The Gilded City

Chicago in 1925 was the most beautiful city in the world, and the most terrible. It had both things in equal measure—the gleaming towers of the Loop, the jazz pouring from every basement door on South State, the women in cloche hats and dropped-waist dresses moving through the rain like watercolors, and on the South Side, children eating from cans because the factory had closed and the factory had closed and the factory had closed.

Judy Callahan stood at the corner of Jackson Boulevard and felt both things at once. She was twenty-two, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and she had just been assigned to desk duty at the Chicago Police Department's Seventh District. Her uniform fit poorly because the tailor had measured for a woman and Judy was smaller than a woman, more like a very serious girl who had graduated second in her class at the Illinois Police Academy.

She believed in second place. Second place meant you had tried and had fallen just short. There was honor in that. Commissioner Marshall did not share her view.

"Miss Callahan," he said, not looking up from the papers on his desk. He was a lion of considerable girth and considerable ambition, and he spoke in the voice of a man who was accustomed to being heard. "You are here because my secretary thought you needed experience. I am here to tell you that experience is something you earn, not something you are given."

"I earned my class position, sir."

"You earned second place. There is a difference." He stamped a document. "You will be assigned to parking violations on South Michigan Avenue. Report to Sergeant O'Leary at six o'clock."

She reported at six o'clock. She wrote two hundred and twelve parking tickets before lunch. She was good at it. She was excellent at it. By the end of the week she had written four hundred and thirty-seven tickets and a man named Henderson had tried to bite her.

The disappearances came to her desk on a Thursday in October. Two cases, both predators, both last seen within twenty-four hours of each other, both with no connections to each other and no obvious reason to have disappeared. One was a weasel named Raymond who worked at a distillery in Pilsen. The other was a panther named Eleanor who had been a dancer at a club on Van Buren before her legs gave out and her drinking began.

Judy picked up the phone and dialed the only number she had been given for the missing persons unit. It rang three times and was answered by a voice that sounded like gravel rolling in oil.

"This is Calloway. If you're selling insurance, I'm not interested. If you're a debt collector, I'm dead. If you're neither, you have ten seconds before I hang up."

"I'm a police officer," Judy said. "I need information about two missing persons."

There was a long silence. "You're a rabbit."

"I am."

"That's new. What do you want to know?"

His name was Nicholas Calloway. He was a fox who lived above a barbershop on South Halsted, and his apartment was exactly what Judy expected a fox's apartment to be—full of things that did not belong together, books about Chicago's criminal history next to poetry collections, a map of the city with red strings connecting neighborhoods like a madman's web.

"My brother disappeared two years ago," Nick said, pouring coffee from a pot that had clearly been brewing since dawn. "Officially, he moved west. Unofficially, he was a predator and predators in Chicago have a habit of vanishing when they ask too many questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"The kind that get people killed. He was asking about the disappearances. There have been seven in two years. Seven predators. Zero herbivores. The police report calls it 'spontaneous regression syndrome.' I call it murder."

He gave her a name: a pharmaceutical company called Serenova Labs, located in an industrial building on the South Side. They specialized in "neurochemical enhancement" and had a contract with the Chicago Police Department.

"He was visiting Serenova," Nick said. "For a job. They were hiring test subjects. High pay, minimal screening, no questions asked. That should have been the first warning."

The first warning had been missed. Judy went to Serenova Labs the next morning and asked to see anyone in human resources. The receptionist—a giraffe of extraordinary height and extraordinary patience—said there was no human resources department, only research and operations.

"I'd like to speak to either department."

The receptionist smiled in a way that Judy could only describe as deeply unhelpful. "Would you like to make an appointment?"

"No. I am a police officer and I am here on official business."

The receptionist picked up the phone. Judy turned around and walked out of the building. On the street, she found Nick leaning against a lamppost, eating an apple.

"Well?" he said.

"They don't want me there."

"I figured. I also figured you would not listen." He took another bite. "You want the real story, rabbit? It's not about regression syndrome. It's not about predators losing their minds. It's about chemistry. Serenova is running experiments on predators—new compounds, new delivery methods, new ways to make animals do things they would not normally do. And the police commissioner's office is funding it."

"Commissioner Marshall?"

"Commissioner Marshall, his donors, his friends, and apparently half the aldermen. They call it 'excitement serum.' The test subjects call it hell."

Judy wrote down everything he said. She took it back to her desk at the police station and read it three times. Each time, it sounded less like an investigation and more like a suicide note.

She went to the records division anyway. She found the shipment records for Serenova—monthly deliveries of a compound called NMD-7 to police-adjacent facilities across the city. She found the budget allocations, signed by Commissioner Marshall himself, authorizing three hundred thousand dollars for "behavioral research and public safety enhancement."

She found Nick's brother's name on a patient list: Raymond Calloway, admitted March 14, 2023, discharge: deceased, March 28, 2023. Cause of death: organ failure secondary to experimental neurotoxin exposure.

She stood in the records room with a piece of paper that said her partner's brother had been murdered by the people she was supposed to investigate, and she felt the world tilt sideways.

Nick found her there. He did not say anything for a long time. Then he said: "You going to file this?"

"I don't know who to file it with."

"Nobody. Nobody files this with anybody. That is the point." He leaned against the doorframe. "My brother's body is in a lab freezer at Serenova, Judy. Number 47 on a shelf. Labeled with a number, not a name. And Commissioner Marshall signs the checks that pay for it."

She filed it anyway. She took the paper to Commissioner Marshall's office and laid it on his desk. He read it without changing his expression, then looked up at her with eyes that were the color of old whiskey.

"Miss Callahan," he said. "You have done admirable work. Truly. But I am going to ask you to close this file."

"On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that you are a good officer who has just made a mistake. The file you have assembled contains misinformation, unverified claims, and a profound misunderstanding of how public safety works in a city the size of Chicago. Raymond Calloway died of natural causes compounded by substance abuse. Serenova Labs is a legitimate research facility. And you, Miss Callahan, are being reassigned to traffic duty on South Michigan Avenue. Effective immediately."

She walked out of his office and down the hallway and past the elevator and took the stairs three at a time until she was outside and the Chicago wind was hitting her in the face like a slap.

She found Nick at a bar on South State called The Blue Note. He was sitting at the counter, drinking something that looked like it had been distilled in a basement and tasted like it had been distilled in a basement.

"Reassigned?" he said when she sat down.

"Traffic duty."

"Of course." He ordered her a coffee. "You know what the funny thing is? Chicago is going to keep jazzing. The bands are going to play, the dancers are going to spin, the drinkers are going to drink. And Serenova is going to keep their lab, and Marshall is going to keep his checks, and every Tuesday a predator is going to vanish, and nobody is going to ask questions because the city is too busy being beautiful to notice its own rot."

Judy drank her coffee. It was hot and bitter and exactly what she needed. "What do I do?"

"That's not my problem, rabbit. That's yours." He raised his glass. "But if it were mine, I'd say: keep the paper. Not file it. Keep it. One day, Chicago might need it."

She kept it. She did the traffic duty. She wrote four hundred and thirty-seven tickets in her second week. The Chicago wind never stopped. The jazz never stopped. And on the last Tuesday of October, she found a piece of paper in her desk drawer that had Raymond Calloway's name on it, and she held it in her hand for a long time, and then she put it in her coat pocket and walked out into the city that was eating itself alive and had never looked more beautiful doing it.

Author Note & Copyright: