But then the man’s voice died away in surprise. He looked up, beyond Toby. Toby turned to see what he was staring at, but there was nothing—only the street, and the sunshine, and the Woolworth Building’s crown peeking above the tenements. The boys from the alley had vanished like smoke. Pedestrians on the sidewalk gawked at the open door, and the man in his apron.
The dark eyes focused again on Toby—and suddenly the boy was certain he’d seen this man before. He swallowed. “Western Union, sir. A cable for you.” He held out the envelope.
The man reached out to take it. There was a hiss, like a match being struck—
Toby yelped in surprise. The envelope fell to the concrete between them, flames curling along its edge. For a moment they both stared at it—and then Toby lunged forward and stomped on the envelope until the fire was out. He bent down, picked it up between thumb and forefinger. “Sorry, sir,” he said, panting a little. “Dunno how that happened—”
But the man was retreating through the half-open door. “I don’t want it,” he said sharply.
“But it’s yours, sir!” There was something in the depths of the building behind the man, a silver shape of some kind . . .
“I don’t want it,” the man said again—and then, as though to ward boy and envelope away, he dug into his apron pocket and thrust a coin at Toby. The boy took it, then nearly dropped it: it was burning hot. Liberty’s profile filled its front. Three Dollars, said the reverse.
Giddily Toby looked up from the coin—just as the door slammed shut and the bolt slid home, leaving him alone on the stoop, a singed cable in one hand and half a week’s pay in the other.
In a daze he walked back to his bicycle. What had just happened? The man, the heat, the flames, the coin: it had all taken less than a minute. He’d have thought it all some kind of vaudeville illusion, except that the man had seemed just as confused as Toby.
He slipped the coin into his pocket, then considered the envelope. Had it been doused with kerosene somehow, at the docks? He brought it to his nose, but smelled only burnt paper. One entire side of the rectangle was gone. He squeezed the envelope a bit—and it gaped open, revealing paper that was darkened at its edge but otherwise whole.
We’re not allowed to peek.
He looked around, but the spectators had all moved on. Carefully he pulled the message free—and the words Chava Levy leapt at him from the paper.
He took a startled breath, then read it from the beginning:
MY NAME HAS CHANGED BUT I TRUST YOU REMEMBER THE FOUNTAIN IN CENTRAL PARK AND THE FIREPLACE ON FIFTH AVE RETURNING TO NYC THURSDAY PM MUST SEE YOU SEND REPLY HOTEL EARLE URGENT CHAVA LEVY MUST NOT KNOW.
SOPHIA WILLIAMS
He remembered, then, where he’d seen the man before. The morning after Triangle; his mother on the sofa, burning with fever. The tall man talking to Missus Chava in front of her boardinghouse, falling silent at Toby’s approach.
He stared up at the Amherst’s facade. Then he slid the cable back into its envelope and wheeled his bike around the corner, into the alley.
Only one of the boys had stayed behind, the smallest of the bunch. He was perhaps seven, and wore what looked to be an older brother’s cast-offs: a too-large shirt tucked into baggy short pants, with a rope belt to cinch it all together. The boy glanced up at Toby, then turned his attention back to the ground, where he was using a stick to poke at a dark, irregular patch that had been set into the concrete.
Toby leaned his bicycle against the alley wall. “So, that’s Ahmad al-Hadid,” he said.
“He’s just Mister Ahmad,” the boy said.
“Do you know him?”
The boy shook his head. “No one does. He’s—” And then a word that sounded like biddoo.
Toby frowned. “What’s that mean?”
“Means he ain’t Christian.”
“Huh.” Toby wondered how to proceed. “So, you aren’t allowed to talk to him?”
“Naw, we’re allowed, he just don’t. He never comes out, not since Mister Arbeely died.”
“Who’s that?”
“His friend. They bought the Amherst together. Now it’s just Mister Ahmad’s.”
Toby whistled low. “He must be rich,” he said, feeling the weight of the coin in his pocket.
The boy shrugged again, but his expression suggested that he shared this theory.
Toby considered a moment, then said, “You ever heard the name Chava Levy?”
The boy looked up. “I seen her once,” he said.
Toby’s heart leapt. “You did? Where?”
The boy gestured heavenward with the stick, and Toby realized he meant the rooftops. “With Mister Ahmad. They usedta walk up there, and talk in different languages, all twisted together. My brother said they’d done that since before I was born. They’d walk around all night and then go to Mister Ahmad’s apartment, and in the morning she’d come out again.”
Toby’s eyebrows rose. Missus Chava had kept a secret love-nest in Little Syria? “But this was all before Mister . . . before the other fella died.”
The boy nodded. “She never came around, after that. And all the people who worked in the Amherst left, too.”
“When was that? Do you remember?”
The boy thought. “Ma was pregnant. And Hanna’s almost three.”
“So he’s been in there all alone for three years?”
“Guess so.”
“Huh.” He would’ve liked to show the boy the cable, and ask what he made of it, but held back. Peeking at a message was bad enough; showing it around was worse. Still, the boy had been a surprising help. Toby reached into his pocket, past the golden coin, and fished out one of the City Hall nickels. “Here,” he said, handing it to the boy. “Take yourself to the pictures.”
The boy grinned his thanks, and ran off.
Toby frowned down at the envelope. He couldn’t just keep it; it belonged to the man in the building, even if he didn’t want it. For all Toby’s disappointment in Western Union, he still believed in the job itself. A message must reach its
