THE DEVILS DIME (31 page)

“Oooooh!” Jess beamed with childish delight and reached for the knob and twisted it over and over, making the bell chime steadily for a good five seconds.

“That’s enough, boy. They hear you.” She turned as the door opened and spoke to the matron who was already glaring angrily at him. “Good morning, Lenora. I was just helping this young man with the bell.” She leaned toward Lenora and said in a loud whisper, “I think he’s slow.”

“All right, thank you, Lizzie. You can go on back to your roses.” She dismissed Lizzie and turned to Jess. “What can I do for you?”

“I, um, I, uhhh.” Jess shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“Out with it, boy. I don’t have all day.”

“I wanna see Doc Haberman.”

“Doctor Haberman?” Lenora narrowed her eyes. “He’s no longer here. Why do you want to see him?”

“C’n I come in?” Jess put a touch of whine into his voice. “Ma says I gotta see Doc Haberman.”

“And I told you he’s no longer here. Now good day.”

Lenora began to close the door but Jess moved his boot a bit to stop it and tried again.

“Ma says Doc Haberman takes care o’ her brother an’ I’m s’posed t’ aks is her brother doin’ good.”

“But I told you—”

“Ma’s real sick and she don’t wanna die ‘thout knowin’ her brother’s okay.”

Lenora let out an exasperated sigh. “What is your uncle’s name?”

Jess looked perplexed and let a couple of seconds pass. “My uncle? I don’t—”

“Oh, for pity’s sake! Your uncle, your mother’s brother, the one you want to know about. What’s his name?”

“Oh! Ma’s brother! Well, why didn’t ya say so?” Jess puffed up his chest and spouted the name as if he’d taken months to memorize it. “Jeremiah Leviticus Carnello. Ain’t that a grand name?”

Jess watched the woman recoil at the name. She put a protective hand to her throat and her voice dropped to almost a whisper.

“The patient by that name died fifteen years ago.”

Jess gave a monumentally crestfallen look, even though this information came as no surprise to him.

“And so did Doctor Haberman.”

Lenora began to close the door and pushed Jess’s boot out of the way with it, and just before it clicked shut she dropped her eyes and said, “Tell your mother I’m sorry.”

. . .

Addie’s pale fists beat the dark ebony of Chief Deacon Trumbull’s mammoth desk as she repeated her demand. He sat behind it, a sincerely compassionate look on his surprised face, immensely dignified in his wide lapels. She pulled her hands back swiftly. His pristine, crisp white cuffs made her own look absolutely dowdy.

“I want to know where you’ve taken my father
.
”

Chief Trumbull affected a look of regret and answered her for a second time. “I don’t personally keep track of all our prisoners, Miss Magee. Surely you can understand that.”

Addie swallowed, desperate to modulate her icy tone. The chief had displayed his earlier gallantry to her until she’d begun to challenge him. With her vehemence, his kindness seemed to peel away, revealing a man best not to be bullied. Not by a mere woman, at any rate. “Then of course you will be able to find me someone who does.”

That was better. Allude to his power over the situation.

Trumbull stepped from behind his desk to face Addie. She turned and backed a step involuntarily, uncertain she could maintain her poise this close to a man capable of doing the things Jess had related to her the night before. Of course, she hadn’t quite believed him. How could she believe that this man could have beaten a woman with his own fists?

Still, why had she thought she could run to this man who’d charmed her so thoroughly that night at the Astors and he would magically restore her father and make all her problems go away?

Addie suddenly felt as if she’d stepped across some kind of invisible line. She had to control her temper if she was to garner any kind of help from the precinct chief.

“Miss Magee, I didn’t want to alarm you, but your father had a bit of a cough and is in the infirmary.”

Addie blinked, unsure whether to trust the man. “I’ll go see him right now if you’ll have someone show me the way.”

“I’m sorry, dear, that’s simply not allowed.”

His patronizing tone made her stomach pinch as he put a comforting hand on her shoulder. It brought no relief, only revulsion. Every instinct said run and run now, but instead Addie slid to her left and dropped into the nearest side chair. “Oh. I see. Then if you would be so kind, I should like to meet with him here, in your office.” She looked up at him with what she hoped was less challenge and greater meekness than she’d managed up to now. “It would feel so much safer here,” she lied.

She forced her eyes to stay fixed on his face, though she saw sliding across it a mixture of calculations that unnerved her.

“Miss Magee, I find this extremely regrettable, since I feel a...a fatherly concern for you, my dear.” He moved behind her chair, his tone solicitous and sanguine, his hands dropping with unwelcome familiarity onto her shoulders. “I can surely understand how very much you would like to believe that your father is the good man you hoped for.” The sweet, cloying smell of his cigar smothered her as he leaned close to her ear. “But I assure you, he is the most dangerous, the most deceptive kind of criminal.”

A fearful tremble began in her diaphragm and threatened to shake her whole body, but she clasped her hands firmly in her lap and refused to jump from the chair, as every nerve seemed to be demanding.

“Chief Trumbull, I...

“There now, my dear, you’re getting all worked up.” He slid into the chair opposite her and took her hands. “I’ll tell you what. You tell me where you’re staying, and as soon as I have an opportunity to arrange a meeting, I will send for you.”

She turned to thank him, saw something cold and calculating in his eye that stopped her words. If she lied, and missed an opportunity to see her father, she’d never forgive herself. But the hungry look in this man’s eye, the way he leaned in, shouted danger. She knew now what to say.

“Well, you see...I’m leaving town, Mr. Trumbull. Today, in fact.” She stood, drawing on her gloves roughly, eager to wipe away the trace of his touch. “I only wanted to see my father to...to tell him...to say that I never wanted to see him again.”

She moved toward the door, sick at the sound of the lie she’d felt compelled to speak, sick at the knowledge that Jess was right about this man, sick at the possibility that if this man had his way, she might truly never see her father again. Ever.

. . .

“Don’t worry, lad, I won’t give you away.”

The rose lady put a hand on Jess’s shoulder and settled herself on the step next to him. He’d carried on with his act while he sat on the step to ponder where he might wait until he could slip back after dark and check out the hostel’s files.

“Pardon me, ma’am?”

Her hand came up under his chin as she leaned close. “You can drop the act,” she whispered. “I won’t give you away.”

Jess looked over both shoulders. If they kept their voices low, no one would overhear.

“How did you know?”

“Oh, laddie, maybe these people are just too used to seeing the lights turned out behind blank eyes to recognize intelligence when it’s staring them in the face.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I hate to disappoint you, but you’ve got smarts comin’ out your pores!”

Jess straightened and gave her a disparaging look.

“Now blow your nose like you’re cryin’ so I can pat you on the back.”

Jess pulled out a blue plaid handkerchief and did as Lizzie had instructed.

She put a grandmotherly arm around his shoulders and patted his arm with her other hand so she could lean close again. “I heard you ask for Doc Haberman.”

Jess wiped his shirt sleeve across his eyes as if he were still bawling and nodded.

Lizzie stood up and took his hand like she would a child and said clearly, “You come on home with me, sweet boy. I have some cookies and milk that will make you feel better in nothin’ flat.”

Jess stood up and, still holding her hand like a lost little boy, walked with her down the carriage path, through the gates, and across the road to a small bungalow set back behind a double row of mulberry trees. Once safely inside, Jess straightened up and dropped his act.

“Now then, I’ll just get those cookies.”

“Please don’t go to any trouble on my account, Mrs. –”

Lizzie turned a beatific smile on him. “Such lovely manners,” she sighed. “It’s Chalmers, laddie. Lizzie Chalmers.” Without waiting for him to complete the introduction she disappeared into the kitchen.

Jess dropped his hat on the hall bench and moved into the parlor to find a seat.

He had just retied the leather strap around his hair that seemed to be getting longer by the minute when Lizzie came back from the kitchen. A plate of cookies in one hand. And a double-barreled shotgun in the other.

“Now, then, laddie. Tell me who you really are.”

Lizzie slid the plate of cookies across the small birdseye maple table tucked between the chair and loveseat and sat back with the barrel of the gun resting comfortably between her knees.

Jess smiled, awed and humbled at the act she herself had carried out flawlessly.

“You’re good, Lizzie Chalmers. You’re very, very good.”

“Years of practice, Mr.—”

“Pepper. Jess Pepper, ma’am.” He nodded toward the gun. “You’ve got nothing to fear from me.”

“Lizzie?” A soft male voice called to her from a room beyond the parlor. Wobbly and slow, it lacked body but still carried with a cheerful ring. “We got company?”

“That we do, Clarence,” she called. “That’s Clarence,” she said, as if Jess were still slow to figure things out. “Be in in a minute, Sweetie.”

“Take y’ time, take y’time.”

Jess heard bedcovers rustle and settle before he turned his attention back to Lizzie.

“Your husband?”

“My sweetie.”

Jess wasn’t certain she’d answered his question. Maybe he was really getting slow after all.

“Mrs. Chalmers, I—”

“Miss.”

“Oh, sorry. Miss Chalmers, I want you to know that my presence here is completely honorable.”

“I see. You just like to play dress-up.”

Jess chuckled. “Actually, I needed information, and I didn’t know if the Williamsbridge Hostel was an honest institution.”

“What made you think that it might not be?”

“Well, I know nothing about the hostel, but the information that led me to the hostel came from characters of a very unsavory sort, and I felt subterfuge—”

“You mean, lyin’.”

Jess cleared his throat. “ I felt...pretending to be someone other than myself would...”

“Would make them more sympathetic to you, is that it?”

Jess dropped his head, wondering if this was what intimidation felt like. “Yes. That’s what I thought.”

“Why did you want to see Doc Haberman?”

Jess looked a long moment at Lizzie, measuring her. The corner of his mind that was not engaged in conversation had already decided that while she was a character, she was honest at heart.

“Miss Chalmers, Doc Haberman cared for a patient here about twenty years back. The fellow may have been here three or four years. He was, or at least I think he must have been, terribly disturbed. He was in his early twenties when he would have been here, and the only thing I know, or suspect, about him is that he had a deformed or damaged right arm.”

Lizzie’s head reared back and her eyes widened, but she said nothing.

“You know who I’m talking about, don’t you.”

Lizzie answered, but her voice had lost its lilt. “Dark hair, grey eyes that could pierce right through you, misshapen right hand that he always carried behind his back?”

“I would say that’s him.” Jess watched and waited for her to continue. But before she did, she dropped the shotgun to the floor beside her and stood up with a heaviness she hadn’t displayed earlier.