It was so close in here, he could feel the sweat gathering beneath his arms. Maybe he had made a mistake stayinghere tonight. Sadie had never wanted anything to do with his mansion on Fifth Avenue. Her ghost rarely haunted him there.
But Rory’s place was too reminiscent of that old apartment, the home Sadie had carved for her family in that concrete wasteland that was Little Italy. Zeke had had difficulty, after so many nights huddled in some alley, in sleeping there too. His temperature had always seemed to run a shade hotter than Sadie’s and the girls.
Flinging off the covers, Zeke finally got to his feet. Surely Rory would have no objection if he opened a window. He approached one of the side ones and tugged at the sash. It stuck. Didn’t they always? He was obliged to put a little shoulder into it before the window creaked upward. But the welcome rush of cool air was worth the struggle.
Just outside loomed the familiar metal rungs of a fire escape, making it possible to descend or mount up to the roof. A smile tugged at Zeke along with a memory, one of his few pleasant ones. On those really hot nights, Sadie had always let him sleep up on the roof. It was a good place for privacy, to get away from the chattering of Caddie and Agnes, Tessa’s endless scolding.
Only him and all those stars to count. Somehow up there it had been easier to relax, to stop being so tough, to harbor a few tender dreams hidden away beneath the moon’s shadows. Zeke leaned up against the window frame, a rare mood of nostalgia sweeping over him. A sudden impulse seized him, or was it the night itself that beckoned? He didn’t know, but he eased himself through the window onto the fire escape. He peered down through the grating to the street below. It was only two stories down, but Zeke felt a familiar churning in the pit of his stomach. He had always had a fear of heights, ever since he was a kid and two of the Plug Uglies had dangled him by his heels from on top of the old cotton warehouse. It had been one of the few times in his life anyone had ever gotten him to cry uncle.
After all this time, Zeke knew the fear to be irrational, but there seemed to be no ridding himself of it. He coped now as he had always done as a boy. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to look up, never down. Clambering along the metal rungs, he finally reached the flat surface of the roof.
He had been afraid he would find the experience not at all as he remembered, changed somehow, but it wasn’t. The night was like velvet, the sky still as vast as he recalled, the stars just as far away and mysterious. Keeping a prudent distance from the edge, Zeke sat down, drawing up his knees. Of course it had not been that long ago that he had done this, only two years. But he hadn’t noticed much of anything then, the last time he had been with Sadie. A hot July night, he helped her up above to seek some relief, but no air was stirring, not even on the rooftop. And still Sadie shivered. She was already sick then. If only he hadn’t been so stupid, he would have noticed that. But he had been too caught up describing to her the wonders of his castle on Fifth Avenue.
“I’ll get you away from this wretched tenement at last, lady. The kitchen is going to be bigger than your whole apartment. You’ll love it.”
Sadie only gave a sad shake of her head. “I don’t belong in such a place, Johnnie. I wouldn’t know how to go on.”
“You’d learn. My friend, Mrs. Van Hallsburg, has undertaken to teach me to be a gent. I’ll get her to help you become a grand lady.”
Zeke flinched now at the recollection of his own crudity, his incredible ignorance. As if there had been anything that Mrs. Van H. or any woman could have taught Sadie. The mention of the wealthy widow had only served to spoil that night with his mother, his last, if he had only known it.
On parting, Sadie’s eyes had been shaded with trouble. She had always looked that way, ever since he had first told her of his acquaintance with Mrs. Van Hallsburg.
“I wish you would stay away from her, Johnnie. She’s not a good woman. She comes from bad blood—all those Markhams. Cold, uncaring people.”
Zeke had been surprised that such a remark would come from Sadie, who ever saw only the good in people.
“But you don’t know the Markhams or Mrs. Van H,” he had protested.
“I know enough,” she began and then stopped. He had the feeling she had meant to say more, but she complained suddenly of dizziness, begging him to take her inside.
Although he had been disturbed, Zeke had managed to dismiss Sadie’s warning. After all, she had only ever seen Mrs. Van H. once. He had pointed the elegant widow out to her during a Sunday drive through Central Park.
But remembering the incident, it now struck him as strange, especially considering that Rory had also taken a strong aversion to Mrs. Van H. on first sight. What was it Rory had said when Zeke had awoken her from that nightmare in his bed?
She had been dreaming that Mrs. Van. H. was some sort of a monster. “She’s evil,” Rory had insisted.
These women and their peculiar instincts. Zeke wished he could dismiss them that lightly, but the memories continued to trouble him. He was still pondering the matter when he heard the scrape of metal behind him. Someone was mounting the fire escape.
A half-formed hope seized him that Rory might have awakened, found him missing. If she had noticed the window open, perhaps she had guessed where he had gone and decided to join him. Earlier he had only wanted to be alone, lick hiswounds from the scrap with Tessa. But now he welcomed the thought of Rory.
He glanced over his shoulder, but his smile froze on his lips. For the second time that night, shadows fell across one of the ugliest faces he had ever seen, the man with the scarred chin.
“What the devil?” Zeke exclaimed, tensing for battle, but this time his reflexes were a shade too slow.
A heavy club swished down through the darkness, catching him hard on the side of the head. The stars above him seemed to explode, a thousand pinpoints of white hot light.
Then they vanished and there was nothing but unrelenting black.
Ten
Rory awoke from a deep, dreamless night with a headache niggling behind her eyes, oppressed by the feeling that something was wrong. Her mind yet fogged with sleep, she remembered that she had gone to bed troubled, but her thoughts were not collected enough to recall what that trouble had been.
Whatever it was, it had sent her to sleep hugging her pillow as she always did when beset with some worry. Even now that downy cushion was crushed close to her breasts. Thrusting it away from her, Rory rolled onto her back, rubbing the haze from her eyes. She blinked at the sunlight streaming across the oak railing at the foot of her bed.
The morning was well advanced past sunrise judging by the sounds emanating from the sidewalks below. She had left her window open a crack, allowing the clatter of passing horse carts to invade her bedchamber, the shrill voices of children marching off to school, shouting and scuffling, the milkman cursing at Finn MacCool for nipping his ankle again, Miss Flanagan hollering back it served Mr. Peaby right for forgetting her second bottle of cream.
Just the normal Monday hubbub on McCreedy Street. Why then did something seem so different? There was always enough noise on a workday to wake the dead.
