The Museum of Extraordinary Things(85)

“I heard you found her,” Rosenfeld remarked.

Eddie shrugged, embarrassed. “A little late.”

“Late or not, the Weisses needed to set her to rest.”

Eddie wished he could erase the moment when he’d stood on the threshold of the Weisses’ flat to hand the old man the gold locket. “I wish you’d never hired me,” he’d confessed.

“It was the right thing.” Weiss had turned the locket over in his palm. “You did what you were supposed to do. Now you’ll find who did this to her.”

“That’s not what I do. I’m not a detective.”

There was no point in going to the police, certainly not in Brooklyn. Eddie most likely would end up in jail if he offered the slightest complaint against Coralie’s father. Even if he did, the worst the Professor might be accused of was possession of a body; a fine would be levied, little more. As for the men of the Tenth Precinct in Chelsea, they were not inclined to help those such as Hannah who might be associated with union activity. People disappeared and that was that. Once a corpse was discovered, there was no further inquiry. The matter was settled. But it wasn’t, and Eddie knew it. He thought of the message of the blue thread, Beck in his mud-splattered long underwear, the flattened ferns around the hermit’s body.

“You’re better than a detective,” Weiss insisted when Eddie had tried to beg off. “Your father said you would find out what happened to Hannah, and I won’t rest in peace until you do.” He gave Eddie a fierce look, eye to eye, man to man. “And you know as well as I, neither will you.”

Eddie, always prone to insomnia, hadn’t slept since they’d carried Hannah from that wretched workroom. He feared his dreams, filled with violent imaginings of what he might do should he ever come upon the cold-blooded killer who’d dared to take up a needle and thread to quiet the dead. He’d tried to pull himself together before attending the funeral, but his clothes were untidy and he hadn’t shaved. His good hand seemed to have a tremor.

“You’re in poor condition.” Rosenfeld took note of his old companion’s disheveled appearance, surprising Eddie with his concern. “Broke your hand?”

“It was broken for me.”

Rosenfeld handed over a card that carried the address of the Workmen’s Circle. “If you find out anything, contact me. Or if you need anything.”

“You’ve got the wrong person. I’m the fellow you despise.”

“Don’t forget how long I’ve known you.” Eddie had taken out his watch, which had continued to tell perfect time despite the broken face. Rosenfeld nodded, a smile at his lips. “Still have that, I see.”

A flush of embarrassment crossed Eddie’s face, for here was the one person who was well aware of how he’d come to possess the watch. The funeral was ending, and before Rosenfeld went to pay his respects to the family, he clapped his old companion on the back. “I’ve got the right person, brother.”

Eddie watched as the mourners departed. A few people lingered: some of the girls who had worked in the Asch Building, along with a young man wearing a frayed jacket with a black mourning band wound around his arm. Eddie took the opportunity to follow a path leading to Moses Levy’s grave, a site he hadn’t visited since his mentor’s death. Stalks of milkweed grew wild in the area, and Eddie pulled the weeds clustered around Levy’s headstone. It was the least he could do for a man who had given him so much. He thought with gratitude about the night when he’d first encountered Levy, for he didn’t like to imagine whom he might have become otherwise.

He left Mt. Zion and began the walk back toward the Second Avenue El, which would take him across the Queensboro Bridge, which had opened two years earlier to span the East River and cross into Manhattan. In the past, Eddie had journeyed to Queens County so that he might try his hand fishing in Jamaica Bay, but the varieties of fish once so common there, enormous schools of sheepshead and black drum, had all but disappeared. As he walked along now, he did his best to let the act of walking clear his mind. Yet he had a strange, spooked feeling. Perhaps he had been unnerved by visiting Moses’s grave, for an odd brand of loneliness had settled upon him as he was leaving the cemetery.

He turned onto a nearly deserted road, the sun beating down on his black hat and coat. As he continued, he paid attention to his surroundings, as Hochman had taught him to do. Listen, and you’ll hear a story being told, one you may need to know. Upon hearing a rustle behind him, Eddie stopped, as if to adjust the wrappings on his hand, taking the opportunity to peer behind him. He spied the young man who had lingered at the funeral, who now ducked behind a stable. He wondered if this was the man Beck had noticed in the muck near the river, and if he had found himself a murderer. Instead of continuing on, Eddie walked back toward the stable, going around the far side. He picked up a branch from a chestnut tree and approached his stalker, surprising him from behind, pushing him up against the shingled wall, the branch across his throat.

“Get off !” the younger man cried, choking out the words. He was only twenty-one or twenty-two, clearly unused to a fight. Eddie had no trouble keeping him in check, the branch pressed harder against his neck. “I’ve done nothing to you!” the young man managed to croak.

This man was a stranger to Eddie. “Why are you following me?”