The Diviners

“Ice Man?”

“And the sixth offering shall be an offering of obedience.”

A chill skipped up Memphis’s arms and neck. He didn’t recognize what Isaiah was saying. It was almost like he was receiving those words. Memphis wasn’t sure what to do. If he went to Octavia, she’d drag Isaiah and Memphis down to church and keep them there all day and night praying.

Sister Walker. Maybe Sister Walker would know. He’d ask her about it tomorrow. Memphis took Isaiah’s hand and led him back to bed. The boy was still staring into the distance.

“The time is now. They are coming,” Isaiah said, drifting back into dreams, his last word barely a whisper: “Diviners.” And then he was asleep.

A RIND OF MOONLIGHT

Several blocks and a thousand years from the city’s ritzy nightclubs and theaters, a rind of moon sweated in the sky, but its glow did not reach the gloom of the tenements along Tenth Avenue, where Tommy Duffy and his friends welcomed the feel of the cool night air as they swaggered through Hell’s Kitchen. They called themselves the Street Kings, for they were rulers of the rubble piles and the railyards. Makers of mischief. Sultans of the goddamned West Side.

“… I heard dere’s a cellar ’round here where dey take snitches,” one of the boys crowed. “I heard ’a floors is covered wit teeth ’at you can pry da gold right outta and sell it over to da pawnbroker on Eighth and Forty.”

“You’re as full of it as yer old man.”

“You take back what you said about my da.”

“Yeah, the only thing his old man’s full of is Owney’s whiskey!”

The two boys fell on each other with fists and curses, more out of habit than a sense of honor, until Paddy Holleran broke them apart.

“Save it,” he ordered. “We might need our knuckles for what we’re doin’ tonight.”

Paddy was fourteen and already running some small rackets for Owney Madden’s gang, so the boys followed him without question, shouting “Street Kings!” and toppling garbage cans and throwing rocks at windows. No one could touch them. This was what it meant to be in a gang. Without your boys, you were nothing. A chump. A nobody.

When they reached the empty yards along the Hudson where the warehouses stood sentry, Paddy shushed them. “Gotta be looking out. Dey got a guard dog, a big German shepherd with teeth a foot long dat keeps watch. He’ll eat your face off.”

“What’s the plan, Paddy?” Tommy asked. He was only twelve and looked up to the older boy.

“See dat warehouse at the end? I heard Luciano’s men got their whiskey from Canada hidden in there. Got a distillery in dere, too. We steal some whiskey, bust up the still, I bet Owney’d be chuffed. Bet we’d look good to him. We’ll let dem Italian bastards know we Irish was here first.”

“Didn’t Columbus discover America?” Tommy said. He’d learned that in school, before he’d quit in fifth grade.

Paddy thumped Tommy’s nose. “Whatsa matter wit you? You wanna run wit the Italians now? Is ’at it?”

“N-no.”

“Hey! Tommy Gun here wants to be Italian! He’s too good for us!”

“Am not!” Tommy shouted over their insults.

“Yeah? Prove it.” Paddy had a mean glint in his eye. “You go in first. Stay in for five minutes, then come out with somethin’ and we’ll believe you.”

Tommy glanced down toward the shadowy end of the yards, where the warehouse sat. Winos slept there. Perverts, too. Sometimes rival gangs patrolled with lead pipes. And there was the threat of the guard dog Paddy had mentioned. Tommy’s stomach knotted in fear.

“Do it or you ain’t part of the Street Kings no more.”

There was no worse fate. Even the thought of some geezer showing his bits was better than being left out of the gang, a nobody.

“Okay, okay,” Tommy said. He walked on shaky legs toward the looming warehouse on the river. Feral cats slunk through the weeds, carrying things in their teeth. One hissed, its eyes gone to glass in the dark. King of the Streets, King of the Streets, Tommy chanted to himself. At the warehouse’s big doors, he hesitated for a second. It wasn’t padlocked. There was only a wooden bar looped through the handles. One of the boys howled like a dog and Tommy’s heart beat fast at the thought of what might be on the other side of those doors.

King of the Streets…

Tommy slipped inside and saw at once that it was not a secret distillery but a slaughterhouse. The place had a terrible smell of river water and dead flesh. Behind him, Tommy heard the wooden bar being slipped back through the handles. He fell against the doors, pounding with his fists. “Lemme out! I’ll kill youse!”