13 Hangmen (3 page)

They all sat there. They barely
knew
Zio Angelo.

“Don't you want to hear the
good
news?” Michael asked, exasperated. “I haven't even told your mom the upside yet. I've been waiting till everyone was back together.”

Julia's eyebrows shot up.

“Let me guess,” Mikey said. “You totally rocked your speech on Revere.”

“And all the history professors went wild,” Angey said.

They laughed and high-fived each other.

“Besides that,” Michael said, grinning in spite of himself.

“Now you're making me nervous,” Julia said.

“There was a reading of Zio Angelo's last will and testament
after the wake,” Michael said. “He left his house in Boston to somebody we know. Guess who.”

“Nonno Guido?” Tony said. That was what they all called Michael's dad—
nonno
was Italian for grandpa—which made him Zio Angelo's brother and next-closest relative.

“Guess again,” Michael said.

Stunned silence.

“You're not serious,” Julia said.

“We can move right in,” Michael said. “Isn't that great?”

“We do actually live here in Ann Arbor for a reason,” Julia reminded him.

Michael dropped his second bomb of the family meeting. The DiMarcos would, in any case, need to move by the end of next month. Michael had gotten an email from University Housing the morning he left for Boston. He was no longer eligible to live on campus, now that he'd finished his course work. To get his PhD, he just needed to finish writing his dissertation about Paul Revere, which he could do anywhere. Like Boston, the very city in which Revere had lived and worked as a silversmith.

“Or like Ann Arbor?” Julia said. “Where I actually have work.”

“You've been looking for ways to ramp up your career as a book designer,” Michael said. “Boston has something like seventy-five colleges. With your portfolio and references, the academic presses will be banging down the door.”

“But we're enrolled at Ann Arbor High this fall!” Mikey said.

“Its varsity baseball team is third best in the state,” Angey added.

“Why would you ever want to go to boring old Ann Arbor High?” Michael said. “When you could be freshmen at Boston Latin, the oldest and most respected public school in the country? Which, in addition to boasting a
nationally ranked
varsity team called the Wolfpack, happens to be located about a block from Fenway Park.”

The twins shot each other a look, not quite sure what to think.

“Bottom line?” Michael said. “No one's offering us a free place to live here in Ann Arbor. Meanwhile, there's a gigantic house just sitting empty in Boston's North End with our name on it. It's like a gift from heaven. And if we want to take advantage of it, we've got to do so before Tony's thirteenth birthday.”

“Why?” Julia said.

“That's what Zio Angelo stipulated in his will,” Michael said with a shrug.

They all looked over at Tony.

“I only met the guy once,” Tony said—an undeniable fact.

No one knew quite where to go from there.

“So what's the North End?” Mikey said.

“The city's most historic neighborhood,” Michael said. “Zio Angelo's town house is over three hundred years old.”

“What's a town house?” Angey said.

“Quintessential Boston living,” Michael assured him. “A brick row house that shares its walls with the neighbors on either side. Zio Angelo's is just one room wide, and two deep, but four stories tall. It's in a cobbled cul-de-sac of town houses surrounding a giant old oak. It's called Hangmen Court. How's that for a colorful address?” Michael turned to Tony. “You're awful quiet. What do you think?”

Tony glanced over at the twins. Mikey and Angey were always ganging up on him, messing with his stuff, ditching him when they went out, excluding him from their secrets. Twins should be outlawed. Or everybody should have one. “Will I get my own room?” he said.

“Funny you should ask,” Michael said. “That was another weird stipulation of Zio Angelo's will: that you—and only you—should get
his
bedroom. It's the whole top floor of the house. Your own private domain.”

A shiver ran up Tony's spine. So
that
was what Zio Angelo had meant in his birthday card:
Give this the place of honor in your new room.

“Why would he do a thing like that?” Mikey said, reading Tony's mind.

“Who knows?” Michael said. “He obviously took quite a shine to Tony at Thanksgiving. Maybe you two shouldn't have excused yourselves so quickly when he started talking. Or maybe you should have rooted for the Red Sox, like Tony, instead of the Tigers.” Michael turned back to Tony. “Well? Are you up for it?”

A room with a door he could slam in the twins' face, then lock?

“Totally,” Tony said.

here it is,” Tony said, pointing through the fly-specked windshield at an old-fashioned street sign off to the left:

“Finally,” Julia said, throwing on the turn signal. “Note to self: Never download Boston driving directions off the Internet.”

They'd been circling the North End's narrow one-way streets for a half hour. The guidebook in Tony's lap clearly confirmed it was the city's oldest neighborhood. (Originally settled by John Winthrop's band of Puritans in 1630, but changing hands often to welcome each new wave of immigrants: first to runaway blacks escaping slavery, next to whole Irish clans escaping the
potato famine in Ireland, then to Jews escaping persecution in Europe, and most recently to Italian families like the DiMarcos hoping to live the American Dream.) But what Tony had seen of the North End so far looked kind of sketchy and grungy—pretty much the same as downtown Detroit.

Which was why his
very
first reaction to Hangmen Court was relief. It was exactly how Michael had described it three weeks ago: a quiet cul-de-sac of beautifully restored Colonial town houses surrounding a grassy oval planted with the largest oak tree he had ever seen. The sidewalks were laid with bricks the same color as the buildings, and an antique gas lamp sputtered in front of every stoop.

“Sweet!” Mikey said. “We're rich.”

“Which one's ours?” Angey said.

Tony didn't care. The twins had done nothing but complain from the backseat since they'd all set off from Ann Arbor early the previous morning: We're too hot, turn the AC up. We're too cold, turn it down. We like this song, turn the radio up. We hate this one, change the station. Ohio is boring, how long till we get to upstate New York? Upstate is even more boring, how long till we get to the motel in Albany? This motel doesn't have a pool, let's just head for Boston. Unfortunately, Julia had been too exhausted to make the four-hour drive across Massachusetts in the dark. So they had gotten up early. And the twins had started
right back in again about Denny's or McDonald's for breakfast.

It was now noon. Tony had a splitting headache. He was desperate for a pee. And he just wanted out of the car. Any of these places would do, in his opinion.

Until Julia pulled up in front of No. 13.

“Oh my God,” Mikey said.

“What have we done?” Angey said.

For once, Tony agreed with them. There was no other way to put it: 13 Hangmen Court was a total dump.
Their
town house wasn't beautifully restored. It was a pile of dirty old bricks on the verge of collapse. “Must be some mistake,” Tony said.

Nope. There was Michael, grinning and waving, bounding down the uneven steps of a steep front stoop. (Michael had flown ahead to meet the moving van with the family's stuff.) He didn't seem at all horrified. In fact, he seemed
pleased
. Reluctantly, Tony climbed out of the car. His dad ruffled his hair. “Pretty great birthday present, eh Tony? Thirteen must be your lucky number!”

Tony didn't reply. He was actually sort of speechless. Today
was
his birthday. But whenever he had imagined himself turning thirteen, he was always twenty-five pounds lighter. (So far he hadn't lost anywhere near twenty-five pounds. More like ten. Well, maybe eight. But if he were to be honest, that wasn't the fault of Julia's latest dieting strategy of portion control—which
was basically to limit everything on Tony's plate to the size of his clenched fist: a fist-size burger patty without the bun, a fist of mashed potatoes, and a fist of peas—but, rather, the fault of all those fist-size Snickers bars he'd been sneaking on the side.) Then again, Tony had also pictured himself in Chicago, racing around a giant mansion on Lake Michigan, finding the ropes and knives of murderers in real live games of Clue with dozens of junior sleuths from all over America.

“You want us to live here?” Mikey said.

“You sure it doesn't have rats?” Angey said.

Julia didn't say anything at all. She just bit her lower lip.

Michael laughed. “C'mon, I'll take you on the grand tour. First stop, garden level!” But he didn't head back up to the weather-beaten front door. He ducked
beneath
the stoop and opened a small ivy-covered door a few steps below the sidewalk, then slipped into a part of the house that wasn't quite ground floor, wasn't quite basement.

Tony's eye caught the flutter of lace curtains in the bay window of the supernice place next door. An old man scowled down at him, then vanished.

Garden level was, as it turned out, the kitchen. Tony peered around a cavernous room of old-fashioned appliances and cupboards. Built into the giant bay window at the front was a funky little breakfast nook. Its table was laden with all the pots and
pans Julia had shipped from Ann Arbor. Julia did not, to Tony's utter amazement, demand that everyone climb into the car so they could hightail it back to Michigan, where they belonged. Instead, she ran her hands over the greasy gas range—one that reminded Tony of a junkyard Cadillac—and declared she was in love. “But wait, there's more!” Michael said, beaming. He opened a door to reveal a large pantry lined with shelves. “It's called the mother-in-law room,” he said. “The perfect place to set up a design studio.”

“Or torture your mother-in-law,” Mikey mumbled.

“Or skin a few rats,” Angey added.

Tony opened the pantry's back door and peeked out. Nothing but a rotting deck overlooking a weed-infested patio at yet another level below the street. He closed it again, shuddering.

Julia and Michael didn't notice; they were too busy kissing. “And it just keeps getting better,” Michael said when they finally came up for air. He opened another door to reveal an ornately carved staircase winding its way to the very top of the house. “Next stop, parlor level!” he said, leading them up to the main floor.

Parlor level wasn't, contrary to Michael's promise, much of an improvement over garden level. In the front there was a musty wood-paneled dining room (not unlike what Tony had been imagining for Chicago, he had to admit), but the Addams
Family–style table in the middle of this one had legs carved with gargoyles and was coated in dust. Michael pointed out a smoke-stained marble fireplace. “There's one in nearly every room,” he said. “And they all work.” He opened an empty wooden cupboard next to it and tugged on a rope. Hidden pulleys squeaked as the shelf inside began to lower. A dumbwaiter, Michael explained, for hoisting hot food up from the kitchen.