“I suppose he could’ve been,” Evie allowed. “But he seemed very sincere. He was asking about a symbol—an eye with… oh, here. I’ll draw it for you.”
Evie sketched the eye and lightning bolt and held it up for Will. Sam sidled up close to Evie and said, “He was asking about this symbol?”
“What did you say his name was?” Will asked.
“Memphis. Memphis Campbell,” Evie replied.
“You know what that symbol means, Professor?” Sam asked. He was looking at the drawing of the eye with keen interest.
Will glanced briefly at the page. “Never seen it before. Now please don’t disturb me. I’ve work to do.” He turned on his heel and left them standing in the foyer.
Memphis and Theta sat in Mr. Reggie’s drugstore in Harlem with a couple of egg creams, talking and talking. Theta felt like she hadn’t talked this much since she first met Henry. She made Memphis laugh with her stories of the petty antics of the showbiz folks, and Memphis told her about playing the numbers and picking gigs, and about how irritating Isaiah could be, but Theta could tell he loved his brother fiercely. They talked so long that they both lost track of time. Theta had missed her call for the show, which she shrugged off.
“I’ll tell them there was a subway fire,” she said.
“You sure you don’t want something else? A sandwich, or some soup?” Memphis asked.
“For the last time, I’m jake,” Theta said. She was aware that everyone in the joint was watching them. The minute she looked up and caught their eyes, they’d look away quickly, busying themselves with their silverware or pretending to be reading a newspaper.
There were so many things he still wanted to ask her. Where was she from? Did she still dream of the eye? Had she thought of him at all since the night of the raid? Had she, too, lain awake, staring at the ceiling, picturing his face as he had hers?
“A Ziegfeld girl, huh?” was all he said.
“I heard the position of poet was already taken,” Theta joked. “Speaking of poetry, have you read The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes?”
“ ‘And far into the night he crooned that tune,’ ” Memphis quoted, grinning madly.
“ ‘The stars went out and so did the moon,’ ” Theta finished. “I never read anything so beautiful before.”
“Me, either.”
The rest of the drugstore seemed to fall away—the clink of dishes in the back, the bright brrring of the cash register, the low drone of people talking—and there was only Memphis and Theta and the moment. Theta’s hand slid just slightly toward Memphis’s. He inched his forward, too, just grazing the tips of her fingers with his.
“There’s a rent party this Saturday night at my friend Alma’s place, if you’d like to come,” he said.
“I’d like that,” Theta answered.
The drugstore seemed to swirl once more into noisy life. An older man walked past and frowned at them, and Theta and Memphis pulled their hands back and were quiet.
A TERRIBLE CHOICE
Evie and Jericho were having a late lunch in the Bennington’s dowdy dining room. Jericho was talking, but Evie was lost in her own thoughts. Her chin balanced on one fist, she stared, unseeing, at her coffee, which she had been stirring mindlessly for a good ten minutes.
“So I shot the man in the back,” Jericho said, testing Evie’s attention.
“Interesting,” Evie said without looking up.
“And then I took his head, which I keep under my bed.”
“Of course,” Evie muttered.
“Evie. Evie!”
Evie looked up and smiled weakly. “Yes?”
“You’re not listening.”
“Oh, I pos-i-tute-ly am, Jericho!”
“What did I just say?”
Evie gave him a blank stare. “Well, whatever it was, I’m sure it was very, very smart.”
“I just said I shot a man in the back and took his head.”
“I’m sure he deserved it. Oh, Jericho, I’m sorry. I can’t help thinking there’s a connection between this John Hobbes fellow and our murders.”
“But why?”
Evie couldn’t tell him about the song, and without that, there really wasn’t much to go on. “Don’t you think it’s interesting that there were some unsolved murders fifty years ago that were similar in nature?”
“Interesting but remote. But if you want to know about them, we could go back to the library….”
Evie groaned. “Please don’t make me go back there. I’ll be good.”
Jericho gave her the slightest hint of a smile. “The library is your friend, Evie.”
“The library may be your friend, Jericho, but it pos-i-tute-ly despises me.”
“You just have to know how to use it.” Jericho played with his fork. He cleared his throat. “I could show you how to do that sometime.”
Evie sat fully upright. “Jericho!” she said, grinning.
Jericho smiled back. “It would be no trouble. We could even go—”
“I know someone who could find out about the old murders for us!”
“Who?” Jericho asked. He hoped she couldn’t sense his disappointment.
“Someone who owes me a favor.”
Evie ran to the Bennington’s telephone box and shut the beveled glass door behind her. “Algonquin four, five, seven, two, please,” she said into the receiver and waited for the operator to work her magic.
“T. S. Woodhouse, Daily News.”
“Mr. Woodhouse, it’s Evie O’Neill. I’m calling in that favor you promised.”
“Shoot.”
“Can you dig up some information on an unsolved murder in Manhattan in the summer of 1875?”
She heard the reporter chuckle on the other end. “You got a history test, Sheba?”
“Just tell me what you find out, please. It’s very important. Oh, and Mr. Woodhouse—this is just between you and me and the garden gate. Do you understand?”
“Whatever you say, Sheba.”
Feeling very clever, Evie stepped from the telephone box and headed back toward the dining room. As she passed the elevator, the doors opened and a flustered Miss Lillian stood inside. “Oh, dear. I went down instead of up.” She was struggling with a bag of groceries, and Evie offered to help her carry the heavy bag to her apartment.
“Come in, come in, dear,” Miss Lillian said. “So nice to have a visitor. I’ll put the kettle on.”
“Oh, please don’t go to any trouble,” Evie said, but the old woman was already in the kitchen. Evie could hear the strike of the match, the hiss of the gas as it took. She hadn’t meant to get trapped in a conversation. That was the trouble with offering help to old people. She nearly tripped over a tabby cat, who meowed in surprise and darted away. A second cat, black with yellow eyes, peeked out from under a table. It was hard to see in the dim light. Miss Lillian reentered the room and turned on a lamp.
“What a charming home you have,” Evie managed to say, hoping that her grimace passed for a smile. The place was a dreadful mess, papers and books stacked all about, every surface covered in some sort of bric-a-brac: ornate clocks set to slightly different times, brass candelabras with dark candles burned down to nubs, a bust of Thomas Jefferson, a framed picture of solemn pilgrim ladies on a hill, plants, dead flowers in a glass vase whose water had dried to a film on the sides, and a small painted tintype of what Evie presumed were the young Lillian and Adelaide in their starched pinafores. If there were an award for hideous taste, Evie thought, the Proctor sisters would win, hands down.
“Here’s your tea, dear. Do have a seat,” Miss Lillian said.
Miss Lillian indicated a rocking chair beside an old pump organ.
“Thank you,” Evie said, already thinking up excuses for why she needed to leave: sick uncle, building on fire, a sudden case of gangrene.
“Addie and I have lived in the Bennington since nearly the beginning. We moved in in the spring of 1875. April.” She frowned. “Or perhaps May.”
“Spring of 1875,” Evie said, thinking. “Miss Lillian, do you remember a story about a man named John Hobbes who was hanged for murder in 1876?”
Miss Lillian pursed her lips, thinking. “I can’t say that I do.”
“He was accused of murdering a woman named Ida Knowles.”
“Oh, Ida Knowles! Yes, I remember that. Ran off with a fortune hunter, they said. And then… yes, yes, I remember now! That man—”