As Mr. Whitby showed Frankie out of the room, Gregory gave me a nod of acknowledgment. “Dobryy vecher.”
“Pardon?”
“Ah, you’ll have to excuse me. My Russian is not very good. You are Russian, yes?”
I realized that Frankie must have told Mr. Whitby that he was from Russia, although by imperial law he was considered neither a Russian citizen nor an ethnic Pole or Lithuanian. Mr. Whitby had likely assumed that I was a landsman to him, provided Frankie hadn’t told him that outright.
“Er, yes,” I said, afraid to say otherwise and risk ruining my cover.
“Alexei then, is it?”
“Call me Alex.”
“I visited St. Petersburg several years ago and remember a phrase or two,” Gregory said. “May I practice on you?”
Why couldn’t Frankie have told Mr. Whitby we were German or Romanian? I cleared my throat, forcing a thin smile. “Of course.”
“Now, let’s see. Hopefully, it won’t be too painful... Menya zovut Gregory. Am I saying that correctly?”
“Da,” I said, which was the only Russian word I knew other than the curse words that Frankie had delighted in teaching me.
“Rad poznakomitsya?” Gregory cocked his head. “That means ‘what is your name,’ right?”
I nodded, pretending to be impressed. “Da, that’s perfect.”
“Ah, don’t coddle me. I know that my pronunciation is atrocious.”
“No. No, it’s very good. Almost native.”
Gregory’s smile remained, but a strange light had entered his gray eyes. Sweat dripped down my neck. I had made a mistake. He knew something was wrong. As he was about to say more, Mr. Whitby returned with Frankie alongside him. Mr. Whitby had a thin brown cigar propped between his lips and was puffing away at it merrily, while Frankie held his own cigar unlit at his side.
“The next race is about to begin, gentlemen,” Mr. Whitby guffawed, punctuating the statement with a jab of his cigar, in a flourish as enthusiastic as an orchestra conductor. “My money’s on Empire. There’s nothing more elegant in the world than a well-bred Thoroughbred, wouldn’t you agree? Humans and racehorses are really quite alike in that regard. Pedigree, my boy! Take yourself for instance, Frankie. With your skill for fighting, I suppose you come from a military background. Cossack, perhaps?”
Frankie laughed, but I could sense a strain in his features. If there was a Cossack in his family tree, that particular branch would have been grafted in blood and suffering. “Not nearly as interesting, I’m afraid. Mainly well-diggers and tailors.”
“Well, there are always exceptions to the rule, I suppose.”
As the two men took the stairs to the second-floor balcony. I stopped Frankie before he could join them.
“Could we find somewhere less crowded? I don’t feel good.” The heat was getting to me, or the billiard room’s confines, or maybe it was the copious amounts of cigar smoke wafting from the gentlemen on either side of us. A dull, throbbing pain radiated through my temples, and my throat felt as though it was collared with barbed wire.
We found a secluded corner on the first-floor veranda, with a clear view of the racetracks below. The sun settled bright as an ember on the horizon.
“Is it the dybbuk?” Frankie asked in Yiddish, after glancing around to confirm we were alone.
“I just need space to breathe.” I loosened my collar. “I was burning up in there.”
“Not much better out here, with this humidity.” He hesitated, looking out across the racetrack. “Back at your tenement, you wanted to talk about the night you left.”
“Right.” I didn’t say more. We had ended things so violently that night, I had a feeling he wanted to discuss this at his own pace, on his own terms.
“Why?”
“It wasn’t a normal burglary that night, was it?” I watched him from the corner of my eye. His gaze was planted on the stretch of track, his face unreadable.
“Why does it matter what it was?” he asked.
“You brought your gun.”
“I brought it along to all the burglaries. You just didn’t see it.”
This was something that needed to be taken slowly and ceremoniously, like tending to the dead. I didn’t want to push him, so I allowed silence to find its place between us.
“Why do you care all of a sudden about what happened?” he asked after another moment. The way he said it told me it wasn’t an invitation to ask more questions. “I thought you just wanted to put the past behind you.”
“Raizel and I visited that man today. His name is Mr. Katz. He’s a boss down in Packingtown.”
Frankie’s face showed nothing. “Oh. I see.”
“I don’t know if he recognized me, but I think he might have something to do with the disappearances of some boys I know, and maybe even Yakov’s and Victor’s deaths.” I selected my words with the utmost care, afraid that if I said something wrong, it would be like opening a doorway. Anything might come out. “I just thought, if you happen to know anything...”
Something dark and primal welled in Frankie’s gaze. It was an emotion I didn’t quite have a name for, and it chilled me to the bone. All I could think about was a year ago, Frankie bringing his fists down again and again, until Mr. Katz’s blood dewed on his face and knuckles. And the pained, bared-tooth grimace on his face when he’d done it, like an animal mauling its own side.
“Alter, he was just some rich bastard,” Frankie said curtly. “Bastards like that, they don’t get their hands dirty muddling with immigrant boys.”
“Frankie, a worker was found dead at Katz’s factory. A boy younger than us. He’d been—”
“Listen to me, don’t you ever go see that man again, you hear? The last thing you want to do is get on some Stockyard boss’s bad side.”
The sharpness in his voice jarred me. I swallowed. “I won’t.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.” The promise felt weak even to me.
Frankie sighed, turning back to the track. He felt even further away than before. Untouchable.
“Last month, the American Derby was held here, did you know that?” I could tell from the strain in his voice he was eager to change the subject. He leaned over the railing, tapping his unlit cigar gently against his palm. “Thousands of people came to watch. Guess how much the horse won.”
I gave it some thought. “Three hundred.”
“Oy gevalt. What do you think this is? A cock fight at your county fair?”
“Five hundred?” That was slightly more than six months’ worth of wages for me.
Frankie laughed. “Higher.”
“A thousand?” I said, although I found it a little hard to believe that a horse could make in a two-minute race more than what I earned in a year.
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
I chuckled. “You mean five thousand, right?”
He said nothing.
“That...” Silently, I did the math. “That’s more than I’d make in fifty years. I’d be dead before then.”
“Welcome to the land of milk and honey.” Frankie turned his attention to the unlit cigar and looked around, presumably for a cutter, before resorting to biting off the tip and spitting it over the railing. So much for playing the part of a gentleman.
“If you intend to become that rich one day, you’ll need to learn how to cut a cigar,” I said. “Instead of, you know, mauling it.”
“Actually, I’m more interested in power than wealth.” Drawing a match from his silver vesta case, Frankie lit the cigar. He took a draw and grimaced. “Oy, this is atrocious. It tastes like a filthy ashtray.”
“Aren’t wealth and power the same thing?”
“They’re connected, but not the same. Power makes you untouchable. Wealth doesn’t.”
I gave it some thought. “But
wealth gives you power.”
“And yet when there’s a pogrom, the rich Jew is butchered alongside the poor one.”
“So, what you’re saying is that you intend to convert,” I said sarcastically.
“I’d sooner kill myself.” He sampled the cigar again, this time managing to hold the smoke in for a moment longer before starting to cough. “Ugh, this is worse than opium.”
I turned to him, aghast. “You’re smoking opium now?”
“Just once. I thought it might help...” He shrugged, looking a bit sheepish. “You know, how I have a hard time sleeping sometimes. I thought it might help with that.”
I did. More than once, I had woken to find his cot empty and the skylight window hoisted up. He would spend hours up there on the rooftop, watching the Levee District’s inhabitants begin their drunken, violent stumble toward dawn.
“I didn’t like how it made me feel, so I haven’t tried it since.” He held out the cigar. “Here.”
I took it from him. It was strangely thrilling knowing that he’d propped the cigar in his lips mere moments before. His own saliva dampened the tip.
The smoke filled my mouth, warm and dry, with a taste like burnt maple. I rolled it over my tongue, savoring it.
“Atrocious, right?” Frankie said.
“Not really. It has a nice flavor.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Since when did you become a connoisseur of fine cigars?”
“Not me. Yakov.”
A gunshot rang out.
I flinched, lowering the cigar. “Did you hear that?”
“Relax. It’s just to show the race is starting.”
Down below, the racehorses burst from the gate, like inkblots in the glow of the setting sun. We were too far away to hear their hoofbeats, but as they surged down the track, I thought I could feel the resounding force resonating through my bones.
A mild sense of disquiet passed over me. I took another puff of the cigar, hoping it would calm me the way the cigarette at Meir’s had done. On the second drag, the flavor changed subtly, turning bitter. Coughing, I rested the cigar on the ashtray provided for guests.
When I turned back to Frankie, his smile had slipped from his lips. Confusion darkened his gaze. “Alter, what are you doing?”
Only as he spoke did I become aware of the smooth curve of glass beneath my fingers. I looked down. The ashtray was clutched in my hand. I told myself to let go, and my arm jerked up as though it meant to obey, except my fingers were still clenched tightly around the ashtray’s edge. I slammed it against the railing hard enough that I took a chunk out of the wooden trim.
The glass bowl shattered along the circular depression in its middle, leaving me with a jagged sickle of a shard. It wasn’t long, scarcely extending past the edge of my hand, but it was sharp. It would serve its purpose.
Nonsensical words swirled through my head: Dolzhni ubit. Dolzhni ubit. Dolzhni ubit.
I sensed it meant something a lot like zolst im derhargenen.
You must kill him.
I stepped toward the door leading into the inner chambers.
“Alter, stop.” Frankie seized my wrist. I yanked away, but he grabbed me once more and wheeled me around to face him. “Let go of that now. You’re bleeding.”
The uproar of hoofbeats filled my ears, deafening, like the crash of waves against a steamship’s hull. My fingers felt numb and inflexible, frozen around the shard as though my skin was just a glove for the dybbuk.
My trembling lips shaped around a word; it left my mouth in a stuttering whimper: “Kat-kat-katorz—”
“Katz?” Frankie asked, his features darkening.
This terror that seized my lungs in a stranglehold was the only answer. It had to be him. “Here.”
Frankie looked around us. “Is he here?”
“I—I—” Choking on the stench of smoke and soiled sawdust, I tried to break away from Frankie. He only gripped me tighter, closing his fingers around the hand that held the ashtray. I wanted to weep, but all that left my lips were the desperate groans of a hunted animal.
He placed his other hand upon my cheek, holding my face steady. “Tell me what you see, Alter.”
“It’s dark,” I heard myself say in a voice that was no longer my own. “It’s so dark.”
“What do you hear?”
“Hoofbeats. Laughter.” I searched over his shoulder for the source of the noises. By now, the horses were completing the final leg of their lap, far enough away that they were just specks. The nearby club members conspired in muted whispers. “Gunfire or fireworks.”
Frankie’s fingers ground into my knuckles. Slick warmth filled my palm. I couldn’t tell whether it was his blood or my own. The throbbing burn in my throat displaced all other pain.
“Alter, instead of the fireworks, I want you to listen to the music,” Frankie said. “Don’t you hear it? It’s coming from the dining room upstairs.”
Only when he mentioned it did I become aware of the piano music trickling from the second-floor windows.
My shoulders slowly loosened. I managed to find my voice, weak and trembling, but blissfully my own. “Piano.”
“That’s right. And look at that sunset. Isn’t it stunning?” With his fingers still locked around my hand, he turned to the railing. My body followed.
The sky was a tapestry of gold and crimson, fringed by the deepest indigo to the east. It wasn’t dark at all.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“Yes. The air is so clean over here, you can see it perfectly. Now, focus on your breathing like Meir told you.” Frankie took deep breaths, as though he meant to guide me by example. I tried to follow him, drawing in air when he did, exhaling in turn. We fell into perfect unison. Slowly, the crushing weight on my lungs lifted. If he could breathe steadily, that meant there was no smoke.
“Alter, there are people staring at us, and any minute now, the track guards are going to come over.” Lowering his voice to a murmur, Frankie searched my eyes. “And they might be violent. And someone might get hurt. Unless you drop that ashtray now.”
“I—I can’t.”
“You need to.”
“I can’t.”
“Alter, I’m not ready to lose you a second time. Please. Come back to me.”
My fingers went slack. The broken ashtray cracked on the floor of the veranda, streaked with blood. Frankie lightly kicked it across the porch. It came to a rest by the group of gentlemen nearby who were watching us with appalled expressions. Even Mr. Whitby and Gregory had joined the crowd. Had they seen the entire thing?
“Good. I knew you could do it.” A ghost of a smile passed over Frankie’s lips. “Now, let’s get you home.”
30
By the time we made it back to Maxwell Street, night had fallen. Twice, I thought I heard footsteps or gunfire, but I knew it was only the dybbuk now. The streets looked unfamiliar in the dark, as though I was seeing the buildings from a different angle for the first time. Grimy brick tenements shifted in the corner of my eye, acquiring decorative statues and rococo stuccowork—the adornments of a European city. Varshe, perhaps, or Paris, or Rome. Yakov had been well traveled.
At first, the changing cityscape frightened me, but after the first several blocks, I looked at the buildings in dazed awe. Yakov must have once admired these places. Had he eaten at this Parisian café once? Had he read a book by this fountain?
Between the chevra kadisha and the unfinished shul, an expanse of sunflowers greeted me. Even at night, the petals were spread like grasping fingers.
A hand closed around my shoulder. “Alter?”
I glanced at Frankie. “Mmm?”
He studied me carefully. “What are you looking at?”
“Oh, it’s...” I turned back ahead. In the blink of an eye, the sunflowers had receded into the earth. A
raw dirt alley confronted me, heaped with stacks of slates and wooden boards like grave cairns. “It’s nothing.”
I could tell by his face he was worried. Scared, even.
We parted ways at my tenement. As I opened the door, I heard Frankie’s footsteps stop and looked over my shoulder.
He stood on the sidewalk, his back to me. But he must have sensed me hesitate, because he said, “Alter, about that man you were talking about, you say a boy was found at his slaughterhouse?”
“Yes.”
“How old was he?”
“Fourteen or fifteen,” I said.
“I see.” His voice turned cold and flat. “I guess that’s what you get for honest work these days.”
Frankie walked off. Feeling vaguely queasy, I watched him until he reached the next block, then entered my tenement. I encountered no one on my walk to the third floor. For the first time in a long time, the building was blissfully silent.
While fighting with the stubborn lock, I heard hinges creak behind me. I turned with a sinking heart. Mrs. Brenner stood in her doorway, gripping onto the frame with white-knuckled fingers.
“Oh, Alter.” Distress welled in her gaze. “My poor boy. Look at you.”
Afraid to hear the rest, I fled into my room and locked the door. She knocked, and I sank against it, sliding to the floor.
“Alter,” Mrs. Brenner pleaded from the other side of the door. “Let me in.”
Underneath my feet, a grit of black soil spread across the floorboards, creeping from the darkness under the empty cots.
I pinched my arm viciously, but the soil only spread. Bit my palm. Dug my teeth in. Sunflowers began to sprout between the beds in savage green tangles. Why wouldn’t it stop?
“Please, open the door.”
“Go away. Just go away.” The words left my mouth in a desperate sob. Mrs. Brenner kept knocking, and I slammed my palm against the door to drown her out, matching her rhythm. The downstairs neighbors must have thought us both deranged.
She stopped, so I did, too.
“It’s no longer just smoke that surrounds you, Alter,” she murmured, sounding so close that I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d gotten down on her knees and had her lips mere centimeters from the panel. “It’s fire.”
The City Beautiful Page 21