looking at. There was no longer a sign above the Bucket’s entrance. It had been taken down during the raids.

“Tark, we never talked about this, but you don’t like to do more than have a drink, do you?” Flip whispered as they neared.

Tark seemed genuinely puzzled by the question.

“More than?” the magician said. “What more would you do? Drinkin’s plenty.”

Flip nodded to say this was meet.

“People in here will offer you morphine, opium, cocaine,” Flip said.

“I stick to a liquid diet,” Tark said.

“Well if anyone hands you a drink—especially a woman—make sure you watched the bartender pour it,” Flip continued.

“I’ll take care of him,” Sally said, putting her arm around the magician like an affectionate auntie. “Show him how to handle himself in a big-boy place.”

“What?” said Tark, attempting, unsuccessfully, to shrug her off. “Damn. I know how to handle myself. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“That’s what a lot of men say before they go inside here,” Flip told him sternly. “Then they end up poisoned, robbed and froze to death in an alley out back.”

Sally released Tark from her embrace, and patted him encouragingly on the back.

‘Big-boy,’ she mouthed, as they walked past the strange, vibrating doorman and inside the Bucket.

The interior was most immediately defined by its low, wooden ceiling. A very tall man could reach up and touch it. It was like an inn from Colonial times. There were doors and hallways leading away from a large central barroom. Filthy red curtains had been hung here and there, creating nooks and aediculae into which one might duck to perform small, intimate rites. Because it was still so early in the evening, there were not many customers. Against the far wall stood a long, low bar. It was, for most visitors, merely the staging area where they would queue before being whisked off to wonders and horrors in other rooms. In a wicker chair near the entryway sat an elderly prostitute—entirely naked except for her shoes. If a visitor had come to get straight to the point—without a lot of froufrou—she was, presumably, there to accommodate. The naked woman looked Flip up and down, but soon switched her gaze over to Tark, sensing a keener vulnerability in him. Tark glanced at her from the side of his eyes. She made a smooching kiss into the air like a French woman.

Flip laughed.

They walked up to the bar. Seated at it was a very drunk man in late middle-age. He was unshaven, and had a red, ruddy face. He was dressed like a sailor who worked on Lake Michigan. Seated beside him was a woman in a flouncy, ruffled skirt like a can-can dancer. She wore too much makeup and had had her nose broken to one side. The sailor—loudly, with much basso—was telling a story about a fishing accident that had left seven men dead. One of the sailor’s meaty hands clutched a mug of cold beer. The other was buried inside the woman’s skirt. Every few moments—when he needed to make an especially enthusiastic point—he would remove his fingers from the woman and hold them up to gesture. Then, the desired emphasis achieved, would return them. (Flip thought the courtesan did a fine job of showing herself equally stimulated by the raconteur’s tale as by his efforts underneath her garments.)

“You!” a voice suddenly cried.

It was the barman, half-Chinese and thinly bearded. His body was covered by a sheen of sweat and not-bathing. He wore a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and had a great round belly.

“I remember you!” the barman called to Flip, as though this successful recollection both astounded and pleased him. “We only allow high-class Negroes in this place. I forget, are you high-class?”

“Any higher and I’d be hittin’ the ceiling,” Flip said. He reached up and touched the wooden boards above to make his point. The barman laughed and squinted and clapped his hands like a baby.

“You been here before?” Tark asked quietly.

“Course I have,” Flip whispered back. “Workin’.”

The enthusiastic barman laughed again, seemingly at nothing. Underneath the bar was a smoking pipe. The barman stooped and took a long draw from it. Then he nodded vigorously, as though the pipe had helped him make up his mind about an important matter.

“Here,” he said. “I know just what high class persons like yourselves need.”

The bartender took three tall glasses down from a battered shelf behind him. Into one, he poured dark bourbon. Into the next, a sweet amber liqueur. Into the final glass went something thick and mysterious and green, which Flip hoped was Chartreuse. As the barman poured, the wailing cry of a prostitute being fucked behind a curtain rose and fell like the whistle of a fast-moving train. Tark stayed more or less motionless, but his eyes circled in wild alarm. Flip put a hand on the magician’s shoulder to steady him.

The bartender nodded in satisfaction, as though the drinks had been satisfactorily consecrated by the artificial cries of lust.

“Here you go,” he said, pushing the glasses forward. Flip got the whisky, Sally the sickeningly-sweet liqueur, and Tark the mysterious green concoction.

“It’ll give you all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming,” the barman said to the magician. “That’s what I tell people, anyway.”

He laughed.

“Thank you,” Flip said, placing a few coins on the bar.

The bartender immediately pocketed them.

Flip said: “I’ve never seen a man tending bar who could smoke an opium pipe and keep himself awake. Much less serve drinks. Must take some talent.”

“Thank you for noticing,” the barman said proudly. “The pipe helps to keep me even. I eat so many snow-balls, you see. Last year, before I found the pipe, I stayed awake for fifteen days on those things. By the end, I was serving drinks to people who weren’t even there. The pipe makes it one beautiful balancing act.”

“I’m sure it does,” Flip said.

“Would you like a snow-ball?” the bartender asked, in a whereare-my-manners sort of way. He brought up a small sachet from under the bar.

“Not quite yet,” Flip told the bartender.

Tark picked up his green drink. He sniffed at it carefully, and took the smallest sip.

Flip put his back to the bar, surveying the room. His eyes lit on a darkened doorway. A sign reading “Torture Chamber This Way” was affixed to the wall above it. As Flip watched, a man and a woman—convivial, drunk, and happy as jaybirds—passed, arm in arm, into that darkness.

The barman had another puff of his pipe.

Flip turned back and said: “My old friend Rotney Nash. . . Has he been in tonight? He owes me twenty dollars, and I intend to collect.”

The barman searched what was left of his memory.

“Rotney. . .” he said. “Has he been around recently? Let me see?”

Flip wondered if the barman was angling for a bribe.

The barman glanced over and saw that Tark had already drained his glass. Flip glanced over too. The barman brought down the green bottle and refilled it.

“So wait. . .” Tark said. “I thought you only let high-class Negroes in this place.”

“That’s right,” the barman said, replacing the bottle.

Flip looked at Tark hard, asking what he thought he was doing.

“And you telling me someone like Rotney Nash qualifies?” Tark continued.

“I see that you all truly know him,” the bartender said, giggling.

Tark shrugged.

“But Rotney Nash is the highest-class customer of all!” the barman declared. “He’s one who spends his entire paycheck within these four humble walls. That’s as high as you can get.”

Abruptly, Sally began tapping Flip on the thigh. He looked over. She indicated with a nod that he should follow her glance across the room. There, a lone woman lingered, very strange.

The woman was tall and pale and thin almost to the point of boniness. At first glance and at a distance, she seemed possessed of beauty far too great to be working at a place with “Bucket” in its name. Yet, as Flip trained his eyes more carefully, other aspects became clear. The deep scarring across the cheeks and neck. The subtle but unmistakable positioning of one eye higher than the other. The hairline that went jagged on one side of her scalp. These could only have been the result of terrible injuries—of being burned, and having one’s face broken and healed and broken again.

The woman was looking at the trio of newcomers with a curious expression. After a long moment, she made her way over. While she walked, she screwed up her face, as though the effort it took to move in a straight line was very great indeed. Flip had seen this kind of walk in those who had suffered an injury to the inner ear.

“You are looking for Rotney?” she said in an accent that was impossible to place, but definitely not Chicago.

“That’s right,” Flip replied. “He owes me twenty dollars.”

“That’s funny,” the woman said. “He owes me twenty dollars, too.”

Flip looked the woman over and inclined his head to the side.

“Seems like maybe we have something in common,” she continued. “Perhaps you’d care to discuss our mutual interests somewhere a bit more private?”

She took Flip’s four fingertips in her hand and eyed one of the many dark passageways leading away. It was framed by red velvet curtains—smokestained, ripped, and rubbed filthy. (No sign above it promised torture, but that counted for almost nothing.)

“You misunderstand me,” Flip said. “I actually am looking for Rotney Nash. That’s the long and short of my agenda.”

The mutilated courtesan made a point to glance down at the crotch of Flip’s pants after he said ‘long and short.’

“I think you misunderstand me,” she whispered.

The courtesan leaned in close.

“Do you know what your man there just drank?” she asked, nodding ever-so-slightly at Tark.

Flip did not know. He looked back to the bartender for guidance. The bartender had taken another puff of his pipe and was lost in a world of his own.

“Chartreuse,” Flip said. “Or absinthe.”

The courtesan smiled and shook her head no.

“That was fermented ramp juice,” she whispered. “That’s why it smells so awful. And why it’s so green. Most men get nothing from it. But some men are, let’s say, receptive. The drink is one of Rotney’s favorites. The barman here . . . He only serves it to Rotney . . . and to Rotney’s friends. I wonder how he knew you were friends with Rotney.”

“Like I said,” Flip replied—even as he began to grow uncomfortable, “the man owes me twenty dollars.”

“Yeah,” the woman said. “And like I told you, he owes me the same amount.”

She looked at Flip—one eye a half-inch above the other—hard and fierce.

“You know, I believe we should go and compare notes. My friends here will be safe at the bar, yes?”

Without glancing, the courtesan said: “The madam of the Palmerton House knows how to handle herself anywhere in the city—even if she doesn’t want to let it show.”

Sally did not respond.

“The other one. . . Buy him another ramp juice and he’ll be fine, I expect.”

Flip tossed a coin down and nodded to the barman. Then the strange woman took him by the fingertips, and pulled him deeper into the Bucket of Blood.

They walked down a dark passage framed by red curtains, then through a second hallway that led to a side room. Outside the room was a spent-looking man lying across a small settee. His clothes were fine but rumpled. Pinned to his chest was a six-pointed metal star. He was in a deep narcotic haze. Unnatural amber drool depended from the corner of his mouth. Flip let his fingers drop from the woman’s and stooped down to take a look.

The star had been issued by the City of Chicago, but was not a policeman’s. It was engraved to read: “FOR VALUABLE SERVICES RENDERED TO THE CORONER.”

“Don’t mind him,” the woman said. “He’s always like that.”

“A deputy coroner,” Flip said. “Work for the damned to do. Eastland Disaster? Nine-hundred bodies all at once like that—all bloated and burned by the sun? Make any man need to forget himself, I s’pose.”

“A normal man, yes,” the courtesan said. “But not this one. This one misses it. The days after the Eastland were the finest of his life. Nothing he ever does will capture that feeling again, and he knows it. So he numbs himself here. . . waiting, hoping for another catastrophe. Come on.”

They went into a bedroom and the strange woman shut the door.

Here, she was like an actress stepping off stage. She relaxed. Her face fell. When it did, it became even more crooked. Her eyes appeared even less aligned. She was like two faces sewn together.

“So. . .” the woman said. “What do you want with Rotney Nash?”

“He owes-” Flip tried.

“What really?” she growled. “Come on. You didn’t come to a place like this to play games.”

Flip was unflappable and stern.

“It’s something serious, I’ll tell you that much,” Flip said loudly. “Whether you’re a friend of Rotney’s, or whether he really does owe you money—and you want him to live long enough to pay you—you ought to help me out. I’m interested his safety. The safety of some other people too. You’re right, I didn’t come here to play games. I’m here on a matter that is deadly dire. If you know where he is—whether it’s here or somewhere else—you better tell me.”

The room had a bed and a small chest of drawers. The broken courtesan walked to the chest and took out a cigarette. She lit it and held it between her lips, considering.

“You’re not like the others,” she said, looking Flip up and down. “And that’s just a matter of fact, not my opinion.”

“What ‘others?’” he said.

“The others who come here and ask after Rotney,” she replied, taking a long drag. “His friends. His enemies. Whoever they are. I don’t know. But the others are odd. Very odd. Odder than you, even. And you are odd. Anybody ever tell you that?”

“I don’t understand,” Flip said. “People come looking for Rotney? Wait. . . One of them wouldn’t be a white man—thin and balding? Kinda mean-looking? Goes by Durkin?”

He pulled out the photograph of the hitman smiling in his pinstripe suit.

The courtesan shrugged.

“Maybe,” she said. “Some people who come in—their faces get obscured by the shadows. It’s so dark that maybe I don’t see.”

Another angle for a bribe. Everybody was the same. But Flip was not about to start doling out cash. Not until he had a better sense of whether this woman could truly be of help.

“I’m not with vice and I’ve no interest in shutting this place down, but I’ll tell you plainly that this is a police matter,” Flip said.

“What in here ain’t a police matter, potentially?” the woman said with a shrug.

Despite himself, Flip smiled.

“I tell you one thing,” she continued. “You flash a star and a gun out there, your chances of finding Rotney go to nil.”

“I know that,” Flip told her.

The courtesan sat down on the bed.

“Now then . . .” she said. “What can I tell you about Rotney Nash? He comes in here, drinks himself insensible, and winds up on the floor most of the time. They have to carry him out. He usually starts with the fermented ramp juice, but he’ll switch to whiskey or beer after a pace. Drinks like there’s no tomorrow, that one does.”

“How often does he come in?” Flip asked.

“Maybe once a week,” answered the courtesan. “And I hate to tell you honey, but Monday is not his night. He likes Fridays and Saturdays, when the joint is really hopping.”

Flip sighed. So he would not have his man this evening after all.

“What else?” Flip pressed. “Anything you can tell me while I’m here?”

“He . . .” the courtesan began, hesitating between puffs. “He. . . always wears the same clothes. They’re not nice clothes, and they’re always the same. Dirty trousers that smell like shit. Rumpled shirt. Muddy shoes. Bowler hat pulled low . . .”

“Does he-”

And then Flip stopped speaking because he realized he had spoken over her. The courtesan had said something more.

“What was that?” Flip demanded. “What did you just say?”

“Huh?” the woman replied, confused by his insistence.

“Tell me what you just said under your breath?” Flip pressed. “When I cut you off. It sounded like-”

“He keeps his bowler hat pulled low. . . to hide his deformity,” she clarified. “Rotney Nash is like me, all right? He looks different. He has a hole in his head, like a scoop taken out. That’s one reason I protect him—one reason I look out for him when people like you come around. I can relate to him. He and I are alike. Rotney wears that hat all the time because a piece from his head is missing.”

Tark was still on his third glass of fermented ramp.

Halfway finished with the drink, he let his tongue linger on the lip of the glass, savoring the strange salty taste. Sally, despite her tobacco-stained clothes and general deshabille had had to turn three men away already. (A lack of eye-contact and a stern “Keep walking” had done the trick so far, but she knew they would be less likely to take no for an answer as the night progressed.) Sally thought that Tark’s green drink smelled horrible. Now and then she got a whiff of it, and turned up her nose.

Flip barged out of the back, trailed by a courtesan who appeared both alarmed and confused. He looked around wildly for his friends. The brothel had become busier, with new patrons filing inside every few moments. All the seats at the bar were taken.

Flip found Sally and Tark, and moved in close between them. He spoke in low, intense tones.

“Rotney Nash is our man,” he said.

“What?” said Sally. “We know that. We’re here looking for him here, aren’t we?”

“No,” Flip said, putting his hands on their shoulders to urge them off their barstools. “I mean that Rotney is our suspect.”

“For the. . .” Tark said, setting down his drink.

Flip nodded.

“We need to go,” Flip said. “I don’t believe there’s a good chance of catching Rotney here tonight.”

Tark and Sally gathered themselves and headed for the door.

As he turned, Flip felt something hard and stiff hit him in the side of the chest. He glanced up and saw the broken courtesan, her fingers square against his ribs. Her face was drawn into a sneer.

“You see that man there in the corner?” she hissed. “And the one standing behind the couch? All I have to do is say a word, and they can keep you from walking out of here. Or from walking ever again. You follow me?”

Flip reached out.

Slowly, deliberately, he moved her hand down from his chest.

But the woman put it right back on him.

Flip saw the shadows nearby begin to shift. The confrontation had been noticed. Flip kept his hands at his sides.

“What do you intend to do with Rotney?” the woman asked.

“What I intend to do . . . is save lives,” Flip replied. “Look into my eyes if you doubt me. See if you think I’m not telling you the truth. Go on.”

For a moment, nobody said anything. Nobody moved.

The broken courtesan lowered her hand. And she did look into Flip’s eyes. She looked longer and harder than Flip could remember anyone ever looking into his eyes. Not a lover. Not his own mother. He allowed it to happen. He tilted his head slightly, so his own eyes might line up more directly with her crooked sightline.

Other patrons of the Bucket stopped to watch, or to watch patrons watching. (Stranger things took place within the Bucket, to be sure, but this wasn’t bad for early on an off night.)

Eventually, the broken courtesan said: “I believe you.”

Flip brushed past her and marched outside.

Back on Nineteenth Street, a man had been stabbed. He did not seem badly hurt and was limping away from his attacker (another drunk who seemed as astounded as the victim that the altercation had occurred). The hypnotized lummox of a man guarding the Bucket’s door had not noticed the fight. He stayed watching the space on the wall. Watching something invisible and irresistible. Flip began to wonder if he was even employed by the brothel. A handful of men had gathered to see if there would be more violence between the two drunks. When it was clear there would not, the onlookers shuffled off.

Flip, Tark, and Sally stood alone on the sidewalk, not far from the patch of fighting men’s blood.

“What’s happening, Flip?” Tark asked.

“That woman,” Flip explained. “She said that Rotney Nash was missing a piece of his head. Said he conceals it under a hat.”

“So . . .” Tark began, gears turning.

“So, like I said, Rotney is our man,” Flip continued. “That woman told me Monday isn’t his night to come to the Bucket, and I believe her. Men are creatures of habit. They stick to certain calendar days, or only come out when a girl they like is dancing, or a drink they like is pouring. Rotney’s days are Friday and Saturday, but I don’t want to wait that long. I think we go back to his garage in the pigyards and try to pick him up. I have a lot of questions right now. Foremost, I’m wondering why Ed Nash lied to us. Why he didn’t say it was his own brother who attacked him. But experience has taught me you can’t wait to act until you have all the answers. You’ve got to move when you have the scent. And right now, I have it.”

Before Tark or Sally could object, Flip turned east down Nineteenth Street at a brisk pace.

“Welp,” said Sally. “At least I’m wearing the right clothes this time. Though, two baths in a day isn’t a wonder for anybody’s skin.”

Flip did not respond. The smells they might accumulate over the course of the night were the least of his worries.

He thought of telling Tark and Sally that they didn’t have to come along; not for this part. That they were not needed-needed, not really. He had always had his greatest successes apprehending criminals when working alone. But Tark spoke before Flip could articulate any of these things.

“Do you think he was born with it?”

“Hmm?” Flip called back distractedly.

“The thing in his head,” Tark clarified as he jogged to keep up with the striding policeman.

“I don’t know, kid,” Flip said. “You could get something like that in an accident, or from being shot in the head just right. More people are shot in the head and live than you’d imagine. Though they are always changed after. It might explain Rotney’s need to drink fermented ramp juice at the direst brothel in Chicago every weekend. To live like he does.”

“I dunno,” Tark said thoughtfully.

“You don’t know what?”

“The fermented ramp didn’t taste half bad. It was different—don’t get me wrong—but I wouldn’t say it was awful. You sure can taste the living plant in it, just like you can taste the berries in gin. I can, anyway.”

Flip wondered if he should send the magician and the madam home.

“Well I think he could have been born with it,” Tark continued. “Rotney, I mean. Hey. . . What if they both have it!?”

“Both?” Flip said, not seeing the idea.

“Yeah,” said Tark. “And then that would explain why Ed Nash had that hairpiece.”

Flip.

Stopped.

Walking.

Sally, following close, ran into his back.

“Ow,” she said. “What are you. . . Flip?”

The policeman acted as though she were not there at all. He turned his entire attention back to the magician.

“What did you just say?”

Tark looked around the empty, filthy streets for anything, anyone to account for why his words had left Flip so astounded.

“I . . . said that it would explain the hairpiece, is all,” Tark replied. “I was just thinking—’cause they’re identical twins, right?—what if they were both born with a piece missing from their heads.”

Flip leaned in so close to Tark that he could smell the horrid fermented ramp on his breath.

“What do you mean, hairpiece?”

“Oh, it was a fine one,” the magician said. “No doubt there. But it was a hairpiece. My line of work, you get good at spotting fakes. You spot fake eyelashes on women. Fake bosoms or fake figures entirely. And on men? There you spot all manner of fakes. Some men wear girdles. Some men dye their hair. Some wear fake hair altogether. And Ed Nash does, sure as I’m alive. At the time, I only thought he had it ‘cause he was bald. I thought it was a regular wig. But if you had the money—and he probably does, if he runs his own insurance agency—it would be nothing to commission something special. A toupee that has a ball of felt, say, that goes down into your head-hole. Plugs it up so you look normal again. It would probably help the toupee to stay on, too.”

Lightning and thunder struck Joe Flippity. He saw no flash and heard no report, but the effect was nearly the same. He looked up into the night sky, crowded with the reflected glow of the streetlights, to see if there were indeed thunderclouds above. All that came back out of the ether were Ursula Green’s words. One is two. Two is one.

The thought inside his brain seemed so terrible that he feared if he spoke it loudly the universe might simply strike him dead—with real lightning, this time. Something in Flip’s soul told him to keep it clamped shut in an iron-tight lockbox.

Tark and Sally looked on in concern.

“Flip, what is it?” whispered Sally. “Do you think it’s Ed Nash instead of Rotney Nash?”

“Yes,” Flip said slowly. “Yes and no.”

“I don’t follow,” said Tark.

The policeman took his eyes back down from the skies above Chicago. He spoke carefully and soberly, like a physician explaining a complicated condition to a patient.

“In your act, Tark, you and your brother pretend to be one man. That’s how you appear across the circus tent. You let on like there’s just one Tark brother, but in actuality there are two. The trick works because no one in the audience is even thinking you might be a twin.”

The magician nodded.

“If I’m right, we have the reverse,” Flip continued in deadly serious tones. “Everyone acts like there are two Nash brothers—Ed and Rotney—but what if, really, there’s just one?”

Now Tark looked confused.

“Just which one?” Tark asked. “Cause we’ve met Ed, and we’ve seen a newspaper picture of Rotney.”

“I don’t know the details yet,” Flip said. “But I can imagine a man who runs a respectable insurance brokerage during the week, but on the weekends likes to do things that would keep anybody from wanting to trust him with a policy on their life. So he decides to become two people. He’s Rotney Nash when he’s carousing at the Bucket, and he’s Ed Nash the rest of the time.”

Tark looked halfway convinced. Sally, less so.

“Wait. . .” Sally said. “That still doesn’t explain what Janice Collins saw. Or thought she saw.”

“I’m thinking about that right this moment,” Flip told Sally, inclining his head like a man listening for a sound in the far distance. “In my experience, people with something to hide will spin a lie so that it can work both ways. So that it can work ‘just in case.’ I can imagine a night ten or so years ago. . . Ed Nash came home drunk as a skunk, after being out as Rotney. Maybe he was careless. Maybe he stumbled around the back of his house where that pretty young newspaper girl worked—tried to look into her window, even. And maybe the next morning he thought she might have seen him without his hairpiece on, so he made up a story. When he saw her again, he told her that a man with a divot in his head had attacked him. That it was a mugger. I’m still not sure, but it’s got to be something like that.”

“This is all very strange,” Sally said.

“Maybe so,” said Flip. “But I get the feeling it means we need to find Nash, and we need to find him right away. Mr. Hyde only comes out on the weekends, so I think we got to go arrest Dr. Jekyll.”

When they reached the south end of the Levee District where you could still catch a cab, Flip used his policeman’s star to hail one and they piled inside. Flip pushed money into the cabbie’s hands and gave the address of Ed Nash’s neighborhood in the stinking shadow of the stockyards. The neighborhood only. Flip told the diver to stop at its edge.

Flip said nothing more. He was distant, lost in thought. He was still turning over the strangeness in his head.

“Why we ain’t go directly to his house?” the magician whispered after they had gone a few blocks.

“Because that’s not how I choose to handle it,” Flip said, looking up at the stars above the city—smelling the lake and the hogs on the summer breeze. “Ed Nash is already under arrest. He was under arrest the moment I thought to arrest him. The only question is what makes him more liable to talk. More liable to tell us the truth about what he did. I could go to the station right now, come back with enough policemen to surround his house. Then we’d take him downtown and put the screws on.”

Flip inhaled a bug or piece of pig mummified pigshit floating in the air. He paused to spit it out the side of the cab.

“But that doesn’t always work,” he continued. “I’m thinking it might not work at all on a man like him. He’d just clam up. And I feel like what the mayor wants, really, is answers. That’s what I’d want, if I were mayor. If we’re not bringing in Durkin—which I don’t think we are—I got to be able to say why. So I want to make Mr. Nash explain himself to me.”

The cab paused at the edge of the neighborhood. Flip directed the cabbie to press just a little further inside. The pig smell was strong now. The scent did not ease up overnight. Perhaps it never eased up. Maybe in winter, Flip mused. Maybe then.

The surrounding homes were dark and quiet. Nobody was out on the street. Flip told the cabbie to stop at the end of Nash’s block, and then to turn around and leave the way he had come.

On foot, Flip led the trio into a row of trees that grew parallel with the street and wound through different yards and properties. Flip seemed uncannily able to pass into shadow and become one with it. Despite being a tall man, he concealed himself so completely that Tark and Sally Battle found this ability to disappear positively disturbing. Tark was on the point of commenting upon it when Sally hissed: “Someone is liable to think we’re burglars and shoot us, creeping around like this.”

“Then I’ll shoot back,” Flip said. “Now stay quiet. We’re almost there.”

They were.

The trees led to the edge of Nash’s yard. His house was visible only by the light of the moon; there were no streetlights close by. Flip remembered that a young woman rented the upstairs flat. He hoped she would not become involved tonight. With luck, she would prove a very sound sleeper.

“There’s a back door to his place,” Flip whispered. “I mean on the first floor. I saw it when we were inside. If he’s going to run, that’s how he’ll do it. I think he’s too wide to fit through any of the windows. None of you saw other exits, did you?”

Tark and Sally shook their heads.

“Me either,” said Flip. “I’m going to knock on his front door and get in under a pretense. Sally, I’ll ask you to come with me. I think he’s liable to believe I have softer intentions if he sees a woman along.”

It was too dark to view Sally’s reaction to this idea.

“Tark, I want you to go around back and hold the rear door shut. It opens out. Place your foot against it. If he tries to run, you only need to buy me enough time to get back there. Understand?”

Tark said that he did.

They stepped out of the trees and into the darkened yard. Flip and Sally headed up toward the front door. Tark split off and picked his way around to the back of the house. Flip thought again of the young woman sleeping up on the second floor. His eyes traced the dark window panes above them. He looked hard but saw nothing, only blackness and reflected glass.

Because his eyes were adjusted up, he and Sally were fairly close to the house before Flip chanced to peer into the darkened first floor windows. And he saw it immediately. A visage so close and clear that it seemed for an instant to be his own reflection. Ed Nash. Or Rotney Nash. Wearing trousers and a sleeveless white undershirt. Staring back out at him from the other side. Stone bald headed, and with a piece of his forehead missing.

And he had been watching them, maybe the entire time.

Flip opened his mouth to say something, but Nash was too fast. He disappeared like a ghost into the darkness. Flip heard his footsteps padding fast to the back of the house. Flip changed his course and broke into a run.

“Tark, he’s coming your way!” Flip shouted.

Flip raced around the side of the house. Sally trailed after him. They heard a crash and the sound of glass shattering. Flip reached inside his coat and produced his 1911. They turned the corner, and Flip swung his gun left and right, looking for a target. He saw nothing, not even Tark. Then he noticed the crumpled pile on the flagstones behind Nash’s back door. Glass was all around, and the door was ajar.

Flip ran over.

Tark sat up out of the pile. He was the pile. One hand still held the neck of the broken gin bottle. The other held his head.

“You all right?” Flip asked, training his gun into the trees.

A neighbor had heard the commotion and was turning on lights.

“He came before I could get my foot on the door,” Tark said apologetically. “I was just having a nip for courage. Then the door slammed into my head and knocked me over.”

“Where!” Flip cried, squinting into the darkened yard. “Where did he go?”

Tark pointed into the trees, due east.

“There, I think.”

Sally approached. She placed her hands on her hips and clucked disapprovingly, then bent to help Tark right himself.

Flip went immediately after his prey. He lunged into a sprint and disappeared in the darkness. His footfalls fell away and soon Tark and Sally heard and saw nothing more. Flip was like an eagle launching himself into the night sky. It chose not to silhouette itself against the moon. It chose not to show itself, period.

Sally inspected Tark’s wounds. He had a small gash on brow where the door had connected with his face, but it was not deep. Other than that, he might only have some bruises.

“Come on,” Sally whispered. “Stand up. You just got the wind knocked out a little.”

Tark dropped the jagged neck of the gin bottle and rose.

Moments later, they heard Flip’s quick, sharp breath and he came padding back out of the trees. He held his 1911 low, with two hands. There was nobody with him.

Flip shook his head, answering no, he had not found Nash. He stared at Sally intently.

“He didn’t come back here either,” she whispered.

Flip suddenly became interested in the back door, creaking on its hinges.

“Tark, you’re sure he brushed past you?” Flip said urgently, taking the magician by the shoulder. “He didn’t just bump you and run back into the house?”

“No,” Tark insisted. “I saw him run that way.”

Flip sighed in frustration and put his gun back into his coat. He opened the door with his foot and looked doubtfully into the dark house. There was no movement or sound. Flip saw no trace of Nash.

“What do we do?” Sally asked.

“Is Tark all right?” Flip asked, leaning in to have his own cursory look at the magician’s brow.

“He’s fine,” Sally said. “Cut like that can be stitched right up.”

“Come on then,” Flip told them, heading back into the yard.

“To where?” asked Sally.

“There’s a thousand places he might go,” Flip said. “But I know men like this. Men with double lives. In this situation? There’s one place I know he’ll go.”

Flip took off into the night.

Tark and Sally Battle looked at one another, then followed after.

Flip walked quickly but did not quite run. He knew that Sally’s shoes and skirt were making it difficult for her. He also knew that nothing could be done. The woman would have to soak her feet after this, surely, but she could afford the Epsom salts.

The stockyards were near now. The trio could hear low bayings in the distance. A night ocean of animals awaited.

“Why don’t we find another cab to take?” asked Tark.

“I don’t want to beat him there,” Flip said. “He sees that, he goes someplace else. We never catch him. I want to chase him into his hole. I want to be right on his heels. And I think that’s where we are.”

They made their way deeper into the yards. The horrid smell increased.

Flip had not made up his mind as to whether or not a cornered Nash would be dangerous. Many predators could be positively meek when you first met them, but then the claws would come out when things got underway. Many predators, but not all. . . Flip had not seen any real claws from Ed Nash. That he had fled was a good sign. His knocking over Tark had probably been an accident.

They turned a corner and the walls of the stockyards rose before them. And there, in the distance ahead, at the center of it all, amongst bunkers and outbuildings just like it, was the garage of Rotney Nash.

The air around them seemed to crackle. Not with electricity, but not with airborne pigshit either. The wind blew in hard off the lake, the way it should not. The strangeness might have come directly from the great body of water itself, or from another place entirely. Flip had the sudden sense that something else was present in the atmosphere above.

Flip slowed his pace enough for Tark to ask, “Hey, what’re we gonna do when we get there?”

“When we get there, I want you to look in,” Flip said. “And Sally, I want you to look out. That is to say, Sally, you keep an eye on the pens and the walls around us. You see guards, you go up to one of them. They’ll be less alarmed to see a woman. You go up to them and tell them to fetch the police. Tark, you watch the garage. You see Nash come out of there—out through a place where I’m not—you shout to me. You raise an alarm loud as you can.”

Sally and Tark both nodded.

“Otherwise, you both stay away,” Flip told them. “The rest of this is up to me.”

“But what if he’s not in there?” said Tark. “He could be in any one of these buildings; there are hiding places all around us.”

Flip said nothing. He lowered his stare. For a moment Tark believed the policeman was angry with him for having brought up the possibility. Then Tark realized why Flip was looking down.

Just visible in the pig dust was a single set of footprints, hard to see in the moonlight, but not impossible. And they headed straight to the garage of Rotney Nash.

Once again, Flip produced his 1911.

“Just keep an eye on that garage,” Flip said. “You see him come out—and I ain’t directly on his heels—you start shouting.”

Tark nodded and Flip moved off, stalking deeper into the pigyards.