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The novel that introduces Emily Strauss of the New York World
DARK HEARTS OF CHICAGO
Day One: Chicago Thursday 19 October 1893
1 BUBBLY CREEK
There are good times and bad times to dump a body in Bubbly Creek, as locals call the south fork of the Chicago River. Winter's not much good because the Creek freezes over, so the evidence of your crime stays right where it falls. Summer's no better because the flow slows right up, the place smells bad and you don't want to go anywhere near it. If you do you'll soon work out why it's called Bubbly - the water's so polluted with bones and offal from the Union Stock Yard that it's busy fermenting with the rottenness beneath the surface. Spring and fall are best because that's when it flows, especially after rain, which ensures that the evidence of your crime drifts slowly away, out of sight and out of mind. You hope.
One misty morning in October 1893, a body came to rest at Benson Street, opposite Mr Armour's glue factory and a couple of hundred yards from where the Creek comes to an end as it flows into the Chicago River proper. It lay there as soot descended gently on it from the furnaces of the Illinois Steel Company on the far side of the Creek.
An immigrant heading for the Union Stock Yard in search of a day's hire noticed it at six, shook his head wearily and walked on by. Finding work was more important.
Finally, a barefoot boy clambering over the mud looking for something to salvage among the washed up detritus along the shoreline, touched its bare back with his foot and then its face.
Then he peered a bit closer, holding his breath; and closer still, looking for any valuables, when suddenly it half opened an eye and let out a watery moan.
'Jesus, it's alive!' he screamed, toppling back into the mud.
Men came running over and pulled the body up onto the street but the women took over after that, shooing the men and boys away. The girls could stay if they liked, but at a distance.
She was female and wearing a torn and filthy dress that was thick with slime. The stocking on one leg was torn and round her ankle. The other leg was bare. Her dark hair was a mess made slimy with mud.
You didn't need to be a doctor to tell she was nearer dead than alive and you needn't have lived by the Creek for long to guess that she'd been right in it, and the water had got into her, in which case she'd be sure to fall sick and die later if not right away.
There was nothing about her that told who she was, why she was there, or why she was still alive. Nor could the women now gathered round the woman get any sense out of her with their questions: the gibberish she spoke was a madwoman's talk.
So they sent a boy to find a patrolman on 31st Street. When he arrived, he took one look at the woman and went and telegraphed Harrison Street Police Station for the wagon.
Eventually, at around 8.15, a square, high-sided black wagon on four sturdy wheels arrived. It looked like a paddy wagon but everyone knew it was worse than that. A few mothers pushed their kids indoors, telling them it was unlucky to see the wagon standing there.
A uniformed man climbed out of the vehicle while the driver, the boss, got down and looked the woman over. Most people knew him in those parts. He was Padraic 'Donko' O'Banion and driving this vehicle was his day job. At nights he worked in a brothel on the Levee.
'She's twenty or so,' said Donko, adding, 'and she's been beat real bad.'
'Been for a swim,' said the other laconically.
'Client tried to kill her more likely,' said Donko.
He backed the wagon expertly round and then headed up to 31st and Throop Street for the run downtown. Folk looked away and got on with their business, but the boy who found the woman who had been a body stood there staring at the wagon and at the scratched and faded lettering on it.
He couldn't read but he knew what it said: Cook County Insane Asylum.
'Is that where they are taking her?' said the man who had first seen the woman earlier that morning, now returning the way he had come. He was new round here. He had the shaggy beard, the clothes and the accent of an immigrant from Eastern Europe. Now his eyes carried the despair of someone who had failed to get the day's work he so desperately needed.
'Not straight away,' said Donko.' First they have to take her to the Detention Hospital and then, if it's a suicide attempt - and more'n likely it is - to the Insane Court,' said one of the women.
'Yeah, and then she'll go to Dunning,' added the boy, spitting tobacco juice right on the sidewalk where she had been laid, 'so she ain't never coming back.'
They stood in silence staring after the black wagon for a minute or so. Everyone round here knew what being sent to the Insane Asylum out at Dunning meant. Then the man went one way and the boy another. Where the anonymous woman had washed up at the edge of the Creek nothing remained but a stain of red blood turning brown in the mud.
Copyright 2007 William Horwood & Helen Rappaport
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