13 Hangmen (13 page)

And so was Angelo.

Panicked, Tony placed the cap back on the spiral. Angelo materialized on the bed before his very eyes, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “How spooky was that?” Angelo said.

“The scroll's not there anymore,” Tony said.

“I know,” Angelo laughed. “I was just telling you when you disappeared. I took it out. It kept scratching my forehead while I was trying to make the cap fit better.” Angelo unscrewed the brass knob of the right bedpost. Out of it he pulled a small,
rolled-up piece of parchment. “Solly told us it was for protection,” he said, sheepishly. “And you've got to admit this room is awful creepy. At least now I know why.”

“Go ahead and place it on the spiral,” Tony said.

Angelo hoisted himself off the bed and joined Tony at the pawcorance. He set the scroll next to the cap. They both hovered their hands over it. Tony's palm began to itch. He could tell by Angelo's grin that he too could feel the static electricity.

“I think it must be working,” Tony said. “Can you hear the echo of a boy's voice?”

Angelo nodded. “It's faint, though. I can't make out what he's saying.”

“Maybe Solly is too far away,” Tony said.

“What do we do?” Angelo said.

“Wait for him to hear
our
voices, I guess,” Tony said.

“Prayer scroll!” Angelo shouted. “On the spiral! Now.”

Nothing.

“This could take ages,” Angelo said. “How should we kill the time?”

Tony had an idea. But he could feel himself going red at the very thought of it.

“What?” Angelo said.

“You told me the Sox did weight-loss exercises as part of their spring training,” Tony said. “Maybe you could teach me a few.”

“Why not?” Angelo shrugged.

“Let me just change into a pair of gym shorts and a tank top,” Tony said, relieved. “It's kind of hot up here.”

“Not for me,” Angelo said, flopping on the bed. “So far it's been a pretty rainy May.” He started tossing the brass knob with one hand, catching it with the other. “What's wrong?” he said when he noticed Tony hadn't moved.

“Aren't you going to step outside?” Tony said.

“What for?” Angelo said. “I spend half the afternoon watching the Red Sox get dressed and undressed—well, until today, that is.”

“I'm kind of shy,” Tony admitted. “The twins give me a pretty hard time about my weight.”

“You think
I'm
going to make fun of you?” Angelo said. “I used to be way fatter than you.”

Tony pulled off his polo shirt and dropped it to the floor.

“Go on,” Angelo said. “Time's a-wasting.”

Tony shucked off his jeans.

“Underwear sure hasn't changed much,” Angelo said, yawning. “Hang on a sec—where did your clothes go?”

“They're right there,” Tony said, pointing.

“More spookiness,” Angelo said. “I can't see your shirt or your jeans anymore.”

“Try taking off your T-shirt,” Tony said.

Angelo did. It vanished. “Very weird,” Tony said. He went to the dresser and pulled his favorite tank top out of the second drawer. He tugged it over his head. “Can you see what I'm wearing now?”

“SpongeBob for President?” Angelo laughed.

“Maybe all we can take into the anomaly is the clothes on our backs,” Tony said. He fished the cell phone out of his jeans pocket. “Which is why you can't see this.”

“See what?”

“It's a phone,” Tony said. “They're wireless in my time. Everybody has one. We take them with us wherever we go. It's what I was fiddling with earlier.”

“Rats!” Angelo said. “I'd love a look at one of
those
.”

Tony pulled on a pair of basketball shorts. “Apart from each other, we only seem to be able to see stuff from our own times.”

“So how come we can both see this bed?” Angelo said. “And that dresser, and the bookcase over there?”

“I don't know,” Tony said. “Because I can't see the quilt your mama made
on
the bed, any more than you can see my Red Sox comforter. You can't see my murder mysteries, and I can't see your Hardy Boys books. Maybe all we can see is stuff from the house that exists for both of us.”

Angelo hopped off the bed and had a look through the dresser drawers. “You're right,” he said. “It's just my own socks and underwear inside.”

“I guess that's why we can both see Ted Williams's cap,” Tony said.

“I wonder why you can also see Solly's prayer scroll,” Angelo said. “It wasn't in the cap by the time you got it.”

“It must belong to the house somehow,” Tony said.

They both glanced over at the pawcorance. Still no Solly.

“Ready to sweat?” Angelo said.

“I guess,” Tony said.

Angelo taught Tony several old-school calisthenics. First jumping jacks, then sit-ups, then push-ups. Tony got winded pretty fast. After ten squat thrusts, he suggested they take a break. They both sat on the floor, leaning against the foot of the bed. Tony noticed Angelo's glasses had fogged up. “I almost forgot,” he said. He grabbed his jeans, which were still lying on the floor. From the back pocket he pulled the page he had printed off the Internet. (By the time he got home from Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, the cable guy had finished installing broadband in Michael's new office, and Julia had set up Michael's laptop and printer so they could all check emails.) He unfolded the printout and offered it to Angelo.

“Um, I don't see anything,” Angelo said.

“I guess I'll just read it to you,” Tony said. “It's the history of contact lenses.”

“What're they?” Angelo said.

“Like tiny eyeglasses you wear directly on your eyeballs,” Tony said.

Angelo laughed.

Tony told him he was totally serious. All the big sports stars would eventually wear them. According to Wikipedia, Angelo would only have to wait another decade before scientists invented hard lenses.

As soon as they did, Angelo should get a pair. He'd never fog up again.

“Do they hurt?” Angelo said.

“You'll barely notice they're in your eyes,” Tony said. “Especially when soft lenses come out in the 1970s.”

“What's Wikipedia?” Angelo said.

Tony didn't even begin to know how to explain the Internet. Luckily, he didn't have to. They were interrupted by a voice:

“What's going on here?”

A kid their age was standing at the pawcorance. It was Solly, of course. But as a thirteen-year-old. He was dressed in a black wool suit, there was a yarmulke pinned to the back of his head, and his face was framed by long brown curls. Tony thought they looked a little like ram horns and wondered if the ram was his animal totem.

“Solomon Weinberg?” he asked.

Solly nodded, startled.

“Hurray!” Angelo said. “It finally worked!”

“Who are you, and what are you doing in my room?” Solly said. He had an unexpectedly thick Yiddish accent, one he would obviously lose by the time he became a benchwarmer for the Sox.

Tony introduced himself and Angelo. He explained they were both from the future—well, sort of. Tony was actually sitting on the floor of his attic bedroom in 2009, whereas Angelo, here, was in his
own
bedroom in 1939. That was all because of an anomaly in Minkowski's block universe. Tony launched into an explanation of how the top floor of 13 Hangmen Court acted as a weird sort of time machine—

Solly strode over to the door and opened it. “Scram!” he said.

“Wait, I can prove it,” Tony said. “You just turned thirteen, didn't you?”

Solly nodded uncertainly.

“And you just set a prayer scroll on the spiral, right?”

“That doesn't prove you're from the future,” Solly said. “It just proves you've been spying on me. Why? I swear I don't know anything about that molasses!”

Molasses? Who said anything about molasses?

Tony explained how the prayer scroll would eventually end up in the brim of that baseball cap on the shelf, a present to Angelo from a Red Sox outfielder. Angelo—who was actually Tony's great-uncle—would give that cap to Tony for
his
thirteenth birthday. Setting both the cap and the scroll on the spiral was how they were all connected, why they were all in the attic at the same time. See?

“No,” said Solly. “Any more than I see a Red Sox cap.”

“Ted Williams doesn't exist for him yet,” Angelo whispered to Tony. “Like your cell phone doesn't exist for me. The best way to prove we're from the future is to say something that's going to happen.”

“You know him better than I do,” Tony said.

“Scram!” Solly said. “Now. I mean it.”

“Wait, I know!” Angelo said. “Something happened to you today, on your birthday, something you'll never forget because of this house, a rusty molasses tank, and some guy named Finn McGinley.”

Solly suddenly went very pale. He closed the door. “Who told you that?”

“You did. On
my
thirteenth birthday. By then you're an outfielder for the Sox, though to be honest, your career gets sort of ruined at my party.”

“Is Finn OK?” Solly asked. “I'm waiting for word from him.”

“I have no idea,” Angelo admitted. “The press arrived before you got the chance to finish your story. All I know is that a Hagmann is involved somehow.
Chester
Hagmann.”

“Which is actually why we conjured you,” Tony said. “We've both got serious issues with our own Hagmanns over this house.”

“It's all because of my big mouth,” Solly sighed, taking a seat beside the other boys on the floor.

“What is?” Angelo said.

“Chester Hagmann has just double-crossed Finn into selling him this house. Otherwise the Irish mob will make Finn a pair of cement shoes and sink him to the bottom of the Charles River, all on account of that worthless molasses. Unless, that is, Finn really
does
know a way to beat Hagmann at his own game.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Tony said. “Start from the beginning.”

“I should have known what kind of day it would turn out to be, just by the crazy weather outside,” Solly began.

olly actually began the morning of his thirteenth birthday in good spirits. There was still a week left of winter break from school, it was a beautiful springlike day—very unusual for mid-January in Boston—and he was off to the synagogue to memorize the Torah passage he would be reciting for his bar mitzvah Saturday morning.

He just had one slightly unpleasant errand to run first.

Solly found Finn McGinley, the owner of the run-down town house his family rented—13 Hangmen Court—exactly where Mameh said he would: in the boarded-up pub at the corner that used to be called One-Eyed Jack's. And just as Mameh had predicted, Finn was perched on a stool at the end of the grimy bar, smoking a cigar and reading the
Boston Globe
. His
makeshift office. Solly's only surprise was the slumlord's age; Finn couldn't be much more than twenty-five.

“I'm here to pay the rent on Number Thirteen,” Solly said.

“About time,” Finn said without looking up. “It's two weeks late.”

“I've only got half,” Solly admitted. “It's been slow at the deli where my mother waitresses—on account of the holidays. What little tip money she made had to go to the doctor treating my baby sister's polio. Plus my father hasn't been shipped back yet from the trenches in France, where he's been fighting the Germans. And his soldier's pay seems to be lost in the mail.”

“You know how many hard-luck stories I hear a day?” Finn said.

Solly exploded with anger. “Shame on you!” he shouted. “You grew up in the North End. Have you already forgotten what it was like for
your
folks to start a new life in a new country? It's a
shanda,
I say—a shame.” Solly instantly regretted his outburst. Mameh was always chiding him for making things worse with his sass.