Moonshine (2010)

by Johnson, Alaya

  “And making it illegal will be just as effective and clever as Prohibition, I’m sure.”

  I sighed. “Well, we have to do something.”

  “That’s my Zephyr.”

  I longed to go back to sleep, but my mind had already filled with the thousand things I needed to do today. And my first order of business was to help Judah find his family. I could only imagine how they’d react to finding their son turned into a vampire, but it had to be better than staked and beheaded. And then I’d renew my efforts to find Rinaldo. If we couldn’t make Mayor Jimmy Walker listen (which I very much doubted), then perhaps this Faust problem was best traced to the source. I raised my arms above my head and stretched.

  “Bloody hell, what happened to your arm?”

  The sleeve of my nightgown had fallen down. I quickly tried to cover it up again, but Aileen already looked horrified. I recalled her terror the night before and cursed myself silently.

  “It’s nothing. The cat scratched me a little last night, that’s all.”

  “Was it rabid? Those look deep, Zeph.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry, it happened when I was carrying it outside.”

  “I didn’t hear you go down the stairs.”

  “I can be quiet when I want to.” Aileen just stared at me, as if she knew I was lying. “Anyway, I’ve got to go,” I said hastily. I practically ran out to take a bath, and when I returned Aileen was lying down on her bed. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t say anything to me when I said good-bye. Which was strange—Aileen usually didn’t ignore me, even when she was annoyed.

  As I bolted down the last of the congealed soup left on the stovetop (along with all six chocolate-covered strawberries Mama had given me), I wondered if she might actually be right about the Sight. It wasn’t impossible to come on in your twenties, after all. Maybe being Swayed by an old vampire had triggered it. And she’d been right about the cat, hadn’t she? She’d known some kind of Other was outside the door. I shuddered. I didn’t want to think about how difficult Aileen’s life would be from now on if she really were a seer. There was a reason that the street fortune-tellers cultivated that air of frenzied abstraction: real seers were always tormented, and sometimes driven insane, by their visions.

  No wonder Aileen was terrified. I’d have to help her. But after this mess with Amir and Rinaldo died down.

  I’d decided to start my search for Judah’s parents at Lafayette, in the hopes that at least someone in the nearby tenements had seen something. If that didn’t work out, I’d make my way down to South Ferry. It seemed the most likely nearby location for a boy to blow a ship’s horn with his mother.

  The tenement closest to the spot where I’d first discovered Judah was on Leonard Street, right by Benson Street. It looked like your average immigrant affair—an eight-story walk up of crumbling red brick and sooty limestone. The landlord had apparently started to install fire escapes, but lost interest around the fifth floor, where rusting steel bars hung forlornly over the impossibly steep drop to the street.

  I pulled my jacket tight and headed for the door covered in several garlands of garlic. Strange how the street was nearly deserted, except for passersby determinedly hunched against the wind. Where were the children? With the streets so white and icy on a Sunday morning, I should have been tripping over them. I put my gloved hand on the doorknob to see if it was open.

  “What’s your business?”

  The voice was female, and heavily accented. I jumped backward, nearly slipping on the ice. A woman rested quietly beside the door, deep within the shadows of its granite overhang. My eyes had grown so used to the early-morning snow glare that I had to squint to just make out her figure: surprisingly tiny for such a large voice, and old, though I knew that age could be hard to judge among immigrant women.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said. A sudden gust of wind sprayed snow against my exposed cheeks.

  “I don’t think today is a good day for moral instruction. Or is it proper hygiene? Or dietary advice? Or are you a Lutheran?”

  It was strange for someone to read me so clearly, and with such contempt. I generally imagined that the immigrant families were grateful for the Citizen’s Council’s efforts on their behalf, but clearly this wasn’t universally the case. I shrugged. “I’m Zephyr Hollis,” I said, holding out my hand. “There’s a boy who went missing around here, and I’m hoping someone can help me find his parents.”

  The woman—who looked Jewish and sounded Eastern European—kept her arms firmly crossed against her chest. She considered me for several uncomfortable seconds, until I gave up and stuffed my hand back in my pocket.

  “Who is the boy?”

  “His name is Judah. He’s about eleven, with red hair and freckles.”

  “Immigrant?”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t have much of an accent.”

  She considered. “His clothes, then?”

  I had a momentary flash of the small boy in Kardal’s opulent palace, in his brightly colored pantaloons and pointy shoes. But I needed to go back further. “Corduroy knickers and a brown wool suit jacket. Gray peacoat and one knitted blue mitten.”

  The woman shook her head. “Not one of ours. Clothes too fine. When did you find him?”

  “Thursday.”

  The door opened and another, younger woman stepped out into the cold. “Esther,” she said, “go back inside. I’ll take over for now.”

  Esther didn’t take her eyes from me as she pulled the rifle she’d kept concealed in her coat and handed it to the other woman.

  “Chavie, this lady is looking for the mother of a boy gone missing this Thursday. Did you hear anything?”

  Chavie hefted the rifle and sighted down the empty street. “Thursday? The boys told me something about some commotion on Catherine Lane. I didn’t hear about a kid, though.”

  “Th-thanks,” I said, hoping they’d attribute my stutter to the cold and knowing they wouldn’t. “If you don’t mind my asking, what—”

  Esther frowned, as though she dared me to finish the sentence. I swallowed, and said, “It’s Faust, isn’t it?”

  Chavie tightened her grip on the rifle. “That’s what they’re calling it? Pig’s blood. As if being a sucker wasn’t enough of an abomination.” She looked back out at the street. “There’s still a few out there. Hiding in the shadows.”

  Esther put a hand on her elbow. “One of the girls on the fifth floor was bit this morning,” she told me.

  Well, that explained the lack of children. “Be careful,” I said. I looked back at the rifle. I’m sure it made them feel safer, but still, I hated to see these things done improperly.

  “Those bullets . . .” I said, and paused. If they used silver bullets, what would happen to the vampires they hit? But then, what would happen to them when their mundane lead caused a sucker no more trouble than an insect bite? I held my peace and left quickly.

  Catherine Lane was a street of precisely one block, sandwiched between Leonard and Worth like a slice of pastrami. The solitary tenement was otherwise surrounded by ware houses and empty lots, so at least my search was quickly narrowed. I approached the door with a certain amount of trepidation, given my reception on Leonard Street. I didn’t want to get riddled with silver bullets for too closely resembling a twitchy vampire. But the doorway was deserted and the battered red oak doors were locked from the inside. I rattled them for a moment and then knocked loudly, but no one came. I couldn’t hear anything but the sound of my own breath against the cold. The snow muffled the sounds of traffic on Lafayette, so it seemed, for a moment, that I’d been transported out of the city entirely. I’d gotten used to the constant hum of noise in New York. This sort of deep, fearful silence seemed more appropriate to the haunted edges of Yarrow than one of the most populous urban centers on earth. Faust did this in one night?

  I cupped my hands over my mouth and called up. “Hey, is anyone there?”

  Silence. It felt a little silly to be yell
ing at a building, but if what ever had happened here last Thursday had anything to do with Judah, then I had to find out about it.

  I scuffled my feet in the snow and then began bouncing up and down to generate some warmth. Okay, try again. “I’m fully human, I promise. Zephyr Hollis. Maybe you’ve heard of me? I’m looking for information about a little boy.”

  I looked expectantly at the door. Well, damn, all I needed were some tumbleweeds blowing down the street. “This is really embarrassing,” I muttered. Maybe I could just wait on the block until someone left. They couldn’t stay in there forever.

  “Hey, you!”

  The door was still locked. I looked up and located the source of the voice: a second-floor window with crude graffiti above it. An old woman with iron curlers in her hair had pushed up her window and was leaning out into the street.

  “You’re that girl, right, the singing vampire suffragette?”

  Well, at least now my face was warm. I just nodded. “I’m looking for the mother of a little boy. He was attacked around here on Thursday evening. Maybe the Turn Boys. Did you hear anything?”

  The woman waved her hand in the air. “It’s been a mess around here the past week, I don’t mind telling you. Everyone’s afraid to go out. Yeah, those damned kids of Rinaldo’s were here last Thursday. Don’t know what in hell they were up to, but it sure sounded nasty. All sorts of growling and screaming and laughing. Gave my granddaughter nightmares. I didn’t know it was a little boy they got, though. Damn shame. You need someone to take the body, I guess?”

  I hesitated. Suddenly, Amir’s warning about what a dangerous and stupid thing I had done to save Judah came back to me. An eleven-year-old child. My God, even this old woman didn’t imagine that he’d survived.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Do you know anyone missing a child?”

  She shook her head. “We were lucky none of our own got caught by those blood-mad suckers last night. Anyway, it sounded like Rinaldo’s boys had been playing with him for a while.” She clucked her tongue. “Heard them laughing and singing all the way down Lafayette. A little boy! It’s too much, I tell you. No mother should have to deal with this. Her little boy staked and beheaded. I hope you find her. And if she needs some help, tell her to come to Catherine Lane.”

  She gave me a smart, almost soldierly nod, and I returned it. I recognized a kindred spirit when I saw one. “I will. Thanks for your help.”

  She closed her window and I turned to leave. It was clear Nicholas and the Turn Boys had stolen Judah someplace else and dumped him here. Well, that made South Ferry even more likely. I fetched my bicycle and slowly pedaled down Lafayette, looking in vain for any other clues. The Turn Boys were out of their territory here. I’d never heard of them attacking so far away from Little Italy. I’d almost think that they’d targeted Judah in particular, if I could think of any reason that a hardened gang would care about the fate of an eleven-year-old boy. That woman, Esther, on Leonard Street had thought Judah was a little too well-dressed for their part of town. She was probably right, now that I thought of it. Maybe the Turn Boys had targeted Judah—not because of a personal vendetta, but to let the more affluent residents of Lafayette and Park Row know that they were vulnerable. But in that case, why take the trouble to hide his body in an alley farther uptown?

  I shook my head—and looked up just in time to see a firmly packed snowball sailing at my head. Ice crystals stung my cheek and eyelids, gritty snow filled my mouth. I spat and whirled around, but the children who’d pelted me were already screeching and running down the block. One of them looked back and waved.

  “Damn kids,” I said, and waved back. Just a few blocks away from the Leonard Street tenement, the atmosphere was noticeably less grim. I saw the reason immediately: the police were patrolling the streets around Elm and Park Row in unusual force this Sunday morning. I could hardly expect less for City Hall, of course. The precinct station was less than a block away, and the police tended to be quite good at protecting those who could afford to sweeten their salaries.

  Like Judah’s mother?

  The precinct station was so crowded that the line of people waiting to get in had spilled into the street. Most of them had a familiar look: exhausted, harried, their clothes several years away from new and never stylish. I recognized shouted German and Yiddish and Russian and Italian mixed among the English. It seemed that the tenement residents farther uptown had decided to take their complaints about last night’s disturbances directly to the source. As I pushed through the crowd I passed a man with a pale, almost jaundiced face, and a dirty handkerchief pressed to his neck. A woman stood beside him, fingering rosary beads and mumbling indecipherable prayers. I forced myself to look away—no one knew why some people were more susceptible to turning than others. But I’d been witness to that agonizing wait many times and had no wish to relive it.

  At the front of the lobby, four police officers attempted to take statements. But the crowd up here had grown vocal with their impatience, and their angry shouts drowned out anything else.

  “I told you, one of the suckers is still on our block! We’re afraid to let the kids out, you’ve gotta—”

  “Our daughter, she missing. You promise to—”

  “But the Blood Bank is all out! How are we—”

  Great. How the hell was I supposed to ask about Judah in this mess? At least I wouldn’t have to worry about being discreet. In this press of people, the police officers would never remember me. I had maneuvered my way nearly to the front when I saw a familiar silhouette. She stood out against the lower-class crowd, if only because no thrift shops would ever sell a dress in such a bright shade of teal. And upon closer inspection, her whole ensemble—from suede heels to pert cloche hat—made her seem as at home among the tenement crowd as a fish in the Serengeti. She was taking notes while interviewing a young police officer who was markedly ill at ease. He eyed the mass of people in the station as though they might riot at any minute, or just crush him underfoot. His left hand rested firmly on the handle of his pistol.

  Lily, of course, seemed entirely unaware of any of this.

  “So how many people did you say have been attacked so far?” she asked, tapping her fountain pen against the edge of her reporter’s notebook.

  The police officer cleared his throat. “At least thirty reported here. More threats and sightings. It’s been pretty bad.”

  “And, in your professional opinion, this is all attributable to that new vampire street-drug, Faust?”

  He looked at Lily like she might have lost her mind. “Well, what the hell else could it be? Something has to be making the suckers burn like fried chicken.”

  I winced at the analogy. Lily just scribbled furiously. She seemed bizarrely . . . well, if not happy, then energized. She might not fit the scenery, but she clearly thrived on this type of disaster.

  “I’ve heard rumors that Faust is being funneled through the notorious Italian mob boss, Rinaldo. Can you confirm that?”

  The room seemed to grow immediately quieter, as though someone had muffled the roar with a giant wad of gauze.

  The officer cleared his throat again. “I, ah, can’t confirm that, no. There have been lots of rumors, right, and we can’t say now where this stuff is coming from—”

  But Lily wouldn’t let up. “Isn’t it true that most reports are coming from Little Italy and the immediate vicinity, which is, as I’m sure you know, controlled by Rinaldo and his gang?”

  The people near me might be eavesdropping on Lily’s interview, but behind us I could hear inarticulate shouting. The police officer craned his neck to look over the crowd.

  “Listen, we don’t know where this stuff is coming from. We’re following leads.”

  Someone to my right shouted, “You’re just afraid of that scum Rinaldo and his Turn Boys!” The officer flushed with embarrassment and gripped the handle of his gun. Even Lily seemed to notice this, but instead of getting nervous, she smiled. Goddamn, and I thought I l
acked a sense of self-preservation.

  The disturbance at the front of the station was getting louder now, and impossible to ignore. A man somewhere behind me was shouting loud enough to be heard over the din. “You’re letting them in here? After what they did to us?”

  A woman shrieked and a child started wailing. “She touched me, Jesus Christ, don’t bite me, please I lost my husband—”

  The rest of her plea was lost in a roar of inarticulate mob rage. The hapless police officer, lately the victim of an interrogation by Lily, crack reporter, tried to shout over the noise.

  “Please, everyone, calm down. You’re safe from Others in this—” He looked around, shook his head, and motioned to a nearby officer. “Christ. Galt, go get that damn sucker out of here. Don’t know what the hell she’s thinking.”

  Probably that she needed some help, just like everyone else. If this was a glimpse of what Faust would do to future human-Other relations, it made me furious. The officer fired his pistol into the ceiling, cracking off a bit of plaster. He plunged into the crowd a moment later. Lily made as if to chase after him, but I grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her behind the officer’s desk. I could tell this was going to get ugly. Lily was too eager for her own damn good.

  “Zephyr! I was hoping you’d come. I need a quote for my article.”

  I sighed. Better that than my inside source getting crushed to death by a mob. “Lily, you should be more careful. Angry crowd, terrified and armed police . . . it’s not a stable combination.”

  Lily gave me what I suppose she thought was a contemptuous smile. “I know what I’m doing.”

  I just rolled my eyes and looked around for a back exit. We needed to get out of here; so much for my plan to find information about Judah. The crowd had surged to the left side of the station. They were yelling and spitting and shoving the few police officers to reach a huddled figure I could barely make out through the press of bodies. I wondered if we could edge along the wall until we reached the exit, but even the less crowded areas were too dense to make our way through.