Yet that might be risky. But why? There were thousands of colicky babies in Chicago, and twice as many parents hoping for relief. No one would remember a man buying soothing syrup and lemon drops.

Still, better safe than sorry. But his nausea increased, along with a lancing headache. He uncorked the bottle of Dr. James Cordial, its sickly sweet smell undercut by something chemical, cherries dipped in kerosene. He poured some into his coffee and drank it. After several minutes he felt the familiar, fizzing sensation, as though his head had been pumped full of seltzer.

He paid for his breakfast and went outside. The shimmering air made him feel as though he walked underwater. Dreamily he imagined Hell Gate’s subterranean river flowing beneath the entire city, moving under his feet at this very moment; not just this city but New York and Boston, Dreamland and Wonderland, all those places where he’d found children unafraid of venturing into the darkness with him. His hand reached out as though to grasp another, smaller hand as he crossed the street and headed north, toward the amusement park.

Chapter 40

Chapter 40

FRANCIS HAD A bad night’s sleep in his room at Mrs. Dahl’s boardinghouse. Back at Robey Street, he’d grown accustomed to seeing men gutted like carcasses at Packingtown, twelve-year-old girls dead from botched abortions, women whose faces had been melted like candle wax because their lovers belonged to the Black Hand and suspected a betrayal. That’s what had happened to his sister, Ellen, his only family since their parents had died of influenza. Ellen had taken up with a man named Lorenzo Filli, who worked at a bakery while extorting money for the Black Hand. After he impregnated her, Ellen confronted Lorenzo’s wife after Mass one Sunday morning, showing her the evidence of her husband’s infidelity. Two weeks later Ellen was dead, her hair and flesh burned away and her violated body thrown from the roof of the building where she and Francis shared a small apartment.

“Leave it,” Cabell had ordered him when Francis, mad with grief, began his own investigation of the gang’s activities in Little Hell. “Your sister’s not cold in the ground, you’ll be joining her if you continue like this.”

Francis didn’t leave it. He knew the only reason he hadn’t been killed in the aftermath of his failed investigation and subsequent firing was that his death would have brought more attention to the department’s corruption. Or made a martyr of Francis and inspired one of the city’s newspapers to delve into the tale behind it. Better that he become a floorwalker and a toy cop patrolling the midway.