13 Hangmen

by Art Corriveau

  “Who taught you how to throw?” Angey asked suddenly.

  Tony shrugged. I’ve been getting a few pointers from a future ex-outfielder for the Red Sox. “I downloaded this video on YouTube,” he said.

  Angey poked his stomach. “Plus you’ve lost weight.”

  “Hello?” Tony said. “I’ve been on a crash diet since school got out? I’ve lost ten pounds. Well, OK, maybe eight.” Plus Zio Angelo and I now do calisthenics together while we’re waiting around for a bunch of other long-dead thirteen-year-olds to turn up.

  “I’m not stupid,” Angey said. “It’s like you’re suddenly leading this secret double life.”

  “No I’m not,” Tony said.

  Sarah Pickles stepped out onto the sidewalk dressed in her Colonial-maid outfit. She set a sandwich board at the front gate of the Revere House. NEXT TOUR STARTS HERE. “Hi, Tony,” she said.

  “Oh, hi.”

  “What did you mean by ‘Case closed’?” she said. “Are you saying that sketchy Hagmann dude didn’t murder your great-uncle after all?”

  Angey stared at Tony, speechless.

  “I’m not so sure now,” Tony admitted. “He’s on the warpath again. He just got a couple of Health & Safety inspectors to boot us out of the house.”

  “Ouch,” Sarah said.

  “I’m Angey,” Angey said. “Tony’s big brother?”

  “Oh, hi,” Sarah said. “Sarah.”

  “Her mom owns that curiosity shop,” Tony said.

  “So what are you going to do?” Sarah said.

  “Nothing,” Tony said. “We’ve got to be all packed up by six o’clock.”

  “You can’t let him get away with this!” Sarah said. “That would totally suck.”

  “Tell me about it,” Tony said. “They’re moving us to a motel on Revere Beach.”

  “Ouch,” Sarah said again. “Listen, I’m off work at three. Text me with anything you need me or Mildred to look up, OK?” A tour trolley pulled up, and a bunch of people climbed out. “I gotta go,” she said. “Just don’t give up, OK?” Tony nodded. Sarah told the tourists to shut off their cell phones, please, as a courtesy to the past. One of the first things they would notice on entering the courtyard was a gigantic bell to their right. Most people knew Paul Revere was a silversmith, but few were aware he also made bells and cannons and unpickable locks.

  Tony continued down North Street.

  “Freeze!” Angey said. Tony stopped walking. Uh-oh. “There is no way you are not going to explain what that was all about,” Angey said.

  “Why should I?” Tony said. “I’m suddenly supposed to trust you because you’ve been nice to me for, like, five minutes? This is probably the longest conversation we’ve ever had in our lives!”

  “I’m not Mikey, you know,” Angey said. “I’m a completely different human being on this planet.”

  It had never actually occurred to Tony that Angey might feel invisible too.

  For some reason, he decided to go for it. He explained to Angey how he had strong reason to suspect Old Man Hagmann next door of foul play in the death of Zio Angelo. Sarah and her mother, Mildred, had been helping him figure out what Hagmann’s motive might be. Turns out he came from a long line of murdering hangmen who would stop at nothing—including bumping off Zio Angelo—to lay their hands on No. 13. But Tony still didn’t know why. It was definitely for something hidden inside the house. Old Man Hagmann had wanted whatever it was bad enough to frame Michael for Zio Angelo’s death to invalidate his last will—why Michael had actually spent yesterday afternoon under police investigation and not shopping for Tony’s new bed. When that hadn’t worked, Hagmann had tried buying the place off Tony. And when even that hadn’t worked, he had gotten it condemned so he could pick through the rubble after they were evicted.

  “Shut up!” Angey said.

  “You think I could make all that up?” Tony said.

  They continued walking up North Street.

  “Well, that girl Sarah is right,” Angey said. “You gotta pin the murder on him.”

  “It’s too late,” Tony said. “He totally has the upper hand. If Hagmann objects to any major construction—and he will—the city is going to tear down Number Thirteen.”

  “Not if he’s in jail,” Angey said. “Then we just need to figure out a way of getting the place listed as a historical monument.”

  Tony walked a few more yards in silence. Angey had a point.

  “There’s still a big problem here,” Tony said. “No murder, no crime. The cops already closed the case. As far as they’re concerned, Zio Angelo died of natural causes.”

  “You’ve got nothing on Hagmann?” Angey said. “Nothing at all?”

  Tony stopped. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He fished out Maria Gomez’s card. He handed it to Angey. “Hagmann claimed he was the only person looking after Zio Angelo. It was supposedly the big reason he deserved to inherit Number Thirteen, not me. Yet Zio Angelo clearly had a visiting nurse. Something doesn’t quite add up.”

  Angey pulled out his cell phone. He dialed the number. Straight to voice mail. “Look, her agency’s office is farther down Hanover Street,” he said. “How about I just walk over there and ask her what the deal was? Meantime, go talk to Dad. He’s gotta be able to dig up something historic about the house. He’s a freaking historian.”

  They reached Hanover Street.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” Tony said.

  “I don’t feel like being homeless right now?” Angey said.

  Tony grinned.

  “I can’t believe you already know people, even before Mikey and me,” Angey said. “Especially cute girls.”

  Come to think of it, neither could Tony. How weird was that?

  Tony found Michael in his study, filling crates with books.

  “Careful,” Tony said, handing his dad a roll of tape out of the six-pack he and Angey had just bought at the hardware store. “That bookcase looks like it’s about to topple over.”

  “Not that it matters much.” Michael sighed. “I can’t believe I just got all these onto the shelves.”

  Tony had never seen his dad so down in the dumps. “Mom says lunch is make-your-own-sandwich out of the fridge,” Tony said. “We gotta use stuff up.”

  “I’m not very hungry,” Michael said.

  “Me either,” Tony said.

  Michael held up a dog-eared manuscript. His unfinished dissertation. “Didn’t get very far on this, did I?” he said. “Not that that matters, either. There’s a big fat hole in my research, anyway. I was hoping to plug it this summer—a real live history mystery about Revere.” Michael told Tony to take a load off for a sec, and he would explain. Reluctantly, Tony perched on the desk chair. The last thing in the world he cared about right now was Paul Revere. But he could plainly see his dad needed to vent.

  Michael launched into a bit of history:

  In 1779, four years after his Midnight Ride, Paul Revere was made Artillery Train Captain for something called the Penobscot Expedition. The goal of the campaign was to stop British forces from establishing a stronghold in Maine. But it was a total failure, mostly due to the incompetence of its commander, Dudley Saltonstall. Unfortunately, Saltonstall tried to foist all the blame on Revere by claiming he’d tipped off Loyalist spies about the campaign before leaving Boston, which ruined the surprise. Revere was dishonorably discharged.

  Revere then did an incredibly risky thing: he requested his own court-martial. He could easily have been found guilty—it was, after all, his word against his commander’s—but he was instead cleared of any wrongdoing before the case ever went to trial. It was Saltonstall himself who got dishonorably discharged in the end, and Revere’s reputation as a hero was saved.

  The history mystery was this: Why did the Continental Army suddenly decide to take Revere’s word over Saltonstall’s? What changed their minds about him tipping off the British? Michael still had no idea. And so far he hadn’t been able to find a sing
le clue in any of the books he was now packing.

  Tony tried to keep his eyes from crossing. Who cares? They were about to be moved into a motel. They needed to get Health & Safety off their backs! He suggested to his dad that the answer might pop into his head if he turned his attention to something else—like, say, figuring out how to get 13 Hangmen Court listed with the Historical Preservation Society. Did Michael know, for example, that Hangmen Court was the court where real live hangmen strung people up? Wouldn’t that be important enough to put No. 13 on the Freedom Trail?

  Michael ruffled Tony’s hair. It might be enough to get a plaque bolted to the oak in the middle of the court, Michael said, but that was about it. All these town houses dated from the 1700s—not the 1600s—which was well after the last witch trial had ended. And though No. 13 did date from pre-Revolutionary times, Hangmen Court had played no real role in America’s fight for freedom. It wasn’t even on Revere’s Midnight Ride route.

  Ted Williams’s cap.

  “What if we finally got Ted Williams’s cap appraised?” Tony said. “I’m pretty sure it’s the real deal. We could probably sell it to some collector for a ton of money.”

  “Your mother and I thought of that too,” Michael admitted. “For about two seconds. But we could never live with ourselves for making you part with such an incredible gift from your uncle. It’s incredibly cool of you to make the offer, Tony. You’re a star. But it’s one hundred percent out of the question.”

  Another dead end. Disappointed, Tony made for the door, then paused. “Did Zio Angelo ever tell you he had a visiting nurse?”

  “Birnbaum mentioned something about that at the wake,” Michael said. “Zio Angelo hired her after he fell ill, I think. But then she quit. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” Tony said. “I just found a nurse’s card, when all those canceled checks and bank statements spilled out of the metal cabinet in the basement. You don’t happen to know who Anders Fogelberg is, do you? I found a photo with his name on it at the same time.”

  “Haven’t got a clue,” Michael said. “Like I said, Zio Angelo was pretty tight-lipped about his life.”

  Funny, that wasn’t Tony’s impression of young Angelo at all.

  “Too bad you didn’t find an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.” Michael sighed. “Even if we manage to save this place from the wrecking ball, we still don’t have a half million to fix it up.”

  Hagmann’s treasure!

  “I better be getting back upstairs,” Tony said.

  Tony pulled the ball cap, mezuzah case, and claddagh ring out of the packing box. He set these, one by one, on the spiral of the pawcorance. Angelo and Solly materialized. And just in the nick of time! They were about to crash straight into each other. Both had been pacing back and forth in their own separate time periods.

  “What the heck happened?” Angelo said.

  “Sorry,” Tony said. “I was a little freaked out. Wait, where’s Finn?”

  “Who knows?” Solly said. “One minute you’re sweeping off the spiral, the next I’m sitting here talking to myself like a schmuck.”

  “What did you mean by game over?” Angelo said.

  “It isn’t over,” Tony said. “But we’re definitely down by a few runs at the seventh-inning stretch.” He filled them in on the surprise visit by the Health & Safety inspectors, thanks to concerned citizen Benedict Hagmann.

  “Don’t worry,” Angelo said. “It took a little doing, but Solly finally convinced Finn that the only way not to disappear forever when he’s grown up is to never make any pacts about the Hagmanns with childhood friends, stay away from the track as an adult, and sell this house to Chester just as soon as he owns it.”

  “But that’ll take ages,” Tony said. “And by six o’clock tonight I’ll be homeless. Sorry, we need to go straight to Plan B.”

  “Plan B?” Solly said. “What does that mean?”

  “Find that treasure ourselves!” Tony said. “The very fact that one is hidden in these walls should be enough to get Number Thirteen listed on the History Mystery Tour and stave off the wrecking ball. If I promise to sell the treasure to Benedict Hagmann, he won’t have any reason to object to us renovating the place. At the very least, I can use the money I make off the deal to hire Eddie Wong to repair the back wall and deck and bookcase in Dad’s study—and whatever else—to keep this place from falling down around our ears while I’m figuring out how to raise the half million I actually need to get it up to code.”

  “So much for tweaking history to prevent Benny from killing me,” Angelo sighed.

  Oops. Tony had totally forgotten about that part.

  “Wait, maybe there’s a way to save Angelo and keep the treasure,” he said. “What if, after we find it, we get Finn to show Cedric Hagmann it’s already gone? Then Chester and Cyril—and even Benedict—will lose all interest in the place. No treasure to find, no reason to kill for it, right? I can just sell it to the highest bidder in 2009.”

  “Not bad,” Angelo said, grinning.

  “Except we don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Solly pointed out.

  “We’re not going to get that out of any Hagmann,” Tony said. “But at least we know the place to start looking for it is here in the attic.” He told them about the inspectors’ measurements—that No. 13’s outside dimensions didn’t sync up to the attic’s inside floor plan by something like nine feet square. Plus they knew One-Eyed Jack had used the heart hook from the door knocker to get inside some sort of secret hiding place where he could eavesdrop on the Tailboard Thieves. Had either Angelo or Solly ever stumbled across an old hook latch or trapdoor or anything?

  “I’m way ahead of you,” Angelo said. “I asked Mama if she knew about any secret rooms in the attic when she called me down to lunch.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Typical Mama,” Angelo admitted. “If there were any extra space, she said, she would have rented it out by now. But I didn’t give up. I asked her if Solly’s parents had ever mentioned anything strange about the attic when they sold it. Funny you should ask, Mama said. It was thanks to the attic that she and Papa were able to get this house instead of Cyril the Squirrel. Apparently, Cyril offered Solly’s parents over double what my own folks could afford to pay for Number Thirteen. But the Weinbergs agreed to sell it to my folks anyway—on two important conditions, which they wrote directly onto the deed: The first was that Mama and Papa could never sell the house to a Hagmann; they could only give it to their first-born son on his twenty-first birthday. The second was that the son would have to sleep up in the attic until he was fully grown. Mama said she and Papa agreed to both conditions immediately. They hated Cyril Hagmann, and who knew if they would ever even have a son?”

  “Which proves Antonio DiMarco must eventually marry your mama for love,” Tony pointed out. “Since Number Thirteen could only ever go to you, legally. And your mama would surely have told him that, way before he proposed.”

  “You’re right.” Angelo grinned. “But listen, that’s not the only weird thing about the sale. When the deed to Number Thirteen was finally handed over, Mama and Papa realized the house didn’t even belong to Mr. and Mrs. Weinberg; it belonged to their son, Solomon.”

  Tony turned to Solly, surprised. “It’s true,” Solly said. “Number Thirteen’s mine, as of this very morning.”

  “Start talking!” Tony said.

  “Just after you vanished, there was a knock at my front door. Mameh and I got there at the same time. Somebody had slipped an old roll-up piece of parchment through the mail slot. Mameh’s eyes went big as saucers when she started reading it. It’s the deed to this house, she said; Finn McGinley has decided to give it away. My heart sank. Not to Chester Hagmann, I said. No, Mameh said; to you. She read me the last line: Finn had officially transferred ownership of Thirteen Hangmen Court to me, Solomon Weinberg, on my thirteenth birthday. But it was on condition that I not sell the place till I turned twenty-one—and never to a H
agmann—and that I sleep up here in the attic.”

  “It must have been Finn himself!” Angelo said.

  “Do you think?” Solly said.

  “Let’s see that deed!” Tony said. “Benedict Hagmann accused my dad of stealing it out of Zio Angelo’s desk. But now I’m wondering if he’s the one who made it disappear, since it clearly bars every other Hagmann from owning the place.”

  “Mameh’s still got it,” Solly said. “She was worried there must be some mistake. People don’t just give away houses. She took the elevated train over to Finn’s house in Dorchester, to ask him in person. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that neither she nor anyone else would ever get that chance again.”

  “It’s sort of spooky, isn’t it?” Angelo said. “As grown-ups, we obviously make sure this place goes to each other.”

  “I wonder if Jack gives it to Finn,” Tony said.

  “He does,” Finn said, materializing at the door. “Look!” He took a seat on the bed. He appeared to unroll something in his hands.

  “The deed!” both Angelo and Solly said at once.

  “How come I can’t see it?” Tony said. “Wait, I know why. Here in 2009, the deed has gone missing. It may no longer exist.”

  Angelo gave Tony the basic gist of what the parchment said. The property had been signed over to a half dozen owners through the centuries: Rodney McKeag, Thomas Willard, Nathaniel Tucker, Polly Pickles Tucker. The last two lines at the bottom were the most interesting: Tobias Tucker, upon his death, had deeded the house to Jack Douglass, on condition Jack sleep in the attic, not sell it until he was twenty-one, and never sell to a Hagmann. Jack Douglass had in turn deeded the house to Dolly McGinley for a dollar, as long as she gave the house to her son, Finn McGinley, on his thirteenth birthday, with the same conditions.