August 16, 1965
Wrapped in a blanket, the naked redhead sat on a sagging chair in the center of a dank, cluttered room while a man called Norman explained his plans for her with large gestures and wild eyes. While she didn’t comprehend all of it, she concluded that Norman was extremely clever...and at least half mad.
When he finished his long soliloquy Norman sat back, an expectant smile on his fleshy face. “What do you think?”
After a long pause, the woman spoke. “I think, sir, that you are a pimple on the rump of creation.”
A frown passed briefly over his face, but then he laughed. “You’re magnificent!” he crowed. “And you’re only the first of many.” Flecks of saliva crusted at the sides of his mouth. “You can’t imagine what I gave up in order to make you mine.”
A pale eyebrow rose. “Don’t be a fool, Pimple. I am not yours, nor will I ever be.”
Still dazzled by his success, the man didn’t seem to hear. As he rubbed his hands like some gloating alchemist, the redhead turned to the battered metal door, focusing her gaze as if she might glare her way to the other side. Though not afraid of the strange man, she was concerned nonetheless. If what he said was true, her life would never return to the way it had been, and she had to learn to live a new way, in a manner she’d never imagined before this moment.
SEPTEMBER, 1967
Playing the bum at the Randolph Street Mission amused Leo less and less. Still, he sat patiently among a dozen or so derelicts, hiding his dismay at the sounds and smells around him. They listened, at least some did, to a long, clumsy lecture opposing strong drink and the love of God. Evidently one precluded the other. Maintaining a blank expression, Leo waited as the amateur speaker propounded Christian principles to his captive audience, though he grasped little of the subtleties of his audience or the principles themselves.
As men snored, burped, and muttered, the speaker, rapt with his own voice, went doggedly on. Leo resisted the urge to break into the Te Deum, imagining the surprised look it would bring to the man’s righteous, acne-scarred face. But that would defeat his purpose, which was the impending meal. Once everyone was busy either serving or eating, he’d steal as much food as possible and then leave. He never spent the night in such places. They were bound to be infested.
With his face lowered, Leo didn’t look much different from the others. His longish, flowing hair was shot with gray, and his strong countenance had intriguing life experiences carved on it in the form of deep wrinkles. Hard physical work had roughened his hands, and his scruffy, baggy overcoat made him easily recognizable to the mission staff. When the meal was finally announced, he took a seat on a cockeyed folding chair at a battered table. Pretending to gobble like the others, he surreptitiously stuffed most of his food into large, hidden pockets Memnet had sewn inside the coat.
On this occasion, he was careless. A worker passing with a coffeepot saw two rolls disappear under the table. Though she had a kind face, she frowned. “Clients aren’t allowed to take food from the mission.”
Leo bent his head as if ashamed. “It’s for later,” he murmured. “It keeps the cravings down.” With a brief nod of understanding she retreated to the kitchen, the empty pot dangling from one hand. A true Christian, Leo concluded, but he resolved to be more careful in the future.
When the meal was over, Leo left the mission and started for home, the food in his pockets bumping against his thighs with reassuring solidity. Having done his part for the communal good, he slowed to enjoy the sights and sounds around him.
Since his arrival two years ago, the streets of Chicago had produced a succession of emotions. First he’d felt only fear and confusion. Later he’d found stimulation, and lately, he’d begun to think of the city as home. As he maneuvered through familiar places, Leo felt a bittersweet happiness.
The buildings of downtown dwarfed the individual man, yet the minds of men had created them. Machinery that rolled, growled, whirred, and whined around him stirred his inquiring mind. Though he didn’t understand everything about the city, Leo was interested in every aspect of it.
As the odor of fried chicken wafted up from his coat, he smiled in anticipation. Soon he’d be home, though his home was not what most people meant by the term. Working together, Leo and three friends had carved out a place for themselves and built acceptable though not luxurious lives. Like hunter-gatherers of another age, their daylight hours were spent foraging. Each had discovered and developed talents that contributed to the group’s welfare. Leo and Roy put aside their morals, such as they were, and stole. Memnet, who had no talent for crime, earned a small store of cash by singing on the streets. Libby refused to steal, but she made the most of Memnet’s money, demanding value for every penny. After screaming like a fishwife at the Greek in the delicatessen down the block, she’d come away with a fragrant cheese or the crispest vegetables. Once she learned not to slap those who irritated her, Libby used her wicked tongue instead, and it paid off.
Walking quickly to avoid the appearance of vagrancy and a chat with Mayor Daley’s Finest, Leo made his way down the city’s gas-choked streets. A few blocks from the lakeshore, he reached his destination and stopped to reconnoiter.
Set squarely in the middle of the block, the building he lived in was squat and flat-looking, with two rococo balconies on the second story that seemed out of place against the plain gray brick. In an attempt to modernize, bright green awnings had been installed over them, but they only added to the structure’s overall oddness. Most people entered and left the building by a lofty entrance where a brushed metal sign proclaimed Schmidt Museum of Anthropology. For that privilege, most people paid a fee.
Leo and his friends used an entry not meant to exist and therefore free of charge. A coal delivery chute, necessary in the 1920s when the building was new, had been boarded up when the heating system was updated. The narrow alley between the Schmidt and the building next to it was blocked with a high wooden fence to prevent through traffic. The resulting cul-de-sac was dark, cold, and smelled unpleasant, which made it perfect for unseen entrances and exits. No one knew where the four of them spent their nights. No one was supposed to.
As he approached the alley, Leo noticed a child of undistinguishable gender near the entrance. It wore the uniform of the times: bell-bottomed trousers with hems frayed and dragged to a dirty shade of gray; a tattered denim jacket with signs and signatures drawn on it with an ink pen; and under it a long vest of something shaggy and thick, like sheep’s wool. Beneath the vest was a paisley-print shirt in vibrant reds and yellows. Dark hair, heavy and in need of washing, was cut in the style of four young English singers Leo had seen on the television. He decided the child was female only because the bag she carried, which had a ballerina embroidered on it.
The girl’s liquid brown eyes gazed hopefully at people passing on the sidewalk, measuring them with a maturity her small frame couldn’t match. Leo was cautious lest she see him slipping into the alley, but her glance passed over him disinterestedly. She was searching for someone, but an old man in a baggy overcoat wasn’t it. Since his own concerns precluded taking on the troubles of others, Leo entered the alley, ducked behind the trash bin, and headed for an entrance only four people in the world knew about.
A year before, working late at night, Leo and Roy had unsealed the old coal chute, carefully preserving its blank appearance. Its wood-and-wire covering now opened and closed like a door, but only if one knew the trick of a clever mechanism. Roy had moved the alley trash bin to a new position blocking view from the street and further protecting their secret.
When they’d finished the work Libby crowed, “Leo, you’ve given us freedom!” at which he’d bowed graciously. Commendation from Libby was always welcome, but he was used to being praised for his clever hands.
With a last glance behind, Leo opened the latch and climbed through the door. Once inside, he took a metal staircase down two levels, stepping softly to silence the vibrations. As he descended the air grew stale, but he hardly noticed anymore. If dank meant others stayed away, so be it. At the bottom of the fourth and final set of steps, he turned down a dark, low hall where dusty, wire-mesh-covered bulbs illuminated the way only slightly. At the far end was a rusted metal door marked Storeroom C in cracked, fading stenciled letters. Leo closed the door behind him before calling out, “Anyone here?”
Storeroom C was remote from the daily workings of the museum. Ill-kept and clammy, it was stuffed with piles of miscellaneous items, many of them junk. They were stacked with little concern for order, indicating the staff didn’t expect anything there would be needed again. Leo followed a rough pathway to the back of the room where they’d made a space for themselves. Here was what they called home.
Roy ducked out of a rectangular hole in the wall, his lank frame bending with the grace of one in the prime of manhood. “Libby and I started makin’ supper,” he said, the dropped final g’s betraying his rural background. He set a mismatched assortment of dishes on a threadbare rug. “We’re still waitin’ on Memnet, but I got a whole cake and six bottles of root beer.”
Roy had a passion for the soda, which Leo found overly sweet but was too polite to mention. Emptying his pockets, he placed his contribution of bread, chicken, and cheese on a chipped plate. “Compliments of the Randolph Street Mission.”
Libby emerged from a second, equally odd door with a bowl balanced between hip and forearm and a tomato in hand. Red hair mixed with gray and pulled into a tight bun gave her a severe look. Leo kissed her pale cheek, smelling her Ivory soap, and remarked, “A tomato, Libby. Will you poison us?”
His ancient joke brought a smile that sweetened her haughty expression. “Leo, you must overcome your old-fashioned thinking. I suppose you won’t sleep with the window open either, for fear of the night air.”
“I might if I had a window,” he replied. “Maybe Roy will dig me one.”
“Too much concrete for diggin’,” Roy observed wryly. “You might could draw you a pretty one. You’re good at that.” His tone conveyed a tinge of disrespect for effort wasted in the expression of beauty.
Libby stiffened and her mood turned snappish. “If Leo’s drawings distract us from the fact that we live like moles, we should be grateful for it.”
Leo surmised she’d been thinking about the past, dwelling on it, as she often did. When he put a hand on her shoulder she shivered, adding, “I have always hated damp.”
“There’s no remedy for it, Libby.”
Her nose went thinner. “I don’t have to like it. Moles, scuttling about in the dark. If they found us...” Resentment crept into her voice. “I used to dance until dawn. Since Norman interfered with our lives, it’s only Roy who celebrates the night.”
Roy’s expression turned sullen, and Leo searched for a way to deflect the impending argument. “Our life here requires sacrifice—” he began.
“Exactly!” she interrupted. “Secrecy is crucial, but he comes and goes as he pleases, at all hours, never revealing where he goes or what he does.”
Unaffected by her tendency to talk about him as if he weren’t there, Roy said, “I do as I please.”
“As we well know. You return smelling of tobacco and perfume.”
Roy took a piece of green pepper from the bowl she held, tacitly daring her to stop him. “I’ve done my share of layin’ low,” he said. “A man can only stay in nights for so long.”
“But it causes concern for the rest of us,” Leo said. “You must see that.”
Libby’s voice rose. “What if you’re caught on one of your outings, half-drunk and loose-tongued?”
Roy waved a casual hand. “I can take care of myself.”
“With theft and lies,” Libby sneered.
“That’s Roy’s strength, Libby. People see him as a friendly eccentric with no secrets.”
Roy spoke to Leo, neatly turning the third-person gambit around. “You’re not so bad yourself. It’s Libby who acts like she’s got the right to order folks around.” He grinned. “We’re lucky most people think she’s crazy.”
Libby tossed her head. “I’m driven halfway to madness by the chances you take. We’ll pay when your skills fail you.”
Leo tried again. “We each do as we choose, Libby. We agreed to that from the start.” They moved about Chicago almost naturally these days, blending into the crowds of odd people any large city attracts. At times Leo almost forgot they were, and must remain, shadows in the city of big shoulders.
Libby’s anger faded. “It’s no life; that’s all I’m saying. No life at all.”
“Perhaps soon we’ll be ready to leave here.”
She managed a weak smile, but they all knew that was unlikely. There was too much they didn’t know, too much danger. The Schmidt offered safety and anonymity, and even after two years, they were afraid to make a permanent move.
Done harassing Libby for the moment, Roy changed the subject. “What shall we play tonight, gin rummy or poker?”
Libby sighed philosophically. “Leo’s choice. I can guess what it will be.”
“Poker.” Roy had taught them the game. Leo was a quick learner, so the women always lost to one man or the other. Libby enjoyed chess, though from her first few moves Leo knew what she had in mind. Memnet had long since ceased trying to teach them her favorite game, something with hounds that the others could make no sense of. Still, their evening games were anticipated with pleasure.
Taking a chair padded with an old blanket to cushion a slightly protruding spring, Leo watched as Libby chopped the tomatoes with brisk movements. Though she made many people uneasy, Leo was not afraid of her, and Roy seemed to enjoy provoking her anger.
“Where did you go today?” Authoritative chops accompanied her words.
“Before the Mission? The library.”
Libby smiled as if she’d known the answer before asking. Most days, they left the museum in the morning and roamed the streets separately. Leo spent his leisure hours poring over books, grappling with their complexities and his own inadequacies. He yearned to know more about Norman’s secrets, though the others said he should accept what he’d done and forget it.
Whatever their chosen path on a given day, they returned between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., after the staff upstairs had gone home, to share a meal. By tacit consent, their dinner was served in the best style they could manage, and they waited until everyone was present to begin.
Picking up the thread of the former conversation, Libby said, “At least we’re safe down here.”
“Yes,” Leo agreed. “We’re safe.” Even as he said it, Leo knew it couldn’t last. On some uncertain future day, their secret would be revealed. They couldn’t predict how it would happen, and they couldn’t prevent it. Still, it was good that Libby tried to be optimistic. Tried to behave.
After two years, they were used to each other’s ways, but it wasn’t always easy. They were so different, yet survival required they function as a group. Norman’s interference had forced them together and required them to recognize each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Leo had to admit that most of the time they complimented each other.
Libby was the easiest for him to deal with, having known her type all his life, but she also had the hardest time accepting their poverty. They were homeless, jobless, family-less, and friendless, except for each other. It would be a disaster if anyone discovered they were still alive. For someone with Libby’s background of wealth, power, and prestige, banishment from the world was a harsh sentence.
As she set out a shoebox with packets of sugar, salt, and pepper lifted from various restaurants, her unsettled mind caused an abrupt return to petulance. “Can that girl never be on time for supper?” Patient with Leo, Libby disapproved of Roy, though she was susceptible to his charm and masculinity. With Memnet she was condescending and demanding.
“Perhaps got confused about the streets again.” Roy’s tone implied it was normal. His back to Libby, he caught Leo’s eye and mouthed, “Women!”
Roy’s assumption of male superiority and his low opinion of Memnet’s abilities irked Leo, though he noticed the younger man was careful not to let Libby hear his chauvinistic comments. After several fiery diatribes, he was apparently unwilling to accept more from her on that subject.
“She was to fetch fresh water.” In theory, they took turns hauling bucketsful from a sink at the far end of the hall, but Memnet took Libby’s turn as well as her own. Libby never argued, since she tended to assume everyone should wait on her.
Leo had chided Memnet more than once about it. “My dear, this is the age of women’s rights. You are as good as any of us.”
“I don’ mind,” she would reply in her soft, heavily accented voice. “And if I don’ mind and it make Libby happy to us, it is a good thing, yes?”
Possessed of a beauty Leo appreciated intrinsically and goodness that shone from her like an internal candle, Memnet was what Leo imagined the lesser angels to be. Soft and yielding, she lacked the will to combat Libby’s pettiness. She also seemed unable to contemplate evil, having lived a sheltered life before coming to Chicago. Leo tried to encourage her confidence, but Memnet was Memnet, and what is Man to alter an angelic soul?
Leo had faults of his own, beginning with a decidedly un-angelic outlook on life. He tried to be modern and learn everything he could about the world around him. That was his good side. Opposing that was a stubborn streak. In addition to that he was prone to ignore reality and ponder impractical “what-ifs?” It often made Roy shake his head in disgust.
“Why do you care?” Roy would ask as he pored over books from the museum’s reading room at night. “It’s over, and there’s no changin’ it. What happens next is what we need to think on.”
Leo always nodded in agreement, but his stubborn mind wouldn’t let him leave it alone. A life, his life, had been left behind, and he wanted an explanation. So far, there was none.
AUGUST 26, 1965
A haggard face hung over Leo when he woke, sore and woozy, to new surroundings. “Jet lag,” Norman said with a wheezy chuckle. He had a large nose with veins like chicken tracks running all over it, rheumy blue eyes, and a small, thin-lipped mouth surrounded by several days’ growth of gray beard. His breath smelled of onions and what Leo later learned was Scotch. “How are you?” He shouted the words, as if Leo were deaf.
Dazed, Leo was at first unable to communicate. Light too bright to comprehend shone everywhere in the room. It hurt, but gradually his eyes grew accustomed. Behind the homely man, a red-haired woman watched with something like pity on her face. When her gaze moved to the man, her lips twitched with bitterness. She knew what was happening, and she opposed it.
Norman leaned even closer, inspecting Leo as if he were an unfamiliar bug. “Are you all right?”
Leo pulled his wits together enough to give an intelligent answer. “Je ne parle pas l’anglais.”
1967
While the squatters at the Schmidt Museum shared their makeshift meal, a small-time, slightly-built forger known as Dickie slid into a restaurant booth. His furtive air belied his clean-cut looks, and he wrinkled his nose at the smell of something that had burned in the kitchen. Opposite him, a tense man of about thirty gave the barest of nods before asking, “How did it go?”
Dickie grinned, revealing a wide space between overly large front teeth. “Smooth as glass. He plans to stay at the Palmer House till he finds an apartment, should be checking in around six on the eighteenth. Everything’s in here.” Glancing around furtively, he slid an envelope across the table. “All you need to become one of Edgar’s own.”
“Who else knows about this?”
Dickie looked aggrieved. “Nobody, like you said.”
The stern face formed a smile that appeared to take effort. Pushing away an acidic cup of coffee, the man rose. “Come with me to my car and I’ll get your money.”
Though skilled at his trade, Dickie was a poor judge of people. Without objection he followed the man he’d privately dubbed “Stoneface” to the back of the restaurant.
A clatter sounded as they rounded the building, and both men stopped warily. The setting would have turned off most of the diners inside. Stacked crates crowded the area, many half-filled with rotting vegetables. Cardboard boxes had rested there long enough that weather had turned them into amorphous blobs. A few broken dining chairs lay off to one side of the door, and a junked gas stove, grimy with burned-on grease, sat against the back wall. Across the alley, an anonymous Ford sat next to several rusty trash cans. A cautious face peeped out from behind the car’s rear fender.
“Come out of there!” Dickie ordered.
A girl rose from the shadows, her escape blocked by the men. She wore jeans, a shaggy vest, and a paisley shirt in need of laundering. Over her shoulder was a pajama bag with a ballerina stitched onto it, and in one grubby hand a sealed cellophane bag crackled. It was full of broken cookies someone had thrown away, and she grasped the bag tightly. Eyes that had seen a lot tried to gauge the threat the two men posed for her.
“Picking through the garbage, huh?” Dickie felt a moment’s pity for the kid but brushed it away, sensing his erstwhile employer had no such sentiments.
“I didn’t take anything anyone wants.” It was half challenge, half plea.
Dickie noticed his companion had turned his back, leaving him to handle the situation. “Runaways,” he scoffed. “They hear songs on the radio about free love and take it seriously. Raising his voice he ordered, “Get outta here!”
As the girl ducked past Dickie, he lunged at her with a playful growl. She sprinted away, almost falling on the oil-slicked pavement as she rounded the corner. “Go home to mama!” He called after her. “Dumb kid!”
For a few seconds Stoneface watched the spot where the girl had disappeared. Apparently satisfied she was gone, he moved toward his car. “Time to get paid.” As he unlocked the door Dickie leaned in, too trusting, too close.
With a last glance around them Stoneface turned, a flash of metal in his hand. Before Dickie could react, he felt a sharp pain in his gut. A grunt escaped him and he slumped against the car, holding his stomach. More pain shot through his back as the knife penetrated each lung, rendering him airless and silent.
The helpless forger felt himself lifted off his feet by his shirt collar and pants waistband. Pain intensified as he was thrown headlong into the piled boxes. By the time he died, the Ford was already pulling away. Stoneface had hardly broken a sweat, and Dickie’s work rested securely in his pocket.
WHEN MEAL WAS FINISHED Roy patted his belly, commenting, “I thought for a while we’d starve down here. Thought someday they’d find four rotting corpses to puzzle over.”
Leo looked up from his book. “We have been lucky.” Two years ago, neither he nor Memnet spoke any English, and they’d been terrified of what lay before them. With time, determination, and the luck Roy claimed was in his stars, they’d forged a team that managed both survival and secrecy.
In the quiet of the last two years, they’d grown accustomed to their new surroundings and tolerant of each other, at least most of the time. The language barrier shrank as Leo mastered English and Memnet gained the rudiments. A kind of normalcy evolved, any routine being preferable to chaos.
A sound from above caused them to freeze, but silence followed and they relaxed. “Harley on his rounds,” Roy muttered. The museum guards, old men who didn’t care to walk much, patrolled just often enough to satisfy insurance requirements. Having learned who was on duty and what their routines were, the unrecognized tenants of Storeroom C seldom worried about the guards anymore.
“What would they do if somebody broke in?” Roy wondered aloud.
“That’s not likely,” Leo replied. “Few seem to even notice the Schmidt as they pass it on the way to better-known attractions.”
“We need a decent curator.” Roy spoke as if he were on the museum board rather than squatting in its innards. ...
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