The Metropolitans Read online

  The taxi had come to a stop near Rockefeller Center. A Salvation Army band was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” People were hugging each other and crying. “We’ll bomb them yellow devils to hell and back!” a man in a business suit yelled. People were looking up at the sky as if they expected to spot enemy planes flying overhead dropping bombs. . . .

  And something was falling from the sky. White shapes fluttering down from the skyscrapers. Like enormous snowflakes. One of them sailed right through the taxi’s open window into Kiku’s lap. She started as if it were a bomb.

  “It’s just a paper airplane,” Madge said, plucking it out of Kiku’s lap and unfolding it. “Frankie used to love making these. Oh, look, there’s a message inside.”

  Kiku took the paper airplane back from Madge. “It says, ‘We are at war with Japan.’”

  “It must be the fellas up in the newsrooms sending them down,” Madge said. “In case we hadn’t heard yet.”

  “It looks like everyone in the whole city’s heard,” Walt said. “Gosh, I wonder how my aunt Sadie’s taking the news. I wonder if my cousin Ralph will sign up.”

  “By tomorrow all these young men will enlist,” Kiku said, wondering what her mother, thousands of miles away in Yokohama, must be thinking. “If I were a boy and I was old enough, I’d join the army to show everyone that I love this country as much as anyone. But no one will believe that. When they look at my father and me, they’ll see the face of the enemy. I wish . . .” She thought of the moment this morning when her father had looked right through her. “It would be better if I were invisible.” She crumpled the paper airplane up in her hand and let it fall to the floor of the taxi, feeling, as she let it go, as if she were the one falling from the sky.

  6

  RING-A-LEVIO

  THE TAXI PULLED up in front of a building on Gramercy Park. It was a fancy building with an awning and a doorman in a red uniform with shiny brass buttons who came to open the door for them, but Madge didn’t envy Kiku for living in such a swank place when she saw the look on the doorman’s face.

  “There are some men waiting for you in the lobby, Mr. Akiyama,” the doorman said.

  Mr. Akiyama opened his eyes and turned to fix Kiku with a hard stare. “Do not come in with me, Kiku-chan. They will only take you too. Dr. Bean is right.” He moved his head to fix each of the kids with the same hard stare. “You are only children. You should not meddle with what you don’t understand.” Then he got out of the taxi with a surprisingly spry step for a man who had looked like he was at death’s door a half hour ago and walked firmly toward the door of the apartment building.

  Kiku started after him, but Joe grabbed her arm. “You heard what he said.”

  “Let go of me!” she cried. “I have to go with him. Otousan!”

  The cry brought tears to Madge’s eyes. It sounded like Frankie’s cry when their father stood up from their mother’s broken rocking chair and walked out of their apartment. “Da!” he had cried, but it had sounded just the same. Madge wanted to run after Mr. Akiyama herself. But then the front door of the building opened and her heart froze.

  “It’s him!” she shouted, grabbing Walt’s arm. “It’s Mr. January!”

  The man in the trench coat was flanked by two men in dark suits. They held up badges to Mr. Akiyama. “We’re here from the State Department,” one of the dark-suited men said. “You’re coming with us.”

  “Am I being arrested?” Mr. Akiyama asked.

  “You are being detained as an enemy alien,” the other dark-suited man said. “Is that your daughter in the taxi? She has to come too.”

  “Drive on,” Joe hissed to the driver.

  “No!” Kiku cried. “I want to go with my father.”

  “You won’t be able to help him if you’re arrested too,” Joe said. “Drive!”

  The driver looked out the window at the men and then at Joe’s face. “Oh, what the heck! I don’t suppose I’m ever getting back to Canarsie tonight.”

  He peeled away from the curb, tires squealing, Kiku wailing and pounding her fists on Joe’s arm. Looking back, Madge saw Mr. January lift his head at the sound and watch them go. Even from this distance, Madge felt the coldness of those eyes on her.

  “Where to, bud?”

  “Make a right here,” Joe said.

  As the taxi went around the corner, Joe turned to Madge. “Have him go around the block. If I’m gone, keep on going.”

  “What do you mean if you’re—”

  But instead of answering, Joe opened the car door and stepped out of the moving cab.

  “Holy smokes!” Walt shouted. “What does he think he’s doing?”

  “Providing a distraction,” Madge said, watching Joe from the rear window. He had stumbled getting out of the taxi but recovered himself quickly and crouched behind a parked car just in time before one of the dark-suited men came around the corner. Joe popped out from behind the car and shouted something at the man and then took off running, the man in hot pursuit.

  Madge laughed, then leaned forward to talk to the driver. “Go around the block, Mister. I’ve got an Andrew Jackson with your name on it if we’re back before the suits and the girl’s father leave.”

  The driver shook his head and swerved around a parked fruit truck, muttering under his breath, “I hope youse kids know what you’re doing.”

  “Joe’s leading that man away while we go around the block so we can follow the others to see where they take your father,” Madge said, squeezing Kiku’s hand. “I’ve pulled the same trick myself in ring-a-levio. You get one of your players to lead the other team away from base and then you run around the block and free your teammates from jail.”

  “Jail?” Kiku asked. “Is that where they’re taking my father?”

  “They’ll take him to Ellis Island,” Walt said. “That’s where they keep you if they think you’re a danger to the country. I was there for a week when I came over from England because I had the measles—Look!” They had come around the block and were approaching the Akiyamas’ apartment building. One of the dark-suited men was putting Mr. Akiyama in the back of a black Packard. Mr. January stood on the curb, looking up and down the street.

  “Slow up!” Madge hissed.

  “Faster, slower, I wish youse kids would make up your minds!” the driver complained while deftly maneuvering behind another taxi waiting at the curb.

  “That’s good!” Madge said. “Put your light on so it looks like you’re waiting for a fare. Everyone, get down.” She slid onto the floor, pulling Kiku with her. Walt stared at them and after a moment joined them on the floor.

  “How will we know when it’s safe to go?” Walt asked, peeling a piece of gum off the knee of his trousers.

  “If you’re waiting on that fellow who’s got the girl’s dad, they’re pulling out now,” the driver said.

  “Follow them!” Madge cried, popping back up. She scanned the street, looking for Joe. He’d said to go on without him if he wasn’t there, and that’s what made the most sense, but she never liked losing a player so early in the game—

  The door was flung open and a hot bundle of denim, flying hair, and copper eyes crashed into the backseat.

  “What are you waiting for?” Joe asked. “Follow that car!”

  * * *

  The taxi followed the Packard to Second Avenue, where it turned south. Their driver seemed to know exactly how far to stay back so as not to be seen.

  “Usually I’m following some mook’s wife,” the driver admitted when Madge asked if he had experience “tailing.” “This is a nice change of pace.”

  “Just shout out if they make any unexpected moves,” Madge said. Then she turned to Joe. His denim jacket was torn and covered with garbage. There were eggshells in his hair and he’d added a cut above his eyebrow to the black eye and swollen lip he’d gotten earlier. He smel
led like week-old boiled cabbage. “What’d ya do? Catch a ride on a garbage truck?”

  “I led him into a blind alley and knocked a couple of trash cans in front of him. We had a little tussle—”

  “Did you . . . ?” Walt began, staring wide-eyed at Joe. “Is he . . . ?”

  “I lost him a couple blocks away and doubled back. He didn’t seem like the brightest bulb in the pack. In fact . . .” Joe narrowed his copper eyes. “He seemed like he was half asleep. Like he was just going through the motions.”

  “Huh,” Madge said. “That’s interesting. Maybe that will give us the chance we need to get Mr. Akiyama back.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kiku said.

  “Madge is looking for weak spots in the enemy’s team, right?” Joe asked.

  “Oh, like in chess,” Walt said, “when you see your opponent leave himself open.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Madge said, surprised at how good it felt to have the two boys looking at her like she knew what she was doing. It had been a while since anyone had looked at her like that. But Kiku was still frowning.

  “No,” she said. “I mean, why are you doing this for me and my father? We only just met and we’re . . . I mean . . .” She lowered her voice. “We’re Japanese. Everyone hates us now.”

  “I’m pretty sure you didn’t have anything to do with dropping those bombs on Pearl Harbor,” Madge said. “And as for just meeting . . . we all just met, but something’s going on here. I don’t really understand what yet, but it’s bad. That Mr. January is planning to do something bad to the city and we can’t let him get away with it.”

  “It’s like the page Dr. Bean read us said,” Walt said. “Whenever evil arises in the world, brave knights will rise to vanquish it. We’re the four knights. How can we vanquish evil if we don’t help each other?”

  “And I don’t like to see anyone get pushed around,” Joe said. Then he pointed toward the front window. “Look, that’s the third turn they’ve taken in five minutes. I think they’re trying to lose us.”

  It was becoming more and more difficult for the taxi driver to follow the Packard without giving himself away. He had followed them down Second Avenue, turned right on East Houston, and then south on the Bowery, driving through strips of light and shade beneath the elevated train track. From there the Packard had turned onto the narrow streets of Chinatown, which were crowded with food carts and Sunday marketers. As the big black Packard moved down the street, the crowds parted. Vendors closed up their carts and old women with baskets covered their heads and hurried home. Madge gazed at the shopwindows, where plucked ducks and silk banners hung beside signs hastily handwritten in English.

  WE ARE CHINESE, the signs read. NOT JAPANESE.

  The Packard continued south on Pearl Street and then Water Street.

  “They’re headed for the ferry,” Madge said. “Maybe they really are taking him to Ellis Island.”

  “And then what?” Kiku asked. “Will they keep him there for the whole war? Will they say he’s a spy and execute him, like they did those Italian men in Boston?”

  Madge didn’t know how to answer, but Joe did. “We won’t let that happen. Look, they’re stopping at that park.”

  “That’s Battery Park,” Walt said. “I came here on a class trip. The ferry to the Statue of Liberty is here and Ellis Island is just a short boat ride away. Look, they’re getting out. We’ll have to follow them.”

  Madge dug the twenty-dollar bill out of her pocket. There was something else in her pocket besides the handkerchief—something that crinkled—but she didn’t have time to look at it now. The meter read $3.05, but she’d promised the driver the twenty. “Here,” she said. “Treat your girl to a good dinner before you ship out.” She looked at the driver’s license on the dashboard. “Good luck to you, Alphonse!”

  “Good luck to youse guys,” Alphonse said, waving his hand out the window. “Whatever it is you’re up to!”

  The four crossed the street and entered the park. Mr. January and the dark-suited man were walking on either side of Mr. Akiyama, past a chestnut vendor and a stone castlelike building, toward a pier where a ferry was docked. The harbor was crowded with boats—supply ships bound for Europe, big cruise ships full of evacuees from Europe, and ferries going back and forth to the Statue of Liberty. Madge’s old school, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, didn’t do field trips, but she knew the park because her mother had taken her here once to catch the ferry for the Statue of Liberty.

  “My grandmother came on a boat from Ireland during the Great Hunger,” she had told Madge on the ferry. “Her mother died in the crossing, and she was all alone when she got here. They weren’t going to let her leave alone without a responsible man to claim her so she convinced another passenger to say he was her brother. She found work in a factory and made enough money to send back to Ireland for her three brothers. They were big brawny men who worked the docks down in Red Hook, but when Peggy O’Shaunessy told them to wash their hands for supper, they said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ like she was the Queen Mother. She raised five children and put food on the table for half the block as well.” Madge’s mother had given her a mischievous smile. “Some people called her bossy, but most just called her strong. Always remember you come from women who know their own minds like her—and her”—she had pointed to the statue in the harbor of the regal lady in green robes holding aloft a flaming torch—“and that you’re just as strong.”

  Madge’s eyes blurred with tears, remembering her mother’s words. When she blinked them away, the park in front of her was still blurry. A fog was moving in from the harbor. It had already swallowed up the ferry waiting at the dock.

  “Funny,” Walt said. “It was clear as a bell a minute ago. I could see the Statue of Liberty.”

  “Didn’t Dr. Bean say that this is where they found that spy who killed himself?” Joe asked.

  “Look!” Kiku cried. “They’re taking my father to the ferry. We’d better hurry or we’ll lose them in the fog.”

  Kiku led the way to the dock, ignoring Joe’s pleas to stay farther back. They were only a few feet away when the men disappeared in the fog. Kiku let out a small cry and hurried forward, Madge, Joe, and Walt close at her heels. When the fog lifted, evaporating as quickly as it had descended, the four of them were standing on the dock in front of the ferry. An empty ferry.

  SERVICE SUSPENDED DUE TO NATIONAL EMERGENCY read a sign hanging from a chain looped across the gangplank. A lone seaman was sweeping the ferry’s deck.

  “Hey,” Walt called to him. “Did a couple of guys just get on board?”

  “A fella in a trench coat, one in a black suit, and a Japanese man,” Madge added in case there was any question about what men they were looking for.

  The old seaman lifted his grizzled head and peered through rheumy eyes at the four young people. “Ain’t no one come aboard and certainly no Jap. The harbormaster closed the ferry on account of the Japs bombing Pearl Harbor.” His eyes rested suspiciously on Kiku. But Kiku didn’t notice. She was looking around the park. Although there were crowds by the band shell and farther down the pier, this area was deserted.

  Her father and his two captors had gone. Vanished with the fog.

  7

  FISH DREAMS

  THEY SEARCHED THE park and even distracted the suspicious seaman long enough for Joe to get on board the ferry and search it, but there was no sign of Mr. Akiyama or his two captors. Finally even Kiku had to admit there was nothing left to do.

  “Dr. Bean will know what to do,” Walt said. “We’ll go to the museum tomorrow. He’ll call his friends at the War Department. I-I’ll skip school so I can be there too.”

  The way he said it told Madge that Walt wasn’t used to skipping school. Neither was she. If she had skipped at Our Lady of Perpetual Help the nuns would have come round and told her mother, but now that she was at public school she didn’t
think anyone would notice. “Me too. I bet a lot of kids’ll be out, with everyone’s fathers and brothers joining up.”

  “I don’t have school,” Joe said, “so I’ll be there too.”

  Kiku nodded but made no move to get off the bench where she sat, shivering in the cold. She’s afraid to go home alone, Madge thought, remembering how she’d felt going back home after her mother’s funeral—and she’d still had her brothers and father.

  “Come on,” she said, “you’ll stay with me. Aunt Jean works the late shift at the diner. She won’t even notice you’re there.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Joe said, giving Madge an approving nod. “I’ll meet you all back at the museum tomorrow.”

  His eyes roved around the park, lighting on a discarded bag of chestnuts. Madge gave Walt a nudge and widened her eyes at him. “Oh!” he said when he understood. “Would you like to come stay with me, Joe? You can have my cousin Ralph’s bunk. He’s away at college.”

  Joe looked doubtful, but then Walt added, “Really, you’d be doing me a favor. Aunt Sadie cooks when she’s worried. I bet she’s made enough kugel, gefilte fish, and blintzes to feed the entire neighborhood. If you don’t come and help eat it all, I may die of overstuffing.”

  “Thank you,” Joe said stiffly. “We can talk over our plans tonight.” Then he turned to Kiku. “We’ll meet at the museum tomorrow. I promise we’ll get your father back.”

  He’s just a boy, Madge thought as Joe and Walt turned away to walk to the South Ferry station to catch a train for Brooklyn, so why do I believe he can find Mr. Akiyama?

  * * *

  Madge and Kiku took the IRT to Aunt Jean’s apartment on Eighty-First and Lexington. A couple of toughs made remarks about Kiku on the train, but Madge told them to go soak their heads. Kiku just stared straight ahead of her like she didn’t see or hear anything. No one else bothered them for the rest of the ride.

  Aunt Jean should have gone to work already, but she was still there, standing at the bathroom mirror, fixing her mascara. Her eyes were red and puffy.