THE DEVILS DIME (38 page)

Block after block they dodged drunken blokes tossed out the front door of bars and bawdy houses. He knew if the poor saps were lucky, they would only be robbed of their valuables and clothing and live to tell about it.

Bare breasted women hollered their invitations from second-story windows. Men with bloodied faces staggered out of dark alleys. Young men and old women lay tangled with one another in drunken stupors, right there in the gutter where just feet away others relieved themselves. This was where the worst of the worst came to do their ugliest deeds. And Trumbull had brought Addie here.

Jess was seeing it for the first time, this place that would have normally drawn him like a taunting jewel. This was the kind of place where he’d normally lose himself for days, ferreting out his stories. These were the smells that were spawned by the depravity and neglect, poverty and abuse that he felt such a need to expose and banish. This was the doorstep of hell.

But in his early weeks in New York City he’d not felt the pull of this place even once. For the first time in years he’d been distracted from this dark side, he’d been drawn to the sun, to the bright circles that surrounded Addie.

And now, the thought of Addie in the hands of warped degenerates who’d spent decades encouraging hell holes like this made him ready to kill.

As they careened into the lower end of Greene Street, the neighborhood deteriorated even further. Both sides of the street were lined with low-stooped shacks, each garishly lit with red lanterns lighting the entrance to yet another brothel.

The
Lizzie
.

The
Gem
.

The
Forget-Me-Not
.

And then there it was, a building so out of character with the rest, a former grand lady, now just shabbily gaudy, like everything around it.

McGlory’s Cork and Dance
.

Raucous laughter and a pumping piano told him it was still a dance hall, and silhouetted in the windows of the second floor were half a dozen couples engaged in lewd frolic. The windows on the top floor were dark.

His stomach tightened at the thought of Addie up there, alone in the filthy blackness, or terrorized by some of Trumbull’s goons. Or worse.

Jess pulled his Stetson low over his brow and leaned back into the dark corner of the buggy as Ford drew the team down a side street and started into the alley.

The buggy stopped. Just yards away the alley was partially blocked by a motor car, a Duryea Runabout, parked at a crazy angle. The building towered beside it, its roof higher than the surrounding buildings. A single lantern cast its glow across a recessed window set above a stained and peeling door, and caught the automobile’s curving chrome in an otherworldly light.

Jess squinted, bringing into focus the window’s faded painting. And there they were. Moons and stars and wispy clouds cascading across the painted glass that was streaked with aging grime.

Jeremiah’s Heaven.

Beneath it, half in darkness, a man struggled along the far side of the automobile, trying to stuff an unwieldy bundle on the floor behind the driver’s bench. He passed the beam of his headlamp as he hurried to the other side to pull the bundle further aboard. The pale beam lit his frowning features, framed his usually perfectly oiled hair and his white, crisp shirt collar above the perfectly tailored coat, and Jess knew with a start who he was looking at.

“My God,” Jess breathed. “It’s him. He’s Cash.”

Ford dipped his head to the side, his question obvious though unspoken.

“It’s Hamilton Jensen. Chase National Bank. Addie’s boss.”

Jess drew back into the shadows and searched the buggy’s interior for a weapon. He flipped open a leather-bound box secured to the sidewall and discovered the Chief’s cigars, but no weapon. He was about to slide out of the buggy and make do with his fists when he realized Hamilton had seen them, but hadn’t stopped what he was doing.

Of course. He’d recognized the gold seal emblazoned on the side of the brougham. He’d thought Deacon Trumbull was there to help him. And so he would.

Jess pulled a box of matches from the leather case and reached past Ford to light the two carriage lanterns that had blown out in their wild ride. The light in front of him would keep him hidden, impossible to see behind the glare.

“Don’t move,” he cautioned Ford. “He thinks I’m Trumbull.”

“Deac!” Hamilton hollered and waved, and a foot fell free to dangle out of the side of his vehicle. A dainty, female foot.

Ford saw it at the same moment and lurched as if he would jump down from the seat.

“No!” Jess hissed. “Don’t move! We’ll get her, Ford, we’ll get her! Just sit. Now. Please!”

“Deac! Some help here!” Hamilton called.

Screams and music and laughter from blocks away converged in a decadent echo that danced up the alley walls and distorted the sound of Jensen’s voice. He prayed it would do the same for his own.

Jess struck another match and lit a cigar, pulling on it until the embers glowed red. He let the memory of Chief Trumbull’s voice echo in his ear, and then, with the cigar still clamped between his teeth, he took the chance.

“What’s going on....Cash?” This had to be Cash, the man with the money, but if it wasn’t, Jess was prepared to leap from the buggy, fists at the ready. Adrenaline surged in every limb, pressing him past the verge of action, but he stayed in the shadows.

Then the man answered to his name, and sealed his fate.

“Damn Runabout won’t start...got to get rid of her, Deac, she
saw
me!” Hamilton paced toward the buggy as he spoke, wiping his hands nervously with a pristine handkerchief.

“We can’t have that, Cash, can’t have her knowing who you are.”

Hamilton shook his head, his eyes wild in the glow of the buggy’s lamps.

“Deac, I think they’re on to us.”

Hamilton looked back toward his automobile, and Jess drew hard on the cigar. As Hamilton turned back, Jess let the embers flare.

“We better move the stash, then,” Jess growled, trying hard not to say too much, but suddenly realizing he was poised to lead Hamilton into a trap. If he could keep up the deceit long enough to get Addie out of here, and then bring the authorities...somebody clean...to wherever Hamilton was with the incriminating funds, or contraband, or whatever it was, he could bring them all down. A man like Jensen was sure to sing once they had him cornered.

Jess felt his pulse even out from its erratic pumping. It was a plan. And it could very well work. If he managed to get Addie without being recognized, then he could lure Deacon to the same place where he’d expose Jensen. It could work. It had to.

“Y-you mean the vault?”

Attaboy, Jensen.

“What else?” he snarled.

Hamilton’s motions were jerky now, and he ran his hands through his hair every few seconds as he darted looks over his shoulder toward his vehicle.

“I, um, I can get to the bank by midnight, Deac, but I have to...I have to...I think she might be dead, Deac.”

His heart slid into oblivion, and after a moment of black darker than anything he’d ever felt, rage overtook him. His hands shook,

“Give her to me, Cash,” Jess growled. “I’ll dump her. Meet me at the bank. Midnight.”

Ford bolted off the bench and loped past Hamilton. Jess’s stomach heaved with the impotence of sitting there in the dark, hiding. But in seconds Ford was handing Addie’s limp form into the buggy, into Jess’s arms. Jess could barely see her for the tears that swam in his eyes.

“Midnight,” he yelled, his voice breaking with fear and fury as Ford backed the buggy out of the alley and took off down the side street.

Jess pulled Addie into his lap and cradled her, hugging her hard against the lurching roll of the speeding buggy. He ran his fingers over her bruised face and clutched her unresponsive hand, desperate to see her brown eyes again, to feel the joy she took in folding herself into his arms, to talk about nothing and everything with her, just one more time.

“Addie. Sweetheart. Open your eyes.”

Jess laid his forehead on Addie’s and traced her cheek with his finger, careful to avoid the deepening bruises that broke his heart. “It’s no fun here without you.”

Over and over Jess whispered his plea as Addie lay still in his arms. She’d been beaten violently. Even in the dark he could see the horrible evidence.

She’d been so angry with him when he was two hours late for dinner. And in his callous way, he’d made light of her fear for his safety. He’d been so thickheaded that it wasn’t until Addie was in horrible danger that he understood the need to guard, to protect, to hold someone to yourself against the dark.

Letting go of her hand was so unfathomable to him now, that he wondered if his heart would shatter if she were really gone.

For the first time in his life, Jess understood courage. And it had nothing to do with running headlong into peril. It had everything to do with letting a precious love out of your sight. How would he ever have the courage to do that?

How had she?

His tears slowed as he murmured over and over in Addie’s ear. When he leaned back to look on her face, a tear rolled from beneath her lash and onto her cheek. Startled, he looked closer, and at that moment, his tear fell to join hers, and rolled across the fearsome bruise to the corner of her mouth.

Jess bent slowly and touched his lips to hers. In the same instant, Addie’s lips parted. As lightly as he knew how, Jess kissed her awake.

“J-hessss?”

Her eyelids fluttered weakly, and Jess choked back the huge stone of gratitude that welled in his throat.

“Yes. Addie. It’s me. It’s Jess. Open your eyes, sweetheart. You’re safe now.”

The horses had found their stride, and as they left the worst of the Gut behind, the ride smoothed out. Still, Ford drove them as fast as he dared, and every few seconds his head whipped to the right, trying to catch a glimpse of his daughter.

“She’s coming ’round, Ford!” Jess hollered, sending reassurance, and saw a flicker of relief before Ford’s head whipped back around.

But he’d been a second too late, and didn’t see disaster approaching. Just as the horses charged into the intersection, a three-wheeled contraption careened out of the side street and raced crazily toward them. In the same instant the horses shied, the boy pedaling the contraption looked up and saw that he was about to clobber into the precinct chief’s buggy, and that realization sent his face into a paroxysm of fear. His hands came up as if to ward off the devil, and his rickety contraption rocked crazily to the side, spilling him into the street.

He rolled, narrowly missing being crushed by the chief’s buggy wheel.

“Tad?”

Jess blinked as the near miss set his heart pumping hard. “Ford, stop, pull over!”

“What the hell?—” But Ford obeyed.

The moment the buggy lurched to a stop, Jess propped Addie gently in the corner of the seat. Her hand came to her forehead, and he kissed her cheek before leaping out of the carriage.

“Tad!” He hollered as he ran back toward the small figure just getting to his knees in the street. “Tad!”

The kid darted a glance as he began to scramble now. His feet scuffled hard, trying to get traction so he could run from what he knew to be danger.

“Tad, it’s me! Jess!” Jess scooped him up just as he got his footing and battled his flailing arms. “It’s me! Jess!”

Tad suddenly stopped flailing and slumped in Jess’s arms. “Jess? We got to...she’s back there...they hurt her...”

“Tad, Tad! Stop now, it’s all right. I got her.”

“Wh- what?”

“I got Addie. She’s right here. He swung around and threw Tad up into the buggy. “She’s right here, Tad. It’s all right now.”