legs trembled. His entire body tensed like a coiled spring. What if he made a mad dash for it? Would he make it? And what would happen if he didn’t?
It was only the briefest of glances, a flick of his eyes toward the stoop. No natural creature could have vanished into the shadows that quickly. Nonetheless, when he looked back the watcher was gone.
Sacha cast his eyes frantically around the silent street, but there was no sign of the shadowy figure. If it weren’t for the icy chill still upon him, he could almost have convinced himself he’d imagined it.
As he reached the third floor, he could hear his mother and father bickering affectionately with each other, and Bekah setting the table for dinner, and Uncle Mordechai chuckling over something in the
He gasped and spun around, heart pounding — only to see Moishe Schlosky, of all people.
“Shhh!” Moishe whispered. “Stop shrieking like a girl!”
“I was not shrieking like a girl,” Sacha protested, torn between anger at Moishe and embarrassment about the admittedly somewhat high-pitched sound that had escaped him when he felt Moishe’s bony fingers on his shoulder.
“You were too. Anyway, never mind. I have to talk to you.”
“Fine, so talk to me like a normal person! Don’t sneak up on me in a dark hallway!”
“Do I look like the landlord?” Moishe asked comically. “Now it’s my fault there’s no lights in here?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Moishe! What do you want already?”
“A favor, just a favor. You’re working for that Inquisitor, right?
“So?”
“So you know what he’s up to and how his investigation is going.”
“I guess,” Sacha said reluctantly, not liking where this conversation was headed.
“Well, then couldn’t you just … you know … kind of keep me posted on it?”
“I could get fired for that!”
“Class solidarity demands it of you!”
Sacha guffawed. “You’ve
Inside the apartment the friendly voices were drowned out suddenly by the rapid-fire clatter of Mrs. Lehrer’s foot-powered sewing machine. It was probably Mo at the sewing machine, knocking off another dozen shirts while his wife fixed dinner before doing her nightly quota. It seemed a hard life suddenly — miles away from Lily Astral’s world of mansions and limousines.
“Is that all you want in life?” Moishe asked, as if reading Sacha’s thoughts. “To be an errand boy for the Carbuncles and Vanderbilks and Morgaunts? Don’t you believe in anything?”
“I believe in taking care of my family,” Sacha said stubbornly.
“Of course you do. We all do. That’s what your sister is working for, and a lot of other girls like her. We’re just asking you to help.”
“Well, ask someone else.”
“Look,” Moishe said, “couldn’t you just think about it?”
“Moishe, I’m not going to do it no matter how long I think about it.”
“Oh!” Moishe cried in a voice worthy of the mourners at the Wailing Wall. “Oh, that a nephew of Mordechai Kessler should have come to this!” He was still shaking his head when the door to Sacha’s apartment popped open and Bekah stuck her head out.
“Sacha!” she said. “What are you doing lurking in the stairwell! Dinner’s already on the ta—”
She caught sight of Moishe and stopped abruptly.
Sacha looked at Bekah. Then he looked at Moishe. Then he looked back at Bekah again. “Are you
“Don’t!” Bekah warned. “Don’t you dare say one more word!”
“Bekah—” Moishe began.
“And you!” she snapped, sounding uncannily like their mother. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble? Get out of here already!”
Moishe started to protest, but then he took one look at Bekah’s furious face, tucked his tail between his legs, and slunk away like a man who knew when he was beaten. Sacha couldn’t help grinning at the sight; obviously Bekah already had Moishe’s training well in hand.
Bekah held the door to their apartment open, but Sacha wasn’t ready to go inside yet.
“No way!” he said, just quietly enough to make sure their mother wouldn’t hear him. “Moishe Schlosky?”
“Oh, and I suppose you’re dating Mary Pickford? I’d bet good money you’ve never even kissed a girl!”
“Yeah, but … Moishe? He’s so … so … so
“You are the most shallow, superficial, trivial—”
“Are you two waiting for the Messiah out there?” their mother shouted from inside the apartment. “Come in and sit down already! Dinner’s getting cold!”
Sacha was still shaking his head in amazement when he sat down to dinner. Indeed, he was so busy being amazed at the idea of Bekah being sweet on Moishe that he almost forgot Moishe’s outrageous idea that he ought to spy on Wolf for the strikers. As if he didn’t have enough problems already!
When the rest of his family was settling down for coffee and after-dinner chatter around the kitchen table, Sacha went to the window and cautiously lifted the curtain.
There was nothing there. No watcher in the shadows. No dark figure standing at the edge of the streetlights.
For some unfathomable reason, that made him feel worse instead of better. Who or what had been following him? And could it possibly be a coincidence that this silent watcher had first appeared on the very same night that Edison and Sacha’s mother had both been attacked?
He was still wondering about it when he got to work the next morning to find out that the dybbuk had tried to burn down Edison’s Luna Park Laboratory.
CHAPTER NINE. The Wizard of Luna Park
NEW YORKERS disagreed about everything else under the sun, but the one thing they all loved was Coney Island. On Coney Island, New Yorkers of every race, religion, and nationality banged elbows with one another in raucous harmony. a Jewish boy from Hester Street couldn’t venture into Hell’s Kitchen or Little Italy without risking injury to life and limb — not to mention pride. But on Coney Island he could mingle with Irish, Italian, German, and Greek boys, all of them bent on nothing more sinister than riding the rides and ogling the peep shows. Everyday jobs and responsibilities and loyalties were forgotten. Coney Island’s philosophy was live and let live. Or rather, play and let play.
Sacha had been there before, of course. Several times a year for as long as he could remember, he and Bekah had piled onto the nickel ferry with their father for the long ride to the famous amusement park. Mrs. Kessler never went; she insisted she had better things to do with her day off than walk up and down the boardwalk wearing out her shoes and gawping like a carp. But Mr. Kessler loved Coney Island. It was the one place in New York where he seemed to be able to forget his worries and just enjoy life. It was the one place in New York where Sacha could imagine that his father and Uncle Mordechai were actually brothers. If anyone had asked him, Sacha would have said he loved Coney Island — but, really, it wasn’t the rides he loved, or the boardwalk, or the hucksters and peep shows and shucked peanuts. It was the person his father turned into when they went there.
Going to Coney Island with Inquisitor Wolf, on the other hand, was a somewhat different experience.
Wolf whisked Sacha and Lily into a waiting cab and straight downtown to the Brooklyn Bridge. then he counted over the unimaginable sum of three dollars at the ticket window and ushered them into the quiet, middle- class luxury of the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad Company Special Express: nonstop to Coney Island in a blistering thirty-two minutes.
