The visitor removed his wire-rimmed glasses and cleaned the lenses with a pocket handkerchief. “I’m a friend of your father’s. He sent me. That’s how I came to have your address.”
Eddie took a step back, confused. “That’s impossible. My father doesn’t know where I live.”
“He gave me your address. Therefore he knows something.” The visitor spied the photographs of the dead girls tacked to the wall. “Yes. I’m in the right place. You were there.” The older man crossed the room, his steps echoing on the wide-planked wooden floor. He wore heavy shoes, one heel built up with wooden filler to even out his gait, for his legs were mismatched in length. “You’re going to find my daughter.”
Eddie’s visitor was Samuel Weiss, a tailor and the father of two daughters, Ella and Hannah, both employed by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Ella was safely at home, but Hannah could not be found. Weiss had been to St. Vincent’s Hospital, established by the Sisters of Charity in 1849, then he’d gone on to Bellevue, and finally to the morgue on the pier. His beautiful daughter with the white-blond hair had not been among the wounded or the dead. No one in the neighborhood had seen her since Saturday, not even her closest friends. Now Weiss searched the images on Eddie’s wall, but again, Hannah could not be found. When he had gone through every photograph, he sat in a wooden chair, overwhelmed, his face streaming with tears, his eyes rimmed red. The light filtering through the skylight was a pale, creamy yellow. Between Weiss’s sobs Eddie could hear the horses in the stable below, restless in their stalls now that morning had risen, waiting for the liveryman and their breakfast of oats.
“Hannah worked on the ninth floor. Do you know what that means? No survivors. Or so they say. How do you believe a pack of liars? I for one don’t trust anything we’re told.”
“Mr. Weiss, I’m sorry. I truly am. There were no survivors.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry! Help me! That’s what I need. Your father said you could find her.”
His father, whom he had not seen or spoken to in twelve years, almost as much time as they had lived together, who knew nothing about what his son was capable of. Eddie often wondered if they would recognize each other if they passed on the street, or if they had become such strangers to one another they would merely keep on walking, having no idea that they shared the same flesh and blood, that they had once slept together under the same black overcoat in the forest, in shock and mourning.
“How is it possible that there’s no sign of her?” Weiss went on. “How many girls have hair so pale it’s the color of snow? How many come home every night right on time and are never late?” His voice was raspy. He had been searching through the debris on Greene Street and had breathed in cinders. “They found not a scrap of clothing, not her purse, not a bit of jewelry, nothing. She wore a gold locket that belonged to her mother. I gave it to her on her last birthday. She wept with tears of gratitude and swore she would never take it off. Gold does not burn, I know that much. It melts, but it doesn’t disappear. None of her friends saw her that morning. What do you think of that? I questioned everyone who survived, even her best friend, Rose, who’s still in St. Vincent’s Hospital, with both of her legs burned.” He glared at Eddie. “Don’t tell me nothing remains of a human being.”
Eddie went to the bureau for some whiskey and glasses. Before the fire he would have merely insisted his visitor leave, now he felt the thorn of compassion. He put down a glass in front of Weiss and asked, “Have you been to the precinct? Spoken with the police?”
“The police?” Weiss’s face furrowed with distrust. “No.” He gulped the whiskey and tapped his glass on the table for more. “I wanted someone I can trust. That’s why I came to you.”
“Me? Why would you trust me?”
Weiss shook his head, amazed by how dense the younger man was. “Because you are one of us, Ezekiel.”
“I’m not! Look at me.”
Eddie wore a blue shirt and black trousers. He had no tallit around his shoulders, a garment that showed a covenant with God, and no remnants of his Orthodox upbringing. His hair was cropped short, and he’d long ago forsaken the practice of wearing a skullcap. His large, pale feet were bare, allowing a glimpse of a tattoo of a trident he’d had inked on his ankle, a true embarrassment, even to him. He’d gone to the infamous Samuel O’Reilly’s shop one drunken evening, where the owner used Edison’s newly invented electric tattoo machine. Eddie had immediately regretted his choice when he awoke the next morning with a throbbing headache. Tattoos were strictly forbidden for his people, and men of his faith so marked could not be buried in a religious cemetery. Eddie’s regret, however, had less to do with faith than with the fact that the tattoo was so crudely drawn.