The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER TEN. The Handmaid of Science

WHEN THEY LEFT Edison’s lab, Sacha was still so frightened that he barely noticed where Wolf was going. They’d loitered around the park entrance for several minutes before he realized that Wolf must be waiting for someone. And just who that someone was became obvious when Thomas Edison hurried past them.

Wolf grinned … well, wolfishly. And then he set off in pursuit. Edison led them straight down the boardwalk to Peep Show Row. Sacha figured he was just passing through on his way somewhere else. But to his surprise, Edison ducked into one of the peep shows, right under the marquee sign for the “Dangerously Hot Little Cairo, Star of the Dusky East.”

The ticket boy must have known Edison because he let him in without paying. But Wolf was another story.

“I’ve heard that excuse before,” he drawled when Wolf explained they were there on official police business.

Wolf gave him a long-suffering look and flashed his badge — Detective Inquisitor gold and not just beat cop silver.

The ticket boy was less impressed than Sacha expected him to be. “You think I ain’t seen one of those before? We pay our protection money nice and regular. We don’t need to give out free tickets to the likes of you.”

“If I were here to see the show,” Wolf asked in rising frustration, “do you think I’d bring two children along?”

The ticket boy’s gaze wandered from Wolf’s badge to Sacha’s worn cloth cap to Lily’s white dress and patent-leather shoes. “I’ve heard that excuse too.” he stuck out his hand again. “You stay, you pay.”

Wolf sighed and handed over the money, and the three of them stepped through the curtain into the red-velvet-swathed theater.

The show was in full swing — and it was quite astonishing. Little Cairo certainly did have the raven curls and exotic attire of an Eastern houri. And she could also do extremely interesting things with her bellybutton. But as far as Sacha could see, no one else in the all-male audience was there to admire her dancing. Not that it mattered much what they were there for. Little Cairo’s virtue was obviously quite safe. It was guarded by a massive woman seated in a folding chair on one side of the stage. She was built like a heavyweight boxer, and her hat was pinned to her head with the longest, sharpest hatpin Sacha had ever seen. The look on her face made it clear that she was willing and able to use the hatpin. And her uncanny resemblance to a much older, much fatter Little Cairo made it clear that she was the dancer’s mother.

When the dance finally ended, Little Cairo waltzed off the stage, sweeping up armfuls of flowers and silken veils and feather boas. Mrs. Little Cairo rose ponderously, shot one last threatening glare at the audience, and followed her daughter into the wings.

Wolf cut through the crowd, leaving the two apprentices to elbow their way after him. When they finally caught up with him, he was standing at the door of Little Cairo’s dressing room toe to toe with her formidable mother.

“Don’t get hoity-toity with me, young man!” Mrs. Little Cairo stuck out her well-padded bosom and brandished a threatening fist in Wolf’s face. Underneath her prim lace gloves, her hands were as meaty as a prizefighter’s, and they looked just as capable of doing damage. “I already ran off one gentleman caller today, and I can run you off, too!”

“I assure you, madam—”

“Don’t madam me! What kind of a girl do you think my daughter is?”

“—that I’m here on official police business.”

“Hah! You think I haven’t heard that excuse before?”

“Honestly,” Lily whispered in Sacha’s ear, “between her and the ticket boy, you’ve got to wonder what the Coney Island police do all day!”

Sacha snorted in laughter, earning himself a dirty stare from Mrs. Little Cairo.

“I’ll have your badge number!” the dancer’s mother bellowed, turning back to Wolf. “Let’s see it!”

Wolf shrugged and fished his badge out of his pocket again.

“You’ll hear about this,” Mrs. Little Cairo huffed. “Let me assure you, Inquisitor Wo — oh!” She stopped cold as she read the name on Wolf’s badge, and when she spoke again, it was in a simpering, almost girlish voice. “Inquisitor Wolf? Not the Inquisitor Wolf?”

Wolf bowed solemnly. “At your service, Mrs.…”

“Darling. Mrs. Darling. Widowed.” She giggled coyly and extended the hand with which she’d been threatening his life moments ago.

Wolf hesitated only for the briefest instant before bending to kiss it.

“Oh, Inquisitor Wolf! I’m sure my daughter will be highly gratified by your appreciation of her art — to which, as you can see, she’s simply devoted — though, mind you, she’s quite unattached in any other sense. A fact which you might just consider mentioning next time you’re lunching with one of your Astrals or Vanderbilks or any of your other great Wall Street Wizards or captains of industry—”

At this point the door to the dressing room opened and Little Cairo appeared. She took stock of the situation, pursed her bee-stung lips, and turned to her mother. “Mamma,” she announced in an accent straight out of Little Italy, “I need a milk shake.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

“But, my dear, consider your reputation! To receive a gentleman caller without your dear mother present to—”

“Mamma, I’m sure Inquisitor Wolf wouldn’t dream of misbehaving with these two adorable children here.” Little Cairo pronounced the word as if it were spelled adohwable.

“But really, Rosie—”

“Mamma, I’ve lost two pounds this week!” Little Cairo plucked at the chest of her skimpy costume. “If I lose any more weight, we’re going to have to take in my clothes!”

Mrs. Little Cairo gasped. Taking in Rosie’s clothes, even by so much as an inch, obviously meant giving up all her motherly dreams of Broadway debuts and high-society weddings. “A milk shake!” she agreed. “And with extra malted powder! Tell me, my pet, do you think you could drink two?” She bustled off, muttering about the difficulty of keeping up a growing girl’s figure through nightly performances and a doubleheader Sunday matinee.

Little Cairo watched her go with a look of fond exasperation. Then she walked into her dressing room and sat down at a wobbly wicker dressing table in front of a pink-rimmed heart-shaped mirror.

“Take a load off,” she told Wolf and the apprentices. “And don’t mind me, I gotta get out of this getup. It itches something terrible!”

She turned back to the mirror, primped at her raven black locks — and then lifted them right off her head, veil, spangles, and all. The hair underneath the wig was a deep, rich, glowing auburn: the same color that every fashionable woman in New York coveted. And in Little Cairo’s case it was obviously natural — as was the way her curls swept into a ravishing Gibson Girl swirl with only a pat or two from her shapely fingers.

Sacha was still blinking in amazement at this transformation when Little Cairo pushed a pair of coke-bottle glasses onto her lovely nose. Then she peeled a gob of lime green chewing gum off the side of the mirror where she’d been storing it during her dance number, stuck it in her mouth, and started chewing as if her very life depended on beating the gum into submission.

“So,” she said between chews, “whaddaya wanna know?”

“Your name and address would be a good start.”

“Name’s DiMaggio. Rosie DiMaggio.”

Wolf had already started fishing through his pockets for the ever-elusive pencil, but now he looked up at her, perplexed. “Your mother said—”

“I know. She thinks Darling has more social potential. Mamma’s very big on social potential. She says you need more than just talent to become a celebrity. She says you need to build a persona.”

“I see. and is working for Mr. Edison part of developing your social potential?”

Rosie stuck her hand out like a cop stopping traffic. “Now wait just a minute, mister! Let’s get one thing clear from the get-go! If you tell my mother about Mr. Edison, then by gum, I’ll … I’ll … I’ll…”

“You’ll what?” Wolf sounded genuinely curious.

She glared at him ferociously. “You don’t wanna know!”

“There’s no need to threaten me, Miss Darling — er, DiMaggio. I’m investigating a magical crime. I have no interest whatsoever in your romantic entanglements.”

“It ain’t no ’tanglement,” Rosie protested. “I ain’t the ’tangling kind of girl! You think I’m just some common chorus-line hoofer? I’m gonna grow up to be an inventor, just like Mr. Edison! After that, maybe I’ll have time for romance. But for now”—she pressed a shapely hand to her chest and heaved a romantic sigh—“for now, I am a Handmaid to Science!”

Wolf coughed. “and Mr. Edison is…?”

“He’s giving me inventor lessons. You think you can just wake up one morning and start inventing? Not hardly! You gotta practice, practice, practice. It’s just like tap-dancing.”

“And your mother doesn’t know about your inventor lessons.”

“She wouldn’t understand,” Rosie wailed despairingly. “She wants me to be a stawh.”

“Excuse me. A what?”

“A stawh. A celebrity. She wants me to be a famous actress and get my picture in the paper and marry a millionaire.” Rosie sighed fatalistically. “I know she only wants what’s best for me. But a girl can’t be practical all her life. A girl’s gotta have dreams!”

“And Mr. Edison is helping you pursue your dreams by giving you inventing lessons … er … free of charge?”

“Not for free! For valuable services rendered! I’m his lab assistant. Which basically means I take the lab notes and clean up the mess after he explodes stuff, and if someone has to get electrocuted, it’s me.” Rosie grinned, flashing thirty-two perfect white teeth and one gob of lime green chewing gum. “But like they say on the turf, If you don’t risk your money, you can’t play the ponies!”

Wolf smothered a grin. “And was Mr. Edison in the process of electrocuting you yesterday when the … er…”

“When the dybbuk showed up?”

Wolf’s pencil paused. “Why is everybody so sure it was a dybbuk, anyway?”

“Because it was.”

“How do you know?” Wolf asked curiously.

“Oh, it had all the classic signs. The cold and hungry look. That creepy wailing and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness kind of aura. Plus, it looked like a dybbuk.”

“And just what do you imagine a dybbuk looks like?”

“You know!” Rosie waved a hand vaguely in Sacha’s direction. “Like … like a nice Jewish boy.”

“She seems to know an awful lot about dybbuks for an Italian girl,” Lily pointed out acidly. “Doesn’t anyone else think that’s a little odd?”

Sacha jumped at the sound of Lily’s voice. He’d been so busy staring at Little Cairo that he’d forgotten all about Lily. But there she was, sitting right next to him with a pinched-up look on her face like she’d just eaten a lemon.

“Oh, I know all about dybbuks,” Rosie said, completely oblivious to Lily’s hostile tone. “My cousin Maria walks out with a Yeshiva boy. Don’t tell my mother, though. She’d tell Maria’s mother, and wouldn’t they just scream!”

“He can’t be much of a Yeshiva boy if he’s walking out with a Catholic girl,” Sacha pointed out.

Rosie blinked in astonishment. Clearly it had never crossed her mind that the boy’s parents would be just as upset as her own family. “Well, yeah. I guess his mother’d scream too if she found out. Hey, wouldn’t it be a hoot if they both found out at the same time? They’d probably break every window in Manhattan!”

Rosie laughed uproariously at this idea, and Sacha couldn’t help laughing with her. But he came back down to earth with a thump when Lily kicked him.

“That was a complete waste of a day!” Lily said as they settled into the train for the ride home.

“You think?” Wolf asked.

“Well, wasn’t it? We traipse all the way out to Coney Island, and all we have to show for it is a lost piece of jewelry.”

“We know the dybbuk is real now,” Wolf pointed out.

“Assuming you believe the Star of the Dusky East,” Lily scoffed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Wolf said. “What do you think, Sacha? You’ve been awfully quiet today.” Wolf had taken the locket out of his pocket and was turning it over and over between his bony fingers.

Sacha stared, mesmerized. He had the oddest feeling that if something didn’t stop him, he was about to start talking — and once he got started, he wouldn’t stop until he’d told Wolf everything.

It was Lily who saved him.

“What were you saying back at Edison’s lab?” she asked him.

Sacha started. “Oh. I just… I couldn’t understand why Edison was so nervous about his prototype. Or why it looked the way it did. I mean, the one we saw at Morgaunt’s library worked just fine. And it wasn’t dripping engine oil all over his carpet, either.”

“Maybe that one was just for playing souls on,” Lily suggested.

“Yeah, but think of all those cylinders Morgaunt showed us. How did they record those if Edison’s prototype still doesn’t work?”

“You think Edison was lying to us?”

“I don’t know. But someone’s lying.”

“It certainly seems that way,” Wolf agreed.

“Well, coming all the way out here just to find out someone’s lying to us still seems like a waste of time to me,” Lily said. “We didn’t learn a thing about the dybbuk. And anyway, who on earth would even want to kill Thomas Edison?”

Sacha stared at her in disbelief. What about every Mage, magician, and immigrant in New York? He wanted to ask.

But before he could say anything, Wolf pulled that morning’s paper out of his coat pocket and tossed it onto the seat between them.

“HOUDINI ACCUSED OF KABBALISM!” the headline blared in inch-high italics. “Thomas Edison to Testify!”

The article explained that Edison had accused Houdini of using magic in his death-defying escapes — and was going to testify about it next week before the Committee on Un-American Sorcery. The article didn’t say what was going to happen to Houdini. But it was full of ominous words like perjury and contempt of Congress and felony abuse of magic.

It was outrageous, Sacha thought angrily. Houdini was being tried and condemned in the press without even getting a chance to tell his side of the story. “You’d think someone would at least take the trouble to go talk to the poor guy before they throw him in jail!” he blurted out.

“Actually,” Wolf said, still turning the locket in his hands, “we’re on our way to talk to him right now.”