The Eye of Midnight (8 page)

A ragged breeze swept down Seventh Avenue as they passed through Penn Station's towering granite columns into the open street. There in the shadow of the city, the two cousins craned their necks to take in the noisy universe that towered above them.

This was Empire. Glamour and vice and movie-house newsreels come to life, a world of ticker-tape parades and red carpets, gin mills and Tommy guns. An empire, by all counts, too busy to acknowledge a young boy and girl lost in the evening rush. Taxicabs honked impatiently in the street and paperboys hawked late editions as William and Maxine tramped north beneath the steel frames of rising skyscrapers whose bones knit under the welding torches and rivet hammers of an army working high above the earth.

William glanced sideways at Maxine as they walked. Her face was cramped in a look of singular determination.

“You scared at all?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she said. “I've had so many scares in the last couple of days, I think maybe I'm starting to build up an immunity.”

William nodded. “Are you sure you know where we're going?” he asked.

“Sure I'm sure,” replied Maxine, glancing twice from her map to the corner signpost. “The park's straight north from here.” She wrinkled her nose and gazed down Thirty-Third Street like a sibyl searching the stars.

In the meantime, William's attention was drawn to a small crowd gathered beneath the elevated tracks. At the center of the cluster he found a man with a greasy collar seated atop an overturned bucket. On a crate in front of him were three walnut shells—or half shells, to be exact—and he turned them over in succession to show that one concealed a pale green marble. Covering it again, he proceeded to shuffle the shells in a dizzying weave.

“Where's it at, kid?” he asked coolly, lifting his hands from the crate.

William looked over both shoulders and realized that the question was meant for him. He pointed to where he thought the marble was hidden. The man flipped the shell and there, gleaming like a burnished emerald, sat the green marble. William smiled in spite of himself, surprised at how easily he had seen through the man's sleight of hand.

“Say, that was pretty nifty,” said a lanky stranger in the crowd.

“Eight bits says you can't do it again,” sniffed the man on the bucket, rearranging the shells.

“Aww, applesauce,” said the stranger. “You show him, kid.”

William grinned, warming to his audience and swaggering a bit in the spotlight. He saw clearly where the marble came to rest…fairly clearly, at least…and he motioned to his choice, but the man clucked his tongue.

“Let's see the cabbage, runt.”

William's hand went to his pocket, fingering his train ticket and a box of safety matches and the old Persian coin, and then he found Grandpa's dollar bill and laid it on the crate. The man on the bucket nodded and turned over the shell, but the marble was gone.

“Tough luck, champ,” said one of the crowd. “You'll get 'im next time.”

The shells danced on the crate again, and the man looked at him expectantly.

A knot twisted in William's stomach, and he stood in stunned silence, feeling like an ear of shucked corn. His fingers twiddled with the old silver coin in his pocket, and he had a desperate thought that perhaps the man would play him for it, but then he felt a tug at his arm. Maxine shook her head infinitesimally and nudged him away from the crate.

“Gee whiz, kid,” said the thimblerigger, “you ain't gonna let Dumb Dora here call the shots, are you?”

The group around the crate laughed broadly and slapped William on the back. The jeers punctured William's freshly swollen ego, and his face burned hot. He tried to back out of the crowd but stumbled over his own feet. Maxine caught him by the shoulder, and they retreated from the circle, sniggers and catcalls following them as they left.

“Never mind them, Will,” she whispered, feeling a bit bruised herself.

He didn't answer, only stared straight ahead and quickened his stride, leaving her a step behind.

“What were you thinking, anyway? That was all the money we had,” she said. “You know it was a swindle, right? He wasn't going to let you—”

William's face went rigid, and Maxine abandoned the lecture. She fell in step beside him without another word, and they both walked on, pilgrims in an unknown land.

It was late when William and Maxine reached the bright lights of Fifty-Second Street. Evening had settled on the city, and the inhabitants of twilight—the nighthawks and the drugstore cowboys, the pearl-strung flappers and the Brylcreem dandies—all began to slink from their dark corners to swim in the warm current of night. Up the block, the silky notes of a cornet wafted from a jazz club, and winking bulbs chased themselves silly around a corner marquee.

The cousins arrived at Central Park as the full moon was climbing over the trees. Carbon-arc lamps flickered to life along the sidewalk as they ventured off the street into an entrance along the park's southern edge. A leafy tunnel of branches arched overhead, marking the boundary of a world of organic shapes and sounds that seemed not to belong among the smooth, concrete surfaces of the city.

Entering the park felt like crossing over into a dream, as if they had entered the forest of a fairy tale, and as a matter of course, dark and ominous events must presently commence. Here at the threshold they glanced about meekly, but the park, it seemed, was vacant and still. The even clop and steady creak of a plodding horse and carriage was audible through the trees; the cousins listened until it finally moved on, then shuffled forward down the overhung path that lay before them.

They soon realized that, despite the quiet of nightfall, the park was not entirely deserted. A gentleman out for his evening constitutional gave them a nasty start, passing them from behind and excusing himself as he disappeared down the path. Other souls remained, couples mostly, lingering on park benches, sitting so close they were a single silhouette. William and Maxine hurried past, their eyes fixed resolutely ahead. They kept their conversation to a whisper without knowing why and quickened their pace between the scant pools of light cast by the streetlamps.

Over the crest of a small hill, the path turned and ran under one of the arched tunnels set beneath East Drive. They both cringed at the sight of the black, sepulchral opening.

“What are we doing here?” Maxine asked, her words echoing hollowly inside the stone passage.

“In this tunnel, you mean?” asked William.

“This tunnel, this park, this city…I mean, doesn't it seem like we're flirting with disaster?”

“Flirting?” replied William. “I'd say we've leapt right into her arms, more like. Try not to think about it.” He turned up his collar and quickened his step. “Hurry up, or we'll miss the courier. It must be nearly midnight.”

They had almost reached the end of the passage and were just beginning to breathe easier when they had the sudden realization that they were not alone. Another presence was there with them in the darkness—motionless, silent—standing close enough to reach out and throttle them both, watching them wolfishly. The murk of the tunnel was so impenetrable they had almost passed the man without noticing him, but now he inhaled on a thin black cigar and the orange glow reflected faintly in his hooded eyes. A current of terror coursed through them, and they shied like startled antelopes and bolted down the path.

The man watched them go and sauntered out of the tunnel, disappearing among the trees.

Atop a wooded hillock, in a lonely corner of Central Park, lies a wide, cobbled circle. Within this ring, at the very center, stands Cleopatra's Needle, a gift from the viceroy of Egypt to the citizens of New York in 1880. It is a striking geometry, six feet wide at the base and all of seventy feet high. William and Maxine were still panting as they climbed the stone steps and saw the Needle through an arch of cedars, illuminated dramatically from below and rising like a spire into the night sky. The reflected light cast a wide halo on the ground around the ancient obelisk, a dwindling pool of luminescence bounded by trees and bushes. Above, the Hare Moon hung high in the sky, lending its own cool radiance to the scene.

At the edge of the ring they crouched in a clump of brush that offered some degree of cover from passersby. A small opening in the foliage provided a clear view of the Needle, and they peered out, cheek to cheek, like hedgehogs in a burrow. Elbowing aside a tangle of twigs and leaves, Maxine produced two ham sandwiches wrapped in wax paper from her coat pocket.

“Where'd you get those?” asked William.

“The kitchen. I made them before we left,” she replied, passing him one of the sandwiches.

“You don't happen to have a cherry pie tucked under that old red hat of yours, do you?”

“No, but I've got a chocolate bar here somewhere,” she said, chewing lickerishly as she peeked out through their leafy porthole. “Who was that in the tunnel, do you think?”

“Beats me,” said William. “The Grim Reaper, probably.”

He was quiet for a moment, the wheels turning in his head.

“Here's a real question for you,” he said. “Which do you think would be better—falling to your death or being buried alive?”

Maxine looked at him as if he had a wet, drippy cold and had just sneezed on her.

“Or being bitten by a deadly poisonous snake?” he added as an afterthought.

“Which would be
better
?”

“Yeah, I mean, I was just looking at the Needle, thinking about how tall it is and what a mess it would make if you took a swan dive from up there, and that reminded me of the guys who built it—the Egyptian pharaohs—burying their servants alive in the pyramids, and then I thought of Cleopatra and how she got bitten by some kind of viper or asp or something, and I was just wondering to myself, which one of those would be the best way to go?”

“Maybe we shouldn't talk,” said Maxine.

“I guess getting buried alive would be best,” William continued. “I don't love snakes, and heights make my legs feel like jelly. Climbing trees is all right, though. I don't know why. Maybe because you've got branches below you and you can't—”

“Did you see something move over there?” Maxine asked sharply.

“Where?”

“In the bushes across the way.”

“I didn't see anything.”

They fell silent, watching and listening.

“Will! Look! Someone's there, on the far side of the circle! Let's try and get a better look.”

She was just about to crawl out from their hiding place when a tall figure stepped into the light not more than twenty feet away.

Maxine stifled a gasp, and William pulled her back by her coat. Peering through the hedge, they watched the man stop directly before them, with his back turned. He was silhouetted against the orange glow of the obelisk, and smoke curled around his head as he scanned the circle. He turned slowly, and they recognized his smoldering cigarillo. He wore a wine-red fez of stamped velvet, and in the pale moonlight they could make out a sable mustache and a shining, greased goatee that tapered to a curling point.

His clothing was unremarkable in most respects, similar to what any tailored gentleman might wear about town—white shirt, pressed trousers, and boots—but he was clad in an unusual knee-length black coat with a high collar and no clasps, and on his hand he wore a thick silver ring.

“Is that the courier?” whispered William.

Maxine shook her head with horrified certainty.

A twig cracked beneath William, and the tall man stopped dead, his gaze boring into the foliage. The cousins held their breath and watched as he swayed slightly, his face calm and composed. Both of his arms hung slack. He dropped his cigar and crushed it beneath his heel, then crept toward them, massaging his temple with his ring finger.

A high, warbling trill sounded from the far side of the circle. The man's head jerked round. He turned on his heel and strode away.

The cousins exhaled aloud and sagged weakly with relief. They struggled to their feet and stretched their frozen joints, and had just begun to clamber from the bushes when a pair of hands seized them from behind with an iron grip.