“—you’ve got another think—oh!” Goldfaden stopped short. “Really? You’d come see Harry? And the Inquisitors wouldn’t shut us down if we had him back? D’you think we could get away with doing the elephant trick again? No, wait . . . that elephant’s on tour in Saskatchewan. And trust me, you don’t want to try that trick with the wrong elephant! So I suppose we’d have to come up with something new. A séance? A death-defying escape? Something underwater, perhaps?” His eyes sparkled, and he rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Harry’d have to get back in training, of course. Nothing makes a good magician go to seed faster than testifying in front of Congress.”
CHAPTER TWO
A Shtetl Love Triangle
AS THEY WADED through the dirty slush on their way to the Café Metropole, Sacha dropped back to talk to Lily.
“That has to be about the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” he began.
“Maybe. But it’s still not a job for the Inquisitors.” She sniffed disdainfully. “And I have better things to do with my time than run errands for the ordinary cops.”
“Crime is crime. And Naftali Asher’s still dead, no matter what he died of.”
“I suppose. But personally I’m getting sick of traipsing up and down Manhattan on the say-so of illiterate immigrants who can’t tell the difference between Old World magic and perfectly ordinary machinery. I mean, are we training to be Inquisitors or public information officers? And how can anyone possibly make it through Ellis Island without figuring out the difference between a killing spell and an electrical circuit?”
Sacha was quite sure that Pearl Schneiderman could read very well and had never set foot on Ellis Island, but he bit his tongue and let it pass.
“And what was all that stuff about Kid Klezmer and the candy store anyway?” Lily asked as they forged on through the driving sleet. “Now there’s some problem with Inquisitors going into a candy stores?”
“Rule five hundred and eighty-four in the NYPD Inquisitors handbook,” Sacha teased. “No candy for Inquisitors. Wanna quit yet?”
Lilly elbowed him in the ribs. “Come on!”
“Everyone knows the Essex Street Candy Store is Magic, Inc., headquarters. So if an Inquisitor ever went in there and came out alive . . . well, the whole world would think he was working for Meyer Minsky.”
Lily stopped in her tracks and stared at him. “That’s completely ridiculous! You’re telling me the most notorious magical gangster in all of New York runs his rackets out of a candy store? Why on earth would he do that?”
“Maybe he has a sweet tooth.”
“Oh, be serious, Sacha!”
“I am.”
“Well . . . but what parents would ever let their children buy candy there?”
“I don’t know about that. But one thing I do know: they don’t have much trouble with shoplifters!”
“Would you two like to come inside?” Wolf called back to them from halfway down the block, where he was holding open the big mahogany and plate-glass front door of the Café Metropole. “Or are you enjoying the spring weather too much?”
The Café Metropole was the legendary watering hole of New York’s intellectual set—or at least the Jewish part of it, which pretty much amounted to the same thing. It was strategically located between the Eldridge Street Synagogue, the Industrial Witches of the World headquarters on Hester Street, and the several Yiddish theaters that competed for the hearts and wallets of Lower East Side theatergoers.
Each great Yiddish theater had its own stars, its own playwrights and songsmiths, and its own army of die-hard fans ready to come to blows with one another to defend their favorites. The Thalia had the great tragic genius David Kessler. The Windsor had the immortal Thomashevsky. The Grand had what seemed like an endless string of comic leading ladies, each shamelessly promoted as “America’s Sweetheart,” regardless of the fact that no one north of the Tenderloin had ever heard of her. And of course the ever-struggling Yiddish People’s Theater had Uncle Mordechai. But the center of all this flamboyant Lower East Side mishigas was the gleaming main saloon of the Café Metropole. Here rabbis happily rubbed shoulders with actors and revolutionaries. Here the IWW organizers plotted strikes over tiny steaming glasses of strong tea. Here young men (and young women too, despite Mrs. Kessler’s clucking tongue) debated deep into the night over the latest revolutionary pamphlets smuggled in from England or Russia.
Which made it strange that Sacha hadn’t realized until this very moment just how much he didn’t want Lily Astral to set foot inside the place. But there was nothing to do about it now. Wolf was holding the door open, and already getting irritated looks from the customers near enough to the entrance to feel the cold wind blowing in around him.
Lily marched inside, shaking off her sleet-spattered coat and looking around the place in wide-eyed curiosity. Suddenly, Sacha saw the Metropole through her eyes. The gleaming mahogany bar with its polished brass railing was as immaculate as ever, but everything looked a little shabby compared to the uptown places he’d seen in the last year as he followed Wolf from crime scene to crime scene. And, truth be told, the people looked a little shabby too. None of the Metropole’s regulars bothered much with appearances. For one thing, they were mostly poor. And for another thing, they were all far too busy planning the coming Wiccanist magicworkers’ paradise, or plumbing the mysteries of theoretical Kabbalah, or penning the next brilliant masterpiece of Yiddish theater. All of which could be done perfectly well in old, tattered, ink-stained clothes. But still—
“Who’s that?” Lily asked, poking Sacha with her elbow.
Sacha followed her stare across the room—and to his horror, he saw that Uncle Mordechai had gotten up from his usual table in the corner and was headed straight for them with his hand out and a welcoming grin on his face.
Sacha glanced at Wolf—who was busy talking to the bartender, thank God—and then gestured desperately to Mordechai behind Lily’s back.
Mordechai caught the gesture, wavered ever so slightly, and then kept advancing toward Lily as if nothing had happened.
“Let’s go,” Sacha said, trying to drag Lily toward Wolf and get away from Mordechai.
“Wait a minute—”
“Good afternoon,” Mordechai said in his smoothest voice. And Sacha turned back just in time to see him sweep his hat off his glossy black curls and give Lily his most winning smile. “May I be of any assistance?”
“Uh . . . well . . . oh!” Lily opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water, but she didn’t seem to be able to make a rational sentence come out of it. What on earth was wrong with the girl?
Sacha gave Mordechai a pointed stare. “No help required, thank you very much. We’re here with the Inquisitors.”
“A nice Jewish boy like you working for the Inquisitors?” Mordechai said, with an absolutely malicious grin on his face. “You must have broken your poor mother’s heart!”
“I don’t discuss my mother with strangers,” Sacha snapped.
“I applaud your discretion.” Mordechai’s solemn smirk told Sacha he was going to be the butt of his uncle’s jokes for many family dinners to come. “Good day, young sir. And please accept my utmost apologies for intruding upon you, Miss—er?”
“Astral,” Lily gasped.
“Not Lily Astral!” Mordechai exclaimed as if he’d just heard that she was the goddess Aphrodite fresh off her clamshell.
“But—how do you know my name?” Lily asked breathlessly.
“Ah, well, I can be discreet too. Shall we say a little birdie told me? But they didn’t tell me you were so very charming. Little birds can be so unreliable, can’t they?” Mordechai gave Lily the smile that had broken the hearts of half the girls on Hester Street. And then—having tormented Sacha for long enough—he retreated to his table in the corner.
Sacha glanced back at Wolf to see if he’d noticed anything. But he had been talking to the bartender and was now making his way through the crowd toward the Metropole’s back
room.
“Come on,” Sacha said brusquely, starting after Wolf. “Don’t you know better than to talk to strange men in public?”
But Lily was too busy staring after Uncle Mordechai to hear him. “That is the handsomest man I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” she said as Sacha dragged her along. “And I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before too, if only I could remember where. He must be famous, Sacha. Who is he?”
“How should I know? Just some out-of-work actor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Actors are seedy and disreputable. And he’s . . . well . . .” She cleared her throat and looked a little embarrassed suddenly. “You know what?” she asked brightly. “I think he must be one of those exiled Polish noblemen one sees around town these days. That would explain why he looks so familiar, too. I must have seen him at one of my mother’s parties.”
“I seriously doubt that!” Sacha muttered.
“As if you’d know anything about it!”
But what they saw when they stepped into the Metro- pole’s private dining room stopped their argument cold. Kid Klezmer was sitting at a table full of food and drink far better than anyone in the front room of the Metropole ever got to eat. At the table’s far end lounged Dopey Benny Fein, the most notorious starker on all the Lower East Side—a man bold enough (or, some people said, stupid enough) to hand out a professionally printed price list of his starking services. And between the Kid and Dopey Benny sat the king of the Lower East Side: Meyer Minsky.
Sacha had seen Minsky before, of course, but he still couldn’t help staring at him. Sure, Kid Klezmer was handsome enough in that skinny Uncle Mordechai kind of way that girls seemed to like. And Benny Fein would have been a fine figure of a man if he hadn’t broken his nose so many times that he talked like he had a permanent head cold.
But Meyer Minsky—now, that was Sacha’s idea of what a real man ought to look like.
Minsky had grown up on the streets of the Lower East Side, among the poorest of the poor. But you’d never know it to look at him today. He wore the best clothes money and magic could buy, and he carried himself like a perfect gentleman. Yet the set of his broad shoulders would have demanded respect even if he’d been dressed in beggar’s rags. That and the proud glint in his blue eyes that seemed to say, Other Jews may be poor and powerless, but I’m not. Respect me, and we’ll get along. Disrespect me, and I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.
That quiet but indomitable pride had made Meyer Minsky the idol of every Jewish boy in New York, and the closest thing the Lower East Side had to royalty. He was an honest-to-goodness made-in-America Jewish folk hero, and in the eyes of most Lower East Siders, he could do no wrong. If you called him a common criminal, they’d tell you he was a nice Jewish boy who treated his mother like a queen and made the streets safe for respectable girls. If you told them he abused magic in ways no pious Jew should tolerate, they’d look uncomfortable for a moment—and then ask if you wanted to let the Irish and Italians rule the streets. If you told them he was dangerous, they’d tell you that Jews had been slaughtered and persecuted for two thousand years, and maybe it was time for a dangerous man to step to the fore.
And so Meyer Minsky reigned over the Lower East Side, living off the fat of the land like a modern-day King David—and far more beloved by his subjects than most kings could ever hope to be. Of course the owner of the Café Metropole would have paid his protection money to Irish gangsters if he had to; there was no escaping life’s harsh realities. But he would have felt ashamed. Minsky, on the other hand, he was proud to pay. And when Minsky deigned to grace the private back dining room of the Café Metropole, you could almost see every man in the place stand a little taller and breathe a little freer.
At the moment, however, Minsky wasn’t looking much like a modern-day Jewish warrior king. He was just relaxing comfortably over lunch with a few friends. And when Wolf came into the room, Meyer gazed mournfully up at him as if to say that even an Inquisitor ought to have better taste than to mar pleasure with business.
Still, he greeted them graciously, called the waiter to set out plates for the three of them, and made polite small talk until the waiter was gone again. Then he turned to Inquisitor Wolf and asked, “What can I do for you, Max?”
“Oh, it’s Max, is it?” Wolf replied with a hint of a smile. “I didn’t think we’d parted on such good terms last time I saw you.”
Meyer threw back his head at this and laughed merrily. “Ah, but we were young and hungry together, Max! And a man who’s your friend when you’re poor is your friend for life. Besides, even if I hated your guts, I gotta respect a cop I can’t buy.”
“And you can buy all the other ones?” Wolf asked with a solemn twinkle in his gray eyes. “I thought Mr. Morgaunt had already beat you to it.”
“Ah, but they don’t stay bought, that’s the trouble, Max! They only rent themselves out until someone comes along with a better offer. Can’t you talk to Keegan about trying to recruit a better class of rascal?”
“I don’t think the Inquisitors pay well enough to hire honest rascals,” Wolf pointed out. “Maybe you’d be better off talking to Morgaunt. I’m sure the two of you could come up with something.”
Minsky frowned and pushed back his chair a little. “I hope you’re not here to pester me about Morgaunt,” he told Wolf.
“What about him?” Wolf asked in his blandest voice.
“Don’t play the little innocent with me. I don’t see you for years on end, and then Morgaunt’s facing a strike at Pentacle, and you suddenly show up on my doorstep? What do you expect me to think?”
“Ah,” Wolf said, glancing at Dopey Benny. “I see. Morgaunt’s asked Magic, Inc., to put down the strike.”
“Of course he has. We’re the best. And Morgaunt always hires the best.”
“Then you’ve agreed to work for him?”
“Not yet. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t.” Minsky set his jaw and narrowed his blue eyes. “Morgaunt may be a nasty piece of work, but his money’s as good as another man’s. And if he wants me to put a little magical muscle on the street, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t take his money. Unless, of course, the other side can pay me more.”
“We both know they can’t do that.”
“No, they can’t, more’s the pity.”
“Have you been down to the IWW offices yet?” Wolf asked.
“I have,” Dopey Benny said in his adenoidal drawl. “It’s right upstairs from my mother’s apartment. They seem like a nice bunch of kids. Someone oughta tell their parents they’re fixing to get their heads bashed in.”
Wolf didn’t say a word in reply to this—just stared hard at Minsky, who shifted in his chair a bit.
“It’s nothing personal,” the gangster protested. “Those kids down at the IWW are as brave as lions, and I’d give any of them a job in a minute if they asked for one.”
“I think they have other goals in life,” Wolf said with the hint of a sarcastic edge in his voice. It was only the very slightest of hints, but Sacha still held his breath with shock at the mere idea of someone speaking to Meyer Minsky in such a tone.
Minsky had clearly noticed it too, judging by the dangerous glint in his eye. “Now, Max. Don’t despise me or my choices. I’ve always respected you, even when I disagreed with you. Even after you joined the Inquisitors.” Minsky’s voice sank with utter disgust as he pronounced the despised word. “But you need to respect me back, or we won’t be friends, even though I do like you so much.”
“Don’t get your hackles up,” Wolf said mildly. “I wouldn’t insult you for all the world. I just don’t like to see you even thinking about working for Morgaunt.”
“I’d call it working with him, not for him, Max. And I have to think about it. A man has to think about staying on good terms with Morgaunt if he wants to keep doing business in this town.”
“Oh, Meyer,” Wolf said in a voice too soft and sad to give offense, despite the hard words. “I never thought I�
�d see you afraid of any man.”
“Not afraid. Just realistic. Don’t underestimate me: I’ll go against him if I have to. But he has the cops in his pocket and the papers and City Hall. And lately he’s been muscling in on my territory too. It’s not just me that sees it. The Hell’s Kitchen Hexers, the boys down in Little Italy, we’re all seeing the same thing. There’s—well, there’s another thing I need to talk to you about, but never mind that now. The point is, if I go against Morgaunt openly in this Pentacle strike situation, it’ll be absolute war. And that’s not a war I can win, not yet anyway. You ever heard of the Maccabees? Look ’em up sometime. There’s a fine line between being brave and being crazy.”
Wolf sat silent for a moment, looking far from happy with this answer. But then he shrugged and said, “Well, I don’t expect you to commit suicide for the greater good, Meyer. You know I’m not that unreasonable. Especially since I haven’t quite worked up the nerve to do it myself.”
“You’ve come pretty close a time or two, though, if memory serves me right.”
“That was different. When a man drags women and children into trouble, he’s got an obligation to stand up for them.”
“Speaking of which, how is Shen Yunying doing these days? Damn fine-looking woman. There was a time when I even thought you two might—”
“Yes, well, that’s all over now,” Wolf said hastily, as if he were eager to avoid any further mention of Shen.
Sacha glanced sideways at Lily—and sure enough, she practically looked like she was going to explode. She had a serious case of hero worship for their martial arts instructor, Shen Yunying, who she was convinced was some sort of modern-day female version of the wandering Shaolin Monks of Imperial China. And she also had a lot of silly ideas about Shen and Inquisitor Wolf—ideas Sacha usually did his best to squash. He could tell that Lily was going to be all but irrepressible after this juicy tidbit.
The Watcher in the Shadows Page 4