Chapter 14

Will pushed his way through the heavy foot traffic along the city streets. Michigan Avenue, decked out for Christmas, twinkled in the cloudy, late autumn haze. Laura had to run to keep up.

"Will, slow down!" she called to him as ducked around a corner. As she charged ahead to catch him, Laura slammed into someone coming from the other direction. It was a full-body collision, ricocheting force through her body. As the stranger struggled to disentangle himself from Laura, he clumsily stomped on her foot. She winced, and turned toward him as he sped off behind her.

Chad? She thought, as the man sped toward the loop.Was that Chad?

Will's head popped out from around the building at the corner just ahead of her.

"Laura!" he hissed. "Get a move on! There's something afoot!"

Laura shook off her confusion and caught up with Will. He grasped her hand and dragged her to the entrance of a tall, drab skyscraper. The building had none of the charm of the familiar Chicago school of architecture. A sleek, dark, uninspired structure, it was most likely a fairly recent construction. Form definitely followed function.

They stepped into the lobby and were surprised to find a fairly ornate and highly decorated inner space. Variegated peach-colored marble lined the walls and floor, and the wide lobby was broken up by a series of columns of the same material, ornamented with gold leaf. It looked less like a place of business than a museum. Or a mausoleum. Bach's Fugue in G Minor played softly over the sound system.

As Will pulled her through the entranceway, Laura caught a glimpse of a placard buttressed by two stacks of photocopied guides. It read:

Laura swiped at one of the guides as Will pulled her past. It listed Takamoto's artistic acquisitions, and noted each location on a map of the room. Laura skidded along as she skimmed the various entries:

1. Vanderhelt Portrait Doll, Madame Christoffa
   Circa: 1872
   Height: 16"
   On loan from the Vanderhelt family of Chicago, the doll was presented to Cynthia Vanderhelt on her 3rd birthday. Based on a portrait of her painted earlier that year, the doll's dress is an exact replica Cynthia's christening gown, including the bead work, wrought in Australian crystal.

2. Paul Revere Pewterware
   Circa: 1790
   Subsequent to his historic ride, Paul Revere remained in Boston in the capacity of a silversmith. Numerous examples of his work have survived, not the least valuable of which include these stylish bedpans.

3. Novelty Penny Banks, Fleischer Metal Works
   Circa: 1898
   From 1890 to 1929, Fleischer Metal Works designed and sold a line of popular novelty penny banks for children and collectors. A marvel of master craftsmanship, these banks delighted collectors with their smooth mechanical workings and attention to detail. All banks displayed here are fully functional and are highly valued by collectors for the vividness of their paint (unrestored).

Laura looked at the display, looked back to Will questioningly, and dropped her eyes to the guide sheet she still held.

23. Velveteen Chaise, Bendix & Sons.
    Circa: 1911
    This chaise, an ordinary piece of lounging furniture from a popular though elegant line, was rumored to have belonged to Evelyn Nesbitt, starlet and notorious player in this century's first "Trial of the Century," the 1906 murder of Stanford White by millionaire eccentric Harry Thaw. Familiar from the film "Girl on a Red Velvet Swing" (starring Joan Collins) and E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime (now a hit Broadway musical directed by Chicago's own Frank Galati), the story of Evelyn Nesbitt's romantic entanglements shook the nation in the early part of this century. On loan from the private collection of Simone de Loenteray.

"Nothing! Isn't that fabulous! The signpost to the next clue has nothing to do with the clue itself. Or the previous clue. It's a signpost pointing back to Sooner Than Never." He looked at her significantly, and gestured back to the couch. "Get it?"

"No, Mulder, I don't get it. You're gonna have to fill me in."

"A red velveteen chaise! Like the one Mistress Peregrine perished on the night she brought Lady Violet into the world. Death and life united in one gloriously plush piece of furniture. And it's blood-red. Blood for death. Blood for passion. Fiery emotions, lives cut short, tumultuous adventures to come!"

"Will. It's a couch."

"Ah, yes. A couch. Just a couch. Did you bother to read the label?" he asked snidely, pointing to the placard alongside the display. It bore the same description as on Laura's guide sheet.

"And . . . ?"

"The owner's name? Simone de Loenteray? Ring a bell?"

Laura wrinkled her brow in confusion, and Will heaved a sigh of exasperation.

"Hello," he exclaimed, rapping his knuckles gently on her skull. "High school French. Sound it out."

Laura looked worried and shrugged. "Sorry. I took French. Passed all sorts of fluency tests. Don't remember a damn thing. Oh yeah--I can order a steak . . . that's about it."

Will rolled his eyes. "Cretin. Well, my dear, don't sweat it. The one language you do speak, you speak very well." He patted her head. "Thankfully, multi-linguistic Will is to the rescue, mon petit chou!"

He waved the guide in front of her, and jabbed at the name. "Simone. Duh. That's Simon. But here's the tricky part. Loenteray. Break it into parts. Lo. French for water. You know L-E-A-U. Now--enteray. To bury: enterrer. Water-Bury. L'eau-Enterrer."

"Oh, my God."

"Yeah! We're on the trail. And look around. No one else is! See, it took us a month to get here--but it was worth it. Because no one else can find it!"

"Um, Will?"

His eyes sparkled as he surveyed the display room with self-satisfaction. "Yes, querida?"

"Find what?"

He looked back to her, and his face fell.

********

As Chad turned the corner, he quickly shot a look back toward Laura. She had since moved on. Good, he thought. I don't need that little bitch blowing my cover.

That was a little too close, though. He'd have to be more careful in future. But who thought Will and Laura would be this close to ground zero? They'd spent a month in Chicago chasing their own tails. He expected them to give up soon, or to pick up a false scent.

Chad wandered on, glimpsing river, lake and skyline as he went. He crossed the river and headed down stairs to the tunnel below Michigan Avenue. The bleak semi-darkness of the tunnel appealed to him. And, he figured, decreased the chances of more unpleasant encounters.

Seeking refuge from the increasing chill (Damn! The temperature had dropped 20 degrees in 20 minutes. Only in this god-forsaken city), Chad pushed his way into the closest tavern. Once inside, he surveyed the room. A dingy, smoky dive. There was a bar that ran around two sides of the room, a grill on another side, a pool table, and a series of picnic tables. The place was crowded with a motley gathering of misfits. Hoary old-timers, beef-necked southsiders in t-shirts and ball-caps, yuppie business types, bright-eyed tourists.

He turned his eyes to a placard on the wall:

Chad slid onto a barstool, glared maliciously around him, and ordered a scotch. So far, he'd done his job. He'd tracked Will and Laura. They'd been in his sights all along. Sure, the bomb hadn't worked, but it had served its real purpose: to add complication to the trip. He couldn't have anticipated that they'd defuse the bomb before it had done its job. If it hadn't been for that slut and her so-called FBI friend, things would've gone according to plan.

And he'd added more fuel to the fire with several recent hijinx: the mugging, the street preacher, lots of little games. If that little bitch thought this was going to the same cakewalk the rest of her life had been, she was in for a surprise. Chad was here to spice things up. And he worked best in the dark.

As the scotch hit his system, Chad began to relax. He untensed his shoulders, loosened his tie, and cast his eyes over the crowd scattered in the bar. The place was too noisy, too chaotic, but it gave him some anonymity, and that was what he needed right now.

But slowly, it dawned on him that he was being watched. Seated at one of the picnic tables, just behind a family of tourists (so cheery in their cubs sweatshirts and caps), he noticed a group of five suits. Staring at him. As he locked eyes with the fair-haired one, he noticed the rest of them closing into a tight circle. A man in Armani leaned into the fair-haired man and muttered something to him. The fair-haired man held Chad's gaze, but all the while listened intently to the man in Armani. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded. A third man, one with coarse features and a bull-neck, started up. Chad's heart started to pound as the stocky and oddly powerful man moved toward him.

He'd had enough. He slapped a bill down on the bar, gathered his raincoat and moved quickly to the door. The bull-necked man caught his movement and quickly changed direction with an unexpected agility for a man of his girth. Chad increased his pace, almost breaking to a run. Just as he reached the door, a small girl, pig-tails and Cubs cap, darted in front of him. She slammed into his leg, momentarily impeding his exit. He reached down, cupped her forehead in his hand, and brutally pushed her aside.

Bitch, he thought, as he pushed his way to the street.

********

Laura ran her fingers through her touseled auburn hair. "Will, I agree, this is significant. Clearly, the chaise is a signpost back to Sooner Than Never. We're in the right place. And you're absolutely right about the name of the donor. But it doesn't get us anywhere else."

Will looked dismayed. "But this can't be accidental. We are supposed to be here. It's too clear."

"Well, let's think about what we have now. The chaise points back, but it doesn't point forward. It tells us we're in the right place, but I think that's its only function. What more can we get from this?"

"But we already know that!" Will groused.

"Yeah, we do. But we only know it because of your friends. Not everyone else in the world has their own personal set of Girls With Glasses. In a way, we found the answer too quickly. We jumped right over this part of the puzzle. That's why we've been searching the river to no avail. We know it's Eastland, but since there's no memorial for the disaster, Waterbury's probably constructed his own. And the clue on how to get there is somewhere indicated here."

"But it's not the chaise?"

"I don't think so," Laura answered, and buried her nose back in the guide sheet.

Suddenly Will's eyes narrowed and he moved quickly away from Laura. "This is it. . . this is it . . .THIS IS IT!" he hollered.

Laura scurried over to him. He pointed at the wall. There was posted an outsize placard identifying the display. She peered at it near-sightedly.

23. Vintage Postcards Documenting the Eastland Disaster
    Circa: 1915
    On Saturday, July 24, 1915, the passenger ship Eastland unexpectedly capsized and sank while preparing for a pleasure cruise for employees of the Western Electric company. The overloaded ship, poorly designed and possibly docked on a sandbar, threw hundreds of passengers into the river and trapped many others underwater. Over 800 passengers died, just feet from the shore and the Clark Street bridge which towered over the disembarkment point.

    The effect of the disaster was horrific. One eyewitness described it:

    "I shall never be able to forget what I saw. People were struggling in the water, clustered so thickly that they literally covered the surface of the river. A few were swimming; the rest were floundering about, some clinging to a life raft that had floated free, others clutching at anything that they could reach--at bits of wood, at each other, grabbing each other, pulling each other down, and screaming! The screaming was the most horrible of all."

    The rescue efforts for the Eastland disaster were quickly mobilized, but due to the monumental number of people on board, few were saved. Rescue workers pulled survivors and the dead alike from the river. To extract victims from the interior of the capsized boat, workers had to cut holes in the hull of the ship. By the time the rescuers could get into the hull, many who had survived the original capsize had since drowned.

    Shortly after the disaster, postcards made from photos of the disaster were widely distributed. These samples are on display here courtesy of Simone de Loenteray.

"Can you only see what's right in front of your nose? I think your years in publishing have made you incapable of looking up from your book. Open up your big green eyes and LOOK!"

He pointed to the display of postcards mounted on the wall. There were numerous sepia toned photos arranged in a large circle on the wall. Photos of the Eastland years before it sank. Images of the capsized boat. One particularly grisly card depicted rescue workers pulling the corpse of a young woman from the water. Laura winced.

Then she saw it. The photos served to frame the center point of the exhibit. A larger photo, bigger than any of the postcards, dominated the display. It depicted the river shoreline, littered with hundreds of bodies lain on the ground. Looming above the scene was the watch turret of the Clark Street Bridge. It was a truly gruesome spectacle. A placard beneath the photo read:

This image is a particularly rare reminder of the Eastland disaster. Portraying the aftermath of the capsize, the photo was consider too explicit and too distasteful for public consumption. In accordance with federal order, this image was pulled from the market; very few copies remain.

Pictured here are the bodies of the victims awaiting identification. The employees of Western Electric had not been assigned to any specific ship (several had been chartered) and there were no passenger lists. In many instances, entire families had perished in the accident, so no one remained in the area to identify the bodies. Identification took several days.

Of note is the image of the watch turret of the Clark Street Bridge. Local lore has it that tower played no small role in the magnitude of the disaster (although this rumor has never been verified). According to legend, rescue crews were coming from north of the river and had to cross the bridge to reach the near shore. The bridge had been drawn up and, due to a mechanical failure of mysterious origin, could not be let down. Crews waited on the far shore, finally backtracking to cross at the Well Street bridge, but precious time was lost. The watchman on duty tried in vain to engage the mechanism, but to no avail, and he was stranded, immobile, with a bird's-eye view of a tragedy he was unable to avert.

It is rumored that the same watchman later committed suicide by throwing himself from the tower into the river, and that his ghost walks the tower by night. Often, late at night, passers-by hear voices--indistinct murmurs, unintelligible whispers, countless sighs.

"Well, that's freaky. Not your garden-variety museum label."

"Uh-huh . . ." Will looked at her significantly.

"What?"

Will pulled out his tattered copy of Sooner Than Never, rifled through the pages, and jabbed his finger at the description of Lady Violet's last night in the tower. Her eyes widened.

"We need to get to that tower!"

Before Laura could finish, Will grabbed her hand and dragged her out to the street. They dodged business people, Christmas shoppers, parked cars, and fought their way across Wacker Drive to the river. When they got to the tower, both stopped short.

"Now what?" Laura asked plaintively.

"I don't know," Will answered intently. "I just don't know." He paced alongside the structure, looked over the edge of the bridge into the river, and finally turned back to Laura. "It's up there," he pointed up the stairs leading to the tower. "I think it's time for a little B and E."

She furrowed her brow in a question.

"Breaking and Entering, my dear. You've led such a sheltered life," he said as he strode up the stairs. Bracing himself, Will forced his shoulder against the door. It gave easily, wood splintering and dust flying.

Laura followed him in and scanned the room. A cherrywood panel mounted on the wall stood out against the worn cheap planks that made up the bridge's tower. Set in the wood was a photo of recent origin. A vivid image, it depicted a liquor store, rather unfortunately named "Beaver Liquors."

Mounted beside the image was piece of parchment, inscribed with the inevitable snatch of doggerel:

A flash of red air--
Heat breaks out from the abyss.
Death of the hamlet.

Formless matter flows.
Solid slides within and sinks.
Screams renting the air.

Hard as rock, more smooth.
Air stabs the chest with each breath.
Sliding past needles.

"Hey! It's haiku!" Laura grabbed a piece of paper from her purse and hastily jotted it down. "At least we're not being chased out this time. We have some time to work on this clue on-site."

"Hey! What's that?" Will exclaimed, pointing to a button that was mounted on the wall. It was labeled: PUSH ME. "Curiouser and curiouser!" Will chortled, and followed the label's directive.

"Will! NO!" Laura shrieked, a moment too late.

As Will's finger left the button, a deafening din overtook them, almost knocking them to the ground. It loud. It was thunderous. It was . . . perky.

It was the Carpenters.

Laura and Will looked at each other in amazement as "On Top of the World" blared out over the river from some unseen loudspeaker. It resonated up and down the canyon of skyscrapers. Cars screeched to a halt. Pedestrians turned to stare. The wail of a siren-- only faintly audible through the cheery cacophony--told them that someone had called the police.

"We've got to go NOW!!!" Laura shouted above the din, still thinking of the dreaded B and E, and longing not to return to prison. She grabbed Will by the arm and pulled him out of the tower, down the stairs, and north over the river.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chad. He was pointing frantically toward her. A Chicago policeman was by his side. She ran faster.

"Quick!" Will hollered to her. "To the Merchandise Mart! They'll never find us there!"

CODA

The lights dimmed in Eighty-Eights as the floor show began. Tim Pfizer, who usually worked this shift, took the mike to serve as swing master-of-ceremonies for the evening showcase. Large eyes, set in a charmingly boyish face--it was no wonder he had been cast to play Harlowe, Lady Violet's young stepson in the Thanksgiving Day parade. But his voice, at first a light and gentle tenor, bore within it a growl that betrayed his age and sophistication. This was no boy. He cut an odd figure at the front of the bar's performance area, rather like something out of "Cabaret."

"Hi, all. Thank you so much for joining us here for 'showcase night' at Eighty-Eights. Please help me welcome tonight's headliner, a very talented composer--I know we'll all be hearing a lot from him in the future--Mr. Don Tetley."

Tim beckoned the young man onto the tiny raised platform with a flourish. A skinny, gangly kid with a hawk-like profile and nearly shaven head slunk to the piano. He smiled awkwardly at the audience, acknowledging their applause with a casual wave from the world's longest fingers.

As Don started his set, Tim moved to the back of the club. He joined Amelia (formerly Macy's Lady Violet) at the bar.

"How's that cold?" he asked her.

"Better. Thanks." She reached for a tissue. "That is the last time I do one of those parades. Sopping wet. Doing idiotic choreography. It's degrading. It's really not worth it."

"Hey, at least you got to play a grown-up!"

"Small favor," she sniffed, clutching a cup of tea.

"I still say it was worth our while," Tim retorted, mopping the bar with a rag. "Vesper Shillington has a lot of pull. She's Waterbury's right hand. That's a connection worth having."

"Yeah, well, it's done me soooo much good so far."

"Oh, quit grousing," Tim chided her good-naturedly. "Good things'll happen, and I think they'll happen because of Ms. Shillington. I mean, look what she's done for Will. At least he has fame. And he might make great heaps of money."

"Treasure hunt! No thanks. I'm telling you, there's is no way they are giving Will and Laura that money. I bet there's not even any money. It's just a big stunt."

"Maybe, maybe not. But in the long run, this will do Will's career good. Wish I had that kind of an 'in.' Which reminds me, I was going to chat up Ms. Shillington tonight. Where is she?" He scanned the crowed room. "Her usual table's still empty. That's odd. She never misses showcase night. I wonder where she is . . ." he mused.

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