Dead Ringer

by Kat Ross

  I fingered the bulb of garlic in my right pocket. The left sagged with an iron horseshoe we’d found in the stable.

  “Can she hex us? Or whatever the terminology is?”

  “I imagine so. Potions and formulas, animal sacrifice — those are the most common ways to work magic, but any witch worth her salt can cast an evil eye without even touching you.”

  We passed the hubbub of Union Square and Moran turned east, following the Bowery south into Little Germany. Beer halls and oyster saloons dotted the streets, along with factories and workshops, sporting clubs, schools and churches, all with signs in German.

  Pushcarts crammed the narrow sidewalks under brightly colored awnings. The larger avenues teemed with men in suspenders and women wearing scarves over their hair. Moran was forced to slow his pace, winding through the clogged streets, and I took the opportunity to lean forward to the driver’s bench.

  “What do you plan to do when we find her?” I asked him.

  “Whatever Emma paid, I’ll triple it,” he replied. “If she refuses, I’ll explain the alternative. She’ll lose everything and everyone that’s dear to her, down to the last squalling infant.”

  We passed Tomkins Square Park, the patch of green denoting the neighborhood’s heart, and the elegant brougham drew curious stares.

  “It might be unwise to threaten her,” I pointed out.

  “That’s why I’ll offer her the money first,” he responded impassively.

  I leaned back against the padded seat. If it came down to it, I intended to grab John and run as fast as I could. My loyalty ended at doing battle with a black witch.

  The brougham turned south along Avenue A, where men staggered under the weight of piecemeal garments waiting to be stitched by women and children bent over sewing machines in tiny bedroom workshops. Younger kids rolled up their pants to horse around in a gushing fire hydrant. I smelled the heavenly aromas of the knish parlors, those purveyors of hot, flaky pastry filled with kasha, potato and sauerkraut.

  At Cherry Hill, home to General Washington during his first term as president, the respectable old houses of the Knickerbockers had been sliced up into slum dwellings, with heaps of brick shards handily placed to be used as missiles against the police. The neighborhood’s particular specialty was robbing sailors, who were knocked flat with a quarter’s worth of chloral hydrate.

  The address we sought was near the East River in a rough area at the far fringes of the Seventh Ward. Heaps of refuse lined the unpaved streets and the air stank of coal smoke and human waste. The reason for this became clear when we were nearly doused by the contents of a chamber pot someone tossed out an upper-story window with a desultory yell of warning. Moran shook a fist at the offender but didn’t slow his pace.

  He seemed familiar with the tangle of unmarked alleys along the waterfront, guiding the horses between sagging wooden structures where families lived jammed together in cold-water flats, past unpainted board fences and dirt yards with women washing clothes in barrels. Yet most lacked even that basic amenity because the space in the middle of the block was occupied by more houses – the darkest, gloomiest, most airless places of all, offering even cheaper lodgings than the ramshackle buildings facing the street.

  By some stroke of luck, the one we wanted had a faded number painted on the front door. Sixty-two Division Street.

  Moran stopped the carriage and whistled at a group of barefoot boys who were playing a game of tipcat with a little piece of wood, cracking it with sticks so it would go spinning into the air. They eyed us with open hostility, but something in Moran’s face seemed to command a response. The boldest, dirtiest-looking one sauntered over, a lad with bright blonde hair and a swagger he must have copied from the older toughs in the neighborhood.

  Moran pulled him aside and spoke softly in his ear. I watched the boy’s expression turn from animosity to fear and then awe. He bobbed his head and actually gave a little salute, then beckoned over the rest of his gang. They ringed the carriage like the honor guard for a Roman emperor.

  I regarded the building we were about to enter with more than a little trepidation. It was six stories of red brick – the tallest on the block – but had a flimsy, crumbling look, with years of grime moldering in the crevices and broken windows mended with blankets and scraps of wood. I sensed eyes watching us from behind the boarded-up façade.

  John and I hopped out and took a look around. The few souls who had been about fled at the sight of us, leaving the street deserted except for the boys watching Moran’s carriage. When the sun chose that moment to sink behind thick soot-colored clouds, the building assumed such a sinister aspect I quailed at the thought of entering.

  “What if it’s a whole coven?” I whispered to John.

  He drew a deep breath. “Then we run for our lives and hope they’re satisfied with Moran.”

  “I’m glad we’re in agreement.”

  I squared my shoulders as Moran approached. Despite his threats, he looked nervous, too.

  “Are you coming inside?” he asked.

  I nodded, though I wanted to emphatically shake my head. I noticed that Moran’s pockets were bulging. He must have brought his cosh and brass knuckles and God only knew what else, for all the good it would do us.

  “If she’s a real witch, why does she live in such a dreadful place?” I wondered as we approached the front door.

  “Maybe she likes it,” John said. “You never can tell with witches. It’s all upside-down and backwards.”

  The front door might have had a lock at some point, but it had been broken so many times the knob was missing completely. One hard kick from Moran’s boot and it swung open with a squealing, prolonged creak that instantly made me think of a rusty coffin lid.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, raising a sleeve to cover his nose.

  The smell inside the ground-floor hall continued the graveyard motif. It was damp and cold and ripe with so many layers of rotten I could hardly distinguish them all.

  “Klara said she lives on the top floor,” I said. “Number fourteen.”

  We made for the staircase, whose risers were sticky with nameless grunge. I got the impression of doors cracking at the sound of strange voices, then quietly closing again. A single boarded up window on the street end of the first landing provided the only illumination and even that faded once we had reached the third floor. I screamed as a rat the size of a French poodle scurried across my boot.

  “You know, the sewers aren’t so bad, after all,” I whispered into the darkness.

  John gave a low laugh, but I could hear the edge in his voice. Somewhere above us a baby was wailing, on and on. It was a pathetic, heart-wrenching sound and my attempt at black humor felt callous. Human beings lived in this place. Children.

  Moran walked in the lead. When we reached the next landing, I heard the rasp of a match and a wavering flame appeared. He held it up and I saw the number thirteen scrawled across a door in red paint.

  A chill swept over me. The air felt charged with a strange electricity, just like the day we sought shelter at the Boathouse. “Be careful,” I said.

  He gave a taut nod. We climbed the last flight of stairs. When we reached the top, the baby abruptly stopped crying. Considering how flimsy the walls were, I thought we would hear voices, smell food cooking and smoke from the stoves, but it was deathly silent.

  Moran hissed as the match burned down to his fingers. A brief interlude of darkness followed, and then another tiny flame appeared. Two of the doors had thick boards nailed across their width, but the last, at the far end, sat an inch ajar. It had no number.

  “Take this.” Moran passed me the box of matches. He slipped a weighted sap from his pocket, holding it down by his side, and pressed himself against the wall next to the door. He nodded at John.

  “Hannah Ferber?” John called softly.

  No one answered. He pushed the door with his palm and it swung silently open. I lit a match and held up the flame. The room beyond w
as bare.

  “Hello?” he tried again. “Is anyone here?”

  We waited for a long minute, ears straining for any sound, but the place had an undeniably deserted feel. John shook his head and Moran stalked inside, his eyes flicking through the shadows. Dusk had fallen outside. I moved to the grime-streaked window facing the street and glanced down. The boys still watched the carriage six stories below. One of them was petting the horse’s nose.

  John and Moran headed deeper into the flat. The match was starting to burn my fingers so I dropped it and lit another. The next room had no window, only a narrow airshaft. I saw a coal stove that vented into the shaft and a heap of malodorous rags. The stench was worse in that second, lightless room.

  “She’s gone,” Moran muttered with a vile oath. “Either Klara lied or this witch knew we were coming. Maybe Klara tipped her off.”

  In the flickering light, I saw cracked walls, the plaster streaked with black mold, although the floor was surprisingly clean as if someone had tried to make the place habitable. The only dust was in the corners, where furniture must have stood.

  “But she didn’t just flee,” I said. “Not if she took all her furniture. And it can’t have been too long ago if they haven’t let it to new tenants yet.”

  “We should question the neighbors,” John said. “They might know where she’s gone. At the very least they can confirm that Hannah Ferber lived here.”

  Moran slipped the sap into his pocket. “If she’s gone, I intend to go visit Klara Schmidt myself,” he said with a deep scowl. “If that old woman thinks she can play games with me—” He kicked the pile of rags in frustration and yelled as it rose up, a howling, wild-eyed scarecrow with a knife in its hand. I lurched back and dropped the match. It guttered out and total darkness descended except for a faint gleam from the airshaft.

  I heard the sounds of a struggle, grunts and scuffles and the dark outlines of men grappling. I gripped the iron horseshoe in my pocket in case I needed to brain someone. A gaunt figure shoved past, knocking me to the floor. John’s broad shoulders were silhouetted in the doorway for an instant and then he dashed into the hall and down the stairs.

  “Moran,” I hissed. “Where are you?”

  “Here.” His voice emerged as a croak. “Find the light.”

  I crawled across the uneven plank floor. At last my fingers brushed the box of matches. Most had fallen out, but there was one left. I struck it with an unsteady hand. Moran stood hunched over and gasping, and at first I thought he had been stabbed with that long knife, but then he straightened a little and braced his palms on his knees.

  “Bastard kicked me in the plums,” he wheezed.

  “It was a man?”

  “Drunk squatter is my guess. I saw his face just before it went dark. Nary a tooth in his head and breath that would stun a mule.”

  I let out a long sigh of relief. “At first I thought it was Hannah Ferber,” I said shakily. “Lying in wait for us.”

  “Me, too,” Moran admitted. “I hit him with the sap but he was too cockeyed to feel it. I hope Weston catches him. Maybe he knew the witch. How else did he figure out the place was empty?” Moran winced as he straightened up. “Bring that light over, will you?” He cautiously peered into the air shaft. “Let’s see what’s down there.”

  I gave him the match. Moran extended his arm into the narrow gap, then jerked back as a pigeon winged upwards inches from his face, wings beating frantically. I watched it vanish into the tiny square of sky above.

  “What a dive,” Moran remarked, leaning back against the wall. “I’ve been in some hellholes, but this one beats them all.”

  A draught of stale air from the vertical shaft lifted goose pimples on my skin. I didn’t like being so near to the shaft. I didn’t like being in this flat. Not in the least.

  “We should leave,” I said, turning for the door.

  Moran started to push off the wall and it simply gave way beneath his weight. The interior section fronting the airshaft was not, in fact, made of brick. It was made of plaster mixed with sawdust, and it wasn’t just flimsy. It was rotted through. His eyes widened as the whole kit and caboodle collapsed outward.

  I grabbed the back of his coat just before he vanished into the lightless hole. Had Moran been a pound heavier, he would have dragged us both over the edge. His arms pinwheeled for a long moment, poised on the brink. There was nothing to grab hold of — not that I could trust. My own center of gravity was rapidly shifting, and not in the right direction.

  “Let go of me, Pell,” Moran rasped. “Let go!”

  But I couldn’t let him die this way, broken at the bottom of a filthy airshaft. I gritted my teeth and gave a mighty heave. We stumbled back and fled Hannah Ferber’s flat, running into John just outside the front door.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  There were no street lamps in the neighborhood, but a full moon had risen. By its light, I saw that Moran’s hair was streaked white with plaster dust.

  “Wall gave way,” he muttered.

  John raised his eyebrows. “As in—”

  “Nearly died? Yes. Miss Pell intervened.” Moran crossed his arms. “I’d rather not talk about it. What about you? Did you catch him?”

  John shook his head. “I was right on his heels, but then he darted into an alley and vanished. It’s a rabbit’s warren around here.”

  “Shit,” Moran muttered savagely under his breath. “The witch could have gone anywhere. We’ll never find her in time.”

  Over John’s shoulder, I saw one of the blankets covering a ground floor window twitch.

  “Go wait in the carriage,” I told Moran. “I think you’ve tempted fate enough for now.”

  He seemed about to object, then sighed and did as ordered. The boys crowded around as he approached, heads bobbing in those funny little salutes. Moran tossed them a handful of silver, then shooed them away like pesky flies. He clambered inside the brougham and slammed the door.

  “Someone’s watching,” I said to John. “If we can find a nosy neighbor, they might know something.”

  We returned the building’s entrance. “Did you see the doppelgänger?” he asked me in a low voice.

  “Fortunately, no.” I gave a small shudder. It would have been most unpleasant to face Moran’s double in the light of a single wavering flame yet again.

  We went to the flat facing the street and John rapped on the door. A moment later it was opened by a stout woman wearing a black shawl. She had fingerless gloves on her hands, which were raw and chapped from washing. “I ain’t done nothin’,” she said with a suspicious glare. “You the Jesus people? I already told ya—”

  John took out his wallet, which instantly got her attention. “We’re looking for a woman who lived on the top floor. Hannah Ferber.”

  Her eyes went flat. “What do you want Hannah for?”

  “We have rather urgent need of her services,” I said, resting a hand across my belly. “It’s . . . well, it’s a delicate matter.”

  I glanced up at John, who took the hint and pulled me against him protectively. He smelled very nice, like shaving soap and clean wool, and a flush rose to my cheeks, which worked out well for our ruse. The woman’s expression softened.

  “Ah. Well, Hannah’s gone. Moved out five or six months ago.”

  “That long?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “But no one else has let the flat.”

  The woman stared at me. “They’s afraid to. The goings on up there is common knowledge. Some say she had the Devil hisself to visit.”

  I lowered my voice to a whisper. “So she was a witch?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. The woman’s face shuttered and she started to turn away.

  “Wait! Do you know where she went?” John opened his billfold and took out a ten. He folded it in half and held it out. The woman’s eyes locked on the money. It was probably a month’s rent.

  “You can’t tell her I told you. You have to promise.”

  �
��I swear,” John replied immediately.

  The woman snatched the money and stuffed it in her shawl.

  “Hannah moved to some fancy digs uptown. I heard her telling the boys she hired to move her stuff. Twenty-First Street between Ninth and Tenth.”

  “Do you know the house number?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. Can’t remember.”

  “If you’re making up a story, that gentleman will come back here.” John pointed to Moran, who stared with a grim expression out the carriage window. “I’m not trying to threaten you. It’s just a word of warning.”

  “I ain’t lying to ya,” she said, looking offended. “I heard her tell ’em that. She said to take the cart up Tenth Avenue because the traffic wouldn’t be so heavy.”

  “Do you know why she moved?” I asked.

  “Came into some money, I s’pose.” She looked wistful for a moment. “I’d do the same if I could, but I ain’t got a pot to piss in. Fer Christ’s sake, just don’t tell Hannah who ratted her out.”

  I smiled. “Well, thank you. Mrs. . . . ?”

  The woman shot me a scornful look and slammed the door in our faces.

  Chapter 15

  The neighborhood of Chelsea was on the other side of town, bounded by Fourteenth Street to the south and the Hudson River to the west. Twenty-First Street sat near its northern boundary. The block between Ninth and Tenth avenues was occupied on one side by a walled theological seminary belonging to the Episcopal Diocese of New York. The other side of the street had well-tended brownstones.

  It was a nice enough area, though property values had gone down because of the railroad tracks, belching factories and distilleries that had sprouted up along Eleventh Avenue. With no house number, we started knocking on doors at random. It was the dinner hour and most of the inhabitants didn’t look pleased to find three strangers on their doorstep. No one admitted to knowing the name Ferber, though at last a serving girl pointed out a row house halfway down the block, where she said a family had moved in not long before.

  “Doesn’t seem promising,” John muttered as we approached the door, which was painted a cheerful robin’s egg blue. Asters bloomed in window boxes on the second floor. Light spilled through the windows and I could hear children laughing and shouting inside. “This is a black witch we’re hunting.” He clutched his amulet. “You think she’d be lying low. Readying a jinx in case we caught up with her.”