The Museum of Extraordinary Things (11 page)

“Mr. Weiss, I’m sorry. I truly am. There were no survivors.”

“I don’t need you to be sorry! Help me! That’s what I need. Your father said you could find her.”

His father, whom he had not seen or spoken to in twelve years, almost as much time as they had lived together, who knew nothing about what his son was capable of. Eddie often wondered if they would recognize each other if they passed on the street, or if they had become such strangers to one another they would merely keep on walking, having no idea that they shared the same flesh and blood, that they had once slept together under the same black overcoat in the forest, in shock and mourning.

“How is it possible that there’s no sign of her?” Weiss went on. “How many girls have hair so pale it’s the color of snow? How many come home every night right on time and are never late?” His voice was raspy. He had been searching through the debris on Greene Street and had breathed in cinders. “They found not a scrap of clothing, not her purse, not a bit of jewelry, nothing. She wore a gold locket that belonged to her mother. I gave it to her on her last birthday. She wept with tears of gratitude and swore she would never take it off. Gold does not burn, I know that much. It melts, but it doesn’t disappear. None of her friends saw her that morning. What do you think of that? I questioned everyone who survived, even her best friend, Rose, who’s still in St. Vincent’s Hospital, with both of her legs burned.” He glared at Eddie. “Don’t tell me nothing remains of a human being.”

Eddie went to the bureau for some whiskey and glasses. Before the fire he would have merely insisted his visitor leave, now he felt the thorn of compassion. He put down a glass in front of Weiss and asked, “Have you been to the precinct? Spoken with the police?”

“The police?” Weiss’s face furrowed with distrust. “No.” He gulped the whiskey and tapped his glass on the table for more. “I wanted someone I can trust. That’s why I came to you.”

“Me? Why would you trust me?”

Weiss shook his head, amazed by how dense the younger man was. “Because you are one of us, Ezekiel.”

“I’m not! Look at me.”

Eddie wore a blue shirt and black trousers. He had no tallit around his shoulders, a garment that showed a covenant with God, and no remnants of his Orthodox upbringing. His hair was cropped short, and he’d long ago forsaken the practice of wearing a skullcap. His large, pale feet were bare, allowing a glimpse of a tattoo of a trident he’d had inked on his ankle, a true embarrassment, even to him. He’d gone to the infamous Samuel O’Reilly’s shop one drunken evening, where the owner used Edison’s newly invented electric tattoo machine. Eddie had immediately regretted his choice when he awoke the next morning with a throbbing headache. Tattoos were strictly forbidden for his people, and men of his faith so marked could not be buried in a religious cemetery. Eddie’s regret, however, had less to do with faith than with the fact that the tattoo was so crudely drawn.

Weiss eyed the younger man sadly. “You think your father would send me to the wrong man? You think he doesn’t know his own son? You’re the one who can find people.”

“Mr. Weiss, please.” Eddie downed his whiskey and began a second glass. He wouldn’t mind getting drunk.

“He said you worked for Hochman.”

“He knew that?”

“A father knows his son.”

Eddie shook his head. “No.” He would get drunk, he had decided, without a doubt.

“He told me it was you, not that fake wizard, who discovered the boy under the bridge. The shyster took the credit, but you were the one who found him. Your father said you always had this talent. You guided him through the forest when you were a little boy. He said he would have been dead without you, or wandering there still.”

Eddie was stunned. He’d never thought he’d been the one to lead them out of the woods. And surely he’d never told his father how he earned his money. He knew that his father would have disapproved of Hochman and his methods. Now it seemed the elder Cohen had known precisely what Eddie was doing on the nights he’d sneaked out. He wondered if his father had lain in bed, eyes open, as Eddie let himself out the door. Perhaps he’d gone so far as to rise from the thin mattress, slip his coat over his pajamas, and track Eddie to the Hall of Love so he might stand in the dark on Sheriff Street and mourn what his son had become. Perhaps he’d had their suitcase in hand.

“You shouldn’t go around trusting people you don’t even know,” Eddie advised his visitor. “You’ll get into trouble that way.”

“I know your father, and that’s enough for me.
”
Weiss narrowed his eyes. “Do you want money? Because I have it.
”
The older man reached into the pocket of his overcoat, but Eddie stopped him.

“No. No money.” Eddie sat back in his chair and rubbed at his temples. His head was throbbing. “Even if I could do what you want, there’s no guarantee you would like what I found.”

Weiss shook his head, disagreeing. “If you find the truth, then you’ve found what I want.”

“What if Hannah is dead? You want to know that?”

“If she is, show me the locket. That’s when I’ll believe it. That’s when I’ll say the Kaddish and lay her to rest.”

Weiss reached for a photograph in his vest pocket. It was a poor example of the craft, snapped in one of those new ten-cent machines so popular at photo galleries at Coney Island and on Fourteenth Street. The image was already fading, turning milky, but the beauty of Weiss’s daughter was unmistakable. She had long, pale hair and delicate features.

“Your father said you would find her,” Weiss said, his voice seized by emotion. “Don’t make him into a liar.”

After Weiss’s visit, Eddie slept, awaking in the morning on the floor. He’d finished the whiskey after Weiss had gone, and added a good measure of gin, a lethal combination. Apparently he’d fallen asleep beside the dog. Now his back and legs ached. He had a cough and the room felt damp. If he wasn’t careful, he would find himself coming down with pneumonia, as Moses Levy had.

Eddie went to retrieve a tin box stowed beneath the floorboards. There was cash inside, his savings. He had hoped to buy a camera that would allow him to use flexible film, a new style in the art that made the development process faster and easier, but he could forgo such things. He’d gotten in the habit of hiding his earnings when he was a boy, choosing a clever spot, just beneath the table where he and his father took their meager supper each evening. In his loft he kept his savings in the same place. Eddie folded the bills into an envelope.

As he grabbed his coat to go out, Eddie spied a flash of silver light in the pail beside the sink, as if a star had fallen through the skylight. It was the trout, motionless at the bottom of the pail. He felt a rush of regret. He should have taken it back to the river, for a fish was born to be a fish, whether or not he’d been caught. He quickly folded the trout into a sheaf of newspaper, for he couldn’t leave it to stink, nor had he the heart to toss it into the trash pile in the alley. He whistled for Mitts and, with the wrapped fish resting in the crook of his arm, set out.

The liveryman had recently arrived to divvy out oats and hay. The stable tenant was a short individual, with broad ugly features, his face pocked with scars. Several of his teeth were capped with gold, and he often made reference to the fact that he’d given up his wild ways, not caring to elaborate further.

Sometimes the liveryman called himself Joe, sometimes it was Johnny. He started out as what was called a sheriff at various saloons, a bouncer who kept the peace while enjoying the violence of the job. At one time, he’d risen as high as a man could in the criminal world, working for Tammany Hall and the politicians who ran the city. But a long term in prison had taken his wildness out of him, and he’d sunk to working in the stable, renting out a carriage. He had a love of animals and birds, especially the pigeons he raised in the tack room, for they sat on his shoulders as he went about his chores. He’d begun his days in a pet store, and he often told Eddie he should have stayed with that. The horses ran to him now, and he treated them kindly, greeting each by name. Sally, Spot, Little Girl, Jackson. He lived round the corner, at a flophouse on Twenty-second Street where shared rooms could be had for the night, but should one of the horses take ill, he brought over his cot and slept in the stable. He could frequently be found smoking a foul mixture in the alley, bowls full of opium, but he never did so inside the stable, to ensure his creatures would be safe and no sparks would fall into the bales of hay. Eddie had chosen to ignore the stink of opium. In his opinion, there were far worse neighbors to have. There were thousands of men who visited the opium houses of the Lower East Side. Most of them couldn’t get a job, let alone keep one, but the liveryman managed well enough.

“You’re keeping early hours,” the fellow called as he tossed Mitts a biscuit. “Or is it that you never sleep?” He’d heard Eddie pacing at odd hours, seen him come in or leave when most men were safe
in bed.

Eddie grinned and stretched his aching back. “I slept on the floor like a dog.”

“Then you must have dreamed, for dogs do so nightly. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Isn’t that right?” the carriage man said to Mitts, who had offered his paw before following his master out the heavy stable door.

Eddie loved the city when it was first waking. Energy surged through the concrete and cobblestones the way mist rises in the woods. In fact, his sleep had been deep and empty. If the liveryman was right and his dog dreamed, then Eddie envied him, for there had been no sign of the dark-haired woman who sometimes came to his bed in his dreams. Now Mitts trotted briskly along beside him on their journey downtown, clearly happy to be alive, with no thought to the future or the past. For this, Eddie envied Mitts as well, how light his burden was, how clear his purpose. He was to be his master’s companion, and in doing so he became himself, the essence of a dog. When all was said and done, it was conceivable that a being’s purpose remained the same throughout his life, and Eddie’s purpose was exactly what it had been when he was a boy, to pursue the light and find what was lost.

His destination was little more than twenty blocks downtown. He crouched on a stoop across from the building where he had lived with his father, pulling up his long legs, leaning against the ironwork railing. It was drizzling and the sky hung down. The gutters were wet and filthy. A boy came out of the house across the street. It was Eddie’s good luck that when he signaled the boy approached. He was six or seven years old, shy, Orthodox, hanging back when he reached the stoop. Clearly, he’d crossed the street because of his interest in the dog. He could barely take his eyes off Mitts, who cheerfully slobbered and returned the boy’s gaze.

“You know Joseph Cohen?” Eddie asked the child.

“No.
”
The boy most certainly had been told not to talk to strangers. He didn’t raise his eyes. To gain the boy’s trust, Eddie switched over to Yiddish.

“Mr. Cohen, the tailor. You know him?”

The boy glanced up, surprised that this lanky, gruff young man spoke his language. He didn’t look like one of them, but the boy accepted Eddie now that he knew they were of the same faith. It was obvious that the boy was more impressed by the dog than by anything Eddie had to say. He tentatively held out his hand, and Mitts sniffed it. Startled by the dog’s wet nose, the boy drew his hand back. He shifted from foot to foot, nervous but more interested than ever.

“Go ahead,” Eddie suggested, recognizing a fellow dog lover. “You can pet him. He won’t bite.”

The boy remained suspicious. It was likely that his mother had warned him not only to stay away from strange men but to avoid strange dogs as well.

“Go on,” Eddie said. “He’s friendly.”

The boy’s curiosity got the better of him. He edged nearer, grinning when Mitts sat before him.

“Someone I met said he’s a rabbit, and maybe that’s what he thinks he is. A big rabbit with white feet.”

When the boy petted the pit bull’s broad head, a smile of delight crossed his face. “He’s like silk.” Mitts licked his face, and the boy laughed and wiped his cheek. “He is a big rabbit.”