“Like they murdered all those children,” Gloria shot back.
“Fine. Leave her out of it. We’ll do it without her,” Aron said.
“No,” Arthur said. “It’s all of us or it’s none of us. Mabel?”
Mabel thought of her parents, fighting for justice their whole lives. She thought of their small victories, eked out by pennies. They’d always said that there was no room for violence. It was an inviolable rule. In her mind, Mabel saw her father at his typewriter, diligently reporting on some new struggle or cause. She saw her mother standing up to her own family, turning her back on an easy life of wealth in order to marry a penniless Jewish socialist. They were principled, her parents. They’d be horrified to know where she was, who she had become, what she was thinking of doing. But she was not part of their generation. She had come to see that their ways were antiquated. What had their methods gotten anyone? Not enough. Twelve dead children, burned to bones, lying on a field in New Jersey because of one man’s greed. Her parents were wrong. There were no rules anymore. You had to fight fire with fire.
Mabel joined hands with the others.
THE EXCEPTIONAL AMERICAN
In the days before the opening of Jake Marlowe’s Future of America Exhibition, New York had the feel of a giant carnival. The days were warmer. The rains that started the month had now given way to late-April sunshine. Beauty parlors were packed with girls having fresh marcel waves put into their hair. Store windows advertised SMART SUITS AND HATS FOR THE MAN WITHOUT LIMIT, THE MAN LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE OF AMERICA! The mood was optimistic. No one gave a damn about ghosts. It was as if overnight, everyone had agreed that what had come before was nothing but a bad dream best forgotten.
“All anybody wants to talk about is this exhibit,” Woody explained to Evie over pie at the Automat when she’d begged him to write another story about the Diviners. “Sorry, Sheba. But that’s the truth of it. I couldn’t get you an inch of column space. The ghost craze is over. Diviners are on their way out, like yesterday’s dance sensation.”
“But it isn’t a craze!” Evie insisted. “There is real evil at work, Woody.”
He shrugged. “Not when Jake Marlowe makes folks feel good about being American, like they can’t lose.”
The phone had stopped ringing at Diviners Investigations. Evie had taken to scouring the papers for any mention of a sighting. “Just like Will,” she chided herself. The only ghosts they’d hunted down, near a slip in the seaport, had taunted them openly. “Do you think you can stop this? You’ll never best him.” And just before they annihilated the wraith, sending its atoms who-knew-where, it had fixed them with a stare: “This is the history: blood.” When the exhilaration of the kill had fled them, they collapsed, skin crawling, stomachs aching as if they might retch. They were exhausted. And no closer to finding Conor.
Evie had heard nothing from Jericho since the awful weekend at Hopeful Harbor. She supposed that was as it should be—she needed time to sort through her messy, conflicting feelings. But she was sad to have lost their friendship. Mabel wasn’t returning her calls, either. “Sorry, I’m just awfully busy,” Mabel had said the one time Evie had managed to catch her at home. She’d sounded strange, though—evasive. And Evie wondered if their friendship would ever recover.
With only two days to go before the exhibition’s opening, WGI was hosting a celebration for Jake Marlowe at a swanky hotel near the New York Stock Exchange and broadcasting it on air live. Will Rogers would perform. So would W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice, and rising star Theta Knight. And there would be an interview with Sarah Snow and Evie O’Neill—the Divine and the Diviner.
At the sound of applause, Theta elbowed Evie. “Here comes your competition.” She nodded toward Sarah Snow, who was gliding through the ballroom in her signature white—a long satin dress for the occasion and a fresh white corsage nestled against ropes and ropes of pearls, which Evie was sure had not been provided by Jesus. Sarah waved, and then she joined Jake Marlowe, gazing up at him with beaming adoration.
“She’s laying it on a bit thick, isn’t she?” Evie grumbled.
Theta adjusted Evie’s rhinestone headband atop her freshly styled bob. “Listen, kid, you got one mission: Get out there and sparkle for WGI so that old buzzard, Mr. Phillips, and everybody else in here thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas. You’re gonna have to watch that tongue of yours. Can you manage it for one night?”
Evie pasted on a big smile. She batted her lashes like a deranged ingenue. “Look at me! Aren’t I just the dahhhlingest? I only talk about the weathahhhh and the goodness of people’s heahhhts.”
Theta smirked. “Get it all out now, Evil, before you step up to that microphone.”
Evie scowled. “There isn’t even any hooch!”
Theta gave Evie a gentle push toward the room. “Go be charming.”
The hotel’s ballroom swirled with Important People: congressmen, the mayor, radio and motion picture stars. Everyone had turned out for Jake Marlowe’s big gala. The theme was “The Exceptional American.” Everything had been draped in red, white, and blue crepe. Wearing an angelic expression, Sarah Snow moved from table to table, shaking hands with the fawning wives of men who were also working the room, doing whatever took them to the top. The joint smelled of perfume, steak, cigar smoke, desperation, and ambition. Evie wanted to be as far from Sarah as she could get. She headed for the other side of the room.
Passing through the ballroom, she caught snippets of conversation:
“… I hear Miss Snow received two thousand fan letters last week.…”
“… Two thousand? Why, I heard it was five.…”
Envy burned up Evie’s throat. Her pasted-on smile drooped.
“… I like Marlowe. He speaks his mind.…”
“… He oughta run for president. After all, I hear the Democrats are putting up Al Smith again, and he’s a Catholic… don’t wanna answer to the pope.…”
“… Like this Mussolini fella. Now he’s really taken Italy by the reins and instilled genuine national pride. Seems like we need a little of that over here.…”
“Hear, hear! America first.”
Someone tapped Evie on the shoulder. She turned and found herself face-to-face with T. S. Woodhouse.
“I need to talk to you, Sheba,” he said.
“Can’t it wait? I—”
Woody opened his tuxedo jacket, showing her his flask.
“Lead the way, Mr. Woodhouse,” Evie said.
In the hustle and bustle of the hotel kitchen, Evie knocked back several belts of strong whiskey, coughing heartily. Her lungs were on fire. “Whoo!”
“My bootlegger is a good man,” Woody said.
“What did you want to talk about?” Evie asked when she found her voice again.
“Remember that matter you asked me to look into?”
“Jumping into the river in concrete overshoes?” Evie teased.