He couldn’t tell Jericho the real reason he needed to keep the museum alive. Two months ago, he’d asked his informant for a tip about Project Buffalo—a place to start. The contact had written down a name: William Fitzgerald. It had seemed like a joke. What could the professor of the world’s dullest museum know about a secret government project during the war that had taken Sam’s mother away from him? But it was the only lead he’d gotten in a very long time, and so even though it made him feel like an ungrateful heel, any chance he got he searched every drawer, cabinet, crevice, and corner of the place for clues that might lead him to the truth. So far, his search had yielded bupkes. He couldn’t let the museum be sold off until he’d found what he was looking for or proved that his contact had been wrong and that Will was in the clear. At times, he wasn’t sure which of those scenarios would be best.
Sam craned his neck, looking for signs of possible visitors. A mother pushing a carriage. A window washer packing up his supplies. Two men in dark suits waiting out the rain in their sedan. And one fellow in a Harvard letter sweater striding up Sixty-eighth Street.
Sam smirked. “Perfect,” he said under his breath. He bounded down the steps toward the fella, smiling and waving. “Buckwald? Buck Macy, is that you, you son of a gun?”
“I’m sorry. You must have me confused with someone else—”
“Do I?” Whip-fast, Sam stuck out a hand. “Don’t see me,” he intoned, and the college boy’s eyes glazed over.
Sam reached into the fella’s jacket, found his wallet, removed five dollars, and placed the wallet back inside, all in the space of six seconds.
“Nine, ten, eleven, twelve…” Sam counted. When Sam hit fifteen, the man came out of his hypnotic trance, blinking and befuddled. Not bad, Sam thought. Fifteen seconds was the longest he’d ever been able to put somebody under.
“Are you all right, pal?” Sam said, all concern. “You got a little woozy there.”
“Must’ve been that party last night at the Harvard Club,” the college boy said, still a little dazed.
“Must’ve been that,” Sam agreed. “Sorry that I had you confused with somebody else. A Yalie,” he whispered.
“Well. It’s… I’m fine now. Yes,” the fella mumbled. “Thanks, old boy.”
“Anytime, old boy,” Sam parroted and sent the still-wobbly fella on his way. He kissed the five bucks he’d stolen and shoved it into his pocket.
“The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies thanks you for your generous donation, sir,” he said to himself, then hurried up the steps into the museum.
“Did you see that, Mr. Adams?” the driver of the sedan asked, breaking the silence in the car.
The man in the passenger seat retrieved a pistachio from the oil-stained bag in his hand and maneuvered it into his mouth, cracking the shell with his back molars. But he kept his eyes on the museum the whole time.
“I did indeed, Mr. Jefferson,” he answered at last.
The wind whipping down 125th Street in the wake of the zippering trolleys was brisk, and Memphis Campbell blew on his hands for warmth. A tall ladder leaned against the outside of a brownstone where two men hoisted a banner above a second-floor window: MISS CALEDONIA: READER OF OBJECTS, HEALER OF MALADIES, DIVINER EXTRAORDINAIRE. Memphis shook his head. Everywhere he looked, it seemed people were trying to cash in on the Diviners craze.
As he walked with his younger brother, Isaiah, and old Blind Bill Johnson, Memphis counted the signs hanging from doorways or posted in windows up and down the streets of Harlem: FATHER FORTUNE WILL FREE YOU FROM HARM. MYSTICAL MOHAMMED, TELLER OF TRUTHS FROM BEYOND. OBEAH MAN: PALMS READ, FORTUNES TOLD, CURSES LIFTED. Most of them couldn’t tell a crystal ball from a bowling ball. And the only fortunes were the ones they were collecting from gullible clients.
None of them had half the stuff Isaiah did, and Memphis knew it galled his little brother not to be lapping up the attention. Ever since Isaiah had gotten sick, their aunt Octavia had kept a watchful eye on him, preaching about “the dangers of the Devil’s business.”
“You remember what happened? How you lay in that bed for three days?” she’d said, pronouncing each word as if she were spitting it into stone to stand the test of time. “Jesus healed you, so don’t you go throwing his blessings away. This family has no business with Obeah men, mambos, houngans, and card readers. And we certainly don’t have business with Miss Margaret Walker. Never again.”
But it hadn’t been Jesus who’d healed Isaiah. It had been Memphis himself.
He’d never told his aunt that he’d gone to his brother’s bedside as Isaiah lay in that sleep between life and death. In secret, he’d put his hands on his brother, and the power he’d thought had left him forever the night he tried to cure his dying mother had rushed through him once more, just as it used to do back when he was the Harlem Healer, curing the sick in a storefront church with his mother looking on and praising God. It seemed that Memphis had been given a second chance at his gift. He didn’t know why. But he did know that this time, he’d figure it out on his own terms. And no one, except for Theta, would need to know until he was ready.
“You awful quiet back there, Isaiah,” Blind Bill said, breaking Memphis out of his reverie.
“I hate this stupid tie,” Isaiah grumbled, pulling at his collar, and Memphis knew it wasn’t the suit that was bothering him. He put a hand on Isaiah’s shoulder, but Isaiah shrugged it off.
“I have powers bigger’n a lotta these fool Diviners making money now. I coulda had a radio show, too!” Isaiah said and kicked a small rock down the street.
“No, you couldn’t. Too shrimpy to reach the microphone,” Memphis said, hoping to tease Isaiah out of his mood. It didn’t take much to set his brother off these days. Not being able to use his clairvoyant gift was like keeping him inside the house when there was a warm, sunny day taunting him on the other side of the window. Lately, he’d been talking in his sleep again. Nightmares.
“I liked going to Sister Walker’s house. She was a nice lady. She was good to me,” Isaiah grumbled.
“Now, now, now. I can feel you pouting clear over here, little man. Gonna get your face stuck like that,” the bluesman said. These days, Bill seemed to be the only one who could calm Isaiah when he was in a mood.
For the past month, Bill had been a boarder in Octavia’s house. “Can’t let the man who saved my nephew live in some flea-ridden flophouse,” she’d said as she readied the small room off the parlor that wasn’t big enough to hold anything other than a cot, but Bill insisted he didn’t need more than that, anyway.
“This is like a king’s room to me, Miss Octavia,” he said, smiling as he patted the cot with a rough, scarred hand.