The Museum of Extraordinary Things(44)

On the fifth of the month, New York City held a mass funeral for the unidentified victims of the fire, a procession that would take six hours to complete. The morning’s drizzle would become a driving rain, but a sea of more than three hundred thousand mourners holding black umbrellas lined the street to pay their respects to those who had lost their lives. Guards had been stationed around the homes of the owners of the factory, for there was talk of retaliation. The survivors murmured to each other in remembrance of those they had lost, girls who had jumped holding hands, lovers who had kissed before the flames engulfed them, lives burning up like cinders as the owners and supervisors were skulking over the melting tar of the roof, making their way onto a neighboring rooftop. The deceased were put to rest in black coffins covered with shrouds—each had a silver plate upon it, stating that they were the unidentified departed.

The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, begun in 1900 to protect working people from seventy-hour workweeks and wretched conditions, had met in long sessions, swelling the halls at Cooper Union, petitioning President Taft and the governor, John Dix, only in office since January of that year, for workers’ rights. The parade of mourners was more than just a funeral; it was a river of outrage. Carts transporting the dead were laden with flowers, pulled by huge draft horses draped with black netting. Thousands of mourners in black coats, the men in bowler hats, the women draped in black wool and velvet, followed the carts, including the members of the Ladies’ Waist and Dress Makers’ Union, Local 25, the union that had tried and failed to have sprinklers installed in the Triangle factory. The mourners carried black banners and garlands of roses. Signs carried by women’s union groups called out, AN END TO GRIEF. The city still smelled of smoke, and a gray film hung above them. It was April, yet it seemed another month entirely, more somber November in mood.

As Eddie made his way through the crowd, he was looking for one person, a young woman with pale hair, the color of snow. Snow melted, Eddie knew that much. It disappeared if you tried to hold on to it. He had posted himself in the doorway of a pet shop. From this position he could see the swelling throngs. The gathering was not unruly, but the quiet was worse than any mayhem, a pulsing wave of sorrow. Soon enough, the owner of the shop came out with a broom. There was to be no loitering, he declared, for he feared his plate-glass windows would be shattered should tempers rise.

As Eddie moved on, he thought he spotted Weiss’s daughter. It was what he had come to do, yet at the sight of this girl, he grew light-headed. He shifted his camera stand over his shoulder, then folded himself into the crowd. He made his way through the mass of people on the street, trailing her, holding his breath, like a man about to jump from a bridge. She wore a camel-colored coat over blue skirts and high-buttoned boots, her pale hair falling down her back, proceeding so quickly Eddie wondered if she was a ghost, for ghosts are said to move in the corners of human sight. She disappeared in a mob on Fourteenth Street, but after a few moments Eddie spied her again. Her hair was indeed a beacon. If she chose to slip a shawl or scarf over her head, he would certainly lose her in the crowd. He pushed his way through the throngs with greater haste.

She came to a stop on a corner, and Eddie could see her well enough to tell she was no ghost, only flesh and blood. He readied his camera. Just as he took her photograph, she lifted her eyes, and stared directly into the lens. Later he would see that her eyes were dark, ember-colored, and he would recall that the eyes of the girl in Weiss’s dime-store photograph were pale, clearly blue. But at that moment all he could focus on was that she had begun to approach him. He had no idea what to expect, certainly he never imagined she would strike him on the chest with open palms. He reeled backward, even though he was so tall, astonished by her fury.

“You think you can come here like a jackal and take photographs while we drown in our grief ?”

“You didn’t have to hit me.” He was thankful she hadn’t damaged the camera.

“We have some rights, you know,” she remarked coldly.

When she started away, Eddie took her arm. “You’re Miss Weiss?” Several young women on the corner were watching, clearly disturbed, but Eddie wasn’t concerned. It was unlikely they would signal one of the many policemen stationed nearby. None of them wanted the authorities involved in their affairs.

Eddie showed off the dime-store photograph. “Is this you?”

The young woman flushed. “What are you doing with this? Are you a thief ? Did you rob my father?”

“Your father came to me. He thought you were lost and asked for my help. But clearly you don’t want him to know where you are.”

“My father knows exactly where I am.” The girl raised her chin and nodded to the photograph. “This is my sister,” she said of the image.

They stood together as the crowds pushed past, an odd intimacy between them. “You’re twins?”

“A year apart. Not that it’s your business.”

“I just want to speak to you about her.”

“For all I know you could work for the insurance company, or for the police. If you follow me, I’ll hit you harder. And next time I’ll scream.” Hannah’s sister backed away, slipping into the crowd.

Eddie might have followed her, but he had learned early on that it wasn’t possible to force out information; evidence gathered in that manner would be unreliable at best, threaded with half truths and assumptions. The Wizard of the Lower East Side always instructed the boys he employed that, when one was searching for a person’s whereabouts, the individual’s entire history must be considered. With every case, the investigator must look backward in time. Who was the woman who had set off on March 25 wearing a blue coat, a treasured gold locket at her throat? It was the path of that soul he must set out to discover. To find someone, it was necessary to follow in the way that the angels who follow men’s lives on earth are said to do, charting each trespass without judgment, for judgment is never ours to give.