13 Hangmen (34 page)

Hagmann had already told Tony the rest. Michael stuffed the envelope into his pocket and left for his history conference.
Alarmed, Hagmann raced back to the parlor to find out what Angelo had given him—only to discover Angelo dead. Dead with a big grin on his face. At that point, all Hagmann could do was call 911. He ransacked the parlor before the ambulance got there. That's of course when he discovered the will was now missing from the desk. To make matters worse, the key to the chest must have broken loose from the chain around his neck in the mad search—a fact he hadn't noticed in all the mayhem until yesterday at the hardware store.

“But now you've found it,” Hagmann concluded with a yellow grimace. “And what it opens. That's made all of our lives easier.”

“Except Angelo's,” Tony said.

“He was old and dying,” Hagmann said. “You just admitted yourself that you barely knew him.”

“You still killed him,” Tony said.

“Who says?” Hagmann sneered. “There isn't a single witness to confirm this conversation ever took place.”

“Except me,” a voice said from behind him.

Hagmann whirled around to find Angey emerging from the hearth.

“I heard the whole thing, loud and clear,” Angey said.

Hagmann blinked rapidly a half dozen times. He stood. He began to cackle again. “It'll never stick,” he said. “You're just a
couple of snot-nosed kids from the melting pot with overactive imaginations. I come from one of the oldest and most distinguished families of Boston.”

“You do not,” Tony said. “You come from a long line of murderers, traitors, double-crossers, and thieves. Thirteen generations of racist, sexist jerks who think they have more rights than blacks, or the Irish or Jews or Italians, just because you happened to sail over on an earlier boat.”

Hagmann stopped cackling.

“I've got news for you, dude,” Tony said. “It's diversity that makes this country great. And a hangman is still a hangman, even if you move the
n
from the middle of your name to the end.”

“Besides,” Angey said, holding up Tony's cell phone, “I took the added precaution of recording every single word of your confession on the voice mail of Tony's friend Sarah.”

“And anyway I'm here in person as backup,” said Sarah, ducking through the chimney. “Not to mention to settle an old score between my great-great-greats and yours.”

Hagmann slumped onto the bed, speechless. He mopped his face, which had gone very gray. He had finally been bested—by a thirteen-year-old, no less—and he knew it.

Angey dialed 911. He told the operator he'd like to report a murder.

“At least let me see it,” Hagmann whispered to Tony. “Just once.”

Tony stood. He opened the chest. There was nothing like a silver bell inside. Instead, he pulled out a rotting hangman's noose. “I guess this belongs to you,” he said. “And I think you just used it on yourself.”

ony jumped out of bed as soon as he heard the alarm. It was the morning of his first day of eighth grade at Boston Latin. He pulled on a new pair of jeans—two sizes smaller than the ones he had worn when he'd arrived at Hangmen Court, thank you very much—and his favorite Red Sox jersey. He checked himself out in the mirror. All in all, it had been a pretty good summer.

Just as Michael had predicted, the letter from Revere to Tobias was more than enough to get 13 Hangmen Court off Health & Safety's demolition list. As soon as Tony “found” the treasure chest in the attic's secret room, No. 13 easily qualified as an exciting new site for the Freedom Trail, since Revere's handbell proved it was an important part of his Midnight Ride,
and the
VOC
casks proved it was the Sons of Liberty's hiding place for smuggling tea prior to the Tea Party. As an added bonus, No. 13 also qualified for the Black Heritage Trail, seeing how the secret room itself was a heretofore unknown station of the Underground Railroad. Plus when Michael sold the letter to the Revere House, he got a good enough price for Eddie Wong to make all the emergency repairs necessary to allow the DiMarcos to remain safely in the house until a full restoration could begin the following summer—to be funded by the Boston Historical Preservation Society.

The DiMarcos would, of course, have to move temporarily when construction got under way. But that would only be next door, to No. 15. As it turned out, Benedict Hagmann hadn't been as well off as he had pretended—he hadn't been paying his back taxes for years—and he had desperately
needed
that bell to get himself out of some serious debt. (So basically, if he
had
written Tony a big fat check for the place, it would have bounced.) Anyway, the City of Boston had confiscated Hagmann's home, and it now served as temporary housing for any families evicted by the Health & Safety Department. Much more comfortable than a motel room at Revere Beach.

Benedict Hagmann certainly wouldn't be needing No. 15 any time soon. He had been charged with the murder of Angelo DiMarco and was now sitting in Walpole Prison awaiting trial.
Rumor had it that Hagmann's lawyer planned to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

As for Michael's dissertation, he was in final revisions now—thanks again to that letter. A major New York publisher had offered to turn the whole thing into a book you could actually buy and read. Not only that, but Harvard had offered him a teaching job in January, when one of their history professors was to retire.

Meantime, Michael had attended a bunch of Red Sox games with Tony and Angey over the summer. (Tony had worn Ted Williams's cap to every game, for luck. In the end, he had never bothered to get it appraised; he knew for a fact it belonged to Williams. And anyway, it wasn't for sale.) Mikey hadn't joined them much on their excursions to Fenway Park. He continued to be a die-hard Tigers fan. Actually, Mikey had pretty much given Angey the cold shoulder after all that had happened. It had bummed Angey out at first, but then he just started hanging out with Tony and Sarah. As luck would have it, Sarah was starting tenth grade at Boston Latin this fall. The three of them focused instead on perfecting their throwing arms at Christopher Columbus Park so they could all try out for JV baseball in the spring.

Which meant Tony had spent a lot less time online in virtual reality, and a lot more time in, well, reality. And the pounds kept melting away.

Speaking of the Pickleses—

Mildred was overjoyed when Tony jangled into Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe and set the cloth star on the spiral of the slate countertop for her inspection. Needless to say, it was a perfect match to all twelve of the others on the Stars and Stripes hanging overhead—thereby proving, at least to them, that the first American flag's quincuncial design was neither a Hopkinson nor a Ross, but a Pickles. Mildred had seen no need to prove this fact to anyone else. The flag was still not for sale. There was a big difference, she had said, between an artifact and a keepsake, though both could be curiosities.

And finally, the fate of Revere's silver handbell. Since Tony hadn't really needed to sell it to help his parents pay for the renovations (and since he had the front door knocker, also forged by Revere, as a secret backup), he had decided to donate it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. As America's first and
original
liberty bell, it now sat in good company alongside other treasures such as Old Glory, Thomas Jefferson's Bible, Abraham Lincoln's top hat, Lewis and Clark's compass, and Thomas Edison's lightbulb.

“Tony, get a move on!”

Angey, calling up from the third-floor landing.

Tony glanced over at the slate fireplace. He had never put the paneling back up. He liked having access to the secret room,
now that the tea barrels had been donated to the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. He wandered over to the pawcorance and placed his hand on the spiral. He wondered what Angelo and Solly and Finn and Jack and Tobias were up to right now. Though he loved having his own room, he had kind of gotten used to sharing it with five other thirteen-year-olds for a while.

The distant echo of other voices from other times in Boston history, beyond Revere and the Revolution, reverberated in Tony's head. He listened intently. What were they trying to say? Sounded like the word
noose
.

Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away. If he didn't hoof it down to the kitchen, he wouldn't have time to wolf his breakfast yogurt, granola, and juice. He would just have to ignore the voices and leave that hangman noose hidden in Paddy's secret compartment beneath the bed. Right now, he had the rest of ordinary old 2009 to get on with. Then again, who could say who he might cross paths with today, or how he might unwittingly change the course of history just by being himself?

I can't think about that right now.

Tony didn't want to be late for his first day.

Story:
As a fiction writer, I love the idea that story is being made out of history all the time—every single day of every month of every year—in spite of the fact that you may only remember a handful of dates like 1776 and 1812 and 1945. That's kind of why I set Tony's extraordinary tale in 2009—what might be considered one of the more ordinary off years in recent U.S. history. I specifically chose years ending in
9
because, frankly, I just like the nine-ishness of that number.

History:
Mid-July of 2009 was, in fact, fairly quiet in Boston. America was in full economic recession, and the unemployment rate was at 9.5 percent with a loss of 467,000 jobs. President Barack Obama was valiantly trying to end two unpopular wars on terrorism—one in Iraq, another in Afghanistan—and not
making much progress with either. Apart from that, there were a couple of noteworthy world events taking place while Tony was busy conjuring thirteen-year-olds: The big news was probably the funeral of legendary pop singer Michael Jackson, who died of an overdose in late June. Alaska's governor Sarah Palin (the unsuccessful vice presidential candidate for the Republicans in 2008) announced her resignation, shocking most Americans with the declaration she was leaving presidential politics for good. (We'll see.) India repealed its ban against homosexuality, declaring antigay laws to be a violation of human rights. Oh yeah, and the Red Sox swept a four-game series against the Royals at Fenway, though they ultimately ended the season eight games behind the Yankees.

Story:
I wouldn't bother looking for a cul-de-sac with that name in the North End. I thought long and hard about whether I would want a bunch of people knocking at
my
door asking to see Tony's pawcorance in the attic. I immediately made up a fake address. Just as fake, actually, as the names Hagmann and Hangman. Neither family (nor the Pickleses, for that matter) figures prominently in Boston history for thirteen generations.

History:
You might, however, notice the resemblance of Hangmen Court to
Henchman
Street, which does exist. That was
named after Captain Daniel Henchman, who came to Boston as an indentured servant in 1666. However colorful his name, Daniel seems to have been a fairly upstanding—and busy—citizen before he moved to Worcester: militia captain, banker, lawyer, farmer, and brewer. But what if he really had been some sort of henchman? Or better yet, Boston's original hangman? See how stories are hatched?