THE DEVILS DIME (40 page)

Hamilton spun the combination and turned, blushing. “Mother’s jewels.”

Deacon looked from Jensen to the bag and back again. “I didn’t know your old lady died.”

Hamilton giggled, and hid his mouth behind the bag. “She didn’t.”

As Deacon threw back his head and tried to stifle a hearty laugh, Hamilton raised his other hand, aimed squarely for Trumbull’s forehead, and squeezed the trigger of the little derringer. The hollow click of an empty chamber sounded just as Jess stepped out of the shadows.

Deacon lost a second, stunned that the little coward had thought he could double cross the precinct chief, then raised his own gun and returned the favor. He’d caught Jess’s movement from the corner of his eye, and as he fired, he yelled in a false, commanding voice, “Don’t make me do it, Jensen!” But Jensen was already dead.

“Hands up!” He whirled on Jess, and recognition tinged with satisfaction flooded his face. “I never figured you for a bank robber, Pepper.”

Jess slowly raised his hands. A long moment passed as the two sized up the situation. “What are you saying, Deacon?”

Deacon’s startled face relaxed into a canny smirk. “Well, let’s see now. I’m saying that I got a tip that you were here holding a gun on Jensen, that you forced him to empty the vault, and then you shot him.”

Jess nodded slowly, breathing in the sharp sulfur tang that lingered after the shot. “That’s about the size of it, Trumbull. You got me dead to rights.” Jess saw the flicker of a white shirt cuff in the dimness beyond Trumbull’s gunhand, and hoped it was Ford and the Pinkertons that had crept halfway down a side hallway. Conceivably they had come in when they heard the shot fired. If he could just get Deacon to come a bit closer, they’d have a clear line of fire.

But not before he loosened Trumbull’s tongue a bit.

“I mean, you already planted that story that got me canned from the
Times
. I don’t suppose it will be much of a stretch for folks to believe I’ve added bank robbery to my list of preferred criminal activity.”

That earned him a mirthless chuckle. “Pretty clever, if I do say so myself, Pepper. Now get over here.”

Jess backed up a half step, and Deacon took a healthy stride toward him. “Stop right where you are.”

“Okay, okay.” Jess put a heavy dose of fear into his voice and lifted his hands to show he wasn’t armed. “I just don’t think you should be taking all those good people’s money, is all I’m saying.”

“That’s
my
money, Pepper. And what the hell good people would you be talking about? Those fat asses sitting up there in their Fifth Avenue offices couldn’t wait to line my pockets with it. Wouldn’t dare be seen in their hoitytoity Upper East Side castles in a stinkin’ opium daze. They needed me. They needed someplace to go. They
begged
me for someplace to go.”

“So you gave them Heaven.”

Trumbull huffed out a guarded laugh, clearly surprised that Jess knew of Heaven. “Helluva place, Heaven. Finest parlor in the whole goddamn Tenderloin. Too good for muckrakers like you, that’s for sure.”

He took another step toward Jess, his words punctuated with impatience. “Now shut the hell up and move. Over here, next to the vault.”

“I would but, well, I think you should know that you’re going to be in a lot of trouble when Addie delivers my next...
mukraking
column to the paper up in Albany.”

Deacon laughed. “Addie? Adelaide Magee? You think you can bluff me, Pepper?” Now he sounded mad. “You think you can dupe me? Hm? Well, I’ve got news for you, boy-o,” he growled, and took an aggressive step toward Jess as he raised his gun and lined it up perfectly on Jess’s chest. “Mr. Magee’s pretty little daughter is dead. And so are you.”

. . .

Addie heard one gunshot and then silence. Her heart hammered loud enough to drown out a cannon, but after several minutes she felt certain that only one shot had been fired.

Please God, don’t let it be Jess.

Her plea held double meaning. She neither wanted Jess to be the one shot, or the one who pulled the trigger.

With each second she had less and less confidence that Jess had not been hurt. Why didn’t he come for her? He’d promised.

Without consciously deciding, Addie slipped from the carriage and crept to the cover of the bushes near the bank’s side door. A police paddy wagon stood there, its horses untended. Had Trumbull brought more men? Had they overwhelmed the little party of Pinkertons?

She had to know. If they were being held, she could somehow create a diversion. She had to do something, anything.

She stepped up into the bank, her bare toes curling up from the cold marble floor. She paused and turned her ear toward the darkness. There were only two voices. Jess, and the devil himself. And the devil clearly had the upper hand.

. . .

Jess shifted the subtle tension to his left leg, ready to dive. Deacon cocked the hammer of the gun, but the ominous click was muffled by a deafening scream as a blur of petticoats and ruffles flew from the far dark side of the hallway to grapple for the gun.

“No-o-o-oooo!”

Jess couldn’t stop the dive he’d already leaned into, but used the momentum coming out of his roll to hurtle toward the crazed precinct chief. The shot went wild as both Ford and Jess converged, each just a leap short of tackling Deacon. But before they reached him, the chief whirled and secured Addie beneath his arm, and they stopped in their tracks.

“Jess! No!” Addie’s stricken eyes seemed so large in her delicate, pale face. Her hands gripped tightly onto Deacon’s arm that was clamped brutally about her neck and shoulder.

“Let her go,” Jess barked.

“You got no quarrel with her, Trumbull,” Ford said, his voice thinned by emotion. “Let her go.”

“Ha!” Deacon spat. “Now isn’t this nice. Daddy and daughter back from the dead.” He moved the gun that had been trained on Jess, and jammed it into Addie’s shoulder. She gasped. “Back off or she’ll never play again,” he growled.

Nobody moved.

“Back off, I said!” In his anger he shoved the gun harder into Addie’s shoulder and she cried out, sending her pain hurtling straight through Jess’s gut. The shawl that had been knotted around her shoulders slipped, and its long tail dangled to the floor, lightly weighted by a knot that hadn’t yet come loose.

In a perfectly choreographed instant, Jess caught Addie’s eye. He drew her attention to the trailing shawl, and her eyes lit with understanding. A split second later she kicked the knot sideways. It swished in an arc—still tethered where the other end was caught between her body and the chief—and landed behind Deacon. At the same time, she leaned hard into him, and he dragged her another step backwards. His foot came down on the knot and he stumbled. Addie pushed up with both hands and ducked out from under his arm just as her father darted in and pulled her away from the fracas, clearing the way for Jess to land on Chief Trumbull in a move slicker than a Texas takedown.

In seconds the Pinkertons had hold of the chief, whose seething had taken on the wild-eyed panic of disbelief. The elegant satin cape of his evening dress hung askew, and bore the distinct boot print of an angry father. Blood trickled from his cut lip and hanks of blond hair hung boyishly across his cruel face.

“You’re dead men. All of you!” he spat. “They’ll never take your word for this!”

Wheeler Hazard Peckham cleared his throat as he recognized his cue and stepped out of the darkness. He walked slowly forward, letting Deacon comprehend the extent of the trap he had just sprung. The elderly lawyer bent down with stately elegance and picked up a lone Italian black patent shoe. He used the back of his own fine linen sleeve to polish the scuff marks from it, then handed it quietly to Deacon, who seemed to shrink as his shaky hand reached out to snatch the shoe.

“Did you hear enough?” Jess asked, finding his breath at last, and dragging his eyes from Addie to watch Peckham’s commanding performance.

Peckham just chuckled. “Oh yes, my friend. I heard...and saw...plenty.” He turned to the precinct chief. “And you, Deacon Trumbull, are under citizen’s arrest for libel, corruption, graft, kidnapping, and...oh yes...the murder of Hamilton Jensen.” He laid a fatherly hand on Deacon’s shoulder. “And that, son, is just for starters.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It felt like family, clustered there in Lizzie Chalmers’ Williamsbridge bungalow where they’d come to celebrate Chief Trumbull’s fall from grace. Addie sat on Jess’s left, her shoulder tucked behind his. She couldn’t get closer without sitting in his lap, and both of them counted the hours until she might.

Ford stood by the window, a benevolent look on his face that neither of them recognized, and both of them loved. Tad and his parents beamed with pride over the article Tad hadn’t been able to wait to show Jess.

Doc Haberman sat in the sunny bay window, bolstered all around by pillows. It was the first time he’d been in a chair in fifteen years, thanks to Jess and Tad’s father. He was practically drunk on the simple joy of it.

Jess snapped the newspaper open and cleared his throat to read Tad’s article aloud.

“Dear Ed,” he began, then looked over the top of the paper to catch Tad’s eye. “Who’s Ed?”

Tad hunched his shoulders. “You know. The guy who writes all those letters in the paper. Just signs himself Ed.”

Jess blinked, then smiled. Ed. Editor. “You mean the guy who responds to letters to the editor? That Ed?”

Tad grinned and nodded agreement.

Jess cleared his throat again, trapping his laughter in its gruffness.

“Dear Ed.

I read your newspaper every day, and I can’t say that I always agree with the things it says, but mostly I do. Except now.

For some reason, you have stopped printing Mr. Pepper’s column
From the Salt Mines.
Maybe you just forgot to put it in last week. And this week. Or maybe you just didn’t think you could make room for it.

But Ed, if you are not going to put the
Salt Mines
back into the
New York Times
, please let me know, as I will stop buying the paper.

You know, I never bought a newspaper before I met Jess Pepper. I mean, I just never thought a kid my age had any use for a newspaper. But Jess showed me how wrong I was. He showed me how the words can draw pictures of things that happen to people, and pictures of things people should think about doing, and pictures of things people should stop doing.

Words can do all that. And if a person has to go along making every mistake by hisself and not hearing about how other people fixed their mistakes or kept from making them in the first place, why a person could get to be old in a hurry just filling up his days making mistakes.

When I read the
Salt Mines
, I see pictures of people doing good things, pictures of people who think more about other people than they think about themselves. It seems to me you’d want kids like me to get that from your newspaper.

I’ll buy your newspaper again this week, Ed. But if I don’t see the
Salt Mines
on Sunday, I’ll just start saving my money. No offense, sir. But Jess Pepper has taught me more about doing what’s right than all the rest of the stories I’ve ever read in your newspaper combined.

Yours truly,
Thaddeus Morton

“Well, my goodness, that’s a mighty fine letter, young Thaddeus.” Jess felt the corners of his smile waver a bit. “I do think you may have exaggerated a bit, though.”

Tad jerked his chin up. “What?”

“Exaggerated,” Jess repeated, “it means to over—”

“I know what it means,” Tad huffed. “And I did not exaggerate. I meant every word exactly like I wrote it.”

Jess blanched, embarrassed that his attempt at humility had offended his young protégé. He stood and crossed the room to offer Tad his hand. “What I meant to say, Tad, was thank you. Your words honor me more greatly than I deserve.”