13 Hangmen

by Art Corriveau

  “With all the ghosts,” Mikey snickered.

  “And rats,” Angey said.

  Michael pitched his wadded-up napkin at Mikey’s head. Mikey ducked. It thwacked Angey’s left ear.

  “I won’t miss next time,” Michael said.

  “Ooh, I’m scared,” Mikey said.

  “The Buddhist lashes out,” Angey said.

  “It’s always the mild-mannered ones who end up going postal,” Michael said, laughing.

  Yikes! “So the next-door neighbor wasn’t lying?” Tony said.

  Before Michael got the chance to answer, Julia set a store-bought cake in front of Tony, lit with thirteen sparkler candles. “Special delivery for Tony DiMarco!” she said. The family began a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday.” But Tony was a gazillion miles away. If Old Man Hagmann was right about the first part—about Tony owning the house—was it possible he could be right about his other, um, suspicions?

  Tony shot his dad a secret sideways glance.

  Michael blew a party favor so hard, his eyes crossed.

  The twins badgered Tony to do the candles so they could have dessert. Tony made a wish—that Old Man Hagmann really was some crazy old fart with too much time on his hands—and blew them all out with one mighty sigh.

  Tony stood barefoot in his pj’s, eyeing the brass bed.

  His parents had moved it to the attic and set it up in the only place it would fit—the very middle of the room. They had covered the stained and lumpy mattress with crisp white sheets. They’d laid his Red Sox comforter on top. They’d stood his two pillows against the tarnished bars of the headboard. They’d even hung a new poster of the Boston subway system—the T—on the sloping wall overhead. Tony’s alarm clock was set to the correct time on top of the dresser, and his two suitcases of clothes were soldiered next to it, his boxes of trophies and books and baseball memorabilia all waiting to be unpacked by the bookcase beneath that random slate shelf.

  None of it helped. Tony was still staring at the bed of a dead man.

  “BOO!”

  The twins burst into the room. They had draped themselves in their own sheets. Mikey leaped onto the bed. Angey flapped around Tony. Both moaned “Ton-eeee, we’re going to get yooooou!”

  “Out!”

  Julia stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. “Now,” she said. “Before I ground the pair of you forever.”

  Mikey hopped off the bed and dashed past her, wailing. Angey flapped down the staircase after him. Julia slammed the door shut.

  She and Tony burst into a fit of giggles.

  “It was pretty funny,” Tony admitted.

  “For God’s sake don’t ever tell them that,” she said. She sat on the bed. “I came up to apologize again.”

  “What for?”

  She patted the comforter. Tony took a seat beside her.

  “The weight-loss thing,” she said. “I’m not helping.”

  Tony wasn’t sure how to answer. She was right. She was so not helping. “Sorry the new portion-control diet isn’t working out,” he said.

  “I got it off some stupid website.” She shrugged. “Maybe we should see a nutritionist.”

  Tony thought back to when he’d reached for that second piece of pizza at dinner. All those secretly stashed Snickers bars. “The problem with portion control,” he said, “is you’re not in control. It just makes you superanxious you’re not going to get enough to eat, which makes you even hungrier.” He waited for Julia to mull this over. It wasn’t her fault, really. She had always been thin. She didn’t have a clue what it was like. “Let’s just face reality,” he sighed. “I’m never going to be like the twins.”

  “Is that what you think I want?” Julia said, looking startled. “God, no! Two of them is enough, thanks. I just want you to feel happier about being you.”

  Surprise.

  “Maybe you should try focusing on what’s missing,” she said. “What’s creating that space in your heart you’re trying to fill with food. Figure out what your real bliss is. For me it’s art. For the twins it’s sports. For your dad it’s history.”

  “I’m not good at anything.” Tony shrugged.

  “You’re great at solving mysteries,” she said.

  “That just makes me more of a geek!”

  “So? I like geeks,” Julia said. “I married one, didn’t I?” She kissed Tony’s forehead and stood. “Here’s what I bet. I bet the more ‘you’ you become, the less ‘you’ you’ll have to lose.” She looked around. “Maybe you should start with this awful room. How can you make it yours?” She opened the door. “On that note, I need to help your father find the box with all the toothbrushes.”

  “Was it just me,” Tony said, “or was he acting a little … weird … at dinner?”

  “Weirder than usual?” she said.

  Tony laughed, totally relieved.

  Julia nodded over at the alarm clock. “It’s eight o’clock. You were born at nine. In exactly one hour you’ll be thirteen.” She blew him a kiss and saw herself out.

  Suddenly the room felt like an attic again.

  Tony would have given anything at that moment to escape to mysterykids.com for a couple of hours. Virtual reality was so much easier to cope with most days than, well, reality. But neither Julia’s nor Michael’s computer was set up. The house wasn’t wired for broadband yet, and the cable guy wasn’t coming till tomorrow. Tony decided to unpack his clothes and put them in the dresser. He arranged his trophies and mysteries and baseball memorabilia in the bookcase. He added a Young Sherlock Holmes poster and a Snoop Dogg poster to the walls. He peered around. It still felt like an attic. But at least now it felt more like his attic.

  His gaze rested on the slate shelf above the bookcase. Random! He wandered over to see if he could figure out why it was there. Gross, the top was totally coated in dust. He wiped it away with his sleeve. No way! Carved into the center was a spiraling shape, exactly like the one he’d seen at that curiosity shop.

  “How weird is that?” he mumbled to himself. He placed his index finger in the center of the spiral. He felt a faint buzzing sensation, like the static prickle you sometimes got when you touched a computer screen. He ran his finger around the grooves of the spiral.

  Give it the place of honor.

  He jerked his hand back. He’d heard a boy’s voice, echoing from some distant room. Tony told himself to get a grip. It was just Mikey or Angey, calling up the staircase, trying to freak him out. And the static was obviously from an electrical short somewhere. The room’s wiring probably needed replacing.

  He pulled the vintage ball cap out of his backpack. He dusted a few flakes of Snickers bar off the brim. He placed the cap on the spiral. He hovered his hand over it, just to prove to himself that his imagination was totally running wild.

  Finally, your thirteenth birthday! the voice said.

  Tony made a mad dash for the bed, flicking out the light.

  He crawled between the sheets, pulled the comforter up to his nose. He lay there in the blue glow of his alarm clock, panting. Just past nine o’clock. He was now a teenager. He refused to look at the cap on the shelf. Instead, he stared up at the subway map of Boston, wondering if he would ever actually drop off to sleep after such a totally weird and freaky day.

  Lucky thirteen, his butt.

  What the heck was that?

  It was now morning. And something sounded like heavy breathing, just over Tony’s shoulder.

  He slowly turned.

  A kid his age was lying beside him, fast asleep.

  Tony yelped. The kid’s eyes flew open. He yelped too. They both leaped out of the bed and onto their feet.

  “What are you doing here?” Tony said.

  The kid squinted at him from across the mattress. He was wearing a set of embarrassing flannel cowboy pj’s. He looked a lot like Tony, actually, except he was a little taller and wasn’t overweight. The kid reached under the bed and pulled out a pair of horn-rimmed Harry Potter glasses, which he hooked
over the backs of his tiny ears. The lenses were so thick, they made his dark eyes seem gigantic, like those of a slightly cross-eyed owl. “Sleeping,” he said. “What else would I be doing at the crack of dawn? What are you doing in my room?” He had a really thick Boston accent.

  “But this isn’t your room,” Tony said, wondering if he was having one of those dreams about having a dream.

  “What are you talking about?” the kid said. He pointed down at Tony’s Red Sox comforter. “That’s the patchwork quilt Mama just made me for my birthday. That’s the Errol Flynn poster I got at the Boston premiere of Robin Hood. And those are all my Hardy Boys in the bookcase.”

  Tony had no idea who Errol Flynn was, but the poster this kid had just pointed to was definitely of Snoop Dogg. Plus Tony hated the Hardy Boys. The bookcase was full of much cooler mystery writers, in alphabetical order, just the way he had arranged them last night. “Wait, who are you?” Tony said.

  “Angelo Saporiti,” the kid said. “Who the heck are you?”

  “Oh, I get it,” Tony said. “You’re just some guy from the neighborhood. The twins bribed you to sneak up here as a birthday prank and pretend you’re the ghost of Zio Angelo to freak me out.”

  “I don’t know any twins,” the kid said. “Is it your birthday? Mine was yesterday.”

  “Nabbed!” Tony cried. “Zio Angelo’s birthday was in May, not July. He told me so himself last Thanksgiving.” He turned and called to the bedroom door: “Nice try, guys. You can come out now.” But the evil twins didn’t start laughing from out on the landing. He strode over and flung the door wide open. No one was there.

  “It is May,” the kid said, shrugging. “Yesterday was May 5, 1939, the Feast of Saint Angelo—my thirteenth birthday.”

  Tony froze. Zio Angelo had, in fact, told him over turkey dinner that he was born on the Feast of Saint Angelo, hence his name. And Tony was pretty sure the twins had rolled their eyes and excused themselves from the table by then. He glanced over at the vintage ball cap. It was just where he’d left it, covering the spiral.

  The kid followed Tony’s gaze. “Ted Williams gave me that yesterday as a birthday present,” he said.

  Tony perched on the edge of the mattress, trying to collect his wits. He knew for a fact the twins hadn’t been at the table to hear Zio Angelo’s boyhood story about the cap. They didn’t even know yet that it might once have belonged to Williams. Only Michael and Julia knew that. “Prove it,” he said. “Tell me exactly how you came by that cap. Don’t leave out a single detail.”

  “You still haven’t said who you are,” the kid said.

  “We’ll get to me in a minute,” Tony said.

  The kid shrugged. He sat on the other side of the mattress. “I’m a water boy at Fenway Park,” he said. “Williams is number 9, a rookie left fielder for the Red Sox. But he quit halfway through a Detroit Tigers game yesterday afternoon. So I invited him home to supper—”

  ngelo waited, like everyone else in the Red Sox dugout, for number 9, the rookie outfielder from California, to step up to home plate. It was the Sox against the Tigers in the second of a three-game series. And as usual, Williams refused to bat until the crowd stopped booing him. These standoffs could last five minutes or more.

  “Good for him,” said number 27, Solomon Weinberg, signaling to Angelo for a drink of water. Angelo passed him a full dipper. Angelo felt a little sorry for Weinberg, a second-string outfielder who hardly ever got to play—mostly because Williams started every game. “Number 9’s the club’s best hitter,” Weinberg said, handing back the dipper. “He deserves a little more respect.”

  Williams finally stepped into the batter’s box.

  “So why do they hate him so much?” Angelo asked, jerking his thumb up at the disgruntled Fenway fans seated in the stands above the dugout.

  Weinberg shrugged. “He’s a much better ballplayer than showman, which is what the boys in the newsroom care about. He’s pretty tight-lipped when it comes to giving them any copy. So they make it up. Mostly about how much he hates Boston.”

  Williams cracked a smart single into midfield, advancing the only man on base to third. The crowd offered a smattering of begrudging applause.

  “I think he’s just shy,” Angelo said. “He’s always nice to me. Which is more than I can say about the rest of the starting lineup.”

  Weinberg laughed. “What’s your name, kid?”

  Angelo told him. Weinberg looked oddly startled, then pleased. He held out his hand—his friends called him Solly—and Angelo shook it, grinning.

  “I’ll bet it’s your thirteenth birthday soon,” Solly said.

  “Today, in fact,” Angelo said, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “You live in Hangmen Court, right?” Solly said. “Over in the North End.”

  Angelo nodded, mystified. Solly laughed. “My parents sold Number Thirteen to your parents,” he said. “I lived there myself when I was thirteen—when the neighborhood was still mostly Jewish. I slept up in the attic. But I haven’t been back in over a decade—not since we sold the place when I was twenty-one, after I joined the team.”

  Angelo confessed he didn’t know how much longer he’d be living there. Now that Papa was gone, Mama was always behind on the mortgage payments—even with all the boarders she took in. Solly gave his back a consoling pat. He was sorry to hear that Angelo’s dad had passed. He promised to stop by the house someday soon to pay his respects to Angelo’s mama.

  Williams tried to steal second base. It was an amazing slide—and he was clearly safe—but the umpire ruled him out. More booing.

  Williams limped back to the dugout. He took a seat on the bench next to Angelo and asked for water. Solly said, “Tough luck.” Williams nodded, then shucked off his shoe to examine his ankle. It was already beginning to swell. Solly suggested Angelo fetch the team medic from the locker room.

  Angelo returned with both the medic and number 4, Joe Cronin, the team’s shortstop and manager. The medic took a good look at Williams’s ankle and declared it a minor sprain. Williams should probably be pulled from the game so it could be packed in ice. “Just wrap it,” Cronin said.

  “But he shouldn’t be running on that ankle,” Solly said. “It’s turning purple.”

  “Are you a doctor?” Cronin said. Solly shook his head. “Then keep your big mouth shut!” According to Cronin, Williams had to keep playing. The Sox were trailing second in the league standings after their archrivals, the New York Yankees. If they won this game against Detroit, and the Yankees lost theirs against the Cleveland Indians, they would pull ahead. And this was entirely possible. Cronin had just gotten off the phone with Eddie Collins, the Sox’s general manager, who had heard from Tom Yawkey, the owner, that New York’s first baseman, Lou Gehrig, had benched himself for the first time in fourteen straight seasons due to some sort of mysterious illness. So New York was suddenly very vulnerable.

  “Wait, I’ve got an idea,” Solly said. “What if Williams continues to field, but I pinch-hit and do his running for him?”

  “If I wanted the opinion of an uppity Jew-boy benchwarmer, I would have asked for it!” Cronin exploded.

  “That settles it,” Williams said. He slipped his shoe back on, hoisted himself to his feet, and hobbled toward the locker room. Cronin demanded to know where Williams thought he was going—the medic hadn’t wrapped that ankle yet.

  “Home,” Williams said. “I quit.”

  Cronin told Williams to skip the funny business: he was under contract. That’s for the lawyers to decide, Williams said. This clearly unsettled Cronin—he didn’t want to incur the wrath of Eddie Collins—so he backed off. They’d do it Weinberg’s way. Number 27 could pinch-hit for Williams as long as Williams played the field.

  “Not unless you apologize to Weinberg first,” Williams said.

  “Like heck I will!” Cronin said.

  Williams shrugged, then disappeared into the locker room.

  Inning over. Detroit’s turn at bat. C
ronin whirled on Solly. “If you know what’s good for you,” he said, “you’ll get Williams taped up and onto the field by next inning.” He ordered another benchwarmer to grab his mitt. Solly headed for the locker room. Angelo noticed Williams had left his ball cap on the bench. He used this as an excuse to chase after both players—and see what happened next.

  Williams undressed while Solly tried to convince him to keep playing. Nothing doing, Williams said. His favorite uncle back in Santa Barbara—the guy who had taught him how to play ball—was named Saul too. Saul Venzor, a Mexican. Williams knew all about prejudice: his abuela— his grandma—was born in Mexico. His mother’s side of the family barely spoke English. Solly confessed he hadn’t known any of that.

  “Because my contract expressly forbids me from speaking to the press about my family,” Williams said. “Which is also why I never have anything to say. Which is why the Boston papers go out of their way to make me look bad to the fans. And that’s how much I think of my contract with the Red Sox.”

  Angelo handed Williams his cap. Williams tossed it into his locker. It was no use, he told Solly. He wouldn’t play again until Cronin apologized for his racist remarks.

  “Then I won’t play,” Solly said. He opened his locker and started to undress.

  “Me either,” Angelo said, planting himself on the nearest changing bench. Both ballplayers laughed. Solly asked Williams what they should do with their night off. It would be Solly’s treat. Williams told Solly to forget about it. What he really wanted was the one thing another ballplayer couldn’t give him: a home-cooked meal.

  Angelo cleared his throat. The two men looked over. “Mama’s fixing me a big birthday meal when I get back to the North End,” he said. “Why don’t you both come? She always makes way too much food.”