A Master Plan for Rescue (29 page)

Albie, Rose, and I stood quiet on the cold street.

I slipped my hand into the weighted pocket where I kept my father’s gun.

“You go back to Times Square,” I said to them. “Meet me later under the Camel sign.”

“You’re sure?” Albie said.

I nodded, but I was wishing I had his flying cap.

He said something in Yiddish to the refugees and turned them back up 43rd Street. I stood on the sidewalk watching them go. Rose was at the end of the line, her coat the one shining thing in the whole of Hell’s Kitchen.

•   •   •

I watched Rose’s coat
wink out like a dying star, then turned and ran down 43rd Street, barreling around the corner onto Ninth Avenue, telling myself it wasn’t as late as it felt, that the boats had come ashore early, that the subway had traveled faster, that Albie hadn’t taken as much time telling me my father was dead.

Paradise Photo sat quiet, the window of brides dark and the door open a crack. I hurried through the dark front office, past Harry Jupiter’s desk with its bottle of rye whiskey and tumbling piles of negatives, past the girlie calendar perpetually opened to May 1936.

A dim light was on in the photo studio, shining a narrow strip on the floor beneath the thick curtains. I ought to have hesitated, taken the time to look first, considered everything I should have seen coming, but instead I pushed my way through the dusty curtains, blinding myself as I went from dark to light.

When my eyes adjusted, I saw Jakob sitting on Harry Jupiter’s desk chair. Somebody had placed it in front of the backdrop of the Roman Coliseum, and he looked as if he was waiting for the lions to come roaring out of the archways behind his head.

Next to him—dressed in his black spying clothes—was Uncle Glenn.

I suppose that someplace inside—someplace I could keep myself from looking at—I’d known it all along. Known the he had been the one who belonged to the wheeze.

Known, too—I realized as I stood with the curtains at my back and my heart hammering—that he had been the one sending me the messages.

“Why?” My voice bounced off the backdrops of Mount Rushmore and Niagara Falls, like I was trying for an echo. “Why did you pretend to be him?”

My uncle took a step toward me, then seemed to think better of it.

“At first I thought you would know it was me.”

“And when you saw that I didn’t?”

“I thought it would be more kind to let you keep believing.”

A picture came into my head of all the nights I’d sat pressing my hands against those pieces of paper, certain I could feel my father’s magnetism on them, feel the electric tingle. All the weeks I’d walked around with those messages tucked inside my shirt, all the times I’d pressed them against the skin of my chest, thinking how they had only recently been touched by my father, thinking how now they were touching me.

I lunged for my uncle. To do what? Beat my hands against him? Make him pay for all those nights and weeks? Probably.

But before I could get halfway across the room, a man I hadn’t seen stepped out of the shadows. He was big and barrel-chested, and had the kind of thin-lipped mouth that looked as if it had long ago decided smiling wasn’t worth the time.

“Where are the refugees?” he said to me.

“He will know by now there are no refugees,” Jakob interrupted.

It was the first thing he’d said since I’d entered the room. He pushed himself to the front of Harry Jupiter’s chair, and though he was talking to the barrel-chested man, he was looking at me.

“He will know by now that there
never
were any refugees.”

“I’ll bet they’re right outside,” Uncle Glenn said.

He strode across the room past me and disappeared through the curtains.

Jakob, the barrel-chested man, and I stood in the photo studio, listening to Uncle Glenn’s footsteps echo past Harry Jupiter’s desk. I kept my gaze on Jakob’s face, trying to read what he wanted me to do. I could feel the barrel-chested man’s eyes moving over us.

Uncle Glenn’s footsteps rushed back.

“Where are they?” he said to me.

“They are nowhere,” Jakob told him. “Because it was not children that got off those boats.”

“Who was it then?”

“It was men.”

What was Jakob thinking?
Men getting out of those inflatable boats would not save him from the barrel-chested man, who, though he had said very little, was clearly in charge and dangerous.

“You’re lying,” Uncle Glenn said. “I heard it myself. Twenty-three children landing on a beach.”

Jakob gave him a sick smile. “Do you actually think anyone would trust the lives of twenty-three refugees to a rescue plan dreamed up by a boy?”

Uncle Glenn began to say something more, but the barrel-chested man raised his hand, and Uncle Glenn closed his mouth.

The man began to walk toward me, taking his time. He stopped three feet away, as if he knew by instinct how my eyes worked.

“Did men get out of those boats?”

His voice was gentle, but his undertone told me he was turning it that way.

They were children, refugees. What could they do to them?

But they had no visas. And after my night under the floating subway car, I knew too well what could be done to them.

“Was it men?” the barrel-chested man repeated.

I looked around his bulk at Jakob.

“Yes,” I said.

“How many?”

I recalled the five inflatable boats reflecting white in the moonlight.

“Five.”

The man swiveled his head around. “Why would you involve this boy?”

“He involved himself,” Jakob said. “I decided to make use of him.”

“How?”

“Someone had to show them where the subway was.”

“But children?”

“They are a good disguise. There are always children at Coney Island.”

The barrel-chested man turned back to me.

“Where did these five men go?”

“Pennsylvania Station.”

It was the first place I could think of that wasn’t Times Square.

The man walked back across the room and stood above Jakob’s chair.

“Who are these men? Why are they here?”

Every trace of the gentleness had disappeared from his voice.

Jakob shrugged. “They do not tell me such information.”

“And you don’t ask?”

“I no longer care for politics.”

“And if they are here to work for the Germans, you don’t care about that?”

“You think I should care because I am a Jew?”

Jakob stared into the face of the barrel-chested man.

“You think being a Jew means I should be on the side of this country? I was once on a boat of nine hundred Jews, nine hundred refugees who sailed up and down the coast of Florida hoping for a place to land. And do you know what we were to this country? A tourist attraction.”

Jakob’s dark hair was hanging in his eyes. For some reason I remembered him telling me how Lena would cut it for him. I wondered who cut it for him now.

The barrel-chested man shook his head. “You are making things worse for yourself.”

Jakob gave an unhappy laugh. “After the worst has already happened?”

Uncle Glenn pushed himself between Jakob and the man. “If there were no refugees, why did you come here?”

Jakob nodded toward me. “I knew he would come. And I knew he would need to hear some kind of explanation. I did not know you gentlemen would be waiting for me.”

“This is all an elaborate lie,” Uncle Glenn said.

“If I were lying, I would tell you no one landed,” Jakob told him.

“We need to look for those refugees.”

“You cannot find what doesn’t exist.”

“Twenty-three children,” Uncle Glenn said to the barrel-chested man. “They can’t be far. And they can’t be hard to find.”

“I have given you myself,” Jakob said quietly. “Can that not be enough?”

The pleading in Jakob’s voice was clear—even Uncle Glenn had to have heard what Jakob was asking of him. But Jakob hadn’t heard the story of Camp Siegfried and the swimming meet, he didn’t know about the Cauet hand and how hard it could strike in that soft place between neck and shoulder. He had never heard Uncle Glenn’s father speak to his pigeons in the soft German he never used with his son. Jakob couldn’t know that Uncle Glenn would not consider one sacrifice enough if he believed there were still twenty-three more opportunities to be a hero wandering in the night.

Only I could stop him. Only I could keep what Jakob and I had told the barrel-chested man from turning worthless. Only I could keep what Jakob and I had done from turning worthless.

I pulled my father’s gun out of my pocket and aimed it at my uncle.

“You do not want to do this, Jack,” Jakob said.

But I did want to do it.

And for so many reasons. To save the refugees. For making Jakob and me tell a story we both knew would not end well for him. For the messages that were now scratching at the skin of my chest like I’d shoved a nest of spiders inside my shirt. And also, for the part of me where reason had not yet reached, the part that kept looking at the door that said
Knock or die
and expecting my father to step out.

The barrel-chested man did not move. I don’t think he believed me capable of shooting at anybody.

Uncle Glenn, on the other hand, began wheezing. It sounded louder and more rasping than it had behind the roof door. Louder than I had heard—or imagined—it these past weeks.

He waved his hands in front of himself—perhaps asking me not to shoot him—but he couldn’t force any sound past his frantic gasping for breath.

In the seconds before I pulled the trigger, I wondered if my uncle carried his code-o-graph in his pocket, if he wrote the messages that were supposed to be from my father on Aunt May’s ruffled place mats.

The gun went off with a loud bang.

My shoulder jolted from the kickback, and my ears rang as if there was a bell clanging inside my head.

Uncle Glenn fell to his knees. Harry Jupiter’s desk chair with Jakob in it toppled over.

The barrel-chested man lunged for me, and I ran.

I went through the front office, spilling out into the blackness of 43rd Street, my ears too deafened by the noise of the gun to know if the barrel-chested man was behind me. I headed toward Eighth Avenue, remembering I had a gun in my hand only when I caught one of the Hell’s Kitchen kids staring at it. I shoved it into my pocket and fled down the war-darkened street, pieces of the torn and discarded messages—still warm from my body—flying out behind me like snow.

I ran all the way to the 42nd Street subway station, stood at the edge of the platform looking down at the garbage trapped between the tracks—cigarette butts and the wrapper from a Mounds candy bar that would have smelled exactly like the skin at Rose LoPinto’s throat—until an uptown A rumbled deep in the tunnel, blowing warm, mouse-scented air into my face, ruffling my hair.

I forced myself to keep my eyes on the narrow space between the tracks and the third rail as the train came screaming into the station. Calculated the type of speed it would take to roll out of the way, the amount of space it would require to fit between track and rail. I made myself stand on that platform as train after train slid into the station, keeping my eyes fixed on that impossibly narrow space until I was positive I would never again convince myself that anyone would be able to survive a tumble into it.

Then I went back up to look for Albie and Rose and the refugees.

•   •   •

I found Albie
in the drifting smoke under the Camel cigarette sign.

“Where’s Rose?”

“She waited awhile, but it got late.”

“And the refugees?”

“We found the families.”

“Where?”

“At Paradise.” The edges of Albie’s smile disappeared into the earflaps of his wool hat.

“When?” I said. “How?”

Because it was too cold to wander Times Square, Albie and Rose had taken the refugees to the Loews movie theater on 44th Street, sneaking them in through the side exit. They’d sat in the front row, away from everyone else, while Albie translated the dialogue into Yiddish.

“It was
Pride of the Yankees
with Babe Ruth and Gary Cooper, but I still don’t think they have any idea how baseball works.”

When the movie was over, they came back and stood under the Camel cigarette sign and waited for me. After half an hour, Rose suggested they go to Paradise and see if I was all right.

“Rose suggested that?”

But when they arrived, Paradise was dark and empty.

“No police cars?” I asked him. “No ambulances?”

Albie was explaining to the refugees that they would go back to Times Square—talking in Yiddish—when a man stepped out of the shadows and tapped him on the shoulder.

“He asked me if we’d been to Coney Island lately.”

The man told Albie that earlier that evening, as he and his wife were about to enter Paradise Photo, three men had come hurrying out. Something didn’t seem right, so the man sent his wife to wait in a bar on Ninth Avenue while he kept watch. When the other families arrived, he sent them to wait on Ninth Avenue, too.

When Albie told the man that yes, as a matter of fact, they had just come from Coney Island, the man ran around the corner. In less than a minute, he was back with the families, fifteen men and women dressed in dark clothes to blend with the night.

“They stood on the sidewalk in two bunches. Refugees on one side, families on the other. And nobody knew who belonged to who.”

Then the man who’d tapped Albie on the shoulder said a name into the dark, only a first name, because that was all they had, and one of the refugees, a tall boy, one of the few in a coat that was too small for him, crossed over to the side with the families.

“That’s how they found each other, the families saying the name of a refugee into the night, a name they had learned by heart, and then waiting for the right one to walk into their arms.”

Except for the deaf refugee. The deaf refugee’s mother spoke her name with her hands, spelling it out in that secret code.

“Did anybody see you?” I said.

“It’s Hell’s Kitchen. The only people around are stumblebums and drunks. They probably believe they dreamed the whole thing.”