Finn laid a consoling hand on Solly’s shoulder. “I should never have done business with a Hagmann in the first place,” he said. “It’s my fault for thinking I could outwit this day. But here it is anyway. At least I know exactly what I need to do to get the best of Chester Hagmann.”
“What?” Solly said. “I’ll help!”
“You can start by taking the same oath against the Hagmanns that I did,” Finn said. He pulled a gold band off his finger—two hands clasping a crowned heart—and slipped it onto Solly’s. “Swear by this ring. It binds one Irishman to another by the heart of love, the hands of friendship, and the crown of loyalty. My brother Paddy gave me this one on my thirteenth birthday.”
“But I’m Jewish!” Solly said. “I’m not allowed to swear by false idols or symbols.”
“Just promise,” Finn said. “One day you’ll understand why.”
Solly promised he would never let a Hagmann own No. 13—the least he could do for having just ruined Finn’s life.
“Good lad,” Finn said. “Now you’re assured the luck of the Irish. This very ring saved Paddy from a different Wallace and foiled a different Hagmann.”
And he launched into the tale of how.
Solly interrupted. “Sorry, but what are we going to do to get the best of Chester Hagmann? We only have until the end of the day.”
Finn told him to listen very carefully. He should go straight to the giant oak in the center of Hangmen Court. He should circle the base of its trunk until he spied a hollow formed by its gnarled roots. Tucked into that hollow he would find a wrought-iron door knocker bearing the same symbol as the ring he was now wearing. He should rehang the knocker on the door of No. 13, in its original holes. Any neighborhood cop or fireman—they were all Irishmen in Boston—who saw the knocker would think an Irish family still lived there, and would do his best to protect the house from harm.
“Harm? What kind of harm?” Solly said.
“Just hang that knocker and everything should be fine,” Finn said. “Then wait up in your room. Neither you nor your mam should answer the door for anyone.”
“Until when?” Solly said. “Until I hear from you?”
“That may take a while,” Finn said.
“What about Tu B’Shevat?” Solly said. “The ceremony is at sunset.”
Finn tugged at one of Solly’s curls. “With any luck, you’ll still get to plant that tree,” he said. He checked his pocket watch. “I’d better go. I don’t have much time.”
“For what?”
“Trust me,” Finn said. “You’ll know soon enough.” He escorted Solly to the door. He shook his hand and wished him mazel tov! on his birthday. He strode down Charter Street without looking back.
Solly glanced at the upper right-hand corner of the doorpost. He had already found the knocker. He’d dusted it off. He’d fitted it into its original holes in the door—ones he’d never really noticed before—so it looked as though an Irish family lived at No. 13.
Except for the mezuzah in the upper-right corner.
Should he take it down? Did he dare?
He knew from his bar mitzvah studies that moving a mezuzah was against Talmudic law. The whole point was to proclaim that Jews lived within who believed in the one true God. The mezuzah case was inscribed with the Hebrew letter shin, the first letter of the Shema Yisrael prayer. Hear O Israel…
Trust me. That’s what Finn had said.
Solly pried the mezuzah out of the rotting wood with his penknife. He opened the case. He pulled out the prayer scroll inside it and tucked it into his pocket, knowing the mezuzah was now deconsecrated. At least this way, whatever happened, he would be carrying his faith with him wherever he went. Out of his back pocket he dug the handful of sugar he’d taken from the bowl in the kitchen. He placed a pinch inside the case instead, and chanted a Hebrew prayer for protection against his foes, one Mameh had taught him from the Old Country: In the name of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob … He repeated this eight more times. He slipped Finn’s ring off his finger. He couldn’t possibly wear it to the tree planting. Instead, he placed it in the case for safekeeping. Now it was a supersugared mezuzah-Irish-good-luck-charm double whammy. He looked for a place to hide it near the front door. He spied a loose brick where the stoop joined the building. He scraped at the crumbling mortar with the knife until he could pull the brick away. He shoved the case into the cavity, then chipped off the back of the brick so there would be room to slide it into place.
He headed up to his room in the attic.
Now he must wait to hear from Finn. He decided to change into his best suit, just in case he got to go to the tree planting. Prayer scroll. He took the scroll out of his other pants pocket—God forbid Mameh should wash it with the weekly laundry!—and looked around for a place to keep it. On the spiral. Now. When he set it on the slab of slate, he got a faint static shock, heard the echo of a boy’s voice. This could take ages.
He turned to discover two strange boys sitting on the floor, watching him.
What a terrible, awful shanda he’d made of his thirteenth birthday.
ow, did you hear that?” Angelo said to Tony. “Not only have the Hagmanns been after this place for generations, but they think it rightfully belongs to them, and they’re not above a little double-crossing to get it back.”
“Like, say, accusing my dad of forcing you to sign Number Thirteen over to me,” Tony said. “But now I’m wondering something else.”
“What?” Angelo said.
“If it was Benedict Hagmann himself who murdered you, then framed the dirty deed on Dad.”
“Murder?” Solly said.
Tony filled him in on Hagmann’s allegations against Michael.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Angelo said. “If it’s true that Number Thirteen once belonged to the Hagmanns, why would Finn make a pact with friends not to let them get it back?”
“Not only that, but Finn made Solly swear the same thing on his ring,” Tony pointed out.
“Who then asked Mama to make the exact same promise at my birthday dinner,” Angelo added.
They both turned to Solly.
“Finn didn’t say why he made the pact,” Solly said. “He just said I’d understand one day. He wouldn’t even tell me how he planned to get the best of Chester Hagmann.”
The house suddenly rumbled and shuddered. Tony and Solly ducked for cover.
“What’s wrong?” Angelo said. Obviously, he hadn’t felt a thing.
“I think we’re having an earthquake,” Tony said. He grabbed his cell phone and scrambled to his feet.
“In Boston?” Angelo said.
“It sounded more like an explosion,” Solly said, jumping up as well.
Solly and Tony dashed out the bedroom door. All Angelo could do was sit tight till they got back. Both boys had vanished into their own times as soon as they reached the stairwell.
At garden level, Tony peered out the door of the mother-in-law room. Whoa, the back deck was no longer there! Nor was any of the furniture Julia and the twins had moved onto it. He spied the three of them on the weedy patio below, toeing the rubble of rotted timber, smashed chairs, and broken glass.
“What happened?” Tony said.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Julia said.
“Mikey and me were on that deck a minute before it went,” Angey said.
“Good thing you were at the lawyer’s, Two-Ton,” Mikey said, “and not on the deck with us. We’d be goners, for sure.”
“Better get down here,” Julia said.
“How?” Tony said. “The stairs fell with the deck.”
“Through the basement,” Julia said.
“Basement?” Tony said. “I thought garden level was the basement.” So there was another floor below the street.
“Look behind the door at the bottom of the staircase,” Julia said.
Tony took a rickety old staircase down to a dank cellar. The place was coated in dust and festooned with cobwebs. There
were definitely rats down there. No wonder Michael had left this level off his welcome tour.
Gingerly, Tony made his way past stacks of faded Christmas decorations, filing cabinets spilling over with paperwork, a gigantic furnace, and a workbench covered with rusty tools. Finally he reached the welcome shaft of light streaming through an open bulkhead door.
“Where’s Dad?” Mikey said as soon as Tony had climbed the steps and joined them on the patio.
“He, uh, went to look at beds,” Tony said. “For my room.”
“Maybe you better call him,” Angey said to Julia.
Julia burst into tears. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take!” she wailed. “I knew moving here was a terrible idea. I just knew it! Why did I ever let your father talk me into it?” She rushed into the house, sobbing.
“Wow,” Angey said. “She never cries.”
“This is all your fault,” Mikey said to Tony.
“How is this my fault?” Tony said.
“If you hadn’t sucked up so much to Zio Angelo at Thanksgiving,” Mikey said, “he would never have left you this death trap. We would all still be living in some nice rental in Ann Arbor. Me and Angey would be training for freshman soccer. And you’d be out of our hair at some fat camp on the Upper Peninsula.”
Tony bit his lower lip. Secretly, he sort of agreed: Life would be a heck of a lot easier in Ann Arbor. Plus Mikey didn’t even know the half of what was going on. “How about we clean up this mess?” Tony said. “Getting into a fight right now is definitely not going to do much for Mom’s stress level.”
“He’s right,” Angey said to Mikey.
Mikey stared at Angey in disbelief. But as soon as Angey began stacking rotted timbers, Mikey pitched in by piling broken bricks. Meanwhile, Tony tried to puzzle together which arms and legs went with which chairs. A moment later, his cell phone cuckooed with a message. Who could that be? Julia was upstairs bawling her eyes out, and Michael was still being interrogated by the police. He checked the display screen. New Message from: Pickles. He called up the actual text: Update. Stop by shop.
“Who’s that?” Mikey said. “You don’t have any friends.”
“Wrong number,” Tony said, stowing the phone.
That was when Julia wandered back out, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. Tony gave her a hug; she definitely looked like she could use one. “Pity party’s over,” she said. “Thanks for holding it together, you guys.”
“Did you call Dad about the porch?” Angey asked.
“He must be out of satellite range,” Julia said. Placing her hands on her hips, she peered up to where the deck used to be. “That’s not going to be cheap,” she said.
“Maybe we could rebuild it ourselves,” Mikey said.
“We made that tree house with Pablo and his dad last summer,” Angey reminded her. “And it came out great.”
“Appreciate the handyman spirit,” Julia said. “But this definitely looks like a job for a professional. The problem is finding one. We don’t even have a copy of the Yellow Pages yet.”
Tony knew very well they could now look up handymen online. But he took full advantage of the fact his mom was blanking on the cable guy’s visit by telling her about the hardware store over on Hanover Street. The corner hardware back in Ann Arbor had a bulletin board at checkout with the business cards of all the local carpenters and plumbers—remember? Maybe this one did too. He’d be happy to run over and check.
“You’re just trying to weasel out of more work,” Mikey said.
Actually, I’m trying to get to Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
“Couldn’t hurt,” Julia said. “Besides, we need a tarp or something to cover up the holes where the deck separated from the wall. It looks like it might rain.”
“We’ll go,” Mikey said.
“We haven’t had a break all day,” Angey said.
“But you don’t even know where it is,” Tony said.
Julia suggested all three of them go. Her heart had definitely gone out of sanding the floors of her new studio. About all she could manage right now, while she waited for their father to get home, was a long hot bath.
Crap! Now how am I going to get that update?
“I’m still on the cell,” Tony reminded Julia. “You know, just in case—”
“In case what?” Julia said. “A miracle happens?”
Tony totally ditched Mikey and Angey at the hardware store. As soon as the twins had plucked a few business cards off the handyman bulletin board, he suggested they grab a tarp and some bungee cords in Building Supplies while he priced rat traps for the cellar over in Pest Control. But he immediately looped back up Plumbing and ducked outside. Served them right. They were always ditching him.
Crap! The front door of Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe was locked, the CLOSED blind drawn, the purple awning rolled up. Tony checked his watch. Just past six. He peered into the darkened display window, just in case Sarah was waiting for him behind the counter. All he could see, though, was his own reflection. Did his face look thinner? Maybe a little thinner.
An odd plink on the sidewalk behind him.
An old-fashioned key on a purple ribbon. Tony looked up. No one was there, but a second-story window was open. He tried the key in the door. It worked! He let himself inside. Empty. But a book was lying open on the slate counter. He took a peek at the front cover: Balthazar’s Comprehensive Guide to Historic Boston. He scanned the page Sarah must have been reading. Sights of Interest in the North End. His eye caught a paragraph subtitled “Hangmen Court”:
Possibly the North End’s most notorious Colonial address. In Puritan times, the magnificent oak in its courtyard was used to hang horse thieves, murderers, and witches. When the original homestead burned to the ground, a labyrinth of taverns and inns sprang up around the tree to cater to spectators, making Hangmen Court the preferred lair for pirates and smugglers. These were razed in the mid-18th century and replaced with brick town houses. In the 19th and 20th centuries the court served variously as a tenement district for fugitive slaves, Irish clans, persecuted Jews, Italian immigrants—
The wall of books opened. It wasn’t Sarah who emerged from behind it. It was a woman Julia’s age. But that was where the similarity ended. Julia looked like a regular TV mom, whereas this woman looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be a punk rocker for Halloween or an evil witch. She was dressed in a purple-and-black plaid miniskirt, black army boots, black stockings, black T-shirt with a purple peace sign, and black leather jacket. And her hair, which was severely bobbed with razor-straight bangs, was dyed so black it looked, well, purple. Plus she was eating a grape Popsicle.
“You must be Tony,” she said. “I’m Mildred Pickles.”
“Proprietress,” Tony stammered.
“I see you got my text,” she said.
“Your text?” Tony replied. “Where’s Sarah?”
“She had to leave for her shift at work,” Mildred said. “But I’m totally up to speed: You’ve got a hot pawcorance over at Thirteen Hangmen Court that conjured your dead uncle Angelo. You need a nine to fire the thing up, but you have to be thirteen to use it. No grown-ups allowed. You’re wondering why the old dude next door—Hagmann—is jonesing for the house so bad.”
That was pretty much it, in a nutshell. Tony decided to trust her.
“I think Hagmann might even have killed Angelo to get his hands on the place,” he said. “He got my dad hauled down to the station on a bunch of trumped-up murder charges, but I’m pretty sure it was to cover his own tracks. This other kid I conjured, Solly, says the Hagmann family has been after Number Thirteen for generations.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Mildred said. “They’ve certainly been involved in some pretty sketchy behavior for generations—thirteen, to be exact. But not always under the name Hagmann.”
“You lost me,” Tony said.
“It doesn’t strike you as odd?” Mildred said, tapping the page Tony had just read in Balthazar’s. “The simila
rity, I mean, between Hagmann and hangman?” She reached under the counter and pulled out another book. Payne’s Compendium of the First Families of Boston. “I did a little down-and-dirty genealogy this afternoon, when I got back from Wiccan practice. Turns out, the Hagmann family of Boston only traces back to the mid-1700s, having moved to the North End from Worcester. Before that, there’s no trace of the name. There was, however, another family living in the North End called Hangman, dating all the way back to the first Puritans to settle Boston. Three guesses where they lived and what the family business was.”
“You mean the Hagmanns were literally hangmen?” Tony said. “Like with hoods and nooses?”
“Coincidence? I don’t think so,” Mildred said.
She filled Tony in on what she had learned from Payne’s Compendium just before her Popsicle break: The very first hangman of Boston didn’t even have a last name when he set foot on American soil. He was just some orphaned street urchin named Abel, indentured to John Winthrop. (Winthrop was, of course, leader of the group of Puritans who established the settlement of St. Botolph’s Town—soon to be shortened to Boston—on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630.) One of Winthrop’s first orders of business was to get Abel, along with every other able-bodied male, to start clearing land for the Massachusetts Bay Company. This work crew met with very little resistance from the local Massachusets, mainly because eighty percent of them had died from the smallpox Myles Standish had given them a decade earlier—including their sachem, Chickatawbut. In fact, one of Winthrop’s first acts as governor was to condemn Obbatinewat, Chickatawbut’s son, for practicing heathen rituals on what was now Christian land. As the colony didn’t yet have a professional hangman, Winthrop had Abel perform the gruesome task using the oak in front of a curious stone altar. The rest of the heathens were duly banished from the peninsula, and Winthrop awarded the land around the altar to his second-in-command, Jebediah Pickles.
That’s right, Pickles.
Fast forward to 1639. Jebediah’s oldest daughter, Mildred, was accused of witchcraft because she was visited by “demons” on her thirteenth birthday. Winthrop instructed Abel Hangman—as he was now known—to string Mildred up from the oak in her own front yard. Though Mildred and her family managed to escape to Salem, Abel identified the midwife, Margaret Jones, as a member of Mildred’s evil coven. She was properly tried and hanged for sorcery, and Abel was rewarded with the now-vacated Pickles home for his service to the community.
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