THE DEVILS DIME (11 page)

“That’s what I was trying to tell you. It’s me.”

“Eeooo!”

“I know. I’m sorry. Can you really smell it that much?”

Cherise angled her shoulders sideways and slipped her fingers through the buttons of her starched white blouse. She handed the small vial she retrieved from her cleavage to Addie.

“If that’s really you, then you need this. I use it when I leave the bakery to cover the smell of this place.”

“But this place smells wonderful,” Addie objected as she unscrewed the stopper of the miniature flask of cologne.

“Not when you’ve worked here all day.” Her nose was still working double time, trying to ferret out the origins of the smell.

“It’s my shoulder, Cherise. I’ve hurt it and I had to put a poultice on it last night. Mullein leaf and comfrey root.”

“Oh! Poor thing! How did you manage that?”

Addie’s hand stilled as she dipped the tail of the cologne stopper behind an ear. Vague pictures of Jess Pepper in her apartment mixing the poultice floated in disjointed snatches through her memory.

But that couldn’t possibly be. Addie shook her head. She was just confused. The narcotic must have made her dream.

“The shoulder, I mean. How did you hurt it?”

“I...tripped on the stairs and fell backwards into...into the railing.” Addie resumed daubing the perfume beneath her collar and at the back of her neck. “Just bruises, and maybe an inflamed tendon, I think, but that’s what I came to tell you. I can’t play tonight.”

“What!”

“You know I would if I could, but I need one more night of poultice before I dare try. You’ll have to lead tonight, Cherise.”

“I’m not ready.”

“Oh, Cherise, you can play everything standing on your head and you know it.”

“The Hungarian Dance. I can’t do that one. That’s yours.”

Addie studied her most talented member of the troupe, the spunky French-Irish violinist. Even the memory of her haunting audition piece still brought goose bumps.

“Perhaps. But you’ve got something even better.”

“I can’t imagine what.”

“The Gaelic number, Cherise. Don’t you know everyone in the room weeps when you play it?”

Cherise laughed a bit self-consciously and covered her awkwardness by using the moment to replace the small vial of perfume. “But, cushlamachree, girl, I can’t leave ‘em cryin’. The hotel would kill me!”

“So, you open with the usual set, then do the Gaelic to get their attention, and then the ensemble picks up the pace.”

“And a jig for encore, d’ya think?”

“Perfect! It’s done.” Addie slipped out of the booth and looked down at her friend who was still contemplating the work cut out for her that evening. “You saved my life, Cherise. God bless you for it.”

Addie squeezed the redhead’s hand, winked, and hurried to the door. She’d stayed longer than she’d intended. And she knew well what happened to tellers who were late to work at Chase National Bank.

Chapter Seven

Jess read with some relief the note pinned to the door of Addie’s apartment. Last night it had seemed the most natural thing to mix the poultice and put the poor girl out of her misery. Today, it would have been just plain awkward.

Jess took the stairs to the street and looked back up toward her window. He hoped she was telling the truth and was truly out and about. He’d brought the column to show her, and only now realized that he’d really jumped the gun. Raising a crowd for a performer with a lame arm was hardly clever.

But now it looked like she was going to be all right.

He’d come only because he’d promised to come, and was later than he’d expected getting to her place. Jess had gone first to the dockworkers’ union hall and collected the material that he’d requested earlier in the week. A hunch that had nagged at him for several days had led him to seek out archived records at the hall.

The hall’s proximity to many of the attacks described in the tattered blue folder seemed somehow relevant. Jess was itching to dig into the copies of member lists and meeting timetables the union secretary had made for him, just those in a four-hour span of time surrounding each of the attacks.

The smallest twinge of guilt rippled through his temple over his gratitude that Addie’s shoulder didn’t need tending as he backtracked the twenty or so blocks to his office on Park Row.

He loped up the stairs two at a time, shedding his leather coat as he went, and almost didn’t see the city desk manager scurrying toward him.

“Jess!” The man’s stage whisper got his attention. “Jess! Wait a second.”

Jess turned and grinned at the fellow who’d already become a friend and mentor.

“Mornin’, Gus.”

“Morning, Jess.” Gus Callaway issued his greeting in a normal tone with a slap on the back and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Chief Trumbull’s in your office. Thought you’d want t’ know.”

He clapped Jess again and began to move on, waving the morning edition in the air between them. “Didn’t know you were so fond of music, Pepper. I think I’ll let you review the opera for me next week.”

Jess snatched the paper and laughed. “You do, and you’ll have a whole gang of angry Brunhilde’s on your doorstep.” Jess dropped his voice and leaned closer to Gus. “What’s he want?”

“No clue, Jess. Sorry. I assume you haven’t broken too many laws in your brief tenure here. At any rate, he comes bearing gifts.” His envious glance toward Jess’s office was impossible to miss before he disappeared around the corner, leaving Jess to face the man about whom he’d heard a great deal and knew very little.

Precinct Chief Deacon Trumbull.

. . .

Jess stood at the door of his office, taken aback for a moment by the dapper man sitting behind his desk. He looked more fit for the ballroom than the crime scene.

“Pepper! Jess Pepper, I presume!” The man swiveled to the left, then to the right, and patted the arms of the cowhide desk chair. “Just trying out your new chair, Pepper. I say,” he smiled a gleaming, envious grin, “this is one comfortable piece of furniture.”

Jess stepped into the room, pulling the door closed behind him. His office had been transformed. Two heavy book cases lined the far wall, and a Turkish rug was laid out on an angle in front of his desk. Two handsome side chairs sat on it, ready for visitors to Jess’s domain.

A huge portrait of a buffalo stampede took up the wall behind his desk, and a mirror-topped hall tree had been planted just beyond the door, awaiting his topcoat and hat.

The desk chair he’d brought with him had been shoved to the side, and in its place was a monster of a chair, upholstered in soft, burnished leather. Studs marched up its sides and across the top just above Chief Trumbull’s head.

It was a man’s chair, no doubt about it. But it was not his. None of this was his.

Trumbull rose from the chair with easy grace for a man his size. He stood half a head taller than Jess, and evidence of a well-fed stomach filled out his expensive suit coat. Still, he was a handsome man. He rounded the desk with his hand out.

“Pepper, I am just honored to shake your hand,” he said.

“Chief,” Jess replied, “I honestly don’t know where all this came from,” he said, nodding toward the chair.

“Oh! Just a little welcome to New York City for you, Pepper. Here, try it out.”

In one smooth move, Trumbull stepped to the side and propelled Jess around the desk. Jess looked down at the tufted seat of a chair the likes of which he had never owned. He frowned, then knew he needed to try it out and pretend he liked it. After the Chief left he could swap it for his old favorite.

“Well, Chief, this is just about the finest welcome a man could hope for,” he said, trusting he sounded sincere. He turned and grasped the arms as he settled down into the chair. And almost groaned in ecstasy.

Now
this
was a chair. It hugged his backside and massaged his shoulders and hit the bend of his knee in exactly the right spot. He’d never, in any of the fine places he’d visited, sat in a more comfortable chair. He felt giddy. And he felt guilty. He’d never want to sit in his old wooden bucket again. This was heaven. And on wheels.

Jess shook his head. If the tables were turned and he were gifting this to the Chief, it smacked of bribery. He couldn’t accept it.

“Chief, I —”

“Ah, I know what you’re going to say, Pepper. You don’t want to owe me any favors.” Trumbull winked. “And I promise you, you won’t. You’ve just done me a big favor by helping me empty out a storage barn. Saving the taxpayer some money.”

“So, where—?” Jess opened his arms to indicate all the new furnishings.

Trumbull laughed. “’Fraid we have more than our share of this kind of stuff, Jess. Half the folks in this city are on the take, you know, livin’ on the Devil’s dime. Sometimes we just get lucky and put some of them out of business. And when we do, we have to find a place for all the things their evil ways helped them acquire. Most of it we sell and use the funds. Turn bad money into good, so to speak.” He smiled, a theatrical sadness lighting his eyes. “Some of it we give to folks who need it. And Jess,” he looked around and cocked a sheepish grin, “from the looks of this place, you really needed it.”

Jess stepped around the desk, and his boots sank into the thick, colorful Turkish carpet. It alone gave the room a welcome energy, and Jess was already feeling strangely at home. He put out his hand in thanks and Trumbull shook it, then dropped his other hand on Jess’s shoulder. His face transformed to a solemn, fatherly expression.

“You are just what this city needs, Jess.” He shook his head slowly, and an odd despair fell across his face. “Wish there were more like you, men not afraid to tell the truth.” Suddenly the look vanished and the self-assured demeanor swung back into place with his wink. “Keep us on our toes, Pepper. You’re the voice of the people. You run into anything—anything at all—makes you the least bit concerned, you bring it to me. Hear?”

Jess nodded, and Chief Trumbull turned to leave.

“That’s what we do here, Jess. We keep the people safe.”

. . .

Jess laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back into the welcoming cushion of his new chair. A partnership with the precinct chief was going to open lots of doors for him. This could be good, he mused, really good.

Beyond his own open door the typing pool was falling back into its rhythm as the Chief exited the floor. Once again their postures mimicked one another. Backs straight, heads bowed and angled toward racks holding handwritten copy, wrists poised over the keys, and a blur of fingers.

Easily a hundred typists, arranged in twelve rows of forty-foot tables, pumping out text to the collective tune of eight thousand words a minute. Or more. New York’s finest. Each of them intent on their work.

Except for one. The blonde corker, who he knew now as Birdie Tabor, was surreptitiously watching Trumbull make his way to the stairs. Jess leaned forward, surprised to see Trumbull hesitate on the top step and raise one finger. It seemed like a signal.

And it was.

Jess watched as the buxom figure rose and broke the symmetry of the ranks of typists. She left her place and stopped to speak with the manager of the typing pool.

Birdie sagged wearily and held a hand to her head as if complaining of a headache. The exchange was brief, and then she stepped away from the manager’s desk. As she turned toward the stair, Birdie looked back over her shoulder. It was a look Jess knew well. She hoped no one was watching.

It was a tattletale move, a dead giveaway, the unmistakable mark of a novice sneak. This girl, the buxom blonde chatterbox with the southern lilt, had something to hide.