The Watcher in the Shadows

by Chris Moriarty

  On Rosie’s tape, they came through loud and clear.

  “Sam!” Naftali Asher howled. “No! Sam!”

  The film finished. The strip crackled and slipped out of the spool so that its loose end slapped against the table like a fly battering itself against a windowpane.

  The five of them stared at one another for a long time before anyone could manage to speak.

  “Did he say what I think he said?” Lily asked finally.

  “He couldn’t have meant it the way it sounded,” Rosie protested. “Sam never woulda—”

  “That won’t help him one bit if Commissioner Keegan ever gets hold of that tape,” Payton pointed out.

  “I’ve been looking for Sam all weekend and getting nowhere,” Inquisitor Wolf said. “So I guess Keegan’s right. It really is time we went down to Hester Street and paid Moishe Schlosky a visit.”

  Lily jumped up and started pulling on her coat.

  “In a minute,” Wolf said, turning back to Sacha, whose heart was sinking fast. “There’s something else I have to take care of first.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  No Easy Answers

  SACHA FOLLOWED WOLF into his office, feeling like a lamb going to slaughter.

  “Shut the door,” Wolf said.

  Sacha did—though it was all he could do not to dash through it, slam it behind him, and flee the building.

  They stood there for a moment, staring at each other.

  “You can sit down,” Wolf suggested.

  Sacha sat.

  Wolf sat down on the other side of his desk, sighed, and took his glasses off. He peered at them, holding the lenses up to the light and squinting sideways at them as if they hadn’t been working right lately and he was trying to figure out why. He picked up his tie, dabbed halfheartedly at the glasses with it, and then suddenly seemed to notice the motley collection of food stains that always bespeckled his ties. He frowned, sighed again, shrugged . . . and gave up on the glasses-cleaning project.

  “Did you ever find Mrs. Mogulesko?” Sacha asked.

  “What? Oh. Yes. And she told me where Sam’s family was. But it didn’t do me any good. None of them have seen him since Friday afternoon. He might as well have dropped off the face of the earth. The thing is, Sacha . . .” Wolf trailed off into a brooding silence.

  “What—” Sacha began.

  “What—” Wolf said at the same instant.

  “Sorry, you were saying?” Wolf asked.

  “Nothing! I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Mmmm,” Wolf murmured, as if this were extremely worrisome news. “Well, I was going to ask you what you thought of the Klezmer King’s music.”

  “I thought it was a little creepy—I mean that it sounded so much like the etherograph recordings.”

  “I agree,” Wolf said. He looked down at one of the files that littered his desk. “Naftali Asher became an overnight success a little less than a year ago. Before that, he was an amateur klezmer player who couldn’t get a gig to save his life, and other than that, he was just a stone-broke, out-of-work tailor.”

  “That’s odd,” Sacha said before he could stop himself.

  “The timing, you mean.”

  “No. That he was a sewer, not a presser. I mean, there are plenty of tailors, of course. But in the factories, sewing is mostly women’s work.”

  Wolf leaned forward in is chair, frowning. “Why? Can’t men sew?”

  “Well, a skilled man can usually find work as a tailor. That pays a lot better, you see. Whereas even the most skilled seamstresses at Pentacle only make ordinary magicworkers’ wages.”

  “Ah,” Wolf cleared his throat—and was Sacha imagining it, or did he seem a little stiff suddenly? “Thank you. That’s helpful, actually.”

  “Is that all you wanted to ask me about?” Sacha said hopefully.

  “No. Actually, I want to talk about you, Sacha.”

  “Oh.”

  “Have you ever thought about studying magic, Sacha?”

  Sacha stared at his toes, trying to still the pounding of the pulse in his throat before he answered. “It would break my grandfather’s heart.”

  “And how would your grandfather like to see you doing Morgaunt’s dirty work?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sacha asked angrily.

  “Don’t play games with me. I know what he said to you in the Elephant Hotel that night.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, Sacha,” Wolf murmured sadly, “I know because he said the same things to me the year after I joined the Inquisitors Division. Morgaunt was trying to take over Chinatown then. He was going after the Spellbinders the same way Minsky’s afraid he’ll go after Magic, Inc., if they fall out over the Pentacle strike. I can’t tell you what it was to walk the streets of this city then, and I hope you never see such a time.”

  “Is that when you fell—when you met Shen?”

  Wolf seemed to shrink in upon himself. When he finally answered, his voice was little more than a whisper. “Her husband was my first teacher. Everything you’re now learning from Shen, I learned from him. That and more. For unlike you, I was all too eager a student. Shen’s husband taught me. He believed in me. He trusted me when I promised the police would protect him.”

  Wolf bowed his head and covered his face as if the memories passing before his eyes were too terrible to bear. “Morgaunt murdered him at Shen’s very feet while I stood by without the skill to stop him. And that’s what he’ll do to everyone you care about, unless you make yourself strong enough to stand against him. Would your grandfather still tell you it was wrong to study magic if he knew all that?”

  “It wouldn’t change anything,” Sacha said. “Thou shalt not smite so much as a hair on a man’s head by magic. That is the law as far as he’s concerned. Not Thou shalt not smite so much as a hair on a man’s head by magic unless he tries to smite you first. And I guarantee you he’s got a list of rabbis as long as your arm who’ve died for that principle.”

  “So you think it’s right to obey to him in this?”

  “It’s not a matter of obeying, exactly,” Sacha said. He hesitated, not being able to explain it even to himself. “If it were only a matter of small magic, the sort of thing my mother and sister do to keep their jobs at Pentacle, or even the sort of hexes that common criminals use. But I’ve seen what Morgaunt does. That’s a different thing. Meyer Minsky himself wouldn’t dare work such spells. He can spend every Friday night drinking, gambling with five showgirls on his lap, and still call himself a good Jew. But he wouldn’t do what Morgaunt does.” Sacha hesitated.

  For a long moment Wolf just stared past Sacha with a haggard expression on his face. “No,” he said finally. “I suppose he wouldn’t. He’d say it was against his religion. And I would have said much the same thing back when I was within spitting distance of being a good Catholic.”

  Wolf stared at his desk as if he expected to find some answer in the piles of paperwork. “I really don’t know what to tell you, Sacha,” he said. “Maybe your family would be safer outside of New York.”

  Sacha felt a wave of dizziness sweep over him. Leave? Again? They’d already left one home to come to America. And at what cost? How could he tell his mother she wasn’t safe here either? And where on earth were they supposed to go now? Would the wandering never end?

  But he didn’t know how to say any of that to Wolf, so he only sighed and said, “Morgaunt would find us no matter how far we went.”

  Then a strange idea struck him. “That’s really why Meyer’s afraid of Morgaunt, isn’t it? Not because he thinks Morgaunt’s actually a stronger magician, but because Morgaunt’s willing to break the rules. And Minsky isn’t.”

  “Yes, Sacha. Men like Meyer follow a sort of magician’s code of honor. And Paddy Doyle and the Hell’s Kitchen Hexers and all the other gangsters in New York are the same. They’re romantics. But Morgaunt is the ultimate cynic. You could almost even say he doesn’t believe in magic. To a true magician, a dev
ice like the etherograph is practically anathema. The men of Magic, Inc., may not agree with Shen or your grandfather about anything else, but they all agree that power should be earned, not stolen.”

  Sacha tried to imagine his grandfather and Shen sitting down together to talk about Great Magic . . . but he couldn’t get past the image of how his grandfather would look if he ever even heard of such a thing as a woman wearing pants in public.

  “Well,” Wolf said finally, “let me think on this. And in the meantime, keep going to your kung fu lessons with Shen, will you? She’s not teaching you magic. But she’s teaching you the kind of discipline that will help you use magic wisely should you ever change your mind and decide to learn it. And”—he hesitated—“she can teach you things that will help you grow into your . . . gifts. Whatever they may turn out to be. She wouldn’t teach you what you call magic anytime soon, even if you asked her to. She isn’t a woman who deals in easy answers.” He grinned ruefully. “Or any answers at all, if she can possibly help it. But she’s the best teacher—and the best friend—you could possibly have right now.”

  “But why—” Sacha stopped, not wanting to seem nosy.

  “Go ahead,” Wolf said. “I’m in a confiding mood. Even though I know you’ll run straight to Lily with everything I say to you.”

  “Why does Shen help you? I mean after—what happened.”

  “You mean why does she want to help the arrogant fool who got her husband killed? I don’t know. Maybe she feels sorry for me. If you ever find out why that woman does anything, you let me know about it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Manhunt!

  SACHA SPENT MOST of their long trudge downtown to the offices of the Industrial Witches of the World wondering whether Moishe Schlosky was going to be at IWW headquarters when they got there—and the other half thanking heaven that it was the middle of the workday so Bekah definitely wasn’t going to be there.

  Normally Moishe Schlosky was a pretty friendly guy, but today when he opened the door and saw who was waiting for him, he put his hands on his hips, blocked the door—or at least as much of the door as his skinny body could block—made a sour face, and said, “Oh, great! You again! Who am I supposed to have murdered this time?”

  “No one,” Wolf assured him. “I just need to ask you abou—”

  “So you don’t even need an excuse anymore? Now Morgaunt’s just sending you down here to intimidate us?”

  “When Mr. Morgaunt sends the Inquisitors to intimidate you, I doubt they’re going to knock on the door politely and wait for you to let them in.”

  Moishe made a rude noise at this—but he did step aside.

  “Actually,” Wolf said, looking around absent-mindedly, “what I really need to talk to you about is your brother Sam.”

  At the mention of Sam, an extraordinary change came over Moishe’s face. Usually he wore an open, guileless, almost pathetically nice expression on his skinny features. But suddenly his eyes narrowed, and his mouth froze into a stiff line, and he grew completely still except for a nervous twitch to his fingers.

  Sacha almost burst out laughing. He’d never seen anyone over the age of five look so obviously like they’d just gotten caught stealing candy.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Moishe said. “Why would I have seen him?”

  “I don’t know,” Wolf said. “Why would you think I was going to ask if you’d seen him? Is there something you want to tell me, Moishe?”

  “Of course not!” Moishe’s fingers twitched some more. “Do I look like I want to tell you something?”

  “Well, actually . . . Good heavens, what on earth happened in here? Has Keegan already sent someone to turn the place upside down?”

  Sacha looked around the room—and for a minute he, too, wondered if the Inquisitors hadn’t already paid Moishe a visit.

  The place was a mess. Books and papers were scattered everywhere. But when he looked more closely, he realized that most of the papers were hot off the presses, still bundled into big stacks and waiting for volunteers to carry them around the city to hand out to passersby. Wolf glanced at a nearby folding table and fingered a freshly printed flyer.

  “SHOCKING!” Sacha read in the middle of the page. “SCABBALIST SCANDAL! READ ALL ABOUT J. P. MORGAUNT’S ILLEGAL SCHEME TO DEFEAT THE UNION!”

  “What’s a scabbalist?” Lily asked curiously.

  “A scab plus a Kabbalist,” Moishe said with a possessive pride that made Sacha suspect he himself had coined the word. “A magicworker who stabs the union in the back by working for the bosses. And not just as strikebreakers, either. You see, we happen to have good evidence that Morgaunt has had a scabbalist working for him for months and months now, building up a secret stockpile so he can keep shipping shirtwaists even after the strike starts. Morgaunt found a magician so powerful that he could do the work of a hundred regular magicworkers—and he hired him to make Pentacle strike-proof!”

  “Listen, Moishe,” Wolf began, “I need to know—”

  “Who the scabbalist is? I’ll never tell! My lips are sealed!”

  “Never mind the scabbalist,” Wolf said dismissively. “Where’s Sam?”

  “I’ll never tell that, either!” Moishe declared.

  Wolf sighed. “I’d threaten to throw you in jail until you’re ready to talk to me, but you’d probably be overjoyed about being turned into a martyr for the magicworkers’ revolution.”

  “As if I need your cooperation for that!” Moishe puffed his chest out proudly. “I’ll have you know I’ve been to jail three times just this month.”

  “Good God!” Wolf said. “What on earth for?”

  “Making speeches about magicworkers’ rights outside Pentacle Shirtwaist Factory.”

  Wolf hit the end of his patience. “Look, Moishe. I really need to talk to Sam. And you obviously know where he is—”

  “I never said that!”

  “You obviously know where he is.”

  “Not that I’m admitting anything!”

  “Moishe!” Wolf shouted. “Shut up!”

  “Well, gee,” Moishe said in a wounded tone, “you don’t have to shout.”

  “Do you know where Sam is? Yes or no!”

  “Okay—if you insist—yes.”

  “And?”

  “And I can’t tell you. Don’t look at me like that! It’s not my fault. I promised him!”

  “Listen, Moishe,” Wolf said. Sacha could see his frustration at Moishe’s uncooperativeness struggling with his knowledge of just how quickly Keegan would turn Moishe into a suspect if Wolf actually acted on his threat of dragging him in for questioning. “Sam’s in danger. I need to talk to him. For his own good.”

  “No can do,” Moishe said cheerfully. “But I will tell you this. You’re going to hear from Sam pretty soon now. We’ve just got to find a newspaperman in town who Morgaunt doesn’t own lock, stock, and barrel. And then Sam’s gonna talk. And when he does, I promise you, what he has to say is going to expose Morgaunt for the scheming criminal he really is!”

  Wolf seemed to feel he’d heard enough at this point. He stuffed his pencil and paper back into his pocket without having done more than doodled, and soon Sacha and Lily were following him back out into the stairwell.

  “Psst!” Moishe whispered just as Sacha was about to start down the stairs behind them.

  Sacha tried to silence him with a furtive hand gesture, but it did no good; Moishe was too honest to take a hint unless you knocked him over the head with it.

  “Has Bekah talked to you about that little favor we need from you?” Moishe whispered, loudly enough that Sacha thanked his lucky stars Lily was already clattering down the stairs half a story below them.

  “No,” he answered.

  “Well, come upstairs tonight so I can ask you about it.”

  “I might not be home early enough.”

  “So come tomorrow. Anyway, before the weekend.”

  Sacha just sighed and started down the stairs without answering
.

  For the rest of that week, Wolf turned Manhattan upside down looking for Sam Schlosky—or at least he turned Manhattan as thoroughly upside down as he could without naming Sam as a suspect or splashing his name all over the papers.

  They went through every hospital, every cheap hotel and lodging house, every five-cent flophouse. They talked to eve-­ ryone who’d ever known Sam and a lot of people who hadn’t. But it really was as Wolf had said. Naftali Asher’s dresser seemed to have vanished as completely as if God Himself had reached down and plucked him from the face of the earth.

  On Thursday morning, Wolf made a final just-in-case round of the Bowery flophouses and then, having found zilch, struck north with nothing more in mind that Sacha could see than walking and brooding. As they neared the south side of Washington Square, the streets began to ring with the sounds of the garment trade. Banks of sewing machines clattered and rattled in the soaring lofts of the factories. Cutters and drapers shouted to each other, their voices spilling into the street through windows that were propped open even in February to cut the punishing heat of the flatirons and sewing machine crank engines. Wagons rumbled over the cobblestones and double-parked outside the garment factories while schleppers with shoulders as broad as Harry Houdini’s tossed up the heavy bolts of cloth to the cutters who leaned out the second-story windows with arms outstretched to catch them.

  Sacha had tagged after Wolf on a lot of these apparently aimless walks by now, and he had begun to sense that they were part of Wolf’s way of thinking through a case. So he just kept his mouth shut and dropped back to walk next to Lily.

  Lily was still full of the story about Shen’s husband—which Sacha had naturally repeated to her almost as quickly as Wolf had predicted he would.

  “I still can’t believe Morgaunt killed Shen’s husband right in front of her!” she exclaimed. “How awful! Wolf must feel so guilty about it. And no wonder she’s never married him after that!”

  “Yeah, that must be it,” Sacha said sarcastically, “’cause it’s not any problem that he’s white and she’s Chinese.”