Other stories appeared here and there: A couple of subway workers vanished underground. Their lanterns were found still glowing in the tunnel they’d been hollowing out for the extension of the IRT. A pocketbook belonging to a Miss Rose Brock mysteriously ended up on the tracks near the Fourteenth Street station. Despondent over a failed love affair, she’d gone to a speakeasy on the West Side with friends and disappeared. Suicide was feared. A token booth clerk was suspended on suspicion of drinking when he swore he saw a faintly glowing ghost down at the dark end of the tracks. One minute, the pale thing was crouched on its haunches, he claimed, and the next, it skittered up the walls and out of sight. Some riders reported seeing odd flickers of greenish light from subway train windows. Diggers working on the construction of the new Holland Tunnel refused to go below. Down in the depths, they’d heard the terrifying swarming sounds of some unnameable infestation. A Diviner had been called in to give his blessing; he insisted it was all clear, but the workers knew he’d been paid to say it, and now they would only go down in groups and wearing every one of their charms against bad luck. The vagrant population was down; all the unfortunates known to frequent subway platforms, sewers, and train tunnels for warmth in the winter had seemingly disappeared in a matter of days.
On the West Side, two boys had been playing near a storm drain when one was suddenly swept away. Police searched the area below the grate, shining flashlights in sewer lines. They found nothing except for the poor boy’s baseball and one of his shoes. But the surviving child insisted that it wasn’t the water to blame, for he’d seen an unearthly pale hand reach up from below and yank his friend down by his ankle, quick as a rabbit snatched by the strong jaws of a trap.
People disappeared. That wasn’t unusual in a city where ruthless gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, and Al Capone were as famous as movie stars. But the missing weren’t gangsters “disappeared” after a disagreement or turf war. Handmade signs appeared on lampposts and outside subway entrances, desperate pleas from frantic loved ones: VANISHED: PRESTON DILLON, FULTON STREET SUBWAY STATION. MISSING: COLLEEN MURPHY, SCHOOLTEACHER, AUBURN HAIR, BLUE EYES, TWENTY YEARS OF AGE. DO YOU KNOW: TOMAS HERNANDEZ, BELOVED SON? LAST SEEN ENTERING CITY HALL SUBWAY STATION. LAST SEEN IN THE VICINITY OF PARK ROW. LAST SEEN LEAVING FOR WORK. LAST SEEN. LAST SEEN. LAST SEEN…
But these were insignificant stories in a city full of them. These random accounts were pushed to the newspapers’ back pages, past flashy reports about Babe Ruth driving his new Pierce-Arrow touring car to Yankee Stadium or a shining picture of Jake Marlowe surveying the marshy ground of Queens for his Future of America Exhibition or exhaustive reports on what the Sweetheart Seer wore to a party with her beau, the dashing Sam Lloyd.
For the newspapers, it seemed, were typeset with dreams of their own.
“You write a lot of love songs. Have you ever been in love?” Ling asked Henry on the eighth night as they waited for the train.
“Yes,” Henry said and did not elaborate. “How about you?”
Ling remembered looking into Wai-Mae’s eyes.
“No,” she said.
“Smart girl. Love is hell,” Henry joked. He sat down at the piano and played something new.
“What is this song?” Ling asked. It sounded different from the other songs Henry had been playing. Those were forgettable. But the piece taking shape now was strange and lovely and haunting. It had weight.
“I don’t know yet. Just something I’m playing around with,” Henry said. He seemed embarrassed, like he’d been caught telling his deepest secrets.
“I like it,” Ling said, listening intently. “It’s a sad sort of beautiful. Like all the best songs.”
“Is… is that a compliment?” Henry put a hand to his chest in a mock-faint.
Ling rolled her eyes. “Don’t get cute.”