The Museum of Extraordinary Things(14)

Hochman vowed that the angels led him to these lost husbands and fathers and fiancés, but in truth he employed dozens of boys as runners, young spies who tracked down those wretched individuals who had deserted their families. He taught his boys the tools of discovery for seeking out lowlifes: interview the owners of taverns, whorehouses, flophouses, hunt the alleys and tenement buildings, hang around the liquor store on Delancey Street that sold Vishniak whiskey, favored by men who’d come to New York from the Ukraine. We asked the right questions because Hochman taught us what they were. If we had a photograph we’d show it around, even if it was an old daguerreotype and the image was fading around its silvered edges. Do you know this man? we’d demand of as many people as we could find who would listen to our pleas. It will be worth your while to tell us, we went on. He’s won a contest, an award, a free meal, and there may be a reward in it for you as well if you take me to him. Did he grow up in your village back home, do you have pity for his family, are you sure you yourself aren’t running from something? We were posted in the places where men who disappeared were known to gather, whether they were drowning their sorrows or creating new identities. Once a boy had done his dirty work and the good-for-nothing individual had been located, Hochman claimed to have found the missing person with his psychic skills.

The Wizard didn’t seem to think much of me when I met him on the street and asked for work. As always he was fashionably dressed despite his girth. He wore a blue serge suit and a top hat. His secretary was with him, a thin bad-tempered man named Solomon, whose duty it was to keep the Wizard’s many admirers away. I pushed past the secretary and walked beside Hochman as if I had a right to accost him. He eyed me coolly, and yet a smile played at his lips. He liked people with spirit. He said he had never employed an Orthodox Jew, though he himself was a pious man. He feared my father would make trouble if I worked for him. He suggested that I should go back to my studies and leave the wicked world to men who knew how to deal with such matters.

“My father has no say in my life,” I told Hochman. In the newspapers the Wizard was referred to as Doctor or Professor, but I was fairly certain he had no degree. He took out a cigar and offered me one, but I refused. I didn’t want him to catch me choking on the smoke.

“Why is that?” he asked. “A father is a father, Orthodox or not.”

“You’re so smart, you tell me.”

I had nerve, but my matter-of-fact retort did the trick. Hochman all-out grinned as he hired me, thinking an Orthodox boy dressed in black with long hair would have a special sort of access, and that people would confide in me. As it turned out, he was right. Men told me their loathsome tales, how they’d run away from their nagging wives or fallen in love with a Christian woman, how they had a right to their freedom. I was a good listener, and I didn’t make pronouncements. I was so accomplished at what I did that Hochman soon paid me double what I earned at the factory. Much to my father’s distress, I quit my job as a tailor. I spent my mornings sleeping, and my nights on the streets. Hochman was quite famous, and even the Times went to him when children were missing or when there was a crime the police could not solve. My status in the neighborhood either ascended or was deeply tarnished by my new occupation depending on who you were and what you believed.

That winter I found one of the missing children who had been written up in all the papers. It was front-page news for a time. An Orthodox boy of seven was missing. It was thought he’d been kidnapped, perhaps by an employee of one of those houses on Third Avenue where sex was cheaply bought. I questioned several of his friends on the street where he lived, and they all told me the same thing—this boy was a wanderer. He often climbed down the fire escape in the middle of the night. He liked to ramble along the East River, where he dreamed of running away to sea. I began to search the pathways that ran along the river. Every now and then I came upon a group of displaced individuals, lost men with no homes and no goal other than to stay alive. These poor souls lived on the edge of the city, scavenging what they could. I knew enough to stay away from these men, who would bash in a fellow’s head in order to steal his boots. Because I was tall I seemed older than my age, and I cursed a blue streak if anyone approached, therefore no one accosted me. I had taken to carrying a knife for my protection, and once or twice I showed it when someone began to follow me.

I discovered the missing boy beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, a feat of construction considered to be one of the wonders of the world. The boy lay in a pipe that allowed water to rush from the streets into the river. I guessed he had sneaked out, then gone too far. It was likely that he’d become exhausted and had curled up to sleep, freezing to death as the snow fell. I understood what it was like to want to run away from home, and maybe that was why I felt so disturbed. I shook his shoulder, but he didn’t respond. I pulled him out of the pipe and sat beside him for a long time. The truth was, for all my bravado, I had never seen a dead body before. Though many in our village had been killed, they had become cinders that rose up with the wind. I could not look into this boy’s face. I thought I would be haunted if I did, and he would then follow me from that place. I kept my eyes averted as I covered him with a blanket I found nearby. I was na?ve; I thought the dead could still feel cold. I folded my coat into a pillow, for I was convinced that the dead wished for comfort as well. As I left, snow began to fall again, and I was grateful, hoping when the police brought the boy’s mother here, she would be spared the aura of death that clung to this miserable place, and would instead see something that might resemble heaven, a bank of white, a boy who slept peacefully, his head resting on my coat.