City of Orphans Page 5

  “Everything costs a nickel,” says Ryker.

  “Hokey-Pokey ice cream is a penny,” Jacob reminds him.

  “Maks,” says Ryker, “how come they call it that?”

  “Don’t know,” says Maks, and he jumps up and goes to the front room and looks down again. Bruno’s still there. Maks comes back to the kitchen. Willa looks at him. He turns away, not wanting to share his growing panic.

  18

  The door to the apartment opens, and the boarder, Monsieur Zulot, comes in.

  See, these days, with cheap rooms hard to find and immigrants filling up the city, lots of people take in boarders. Helps with the rent.

  Zulot’s a stocky young man with a thin, pale mustache, who’s been in America ’bout a year. He’s always wearing a long coat over an old black suit. Shoes scuffed and the fingers of his right hand smudged with ink ’cause all day he’s copying letters for some business near Wall Street.

  When he comes in, he’s carrying a rolled-up magazine.

  “Bon soir,” he says, bowing to the boys first, then to Agnes. “Mademoiselle Agnes,” he says softly. When she turns away, Zulot’s face becomes red. That makes the boys grin.

  Zulot holds up his magazine. “A new story,” he announces to the boys.

  “Can we hear it?” cries Ryker.

  “With permission. Mademoiselle Agnes?” Zulot asks, making another bow toward her.

  She don’t answer.

  Zulot stands straight and goes into the front room. Trying so hard not to look at Agnes, he don’t even notice Willa.

  As soon as he’s gone, Maks says to Willa in a low voice, “Our boarder. Monsieur Zulot.”

  “Frenchy,” says Ryker.

  “Pays us a dollar a week to board,” Eric adds.

  “We like him,” says Ryker, “ ‘cause he reads stories to us.”

  Giggling, Eric says to Willa, “And guess what? He’s dead stuck on Agnes. Wants to marry her.”

  Agnes blushes.

  “But Papa says no,” Jacob says, grinning.

  “ ‘Cause she’s too young,” says Eric.

  “Uh-uh,” says Ryker. “Mama says it’s because he’s Catholic.”

  “Stop!” Agnes cries.

  Jacob punches Ryker’s leg.

  Urgently, Agnes whispers, “Don’t any of you tell him what’s happened to Emma.”

  “We won’t,” Jacob says.

  “Scoot,” Agnes says to the boys. “Tell Monsieur Zulot his dinner is ready.” The boys horse it into the front room.

  “Your turn,” Agnes says to Maks and Willa as Monsieur Zulot returns. No longer wearing his coat, the Frenchman dips his hands into one of the water buckets, washes off ink. He puts a dollar coin on the table. “My rent,” he says, and sits down at the table.

  Agnes picks up the coin. Puts it in her dress pocket. “Thank you.”

  Maks says to Zulot, “This is my friend, Willa.”

  The Frenchman jumps up and makes another bow. “My great pleasure to meet you.” He sits, tucks a napkin under his chin.

  Agnes ladles the remaining soup into bowls while Maks cuts three more bread slices.

  Agnes sets down the three bowls, the last one for Monsieur Zulot.

  Willa don’t even wait, but gobbles her bread fast. When a crumb drops, she pops it into her mouth.

  Agnes, acting as if she’s not noticing, says, “Maks, you know the rule: No hats when eating at the table.”

  Maks snatches his cap off.

  Zulot bows his head, makes the sign of the cross over his heart, presses his hands together, whispers a prayer in French. All the while, he’s stealing looks at Agnes. She’s acting as if she’s ignoring him, but Maks sees her glance round once in a while.

  No one talks.

  Willa spoons up her soup so fast, Agnes gives Maks a look. Maks, ignoring her, pulls his own bread apart, slides one half to Willa.

  His dinner finished, Monsieur Zulot stands up. “Mademoiselle Agnes, I thank you. Mademoiselle Willa.” Another bow. “Mademoiselle Agnes, may I read to the boys?”

  “Of course.”

  He leaves the room. Soon as he does, Agnes steps close to Maks. “Maks,” she whispers, speaking low before turning aside to clear her throat, “when you see Emma tomorrow, what are you going to tell her?”

  “That we’re gonna help her.”

  “ ‘Going to,’ not ‘gonna.’ How?”

  “Not sure.”

  “You need to find out everything that happened.”

  Maks says, “You don’t think she stole, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why’d they put her in jail, then?”

  Agnes says, “That’s what you have to learn. I’ll help Papa get a lawyer.”

  “Not that stupid Mr. Strande.”

  “I know.”

  “Ain’t a real lawyer gonna cost a lot?” says Maks.

  “ ‘Isn’t,’ not ‘ain’t,’ ” Agnes says. “I’m not supposed to know, but Mama saves money for some uptown doctor for me. So there’s some. But we’re going to have a lot less.”

  “How come?”

  “Didn’t you hear Papa? The factory is closing. For a while, anyway.” Agnes glances toward the back room, hoping Mama and Papa can’t hear her. “It’s going to be you and me who’ll have to think of what to do.”

  “What ’bout Emma?”

  “We should be all right, if we can get her out of jail and she can keep her job.”

  “They ain’t really gonna send her back to Denmark, will they?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Agnes?”

  “What?”

  “We gonna be all right?”

  Agnes, clearing her throat again, don’t answer, just turns away.

  Maks glances at Willa. She’s staring into her empty bowl. Maks looks to Agnes. “Any more soup?”

  Agnes, not able to talk, shakes her head.

  Maks, upset, washes the soup bowls in a bucket, then takes the dirty water down to the yard, where he throws it at a clucking chicken. When he gets back, Willa is sitting in the dark kitchen alone.

  “Your sister says good night,” she says. Then she adds, “You have a nice family.”

  “Yeah. But everybody’s tumbled. Want another piece of bread?”

  Willa hesitates, then says, “Can I?”

  Maks cuts her a piece and gives it to her. “Where’s the lamp?” he asks.

  “Your boarder took it.” Then Willa says, “Agnes has a bad cough. And her eyelids are pink.”

  “Mama told Papa it’s something called ‘wasting disease.’ ”

  Willa stops eating. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Why? What’s the matter?”

  “I know . . . someone who had that.”

  “What happened?”

  “She died.”

  19

  Maks, afraid to say anything, only murmurs, “Get you a blanket. We got some thick Danish ones.” Nods to the back room, where his parents are. “They brought ’em over.”

  He goes into the front room, where he finds everyone sitting on the beds, the lit lamp on the floor. Monsieur Zulot has the magazine open on his lap.

  “Maks,” says Zulot, “do you desire to hear the story?”

  “It’s really good,” says Eric. “ ‘Bout detectives.”

  Jacob, squirming with pleasure, says, “It’s called The Bradys and the Missing Diamonds.”

  “Or,” Ryker adds, “The Boy Detective.”

  “Tell Maks who wrote it,” cries Eric.

  Monsieur Zulot reads: “ ‘By a New York Detective.’ ”

  Maks says, “Lemme get Willa.”

  Before he gets her, he steals a quick look down at the street. Bruno’s still there.

  Not saying anything to Willa ’bout Bruno, the two of them sit on Ryker’s bed.

  “I’ll start again,” says Monsieur Zulot, flipping to the first page. “Bien. Here we go. ‘Chapter One: The Detectives Get the Case.’ ”

  The story is �
��bout two detectives—one an old mug, and the other his kid. They’re trying to figure out who stole this lady’s diamonds. Maks likes the way the story describes the boy detective: “He looked like a mere boy, with a handsome face, a pair of keen eyes, and a dashing, aggressive air that showed he was of a bold, intrepid character.” Maks wishes he were bold, but he don’t know what “intrepid” means.

  Then there’s that lady, the one who lost the diamonds. The story says she’s “tall and splendid, with raven black hair, soft red lips, and gentle brown eyes, all of which gave her an air of great refinement.”

  “Aw,” pleads Eric when Monsieur Zulot stops reading. “Can’t you read more?”

  “Tomorrow.” He brings the lamp back into the kitchen.

  Maks fetches blankets from the front room. As he does, he looks out the window to the street below. Bruno hasn’t budged.

  Back in the kitchen Maks says to Willa, “Bruno’s still there.”

  “Do you think he’ll be there in the morning?”

  “Hope not,” Maks says as he lays out a blanket for Willa.

  “He won’t come up, will he?”

  Maks hasn’t thought of that. “I’ll sleep out here.”

  He sets his blanket in front of the door.

  Willa lies down on the floor and covers herself. Keeps her stick by her side.

  Maks sits on the floor, back against the door, legs stretched out. He says, “You like that story?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’d like to be that boy detective. Wanna be that tall and splendid lady?”

  “Not sure.”

  For a moment there’s silence, until Maks says, “Hey, Willa, when was the last time you ate?”

  “Three days ago.”

  “Want another piece of bread?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Neither speaks till Willa says, “Maks?”

  “What?”

  “I can’t read.”

  “Lot of kids can’t,” says Maks. “Mama can’t. Not American. But you know what? That story Monsieur read gave me an idea. ’Member I told you what my friend Chimmie told me? ’Bout that detective he knows? Maybe we could get him to help Emma. Might be cheaper than a lawyer.”

  “What’s a detective going to do?”

  “Like in that story. Find the real crook. My sister didn’t steal nothing. I know she didn’t. And if a detective could prove it, the police would have to let her go, right? I’d die if she went to prison. Or Denmark.”

  Willa don’t say nothing.

  Maks blows out the lamp, then lies down with his hands back of his head. “Yeah. I’m gonna ask Chimmie.” Maks stares up at the dark. “Willa?”

  “What?”

  “Ever been to The Tombs?”

  “No.”

  “They put crooks in there. Have trials. Then people go to jail—Blackwell’s Island, Sing Sing—for years.” He pulls himself up on one elbow. “Whenever someone in a uniform or a boss tells my parents to do something, they just do it. As if they never left Denmark. Papa’s always telling us how bad it was there. But you know what Mama says? ‘People are freer in America. But there are more tears.’ ”

  Willa is quiet. “Maks?” she says after a while.

  “What?”

  “If you want, I’ll go to The Tombs with you.”

  “Okay.” Maks shuts his eyes only to suddenly realize the clock ain’t ticking. He jumps up, stands on a chair, and adjusts the chains. The clock starts ticking.

  “That clock,” he tells Willa when he lies down again, “was a present someone gave my parents when they got married. Papa winds it every night. Guess he’s so upset, he forgot. Mama loves it. But she thinks that if it stops, someone in the family will die.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Don’t know. Hard not believing what your parents believe.”

  After a moment Willa says, “I don’t know what my parents believed.”

  “Don’t you have no idea where they went? Or why?”

  When Willa don’t answer, Maks says, “Thanks again for saving me in the alley. Glad you stayed. If you like, we can be friends.”

  After a moment Willa says, “I don’t have friends.”

  “Can have one now.”

  Willa don’t reply, and it’s not long ’fore Maks hears her sleep breathing.

  Everything is still.

  20

  Maks closes his eyes. Can’t sleep. Too many worries. Emma, mostly. Bruno, too. That his father and Agnes gonna lose work. Then there’s Agnes and her coughing. He wishes they had more money. What if they have to use Agnes’s doctor money for a lawyer?

  He starts thinking ’bout Willa, all her silences. Like she ain’t all there.

  Maks starts wondering what he’d do if his parents died. Or Agnes did. Or Emma.

  He gets up and slips into the front room. His brothers and Monsieur Zulot seem to be asleep.

  Standing before one of the windows, Maks looks down. To his relief, Bruno is no longer there.

  “Maks? What you looking at?”

  Startled, Maks turns. It’s Ryker. He’s sitting up in his bed.

  Maks says, “Nothing.”

  “Did Emma get home?”

  “Tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

  “Maks, you know what? I’m scared for her.”

  “Told you, everything’s gonna be fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Go to sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  Maks goes back to the kitchen, lies down on the floor, and pulls the blanket up. Lying there, he can hear Mama and Papa talking in their back room. Mostly in Danish, so he can’t understand it, though he keeps hearing Emma’s name. It all sounds tense, full of fear. Then, to his horror, he hears Papa crying, Mama trying to calm him. But she’s crying too.

  Maks sits up. It’s something he’s never heard. It scares him like nothing before. His heart pounds.

  Emma. He thinks about her. She’s a pretty girl, sixteen, taller than Mama, not skinny like Agnes. Light hair, dark brown eyes, happy most of the time. Always laughing, mostly over silly stuff, which makes Maks laugh. He loves being with her. Makes him happy.

  She and he like to take walks together. Nowhere in particular. Just to talk. Emma tells Maks her secrets. Not that she’s got many. Recently, she spent a nickel to ride the elevated train to come home. That was her first time. She did it—secretly—so as not to be home late. She told Maks the ride was exciting. Promised to take him.

  Then there was the time she went to a dance hall with some girls from her work. Wanted to learn that new two-step. That was big. Mama wouldn’t have liked that. A week later she bought a penny ribbon to look nice. She never wore it at home.

  Maks didn’t tell no one ’bout these things.

  So hard to think of her in jail. Maks ponders if it will make her different. If she goes to Blackwell’s on the river, it’ll be like she died.

  Maks wonders how scared Emma is. Then he thinks, Willa’s scared. I’m scared. The whole world’s scared.

  What if we can’t get Emma out? Maks thinks that question ten million times. How many answers does he get?

  Not one.

  Maks, trying to guess where Bruno went, finally closes his eyes.

  21

  Even dreaming, Maks couldn’t imagine the scene at the Roof Garden Dance Hall: part dance hall, part restaurant. It’s atop the American Theatre on Forty-second Street, which is farther uptown than Maks has ever gone.

  The place is crowded. From the stage, a banjo twangs “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers”—a new, hot tune. A few couples dance the two-step on the polished floor, gliding past the iron arches holding up a high ceiling. The arches are decked out with electric lights.

  Lots of whiskered men in dark suits sporting derbies or fedoras on their heads. Women in long dresses with high collars and feathered, flowery, wide-brimmed hats.

  The air is blue-gray with cigar smoke. Not many women are smoking—not considered decent. Most of the people are just
sitting at the hundred small tables on the dance floor, eating, talking, looking round.

  Ignoring the clatter, the music, and the people, there’s a man sitting alone in a far corner finishing his dinner of steak and potatoes. He’s wearing a new black suit, he’s smooth-shaven, and his hair is slicked back. Not interested in the crowd or, for that matter, his dinner. From time to time, he picks up a cigar from an ashtray, takes a puff, blows smoke up.

  Nothing on his face shows what he’s thinking, though now and again he pats his left jacket pocket, feeling for what’s there: a Colt pistol.

  From his right-hand pocket, he plucks up a gold watch—a Breguet—the hours marked by Roman numerals. He checks. Shakes his head, annoyed to be kept waiting.

  He puts the watch away and in its place takes out a photograph. Glued to a card, it’s a photograph of a face. Bruno’s face.

  A barefoot newsie approaches the table. “Paper, mister?”

  The man makes a dismissive gesture. The boy backs off only to bump into someone. He looks up, sees who it is, scrambles away.

  The man looks up. “Ah, Bruno,” he says. “You’re late.”

  “Had some business.” Bruno is staring at the photograph in the man’s hand.

  “Sit down,” says the man, nodding to an empty chair.

  Angry, Bruno yanks out the chair and sits. Rubs his squinty eye, adjusts his derby. “Whatcha doing with that picture?” he demands.

  “I like to make sure I have it.” The man returns the photo to his pocket. “Because I may need to use it, if necessary.”

  Bruno sits there, fuming. “Yous forced me to have my picture taken,” he blurts out. “Stole my face.”

  “Now, Bruno,” says the man, “it was you who tried to hold me up and steal my money. It was my revolver”—the man pats his pocket—“that kept you from stealing it. Correct?”

  Bruno just glowers.

  The man goes on: “Just know that the police are looking for a criminal responsible for a whole series of holdups. All I need to do is give them this photo and they’ll use it to identify you. And when they do, you’ll be arrested. And—”

  “Don’t need to go telling me all that stuff again,” grumbles Bruno. “It’s blackmail, that’s all.”