THE DEVILS DIME (41 page)

Tad stood and hesitated a moment, then slowly offered his own hand. Tad’s mother sniffled quietly, and Lizzie jumped up to offer more cookies. But the look that passed between Jess and Tad seemed less like the look between mentor and student and more like man to man.

“Read the next letter, Jess.”

“Wh—”

“Here.” Tad took the paper from beneath Jess’s arm and re-opened it.

Dear Thaddeus,
it said.
Please tell Jess Pepper we are holding his space in Sunday’s newspaper and will expect his usual fine column. And you may save your money, young man, because I have personally authorized a five-year subscription for you at no charge. You keep writing, son. I look forward to posting your work alongside that of Mr. Pepper one day. Ed.

“Ya know?” Tad said, “I think that Ed must be a big shot over there at the
Times
.”

Jess just stood shaking his head at the boy wonder he’d spawned with a single silver dollar, until Tad threw his arms around Jess’s waist. Jess ruffed Tad’s hair and swallowed back the salt that threatened to spill from his eyes as he hugged the boy back.

Wheeler Hazard Peckham stood and clapped a hand on each of their shoulders. “A mighty fine article, son, mighty fine.” He shook Tad’s hand, then Jess’s, keeping his focus on Tad. “You know, this fellow,” he pointed a thumb at Jess, “managed to do what a whole legal team found impossible.” Peckham smiled. “And he did it without firing a shot.” He dropped his chin a bit. “Don’t ever forget that, young man.”

“I won’t, sir!” Tad promised.

“I’ve had a file as thick as your fist on that man, but he was slippery as an eel.” Uncle Hazard held Jess’s hand in a grateful, congratulatory grip. “It seemed as if he’d greased every palm from here to the Hudson. We’d no sooner get enough for an indictment than our witnesses would disappear, or reverse their testimony or some fool thing. But you took care of that, son, you took care of that just fine.”

Jess smiled, still half stunned at the extent of the damage Chief Deacon Trumbull had wrought in his twenty-plus years on the force. He nearly broke the backs of local businessmen with his extortion for protection, then added innovations when opportunity presented itself.

For months he and his men would look the other way as gyp joints and beer halls stayed open past the mandated time. Then, to polish his image, he’d arrange for a newspaper photographer to come along during a police raid, always using police officers from other precincts that wouldn’t be recognized by the regulars. The joint would be shut down and Chief Trumbull heralded in the papers as the defender of the law, the champion of justice. And once the furor had died down, the fair-haired precinct chief would magnanimously allow the owner to re-open his business. For a small fee, of course.

The murders of Hamilton Jensen and Oliver Twickenham were just the last in a long string of battered corpses and missing persons that were now linked to Deacon Trumbull. It was more than likely that his own name would be added to the list of the infamous and innocent who had walked those cold stony steps into the hanging pit Trumbull himself had so proudly designed.

Ford Magee crossed the room to sit on the edge of the divan, his large hand quickly covered by the delicate long fingers of his daughter. Jess turned, so full of questions for the man who had destroyed his own life to keep someone else’s secret, to keep the secret from his own family. There was more to know, and from the look of peace on Magee’s face, bits of that story seemed poised for the telling.

“I don’t know if I could have done what you did, Ford. I mean, forget the fact that you survived a hanging. That I can’t even fathom. But, well, all those years of protecting Addie and her mother, not even getting to see them, and paying for Jeremiah’s hospital. That must’ve been brutal.”

Jess sat on Addie’s other side, and now the three were linked by the woman whose silence spoke loudly of the things that were full upon her heart.

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Jess,” Ford countered. “A person doesn’t do it because he has to. Sometimes it’s the only way to be a part of somethin’ you love.”

“Even though she never knew?”

Ford shifted his fingers to grasp Addie’s hand as he spoke of her mother. “It would have shamed her, broken her heart. But if I had to do it again, I...I don’t know.”

Jess rolled the thought around for a moment, and tucked the lesson in it somewhere deep inside for future study. There were many colors of shame. Maybe the one Ford kept from Addie’s mother was the one color she could have lived with. But it wasn’t for him to say.

Addie’s soft voice broke the silence with a tentative question. “How did you know it was Jeremiah?”

When there was no answer for a long while, Jess looked over at Ford. He just sat there shaking his head slowly back and forth.

“I just got lucky, darlin’. Plain ol’ dumb luck.”

“How d’you mean?” Jess asked.

Ford worked his thumb across the empty place where Addie’s amethyst ring had left its impression on her finger. “Workin’ for the railroad was never what I thought I’d do with my life. But the railroad was good to me. So, when I got this idea I was goin’ to buy us a cottage somewhere down the line, away from the city, the Hudson River Rail did me a favor. Or at least, I thought it was a favor.”

Ford huffed out a long sigh. “I’d get paid a second full shift for runnin’ mailbags out to Albany. Just the engine, no cars. Easy money. I figured in two years I’d have enough to buy a place. Little cottage, y’ know? With a porch an’ all.

“Some nights I was to pick up an Albany fellow runnin’ payroll back up to Manhattan. I tell ya, Jess, the longer I had that hired shotgun around, the more suspicious I got about what he was carryin’, and who he was carryin’ it for.

“So one night I followed him. Turns out he made deliveries to a bunch of flophouses in the Gut. The last one was McGlory’s. I didn’t know it was the last until he didn’t come out for a while. I was just leaving when I heard the door opening, so I stopped and pretended I was fumblin’ for a smoke.

“When I turned around, it wasn’t him at all. It was my brother-in-law. Jeremiah. Well, hell, I thought he was in the institution, so I took up followin’ him.

“He was in a real bad way. Not really drunk, but staggerin’, like his head was gonna explode. He’d stop and cuss at a lamp post, and then go on up the street. And ’fore I knew it, he was across the street from our place, me and Julia’s. That’s when he got real weird.

“I thought he was gonna kill himself, he banged his head so hard on the buildin’. He’d look up at our balcony and mutter or rant, then bang his head and walk in circles.

“Well, I had no idea what to do. I thought I’d keep followin’ and find out where he was stayin’, then I’d get the doc out at the institution to come pick him up.

“And then all hell broke loose. Jeremiah took off runnin’. Down alleys, across yards, over fences. I couldn’t hardly keep up. And when I did lose him, I just hunkered down on the sidewalk and tried to catch my breath.

“I was forty years old, Jess. He was fifteen years younger ’n me. I didn’t have a chance of catchin’ him, so I was gonna head home.

“And then I heard the screamin’.”

Ford just sat and shook his head for a bit. He lifted his hand from Addie’s, as if what he was about to say was too raw, but she pulled his hand back into her own.

“I ran toward the screamin’ and knocked him off her. I couldn’t believe how much...damage he’d done. So fast. I had to help her. I couldn’t chase after him, or she’d bleed to death.

“As soon as I heard the police comin’ I took off. If I’d stayed, they might’ve asked me who did it, and I woulda told ’em. And I knew Julia would never forgive me that.

“So I just left.”

Ford fell quiet.

“When the police showed up,” Jess ventured, “was it by any chance Deacon Trumbull?”

Ford huffed. “Trumbull? Hell, no. It was his beat, too. He shoulda been there. So after a dozen times and I still hadn’t caught Jeremiah, I sent an anonymous note to the newspaper. They checked it out and published the fact that even though Trumbull was on duty each of those nights, he never showed up at a one of those attacks. The hullabaloo cost him a promotion, I heard.”

“That hardly seems enough for him to come at you now with so much vengeance. Not that a skunk like that needed a reason.”

“I know some skunks that’d take offense to bein’ compared to the likes o’ Deacon Trumbull, Jess, but you’re right. There was more.

“I finally figured out that the attacks only happened on the nights Jeremiah went to McGlory’s. And those were always the same nights I brought my passenger up from Albany to make his deliveries. Whether he picked up something from Jeremiah or brought something to him, I never knew. I just kept comin’ closer to gettin’ Jeremiah. He’d get so far ahead sometimes I’d be two, three blocks away when I heard the screamin’. But finally, one night, I was just across the street a few yards back when he jumped the girl. I got there and got him off her, and she ran like a bat outta hell. I clobbered him so hard I figured he was either dead or next to it.

“I got him out to Williamsbridge ’fore he knew what hit him. But...” Ford sighed heavily, “Julia had already left by then. The most I could do was look after them and keep sendin’ Trumbull anonymous letters ’til he finally closed down. By then I knew that Trumbull’s penny ante scam was arranging burglaries in houses he was supposed to be protecting, and that Jeremiah was one of his best boys at getting into tight places and coming away with the best booty. He was so good that he regularly got the ‘reward’ of going up to Heaven and relieving opium drunks of their valuables. Trumbull was madder than heck that I put his best catburglar back in the institution.

“If you ask me, Doc, I’d say Trumbull didn’t send someone out here to kill Jeremiah. I think it was to spring him from this place and get him back on the prowl.”

Doc nodded. “But by the time they found him here, Jeremiah had turned a corner. He didn’t want to live in that darkness any longer. And...” Doc gave a long sigh, “he saved my life.”

Ford turned a sheepish grin on his daughter. “He was a sick man, darlin’, he...he hated your mother without reason. But she...” he shook his head, “...she never said an unkind word about her brother. All those years she thought he was dead, she put a bow on the Christmas tree every year, just for him.”

Addie caught her breath at this last revelation, and dropped Jess’s hand to fall into her father’s huge embrace. Jess watched, a painful bevy of emotions twisting at his heart. How quickly she’d grown to love the man.

And now Jess was just going to take her away from him again.

Chapter Thirty

Addie was on a euphoric high. Her eyes shone with it, her mouth curved up with delight in it, and the relief of it after so many days of worry had lightened her step. The bank had sent word that Miss Adelaide Magee was most welcome to resume her position as teller, an invitation which she had politely declined. Thanks to her new benefactors—her father, and a prestigious local Conservatory—she was free to immerse herself in her music.

Ford was just helping her into the carriage when Jess trotted up Lizzie Chalmers’ lane on Dakota, the horse he’d been unable to resist when Uncle Hazard had offered it for sale at an insanely low price.

“Jess! Oh, wonderful! I didn’t know you were coming today!” Addie waved and called from the carriage seat.

Jess cantered the horse around the carriage and stopped alongside it. He tipped his hat to Ford and answered Addie’s glowing smile.

“Going for a ride, you two?”

“Going home!” Addie exclaimed. “At last!”

Jess’s smile faltered. She looked so eager. She and Ford had stayed on for two days at Lizzie’s invitation, and basked in her good cooking, her fussing, and her personal style of restorative therapy. Feeling she could take on the world, the idea of going home had brought the color back to Addie’s cheeks.