EAST TWELFTH STREET WAS A TYPICAL EAST VILLAGE STREET, O’SHAUGHNESSY thought as he turned the corner from Third Avenue: a mixture of punks, would-be poets, ’60s relics, and old-timers who just didn’t have the energy or money to move. The street had improved a bit in recent years, but there was still a superfluity of beaten-down tenements among the head shops, wheat-grass bars, and used-record vendors. He slowed his pace, watching the people passing by: slumming tourists trying to look cool; aging punk rockers with very dated spiked purple hair; artists in paint-splattered jeans lugging canvases; drugged-out skinheads in leather with dangling chrome doohickeys. They seemed to give him a wide berth: nothing stood out on a New York City street quite like a plainclothes police officer, even one on administrative leave and under investigation.
Up ahead now, he could make out the shop. It was a little hole-in-the-wall of black-painted brick, shoehorned between brownstones that seemed to sag under the weight of innumerable layers of graffiti. The windows of the shop were thick with dust, and stacked high with ancient boxes and displays, so faded with age and sun that their labels were indecipherable. Small greasy letters above the windows spelled out New Amsterdam Chemists.
O’Shaughnessy paused, examining the shopfront. It seemed hard to believe that an old relic like this could survive, what with a Duane Reade on the very next corner. Nobody seemed to be going in or out. The place looked dead.
He stepped forward again, approaching the door. There was a buzzer, and a small sign that read Cash Only. He pressed the buzzer, hearing it rasp far, far within. For what seemed a long time, there was no other noise. Then he heard the approach of shuffling footsteps. A lock turned, the door opened, and a man stood before him. At least, O’Shaughnessy thought it was a man: the head was as bald as a billiard ball, and the clothes were masculine, but the face had a kind of strange neutrality that made sex hard to determine.
Without a word, the person turned and shuffled away again. O’Shaughnessy followed, glancing around curiously. He’d expected to find an old pharmacy, with perhaps an ancient soda fountain and wooden shelves stocked with aspirin and liniment. Instead, the shop was an incredible rat’s nest of stacked boxes, spiderwebs, and dust. Stifling a cough, O’Shaughnessy traced a complex path toward the back of the store. Here he found a marble counter, scarcely less dusty than the rest of the shop. The person who’d let him in had taken up a position behind it. Small wooden boxes were stacked shoulder high on the wall behind the shopkeeper. O’Shaughnessy squinted at the paper labels slid into copper placards on each box: amaranth, nux vomica, nettle, vervain, hellebore, nightshade, narcissus, shepherd’s purse, pearl trefoil. On an adjoining wall were hundreds of glass beakers, and beneath were several rows of boxes, chemical symbols scrawled on their faces in red marker. A book titled Wortcunning lay on the counter.
The man—it seemed easiest to think of him as a man—stared back at O’Shaughnessy, pasty face expectant.
“O’Shaughnessy, FBI consultant,” O’Shaughnessy said, displaying the identity card Pendergast had secured for him. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I might.”
The man scrutinized the card, and for a minute O’Shaughnessy thought he was going to challenge it. But the shopkeeper merely shrugged.
“What kind of people visit your shop?”
“It’s mostly those wiccans.” The man screwed up his face.
“Wiccans?”
“Yeah. Wiccans. That’s what they call themselves these days.”
Abruptly, O’Shaughnessy understood. “You mean witches.”
The man nodded.
“Anybody else? Any, say, doctors?”
“No, nobody like that. We get chemists here, too. Sometimes hobbyists. Health supplement types.”
“Anybody who dresses in an old-fashioned, or unusual fashion?”
The man gestured in the vague direction of East Twelfth Street. “They all dress in an unusual fashion.”
O’Shaughnessy thought for a moment. “We’re investigating some old crimes that took place near the turn of the century. I was wondering if you’ve got any old records I could examine, lists of clientele and the like.”
“Maybe,” the man said. The voice was high, very breathy.
This answer took O’Shaughnessy by surprise. “What do you mean?”
“The shop burned to the ground in 1924. After it was rebuilt, my grandfather—he was running the place back then—started keeping his records in a fireproof safe. After my father took over, he didn’t use the safe much. In fact, he only used it for storing some possessions of my grandfather’s. He passed away three months ago.”