Terror at the Fair (A Snap Malek Mystery) Read online

  "Well, they never got to see me at the throttle of the Broadway Limited," he said. When I didn't react, he shook his head in wonderment. "You mean to say you don't know about the Broadway?"

  I shrugged my ignorance. "Well, son," he sighed, "it's about as famous as any train in America, and I'm including the Super Chief and the Twentieth Century Limited. Shoot, the Broadway's the top way to go 'tween Chicago and New York. Best food, best sleeping cars, best doggone crew all the way around. After I retired, my wife and I rode it from here to New York and back. First time I found myself anyplace besides the engine on the doggone train. Felt like we were royalty, and we got treated like it, too."

  I dutifully took notes and tried my best to put on an enthusiastic face. "Must have been great times for you, driving such a train," I told Gunderson.

  "The very best," he replied with a curt nod. "Got to leave for Gold Gulch now," he said, referring to the reconstructed frontier boom town at the other end of the Deadwood Central line. With two blasts from its whistle, his smoke-belching train eased away from the platform and chugged off, its three cars filled with waving crowds.

  After finishing the Gunderson piece and phoning it in to the city desk, I dialed Packy Farmer's number in the Police Headquarters pressroom.

  "Ah, Snap, me fine lad, to what do we owe the pleasure of this call?" he boomed.

  "Just checking to see how you reprobates are getting along without me."

  He lowered his voice and apparently cupped his hand around the mouthpiece. "Geez, Snap, any way you can get yourself reassigned back here? Westcott seems to think this assignment is some sort of a walk in the park. Takes two-hour lunches, goes down to see Fahey any old time he feels like it, never mind other people's deadlines."

  "Things are tough all over, Packy."

  "Not for you. Hell, you're–wait a minute, what am I whispering for? Westcott isn't even around. He's on one of those long lunches of his. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he comes back at least slightly looped–again. We're even thinking of drawing straws to have one of us take over the Detective Bureau beat. That's how bad things have gotten."

  "That's pretty grim all right," I observed. "One of you might end up having to do some real work."

  Farmer snorted. "I can see I'm not getting any sympathy. What did you call for–just to rub it in while you're out there basking along the sun-kissed lakeshore?"

  "Sorry, Packy. I really was phoning to see how you guys were getting along. I'm honestly sorry to hear Westcott has turned out to be such a dud, although I have to admit I'm not all that surprised, given some of his past performances as a beat reporter. He should be on general assignment."

  "Well, please feel free to have some laughs at our expense, but I've got to believe sooner or later your bosses up in the mighty Tribune Tower are going to realize what a clinker they've now got on the day shift at Eleventh and State. I'm making book you'll be back here with us in the next three months, maybe even sooner."

  "Don't bet the farm on it," I told him cheerlessly. "By the way, one of your Herald-American colleagues is out here today, Ed Heston by name. Seems the Examiner, your sister Hearst paper out in San Francisco wants a feature done on the cable car and its crew from their burg operating at the fair. Heston told me he wished he could be here full-time, and I told him the assignment's overrated."

  "Sez you," O'Farrell shot back. "Don't try to kid a kidder. You're lovin' every doggone minute out there, Snap."

  I gave him a horse laugh in response and rang off just as Metzger, the fair's public relations man, came into the spartan pressroom.

  "Snap, since you are the only reporter who's here full-time, I feel I owe you an early heads-up on something big, really big: Walt Disney is coming to the fair in the next few weeks."

  "The man behind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, no less? What's his angle?"

  "Word we get is he loves trains, always has. He wants to ride on any moving vehicle here, even hopes to drive a locomotive or two. We'll be giving him the red-carpet treatment, of course. I'm planning to send out a general press release when we know the exact dates he'll be here, but I thought you should know first. You might want to set up an interview in advance for a feature story."

  "Thanks, I appreciate it," I told him, although I'm sure my voice lacked conviction. I knew about Disney, of course. The whole country did, and much of the world, too, thanks to his comic books and animated films.

  Years ago when I was a divorced dad looking for ways to amuse Peter on weekends, we saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. I enjoyed these movies more than Peter did, though. By that age, he found himself more interested in things like Pride of the Yankees and Knute Rockne All American. As far as he was concerned, Disney was for little kids, never mind the stunning color and brilliant animation.

  Although I didn't share Metzger's excitement about the impending arrival of the famed movie-maker, I knew I would be expected by the editors in the Tower to come up with something about the man who put words in a duck's mouth.

  Before I could begin thinking about what approach to take with Disney, Metzger reminded me he had reserved a front-row seat for me at the afternoon performance of the "Wheels a-Rolling" pageant, which he had been badgering me to see since the day I got to the fair.

  "Starts in twenty minutes, Snap. C'mon, let's go. You're really going to love it!"

  Chapter Five

  At last, the time is almost here, Papa. It is easier than I thought to get hold of a live round, a real bullet. Now there's one rifle filled with blanks, plus one not-so-blank cartridge. Each of the bandits and guards at the pageant is told to aim his weapon directly at one of the enemy. That way, the stagecoach "robbery" will look realistic, and we have got to please all those thousands of people in the grandstands, don't we? They have paid to see adventure, and...well, they're going to get it, all right, maybe in a way they never expected, although the real bullet may never hit anyone, which means I would have to try it again.

  I'm more nervous than I thought I would be. But I cannot let the nerves rule me, not now. When I was young, Papa, you always told me to be strong, to suppress my emotions, lest I be seen as weak. When you were young, you had to be strong, I know, even if you never talked to us very much about those bad times.

  In the end, they broke you, but it was an unfair fight, with small people resorting to small behavior. You were worth any five of them, Papa, and you will be avenged. I am not weak, although others may think so. I am not afraid, although I do feel nervous. But I also feel joy in knowing I feel closer to you at this moment than I have felt in a very long time.

  I am thinking of Mama, too, and of the pain she has endured at the hands of the small people.

  I wish you could be up in those grandstands today to see just how much your son loves you. My hands are steady now, and I can only hope the same is true of the one who will fire the weapon that sets in motion our journey of reprisal.

  I am no longer nervous now. I feel a calm, a sense of peace…

  Chapter Six

  Metzger led me to a cushioned seat in a cordoned-off section of the first row in the grandstands, roughly the equivalent of the box seats along the third-base line at Wrigley Field. As I sat down, so did he, and I realized I would have the pleasure of his company for the performance.

  "I can't get enough of this," the PR man enthused. "This is about the fourth–no, I think the fifth–time I've seen the show. Like I told you before, it's a regular history of transportation in the United States. I learn something every doggone time I see it." He rubbed his fleshy palms together in what seemed to be a mix of anticipation and nervousness.

  "Nice crowd," I said, turning around to eye the multitude in the bleachers banked up behind us. "How many does this place seat?"

  "Close to five thousand, so they tell me," Metzger answered. "And it's almost always full, like today."

  The stage, if you could so term it, was at least two hundred feet wide with a concrete floor and, a
s I had observed earlier, several sets of railroad rails embedded into it. On either side of the broad expanse, high, solid walls formed the wings. And the backdrop was none other than Lake Michigan, less than a strong-armed outfielder's throw from where I sat.

  The stentorian voice of an unseen announcer proclaimed the start of the show. "There was a wilderness to be conquered," he intoned as Indians in full headdress, both walking and on horseback, made their solemn entry. "And the Indians knew these wilds well."

  The red men got followed onstage by the buckskin-clad voyageurs, those early French explorers of the Upper Midwest, among them Marquette and Joliet, men who, we were informed in somber tones, "pushed the frontiers ever westward."

  So much for the blink-of-an-eye prelude. After all, this was a railroad event, and the pageant's creators lost no time in reminding us of it. We jumped quickly from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, as the earliest steam locomotives, strange-looking contraptions with tall chimneys I learned were called smokestacks, belched their way onto the stage, spitting out both smoke and steam. They hauled passenger cars resembling stagecoaches, filled with stovepipe-hatted men and women in hoop skirts, some of them seated on the roofs of the cars.

  I'm no theater critic, so I don't presume to know good staging, but all of this seemed pretty hokey, although it was clear the effusive Fred Metzger didn't think so. Neither did most of the audience. As I looked over my shoulder into the bleachers above us, I saw mostly animated, happy faces, both adults and children. Mark me down as a curmudgeon, as Catherine has suggested on more than one occasion.

  In a light and humorous moment–supposedly historically accurate–one of the early steam engines got challenged to a race against a horse-drawn car on rails. Animal defeated machine by a wide margin, much to the delight of the crowd. But, as we were then informed via loudspeaker, this was but a temporary setback in the railroads' inexorable march to conquer a continent.

  Next came the Gold Rush, complete with covered wagons drawn by oxen and men on horseback riding alongside. We learned of the difficulties of these pioneers in their dogged westward movement, and at one point, a young man in suspenders and a broad-brimmed straw hat staggered, keeled over, and lay prone on the ground while a woman wept over his corpse. The dirge-like hymn "Rock of Ages" played as his body got laid in a horse cart that disappeared into the wings.

  "Bless him, the chap will be back at the five o'clock show to die all over again," Metzger said with a chuckle. "He's got his role down pat. Isn't this great, Snap? It just gets better as it goes on. I'm tellin' you, you're going to enjoy the whole darn show."

  I didn't know it then, of course, but I was never to see the whole darn show.

  Chapter Seven

  The pageant continued, with scenes of the Pony Express and of Abraham Lincoln going off from Illinois to Washington as the Civil War loomed. Then, to the tune of "O Susanna," a Wells-Fargo stagecoach drawn by four horses careened across the stage as the narrator stressed the importance of this form of transportation on the western frontier before the arrival of the railroads.

  We were told, however, of the danger that lurked because these coaches frequently carried shipments of gold as well as passengers. On cue, a gang on horseback attacked the stage, rifles blazing. Guards atop the stage stood and fired back and one of them suddenly clutched his stomach, then pitched forward and fell headfirst to the ground with a thud that could be heard between gunshots.

  "I haven't seen that happen before," a shocked Metzger said as murmurs ran through the crowd.

  "And for good reason, I think," I told him as I watched the figure twitching on the concrete. "Unlike the youngster who collapsed next to the covered wagon, chances are this fellow will not be back for the five o'clock performance."

  Chapter Eight

  I leapt from my seat and, ignoring the cries of two blue-and-gold-uniformed Andy Frain ushers, sprinted onto the stage and was the first person to reach the man who lay motionless on his back.

  "Sir, sir, you can't be out there," one of the young ushers yelled as I knelt over the prone figure, pressing my fingers against his carotid.

  "I'm a newspaper reporter, dammit," I shouted over my shoulder. "Get medical help right now! Get the police!"

  Even as I barked orders, though, I knew this man was beyond help. His face froze into a grimace and his open eyes wore the sightless glaze of death. A dark stain had begun to spread over his suede vest, and his forehead sported an eggplant-colored bruise where he had hit the pavement.

  For those first few moments, I was only vaguely conscious of the growing intensity of the crowd noise and the stares from members of the suddenly shocked troupe, who looked down from their horses and from the stagecoach. One of the "bandits," rifle in hand, began to sob, perhaps in the realization he may have fired the fatal shot.

  Siren wailing, an ambulance screeched onto the stage, lurching to a stop as two white-jacketed medics jumped out. I stepped away and backed into the crowd of gapers who had edged onto the stage despite the efforts of the beleaguered ushers to keep them back.

  A pair of uniformed policemen arrived and had better success in keeping the onlookers at bay. "What's going on here?" one asked hoarsely after I had identified myself.

  "Guy got shot," I told him. "Fell from the top of a stagecoach."

  The cop's ruddy Irish face registered outrage. "Holy Mary, mother of God, there's way more guns bein' used in this show than is necessary; I said so right from the start to anyone who would take the time to listen to me," he snarled. "Too easy to have a live round get mixed in with the blanks when you've got this much ammo to play with."

  "So you think this was an accident?" I asked the cop.

  "Of course it was an accident," Fred Metzger said as he tried to get between me and the patrolman, whose nametag read "O'Brien." The PR man panted, beads of sweat materializing across his forehead. "You don't have to write about this, do you?" he pleaded, arms outstretched.

  "You darned well know the answer to that," I snapped at him. "First thing I need is an ID on the poor bastard."

  "You wouldn't be tryin' to get in our way now, would you?" Officer O'Brien asked, puffing out his already ample chest.

  "Not at all. Just doing my job, same as you. Are more of your men on the way?"

  "Yeah, some dicks will be here soon enough," the burly copper said, shaking his head in disgust. "And they'll want to be talking to all the actors in this cussed show. Christ almighty, I figured this was going to be an easy detail, like last summer. Now don't you go quoting me," he quickly added.

  "I won't, don't worry. I've got other things on my mind, and so do you." By this time, the two medics, although out of earshot, had made it clear by their actions that there was nothing more to be done. As they covered the body with a sheet, the loudspeaker crackled, "Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, because of an unfortunate accident, this presentation of 'Wheels-a-Rolling' has been cut short. However, there will be two more performances today. Thank you, and enjoy your time at the Chicago Railroad Fair."

  As the crowd descended silently and somberly from the grandstands, many of them cast furtive, almost guilty glances at the grim tableau of the medics loading the body into the ambulance and driving off. Several of the actors, still in costume, gathered in small groups on the stage talking in hushed tones. I joined one group of three young men in their twenties wearing Stetson hats, Levi's, buckskin vests, cowboy boots, and chaps and introduced myself as a Tribune reporter, flashing my press card.

  "Did any of you know the…uh, victim?" I asked them, glancing from face to face.

  "A little bit. Yeah," the one with a goatee muttered, looking down and scuffing his boot on the concrete.

  "What can you tell me about him?"

  "Name is–was–Vic. Never knew the last name."

  "I did, it's Trevor," said the tallest of the three. "We were both in the same small theater company up on the North Side. Trying to get a foothold into the business, you know?"
r />   "We're all actors–or attempting to be," the third guy added sheepishly. He wore an eye patch that turned out to be a prop.

  "Would you say you know most of the other performers in this pageant?" I directed the question at all three of them.

  "Not really," the bearded one said. "At least I don't. Oh, I've talked to a few of them backstage, mostly idle chatter. Some of the older ones are retired railroad workers. Others just like being on the stage. For instance, I met one woman who's in the Harvey Girls scene, has three kids, and lives up in one of the northern suburbs, Northbrook, I think it is. Used to act in community theater groups before she became a mom."

  "Harvey Girls?"

  "You know, those girls who have worked in Santa Fe railroad station restaurants in the Southwest since way back when."

  "Guess that was going to come later in the show, right?"

  "Oh–yeah. We didn't get far enough today. You haven't seen the show before, huh?"

  "No. You know anything more about this Trevor?" I asked.

  "Came from someplace in Minnesota or maybe Wisconsin," said the tall one. "I only talked to him a few times, but I think he had a small apartment up in Lakeview or maybe Rogers Park."

  "Do you have any idea how long he had been in Chicago?"

  "I couldn't say for sure. At least six or more months, though. We were in a play together in January at a small theater, which was the first time I saw him."

  "Any of you know anything about the guy who fired the shot at him?"

  They all shook their heads. "I rode inside the stagecoach with three others," Eye Patch said, "and never saw what happened."

  "And I sat up on the roof with Vic, but facing the other way firing my rifle when he got…you know," the tall one put in.