He forgot to take a mask for the dust. They must have heard him coughing because within a moment there appeared a head in the doorway and one of the workmen sang out they had spare masks; he should not be under there without one. But then the man changed his expression, and Evan could tell he was looking directly behind, over to the shelves and the stacks of hidden papers.
“
Why are you under here?” the man asked with a quizzical look. “Those are hinges over your head. That stuff can be reached from the top here.”
Evan looked above his head, into the dust of the boards that made the bottom of the polished display platform above him. And all along one of the boards - hinges. A person would only need to know which board might be pried up to open the top of the entire shelf. The man was right; Evan need never have crawled under in the first place. The officer didn’t notice either; they were both concerned with getting out as soon as they got inside. This made Evan feel wonderfully stupid. And relieved.
He brought his boxes back out and thanked the man, the place was very old, had many quirks, like those hinges, the owners had not yet discovered. Within moments, Evan was pulling up the objects from the hidden shelf, and the workmen stopped their work. They watched Evan’s activity at the front of the shop, and it seemed to signal a haunting was needed. This group of men might have been told it was an odd place, but when the screaming began from the great window, and Evan sat placidly in the display, not hearing a thing, they bolted their work and did not return. It had been the same with the young female police officer. She was horribly affected; Evan had not noticed a tingle.
It was not his favorite experience in the Reisman Portraits, other people around him touched by something he could not feel, and they taking flight as their only option for relief. Whatever it was guarding, it was private to the Reismans, and Evan must be accepted into the family now, all others were screamed out of their senses. This one tiny thought alone, put Evan at ease, in such a way he was able to chuckle. It would amuse Sareta, surely, and Shelly might be troubled, but would want to know more.
Menashe Reisman found his voice in the old space of his family building, and he was there, speaking in mad shrieks at everyone else nearby, but silence to Evan, because of the items Evan held in his hands. Evan was family. And it did not take a marriage vow, but a vow of love within their hearts, and consummation of those vows in a perfectly natural and expected manner. Evan could read and hold these secrets, without any fear of harm from the insane old man.
Some of the documents he recognized immediately, and was astounded at their discovery. The family would be thunderstruck, and most of municipal New York as well. He divided the papers so he could count the most critical. The plates themselves were of wonderful importance. The entire shelf, with the exception of the broken Caraliza plates, existed for a practical, if oddly placed use. It was a time capsule. There were a hundred or more photographic plates, and Evan recognized some of the faces from the city’s history, and these were the original plates for those images. Seven Reisman images, of Andrew Carnegie himself, were the first plates Evan held.
They always believed such originals were already in museums and archives, but here they rested. This hiding place was easily reached, should an urgent need arise, Menashe could have his hands on these precious items, but to anyone else searching the store, even empty, for any hidden items, these would have remained hidden. The fact they had, proved Papa was shrewd in his choice of hiding place.
Why had they been hidden there in the first place? Because the building had been entered, by a thief, who left with lives in his evil hands. Papa put in a security system after his first break in. The front window on the doubled receipt. He needed more safety, because two precious items were already lost, these under the display could not be endangered any longer, and they were too valuable. Evan laughed as he fingered an image of William Henry Vanderbilt in his prime, with his lovely Maria at his side.
Evan called Sareta to ask her to bring Shelly back to the building, and her parents if they could come; she would be fine with them all together, and he had made a discovery which would need urgent family attention. He dusted himself off better and returned to look at a New York City archive, missing from the public, for seventy-five years. Menashe might terrify many people, for a great while, at the taking of this last treasure he valued on earth. But it was not a theft, it was a birthright, and the Reisman Portraits would be in the papers again tomorrow. The Bryant clan would resume their own path to glory, a few extra paces back, in familiar position, behind the Reismans. Menashe Reisman, tormented first by dead windows, and then dead children until he lost his mind, had returned from his rest, to rattle the city.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Evan was so pleased with himself, he just grinned as the group came in the studio in the back. Shelly was instantly pissed the workmen left, but Evan told her, they would have been run out after his discovery anyway. He sat everyone on the divan, and had already cleared away all of her work, another tinkering that she reproached. Shelly’s parents were dubious of any need to be present at all, they defaulted all clan decisions to Sareta. But Sareta understood Evan well enough, this would not be trivial, and his mood was upbeat, so much he was exuberant. The spooks must be quite today after all.
Evan began his presentation a few dozen plates at a time, laying them out on the flipped pages of Shelly’s construction plans. The plates jumped to life on the table with the white paper underneath them. The reaction was sudden, and exclamatory, the Reismans knew the value of the collection, long before the first dozen were shoved aside for the next. They sat for two hours and reviewed the people, and the sights of the city, and Shelly would get more excited each time she was first to recognize an iconic image. Menashe Reisman was indeed the photographer of renown in his prime. He brought the place to life, and the world viewed the city through his lens almost more than any other.
Here sat a youthful Carl Sandburg in the same room; Charlotte Bond in a series of four images, two which no one had ever seen. There were images of a dozen New York City mayors: Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt, when they were Governors of the state. And James Reese Europe, in 1918, a year before he died. The gift of Papa’s archives was immense.
There were fifteen images of the dedication ceremony for the Statue of Liberty in 1886, when Menashe was barely older than Yousep had been. And one set of images alone stirred Shelly’s father to tears. The original plates of the very first images of the city, taken from the crown of Lady Liberty, by Papa. This archive was never really known to be hidden. It would spawn a small industry within days, as curators and collectors alike queued for blocks, to view and perhaps hold the treasures.
When he brought no more images before them to view and enjoy, they looked to him for more. This was more excitement than they expected of the old place. But when Evan laid a stack of sixty-three municipals bonds of the City of New York in their hands, Shelly’s father could not sit, and nearly upended everyone in his jump of surprise. Papa had taken all his rents, and bought bonds, for his children. He was not particular, some of them were already matured, many were coming due, and several were hundred year bonds, which would still gather interest for twenty years. But they were huge denominations for the time, five hundred dollars for most and a thousand dollars for quite a few.
The face values were a tidy sum, but the interests surely pushed the value to over a half million dollars, a small fortune. Evan sat back and watched the family erupt. If Shelly had taken him naked in the middle of the floor, she might be just a bit more excited, but not much.
Sareta placed a call to her friends at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, just a few blocks away, and asked the director if she would like to walk down to the Reisman Building to see the contents of the family time capsule, hidden in 1919. She summoned a crowd of people to the front of the shop within minutes. While she apologized she could not show the renovation being done in the front, she invited them all to the studio. That enough was worth the trip.
The public was kept out of the building for over seventy years, and they were in awe of the condition of the room. Every item in it, was original to the era; only the phone and Shelly’s coffee pot seemed out of place. Shelly’s parents left all the visitors and walked with her into the front, to see the kitchen. She grudgingly agreed to show them, though she vowed no family member would be allowed in before the opening evening, and even Sareta honored her request. But this was a special day. They were about to witness the birth of a new Reisman legend, and Sareta was midwife, with Evan at her elbow.
Evan was introduced to the museum staff as the family archive investigator. They might have heard, he found the first clues leading to the recovery of the murdered children across the street. Suddenly Evan was the center of attention. They recognized him, but only in a glancing way, some of the guests were not quite sure they saw him on the news. Sareta allowed him to reveal the photographic plates and Shelly laughed with her parents at the shouts and cries as the treasures were revealed. Sareta promised, they would be allowed to select twenty plates for their collections, and the remainder would be donated out to the other various museums and a few to the national archives. She guaranteed the family an avalanche of publicity within hours. She would not have to lift another finger.
Evan was asked to build a catalog of the plates, in the spare time Shelly granted him from her tasks and personal needs. He was also asked to have Dannie scan every plate so a computer file would be safe kept. Many would be reproduced in facsimile so they could appear in multiple locations; it was certain the Liberty plates would need to be copied many, many times. And so, Evan became the official curator of the Reisman Family Archives, which Sareta promised to found and fund within the week. He was stunned. The party with the guests lasted another three hours. Evening was falling, and the day was wonderfully done. The guests were as animated and excited leaving, as they were walking in. Not a word was mentioned of the family ghosts. They needed a triumph. Papa provided it, and thankfully kept his peace
For Shelly, Evan’s celebrity was an inconvenience. Now he was constantly underfoot in the studio. He was on the phone nearly as much as she was, and he dealt with reporters, none of which were allowed into even the alleyways. They did all their reporting from under the newly painted sign and papered window out front on the walk. Evan was also invited to various functions within the city’s museum community, so the curators and restoration experts could be tantalized with glimpses of the fortune in original plates.
The newspapers were agog, with the sudden turnaround in the troubled Reisman family status, and it was in this vile arena, the rumors of more bodies still lurking would surface, and dog the family until the opening night. But not even the press would hinder the opening now. The interest in the shop grew such, there seemed to be a crowd gathered near the front of the shop, nearly every day. The unfortunate folk most hounded by the press, were the workmen coming and going, or making any type of delivery. But Reisman law was upheld, there would be termination of the contract with any company whose worker was found to divulge any secrets about their work in the building.
The press seemed determined, but was tiring of the fruitless efforts, and was showing signs they simply wanted to wait the next few weeks to see what would finally be unveiled. The most frustrating group of sightseers who might gather in the front, were exactly that, tourists, who wandered from the Tenement Museum a few blocks away. They were constantly being directed to have a walk down to the most haunted building in the Lower East Side.
Evan was called back to the police labs and Shelly was having her brace of trees planted in the very back of the property. She was discussing other gardening with her landscaper, when a group of nearly a dozen tourists simply began to file into the back through the alleyway, and a few were already at the back stair. She was rushing to get close enough to warn them off the property when a young girl, about sixteen, became agitated on the small porch.
She was startled by something in the studio window, as she turned to go up those stairs, and whatever it was…it shook her up a great deal. When Shelly finally got into the midst of the group, and was beginning to shoo people off the steps, the young girl fainted. Her father had been with her, and was following Shelly up the steps to get to his daughter, when another young woman screamed at something apparently watching from the window. Shelly suddenly lost control over the group, and talk that became of the incident.
The Reisman Portraits was as haunted as they ever claimed and the groups of milling tourists only got worse. Shelly was forced to fence the alleyways, something she never intended to do, but Evan reminded her, the crush of publicity, which brought the walk-in pests, was going to make the opening night a smash, and it would be better to lose the alley access than to have someone hurt.
They did not discuss it, but it was ominous news; something terrifying could sometimes be seen in one of the windows. Such a thing had never happened before in the life of the whole building legend. Evan decided to keep a very close watch on Shelly. He did not want a repeat of the nighttime visit she made before Caraliza vanished, and it seemed something up those stairs might have been watching her, while she was out in the back. Evan had a great deal to worry about. The opening was only two weeks away.