13 Hangmen (26 page)

“I'll need more time,” Tony said. “Health & Safety are escorting us out of here at six o'clock. Maybe you could get them to
hold off on evicting us for a day or two. That way I can make a thorough search of the house.”

“You don't need to search the house. I'm certain I lost the key either in the kitchen or in the parlor where Angelo moved his bed.”

“Still,” Tony said.

“You have until Health & Safety get here at six,” Hagmann said. “Otherwise, the city will throw you out as planned, then raze this house to the ground. I'll just pick through the rubble for that key—and whatever else I want—
and
get myself a bigger rose garden in the bargain.”

Without another word, Hagmann returned next door and disappeared inside.

Tony lifted the eviction notice. He slipped the screwdriver through the loop of the knocker. He grabbed both ends and, channeling all his pent-up rage, tried turning the clapper to the right. Slowly, it started to move. One, two, three turns.
You have until six.
Four, five, six. Yeah, well, with any luck Tony would have that treasure by six. Seven, eight, nine. The wrought-iron heart popped out of the middle of the knocker into his hand. There was indeed an old-fashioned hook at the end of it, just as Finn had predicted. Now they just had to figure out what it—not to mention the key in his wallet—opened.

Tony set the heart hook on the spiral. Behind him the other boys waited in tense anticipation. He hovered his hand. Prickle of static. Echo of the word
riddle.
“Riddle?” he muttered to himself. “You could say that again.” He leaned closer and whispered, “Where is
your
heart?”

Jack materialized almost immediately. In fact, he was standing right beside Tony, having just placed the very same heart hook on the mantel. Jack startled when he noticed Tony with his good eye. He was even more surprised when he whirled around to find himself surrounded by a gang of white kids his own age.

Something about Jack's lithe body, ready to leap and flee, reminded Tony of an antelope. Jack's animal totem? Tony wondered again which animal he resembled to the other boys. If his own totem was indeed a hamster, he was more determined than ever to drop those twenty-five pounds and trade it in for something better.

“You're Jack Douglass, right?” Tony said.

Jack shook his head no.

“But you must be One-Eyed Jack,” Finn insisted. “You're wearing a patch.”

“I am Jack. But I don't have a last name.”

To Tony, Jack's English sounded straight out of some late-night cable movie like
Gone with the Wind
.

“But you
did
just turn thirteen,” Solly prompted.

“I—I don't know,” Jack stammered, terrified. “Are you slave catchers?”

Tony did his best to explain—as he had done three times before—who they were, how the pawcorance worked, and why they had all ended up in the same room: They had reason to believe a half dozen Hagmanns throughout history would stop at nothing—including the murder of poor Angelo here—to get their hands on a treasure stowed in the attic someplace. And the only way to prevent Angelo's death was for them to find that treasure first.

Jack just stood there.

“You have to believe us,” Angelo.

“I do,” Jack said. “The Hagmanns are definitely after that treasure.”

“We're almost positive it's in the secret room you've been hiding in,” Solly said.

“It is,” Jack said. “Tobias told me so himself.”

“How do we get inside?” Finn said.

“You just use that heart hook on the spiral,” Jack said. “I'll show you.”

“And then you'll lead us to the treasure?” Tony said, excitedly.

“Sorry. I can't,” Jack said.

“Why not?” they all cried at once.

“I don't know where it is,” Jack said. “In fact, I was hoping—if you're really from the future—that you'd show
me
where it's hidden.”

“Wait,
you're
looking for the treasure too?” Solly said.

“For most of the night,” Jack said. “I have to find it before Tobias's next-door neighbor, Horatio Hagmann, turns up at daybreak with slave catchers and the constable. I need to buy my own freedom with it. Otherwise the constable will arrest Tobias for harboring a fugitive slave, and the slave catchers will drag me back to North Carolina in chains. If only I knew my letters!”

“What's that got to do with anything?” Angelo said.

“For the riddle,” Jack cried.

“What riddle?” Finn said.

“And who's this Tobias?” Solly added.

“Better start from the beginning,” Tony advised.

And so Jack did.

ith his good eye, Jack searched the door of every house in the Negro neighborhood of Boston called the New Guinea. He was looking for his next station along the Underground Railroad to Canada. He would know it by a brass knocker in the shape of a heart flying out of a crown. Jack had run away from a tobacco plantation in North Carolina six weeks ago. He could no longer feel his fingers and toes. He hadn't eaten in three days. His left eye socket ached horribly under its patch.

The eye itself was gone. Master O'Connor had gouged it out during a beating. Jack had stolen a pumpkin so that Auntie Sukey could make the slaves a Christmas pie. The master had wanted to set an example. Lucky for Jack, Auntie Sukey was slave
row's resident healer. She had packed the socket with a poultice of herbs, then covered it with a flannel patch. It was Auntie Sukey who had arranged for Jack to join the next band of fugitive slaves headed north on the local liberty line. He had fled the plantation while the master was celebrating New Year's Eve.

Six weeks had never felt more like six years. Jack had thought more than once he might freeze to death without a winter coat or pair of waterproof boots. Most of the stations northbound had been barn lofts and root cellars, so Jack had barely slept. Food had always been scarce and rarely hot. But fear had gnawed at Jack's belly more than hunger. Always the threat of being tracked down by bloodhounds, dragged back in chains, dangled by a noose from the eaves of Master O'Connor's front porch—an even sterner example. Jack's only comfort had been the other runaways in his band, all dreaming of the same thing: freedom. But even they were gone now. They had all split up in Providence, to take separate lines to the Canadian border.

Where was that knocker? Jack was just about to give up hope when he stumbled into a small side court of brick row houses built around a giant oak. At the far end he spied an iron knocker with a heart at its center. But it wasn't right. It was in the shape of two hands clutching a crowned heart—just like the ring Master O'Connor wore. And the person sitting wrapped in a buffalo robe on the front stoop wasn't black, like the other safe-house
operators Jack had encountered after crossing into the North. It was an elderly white gentleman smoking a clay pipe.

Disappointed, Jack saw little choice but to turn around and keep looking.

“I don't suppose you go by the name of Jack?” the old man said.

Jack nodded, utterly surprised.

“Thirteen, are you?” he said.

“Thereabouts,” Jack said. “I don't know my birth date.”

The old gentleman suddenly broke into a grin. “I'm Tobias Tucker,” he said. “Well, it
must
be today. I've been waiting here a long time to wish you a happy birthday.”

To Jack's continued surprise, Tobias stood. He converted the knocker behind him into the very flying heart Jack had been hunting for.

Tobias cranked the clapper nine times to the right, then pulled it out. It had an odd hook on the end of it. “Better get ourselves inside,” he said, and winked. “Before my busybody next-door neighbor, Horatio Hagmann, sees what we're up to.”

Tobias led Jack up to the attic, which he declared to be his bedroom. Jack watched him use the heart hook to open the back of the fireplace. Tobias ushered Jack through a secret passage into a tiny room. He lit a hurricane lantern and hung it from the eaves. “This is where you'll hide,” Tobias said, “until we make
contact with the local stationmaster about which liberty line you should take to Canada.” A rap at the front door echoed up the stairwell. Tobias frowned. “Be back as soon as I can,” he said.

He ducked through the fireplace and sealed Jack inside.

Jack surveyed his surroundings. In one corner, a mattress had been laid across several small casks. This was made up with blankets and a pillow. Beside it there was a chamber pot, and a washbasin and an ewer of water. Jack took a seat on the mattress. From three more upturned kegs a makeshift table and two chairs had been fashioned. There wasn't really much else to look at, apart from a piece of parchment nailed to the wall. This was inked with five lines of writing.

Jack fell almost immediately asleep, the deepest sleep of his life.

Eventually Tobias returned and woke him up. He was carrying a plate of sausages and potatoes, and a mug of cool water. He set these on the table. Jack wolfed the food while Tobias told him it had been his neighbor, Horatio Hagmann, at the door. Hagmann was getting suspicious. He swore he had heard someone bumping around in Tobias's attic the week before, and echoes of voices coming through the walls. Tobias had tried his best to calm Hagmann's suspicions by informing him he'd been interviewing for an apprentice to take over his silversmithing business. He had then ushered Hagmann out of his house
with the excuse he was late for an appointment in town. From now on, though, neither Jack nor Tobias should speak above a whisper, and Jack would need to keep quiet as a mouse up here.

“But why would a rich white man like you ever risk getting arrested just to help runaway slaves?” Jack blurted.

“Everyone deserves to be free,” Tobias said. “Why do you think we fought the Revolution? For the freedom to be yourself. And in my opinion, that means regardless of race, color, or creed. But enough about all that. I have a little surprise for you.” Tobias ducked out to his bedroom. A moment later, he returned with a pair of boots, some trousers, a shirt, and a coat. “Put these on,” he said. “We're going out.”

“But that's against the rules!” Jack said. “Once in hiding, stay in hiding till you hear from the stationmaster about where to go next.”

“That's why we're going out,” Tobias said. “To make contact with the stationmaster. Hagmann's already suspicious. So the sooner you leave, the better. But we may as well have a night out on the town while we're at it—to celebrate your birthday!”

“But I don't know if it's my birthday,” Jack said.

“It is, it is,” Tobias said. “Now get dressed.”

Reluctantly, Jack donned his new clothes. He hesitated at the threshold of the secret room. What if someone recognized him as a runaway? Tobias reassured Jack he would be fine—as
long as he talked and walked and held his head high, like he had always lived in Boston as a free man. Easier said than done for someone who had been a slave all his life! Jack nonetheless tried his best not to quake in his new boots as he left the house, walked out of the cobbled court, and ambled side by side with Tobias through the North End, Quincy Market, Scollay Square, and Beacon Hill. Eventually they joined a stream of black and white folk entering a brick building.