“You’re on to me, Lloyd. I’m afraid I’ll have to kill you now. Be a honey and sit still while I strangle you.” Evie reached playfully for his throat and Sam jerked the wheel, making the car swerve and Evie scream.
“I’ll go quietly, sister,” Sam said, correcting their course. “Just don’t wreck us.”
They parked Will’s old Model T a block away and dodged the trolley rattling up the cobblestones of Centre Street on their way toward the Tombs. The imposing, elliptical jail was anchored by a turret at each end and surrounded by a tall stone wall and an iron railing, which made it seem more like some medieval fortress than a modern New York City building.
“If I give you this signal”—Sam put a finger to the side of his nose—“it means distract the flat foot while I steal what we need. Got it?”
“Got it. But how will we find where they’re holding him?” Evie said in despair. They entered the building to find a bedlam of officers and miscreants. It was like opening night at a Broadway show of criminals.
Sam walked up to the officer at the front desk. “Pardon me. The lady here heard you might be holding her brother, Jacob Call?”
The officer conferred with someone over the telephone and came back shaking his head.
“No visitors.”
“I see. We just want to be sure he’s not being held down below. He had pneumonia just last month, and that swampy air isn’t good for his lungs,” Sam said.
The officer turned to Evie. “He’s in the warden’s office on this floor, so you can rest easy, Miss.”
Evie batted her lashes and tried to look forlorn. “Thank you. You’ve been a real doll, sir.”
Sam put his finger to his nose in the secret signal, at which Evie’s eyes fluttered. She swayed on her feet. “Oh, ohhhh…” She swooned as attractively as she could, and the officer caught her. Through slitted eyes, Evie watched Sam steal his keys.
“Oh, thank you, officer. If I could just sit down somewhere until I feel steadier on my feet?”
The officer led them inside to a waiting bench. Evie winked at Sam and he whispered low in her ear, making her neck tingle. “Sister, together, we could be a hell of a team.”
Up front, a commotion broke out among a group of drunks and the officer abandoned Evie and Sam to help out. Evie grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled him after her, deep into the building.
“For the record, sister, this isn’t my idea of a swell time,” Sam whispered as he and Evie sneaked through the labyrinthine corridors of the city’s notorious jail.
“How are we going to get past the guards?” Evie said. She could see a policeman sitting on a stool behind a desk, filling out paperwork.
“Leave that to me.”
“Sam,” Evie warned as they got close.
The officer looked up, and it seemed to Evie that he looked right at them. She heard Sam muttering something under his breath, prayerlike. He put up a hand as if to shield them, and the officer looked back down at his paperwork, almost as though he hadn’t seen them. It was very strange, and Evie told herself that he hadn’t really seen them after all.
“That was a stroke of luck,” she said, letting out her breath.
“Just keep walking,” Sam instructed.
They found Jacob Call sitting in a dingy room with only two chairs and a table. He wore the same coveralls and black hat as when they’d last met him. The pendant still hung from his neck. His sleeves were pushed up some, and Evie could see crude tattoos peeking out from beneath the cuffs.
“Hello again,” Evie said. “Do you remember me, Mr. Call?”
Brother Call barely glanced at her. “Yep.”
“I hear you won’t tell the police anything. Why is that?”
“Won’t tell them. Won’t tell you,” he said.
“That’s a shame. I think we’d have just oodles of things to talk about. This, for instance.” Evie placed the Book of the Brethren on the table between them.
Jacob Call’s expression darkened. “Where’d you get that?”
Evie opened the book and turned the pages but didn’t offer him a glimpse. “Fascinating reading. Much better than Moby-Dick. Like this passage, for instance.”