The Watcher in the Shadows

by Chris Moriarty

  “Actually,” Wolf went on, “I’m not even here to see you today. I came to talk to Mr.—er—ahem.” He turned to Kid Klezmer.

  “Murray Gellman,” the Kid said. “And what do you need to talk to me about?”

  “Naftali Asher, actually.”

  “What about him?” Gellman asked, his handsome face darkening.

  “He’s dead,” Wolf said baldly.

  Gellman sprang to his feet, his eyes wild and the blood draining from his face.

  “Sit down,” Minsky said quietly.

  “No,” Gellman said. “Why should I involve anyone else in my misfortunes? It’ll be better if I just go quietly.”

  “It’ll be better,” Minsky said in a voice that brooked no disobedience, “if you just do what your friends tell you to do.”

  Gellman sat down so quickly that Sacha suspected his knees had given out in terror. But it hardly mattered; Wolf’s attention had already turned back to Minsky.

  “You knew Naftali Asher was dead before I ever got here, didn’t you?” he asked the gangster—and his question sounded dangerously close to an accusation.

  “You think something like that could happen without my knowing about it before the cops do?”

  “You could have told me!”

  “Why should I have? I assumed you were here about the Pentacle strike. Since when did the Inquisitors ever care about a dead Jew or two?”

  Wolf didn’t try to argue the point—wisely, Sacha thought, since judging by what he had seen of the NYPD Inquisitors Division since his apprenticeship started, the best defense Wolf could have come up with was that they didn’t care two straws about any poor people, Jew or gentile.

  Meanwhile, Kid Klezmer seemed to have screwed up his nerve to defy Minsky. He stood up again and thrust his hands out to Wolf, offering them up to be handcuffed. “You might as well just throw me in the Tombs and have done with it. I’m an innocent man, as God is my witness. But no one will ever believe it. And if Naftali Asher’s dead by magic, there isn’t a lawyer in town who can save me from the electric chair.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “Because I swore in front of our entire shtetl back in Russia that I would get Naftali Asher for stealing my girl—even if I had to follow him all the way to America to do it.”

  Wolf blinked owlishly at Gellman for a moment. Then he took off his spectacles and searched for a clean spot on his tie that he could wipe them on. Not finding one, he pulled out his shirttail and used that. And then he stood blinking at Gellman with his shirt hanging out and his tie askew. “Do you think I could get a cup of coffee?” he asked. “This looks like it’s going to take a while.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Kid Klezmer said. He sounded much more cheerful suddenly. “And maybe with a splash of slivovitz. It’s a thirsty story. By the way, is it okay if Meyer stays to listen?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Wolf asked ruefully.

  Meyer just smiled and puffed at his cigar. “I wouldn’t miss this for all the borscht in Bohemia,” he said in a voice as silky smooth as the cloth of his spell-fitted three-piece suit.

  “So,” Kid Klezmer began, when the coffee had been served and the waiters were gone, “I was born in a small shtetl near Zhitomer, the oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest son of a famed family of klezmorin. From the time I was born until I was eighteen years old, my life was perfect. I played my music. I studied Torah. I grew up, and I fell in love with our rabbi’s youngest daughter. And I mean real love, like in the storybooks. The kind of love kids today don’t know a thing about.”

  “Don’t let the schmaltz get in your eyes,” Sacha muttered.

  “Shh!” Lily hissed back at him. “I think it’s romantic.”

  Sacha made a rude noise—but he was careful to make it quietly enough that none of the grownups heard him.

  “Life was perfect,” Gellman went on. “Until Naftali Asher came to town. And then everything started to go wrong for me. Boils, rashes, split reeds . . . you name it! But the worst was what happened to poor Rivka!”

  “She fell in love with Asher?” Wolf guessed.

  “As if!” Kid Klezmer cried. “Asher was nothing back then! Nothing as a man, and less than nothing as a klezmer player! How poor Rivka ever could have left me for such a nudnik—well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? He cast a hate spell on her!”

  “I’ve never heard of a hate spell!” Lily exclaimed.

  “And I hope a nice young lady like you never will,” Gellman told her. “It’s bad enough to cast a love spell on an innocent girl instead of letting the best man win! But a hate spell—ah, may you never know the misery that kind of magic can make! Anyway, there was no help for it. Asher may have been a dud as a klezmer player, but when it came to magic, he was a genius. The next thing I knew, Rivka was standing under the huppa with Asher. And I—well, I got drunk and crashed the wedding. And you know the rest.”

  Wolf drew his breath to speak, but he was interrupted by a snort loud enough to make Sacha wonder if someone had snuck a carthorse into the room with them. But it wasn’t a horse. It was Dopey Benny, who was blowing his nose and weeping great, glistening tears. “Id’s eduff to break a fellow’s heart,” he sobbed in the adenoidal tones that every kid on the Lower East Side knew how to imitate by the time they were old enough to see over the counter of the Essex Street Candy Store. “Excudze me . . . I gotta blow by dose again.”

  Benny blew his nose like a bugler sounding a trumpet. Even Minsky cringed at the noise—and then he cast a sharp look around the room, as if to say, You wanna make fun of my right-hand guy and personal starker, you better have the guts to do it to my face.

  “So then what happened?” Lily asked the Kid.

  “Nothing,” he said sadly. “She married him. And they emigrated to America.”

  “And you followed them,” Wolf prompted. “Just like you said you would.”

  “I didn’t follow them!” Gellman sounded exasperated, as if he was tired of explaining himself. “There happens to be this little thing going on in Russia at the moment called pogroms. And not to make light of the larger tragedy or anything, but it’s hard to make a living playing klezmer when the Cossacks keep burning down your venues!”

  “So you came here looking for work,” Wolf said in a placating tone. “That’s reasonable enough. And what about Asher and Rivka?”

  “Oh, Asher had the worst luck in America that a jilted lover could wish on a rival. I would have loved it—if he hadn’t been dragging poor Rivka down with him. He gets to Ellis Island, and what do you think they do? They fumigate his clarinet! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Anyway, that’s the end of his klezmer plans. So he gets a job at Pentacle. Not that I blame him for that; he wasn’t the first one to fall back on magic when he figured out that a poor man can’t earn an honest living in New York. He works at Pentacle for two years, saving every penny to buy a new clarinet. But when he finally gets the clarinet . . . well, great horn blowers are dime a dozen in this town, and Asher wasn’t all that good in the first place. Until—until whatever happened happened.” Kid Klezmer laughed nervously. “He used to tell some schmaltzy story about sharing a rear tenement room with some old Hasidic mystic and nursing him through his final illness. He claimed the Hasid taught him all his nigun before he gave up the ghost—you know, the holy songs the mystics sing. But it always sounded like a bowl of borscht to me.” Kid Klezmer gave a bitter laugh. “Asher wasn’t exactly the type to selflessly nurse a perfect stranger through his final illness.”

  “Well, maybe Rivka nursed him,” Lily pointed out.

  “Oh!” Kid Klezmer seemed never to have thought of this. “Maybe she did at that. Still, no one would ever believe Asher did it.”

  “But they believe he sold his soul to the devil,” Wolf said.

  Kid Klezmer gave him a sharp, almost frightened look. “Who told you that? Goldfaden? Does he believe it?”

  Wolf shrugged.

  “I believe it.” Gellman’s voice dropped to a nervous
whisper. “Naftali Asher hexed the woman I loved and destroyed all my hope of happiness in this world. And then, to add insult to injury, he turned himself from a mediocre hack into the greatest klezmer player I’ve ever heard. But you know what? Even though he had everything I ever wanted in the world, I felt sorry for him. He made a bargain with someone— man, devil, or magician. And whatever he got, he paid a price for it that I never would have paid.” He shuddered. “At least I hope I wouldn’t. I guess a man can’t ever know what he’ll sell until the devil waves a check in his face.”

  A long silence fell over the room when Gellman finished, as if his tale were so dark and strange that even the two hardened gangsters were struck dumb by it.

  It was Meyer Minsky who finally broke the silence. “Well, that’s that,” he said, taking out a cigar as if to signal that the conversation was over, as far as he was concerned. “If you’re going to arrest the Kid, you’d better do it now. I gotta go mind the store.”

  “I don’t think I am going to arrest him,” Wolf said slowly, talking over Gellman’s head as if Minsky were only person whose word counted for anything. “If he tries to run, I’ll have to arrest him, of course. But I’d rather not. It’s not so easy to get a man out of the Tombs once you’ve put him in.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that!” Minsky said feelingly. “I left two teeth down there!”

  Dopey Benny didn’t say anything—but he fingered his crooked nose and looked a little green around the gills. The Tombs was what most New Yorkers called the underground holding cells at the Police Department’s main headquarters down on Mulberry Street, and their reputation was so bad that hardened criminals had been known to confess at the mere mention of the possibility that they might have to spend a night there.

  “Anyway,” Wolf said, turning back to Gellman, “don’t do anything foolish. If you can manage that, I may be able to help you.”

  “Then you believe me?” Gellman asked with pathetic earnestness.

  “I don’t believe or disbelieve you. But there’s no law against going to a wedding without an invitation, is there?”

  “You’re a mensch, Wolf,” Meyer Minsky said as he cut his cigar with a dainty little pearl-handled pocket knife. “A real Jew. We oughta make you an honorary member of the tribe.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It’s the best compliment there is,” Meyer said with fierce pride. “And I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. So don’t be a stranger. Drop by the store sometime.”

  “Maybe I will, if only to keep up with the all the news that’s not fit to print.”

  “We give out free candy to cops, you know.”

  “Ah, but candy always tastes sweeter when you buy it for yourself.”

  Minsky lit his cigar and snuffed out the match between his thumb and finger. “Personally, I always think candy tastes sweeter when you steal it.”

  Wolf smiled and rose to leave. But then he sat back down and frowned at Minsky. “What was that other thing you wanted to tell me about, Meyer?”

  “I’m not sure I do want to tell you,” Minsky said, toying with the change in his pocket. “Maybe I thought better of it.” He glanced at Sacha and Lily. “Or maybe you should come down to the candy store so we can talk privately.”

  “Come on, Meyer, you know I can’t do that.”

  Meyer flattened his lips into a frustrated line. He pulled a buffalo head nickel out of his pocket—one that legend said he’d taken off the body of the man who’d run Magic, Inc., before he took over. Minsky frowned at the nickel for a moment and then flipped it, throwing it high into the air and letting it fall on the table without even trying to catch it. The coin rolled down the polished wood, bumped into a half-empty seltzer bottle, and finally came to rest in front of Dopey Benny.

  “It’s tails, boss,” Benny said morosely.

  “I know,” Minsky said without even looking at the coin. “I hate it when it does that. That son of a gun’s been dead twelve years, and his damned nickel still has it in for me. I hate hexes that don’t die with the hexer. There oughta be a law against ’em.”

  “What’s got you so jumpy, Meyer?” Wolf asked.

  Meyer sighed. He held out his left hand, and the buffalo head nickel slid along the table and landed in his open palm with a soft smack.

  “Have you heard anything on the street about . . . well, I don’t know what to call them. I’d call them hits if there was any hitting involved. But it’s more like guys just dropping dead for no reason.”

  “Gangsters, you mean. Yes, I’ve heard something about that.”

  “Gyp Saminowsky died last week. And Bloody Martin O’Shea. And . . . well, there’s a couple of others, but who cares about the names? The point is, someone’s knocking off gangsters all over town and getting away with it. It’s like New York’s turned into a different city in the last few months. It used to be safe to walk the streets at night—for us, anyway. And now it’s not.”

  “Who do you think is behind it?”

  “I don’t know. Or why would I be asking you? The thing is, a couple of my guys have been hit. And they both saw someone following them before they died.”

  “Did they get a look at his face?”

  “No. One of them said he saw a shadowy figure that he could never quite get a real look at. ‘The watcher in the shad-ows,’ he called it. And the other one . . . the other one said he did see the guy, but what he said made no sense.”

  Wolf, so still in his chair that he was barely breathing, kept his eyes on Minsky’s face. “What did he see?”

  “He saw . . . a man made out of flies.”

  The two men stared at each other for a moment. Sacha couldn’t tell if Minsky’s words meant anything to Wolf or not. Finally Wolf shrugged and stood up. “I’ll keep my ears open,” he said.

  “That’s all I wanted, Max. Just keep a lookout. Better not say anything officially for now. And if you’ll take an old friend’s advice, stay out of this Pentacle mess too. It’s going to be a bloodbath.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Devil’s Bargain

  WHEN THEY FINALLY left the Café Metropole, the afternoon shadows were lengthening and rush hour was almost upon them. Normally—that is to say, when they had no pressing cases—Wolf would have chosen this moment to head back to the office and relinquish Lily and Sacha to the care of the Astral family chauffeur for the long ride home across the park. They took that ride almost every day because, though Lily had managed to defy her mother effectively enough to become Wolf’s apprentice, she had yet to convince her that the sky wouldn’t fall if her daughter ever rode public transportation.

  Today, however, Wolf turned off the Bowery into the narrow, thronging streets of the Lower East Side. At first Sacha was afraid they were going to find Moishe Schlosky at the Industrial Witches of the World office—which would have meant braving the stairs of his very own tenement building in Lily Astral’s company. But instead Wolf was following up Goldfaden’s half lead about Sam Schlosky’s old apartment on Henry Street.

  Pearl turned out to be all too right, however; they did manage to find a neighbor at the building who remembered the large family with the skinny redheaded son who’d turned into an IWW rabble-rouser. She pointed them to a building on the corner of Grand and Orchard. And someone at Grand and Orchard remembered that the Schloskys had moved away about a year and a half ago, and thought they’d taken one of the cheap second-floor apartments that fronted on the Allen Street elevated tracks. But the apartment at Allen Street was the end of the line. Allen Street was the heart of the Lower East Side’s thriving red-light district, and apparently no one there paid enough attention to politics to even know what the IWW was.

  At this point, Wolf gave up on finding Sam Schlosky and hurried the two apprentices north into the mostly German-Irish neighborhoods between Astral Place and Tompkins Square. This neighborhood had once been the center of New York high society. The original Astral mansion was there, as were the ancest
ral homes of half the old New York dynasties. But now all the rich New Yorkers had moved north toward Central Park, and the sedate colonial homes were broken up into disreputable boarding houses whose shiftless lodgers drifted in and out of the saloons and loitered on street corners.

  It wasn’t a neighborhood Sacha knew much about, except by reputation. For though the people who lived here were no poorer than people on Hester Street, they were still looked down on. They lived rootless, shiftless lives, cut off from the larger Jewish community and surrounded by Irish and German and Bohemian neighbors, who were, Sacha imagined, equally adrift and cut off from their fellow countrymen. And though Sacha’s grandfather and Meyer Minsky probably didn’t have anything like the same definition of a “real Jew,” they would both have agreed that this neighborhood was just about the last place in New York to look for one.

  “Where are we going now?” Lily asked—a little breathlessly, since she had to practically run in order to keep pace with Inquisitor Wolf’s long strides.

  “To see Naftali Asher’s widow.”

  Sacha felt surprised—and a little dismayed—at the idea that Naftali and Rivka Asher had lived in this neighborhood. He thought of the way Gellman had described Rivka: a modest, quiet rabbi’s daughter. Looking around at the stale beer halls and the slatternly women and slovenly men lounging on every street corner, Sacha couldn’t imagine that any halfway decent husband would have brought such a girl to live in this place.

  Still, he thought, people did strange things in New York. And Naftali Asher had obviously been a strange and difficult man. Perhaps he’d found comfort in the rootless anonymity of this drifter’s neighborhood.

  As they passed by Astral Square subway station, the piercing cry of a newsboy caught Sacha’s ear. Had there been a familiar name in that cry, or had he just imagined it? He scanned the crowd and caught sight of a ragged newsie brandishing the evening edition of the New York Sun overhead.

  “Murder at the Hippodrome!” the boy cried. “Read all about it!”