THE DEVILS DIME Read online

  He scribbled his name, date, and interest in street crime reports for the last decade and slid the tablet back through the opening. It disappeared with the pencil into the dark cavern and Jess heard a chair scrape, followed by a shuffling. The tablet came flying back through the slot and fell neatly into his hands.

  “Wha-?”

  “Try again,” came the guttural prompt.

  “But-“

  “And this time, use your full name.”

  Jess re-read his entry.

  April 19, 1896...J. Pepper...street crimes over last decade.

  He was anxious to get on with his research, and this fellow’s rules were holding things up. Biting back a grumble, he licked his thumb and rubbed it across the penciled name, then wrote in the smudged space the legal name he tried to use as little as possible.

  Jessiah Saltingham Pepper.

  It was the grandiose name with which his single mother had so proudly burdened him before she promptly up and died. He laid the tablet back on the slotted shelf, and with a tentative finger, pushed it through.

  Jess interpreted the silence from the other side of the cubicle as permission to continue. He turned away from the grill and was startled to come eye to eye with the keeper of the rules. He hadn’t heard the man leave his desk. But now a thin, cranky face peered around the stack nearest him and looked him sharply up and down.

  Jess stopped and extended his hand.

  “Twickenham?”

  The man’s scraggly eyebrows narrowed over a perilously perched pince-nez. A straight Roman nose pointed the way to a jutting chin over a scrawny neck and bobbing Adam’s apple. The encircling starched collar was impeccably white but badly frayed.

  “You truthin’ me?” He asked the question as he shook the tablet in Jess’s face. It seemed his social skills were as frayed as his collar.

  “Why would I not?” Jess was still uncertain what it was about his request that had set the old fellow off. “Are you Ollie Twickenham?” Jess held his smile but dropped his hand.

  Twickenham ignored him still. He wiggled his nose and cheek to dislodge his eyeglasses, and the pince-nez promptly tumbled from his face to dangle on a thin black ribbon attached to his vest pocket. He stepped down out of his nook and Jess realized for the first time just how short the man was.

  Jess stood his ground as the man studied him, looked down at the page, then fixed his eyes on Jess again. He was coatless, with muslin protectors covering the cuffs and forearms of his green-gartered white shirt. Streaks of old ink and other unrecognizable stains proved the muslin’s necessity.

  Twickenham drew himself up to his full height, which brought his beady eyes just above Jess’s elbow.

  “Hmmph. You’re far too young to be Pepper,” he spat, “but then, you’re so wet behind the ears you wouldn’t know that!”

  Jess absorbed the accusation that had been delivered with an unnatural, gravelly bark that sounded like planks dragged across river rock. The damaged effect was most likely the result of years of forcing a high-pitched voice to a more authoritative register.

  “Ah, but I am. Pepper, that is. But please, call me Jess.”

  A suspicious eyebrow launched itself halfway up to Twickenham’s receding hairline. “Of the Denver Post?”

  “One and the same, sir. Now of the New York Times for...” Jess checked his pocket watch and continued, “three days, four hours and twenty-two minutes, to be exact.”

  Twickenham’s jaw dropped and his eye began a rather alarming twitch.

  Jess drew a gold-embossed card from his pocket and turned it with a sheepish grin toward Twickenham who settled his spectacles back onto his nose and peered over them at it. He sputtered and choked and looked to be deciding if he should just stomp off or make a stand.

  A furious battle raged across his face and left the man heaving for breath before he finally seemed to capitulate. This fellow was not accustomed to being wrong.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? I thought you’d be older. Your reputation precedes you, sir.” Twickenham blustered, his voice soaring into its more comfortable range.

  “And yours, as well,” Jess offered magnanimously with a slight bow. If the rumors were true, Twickenham had been one of the best investigative reporters in the city, relegated years earlier to the morgue by a scandal of which he could not prove himself innocent.

  Twickenham tried unsuccessfully to hide his pride at the unexpected compliment. He all but swaggered as he reached up to take Jess by the elbow.

  “I’ve got just what you’re looking for right back here, son.” The little fellow stayed slightly in the lead and moved past a bank of books as if he were presenting a visiting lord to the gallery. Jess allowed himself to preen for just an instant, then followed. Whatever it was that had possessed him to actually follow the instructions this time had landed him squarely in the good graces of an icon of his profession. And it felt pretty fine.

  Twickenham led him deep into the maze, talking and gesticulating the whole way. “The basement’s much larger than you’d think. It’s connected to the basements of buildings on either side of us. Tunnels and dead ends all over the place. Runs clear over to City Hall. You want to know where something is, always ask.”

  He stopped in the middle of an aisle created by stacks of boxes labeled ‘Unsolved’ and turned to Jess. “One other thing you need to know. I keep a gun. You come prowling around here without checking in, you’re likely to get shot. Just a friendly warning, you know.”

  He resumed his tour and Jess followed, taken down a notch by the ominous statement the old man had just spoken as calmly as he might voice an invitation to dinner.

  A few paces further they stepped into an alcove created by shelves surrounding a battered desk and chair. From the layer of dust on the table, it was apparent the area was not much used.

  “I believe you might find what you’re looking for in here.” Twickenham pulled back the chair and used his own muslin cuff to banish the worst of the dirt collected there.

  He spent a few moments identifying the various piles as to what Jess might find in each, until he reached the far end of a cluttered shelf. He reached a hand toward a thick file bound with string and seemed to hesitate. Twickenham chewed his bottom lip, glanced sideways at Jess, took in a long, rattling breath and at last made up his mind. He tugged it from the shelf and plunked the tattered blue folder onto the table.

  “This is a bit outside the scope of what you asked for,” he began, his face crinkling into a clandestine grin, “but it’s some of our best stuff. All that,” he said, as he swept his short arms out toward the orderly piles on the surrounding shelves, “is mostly appetizers and the occasional main course. But this,” he beamed and plucked the frayed brown shoelace that held the bulging folder together, “is better than Christmas pie.”

  Chapter Two

  If there were mice, they knew enough to stay away when Deacon Trumbull took the back stairs to Heaven. The men who joined him might have profited from that wisdom. But it was greed and nothing more that had brought them to the table in the abandoned room above McGlory’s. And it was greed that kept bringing them back.

  “He won’t last long.”

  The hard voice and clipped words hushed the whining tones that had escalated around the crude table. Deacon Trumbull’s malignant self-assurance hovered about them, silencing any objection the three men might have offered. His crisp, pristine shirtsleeves rested on the scarred surface, diamonds glittering in the opulent studs of his cuffs. The cigar he nursed covered the room’s shabby mustiness with its rarefied aroma.

  Below the table, supple gray leather shoes bespoke the man’s wealth, their white linen summer-weight spats ornamented with understated elegance. They weren’t such a vast step above those of the other three men, but there could be no doubt that their Italian felted leather linings made them the finest to be had in New York City.

  The man they called Cash cleared his throat and flicked an ash from his
own Havana Partido. “He completely shut down that Denver operation, Deac. He’s no slouch.”

  Trumbull glared, his blue eyes hooded. The nickname annoyed him, had ever since boarding school days when Cash had begun to shorten his name. It had been a power play, purely designed to make the pampered brat seem an equal with Deacon. As if that could ever happen.

  He waited a beat, and let his companions work equally to hide their nervous swallows. He would have laughed outright, if there had not been such a strong element of truth in Cash’s warning. He was absolutely correct. Jess Pepper was no slouch. But Deacon had already resolved that the man’s luck at uncovering a Denver syndicate that had been selling young, nubile boy-flesh to a hungry European market would be his own undoing.

  Jess Pepper might have brought a million-dollar enterprise to its knees in that cow town, but he was in New York City now, lured by the fame a byline in the Times offered. And not only was he in New York, but he’d planted himself right in the center of the cross hairs. The offices of the Times were, after all, in Chief Deacon Trumbull’s precinct.

  “You leave Pepper to me, gentlemen.” He swept his gaze around the table, pausing just long enough to see the subtle submission he required before changing the subject. As was his habit, he brought them back to the point of tonight’s emergency meeting before adjourning. “Tell that shyster at the Blue Blade that he can continue to deal for us or prepare to meet his Maker.” Trumbull stood, drawing the meeting to a close.

  “And if he says no?” The question came from the only one among them who had come up from the gaming hells to earn his place at the table.

  Deacon Trumbull speared him with his own questioning look. The man knew very well what to do if O’Hanlon balked again, but Deacon felt no compunction at spelling it out for him. “If he says no, my boys will tell his widow she has three days to get out of my tenement.”

  The three men nodded, rose, donned their hats and the suit coats they’d carefully laid across a spare chair earlier. Each one engaged in his own ritual of tidying his look before stepping out into the darkness of a Tenderloin back alley.

  Four men went four separate ways. But in each mind a brief yet fascinating game of running the odds was taking place. Just how long would Jess Pepper last?

  . . .

  New York City was noisy, noisier than Denver in a million ways. Denver had cattle being herded to the stockyards down side streets, their bellows bouncing off nearby buildings, shuffling hooves muffled by hard-packed dirt. This city, on the other hand, had folks being herded into clanging trollies, their heels making clipped rhythms on the bricked causeways, their piercing voices sailing above the street ruckus as they hawked their wares or called for a hansom cab. All this escalated to carry above the sound of ferries trumpeting their departures from nearby piers. He reckoned he’d just have to get accustomed to it.

  Jess propped one leg on a footstool and rubbed at a kink in his neck. He’d resisted reading the information he’d collected until he was back in his apartment, knowing from painful experience what happened when he became absorbed in a project. Spending the night in that basement morgue wouldn’t have been the worst thing to ever happen to him, but it was certainly something he’d consciously avoid.

  For two hours he’d been so caught up in his reading he hadn’t moved. Now he dragged his eyes from the page and let his gaze roam the walls of his flat, blinking his bleariness away.

  He followed the pattern of faded wallpaper upward until it disappeared beneath simple cherry cornices that topped the windows on two sides of his parlor. The east and south exposures had been a big part of what had drawn him to the place.

  After all, a writer needed plenty of light.

  Jess had found the third floor furnished apartment at the corner of Broadway and East Fourth just a week earlier. He’d passed up a quieter second floor spot on the back of the building for these rooms overlooking the busy intersection.

  Three dollars a month more, but the light and the view were worth it.

  He didn’t mind that the curtains flanking the French doors that led to his balcony had seen a brighter day. What was important was the fact that the balcony existed, and Jess had already taken to sitting there for a half hour at the end of each day. People-watching.

  But not so today.

  Today, Jess sat in a cane-seated rocker he’d dragged away from the heavily manteled fireplace and into the late afternoon light that streamed through the window. Articles he’d already studied were piled up on the floor beside him.

  Many had provided tidbits of information that he could weave into his diatribe against the confidence riffraff, and his mind had followed a very lucid trail as he gleaned facts for the story in progress.

  He had the makings now of several fine columns and even allowed himself to feel a bit of enthusiasm. That is, until he opened the last folder — the tattered blue one with the knotted shoelace holding it together. Twickenham’s “Christmas pie”. It had sat there on the table, taunting him, daring him to find out why the old geezer had hesitated to trust him with it.

  Within seconds, the entire premise of his earlier work was forgotten as he absorbed the details of the reports he now held in his hands. The reports that had been tied into a bundle marked in large, faded letters, ‘Samaritan Files’.

  The pages revealed details on twenty cases. All unsolved. All having taken place two decades earlier. And all fascinating.

  The final article, printed more than a year after the last reported attack, when the city was beginning to feel safe again, encapsulated the crime history in chilling prose. The eloquent words stood out in harsh relief against the yellowed page upon which the column had been printed nearly twenty years earlier.

  Samaritan Vanquishes

  Midnight Attacker

  Twelve maidens and six young matrons venture out onto the streets of New York City once again, each excursion inciting a bit less apprehension than the previous.

  More than a year has passed since the last of these women fell victim to a crime of the streets. A year to heal and mend. A year to find courage in their survival.

  And while they did survive, their lives must surely have been forever changed.

  Two who shared their experience, however, shall never again see the light of day, their hearts having given out over time, perhaps unable to shed the recollection of horrors that descended upon them in the dark of night.

  In truth, these two have perished of fright, and traded this earth for heaven’s safe haven.

  And yet the other eighteen victims might easily have perished as well, were it not for the heroic intervention of a man known to this city as The Samaritan.

  Tall, he is, and rugged of face, they say. But gentle of voice. His grip of steel wrenched fainting victims from the clutches of a fiend bent on killing. Or worse.

  “Fear not, darlin’,” reportedly the only words spoken by their rescuer who appeared out of the gloom at the very moment each broken victim thought she had breathed her last. And each, when coming out of her fainting stupor, was reported to have asked her medical attendant, “Where is the good man?”

  And that, dear reader, is the question that remains unanswered a full year later. Where, indeed, is the good man?

  Some say the good Samaritan was a traveling clergyman. Others insist he was the ghost of a Civil War soldier, bereft at having left his womenfolk as he went off to fight the war, unable to find them when he returned.

  If the sabered ghost could not save his own, perhaps he could save the daughters of someone else.

  Still others, like Deacon Trumbull, a flatfoot cop on the beat, maintain the Samaritan and the attacker are one and the same.

  Samaritan or Saint? Ghost or Angel? Perhaps we shall never know. Perhaps we can only be left to wonder.

  To wonder at the flicker of fear in a maiden’s eye as we, mere men, approach.

  To wonder if she might be one of the many who survived to fear another day, rescued by a good man with a gent
le voice.

  Who saved her from death. Or worse.

  Then melted into the black night.

  It was eight o’clock by the time Jess had re-read the most gripping stories from the faded folder, and he’d stopped only once, to light the gas lamp on the wall.

  The scenarios were strikingly similar. Young women alone on the street after dark. Brown hair, small stature. Accosted and nearly beaten to death before being saved by a passing Samaritan.

  And many of the incidents had taken place not ten blocks from where he sat at this very moment.

  Jess focused on the random tapping of the crocheted shade pulls that danced at the ends of their strings in the light breeze. Was this the kind of place those young women had been coming home to when evil had waylaid them on the street?

  Perhaps.

  Jess closed his eyes and sifted through the detail he’d gleaned from the stories. The victims were surely terrified. He shuttered his mind, forcing it to take on the darkness of the street. He tried to cover himself with the panic and fear the victims must have known. To render himself helpless.

  But it was useless, sitting here in his sanctuary. How could he hope to describe a terror he’d never known himself?

  The answer was simple. He wouldn’t.

  After nearly twenty years, these were dead stories. Glimpses of happenings that had gone stale in memory. He should not dredge up the anguish for eighteen survivors who may never have fully forgotten their nightmare. He shouldn’t bring a fear of the streets back into the public mind.