We’d heard about the Gondolas, but most of us hadn’t believed they existed. The whirring sound of their spiky engines sounded like heavy rain on water. Gondolas covered the sky over Lake Michigan like multicolored storm clouds. I’d been fighting to close the parasol before going inside, which was why I was on the sidewalk when someone gasped and pointed. I was supposed to determine bank balances by portraying the young wife of our target, an elderly millionaire who claimed he no longer had the funds to pay us. The high-button shoes I wore with enough heel to help me pass for five-seven wouldn’t have made it easy either. Shirtwaist, skirt with bustle, long auburn hair pinned to the top of my head, parasol to keep out the sun, and (for my sins) a corset, cinched so tight I hoped like hell I wouldn’t have to run after anyone. Which was why I was just outside Cook County Bank & Trust that spring morning, dressed like a proper woman on a hot day. When no Pinkerton could figure out what happened, they called me. When no one could figure out what happened, the Pinkertons got called in. The role-playing, the games, that tiny bit of magic I could use to add a luster to everything, all combined to make me one of the city’s greatest detectives.
One had died-murdered horribly-and the other had fled when she realized what the job entailed. I was the third woman Allan Pinkerton had ever hired in Chicago. In some ways, that day had reinforced it. The day the Gondolas died hadn’t changed my love affair with the Windy City. I’d moved to the city five years after the fire, and had fallen in love immediately. After the Great Fire, the city fathers had mandated all new construction-especially downtown-be made of fireproof stone. When the downtown air wasn’t smelling like Lake Michigan fish, it smelled of newly milled stone dust. The recently completed buildings were made of terracotta, marble, brick, and limestone. Like the way Chicago smelled before the attack. When I tell that story, I leave out most of the details. I’d been on Michigan Avenue the day the Gondolas died, and what was flickering on that screen was nothing like what really happened. I didn’t need to see the pictures, even speeded up. Some so-called director had taken stereoscopes, still photographs, and silver addies, and had somehow- Using His Own Magical Abilities! the poster in the lobby blared-combined them into a herky-jerky semblance of a real film. The organist started blaring some mock Sousa march, which besides being deafening was just damn offensive, given the nature of the images we were about to see. The gaslights dimmed, and the motion picture started up. I worked with men who patronized the Levee District, but I liked to pretend they didn’t. Regalese had told me to come for the motion picture, but hadn’t told me how he’d first seen it. Even though Regalese and I were the only two people in here, besides the projectionist and the organist, the place still stank of tobacco, sweat, and human fluids of a kind I didn’t want to contemplate. The straw hadn’t been changed in weeks, if ever. Regalese sat on benches with straw scattered across the floor beneath to absorb the crap on the patrons’ foul-smelling boots. The screen was the fanciest thing about the place. Designed for burlesque shows mostly, the theater had a red velvet curtain that pulled back to reveal a real silver-painted screen. Not that it mattered much in this theater. I would put a little bit of char on my face, and I’d learned to grunt low and hard whenever I wanted to say hello or good-bye or get the hell out of my way. The memory of his comment always reminded me to wear everything baggy except my steel-toed boots. My baggy shirt and filthy overalls hid my assets, such as they were, but one of the other Pinkertons told me-kindly, he thought-that it was impossible to hide the female nature of my backside. I wore my bobbed hair under an engineer’s cap I confiscated from one of the Gondola widows when I found her years before. I felt itchy just being there, and not only because of the proximity to the vice clubs, but also because I felt obviously out of my element. Regalese had set up a private screening in a tiny little theater near 19th and Dearborn, on the other side of the street from Bed Bug Row.