“Oh, applesauce,” Evie said on a sigh. “Okay, okay. I don’t want you to die of peritonitis like Valentino. Just a minute.” Evie rinsed the cucumber slices under the tap and popped them into her mouth. She pulled the plug and let the water swirl down the drain while she slipped on her robe and opened the door with a flourish. “All yours,” she said as Jericho pushed past her.
In the kitchen, Evie squeezed an orange into a glass, fished out the seeds, and gulped down the precious juice along with two aspirin. “Oh, sweet Mary.”
A moment later, Jericho emerged from the bathroom, scowling.
“What’s eating you?”
“Nothing.”
He sat on the couch and quietly laced up a shoe, but his disapproval hung in the room like the lingering scent of Evie’s perfumed bath salts. Evie didn’t mind yelling, but she hated feeling judged. It got under her skin and made her feel small and ugly and unfixable. She sang cheerily in rebuke of both Jericho and her throbbing skull. “You’re the berries, my bowl of cream, a dream come true, dear…”
“I was only wondering if this is going to be your usual routine,” Jericho said at last.
“Usual routine. Hmm, well, I might add a trained monkey. Everyone loves those.”
“Is that all this is to you? One big party?”
Evie was angry now. At least she wasn’t afraid to get out and live. Jericho didn’t seem to know life beyond the pages of a musty old book, and he didn’t seem interested in knowing anything beyond that, either.
“It’s better than spending every night brooding like Byron’s long-lost brother. Don’t make that injured face—you are a brooder! And what good does it do you? You’re eighteen, not eighty, kiddo. Live a little.”
Jericho got up from the couch. “Live a little? Live a little!” He let out a bitter ha! “If you only knew…” He stopped suddenly, and Evie could see him force an almost mechanical calm to descend. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. I have to get to the museum.” He grabbed his dog-eared copy of Nietzsche and slammed the door behind him.
Evie sat on Mabel’s bed. The aspirin hadn’t helped much, but like a true modern girl, she wasn’t about to lie in bed all day, unlike poor Mabel, who had succumbed to a terrible hangover. She lay curled in her bed, clutching a bowl in case she felt the need to vomit.
“Hot off the presses, today’s headlines: The love of your life does not approve of my wanton flapper ways,” Evie said in a voice of affected mystery. “Really, Mabesie. You might want to reconsider—he is a bit of a killjoy.”
“My stomach doesn’t approve of our wanton ways, either,” Mabel said miserably. She hadn’t lifted her head from her pillow. “I am never drinking again.”
“That’s what they all say, Pie Face.”
Mabel moaned. “I mean it. I feel dreadful. I am ending my association with liquor.” She raised her right hand. “You may be the notary public to this announcement.”
“Noted. Public’d.”
Mabel dropped her hand, her face screwed into an expression of fresh misery. Evie jumped off the bed.
“What is it? Are you about to blow?”
Mabel reached under her bed and pulled out what was left of Evie’s headache band. It was bent in the middle, where someone had obviously stepped on it. Several of the rhinestones were missing, and the peacock feathers drooped like spent chorus girls. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh…” Evie swallowed down a curse word. Mabel’s mouth twitched and Evie could tell she was on the verge of a legendary weep. She tossed the headache band aside as if it were rubbish. “That old thing? I was tired of it, anyway. You’ve done me a favor, old girl, putting it out of its misery like that.”
Mabel cocked an eyebrow. “You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Just to make me feel better?”
“No. To make me feel better. Otherwise I’ll cry.”
“Thanks.” Mabel managed a weak smile. She crooked her pinkie. “Pals for life-ski?”
Evie hooked her pinkie with Mabel’s. “For life-ski.” Evie kissed Mabel’s forehead and turned off the bedside lamp. “Get some sleep, Pie Face.”
Evie left the Bennington and walked down Broadway, past the shops. A radio store played its latest model, letting the sound drift out onto the sidewalks to entice customers. Evie idled for a moment, listening as she painted her lips in the window’s reflection.
“… This is Cedric Donaldson, reporting from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, where just moments ago Jake Marlowe landed his American Flyer, an aeroplane of his own invention. You can hear the enthusiasm of the crowds who’ve gathered here on this fine autumn day to give the millionaire inventor and industrialist a hero’s welcome! And here is the Bayside High School marching band playing ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’ ”
The man in the shop peered disapprovingly at Evie through the glass. She pumped her arms and legs up and down in imitation of a marching band, gave the man a salute, and continued her meandering walk to the museum. At the newsstand, Evie stopped cold. The front page of the New York Daily Mirror trumpeted MADMAN OF MANHATTAN STRIKES AGAIN! She grabbed the paper and flipped past a store advertisement for Solomon’s Comet binoculars to the story on page two.
“Hey, doll, you gonna pay for that?” The newspaperman held out his palm.
Evie tossed him a nickel and, clutching the paper, ran the rest of the way to the museum.
Will was sitting in the library with Sam and Jericho. He looked pale.
“I… I just heard….” Evie said, out of breath. She held up the newspaper.
“Tommy Duffy. Twelve years old,” Will said quietly. “The killer took his hands.”
The horror of it made Evie’s stomach roil. “Is it the same killer?”
Will nodded. “First he posted a warning note to the papers.”
Jericho opened the previous evening’s late-edition Daily News. “ ‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. For the Beast will rise when the comet flies.’ ”
“He seems to like attention, this fellow,” Will said. “He left another note with the body.”
Evie unscrolled the thin parchment, which resembled the first, with strange sigils along the bottom.
“Careful with that—it’s on loan from Detective Malloy,” Will explained.
“ ‘And in those times, the young were idle. Their hands were absent from their plows and they did not raise them in prayer and praise to the Lord our God. And the Lord was angry and commanded of the Beast a sixth offering, an offering of obedience.’ ” Evie read. “The hands. With Ruta, he took the eyes, and with Tommy Duffy, the hands. Why?”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Will agreed.
“The murder of a child could never make sense.”
“I meant the symbology.” Will was up and pacing the room. “Tommy Duffy was posed. He was hung upside down with one leg bent. That’s not a Christian symbol. It’s pagan. The Hanged Man, as seen on the tarot. It hints at magic or mysticism. Yet, this was found shoved into the boy’s back pocket.”
Will slapped a pamphlet down on the table. On its cover, a man in white robes and a pointed hat stood below an open Bible and a cross, ringing a liberty bell, while the ghostly face of George Washington looked on in approval.
“The Good Citizen,” Evie read. “What’s that?”
“It is a monthly publication of the Pillar of Fire Church,” Will said. “It’s also a strong endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“You think the Klan might have killed that boy?”
“It’s possible. Of course, it’s also possible it was on the scene before the murder. However, it’s worth nothing that Tommy Duffy was Irish. Ruta Badowski was Polish. The killer could harbor a hatred of foreigners.”
“He could be anti-Catholic,” Jericho said.
“They don’t need much reason,” Sam grumbled.
There were men back in Zenith who were Klansmen, Evie knew. People like Harold Brodie’s father supported them. But Evie’s father and mother had been Catholic once. The Irish O’Neills. And her father had repeatedly railed against the Klan and the thuggish bigotry for which they stood.
“When do we leave?” Evie asked.
“Leave for what, doll?” Sam said.
“We are going to this Pillar of Fire Church to sniff around, aren’t we?”
“I can’t,” Will said. “I once helped bring charges against the Grand Dragon of the Klan out there. I’m known to them.”