The Inquisitor's Apprentice (27 page)

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.

W
OLF WAS WAITING
for them when they got back to the library, and he was furious.

Not that you could tell that easily. It turned out that Wolf got angry just like Sacha's father did: no yelling, just a deafening silence that made you feel like getting boxed on the ear would be a welcome relief.

"Go back to the office," he interrupted when they tried to tell him about Antonio and the stonemasons' children. "Maybe a day of filing papers for Payton will remind you that this is a real job, not a game."

Sacha caught the undercurrent of anger in Wolf's voice immediately and knew they were on seriously thin ice. But Lily just forged right ahead.

"But—"

"Forgive me, Miss Astral," Wolf murmured in a tone that made the hair on the back of Sacha's neck stand up. "I must have failed to make myself clear—"

"But—"

Wolf leveled a stare at Lily that froze the words on her lips and had her backing toward the door before he even spoke again. "Just go!"

 

"So," Lily asked as soon as they had passed through Morgaunt's monumental front gate and were out on the sidewalk. "How are we going to find Antonio?"

"We're not. Didn't you hear Wolf? We're going back to file papers for Payton."

"But he didn't give us a chance to tell him about Antonio. He doesn't know there's an eyewitness."

"Lily," Sacha said warningly.

"Look at it this way," she told him in her most reasonable voice. "We're only doing what Wolf would want us to do
if
he knew what we know."

"Lily!"

"Besides." She was warming to her argument. "Wolf's hands are tied. You heard Morgaunt threatening Shen, didn't you?"

"
Lily!
"

"Listen, Sacha, you ever read
Boys Weekly?
"

"Sometimes," Sacha said grudgingly. He knew that this wasn't a real change of subject and that she was probably going to use the admission to trap him into something.

"So, you know the Westerns?" Her blue eyes flashed with enthusiasm. "They always start out with some poor bunch of bean farmers. You know the type I'm talking about. They're good men. Principled men. But they're
tied down.
They've got wives and children and mortgages. So when the cattle barons try to run them off their land, what can they do? Nothing. But then"—her voice sank to an excited whisper—"then there's always the lone gunman who rides in over the horizon. No name, no woman, no strings attached. Just a hero and his horse and his gun. A hero who can take on the bad guys with no holds barred and no punches pulled." She nodded decisively and tapped Sacha on the chest. "That's us, Sach. The lone gunman on the horizon riding in to save the day."

"But there's two of us," Sacha protested. "Unless you're saying I'm the
horse.
And what does that make Wolf, anyway? A bean farmer?"

Still, even as he said it, his feet were following Lily of their own accord.

"So how are you going to find Antonio?" he asked after half a block. "We don't even know anyone in Little Italy."

"Oh, yes we do! Think carrots!"

"If you're talking about Rosie DiMaggio, then
I
think you're just being jealous. Most people would call her hair auburn. I understand the color is quite fashionable."

He glanced sideways at Lily to gauge her reaction—and almost laughed out loud when he saw how annoyed she looked.

"You're not as funny as you think you are," she snapped. "In the English language
I
speak, the name of that color is plain old orange. And you know what else? I bet I've got just the right stick to make Little Miss Carrot-top help us!"

***

Rosie DiMaggio's home turned out to be a shabby but surprisingly large wood-frame house. It was in a working-class neighborhood—but still a lot better than anywhere Sacha's family could ever have afforded to live. Obviously the DiMaggios weren't doing too badly for themselves.

"I can't understand why they let the outdoor paint go like that," Lily said with a judgmental shake of her head. "Somebody ought to tell them that keeping up with maintenance is always cheaper in the long run."

"If you say so," Sacha said. "Let's just hope Rosie hasn't left for Coney Island already."

But they were in luck. She was—as Mrs. DiMaggio explained—"between engagements."

"I guess that means they fired her after the newspapers got hold of the Morgaunt story," Lily whispered. If Sacha suspected that there was a hint of satisfaction in her voice, he knew enough not to say anything about it.

"And what do you children want to speak to Rosalind about?" Mrs. DiMaggio asked. She looked back and forth between them as if she couldn't decide whether to chase Sacha away or invite Lily Astral in.

"Oh," Lily answered with an appalling giggle, "I just came over to ask her to my birthday party. Do you think that would be all right?"

Mrs. DiMaggio blinked at Lily. "And what did you say your name was, dear?"

"Lily As—" Sacha jabbed her in the side with his elbow. "Ow! Ah, I mean, Lily Asbury."

Mrs. DiMaggio hesitated. She had taken Sacha's measure in the first glance, but Lily's uptown accent and expensive clothes were clearly puzzling her.

"Oh,
do
let her come," Lily simpered, actually managing to bat her eyelashes at the woman. "It'll be such fun! We're going to have pony rides! And—and tea!"

Sacha thought he was going to throw up. Mrs. DiMaggio, on the other hand, was entranced.

"Oh, you dear, dear child!" the immense woman cooed. Then she waved them up the stairs. "Why don't you just run up and give her the invitation in person?"

"Thank you, Mrs. DiMaggio!" Lily cried, with a sticky-sweet smile pasted on her lips. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou! You're such a darling!"

"You're frighteningly good at that," Sacha teased, as soon as they were safely out of Mrs. DiMaggio's earshot. "I'm starting to think you could pass for a normal girl if you put a little effort into it."

"Perish the thought! Now, how the heck do we find her room without stumbling around until darling Mrs. D. comes up to see if we're stealing her bath towels?"

Now that they were inside the DiMaggios' house, Sacha understood why it was so big: It was a rooming house. One of the doors in the long hallway would lead to Rosie's room, but the rest belonged to lodgers. Not that Lily would balk at barging in on perfect strangers unannounced and uninvited. And if she surprised some poor fellow in his undershirt, she'd probably just give him advice about how to launder his linen better.

Rosie herself rescued them, sticking her head out of a doorway at the end of the hall and greeting them as though they were all the best of friends. She still seemed pretty friendly even when they got inside her room and out of her mother's earshot.

"So how's the Inquisiting going?" she asked around her usual gob of chewing gum. This gob was at least as big as the one she'd been chewing back on Coney Island, but instead of being lime green, it was electric blue.

"Inquisiting is very interesting," Lily answered primly. "But we're here to ask for your assistance in locating some lost persons."

"Some what?"

"Lost persons. People who are—"

"Yeah, I heard you," Rosie interrupted. "I just don't know why you need my help."

"Well, you see," Lily began—and launched into the most convoluted and unconvincing lie Sacha had ever heard anyone try to tell. It featured truancy officers and lost orphans and princely rewards, and it sounded like she'd lifted it straight out of a bad
Boys Weekly
story—which, for all Sacha knew, she had. Uncle Mordechai at his wiliest couldn't have pulled off such a ridiculous story. And Lily was no Uncle Mordechai.

Finally Sacha stepped in to rescue her.

"Okay, so here's the truth," he told Rosie. "The dybbuk killed an Italian stonemason at Morgaunt's mansion this morning, and we met his son—"

"Sacha!"

"Just be quiet, Lily. You should never, ever lie. You're really bad at it. Anyway, like I was saying, we met the dead stonemason's son and a bunch of other kids who were living up on the roof. But they ran away before we could get any information out of them. So we need to find them."

"So where were they from?"

"Who?"

"The stonemasons."

"I told you, Italy."

"Come on! Gimme a little help here!" Rosie held up her hand with her thumb and fingers pressed together and shook it in front of Sacha's nose as if she were trying to shake the information out of thin air. "I mean, tell me he's from Napoli. Or Palermo. Or Abruzzo. Then I could find him for you in half an hour flat. But
Italy?
Do you know how many Italians there are on this island?"

"Oh," Sacha said disappointedly. "But how would we even know where he was from?"

"I dunno. What language were they speaking?"

"Uh ... Italian?"

Rosie sighed and rolled her eyes. It made her look surprisingly like Bekah. "What
kind
of Italian?"

"Is there more than one?" Lily asked, completely mystified.

"Wait a minute," Sacha said. "He did say something that I thought was really strange. Not that I know anything about ... well..." He flailed around for a minute trying to find a polite word for
goyim,
but then gave up. "Anyway, he said the dybbuk's eyes were blacker than
Gesú Bambino.
I always thought that meant 'Baby Jesus.' But that's definitely the first time I ever heard anyone call Jesus bl—"

Suddenly Rosie was jumping up and down and hugging him. "Sacha," she cried, "you're a genius!"

"Really?"

"They're not just stonemasons—t hey're Sicilian stonemasons. From Tindari. Betcha dollars to dybbuks! And not just that, but I know exactly where they'd go if they were looking for a safe place to get away from the cops!"

By the time they got to Twelfth Street, Rosie had explained her reasoning—though her whirlwind explanation left Sacha's head spinning.

"It's like this, see. The only person who'd say someone was
nero come it bambino Gesú,
is a person who's seen a Black Madonna. And the only Black Madonna I ever heard of is the Madonna of Tindari. Which I happen to know about because of the Saint's Feast they have every year up on Twelfth Street. Hey, look! They've got fresh pizza at Vesuvio's. Wanna slice?"

"
That's
pizza?" Lily asked. "Wow. Well, if you're getting a slice anyway..."

"What about you, Sacha? Don't worry, it's kosher!"

"It is?" Sacha asked eagerly.

"Sure," Rosie said with a laugh. "Just like wonton soup."

"
Wonton soup?
Who told you that? Your cousin's boyfriend?" Sacha was starting to have some serious doubts about the fellow.

"It's a joke," Rosie said, laughing. "You know: Why is wonton soup kosher? What, you never heard that one? Come on, ask me!"

"Uh ... okay ... why
is
wonton soup kosher?"

"'Cause it's Chinese, stupid!"

"Oh," Sacha said, feeling disappointed. The pizza really had looked good.

"So anyway," Rosie continued when she'd finished her pizza, "they used to have this street fair every year up on Twelfth Street. You know, get out the Madonna, dress her up in fancy clothes, parade her around, play with snakes. All good fun. I used to go every year 'cause they had the best fried squid in town."

"Fried squid?" Lily said in tones of intense interest. "When is this fair again?"

"Yeah, well, unfortunately the health inspectors shut them down for
sanitary reasons—someone
complained about the squid, probably."

"People are so stupid," Lily sighed.

"Tell me about it," Rosie agreed. "That was some really good squid!"

Sacha rolled his eyes. All he needed to do now was get them in a room with his mother, and every city health inspector would be run out of town on a rail.

"So anyway," Rosie went on, "after the street festival was shut down, the Sicilian Stonemasons Fraternal Association volunteered to build a chapel for the Black Madonna if someone would donate the space for it. So who steps up to the plate? Mr. Rotella of Rotella's Funeral Home on Twelfth Street. He donates his whole basement—well, except for the part where they keep the corpsicles. So the Order of the Santissima Madonna di Tindari builds their chapel there.
Which
my Uncle Louie just happened to be the guy who did the electrical wiring on it.
Which
I just happen to have overheard him telling my mother that those Tindari Sicilians were practically moving into the place, and Mr. Rotella was going to get shut down by the city if he started letting people sleep in his basement. Well, live people, I mean. I guess you don't need a health inspection for dead people. Hey, look, fried dough! Want some, Sacha? No? Well, maybe later."

By the time they reached Twelfth Street, Sacha's stomach was growling—and he was starting to wonder how two reasonably normal-size girls could possibly cram this much food down their gullets without exploding.

"Well, here we are," Rosie said. "Rotella's Funeral Home! Now we just have to figure out how to talk our way into the basement!"

Rotella's Funeral Home presided over a forty-foot stretch of Twelfth Street, transforming an ordinary workaday section of sidewalk into something resembling a wedding cake for giants with very questionable taste in pastries. Its awning was a meringue-like confection of pink and silver satin. Its stained-glass windows twinkled in rainbow colors that would have looked right at home in any Coney Island fun house. Its facade dripped with so many gleaming terra cotta sculptures that it was hard to imagine there was an ordinary brick tenement house somewhere under it all.