THE RAIN was a familiar, bleak curtain when Eddie decided to return to the territory of his youth. After weeks of searching, he knew little more about Hannah Weiss than he had on the night when her father had first come to his studio. She seemed to have vanished completely, as though she’d fallen through the sidewalk and continued her fiery descent into the deepest recesses of the earth. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d lost the knack for finding people, if his talent hadn’t come so easily to him that he hadn’t appreciated his own abilities.
Eddie sought out Sheriff Street. The weather was so raw he found himself shivering, and he kept his collar up, hands in his pockets. For a while he felt disoriented when confronted by the turmoil of the crowded markets, the steamy scent of vegetables and meat from the vendors, the men in wide black hats who gazed at him with contempt. The gutters in the old neighborhood ran with filth, for many tenement buildings were still without toilets, and the outhouses in the bare dirt yards drained sewage directly into the streets. The buildings were so close any bit of light would have been hard-pressed to break through even if the day hadn’t been so dreary. After a while, the streets seemed familiar once more. When he let his instincts take over, he still knew the route by heart. The Hall of Love looked the same. The large wooden doors, the carved balustrades, the tiled mosaic floor in the entranceway. He entered, clapping the rain from his jacket. Several women were gathered in the unheated corridor, anxiously waiting, hoping to be granted a meeting with the renowned man whose reputation had only continued to grow in the past few years. In Russia they called him an angel, a messenger from God who tended to the forsaken and the betrayed. A few of the women in the hallway held handkerchiefs, on the verge of tears. One young mother tried to hush her baby with a lullaby, but the infant continued to wail sharp, mournful cries. The air was thick with the odor of wet wool and human despair.
Two insolent boys of ten or eleven slouched around in a corner nook, caps pulled down, joking with each other as they amused themselves with a pair of dice. They were little ruffians hired to attend to Hochman’s legwork, as Eddie had once been, spending too much time in brothels and taverns. The boys lounging in the Hall of Love were most assuredly practiced in the art of eavesdropping and had learned to peer through keyholes. Those who were literate were instructed to jot down notes to bring back to their employer. Most became caught up in the tawdry life of debauchery they were only meant to report upon. The corruption was like quicksand; one step and it pulled you down.
Eddie approached the boys straightaway. Start at the beginning, and here is mine.
“Is the old man in?”
Eddie could feel the world he’d once known coming back to him. He may have lost his faith in taverns and whorehouses, but he’d been granted an odd variety of strength from being pitiless. His detachment had helped him survive.
The boys glared rudely and leaned closer to one another. Both had dark, rabbity faces. They’d probably been starving when Hochman offered them work.
“What’s it to you?” said the one with more nerve, clearly the leader of the pair.
“I know your game, so don’t think you’re fooling me. You work for Mr. H or you wouldn’t be here. Is he in his office?”
“You don’t know shit,” the leader responded. He squinted to make himself look tough. He was older than he’d first appeared, maybe fourteen, nearly a man, but the scruffy clothes he wore were small on him, giving him the air of a boyhood that was already something of the past. Eddie recalled Hochman recommending that his boys try to appear childish. No one paid attention to children, and guilty men were much more likely to admit their transgressions when they thought no one of any worth would overhear.
The door to Hochman’s private office opened before the conversation grew more heated. Though he had an office on Rivington Street, it was here in his private chambers that Hochman performed marriage ceremonies and took the time to comfort those loveless women who had been abandoned by husbands and fiancés. A hush fell over the corridor as he entered. Hochman wore a velvet waistcoat and a tweed jacket, as dapper as ever. Ladies were drawn to him, and he did his best to encourage their devotion by paying attention to his appearance, even as he aged.
The rude boys shrank away, careful to mind their manners in the presence of their employer. A group of women were quick to surround the Wizard. They clasped at his arms, their emotions heightened by his presence, but Hochman excused himself. “Ladies, all good things take time, and in all good time I’ll hear every one of your stories.” He strode forward, pleased, for not much escaped his eye. He’d taken note of the tall young man dripping with rain and had immediately recognized his protégé. “Ezekiel,” he called fondly, signaling for Eddie to approach. “I knew you weren’t lost just because everyone’s written you off.”
Eddie winced. It was just like Hochman to wrap an insult inside a veneer of good cheer. The Wizard slapped him on the back, a little too heartily, for the welcome stung. “I know you, my boy. You’re here for something. Let’s not waste time. I have people waiting.”
Eddie followed Hochman into his office. It was lavishly furnished, with large leather chairs and a huge, ornate mahogany desk. The carpet was an Oriental, expensive and a bit garish, in bright tints of orange and blue. The walls had been covered with sheaths of blue silk wallpaper fashioned in China, purchased at a shop on Mulberry Street. Blue was said to be the color of trust and loyalty and wisdom, all of the attributes Hochman wanted his clients to associate
with him.
Eddie sat in one of the leather chairs, made of deep maroon calfskin that was well worn and studded with brass buttons. He knew the Wizard avoided shaking hands, for he had a fear of contagious diseases, quite rational considering that many of the immigrants he dealt with were in poor health; tuberculosis and measles ran rampant in the tenement houses.
There were piles of official Jewish wedding contracts stacked on a long oak table. These ketubahs were beautifully made, decorated with gold leaf, each one printed individually, many with biblical scenes painted in watercolors. The marriage contracts would bear Hochman’s graceful signature after he had completed the ceremony, which he was legally entitled to perform, though he was neither a rabbi nor a city official. He charged no fee, but the larger the donation to the Hall of Love, the more fortunate the wedding couple would be.
Hochman eased himself into the chair behind his desk and offered Eddie a cigar. “No more wedding photographs? I heard you were a troublemaker and nobody wanted to hire you. You made scenes.”
“I was no good at it, so I gave it up.”
“You gave up quite a lot of things from what I hear.”
Eddie shrugged. His defection and his loss of faith were common knowledge in the neighborhood. On the way to Sheriff Street, a bearded old man in a broad-brimmed black hat, perhaps a member of his father’s shul, had spat on the ground when he passed by. Among the elder Cohen’s circle, a son who didn’t know enough to respect his father wasn’t worth much. One who didn’t respect his own people was beneath contempt.
“I was sorry to hear about Levy.” Hochman pushed a silver lighter across the desk. “He was a good photographer. A good man.”
Eddie lit the cigar and choked, humbled to have the exact same response he’d had when he finally accepted his first stogie from his employer. He’d done a particularly good job of tracking down a missing fiancé and Hochman had invited him into his office, an invitation he could brag about to the other boys. Eddie remembered being surprised by the conversation on that day. Hochman had asked what he thought of love, now that he was in the business. Nothing much, Eddie had replied. You don’t see how powerful a force it is? Hochman had asked. How it rules men’s lives?
I see misery. Nothing more.
If that’s true, son, Hochman had said, maybe you’re not as smart as I thought you were.
Hochman grinned when Eddie coughed. “Still not a smoker.” Clearly, he liked to get the better of people and show them their own failings. It made for easier negotiations.
“I suppose not.” Eddie propped up the cigar in a bronze ashtray, a beautiful piece, most likely a gift from a satisfied customer.
“Tiffany,” Hochman informed him.
“I suppose that means something to some people.” Eddie shrugged. “To me, it’s an ashtray.”
The older man leaned back in his chair. As a boy Eddie hadn’t noticed that his boss’s chair was larger by half than the chair that faced it, perhaps to ensure that a visitor would feel himself diminished in the presence of a superior man.
“You didn’t give notice when you left. I expected more from you.”
“I’m sure it was easy enough for you to find my replacement. We were all the same to you, weren’t we? Good little spies.”
“I gave you an opportunity. Working for me you ate better, you dressed better. You can’t deny you had a better life. Just as important—you learned valuable lessons. All my boys do.”
“I learned that people betrayed each other, that they fled from their responsibilities and treated each other like shit. Was that the lesson you wanted for us?”
“Not at all.” Hochman had aged since Eddie had last seen him, yet was still imposing with his large, leonine head and a mane of white hair which people said he powdered each morning. “It might have been shit to you, but the Times and the Herald and the Tribune still turn to me when they have a case they can’t solve. They still write about the boy I discovered under the Brooklyn Bridge when the police force couldn’t find a trace of him.”