Eddie wore a blue shirt and black trousers. He had no tallit around his shoulders, a garment that showed a covenant with God, and no remnants of his Orthodox upbringing. His hair was cropped short, and he’d long ago forsaken the practice of wearing a skullcap. His large, pale feet were bare, allowing a glimpse of a tattoo of a trident he’d had inked on his ankle, a true embarrassment, even to him. He’d gone to the infamous Samuel O’Reilly’s shop one drunken evening, where the owner used Edison’s newly invented electric tattoo machine. Eddie had immediately regretted his choice when he awoke the next morning with a throbbing headache. Tattoos were strictly forbidden for his people, and men of his faith so marked could not be buried in a religious cemetery. Eddie’s regret, however, had less to do with faith than with the fact that the tattoo was so crudely drawn.
Weiss eyed the younger man sadly. “You think your father would send me to the wrong man? You think he doesn’t know his own son? You’re the one who can find people.”
“Mr. Weiss, please.” Eddie downed his whiskey and began a second glass. He wouldn’t mind getting drunk.
“He said you worked for Hochman.”
“He knew that?”
“A father knows his son.”
Eddie shook his head. “No.” He would get drunk, he had decided, without a doubt.
“He told me it was you, not that fake wizard, who discovered the boy under the bridge. The shyster took the credit, but you were the one who found him. Your father said you always had this talent. You guided him through the forest when you were a little boy. He said he would have been dead without you, or wandering there still.”
Eddie was stunned. He’d never thought he’d been the one to lead them out of the woods. And surely he’d never told his father how he earned his money. He knew that his father would have disapproved of Hochman and his methods. Now it seemed the elder Cohen had known precisely what Eddie was doing on the nights he’d sneaked out. He wondered if his father had lain in bed, eyes open, as Eddie let himself out the door. Perhaps he’d gone so far as to rise from the thin mattress, slip his coat over his pajamas, and track Eddie to the Hall of Love so he might stand in the dark on Sheriff Street and mourn what his son had become. Perhaps he’d had their suitcase in hand.
“You shouldn’t go around trusting people you don’t even know,” Eddie advised his visitor. “You’ll get into trouble that way.”
“I know your father, and that’s enough for me.” Weiss narrowed his eyes. “Do you want money? Because I have it.” The older man reached into the pocket of his overcoat, but Eddie stopped him.
“No. No money.” Eddie sat back in his chair and rubbed at his temples. His head was throbbing. “Even if I could do what you want, there’s no guarantee you would like what I found.”
Weiss shook his head, disagreeing. “If you find the truth, then you’ve found what I want.”
“What if Hannah is dead? You want to know that?”
“If she is, show me the locket. That’s when I’ll believe it. That’s when I’ll say the Kaddish and lay her to rest.”
Weiss reached for a photograph in his vest pocket. It was a poor example of the craft, snapped in one of those new ten-cent machines so popular at photo galleries at Coney Island and on Fourteenth Street. The image was already fading, turning milky, but the beauty of Weiss’s daughter was unmistakable. She had long, pale hair and delicate features.
“Your father said you would find her,” Weiss said, his voice seized by emotion. “Don’t make him into a liar.”
After Weiss’s visit, Eddie slept, awaking in the morning on the floor. He’d finished the whiskey after Weiss had gone, and added a good measure of gin, a lethal combination. Apparently he’d fallen asleep beside the dog. Now his back and legs ached. He had a cough and the room felt damp. If he wasn’t careful, he would find himself coming down with pneumonia, as Moses Levy had.
Eddie went to retrieve a tin box stowed beneath the floorboards. There was cash inside, his savings. He had hoped to buy a camera that would allow him to use flexible film, a new style in the art that made the development process faster and easier, but he could forgo such things. He’d gotten in the habit of hiding his earnings when he was a boy, choosing a clever spot, just beneath the table where he and his father took their meager supper each evening. In his loft he kept his savings in the same place. Eddie folded the bills into an envelope.
As he grabbed his coat to go out, Eddie spied a flash of silver light in the pail beside the sink, as if a star had fallen through the skylight. It was the trout, motionless at the bottom of the pail. He felt a rush of regret. He should have taken it back to the river, for a fish was born to be a fish, whether or not he’d been caught. He quickly folded the trout into a sheaf of newspaper, for he couldn’t leave it to stink, nor had he the heart to toss it into the trash pile in the alley. He whistled for Mitts and, with the wrapped fish resting in the crook of his arm, set out.
The liveryman had recently arrived to divvy out oats and hay. The stable tenant was a short individual, with broad ugly features, his face pocked with scars. Several of his teeth were capped with gold, and he often made reference to the fact that he’d given up his wild ways, not caring to elaborate further.
Sometimes the liveryman called himself Joe, sometimes it was Johnny. He started out as what was called a sheriff at various saloons, a bouncer who kept the peace while enjoying the violence of the job. At one time, he’d risen as high as a man could in the criminal world, working for Tammany Hall and the politicians who ran the city. But a long term in prison had taken his wildness out of him, and he’d sunk to working in the stable, renting out a carriage. He had a love of animals and birds, especially the pigeons he raised in the tack room, for they sat on his shoulders as he went about his chores. He’d begun his days in a pet store, and he often told Eddie he should have stayed with that. The horses ran to him now, and he treated them kindly, greeting each by name. Sally, Spot, Little Girl, Jackson. He lived round the corner, at a flophouse on Twenty-second Street where shared rooms could be had for the night, but should one of the horses take ill, he brought over his cot and slept in the stable. He could frequently be found smoking a foul mixture in the alley, bowls full of opium, but he never did so inside the stable, to ensure his creatures would be safe and no sparks would fall into the bales of hay. Eddie had chosen to ignore the stink of opium. In his opinion, there were far worse neighbors to have. There were thousands of men who visited the opium houses of the Lower East Side. Most of them couldn’t get a job, let alone keep one, but the liveryman managed well enough.
“You’re keeping early hours,” the fellow called as he tossed Mitts a biscuit. “Or is it that you never sleep?” He’d heard Eddie pacing at odd hours, seen him come in or leave when most men were safe
in bed.
Eddie grinned and stretched his aching back. “I slept on the floor like a dog.”
“Then you must have dreamed, for dogs do so nightly. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Isn’t that right?” the carriage man said to Mitts, who had offered his paw before following his master out the heavy stable door.
Eddie loved the city when it was first waking. Energy surged through the concrete and cobblestones the way mist rises in the woods. In fact, his sleep had been deep and empty. If the liveryman was right and his dog dreamed, then Eddie envied him, for there had been no sign of the dark-haired woman who sometimes came to his bed in his dreams. Now Mitts trotted briskly along beside him on their journey downtown, clearly happy to be alive, with no thought to the future or the past. For this, Eddie envied Mitts as well, how light his burden was, how clear his purpose. He was to be his master’s companion, and in doing so he became himself, the essence of a dog. When all was said and done, it was conceivable that a being’s purpose remained the same throughout his life, and Eddie’s purpose was exactly what it had been when he was a boy, to pursue the light and find what was lost.