The Other World: My Kansas City of Sorrows

By Enid Angela Ziock

Step into the seedy underbelly of the Missouri River casinos, where the glitz and glamour of the flashing neon lights belies a darker truth. In this gripping novel, follow the rise and fall of the notorious Pendergast family and their legacy of underground gambling rings. But amidst the hustle and bustle of the casino scene, the city is plagued by a terrifying serial rapist, striking fear into the hearts of its residents. As the police struggle to solve the case, a determined black cop begins to unravel a web of corruption and deceit, racing against time to uncover the truth behind the gambling ring and catch the elusive predator. Can he bring justice to a city on the brink? Find out in this thrilling tale of crime and intrigue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886936575

Enid Angela Ziock

The author is married and lives in Arizona. She attended Bryn Mawr College and then the University of Iowa where she obtained an undergraduate degree in creative writing. Her advisor was the beloved poet Mark Strand.

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About the Author

The author is married and lives in Arizona. She attended Bryn Mawr College and then the University of Iowa where she obtained an undergraduate degree in creative writing. Her advisor was the beloved poet Mark Strand.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the laborers and forgotten people living in neglected, unglamorous neighborhoods or remote rural areas. You are the heartbeat of our world.

Copyright Information ©

Enid Angela Ziock 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Ziock, Enid Angela

The Other World: My Kansas City of Sorrows

ISBN 9798886936551 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886936568 (Hardback)

ISBN 9798886936575 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023917703

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

I want to thank my husband, Richard Ziock, for his support and love through the years. Also I want to thank Rebecca Duncan and Charlotte Honeywell, who nursed me through detached retinas at a low point in my life; and the unforgettable Neal Moquin, who walked the walk with extreme grace and strength while his vocation was under attack. All of you are my heroes. I mention you in gratitude and love.

1. Bella Luce

I just bought a house in Africa!

Cole Whitethorne was excited to start a new life adventure. He owned several successful businesses in a lush university town and got bored. The idea of rebuilding houses in an inner city, blighted area was a huge challenge he wanted to tackle.

Really! Ella was a little surprised.

Cole had been discussing new investments and had driven to Kansas City because Chicago didn’t appeal to him. He had lived in Chicago for years when he worked in insurance, and he wanted a new place to explore.

I want you to come down with Gracey in a week. I’m busy hiring helpers and buying construction supplies. It’s a two-story shirtwaist. I got it for a few thousand.

Is it safe there?

It seems so. The people are real friendly. I’m putting in an alarm system tomorrow and reinforcing the door locks with metal. I’ll call you tomorrow night. How’s Gracey?

She misses you.

Give her a hug from me and some doggy bones.

Ella hung up and tried to imagine moving to Kansas City. She had hoped Cole would like Palm Springs, but he didn’t like the desert and was bored there. She tried to imagine living in a black area. The only blacks she had known were professionals. Her childhood doctor was a golden-skinned black from Kansas City. He made house calls and drove a beautiful blue Cadillac. Her mother, a nurse, respected him and trusted him. Then there were the students and professors at the university, rarely different from all the others in the mix, most just wanting to graduate and succeed, some outstanding in the arts, music, and athletics. It was the late 1980s, and American cities were continuing to deteriorate as our politicians vainly focused on the Middle East. Ella could see Cole’s dream: the dream of fix up, of gentrification of the lost world of our inner cities and America’s untouchables. She started to pack her work clothes and some cooking equipment. She was off to a new adventure, too. The utopian dream of rescuing and rebuilding a city was invading her thoughts. It was magical.

The next week she packed up their car, turned management duties over to managers, and drove west then south to Kansas City. The Iowa fields were green, an unending blur of green broken by farmsteads, crossroads, and occasional towns near the interstate. She packed water with ice for Gracie and a cooler full of ice and diet colas. She kept alert through the productive but boring landscape by listening to AM talk radio. She would enter and pass through local radio stations, listening to people wanting casserole recipes for their gatherings and discussions of better ways to can vegetables. Then the agricultural markets would be brought up with hog bellies and corn bushel projections announcements. At that point, Ella would search for a new station…at first getting lots of static, and that either got clearer or faded away. At times, she would reach for a mixed cassette tape and listen to Kim Carnes singing ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ and Blondie’s ‘Call Me’. Sometimes Ella would sing along and pretend she was performing in front of an enthralled audience. She liked her voice, if only she wasn’t tone deaf…

As she approached Des Moines, she had the choice of cutting diagonally through the city or staying on the interstates and going around. She found a good local station and listened to a discussion of AIDS. AIDS was the scary, deadly disease of the moment. The caller was complaining about prostitutes and blamed them for their spreading of the disease. Another caller called in and argued that the prostitute was more in danger of getting the disease since the virus was transmitted through semen. The callers were all appalled that the disease was spread by casual sex or even by people who didn’t care that they had a deadly communicable disease. The discussion ended, and the news and markets came on…more corn bushel prices and hog bellies. Ella turned the radio off. She had heard enough about AIDS and hog bellies, a rare combination to consider on a long journey. She had several hours of driving ahead. She pulled into a gas station, gassed up, and visited the bathroom. Then she pulled out for the second half of the trip south through the rolling hills of southern Iowa and northern Missouri. The highway, while serving up endless green fields and bucolic vistas, was a desert lacking in places serving interesting or even edible food. Ella went to her cold drink chest for drinks and snacks from her kitchen. She did allow herself to buy bagged nuts from the mini-marts in the gas stations. There was a long period of little traffic, just the rolling hills and farms, then, after the border, Missouri towns popped up and eventually the traffic increased. Finally, she entered Kansas City’s limits and followed Cole’s directions to the house he purchased.

It was early afternoon as Ella pulled up to the new house. Cole’s pickup was in the dirt-packed drive. The house was two story shirt waist with a fenced in yard. The area was on the east side, and Ella only saw black Americans as she was locating the house.

Cole saw her pull in and stepped out.

What do you think? he asked.

Not too bad. It’s huge!

Gracey ran out of the car and jumped on Cole, wagging her tail and squealing. Cole loved Gracey back and then invited her in.

Ella entered a partially gutted interior.

The plumbing is good, also the roof. Needs a new kitchen, flooring, paint, etc.

Cole was proud of his new purchase. Ella had just walked into a new universe.

The Big Thicket in Texas is a national park with fauna and wildlife from the north, south, east, and western areas of the United States. Kansas City, seated in the center of the country, too, has elements of the west with its cattle markets, the south, with its descendants of southern slave holders, and famous barbecue, the north, imposing law and order by the Grand Army of the Republic, and the east, with Italians and some members connected to the Mafia…thus…Kansas City is the Big Thicket of American cities. It’s no ivory tower. It’s a little bit of America jammed into one sprawling place.

The historic town of Weston, laying a few miles north of Kansas City, still has the Weston Burley House, now assigned for other purposes. A few farms nearby continue to grow tobacco. A brewery still operates outside the city limits. William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody once lived there. It is rumored that Abraham Lincoln once wooed a young lady from Weston. The town was very prominent before a flood changed the Missouri River channel further away from the town’s doorsteps. The region was very bloody before and during the Civil War. Both sides (pro and con) of slavery lived in the area. A pro-slavery group lived around Weston and called themselves the ‘Bushwhackers’. Homesteads were burned out. This was the era of ‘Bleeding Kansas’. The Kansans hated slavery and would raid slave owners’ homesteads, then the slave owners would return the favor. Beecher Bibles were rifles smuggled into Kansas in boxes marked Bibles. They were meant to run off slave owning settlers. William Quantrill and his Quantrill Raiders raided pro-union Lawrence, Kansas. Many descendants of the group proudly live on in Blue Springs, Missouri. Finally, the Union Army marched in and restored order.

Kansas City boomed during the depression. Bored farmers from the region would come there for recreation, and the city never shut down. Nearly everything was available 24/7. That time was its glory days…the days of ‘12th Street and Vine’, now nothing to see…the area in ruins.

Ella unpacked her luggage, then got Gracey and drove around looking for a grocery store. Her jaw dropped. Block after block of once middle class houses appeared, now going shabby.

They all left. The whites…They saw some blacks move in and packed up for the burbs, she told herself as she drove north to a main avenue. How nutty! Spineless!

She found a chain grocery but decided instead to get fast food. There were no iconic KC barbecue restaurants in this forgotten area of the city. She found a drive-in, then drove home with the food, thinking, My God, this goes on forever, a giant cancer spreading in the heart of the city. Cole called it the doughnut hole…the residue of poor clingers after the ‘money’ moved out.

As Cole’s crew of ragtag workers, (many were Vietnam vets), scraped wallpaper, ‘demo-ed’ the kitchen, installed newer plumbing, painted, etc., Ella mowed the lawn and trimmed the hedge. She looked up and an old man slowly walked down the weedy sidewalk toward her. His wizened black face with intense black eyes commanded Ella’s attention. Their eyes locked.

He smiled, showing missing teeth. Ella stopped her labor and smiled back. The man spoke to