“Good man. You might be who I am looking for. Tomorrow night. Pays a little more. Slight chance of a run-in with the coppers, but I’ve already paid off the right ones. Any interest?
Ray rubbed the back of his neck. “I could use the money,” he said honestly, while his brain added and the story. Every paper counted.
“Good man. Here’s the address.” Hedgehog scribbled a street number and time on a slip of paper. “Figure we should meet proper if we’ll do business together. I’m Hedgehog.” The man’s hand was all knobby knuckles, scars, and grime. “And you are?”
“I’ll shake your hand, and I’ll do good work. But my name is my own.”
Hedgehog’s eyes narrowed, and his grip on Ray’s hand tightened slightly. Ray stared him straight on, unblinking, wondering how he might react.
“Fair enough” was the man’s eventual response.
Ray pocketed the piece of paper while having a sudden thought and mentally calculating the distance between Toronto and Chicago. “If I had a trustworthy friend, interested in the same kind of payout, would he be welcome?”
“Another nameless chap like you?”
Ray shrugged. “Big, though. Strong. Unafraid of hard work.”
“Bring him along. Some of my regulars are serving time, and I can always use another body.”
Back on the main road, a smile curved Ray’s cheek as dawn touched the horizon. He fingered the dirty bills in his hand and decided on his next destination. First a boardinghouse, and then a drugstore on Michigan Avenue. He needed to make a telephone call.
* * *
*Ray wondered how the man could find it nice and comfortable when the slight breeze from the window did little to dispel the invasive heat.
?When Jem proposed to him in a most unladylike fashion at the Winter Garden theatre, he had pressed it into her hand in lieu of a ring.
?Ray had no trouble deciphering the origin of his name. His small close-set ears and wide head were a sure giveaway.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There is no room for the slightest mistake when in pursuit of your prey. Be it hare or caribou, the most obvious tell to your prey is to waver from your pursuit and path. Even if your compass spins without true north or your map is lost, the earth around you is your guide. There is no margin of error when you rely on your instincts, no matter where they lead you.
Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness
Jasper couldn’t keep his hands from shaking. Almost twenty-four hours later, he kept revisiting the site in his mind’s eye. And once he followed that trail, he couldn’t help but think of the trolley explosions. All of those lives lost, and all he had to show for it was a tiny wire, tied with precision and care. He studied the latest of the knotted wires discovered on the pavement near Osgoode Hall after the automobile explosion.
He was sick of looking at Skip’s rather impressive photographs capturing the first moments of panic and disarray. They were almost—and here Jasper paused—too talented a look at the immediate aftermath. He had always been relatively impressed by Skip’s skill with a camera, but the man seemed to know exactly where to shoot and when. He was always first at the scene these days.
He was just making a few rudimentary notes when the telephone on his desk jangled.
“Ray, you can’t be calling from the Hog. You sound so very far away.” Jasper startled upright in his chair. “You what? Chicago!”
Jasper ran his fingers through his hair. Chicago? Was this another harebrained rescue for his sister?
Ray’s voice seemed to be coming through a rusty tunnel. “I found another one of those knots.”
Jasper gripped the piece more tightly. “Where?”
“I was following Tony and discovered he works at the docks. Overseeing shipments. Taking a van around the city and unloading and loading heaven knows what at his boss’s request. I was unloading some tugboats, working for a fellow named Hedgehog, and one of the boxes contained a corpse. The knot, I believe, fell out with the body. I have no idea where it came from.”
“No one has identified the corpse?”
“No. Probably just another down-on-his-luck drifter like the rest of these men.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“I don’t want to because I think there may be a story, and the police would pounce on this place immediately. Shut down the operation before I can get the whole scoop. And there’s a Toronto connection here. You told me the other day you are having trouble trusting Tipton, and neither of us trusts Montague or Spenser. Well, you will never guess what I found along with that knot.”
“No.” Jasper was in no mood for guessing games. “I could not,” he said pragmatically.
“A syrup bottle. From Spenser’s. The shipment was from Toronto. The corpse is from Toronto.”
“I don’t have any jurisdiction in Chicago, Ray. It could be anyone. A fluke. Surely they carry maple syrup all over the place.”
“Exactly. Which is why your job is to find out who Spenser’s supplies.”
“And then what?”
“Come to Chicago.”