The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. A Long Way Down

IS THIS WHAT ye call keeping Mr. Morgaunt’s name out of the papers?” Commissioner Keegan raged, waving a crumpled copy of the New York Sun in Wolf’s face.

They were standing in Morgaunt’s library again, Lily and Sacha flanking Wolf while the police commissioner stood before them and Morgaunt lounged in his chair. He didn’t have a glass of Scotch in his hand this morning — but other than that, Morgaunt looked as if he hadn’t moved a muscle since the last time he’d had Wolf dragged onto his astronomically expensive oriental carpet.

“Er … may I?” Wolf asked, reaching for the newspaper.

“Is this discretion?” Keegan shook the paper in Wolf’s face again. “Is this efficiency? Is this privacy?”

Wolf made another unsuccessful grab for the paper, but Keegan jerked it away.

“Do ye think this is all a bloody game?” he growled. “Don’t ye remember what happened to Roosevelt? Or are ye looking for a rematch? If so, I’ll thank ye to warn me. I’ll get out of town till the fight’s over, and so will every other cop with a brain in his head!”

Finally Wolf managed to coax the newspaper from Keegan’s hand. As he uncrumpled it, Sacha glimpsed the headline blazoned across the front page: “J. P. Morgaunt Caught in Love Tryst with Coney Island Cutie!”

“Oh, dear,” Wolf said.

“Is that all ye have to say for yourself?”

“Well, I should probably read the article before I say anything else,” Wolf pointed out — and proceeded, in a remarkably leisurely fashion, to do just that.

Then he handed it to his apprentices and waited for them to read it. The article was written in the signature New York Sun style, full of breezy slang and wink-and-nudge gossip:

A little birdie told us that Inquisitor Wolf of the NYPD Inquisitors Division was sighted on the boardwalk at Coney Island last week questioning eyewitnesses to an unsolved crime.

But was it a crime of magic … or a crime of passion? Can it be a coincidence that the main witness the Inquisitor questioned was the luscious Rosalind Darling, a.k.a. Little Cairo? Or that the crack NYPD Inquisitor was also recently seen coming out of J. P. Morgaunt’s Fifth Avenue mansion?

When we caught up with Miss Darling at home, her mother had this to say:

“I have no comment at all! I don’t wish to speak to you! My daughter lives only for her art, and if Mr. Morgaunt has been paying her some kind attentions, then he is inspired only by his pure appreciation of her artistic accomplishments. Which extend to tap-dancing, singing, photographic modeling, living statue exhibitions, and exotic interpretations. Available for theatrical bookings care of Darling Incorporated, Apartment 3D, 240 Mulberry Street. Did you get the apartment number, dear, or do I need to repeat it for you?”

Your Editors burn to shed the Sun’s blazing light on this Coney Island mystery! Will Mr. Morgaunt succumb to the delightful Miss Darling? Will she be the next theatrical temptress to join the ranks of high society? Will Mrs. Astral be forced to receive One Who Has Trod the Boardwalk? Only time — and your intrepid Sun—will tell!

“Poor Rosie!” Lily whispered to Sacha behind her hand.

“And I thought my mother was a handful!”

“Well,” Inquisitor Wolf said mildly, “Mrs. DiMaggio — er, I mean, Darling — certainly knows how to make the most of her opportunities.”

“And what am I supposed to tell Mr. Morgaunt?” Keegan asked, as if Morgaunt weren’t sitting right there next to him staring at Wolf with a look of cold amusement on his patrician face.

Keegan was doing all the talking again while Morgaunt sat silent in the background. But this time there was an unnerving quality to his silence that hadn’t been there on the first visit. Despite the commissioner’s fulminations, Morgaunt seemed pleased about Wolf’s slip-up.

Morgaunt’s eyes slid sideways, and he caught Sacha watching him. “Hello, Mr. Kessler. Are we still enjoying playing at cops and robbers, or is the fun starting to wear a little thin?”

“Leave him alone,” Wolf snapped. “He’s not up to your cat and mouse games.”

“Ah. So you’ve taken him under your wing, have you?” Morgaunt chuckled. “You’re softhearted, Wolf. That’s always been your downfall. Still, he’s a bit more interesting than the last stray you brought in off the street. How is your little Chinese friend, by the way? Are you still playing Romeo to her faded Juliet, or have you gotten tired of her yet?”

Wolf and Morgaunt stared at each other. Wolf’s face was as bland and expressionless as ever, but a faint flush crept up from his collar and spread over his cheeks.

“Oh, right,” Morgaunt said. “She got tired of you. Or maybe she just decided she’d rather be a prosperous spell-binder’s widow than the wife of an insubordinate policeman with uncertain prospects. How poignant.” Morgaunt reached across the mahogany wasteland of his desk to thumb through a thick stack of papers that looked suspiciously like official police reports. “Really, Wolf, I ought to pay you. Reading Keegan’s surveillance reports on you is as good as going to the opera.”

Wolf flashed Morgaunt a nonplussed look. He recovered quickly, however. “Are we just gossiping now?” he asked. “Or do you have something useful to tell me?”

“I have a job for you,” Morgaunt said. “The job you should have done in the first place. Keep Edison alive. And keep my name out of the damn papers. If you do that, then I might forget about Shen and her little orphans. If you don’t, I’ll dig up half of Chinatown and build a subway stop right in the middle of the Ladies’ Dancing and Deportment School!”

Whatever Wolf would have said in answer to this threat, Sacha and Lily never heard it. Just as he opened his mouth to reply, a great outcry went up in the courtyard of the Morgaunt mansion. A moment later, the butler appeared at the door, looking harried and disheveled.

“What’s happened, man?” Morgaunt snapped. “Out with it!”

“It’s the dybbuk! And this time it’s killed a man!”

Wolf and Morgaunt sprang toward the door like sprinters bursting forward at the sound of the starter’s pistol. Sacha and Lily followed, but Wolf waved them back.

“Wait here,” he warned. “No, don’t argue! We’re not playing games anymore. Stay in the library until I tell you it’s safe.”

The two children gazed forlornly at the closed door.

“Do you think it followed us here?” Lily asked in a small, frightened voice.

“Why would it?” Sacha asked, even though he was afraid he knew the answer.

“Sacha,” Lily whispered. “Have you ever wondered if… I mean, haven’t you noticed that…”

But Sacha turned his back on her, not wanting to hear the next words. He put his hand on the door, desperate to know what was happening outside but not daring to disobey Wolf’s orders. “I wish we could see what they’re doing out there,” he fretted.

“Hang on,” Lily said. “I’ve got an idea about that.”

And before Sacha could stop her, she was off. She sprinted down the length of the library, climbed the spiral staircase two steps at a time, clattered along the wrought-iron balcony, and leapt onto the rolling ladder so energetically that it whirled down its tracks with a sound like cloth ripping.

By the time Sacha reached the foot of the ladder, Lily was already far above his head.

“Wolf didn’t say we couldn’t look out the window,” she called down to him. “Did he?”

Sacha began to climb. The ladder was steep and narrow, and it quivered alarmingly on its metal wheels with every move he made. Morgaunt probably had some sub-under-butler specifically assigned to oil those wheels every morning. Sacha imagined him arriving tomorrow morning with his rags and oilcan, only to find two nosy children splattered all over the marble floor far below.

“Can you see anything?” he called up to Lily.

“No, it’s all stupid stained glass. On the other hand, I guess no one will notice if I just break a little bit.”

“Are you sure you should—”

“Cripes, Sacha! Since when did you turn into an old lady? pass me your handkerchief.”

He passed it up to her. A moment later he heard a sharp crack! and the bright tinkle of falling glass.

“Darn!” Lily said. “All I can see is more rooftops. Unless the dybbuk’s chasing pigeons, we’re plumb out of luck.”

“Lily! I think I hear someone coming, Maybe we should go back down.”

“In a minute.” More crackling and tinkling. “I think I might just be able to—”

Before Sacha could protest, Lily had broken several more panes of stained glass and squeezed herself out the window to her waist.

“Wolf told us to stay in the library!”

“I am in the library,” Lily said. “Or at least most of me is.”

Then she gave a sudden gasp of surprise — and her legs and feet vanished as if she’d been pulled out the window by her armpits.

It took less than a second to climb the last few rungs of the ladder, but it felt like the longest second in Sacha’s life.

When he looked out, he saw nothing at first but open sky. The library’s soaring vaulted roof stuck out above the rest of Morgaunt’s mansion like the prow of a clipper ship. From up here you saw just how vast the place was. Acres of slate-tiled roof rolled away on all sides, folding into high tors and steep ridgelines. It was like one of those impassable mountain ranges that travelers in old stories were always getting waylaid in. And, like real mountains, the roof’s ridgelines enclosed hidden ravines so narrow that you could walk right past them without ever knowing they existed.

It was one of those ravines that drew Sacha’s attention now. Though he couldn’t see into it, he could hear Lily Astral’s voice coming out of it.

“Do you live up here?” she was asking. “I can’t tell you how jealous I am! I always dreamed of running away from home and joining a Gypsy band that camped out on the rooftops! You must have some ripping good times!”

Sacha squirmed through the broken window and picked his way down the slope of the roof until he caught sight of her. She looked completely in her element. She was balanced on the slope of the roof like a pirate ready to board an enemy ship. She even had a broken-off broomstick clutched in one hand like a sword.

“What’s with the stick?” Sacha asked as he reached her side.

“Oh, when they first pulled me out the window, I thought I might have to thrash ’em. But they’re just kids.” A wistful tone crept into her voice. “And anyway they’re already leaving.”

Only then did Sacha notice the little group of children standing at the bottom of the ravine looking up at them.

Lily was right; they were just kids. Most of them were small for their age too, even by Hester Street standards. They were olive-skinned and dark-haired and brown-eyed, and they were dressed like Italians. But not like the prosperous Italians who ran the greengrocers on Prince Street, or even like the poor Italians of Ragpickers’ Row. These children were dressed in brightly embroidered peasant costumes like the newly arrived immigrants Sacha had seen coming off the boats from Ellis Island.

And they were definitely leaving. as Sacha and Lily watched, a harried-looking woman in a flowered head scarf popped around the corner, grabbed two of the kids, and dragged them away, scolding furiously.

“Is that Italian?” Lily asked doubtfully.

“I guess so. But it doesn’t sound like any Italian I ever heard.”

“Come on!” Lily called over her shoulder, already trotting off without waiting to see if Sacha was following. “Let’s see where they’re going!”

The ravine opened onto an undulating valley that stretched for acres in all directions. and Sacha could barely believe what he saw there: an entire shantytown, set up on the roof of Morgaunt’s mansion, where some several dozen women and children seemed to be going about the business of life as naturally and unconcernedly as if they were living at street level instead of hundreds of feet up in the air.

Or rather they had lived there. Now they were leaving — and in a hurry.

“Does anyone here speak English?” Lily called out.

A few of the women stared at them, but the rest just kept packing. Then a sturdy-looking boy a little younger than Sacha came forward. His eyes were red, and his face was streaked with tears. “I speak English,” he said. “What do you want with us?”

“Who are you?” Sacha asked. “What are you doing up here? And why are you leaving?”

“We’re the stonemasons’ families. And we live here. Or we used to. But now we have to leave because my father died, and the police are coming.”

Lily and Sacha stared at the boy, dumbfounded.

“I–I’m sorry,” Sacha said. “Was it the dybbuk?”

The boy shuddered. “If that’s what you call that thing.”

“Did you see it?” Lily asked.

“My mother did. She said it was a shadow in the shape of a person. She said it was made of smoke, and its eyes were blacker than Gesù Bambino.”

“She needs to talk to Inquisitor Wolf right now!”

“What are you, crazy? Why do you think we’re leaving? The last thing we want to do is talk to any cops!”

“But you have to!” Lily pleaded.

It wasn’t going to do any good. Sacha knew that even if Lily didn’t. There was no way these people were ever going to talk to the Inquisitors.

“What’s your name?” Lily demanded.

“Antonio.”

“Antonio what?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“You can’t just run away!” Lily cried. “The Inquisitors are trying to catch the man who killed your father! Don’t you want him caught? Don’t you want him stopped?”

“The police don’t care about my father any more than you do,” Antonio scoffed. “And as for stopping his killer, the police don’t need to worry. I’ll take care of that myself.”

Suddenly a woman ran up behind Antonio and began tugging him away from Sacha and Lily. She looked like Antonio, and she would have been very pretty if her hair hadn’t been so disheveled and her eyes so swollen from crying.

As she pulled Antonio away, she was whispering furiously into his ear. Finally he seemed to grasp what she was saying. His dark eyes flashed toward Sacha, and he tried to struggle free. But two more women had come to help his mother, and finally the three of them managed to drag him away.

As Antonio vanished behind a looming Gothic turret, he looked back one more time at Sacha.

In Sacha’s whole life up to that moment, no one had ever looked at him with such naked hatred.