“Hi, Pie Face. Is Sam here?”
“No. Do you want to wait for him?”
Over Mabel’s head, Evie spied Jericho lurking in the hallway. He saw her and walked back into the library without so much as a hello.
“No. Thank you. If you see Sam, will you tell him I’m looking for him and to call me either at the Winthrop or WGI?”
“Sure. Say, is everything all right?”
“I certainly hope so,” Evie said.
Evie made one last appeal via the radio at the end of the show. “This is the Sweetheart Seer with a message for Sergei—I’m sorry. Please come home. And by home, I mean the Knickerbocker.”
WGI was so ecstatic about the news that Sam was a Diviner that they insisted on hosting a party that evening at the Knickerbocker Hotel. The telephone operators and secretaries had spent the entire afternoon burning up the telephone lines, inviting every swell in town, as well as any reporter with more than an inch of column space. By eleven thirty, the hotel’s ballroom was packed, but Sam was nowhere to be found, and Evie’s heart sank.
As she stood listening to a portly man in a tuxedo drone on about the stock market—“Safest place in the world to put your money. Put it all in today. Every last cent!”—a bellhop delivered a note on a silver tray. “A message for you from Miss Anna Polotnik?”
Evie tore open the envelope. The note read, simply, “Roof. Now.”
“Won’t you excuse me?” Evie said sweetly. She sauntered gracefully from the room, then hiked up her dress and ran for the stairs.
“There you are,” Evie said, huffing and puffing as she came out onto the hotel’s roof. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”
“Congratulations. You found me.” Sam leaned forward, resting his forearms on the wide stone ledge. “How’s the party?”
“Oh, you know. Lots of hot air and silver gravy boats. Aren’t you cold?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go inside?”
“No.”
“Are you all right?”
“Sure.”
“Are you lying?”
Sam shrugged and stared out at the jagged city. It was clear he wasn’t coming down, so Evie propped open the door with her purse and went to stand beside him. Searchlights had been positioned down below, compliments of WGI. White-hot, they swept back and forth, bouncing off anything with shine.
“That time we went to the Tombs to see Jacob Call,” Evie said softly. “That policeman looked right at us. You put up your hand, and it was like he couldn’t see us. Like we were cloaked in some way.”
Sam didn’t answer.
“How long?”
Sam shrugged. “I never know. Depends on how suggestible the person is. I’ve had folks who last twenty seconds and some who come around quick—I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. Usually, it’s about ten to twelve seconds. Long enough to grab the goods if you’re fast. And I am.”
“I meant how long have you been able to do this don’t see me routine?”
“Since I was a kid, maybe eleven, twelve? We’d moved to a tough part of Chicago. These older boys used to bully me, knock me around for being a Jew and for being scrawny and little. There was no way I could take ’em all on. But once I learned that I could do that,” he said, putting out his hand, “it was like hiding in plain sight. It made me feel like I wasn’t this small, sick kid at their mercy. For the first time, I felt powerful.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before, when you knew about me?” Evie asked.
Sam let out a long exhale. “I needed it to be a secret until I found my mother.”
“But now it’s not a secret any longer.”