Evan began his presentation a few dozen plates at a time, laying them out on the flipped pages of Shelly’s construction plans. The plates jumped to life on the table with the white paper underneath them. The reaction was sudden, and exclamatory, the Reismans knew the value of the collection, long before the first dozen were shoved aside for the next. They sat for two hours and reviewed the people, and the sights of the city, and Shelly would get more excited each time she was first to recognize an iconic image. Menashe Reisman was indeed the photographer of renown in his prime. He brought the place to life, and the world viewed the city through his lens almost more than any other.
Here sat a youthful Carl Sandburg in the same room; Charlotte Bond in a series of four images, two which no one had ever seen. There were images of a dozen New York City mayors: Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt, when they were Governors of the state. And James Reese Europe, in 1918, a year before he died. The gift of Papa’s archives was immense.
There were fifteen images of the dedication ceremony for the Statue of Liberty in 1886, when Menashe was barely older than Yousep had been. And one set of images alone stirred Shelly’s father to tears. The original plates of the very first images of the city, taken from the crown of Lady Liberty, by Papa. This archive was never really known to be hidden. It would spawn a small industry within days, as curators and collectors alike queued for blocks, to view and perhaps hold the treasures.
When he brought no more images before them to view and enjoy, they looked to him for more. This was more excitement than they expected of the old place. But when Evan laid a stack of sixty-three municipals bonds of the City of New York in their hands, Shelly’s father could not sit, and nearly upended everyone in his jump of surprise. Papa had taken all his rents, and bought bonds, for his children. He was not particular, some of them were already matured, many were coming due, and several were hundred year bonds, which would still gather interest for twenty years. But they were huge denominations for the time, five hundred dollars for most and a thousand dollars for quite a few.
The face values were a tidy sum, but the interests surely pushed the value to over a half million dollars, a small fortune. Evan sat back and watched the family erupt. If Shelly had taken him naked in the middle of the floor, she might be just a bit more excited, but not much.
Sareta placed a call to her friends at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, just a few blocks away, and asked the director if she would like to walk down to the Reisman Building to see the contents of the family time capsule, hidden in 1919. She summoned a crowd of people to the front of the shop within minutes. While she apologized she could not show the renovation being done in the front, she invited them all to the studio. That enough was worth the trip.
The public was kept out of the building for over seventy years, and they were in awe of the condition of the room. Every item in it, was original to the era; only the phone and Shelly’s coffee pot seemed out of place. Shelly’s parents left all the visitors and walked with her into the front, to see the kitchen. She grudgingly agreed to show them, though she vowed no family member would be allowed in before the opening evening, and even Sareta honored her request. But this was a special day. They were about to witness the birth of a new Reisman legend, and Sareta was midwife, with Evan at her elbow.
Evan was introduced to the museum staff as the family archive investigator. They might have heard, he found the first clues leading to the recovery of the murdered children across the street. Suddenly Evan was the center of attention. They recognized him, but only in a glancing way, some of the guests were not quite sure they saw him on the news. Sareta allowed him to reveal the photographic plates and Shelly laughed with her parents at the shouts and cries as the treasures were revealed. Sareta promised, they would be allowed to select twenty plates for their collections, and the remainder would be donated out to the other various museums and a few to the national archives. She guaranteed the family an avalanche of publicity within hours. She would not have to lift another finger.
Evan was asked to build a catalog of the plates, in the spare time Shelly granted him from her tasks and personal needs. He was also asked to have Dannie scan every plate so a computer file would be safe kept. Many would be reproduced in facsimile so they could appear in multiple locations; it was certain the Liberty plates would need to be copied many, many times. And so, Evan became the official curator of the Reisman Family Archives, which Sareta promised to found and fund within the week. He was stunned. The party with the guests lasted another three hours. Evening was falling, and the day was wonderfully done. The guests were as animated and excited leaving, as they were walking in. Not a word was mentioned of the family ghosts. They needed a triumph. Papa provided it, and thankfully kept his peace
For Shelly, Evan’s celebrity was an inconvenience. Now he was constantly underfoot in the studio. He was on the phone nearly as much as she was, and he dealt with reporters, none of which were allowed into even the alleyways. They did all their reporting from under the newly painted sign and papered window out front on the walk. Evan was also invited to various functions within the city’s museum community, so the curators and restoration experts could be tantalized with glimpses of the fortune in original plates.
The newspapers were agog, with the sudden turnaround in the troubled Reisman family status, and it was in this vile arena, the rumors of more bodies still lurking would surface, and dog the family until the opening night. But not even the press would hinder the opening now. The interest in the shop grew such, there seemed to be a crowd gathered near the front of the shop, nearly every day. The unfortunate folk most hounded by the press, were the workmen coming and going, or making any type of delivery. But Reisman law was upheld, there would be termination of the contract with any company whose worker was found to divulge any secrets about their work in the building.
The press seemed determined, but was tiring of the fruitless efforts, and was showing signs they simply wanted to wait the next few weeks to see what would finally be unveiled. The most frustrating group of sightseers who might gather in the front, were exactly that, tourists, who wandered from the Tenement Museum a few blocks away. They were constantly being directed to have a walk down to the most haunted building in the Lower East Side.
Evan was called back to the police labs and Shelly was having her brace of trees planted in the very back of the property. She was discussing other gardening with her landscaper, when a group of nearly a dozen tourists simply began to file into the back through the alleyway, and a few were already at the back stair. She was rushing to get close enough to warn them off the property when a young girl, about sixteen, became agitated on the small porch.
She was startled by something in the studio window, as she turned to go up those stairs, and whatever it was…it shook her up a great deal. When Shelly finally got into the midst of the group, and was beginning to shoo people off the steps, the young girl fainted. Her father had been with her, and was following Shelly up the steps to get to his daughter, when another young woman screamed at something apparently watching from the window. Shelly suddenly lost control over the group, and talk that became of the incident.
The Reisman Portraits was as haunted as they ever claimed and the groups of milling tourists only got worse. Shelly was forced to fence the alleyways, something she never intended to do, but Evan reminded her, the crush of publicity, which brought the walk-in pests, was going to make the opening night a smash, and it would be better to lose the alley access than to have someone hurt.
They did not discuss it, but it was ominous news; something terrifying could sometimes be seen in one of the windows. Such a thing had never happened before in the life of the whole building legend. Evan decided to keep a very close watch on Shelly. He did not want a repeat of the nighttime visit she made before Caraliza vanished, and it seemed something up those stairs might have been watching her, while she was out in the back. Evan had a great deal to worry about. The opening was only two
weeks away.
Forty of the hidden family images were unknown to the public. The subjects ranged from quaint street scenes all over town, to one image, which surely must have been one of the very first taken in the Lower East side, of the shop street. The Reisman Portraits building looked lovely as ever, but the overpowering building, which stole the morning sunlight, was not there. Buildings that once stood there were a smoldering ruin.
The building that was overlooking the windows, was shorter, and took less of the sun, than what stood in its place now. So the first building had not doomed the studios to complete darkness, but the next one would. It seemed a miracle to see the undamaged shop right next to the ruined buildings. The plate was undated but it struck Evan as so terribly interesting he decided to visit the Times archives again, to see anything that might have been written.
“Hey, aren’t you the guy who helped find those bodies on the Lower East Side a while back?”
Evan was surprised to be noticed at all in the archives. But there stood one of the kids who helped him with many earlier searches for stories about the missing children.
“Yeah, I’m the unlucky guy who got that right. That was unpleasant.”
“Whatcha looking for now? The police archives helped?”
“Yup, they were the key to what we needed. But now I’m looking into a slum fire, sometime after 1889, maybe about five years or so.”
“You just don’t get this archive stuff very naturally do you?” the kid asked, and embarrassed him. “There’s a lot less to look for if you go to the firefighter’s museum, or their archives. Why you come to the largest dump first, I guess you just like wasting time.”
And the kid walked off. Crime; go to the police. Fire; go to the firemen. Evan thought he might have learned his lesson now. But, why was he overlooking the Tenement Museum as well? They were a ready source and he just forgot to ever walk down there to look around. But, naturally, his family history did not take place in the slums, or the lower east side at all. He just was not part of that history. He sure needed to change that, it seemed.
The two sweetest little ladies at the Museum recognized him, from the party at the Reisman, the few weeks before. They welcomed him like one of their largest benefactors. And within minutes he found more information about the great fire than he thought possible, just a five-minute walk from where it had actually taken place. Evan was feeling embarrassed again. When he told them he was investigating a plate, with an image of the damage, one of them pulled out a book which showed the photograph, right there on one of the pages for him to see.
The one print they knew, had been at the firefighters archives when they used it for the book. The idea the original plate survived, made them giggle with excitement. The year of the fire was 1894; it occurred in September, the book caption dated the image as the very day after the fire. He’d found what he wanted, it was a deadly fire and it helped generate the need for a story. At least twenty-two souls perished in the inferno on the street. It happened five years after Papa acquired the family building, but, Evan noticed, just before Papa became owner of the other two properties on his shop street.
The timing of the fire and the purchase of two slum dwellings seemed so very odd to Evan, he decided to begin looking into the papers of that year and the one after, very carefully. It was going to take a terrible amount of time, but he felt there was a connection the family would like to know, and it would give him a reason to stay away from Dannie as much as possible, she was having too much fun, causing him grief, while she assisted with his new catalog of the images. And then he heard the golden words, which opened that other mystery for him,
“Oh, remember all the hubbub about the lot sales after this fire? It made papers for a month. What was that, just a year later?” one of the ladies read it in some obscure history about the area, but she could not remember where. But she told Evan, at least two owners in the street tried to buy up the damaged lots, so they could be cleared and rebuilt.
But the story was more about the claims of swindle, and fraud, committed by the sellers. Just more tragedy, no insurance on the overcrowded dwellings, no funds for the victims and their families, just meager donations from the already depressed community. She just could not remember where she saw the information.
Evan was elated. He had hoped to hear that sort of thing. Now it was only necessary to check the dates on the deeds Papa signed and return to the Times archives. It took him three trips to finally get to the first hint of the story. After a few articles that dwelt mostly on the lack of insurance funds to rebuild the damaged buildings, he found one explaining the hounded owners of the damaged buildings would sell the properties, rather than do anything with them. And right in the middle of the entire sale event, was Papa Reisman. He owned the miracle building which survived, with hardly even smoke damage. The place even kept its windows while the building next to it collapsed. Papa was trying to get help, from some of his elite clients, to raise funds and get at least two of the lots. The article said nothing about which lots he wanted exactly.
Three months of old newsprint, page after blurry page, and Evan found his next clue. Nearly all the destroyed lots were sold, but not the two next to the now famous, unburned, Reisman Portraits. Those were being fought over by a few very angry buyers. But nothing at all specific. Another month of pages to read as quickly as possible, and the last clue fell into place. Mentioned only as M. Reisman, Papa was a winning buyer for the last two lots; but he was complaining foul deeds and fraud on the sellers. Two people bought the same lots, according to the charges, but one of the buyers was handed a deed for other properties and the sale was complete when the deeds were signed. The owners bolted, they were being sought in Philadelphia, where their offices were located, but those were found emptied as well. They took the monies paid for their burned out lots, and skipped off, leaving one of the buyers holding a building he never wanted. That was the extent of the story.
A week after this report, Evan found another item about two other buyers complaining they were given crossed deeds to sign at the purchase, and they were making complaints against the now invisible sellers. But they could solve their problem, they were happy to sell to each other, for only the legal fees to make the sale. Evan knew, the other cheated buyer, could never get relief from the error made against his good-faith payment.
Papa Reisman must have been the poor man, who was sold the property across the street, and someone else was given the claim to the next-door lots, and the monster tenement, which now ate all the morning light from the studio, was built in place of the burned out hulks. Papa wanted to return his light, and had been swindled with a deed for the building across the street. It must have been his second step to madness. The first was the loss of the light. Papa was consumed with the idea of winning those lots, and not building anything next to his shop. If he only applied his energy to finding a new shop, the family history might have been different.
Evan decided he knew as much as was needed to please the family and he took his photocopies back to the shop, to show all the information to Shelly. Driving back, he took time for an eerie side trip, to make two secret images with the Bryant Waterbury, which he hoped would put an end to someone’s torment in the Reisman Portraits. That task thankfully done, he was on his way back to the shop, his mind wandered over the shape of the family story.
Papa tried to prevent new construction when the offending building was destroyed, but was left with apartment slums, and tenants who called him landlord. He must have hated the money; so much, he could never use it. Evan thought it a bit poetic, that if Papa could not bring himself to use it, he must have had no qualms his family should have it, and he began to purchase the bonds, to put the money to use, never for himself. Why the family was never told, or why at least it never left his children’s lips, Evan could not understand. That would be for the family to work out on their own. There would be no newsprint about that secret. Evan felt the first truly satisfied feeling about what h
e discovered. It did not lead off to other secrets; it was nicely complete. If the opening of The Studio went so well, Evan could finally relax and stop worrying about the ghosts. Just stay away from the one who murdered people, and ignore the other who screamed a lot of gibberish at people about keys.
Evan’s mind squeezed so tightly onto the word…keys…he nearly parked his car into the trunk of the cab ahead of him, when it stopped for their red light. His car died from the exertion of stripping its tires to stop before they collided. He was so focused on the word keys he ignored the cab driver shouting and waving his fingers at Evan for being so stupid. Keys. Evan knew for a fact, Shelly made a display of every key the place ever needed.
The rear door of the shop had modern deadbolt locks installed, but over the original lock, which was no longer ever used. Evan had an awful feeling of nausea when he wondered, if the shop keys might also work the locks of the offensive hole under the sidewalk across the street. The putrid taste rising in his throat was nearly enough to convince him. Papa owned the defiled building for years. He would have a set of keys. Evan did not want to investigate this.
He told himself to leave this utterly alone.
Caraliza Page 27