THE DEVILS DIME (33 page)

“Then, when the baby died, and the circumstances were just too peculiar to comprehend, his mother went wild with grief and tried to kill Jeremiah herself. She was convinced the devil was in him.

“So, Jeremiah Leviticus Carnello took up residence at Williamsbridge Hostel at the age of eight and a half. For the next ten years he spent much of his time tethered.”

“Tethered?”

“Yes. I regret to say that we’d tried everything. Shock treatments. Everything. We knew the signs when he was heading toward an episode and tethered him. He could walk around, but only as far as the rope would reach. He hated it.”

“I can imagine.”

“But each time, it got longer between episodes, and we thought something was being triggered in his mind that he could control the episodes. That perhaps he was actually learning to manage his behavior. And then Callie arrived.”

Haberman sighed and shook his head.

“Callie?”

“Callie was a, well, how shall I say it, the clinical term is nymphomaniac.”

“Ah.” Jess understood.

“Callie was a free spirit, a delightful patient. Had the run of the place and took such a shine to Jeremiah that for a while we thought they were actually having a normal relationship. But as it turns out, when Callie made her, um, demands, Jeremiah was unable to perform, if you get my meaning.”

“Yes, of course. How do you know all this?”

“Oh, Jeremiah told me. In our sessions when he came back. He told me...everything. I have his files, you know.”

“You have his files? This is more than I’d hoped.”

“As I said, I’ve been waiting a good long time to hand them to someone. Anyway, Jeremiah convinced Callie that it was being here, at the hostel, that kept him from, um, participating fully in their relationship. So one night he and Callie just left.”

“They just walked out?”

“Oh, they planned it all out. And no one saw them leave. I saw Callie years later in a catatonic state at Bellevue, but Jeremiah swore she’d been fine when they parted ways a month or two after they left here.

“Now, here’s the part that is truly dreadful. Jeremiah fell in with a group of ne’er-do-wells who sold stolen goods for a police officer who set up the robberies for them.”

“A police officer? You’re sure about that?” All of a sudden a link was beginning to form that had not been there before.

“Yes, definitely. It was quite organized, and there was another, very wealthy fellow working with them. Jeremiah just called him Mr. Cash. Oh, and he called the policeman The Preacher. I don’t think he knew them by any other names.

“As Jeremiah told it, Preacher would set up the robberies, and if they were really successful, Mr. Cash showed up with a bonus in addition to their cut. The bonus was a visit to a private brothel and opium den he’d set up somewhere below Greene Street.”

Jess dropped an eyebrow and shook his head slowly. “Is that in the Bowery proper?”

“Den o’ thieves and gyp joints, just beyond the Bowery. Folks call it the Gut.”

“Do you know which building?”

“You know, I don’t think Jeremiah ever named the building. It was hard to get much out of him about those nights, you see. He got agitated just thinking about it. He would do really risky things on their capers so he’d be sure to get a bonus visit to Heaven, he called it.

“Do you know why he called it Heaven?”

“Oh, yes, actually I do! Jeremiah said that the window over the alley-side door, the one they used, was painted with stars and clouds. So he just called it Heaven.

“Each time he’d get euphoric thinking this would be the time his little problem would go away. This time he’d be a man.”

“And of course, that never happened.”

“Sadly, no. It wasn’t long before his failure would plummet him from his high euphoric state to maniacal depths again, and that’s when he began leaving the brothel and finding young women on the streets.”

Jess sat back in his chair, stunned that all the pieces were falling into place. The answers had been right here all along.

“Don’t tell me. Twenty young women attacked in the space of a year. Nearly murdered. Until a good Samaritan shows up and chases the attacker off. Every time.”

“Right you are, Mr. Pepper.”

“But, the attacks, they happened quite a distance from the Bowery, much less from a place even beyond it. Why wouldn’t he have done his deeds behind the flop houses on Greene Street? Somewhere closer to where his rage started.”

Doc Haberman smiled at Jess, and simply raised an eyebrow, as if to say, ‘I think you know’.

Jess spun the story through his mind, wanting to find the reason for himself. Doc was about to speak when Jess suddenly sat forward on his chair. He knew.

“You said his anger had its source in the deformed arm. Anger at his perfect twin, and maybe at the baby sister she mothered. So, just any female wouldn’t do.”

Doc Haberman smiled and nodded like a teacher whose student had just made him proud, and Jess continued.

“So, he had to go north to the more affluent part of town. To find sweeter prey. But, how did the Samaritan figure out what was happening? Manage to stop him?”

“Oh, ho, ho. That very question was worse than a festering boil for Jeremiah. You can be sure he never knew, or he would have changed his method.

“As it was, he tried all sorts of things. Varying his route, passing up quarry and doubling back. But the Samaritan somehow showed up. Every time. Like a ghost.

“You know, it wasn’t just an accidental Samaritan, Mr. Pepper. It was his very own brother-in-law. The husband of the twin he’d tried to maim and perhaps even kill as a child.”

“He told you that?”

“He didn’t have to, though that fact made him outraged. It was his brother-in-law who brought him back here. It was his brother-in-law who paid for his treatment here for the next three years until Jeremiah, um, died.”

“Ford Magee did that?” Jess could believe it, but the stunning impact of hearing it with his own ears still left him reeling.

“Was that his name? He never said. And I must admit I never tried to find out.”

Both men sat for a moment, each resolving questions in his own mind.

“I suppose you’ll want to know how Jeremiah died.”

Jess nodded.

Doctor Haberman closed his eyes and ran a hand over his forehead. He exhaled a long sigh and then began.

“Jeremiah had lucid moments when he returned, and that’s how he was able to tell me so much about the year and a half that he was on the streets. On those occasions he seemed to view his sessions with me almost as a confessional.

“One evening he saw a man coming up the front walk of the hostel, a man he recognized. Someone from the streets. No one should have known Jeremiah was here. But this man did. He was tough-looking. Long face, dressed all in black, string tie. A man the likes of which you don’t easily forget.

“We didn’t have many patients then and I was the only one here on duty. I tried to make him leave. But he had a gun, and he ran through the wards until he found Jeremiah hiding in a closet. I tried to pull him off but he was too strong.

“He tried to convince Jeremiah that he was taking him back to the ‘job’, said Preacher wanted his best boy back. But I think Jeremiah knew the same thing I could see, that the man was lying.

“They struggled and Jeremiah ran toward the balcony over the second floor sunroom. This meant he was actually up as high as the third floor, you see. I thought he was going to jump. It drops quite severely on that side of the building and I thought the jump would kill him, so I tried to bar the door. But he got through. We were both on the roof and the man came out with his gun.

“I stepped in front of Jeremiah and waved my hands at the man not to shoot, but he raised his gun ready to fire.

“Jeremiah pushed me away and jumped in front just as the man shot, and the bullet hit him in the head. The force knocked him into me and we both went over the balcony.

“I broke my back and the shooter thought I was dead, too. He finally got down to the ground floor and was going to dig a hole right then and bury us. But just then all the patients set up this wailing and racket, and he was afraid someone would come investigate, I suppose, and he just dropped the shovel and ran.

“My sweet Lizzie came running across the street and she thought I was dead, too, but when she saw that I was alive, she got her brother to help her. They put me on a board and carried me here. I haven’t left this house since.”

“But, doctor, surely they know...” Jess waved a hand in the direction of Williamsbridge hostel and the village.

He just smiled and shook his head. “Lizzie swore her brother to secrecy. Of course, he was the local undertaker, so it was a simple matter for him to fake my burial. I even have a nice tombstone over there in Fairview.”

“But surely when things calmed down...”

“I know. We thought of it from time to time. But, you know, it was almost three years before that hired gun showed up to silence Jeremiah. They must have had something pretty huge going on by then if they persisted for three years to track him down. Lizzie and I figured it was just best that everyone thought I was dead.”

“But you’re right across the road!” Jess was incredulous at the magnitude of the deception the two had carried out.

“That we are. But then, you don’t know my Lizzie. She’s one of the finest actresses you’ll ever hope to meet.”

“Well, now, that I can believe. I surely can.” He’d had quite a fine taste of her acting ability. And at the wrong end of the barrel, too.

Jess looked at the former doctor, who’d been tucked into the daybed and tended by his sweet Lizzie for twenty years. Had it been Jess, he was certain he’d have looked for a way out, a way to end it all.

“The answer is yes.”

“What?”

“You were wondering why I didn’t kill myself rather than stay in this bed for twenty years.”

“I...yes, I suppose I wondered how a person could do it.”

“A person can’t. Not alone. I begged Lizzie time after time to end it for me. But she wouldn’t hear of it. And after a year or so, I realized my days with Lizzie here in this little bungalow were more fun than any days I could remember in my whole life. And so I’m still here.”

Jess had the answers to the greater part of his questions now, and thanks to this good man who’d waited twenty years to tell his story, Jess had what he needed to clear Ford.

“Doctor Haberman, you said you felt the brother-in-law was a good man, that he did what he could to help Jeremiah.”

“Oh, absolutely. I’ve wished many times I could meet him again, tell him how Jeremiah saved my life.”

“Well, it looks like you’ll get a chance. To save his, I mean.”

“But how—”

“Ford’s been falsely accused of having committed those crimes, and while you and I know he was the one who actually saved those women, the Precinct Chief in Battery Park is anxious to hang him. And I think I know why.”

Haberman’s eyes grew wide. “You mean...”

Jess nodded. “I think our Chief Deacon Trumbull and your Preacher are one and the same.”

“But that’s monstrous! Then, how will you get around the authorities?”

“I’m quite sure the State’s Attorney General will be very interested in what you’ve revealed to me today. And with the files to back it up...?”

“Say no more. Lizzie? Lizzie dear? Would you bring those files, sweeting?”

The loving tone that passed between the two as they called to one another was not lost on Jess. If not for Jeremiah, these two might have spent the rest of their lives on opposite sides of the road.

There was a great deal of risk ahead, but with the files that Jess had tucked inside his shirt as he stepped out into the afternoon sun, the end of Addie’s nightmare seemed very, very near.