Minsky went on with his warning. “You boys want me to come into the fight on your side, if I understand you aright. Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t. But I’ll say this now: if any man among you insults me the way this young lady just did, I’ll come in against you. I’ve never started a fight in my life, but I’ve never walked away from a fight either. Nor ever lost one. And I don’t intend to lose one, not short of dying. So don’t make an enemy of me if you plan to keep living in this town.”
“So does that mean you’ll help us?” Moishe asked, in a voice as calm and steady as if he hadn’t just heard the most fearsome gangster in New York threaten to kill him.
Minsky looked Moishe’s skinny frame up and down, his blue eyes pausing at the skinny neck and the bony wrists poking out of the boy’s shirtsleeves. A ghost of a smile drifted across his lips. Finally he said, “I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Minsky,” Moishe said. “You’re doing the right thing. I really believe you are. You won’t regret this.”
Minsky’s smile sharpened into a wry grin. “Kid,” he said, “I already regret it!”
“You were pretty tough in there,” Sacha told Moishe as they were walking home from the candy store.
Moishe looked surprised at the compliment, as if people didn’t compliment him often enough for him to be used to the idea. “You did okay yourself,” he answered. He slowed down, and they fell behind the others. Then he started to speak, hesitated, and started again. “I, uh . . . I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something. Privately.”
Sacha waited.
“A certain person we both know has mentioned to me that he might be willing to meet with you.”
Sacha’s heart pounded. “You mean S—”
“Shhh!”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
“Anyway, this person. We’ll call him our Mutual Friend. Our MF, for short—”
“Thank God you know where he is!” Sacha interrupted. “Wolf is terrified of what’s going to happen if anyone else finds him first. You have to tell him to come in and give himself up. It’ll be much safer than—”
“As I was saying,” Moishe broke in, “our MF would like to talk to you. But he’s only willing to see you on one condition.”
“Fine! Anything! Just as long as he—”
“You come alone. No cops.”
“But what about Wol—”
“No cops. Period. And that means especially no Inquisitors.”
“I can’t do that, Moishe. I can’t lie to Wolf.”
“Well, then you can’t talk to Sam,” Moishe snapped—and then clapped his hand over his own mouth when he realized that he’d forgotten the secret code himself.
“Oh, come on, Moishe. This is crazy! Listen to yourself! Do you hear what you sound like? I know there are some bad cops out there—”
“And some bad Inquisitors.”
“Okay, and some bad Inquisitors, too,” Sacha said. “But you can trust Wolf.”
Moishe swung around to glare fiercely at him. “Oh? And how do you know? In fact, what do you know about anything except what your precious Inquisitor Wolf tells you?”
“Moishe—”
“Oh, right, I forgot. You have inside information from the lovely Miss Astral, too. Do you know what her father is? Do you know what he does for a living? He’s the slickest Wall Street Wizard of them all!”
“I’ve never even met Lily’s father. Really. I couldn’t care less about him. And I don’t think that Lily is some sort of secret spy for the oligarchy. Seriously, Moishe, she’s not that good a liar.”
Moishe shrugged eloquently.
They walked along in silence for another half a block until Sacha finally relented.
“Okay!” he said. “I’ll come talk to him. Where is he?”
“Can’t tell you. I’ll pick you up at your house tomorrow night after the meeting of the central strike committee. Alone.”
“Okay. When?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Moishe!”
“Okay, okay! Tomorrow night. And you’d better be alone!”
“Can’t you convince Sam to trust Wolf? There are worse things than getting arrested, you know. Wolf thinks coming in voluntarily would be a lot safer.”
“Well, Sam doesn’t. He thinks he’s up against something that even Wolf can’t protect him from.”
“Something?” Sacha asked with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” Moishe whispered. “But Sam says you’re the only one he’ll trust.”
Sacha struggled for a moment. But it was no good. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t go meet him without at least telling Wolf about it first. I’ve caused too much trouble that way before now.”
Moishe licked his lips nervously and glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. “Sam said you might refuse. And he said to tell you this if you did: you have to come, because you’re in even worse trouble than he is.”
“What? That’s crazy!”
“Well, it’s what he said. And he said that if you asked why, I should tell you this: your own mother’s life might be at stake.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
War Council at the Witch’s Brew
THE NEXT MORNING, Inquisitor Wolf led his two apprentices to the Witch’s Brew, the Hell’s Kitchen saloon that he normally sent them scurrying out to every morning for his steaming growler full of mud-thick coffee.
Sullivan, the mountainous bartender, greeted Wolf like a long-lost brother. Sacha knew Wolf had grown up in a Catholic orphanage in the worst section of Hell’s Kitchen, so he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. But somehow he was. And he was even more surprised a few minutes later when Philip Payton sauntered casually into the saloon and sat down at their table, despite the fact that he was still officially on vacation.
“What’s he doing here?” muttered a skinny fellow at the bar. “I didn’t pay good money to drink with—”
“Yer right about that,” Sullivan interrupted with a glare that made the man gulp. “In fact, I don’t recall you paying me any money at all this month. And young Mr. Payton here pays nice and regular.”
Payton gave Sullivan a small nod of thanks, and to Sacha’s amazement the mountain of a man actually smiled at him. “An’ how’s your mother doin’, Philip?” the bartender asked. “I haven’t seen her round the neighborhood lately.”
“No,” Payton said. He paused and cleared his throat awkwardly. For the first time since Sacha had known Payton, the older boy looked at a loss for words. “We’re a bit busy lately.” Payton cleared his throat again. “We’re thinking about moving.”
“Not out of the neighborhood, I hope?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Ah.” Sullivan frowned at Payton and seemed to be choosing his next words carefully. “Not because of the recent unpleasantness? I’m sure that won’t happen again.”
Payton looked Sullivan square in the eye. “My father’s not.”
“Ah,” Sullivan repeated.
Sacha glanced at Lily questioningly, but she just shook her head as if to say she had no more idea what Payton and Sullivan were talking about than he did.
An awkward silence fell. When Payton spoke into it, he sounded less sure of himself than he usually did. “My father thinks we need a neighborhood of our own. And there are others who think the same. They’re looking to move to Harlem.”
Sullivan suddenly became very busy cleaning the gleaming taps at the bar—even though it didn’t look to Sacha like they needed cleaning at all. “I can’t fault a man for doing what he thinks is needed to keep his family safe,” he said at last. “And do I hear lots of people are moving up there, now that the subway’s going to run north of the park. So what’s the rent runnin’ in Harlem these days?”
“I . . . uh . . . actually, they’re looking to buy a building.”
“Well, now!” Sullivan rocked back on his heels in
surprise. “It’s a fine thing to own a piece of God’s green earth, and there’s no denying that. Though I still say the day your da moves out, it’ll be a sad loss for the neighborhood.” He glared at the lone drinker who had complained about Payton. “I’d much rather have respectable colored folk for neighbors than a pack of drunken scofflaws who’ve got nothing better to do on a Saturday night than throw bricks through people’s windows!”
Sullivan delivered these last words in a bellow that made the man leap from his chair in terror. As he hurriedly excused himself and scurried out the door onto Forty-Third Street, Sacha glanced at Inquisitor Wolf. But as usual, there was no way of telling what was going on behind the inscrutable expression and the smudged glasses.
“By the way, Philip,” Sullivan said as the doors squeaked back and forth on their hinges in the wake of the man’s hasty exit. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen Paddy Doyle lately, would you?”
“No,” Payton said flatly. “I haven’t.”
“Pity,” Sullivan said, still in that careful voice. “You used to be such good friends. But then boys do grow apart sometimes as they turn into men and find their way in life.”
“I suppose so,” Payton said stiffly.
Wolf leaned forward and cleared his throat to get Payton’s attention, but Sullivan wasn’t finished yet. “Still, I do hope you’ll find the time to drop by and see Mrs. Doyle before you move,” the bartender said.
Payton’s face softened slightly. “I’ll try.”
“I hope so. She always was fond of you. And her own boys all turned out so wild. No father around to keep them in line—and all of ’em far too handsome for their own good, if you ask me. It’s a scientific fact that no handsome Irishman ever did a lick of work in his life. My wife can tell you all about it. She read a book once where one o’ those doctors who measures the bumps on people’s heads proved it mathematically.” Sullivan grinned, showing a mouthful of peg-like teeth stained brown by decades of strong coffee. “Me, on the other hand, I’m plain as a post. That’s why I’ve risen so high in the world!”
Payton chuckled at the joke—if it was a joke, which Sacha wasn’t entirely sure of—and then came over and sat down at the table across from Inquisitor Wolf.
“All right,” Wolf said, ticking items off on his fingers. “What do we know so far? One, Naftali Asher and his wife arrived in America dead broke four years ago. Two, Asher was a perfectly ordinary klezmer player, but possibly—if we believe Kid Klezmer’s claims about the hate spell—a powerful magician. Three, Asher couldn’t find work playing music, but he did find work at Pentacle—”
“If only we could crack the Pentacle connection,” Payton interrupted, “I’m sure the whole story would fall into place.”
“I think so too,” Wolf said. “But that’s going to have to wait until we find Sam Schlosky.”
Sacha felt a sudden terrible pang of guilt. Maybe he was doing the wrong thing again. Maybe he should just tell Wolf about Moishe’s offer to help him meet with Sam. But no, Moishe had said Sam wouldn’t trust anyone but Sacha. Once he had heard what Sam had to say, then he could decide whether to tell Wolf about it or not. After all, he was only going to meet Sam and listen to his story. What harm could come of listening?
“In any case,” Wolf went on, “we do know this much: one month Asher is sick and broke, and a few months later, he’s the toast of the Bowery and the most famous klezmer player in New York. And he’s playing songs that come straight from Edison’s etherograph recordings. So the big question is, who gave Naftali Asher that music?”
At that moment a tall, lean shadow fell over the table and Sacha looked up to see Paddy Doyle himself staring down at them. The boy studiously ignored Inquisitor Wolf, Sacha, and even his ex-best friend, Philip Payton. Instead his snapping blue eyes and his rakish smile were all for Lily.
“Well, if it isn’t lovely Miss Lily, the Fifth Avenue slugger,” he said, playing up his Irish brogue for comic effect while still managing to sound annoyingly suave and debonair. “And how are you this fine mornin’?”
“Quite well, thank you,” Lily replied, for all the world as if she were talking to one of her mother’s high-society friends instead of a Hell’s Kitchen Hexer.
“And have ye heard how the Yanks battled Boston last night?”
“Only that we won.”
“We did indeed.” His smile broadened into a wicked grin. “’Twas a shinin’ victory, with grand pitchin’ on both sides. And when O’Malley hit the winnin’ run, he slid into home spikes first and practically took off the pitcher’s kneecaps.”
“Was there blood everywhere?” Lily asked with ghoulish glee.
“Aye, and gore aplenty. It was a glorious sight to see!”
“You were there?”
“Snuck in over the back fence.”
“I wish I were a boy!” Lily sighed. “I’d sneak into the games in a minute. But as it is, I couldn’t even go if I bought a ticket. My mother doesn’t approve of young ladies attending professional sporting events.”
“That’s a pity,” Paddy said casually. “I’m sure I would have had much more fun with you than with the young lady I did take. She had no appreciation for the fine art of pitchin’. Kept wantin’ me to stop watchin’ the game and kiss her.” His eyes widened in a look of mock dismay. “Can you imagine such a thing?”
Judging by the look on Lily’s face, Sacha was pretty sure she already was imagining it. “Don’t you have anything better to do than pester Miss Astral?” he snapped.
He took great care to pronounce Lily’s last name very clearly so there would be no mistaking it. Paddy grew pale when he heard it, and Sacha thought he even looked a little sick to his stomach.
“Good afternoon, Inquisitor Wolf, Mr. Payton, Mr. Kessler.” Paddy cleared his throat and gave Lily a final regretful glance. “And, er, Miss Astral.”
“So,” Wolf asked Payton when the saloon’s front door had swung closed behind Paddy, “what have you found out?”
“Well,” Payton said, “I managed to confirm most of Kid Klezmer’s story. Naftali Asher did work at Pentacle before he got famous. And he certainly was broke. I even found the pawnshop where he tried to pawn his clarinet to make the rent one month. But then, listen to this. The pawnshop owner said that the clarinet was only there for one night. Asher came back the next day to get it. He paid cash. And he said he’d gotten a new job and wasn’t going to have to worry about money ever again and he was about to become the greatest klezmer player that ever lived.”
“So that matches up with the wife’s story,” Lily said. “He must have gotten his first theater booking.”
“No,” Payton corrected. “That’s exactly my point. This was two months before anyone hired him to play the clarinet. Two months before he ever had a concert, he already had a job and a paycheck. And he was already telling people that he was going to be the most famous klezmer player in New York.”
Everyone stared at Payton.
“I don’t get it,” Sacha said finally. “Who hired him?”
“Maybe J. P. Morgaunt?”
“But why would Morgaunt hire a washed-up klezmer player who had to sew shirts in a magical sweatshop for a living?”
“He must have had something Morgaunt wanted. Enough to pay him good money for it. Enough to let him turn Edison’s etherograph recordings into klezmer songs.”
“But what could a poor sweatshop worker like Naftali Asher possibly have that Morgaunt would want so much?” Lily asked.
“I don’t know,” Payton answered with a determined look on his handsome face. “But I plan to find out.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sam’s Secret
THAT EVENING SACHA got back to his apartment early and fidgeted his way through dinner, jumping up like a sprinter at the starting gun every time a door opened or a stair creaked anywhere in the whole building.
When Moishe finally arrived, Sacha made some excuse to his parents about going upstairs to the IWW headquarters
to talk to a friend and followed the older boy toward the door.
“You won’t want your coat,” Moishe said when Sacha started to grab it off the peg. “It’ll just get in your way where we’re going.”
Moishe led him out of the apartment. And then, to Sacha’s amazement, instead of heading downstairs toward the street, he started climbing the stairs. Moishe led him past the IWW headquarters, up a final ladder-steep flight of stairs, and out onto the rooftop.
“He’s on the roof?” Sacha asked incredulously. But Moishe just smiled enigmatically and trotted off across the rooftop. Sacha followed him into the maze of tenement rooftops, scrambling over cornices and jumping across alleyways. It was hard to keep track of where they were, but Sacha was pretty sure Moishe was heading toward Allen Street. And when he heard the roar of the Elevated far below them, like the sound of a swift river floating up from a deep-cut canyon, he was sure of it.
Still, knowing more or less where you were was one thing. Knowing how to get down without breaking your neck was another. So when Moishe knelt over a grimy skylight and pried it open, Sacha was relieved to be leaving the world of birds and returning to the world of people.
Moishe looked around carefully, dropped into the empty stairwell, and helped Sacha down after him. Then he beckoned to Sacha and set off down the stairs, as surefooted as a cat in the shadows.
Sacha followed him down one flight, two flights, three flights . . . and soon realized that Moishe had dragged him across several blocks of rooftops only to head straight to a distant basement.
Sacha hated the tenement basements. They were places of vice and terror, either home to stale beer dives and whiskey joints or realms of mold and must and shadows.
This basement was the moldy, musty kind. He could tell that right away. And worse still, it wasn’t even a full basement; just a sort of earthen cave underneath the building where you had to crouch and scramble to get anywhere. There was no light, either.
But there was sound. There were sounds Sacha didn’t like and couldn’t make sense of. And they were getting louder. At first he thought he was hearing running water. But then the ripple became a thrumming, and the thrumming became a flutter, and the flutter became a throaty, gurgling whisper that made his blood run cold and his heart grow faint with terror.
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