“That’s the spirit!” TR cried. “When people ask you if you can do a job, tell ’em yes! Then get busy and find out how to do it! Each of you, quick, before you have time to think about it: Who’s the man you admire most in the world?”
Sacha had never asked himself this question in his life, but he didn’t have to think for a heartbeat before answering it: “My father.”
“Why?” TR grilled him.
“I guess … because he’s always put his family first? And he’s honest. And he works harder than anyone I’ve ever met.”
TR flashed his infectious grin at Sacha. “Bully for you! Grow up like your father, and you’ll be a man I’d be proud to call my friend.”
Then he turned to Lily, who was watching this exchange with a curious expression on her face. Suddenly he looked serious and forbidding. “And you, Lily? Do you feel the same way about your father?”
The angry flush that flooded Lily’s face was all the answer he needed.
“You’re a good girl, Lily. And you’ll make a good job of your life if you’ve got the guts to live up to your own ideals. It won’t be easy. But I don’t pity you. And I guess you wouldn’t thank me if I did. You and I are a lot alike.” He grinned the big gap-toothed grin that cartoonists loved to caricature. “That wasn’t a compliment, by the way, so you don’t have to thank me for it!”
“I–I—oh,” Lily stammered.
TR turned back to Wolf. “You’ve got two good ones here,” he told him. “Hang on to them.”
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!”