I bucked beneath him, gasping for breaths that wouldn’t come. As I struggled to draw in air, my head pulsed in sickening waves.
Looming above me, Grigori didn’t speak. The firelight gleamed in his eyes, or maybe it was his eyes that gave the fire its light. His body shook with urgent panting, like a bloodhound on a short lead. He was enjoying this.
Seconds passed in unbearable slowness as darkness sank in. A cold draft buffeted against my chest, and the shadows resolved into the silhouettes of many wings.
I trembled in the grips of terror even greater than what had engulfed me the moment Grigori’s hands closed around my throat. I struggled to speak, to plead for mercy, but I couldn’t breathe.
I was sinking into—
—the scent of sea brine flooded my nostrils on a wave of cold Atlantic mist. Slowly, I opened my eyes. Through a skein of fog, the sun gleamed as hard and silver as a freshly minted leu.
My feet were on solid ground now. Ahead, the ship’s prow jutted into the fogbank. A small crowd had gathered near the low railing, surrounding a swathed form.
My heart jolted. This couldn’t be happening.
“Wake up,” I whispered, stepping toward the crowd. I barely felt my legs beneath me. The watchers loomed like phantoms, silent and shadowed, their faces just blurs.
I couldn’t speak. I stood there, petrified with shock and horror, as the sailors gave my father’s body to the sea. I stood there, and stood there, and—
Overhead, the indifferent sky. A small crowd stood at the low railing, surrounding a swathed form.
“Stop!” I fought my way to the front of the crowd, straining against hands that felt like wings. The people held me back as the body tipped over the railing and vanished into the sea—
“Not again! Please, not again!”
As the sailors lifted the shrouded body for the third time, it trembled. Weak fingers dimpled the sheet. And then it tipped—
“Stop! He’s still alive!”
And then, a fourth time, a fifth time, the body slid over the railing—
Sobbing violently, I struggled in the grip of the crowd as the shrouded body was lifted for a sixth time. There were ten hands. There were a hundred hands. A thousand, crushing me beneath them.
What was this?
This was death.
This was Gehinnom, the realm through which all souls passed.
The shrouded body—
Ten times, I watched the body be lifted. Twenty. Innumerable.
Slowly, I sank to my knees on the frosty wooden deck and allowed the crowd to block me. I wasn’t going to fight it. This was not punishment, just what must be done. The abrasive Atlantic winds and the salt of the sea would eventually cleanse my soul.
“Alter,” Yakov murmured softly, and I lifted my head. He stood in front of me, dressed as he had been on the night he died. No mud on his face this time. His eyes brimmed with such pity and sadness, I sobbed and crumpled over myself, ashamed at how close I had come, so very close, just to fail. The way I always did.
“Don’t look at me,” I cried, hiding my face with my hands. “I don’t want you to see me this way!”
I knew how the light could turn cruel at certain angles, exposing me for how I must be now—eyes sightless and weeping blood from burst vessels, features swollen blue and grotesque, the bruises of fingertips around my throat.
Sinking to his knees before me, Yakov parted my hands and tilted up my chin. His eyes were as dark and deep as the sea; I could lose myself in them forever.
“You can’t stay here,” he said, holding my hands in his. “You need to survive.”
“I—I can’t.” Sobs racked me. “It’s too late for everything.”
“No, it isn’t. Not for you.” Gently, Yakov helped me to my feet. “You need to fight.”
The crowd’s hands tightened around me.
“Fight!” Yakov shouted.
I struggled against the weight of their bodies, until it was no longer hands that held me, but wings of blood-gummed feathers studded with a thousand eyes and writhing tongues.
Yakov joined me in my struggle, wrestling against the creature as though he were channeling his namesake. I broke free of the Angel’s embrace and raced toward my father as the two sailors lifted him. I shoved them aside. My fingers curled around my father’s trembling fingers. I held tight as the—
—darkness shrank back to the confines of my closed lids in an instant. Past the roar of blood in my ears, I discerned a faint crackling. My cheeks prickled as a sudden wave of heat washed over me.
I opened my eyes.
Flames crawled up the walls and ceiling, casting off billowing black smoke and the whip of sparks. My eyes stung from the blaze. Choking for breath, I snatched up the revolver, cocked its hammer, and staggered to my feet. No use. The crimson glow revealed an empty room. Grigori was already gone.
The smoke disoriented me. My legs collapsed beneath me after several steps, and I sucked in the breathable air near the floorboards. Hauled myself forward, toward the stairs, gagging and nearly unconscious. The floor was so hot now, my palms burned. When I touched the edge of the landing, I laboriously sat up and levered myself down the stairs one at a time, too weak to walk.
Ten steps down, the air was cleaner, and I was able to breathe. I grasped hold of the bannister and pulled myself to my feet. My legs shuddered beneath me but held. As I fled down the stairs, the clang of fire bells filled my ears.
Down below, the rink’s surface glistened with water, but not enough to make a difference in dampening the flames. The staircase to the second floor had been long, but the one leading to ground level was longer still. It seemed to stretch much farther than I’d initially thought. As I stumbled down the stairs, I had the disconcerting impression that I was entering the bowels of the earth.
At last, I reached the first floor. The machines continued to rumble even as smoke filled the room. I threw open the double doors and tumbled into the cool, breezy afternoon.
A crowd had gathered near the entrance to the Cold Storage building. They clustered around me, the air filled with their excited voices. Sharp splintery syllables, words I couldn’t understand.
My legs buckled beneath me after several steps. A man reached out to steady me and helped me to a bench some distance from the building.
“Are you all right, son?” he asked in English, squeezing my shoulders. “Do you need a doctor?”
Tears blurred my vision, turned everything into a haze of color. I wiped them away with the back of my hand and stifled a sob. “Neyn. No. No doctor.”
He stepped back to give me room to breathe. I held on to the edge of the bench, not trusting myself to stand just yet.
The crowd grew by the minute. I searched for Grigori among the shocked faces. At the edge of the group, a man stood with his face craned upward and his lips parted in wonder. He held a pair of tortoiseshell lorgnette glasses to his eyes, to get a better look at the flames climbing the building’s walls.
My breath caught in my throat.
That face. I knew that face.
Mr. Whitby.
51
The crowd parted to make way for a group of firefighters, their bronze helmets glinting like the regalia of knights. Mr. Whitby didn’t stir as I stepped behind him, his gaze locked on the inferno.
I put my arm around his shoulder and tugged him close. He turned with a scowl of distaste and began to pull away, only to freeze as he caught sight of me.
“I have a gun.” I spoke quietly and slowly, taking great care to get the message across. “If you run or shout...”
He swallowed hard, his gaze shifting to where my hand was tucked under my coat. “How... You...you should be dead.”
“Come. Walk.” I nodded toward a dark sprawling building farther down the path, its walls glistening with arch after arch of se
gmented windows. My eyes burned from the smoke, and each time the crowd gasped, I felt as though my stomach was being wrung between cruel hands. I couldn’t stand staying here another moment. It was hideous.
Mr. Whitby looked back at the fire. When I prodded him with the gun through my coat, he got the message and stepped forward.
“You won’t do it, boy,” he said as we walked down the path. I held on to his coattail to keep him from running. “Do you know how I know this? Because of your commandments. Thou shall not kill.”
I didn’t respond. I needed to think about what I’d say next, carefully lining up my words like rows of even masonry, so that there could be no misunderstandings.
Everyone we passed had their eyes on the blaze. Once we reached the building, I tugged him to the side, away from the gateway with its concentric arches and ornate repoussé facade. Unlike the grand ivory buildings in the Fair’s Court of Honor, these walls were painted in garish shades of red and bronze as though colored by a premonition of fire. I stopped as we reached an isolated alcove at the far side of the building, well away from the crowd that had gathered to watch the smoke rising. I drew the gun from under my coat.
“Why are you doing this?” I croaked, keeping my hand close against my chest to shield the view from outsiders. “Why here? Why a fire?”
He didn’t answer.
“Damn you, tell me why! Tell me the truth. What is the purpose?”
“I am a gambler.” Mr. Whitby’s gaze remained on the revolver. “The greatest thrill comes from games where the stakes are the highest.”
“The stakes?”
“The real estate prices in this city will rise exponentially in the aftermath of the World’s Fair. That much is a given. Chicago will be known as the treasure of the heartland. Everyone will come to marvel at it. However, one thing holds this city back. The eyesore that is Maxwell Street.” His mouth twisted in a smile. “Your filthy ghetto is a stain on our city. Maxwell Street should just burn, and if it takes Little Italy and Pilsen with it, all the better. Once the ashes settle, that land will be dirt cheap and up for the grabbing. In my hands, that entire area will become another Prairie Avenue.”
“No,” I whispered. It couldn’t be. This fire had only been a distraction, a controlled burn to keep the fire department busy. “You’re mad. You’ll burn down the entire city. You’ll kill thousands.”
“I am a gambler!” He made a lunge for the revolver.
I pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was drowned out by the cacophony of fire bells. As Mr. Whitby collapsed to the ground, I lowered the revolver. My hands were shaking so badly, I was afraid I might squeeze off another shot by mistake. I slipped the gun in my pocket to be safe.
Against my better judgment, I squatted down and turned Mr. Whitby over onto his back. Blood welled through his white shirt, muddying the fabric. It should have sickened me, but I had seen corpses so many times, I took in the sight of gore like a distant memory.
His fading gaze focused on me.
“Tell me...” My voice caught like phlegm in my throat. I tried again. “Tell me where Grigori is going to set the next fire.”
Mr. Whitby smiled. Bloody saliva welled from between his teeth, inky in the dimness of the alcove, as though he was rotten from the inside out. He grasped onto the front of my shirt and pulled me closer, his hot breath reeking of flyblown meat.
“You’ll try to find it, and you’ll be too late.” His hand slackened and fell from my shirt. The shadow of reeling wings passed over his eyes. “May it all burn.”
52
Outside the fairgrounds, I hailed a hansom cab. I had no money, but I unclipped the Romanian leu from the end of my watch chain and passed it through the trapdoor in the ceiling.
“It’s silver,” I reassured the driver as he turned the coin over in his hand.
“Doesn’t look like any silver I know.” He tapped the coin against the lantern’s copper shade, listened to it ring. Sniffed it. “All right then. Where we off to?”
“Maxwell Street. Please hurry.”
As the man shut the trapdoor, I sank against the seat, giving myself a chance to breathe. The carriage rolled forward. I flinched at the crack of the coachman’s whip, my swollen throat tightening uncontrollably. If I closed my eyes, I knew I’d see it—the inky black expanse of the Atlantic and the swarm of bloodstained feathers. A thousand bulging eyes and writhing tongues.
I held my face in my hands and pretended I was back home. I whispered a few lines of a childhood song I remembered my mother singing:
“‘Girl, girl, I want to ask of you, what can grow, grow without rain? What can burn and never end? What can yearn, cry without tears?’” Moisture welled in my eyes. I swatted the tears away, furious at myself. The next few lines of “Tumbalalaika” returned to me like a cool palm upon a fevered brow. “‘Foolish lad, why do you have to ask? A stone can grow, grow without rain. Love can burn and never end. A heart can yearn, cry without tears.’”
Slowly, my pounding heartbeat returned to a calmer rhythm and the nausea receded. I kept my hands raised for a moment longer, breathing steadily and rubbing the bruises around my throat.
The minutes passed in excruciating slowness. After we had crossed over the river’s northern bend, the carriage stopped. Ahead, a snarl of pushcarts and wagons clogged the road. I swore under my breath and rapped on the trapdoor until the coachman lifted it.
“Is there a way around it?” I asked.
He looked over his shoulder. “We’re boxed in from behind. The horses won’t tolerate me backing up like this, and it’s too tight to turn around. We’ll have to wait for it to clear.”
“How far are we from Maxwell Street?”
“Another mile or two, I reckon.”
I jumped out of the hansom cab and darted between the pushcarts, shoes skidding over slime-encrusted pavestones. As I ran, faces passed through my head. Mrs. Brenner. Raizel and stately, bespectacled Mrs. Ackermann. Haskel. Dovid. Lev. Sender. Some would surely make it out alive, but others would perish in their own homes and businesses as the flames spread. And the sky tonight would be alive with the rustling of the Angel of Death’s wings.
I needed to warn people. I seized the wrist of the first man I came across, gripping on like a drowning sailor as he scowled in disgust and shook my hand away.
“There’s going to be a fire,” I said quickly. “You need to get out of here.”
“The kid is drunk,” he muttered to his wife and kept on walking, shooting back a sour glance after making it a safe distance.
I realized that if I kept doing this, people wouldn’t just think I was drunk. They would summon the police, who would unceremoniously dump me in Dunning Asylum. I could go to the authorities myself, but what then? Officer Rariden was already suspicious of me. If I told him the truth, I would risk implicating myself in Mr. Whitby’s shooting.
As I continued down the street, it dawned on me that I was only blocks from the Arbeiter-Zeitung’s office. It had been a mistake not to rely on Yuri’s help when he had offered it, just as it had been a mistake not to listen to Mrs. Brenner in the first place. I couldn’t go to the police without incriminating myself, but that didn’t mean I needed to do this alone.
At the Arbeiter-Zeitung’s office, I was greeted by a flurry of grinding presses and typewriting. On my way through the doors, I nearly collided with a newsboy carting a stack of newspapers practically as tall as he was.
“Today’s papers, fresh from the presses!” he announced in German, thrusting a paper at me expectantly. “Strikes continue at the Stockyard!”
“I don’t want a newspaper,” I snapped, and his face fell. “Do you know where Raizel Ackermann is?”
“Alter, don’t harass the newsboys.”
I turned to find Raizel scowling at me from the other end of the lobby.
“I wasn’t—�
� I swore under my breath as the boy pushed his cart over my foot and stepped back to give the brat some room to get through the doors.
Raizel came to my side. “What are you doing here?”
“You have to come with me. There’s going to be a fire on Maxwell Street.”
Her eyes flared in alarm. “A fire?”
I pushed through the doors. “I don’t know where, but if we don’t stop it, it’ll end up destroying the whole neighborhood.”
“Wait, are you telling me you found Yakov’s killer?” Raizel demanded. “How? Who is he?”
“A Cossack.”
“A Cossack?” She furrowed her brow. “What is a Cossack doing in Chicago?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. Let’s just go!”
As we hurried down the road, I explained to her how Frankie and I had rushed to Mr. Whitby’s place after triggering the vision at the World’s Fair. When I relayed what Mr. Whitby had said about the Jewish boy at the Whitechapel Club, she froze.
“Aaron?” she whispered, moisture welling in her eyes.
“I think so. I’m so sorry, Raizel.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose tightly. I could see her struggling with the urge to cry. When she lowered her hand, her eyes flared with fury and grief. “They’ll pay for this!”
“Mr. Whitby already has.” Nauseated by the memory of his final moments, I explained my role in his death and described the fire at the fairgrounds. Once I got her up-to-date about Grigori and the rest, I turned to keep going. I took no more than two steps before she grabbed my wrist, pulling me to a halt.
“If we keep running around like this, we’re going to get nowhere,” Raizel said. “Think. If you were Grigori, where would you light a fire?”
A sinking dread grew in my heart. By now, the fairgrounds would be swarming with firefighters struggling to put out the blaze. All of Chicago’s attention would be on the fire at the Cold Storage building.
Think! I needed to think!
Mr. Whitby had surely been driven by numb, mechanical logic when he had chosen the Cold Storage building as the place to set the first fire. Grigori was different. I doubted even he could name the needs that burned inside him.
The City Beautiful Page 34
