“Yeah. And tell your projectionist that if the film tears, he should clip it out right away. Otherwise it’ll burn up—that’s how that big fire in Des Moines started.”

Matthew hefted the projector. “Thanks, kid. You’re the one lives back in the shed there with your ma, right?” Pin saw a flash of sympathy in his eyes. “I’ll tell Felix what you said. Bell and Howell, right?” He dug in his pocket and flipped Pin a nickel.

She ambled onto the Pike. It was not yet ten o’clock and already scorching hot. The air shimmered above the freshly raked gravel path, and mist drifted into the Fairyland woods, obscuring the picnic tables beneath the trees. The woods bordered the North Branch of the Chicago River. From the other side of the river, the scaffolding of the Velvet Coaster resembled the gasworks in Little Hell. A small tributary, barely a stream, trickled off from the North Branch, marking the boundary between the amusement park and the abandoned factories known as Bricktown.

You could see Bricktown from Fairyland, and smell it, too, the lingering tang of acrid smoke from the kilns and dung from the horses that used to haul off carts piled with pink Chicago bricks. After the Great Fire, the city banned wooden buildings. Brick factories filled this part of the North Side, with their clay pits and kilns and hobo workers hopping on and off the freight trains destined for the slaughterhouses in Packingtown.

In other parts of Chicago, the brickyards had been shut down by those who objected to the stink and noise, the shifting population of vagrants who worked there. Ikie insisted that the factories in Bricktown had closed, yet its kilns still roared intermittently, belching black smoke and flames. Some nights you could hear voices. Rumor was the Black Hand came to Bricktown in the middle of the night and burned the bodies of the people they killed.

The giant cuckoo clock began to count the hour as the Blue Streak coaster made its safety run, empty cars rattling like a runaway milk wagon. The final stroke of ten had not quite died away when the screamer march “Thunder and Blazes” rang out from Ballmann’s bandstand. Riverview Amusement Park was open for the day.

Frowning, Pin surveyed the crowds streaming through the entrance gate. Hadn’t news of the girl’s murder hit the papers? At the least, she’d thought that parents might keep their younger kids at home, especially girls.

But no—it was just another Sunday. People beelined for the Tickler and Aerostat and Flying Bobs, the Jack Rabbit coaster and Gyroplane. Already a long line had formed for the Hippodrome, where an Italian movie, The Inferno, had been showing all month. Mugsy and Ikie had snuck in and claimed there were scenes of naked people.