The Girl in the Glass

WHY THE TEARDROP?

The day we went to see The Worm, the city wore a disguise of jangling excitement over its normally grim features of unemployment and destitution. On the previous afternoon, in Chicago, during the seventh inning of the World Series, score tied 4 to 4, Babe Ruth had come up to bat. There had been a season-long, bitter rivalry between the two clubs. Ruth was met by calls of derision from the opposing bullpen. His only reaction was to calmly lift his bat and use it to point out into the distance at something or someone only he could see. The pitch came from Charlie Root, and the Babe blasted a home run that broke the tie and gave the Yankees the momentum to win the game. The city's predominantly downtrodden inhabitants feasted on this feat of confidence, and we overheard people talking about it on the train, in the station, and on the streets. None of us, Antony, Schell, or I, cared much about baseball, but the feeling was infectious, and the entire city seemed to be swaggering.

Around the corner from the main branch of the New York Public Library, across the street and down an alleyway littered with ash cans and junk, was a plain metal door in the side of a brick building. Antony stepped forward, rapped twice, waited a second, rapped again three times, and then took a step back and joined Schell and me. The door squealed open a quarter of the way and a small, old woman with a nearly bald head covered in a hairnet, wearing a pair of thick-lensed glasses, appeared.

"What do you want?" she said in a nasty tone.

"Which way to Paradise?" asked Antony.

She opened the door wider and beckoned for us to enter. Her look of anger melted into a smile, and she said, "Get in here, Henry Bruhl."

Once we were standing inside a dimly lit foyer and the door had been closed and locked, Antony leaned over and kissed the woman's wrinkled cheek. She then turned to Schell and said, "How are you, Tom?"

"Pleasure to see you again, Grace," he said. He lifted her hand and kissed it.

"Still full of shit, I see," she said.

"At your service," said Schell.

She turned to me and eyed me up and down, focusing on my turban. "Who's this, Genghis Khan?" she asked, holding her hand out to me.

"This here is Ondoo," said Antony. "He's a swami."

"Halloween isn't till the end of the month," she said and grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

"Nice to meet you," I said.

"Is this your boy, Thomas?" she asked Schell.

He nodded.

"God help you," she said to me.

"We're looking for The Worm," said Antony.

"Well, you know, he's always either here or over at the library. You're in luck, 'cause he's back there right now, three sheets to the wind and diddling some Columbia professor's wallet."

"Thanks," said Schell.

"I'll bring you back a round of drinks," she said.

We left the foyer and walked down a dark hallway that ended in a short downward flight of steps. The place had obviously been the basement of an old warehouse; the bricks of the walls were crooked, and some had fused together over time. The stairs led to a large expanse crammed with tables and booths beneath a low ceiling of thick wooden timbers. There were candles on the tables and one electric light behind a makeshift bar made of sawhorses and old doors, covered with tablecloths. It was still early in the afternoon, and besides the bartender, who sat on a chair behind the bar, there were only three or four other customers.

I followed Antony and Schell toward one of the booths in the shadows of a rear corner of the room. As we drew closer, I could see the booth held two men sitting across from each other.

"Emmet," said Schell, "when you're done, we'd like to do some business."

The man he was addressing, whom I supposed was "The Worm," waved and said, "Hey, Tommy, give me another minute here." He had a bushy gray beard and wore a rumpled overcoat, tattered hat, and fingerless gloves, like some kind of hobo.

We waited while he finished talking to the other man, who was as neatly dressed as The Worm was slovenly. The fellow in the suit, tie, and small circular glasses finally stood up, reached into his pocket, and handed over a wad of bills to The Worm. Then he lifted his hat off the table, placed it on his head, and walked away.

"Okay, you guys, the shop is open," said the hobo.

Antony and I took the bench across the table from Schell and his odd acquaintance. I was introduced to the man and learned his name was Emmet Brogan. Schell gave him a brief run-down on my story, to which he nodded and said, "A swami, nice touch."

"How's New York these days?" asked Schell.

"Well," said Brogan, "they kicked Walker out at the start of last month. He's off in Europe spending all the money he bilked from the citizens of the fair metropolis. La Guardia's in. The usual ball of crap keeps spinning. Same old, same old."

"Has business been good?" asked Antony.

"Business is always good," said Brogan. "Information's more valuable than gold."

Grace appeared, carrying a tray, and set four drinks on the table. Schell handed her a bill, which she crumpled and stashed in her apron. "Drink up, boys," she said before retreating back into the shadows.

I took a sip from my glass, expecting it to be beer. Whatever it was lit a fire in my mouth and throat, and I coughed.

"Business is good, but the coffin varnish never gets any better," said Brogan, downing a sizable gulp.

"What is this?" I asked Antony.

"Bathtub gin," he said, taking a sip.

An image of the old lady, Grace, sitting in a tub of the stuff, came into my mind, and I couldn't shake it.

"Grain alcohol with a mixture of special ingredients, so to speak," said Brogan. "Drink enough of this shit and it'll make you go blind. I'm surprised I can still see."

"Two questions for you today," said Schell, turning to The Worm.

"I'll give you one for free," said Brogan. "I'm in a good mood 'cause the Yanks won."

"What's a dybbuk?" asked Schell.

"A dybbuk?" said Brogan. "Hold on a second." He sat as if thinking, staring into the distance. "Hey, Henry, you got a cigarette?" he said.

Antony took two from his pack, put both between his lips, and lit them. He handed one across the table. The Worm nodded his thanks, took a long drag, and went back to thinking.

While we waited, Schell tapped my arm to draw my attention. "Emmet's mind is like a camera. Whatever he reads, he can eventually remember like it's sitting right in front of him," he said.

"A dybbuk," said Brogan, obviously smiling with pride at Schell's description of his powers. "It's Jewish. Hebrew occult."

"Is it a ghost?" asked Antony.

"Not exactly," said Brogan. "I remember now. It's a kind of demon. When the spirit of a dead person, wicked, of course, enters and controls the body of a living person, you get a dybbuk. In the folklore, when this happens, the spirit's out to harm the living in some way."

"Jewish you said?" said Schell.

"Yeah, definitely," said Brogan.

Schell nodded. "Okay, here's the second question," he said. He looked at me. "Diego, do you have the drawing?"

I reached into my vest pocket and took out a square of paper. Unfolding it, I laid it on the table and smoothed down the creases. On it was the symbol I had rendered from my memory of the cloth draped over Charlotte Barnes. I pushed it across the table toward The Worm.

"Oh, I know this," he said. He tapped the paper with his index finger, and with his free hand lifted the glass to his mouth. "Yeah." He nodded to himself.

"I thought it might be religious," said Schell, "because of the crosses."

"You could say that," said Brogan. "This is from the Klan."

"What clan?" asked Antony.

"There's only one Klan," said Brogan. "The Ku Klux Klan."

"The Klan?" said Schell. "This came from out on the island."

"No shit," said The Worm. "The Klan was all over the island a few years back."

"I had no idea," said Schell.

"June 1923, over twenty-five-thousand people gathered in a huge field to hear the message of the Klan," said Brogan. "Guess where? We're not talking Alabama, we're not talking South Carolina or Mississippi."

Schell and Antony shook their heads.

"East Islip, Long Island," he said and slapped the tabletop. "Sure, I did a whole workup on this stuff for a guy from the federal government a few years ago. One out of every seven or eight people on the island belonged. White hoods, burning crosses, the works."

"In my traveling show days down south, we heard about colored men being lynched by them," said Antony.

"This was a new type of Klan. They were still race haters, but they sold themselves to the populace on the platform of law and order. Imagine. There weren't enough colored people out there on the island for them to get that worked up about, so they kind of transferred their energy into hating the Catholics, the Jews, the immigrants. They were down on what they considered the dissolution of the white race by all of the foreigners coming into this country. And they were heavy supporters of Prohibition." Brogan lifted his glass, as if making a toast, and took a drink.

"What part of the island were they located in?" asked Schell.

"All over the damn place. They formed these little bands to guard the shoreline against bootleggers and would prevent them from landing. Shoot-outs, lot of violence there. White supremacy is what they've always been about, and that's basically what they're still about. Eventually, their own political infighting undercut their power. By the end of the twenties a lot of it disbanded, but I'm sure it's still there. There were times during their heyday, we're talking less than ten years ago, when they'd be allowed in churches and schools to give speeches, hoods and all. Lot of pastors were big supporters. Some shameful shit."

"That's a scary group," said Antony.

"Scary, yeah," said Brogan, "but mostly just a bunch of ignoramuses. There's guys a lot scarier than them out there."

"Who's that?" I asked.

"Guys with the same philosophy, but with real power, brains, and money. I hate to say it, my friend, but you'd be mincemeat with these bastards whether you were a swami or…where are you from, Guatemala? Mexico? Anyway, you'd be finished."

"Why the teardrop?" I asked.

"That's no teardrop, chum. That's a drop of blood. It's all in the blood. Their big fear is the mixing of the white race with, quote, unquote, inferior blood."