Steam City Pirates (3 page)

If this were how my cases begin now, I was going to have to change my method of discovery. What was I going to do to find clues about a crime that had not yet been committed? In the first place, I was an Army man, and I had no experience with naval matters. Secondly, the fact that Seth reported that these pirates would be using an air balloon to abscond with their booty was not only impractical but it was also beyond my comprehension.

“As soon as we get to the office, I shall address your prognostications, Seth. Until then, if you have any more relevant visions, please retain them until we reach our destination,” I said, squeezing the boy’s hand as I began to walk.

“Yes sir, Mister O’Malley. I just thought you might want to know about it. If you had asked me earlier about the men who kidnapped my father, then you might have avoided a lot of effort,” he pointed out, and there was a hint of rancor in his high-pitched voice.

He was correct. I had not believed the lad when he told me he was invisible inside the hospital room of Mount Sinai when his father was taken, so I never asked him about what he had seen. I was not going to make that mistake again, as young Seth Mergenthaler was now my only real connection with a person who had the same kind of powers I had to now confront.

We had searched all over New York City to find a place where we felt comfortable. Our little group was confronting a force that had proven to be both cunning and diabolical. They could travel through time, and their powers at mind control through the use of drugs and other methods had been an especially difficult adversarial problem in my pursuit of Jane the Grabber. We knew we needed a place that would not be suspected easily, and it was Becky who had come up with the idea to move our location to a Gothic structure that Bessie Mergenthaler said would protect us from the evil eye. Temple Emanu-El was located on 5
^th
Avenue and 43
^rd
Street on the Upper East Side in what was known as
Kleindeutschland
, or “Little Germany.”

As we made our meandering way through the city’s pedestrian traffic, I kept thinking about how Bessie Mergenthaler had reacted when she first realized that her son Seth was a supernatural being. Before that moment, she had been an educated and liberal Feminist and suffragette. She is the Administrator of Mount Sinai Hospital, and her entire life had encompassed a logical, scientific outlook. When her husband, Arthur, was kidnapped from that same hospital in December of ’67, she did not believe in his eccentric statement that he and his son were
mazikeen
and that she was a daughter of Lilith.

I saw Doctor Merganthaler die in Collierville, Tennessee, so I also had no reason to believe his claim of being a half-angel, half-human
mazikeen
. Now, however, ever since Seth’s transformation inside the Sisters’ Row Hotel room, every person in our little detective group listens to what he says with much more respect, and this includes his mother, Bessie. Although, as his mother, she is still a disciplinarian to him when he is behaving in his “little boy” role. When he changes into his
mazikeen
or supernaturally adult self, it is I who has been given the supervisory job of watching out for him.

As we walked up 5
^th
Avenue toward Temple Emanu-El, I remembered Bessie telling me that in the two decades between 1835 and 1855 around 250,000 European Jews immigrated into the United States, many of them settling on the Lower East Side and the tiny congregation that first established this temple on a second floor rented loft in 1845 had certainly exploded into a temple that resembled something out of an Arab’s dream and not a Jewish synagogue.

Only seven blocks north the grand white marble spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral were being built, and ten blocks to the south the brownstone mansions of William and John Jacob Astor demonstrated that high society was making its presence felt. In Five Points, where I came from, this area might as well have been called “heaven.”

If this temple meant to rival the soaring Gothic structure of St. Patrick’s, it succeeded. Bessie told me that the architects, Henry Fernbach and Leopold Eidlitz, had worked together in designing the structure. Fernbach was the first Jewish architect in the United States and had been here only 12 years when he received the commission from the congregation to build the temple. The architects and congregation leaders decided upon using a Moorish motif, which reflected the pre-Inquisition period when Jews enjoyed relative freedom in Spain. It also allowed them to compete with the soaring Gothic pinnacles of St. Patrick’s.

As Seth and I climbed the marble steps leading into the building, the several shades of brick and “Ohio and Newark stone” greeted us on the front and on the two Minaret-type towers that soared 140 feet skyward. There were five arched doorways that were repeated just above in smaller versions. Stained and painted glass sparkled in the sunlight and tiled red roofs at various heights blended to form an Arabian fantasy of these German Reform Jews and were certainly not an understated Jewish orthodox design.

As I opened the door and we stepped through into the main vestibule, the giant oak door whooshed back in place, and we both stood there for a moment and took in the view. Above us, the soaring space rose at least five stories up, with supporting pillars that looked to be over 60 feet tall. Moorish arches were carved and stenciled, and every inch of ceiling and walls was decorated with a variety of mathematical shapes. Both Muslims and Jews were not allowed to depict the human form, as they believed our bodies to be holy and made by God. Instead, the interior showed a dense pattern of stars, crescents, crosses, hexagons and octagons. Of course, both German Jews and the Moors loved mathematics, and the inside of the Emanu-El reflected this love with a great passion.

The woodwork was of black walnut and white oak, and the seats were upholstered in the best manner, the aisles richly carpeted in reds and blues, and floors of the portico and vestibule were tessellated in mosaic tiles. Seth, holding my hand, looked up at me and pointed with his other hand at a seat near the wall. “That’s where I sit,” he said. “The organ has 4,500 pipes!” he said, pointing above us at the giant polychromed and gilded cylinders that stretched the entire length of the choir gallery.

Since it was a Sunday, there were no worshippers present, just a few visitors who, like us, were admiring the magnificent architecture. I led Seth down the stairs into the basement. This was where there was a lecture room and the Sabbath school rooms that could accommodate 400 to 500 children. Seth knew these rooms well, as he attended with his mother every weekday after school. Seth was learning Hebrew, although as this was a Reform temple, he was not going to have a
bar mitzvah
. We were to meet Rabbi Doctor Samuel Adler, the head of the temple and one of the great philosophical and theological leaders of the Reform Movement in Germany.

We met a Missus Schwartz, who greeted us from her desk in front of Doctor Adler’s office. She introduced herself and immediately got up and went to a small table in the corner and picked up a bowl filled with some kind of treats. She brought them over to Seth, and the boy covered his eyes with his left hand and dipped into the bowl with his right.

“We play this game whenever Seth visits. I told him if he can pick out the piece of chocolate without looking, then I’ll let him take two more. Most of the pieces are horehound, and the children don’t like them,” she said.

As luck would have it, Seth selected the chocolate. True to her word, Missus Schwartz let the lad choose two more. Soon, Seth resembled a chipmunk with both of his cheeks bulging.

“Doctor Adler is expecting you, Mister O’Malley. You may go right in,” she said, and she walked to the door and opened it for us.

Doctor Adler was standing before a chart on an easel next to his desk. On this chart was the image of a hand, and in the palm of this hand was an eye. Bessie had explained to me that this was what the Jews and other supernatural believers believed to be a symbol of a
hamsa
, which is used to protect you from a curse that can be placed upon you so you will have bad luck.

In fact, Bessie told me that she had given Seth a silver
hamsa
medallion to wear around his neck. She believed he had been cursed because he had joined me as my assistant, and this was a way to keep him safe. There were also other writings on the chart, but they were in German and Hebrew, so I did not understand what they said. I must admit, I did not expect to see this in the office of such a scientific and unsuperstitious gentleman as Doctor Adler.

“This is the symbol of the
Ayin-horeh
or evil eye. Many members of my congregation, including the educated such as Missus Mergenthaler, believe this is real. The Talmud mentions it many times, but it also stipulates that it is only effective if one believes in it. This, indeed, is at the root of all differences between science and religion, is it not?”

I nodded my head in agreement. I was not about to engage the rabbi in any argument at this point. We needed to rent his room, and he was in charge.

Doctor Adler was clean-shaven and handsome, wearing a black frock coat, white shirtsleeves and cravat. His eyesight must have been keen, as he wore no spectacles, and his grip was firm as I shook his hand. “Welcome, Mister O’Malley! Missus Mergenthaler was correct. You are a big man. And this little man I know well.
Shalom
, Seth.”

“
Shalom
, Doctor,” Seth said, working the final pieces of chocolate between his jaws and sitting down on a wooden chair that had a cushion on it. It must have been for the children who came to visit the Rabbi when they were naughty, because Seth glanced around the room as he sat there as if he expected an adult to begin lecturing him.

We were in for a lecture, but this was a lecture I was not prepared for, and as the doctor spoke, I understood that we now had one more member of our unique band of believers, as Bessie must have entrusted him with the knowledge that I wanted to keep secret for the safety of our members.

“We Jews are not a prideful people because we fear this dark force that cannot be controlled by our actions or by our scientific tools. My congregants often believe that these hidden forces will take away a new job, their good looks and talents, or perhaps just prevent happy things from coming their way. A random compliment, someone showing off her new baby—all of these acts of pride will reflexively bring on mutterings of ‘
Keyn’e horeh
!’—no evil eye—followed by cries of ‘A-willee, a-willee!’ This is not voodoo, Mister O’Malley. This is what is believed.”

“I understand, Doctor. My people also have many superstitions. Gold at the end of the rainbow. Leprechauns and little people living in the clover. But what we experienced recently does not relate to superstition. Have you seen this boy change into other people?” I pointed to Seth, and he smiled up at us like a mouse in a cheese factory.

“Indeed I have! His mother gave me a private exhibition in my office. I was witness to my dog, Jonah, becoming the first canine to discuss the theoretical probability of using
mazikeen
to make the Noah’s Ark story a very probable adventure. I know what Seth is, Mister O’Malley,” he said, smiling down at the boy, “and I also know what you are facing in the way of
Ayin-horeh
. In fact, I knew about Seth long before you became aware of his abilities.”

I was flabbergasted! No wonder Bessie had turned to Doctor Adler. He had already been privy to the young boy’s miraculous powers, and now he was becoming part of our inner group.

“That is quite surprising. Bessie never told me about such things. In fact, she never expressed the slightest belief that her son was magical,” I said. Indeed, my previous cases could have been quite different had I known about the boy and his abilities.

Doctor Adler walked over to where Seth was seated and placed his hands gently on the boy’s shoulders. “I have known about Seth before this temple was built. In fact, it is our little secret that we built this temple in the Moorish tradition because of Seth’s powers and his need to be protected.”

I stumbled over to one of the big leather cushioned chairs and collapsed into it. I did not know quite what to believe. Was I being drawn into some supernatural cult that could possibly get me into more danger than what I had faced with Jane the Grabber, the World Eugenics Collective and Joshua Reynolds the serial killer?

“Don’t be afraid, Mister O’Malley. I understand your trepidation. When I became aware of Seth and the entire Mergenthaler family, I was just as perplexed as you must be now. We Jews are not a superstitious people. In fact, I have not shared any of this knowledge with any person in my congregation. You can be secure in the fact that I am here to offer you refuge and protection from these evil forces you must combat. I don’t know if I can be any more direct. We are here to be your sanctuary.” Doctor Adler smiled over at me, and I felt somewhat comforted, although I was still wary.

“Where is our sanctuary?” I managed to say.

“Please! Come with me, and I’ll show you,” the doctor said, walking briskly over to the door.

Seth and I followed him down the hallway until he came to a large Persian rug on the floor. He pushed on one of the wall panels in a succession of what I supposed were coded taps, and the rug became airborne! It hovered in the air and then, with a pass of Doctor Adler’s hand, it moved to the side to expose a large trap door etched inside the hallway floor. He again tapped on the door in a coded number of taps, and the door moved open like a hidden panel. Beneath it, there were stairs going down into the darkness below.

“Come down with me. I want to show you your new offices, Detective O’Malley. We have spent many years perfecting this enclosure to serve the purpose it will now be serving. We are quite proud of it, although most of our congregation, I am sad to say, do not know it exists.”

As we followed Doctor Adler downstairs, I kept thinking about what he had said about the evil eye. If this new office of mine was going to protect me from bad luck, then what was in it for Doctor Adler? Certainly he must have an ulterior motive. I never knew any man of the cloth who did not know how to manipulate his “faith” into some kind of conniving method to grease his own tabernacle.