THE DEVILS DIME

by Bristol, Bailey

  “Then get rid of him.”

  The flaring embers dropped to the floor and died under the broad shoe of the man who paced the storeroom loft. He fancied shoes, the kind that drew envious stares when he nonchalantly crossed a foot over his knee at his favorite drinking establishment, a blind tiger on the upscale side of the Tenderloin. They paid him good money to keep their “permission” to serve alcohol, though no license had ever changed hands. He was always sure of a good time there. And the girls at the Palladium were sure to notice when he sported new footwear.

  It had always been that way. Deacon Trumbull took pride in his boyish good looks, his devil-may-care swagger, and his top drawer shoes. It was a deadly combination, sure to draw the prettiest of the pretty to sit on his knee.

  When he’d made his first run at getting a promotion to sergeant, he’d had too much confidence in the devilish good looks. They’d bought him entrance to every venue he’d ever sought. But not in the police force. It was sewed up tight as a drum by the commissioners. And they’d gotten greedy with him. It still rankled, even after all these years.

  The Samaritan mess had almost gotten him dumped in the East River, he’d fumbled it so badly. So royally, in fact, that when he put in his first bid for promotion, they’d laughed. The bribe they’d set to overlook the bungling of his beat duties was stiff, and he refused to pay.

  Twice he’d threatened to expose their graft if he didn’t get the promotion, and twice he’d just about taken a final dip in that filthy river. But he’d done too many favors for too many swanks and politicians by then, and they came through for him. Still, when he went for the third time to his commissioner, meekly with the bribe in hand, the squeeze had suddenly quadrupled. His backers—the ones who needed him in the chief’s office to keep their own necks out of the noose—had nearly balked. But they’d paid. And the favors he’d had to render in return had been endless. Now, in his twisted logic, Ford Magee owed him that $20,000.

  That was the last time the hotheaded swaggerer had swallowed his rage, and it had been the best choice he’d ever made. Within a day of making sergeant, his pockets were lined with the kind of “contributions” he could never have imagined. And it had only gotten better.

  “I mean it, Deac,” his companion repeated, “just get rid of him.”

  “It’s too late. He may have talked to someone already.”

  A chair scraped back from the table and soft Italian Barracudas moved quietly to the window. Deacon’s partner was well-soled as well, but unlike Deacon he’d been born that way. “Then discredit his voice. Ruin him. Make his audience hate him.”

  The two looked out the window in silence, then turned in unison toward the door.

  “Don’t wait too long with Magee, either.”

  “How does tonight sound, Cash?”

  The hollow laugh of two men who knew not to turn their back on one another died away in the rafters. They scuffed along carefully over tattered satins that had fallen from padded hangers. Mice scurried away from their nest in the springs of a half-buried chaise lounge as the two passed to the door.

  “I miss what we had here.” The cultivated voice stopped to drag the door open.

  “You know I had to shut it down. That damn Magee had already cost me a promotion.” He took a long draw on his cigar. “I couldn’t take the chance of him connecting the part he knew to the burglaries. If he knew about them, chances were he’d find out about the ‘rewards’ our boys took off those Madison Avenue dames right here. Hell, half the wives and daughters from those hoitytoity mansions lost a bauble of some sort here. It would’ve been holy hell for me if their names went public. I’d have been dead before their spit could hit the floor. It had to stop cold.”

  He shook his head and kicked at a dusty scrap of wood. “I cannot fathom how Magee’s lived this long, you know? I really thought he must be dead by now. Nobody, I mean nobody could find a trace of him. He left his job, his place, just kicked me in the balls with that letter he wrote to the paper and disappeared, the goddamn, two-bit—”

  Cash put a careful hand on his shoulder, lightly, in case it was not welcomed. “You’d be Chief of Police right now,” he commiserated, if it hadn’t been for that damned Samaritan.” His sympathetic tone carried more than a hint of remorse.

  Deacon gritted his teeth. He’d get rid of Magee tonight. And then partner or no, one day he was going to sink his fist into this patsy’s jowl. But not yet. Not just yet.

  . . .

  The hollyhocks in back of Sutton House pitched and waved as Tad Morton shoved the old pennyfarthing back where it belonged. He stepped out of the flower patch and rubbed his behind.

  The scrapes on his elbow and knees were almost healed now, and he’d become so good at riding the three-wheeler that he’d kept it out way too long this time. But he was hooked. Once he’d figured out how to move the thing onto and off of walkways without tipping it over he’d been able to ride nearly anywhere he pleased. With the night wind in his hair he felt he could ride to the end of the world. The streets were his, and he could leave in the dust any beat cop who thought he ought to be home in bed.

  But tonight his sore bottom told him he’d have to cut it a little shorter next time.

  “Ack!” Tad yelped as a hand caught him from behind and jerked him off the path.

  “What’re you doin’ here, kid?”

  “I-I-I-nothin’, sir.”

  “Nothin’?”

  “J-JJJust practicin’ m’wheelin’, mister.”

  “Your wheeling?”

  “No, sir, but she said I—”

  “Siddown an’ shuddup, kid.”

  Tad was shoved to the ground and he scrambled a few feet away before turning toward his captor. The fellow hunkered down and removed his hat.

  “Whaddya got t’ say fer yersef, Tad?”

  The boy’s chin dropped to his chest and he leaned further away from the dark fellow. “How do you know m—”

  The squatting man chuckled and Tad’s eyes flew open wide, then squinted hard.

  “Jess?”

  “Shhhttt! Keep yer trap shut and git on over here.”

  Tad scrambled over to Jess and they both crawled into the space between the hollyhocks and Addie’s bicycle.

  “You scared me t’ death!” Tad was grinning from ear to ear, but his eyes were still big as saucers.

  “Listen, Tad. I didn’t mean to scare you. Pretty good disguise, huh?”

  “Scared the liverin’ lights outta me. What’re you doin’?”

  “Listen up, now, Tad. I really need someone to scout for me, and you’re the best man I know to do it.”

  Tad puffed his chest out and dropped a grownup sober expression across his face. But the corner of his mouth kept twitching up in a proud grin.

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Well, I can’t say it is. And I can’t say it isn’t. We’ll just have to see how things work out. But some fool kids would go playin’ hero or cops and robbers when they should be paying attention. I’ve got no use for a kid like that. What I need is a kid who keeps his eyes open, does what I tell him, knows how to blend in a crowd. Know what I mean?”

  Jess leveled a serious look at Tad and watched him absorb every word.

  Tad nodded slowly.

  “And then, some other kids think the little things are too boring and they won’t do the little things. Even when the littlest thing might be what saves people the most. Understand?”

  Tad nodded.

  “I’ve got three things I need you to do. Are you with me?”

  “Three things, yessir.”

  “First, I want you to see Miss Magee tomorrow night at the hotel and tell her all about your late-night cycling.”

  Tad swallowed hard. “Yessir. I been meanin’ to do that.”

  “Second, tell her you have a message from me, and that I won’t be around for a few days, but that you know how to get a message to me if she needs something. Got that?”

  “Yessir.”
>
  “Third, you find some excuse to hang around here as much as you can the next two days. If anyone goes to her apartment, you go up these back stairs and try to hear what they want. I mean anybody, now, Tad, y’hear?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Then you bring me a message and tell me everything I need to know. Don’t leave out a single detail. All right?”

  “Yes, but how—”

  “Yeah, I know. How are you gonna get a message to me. I was thinking about that. Did you know there’s a little hole behind those loose bricks at the base of the front stoop?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “Well, I was thinking it’s about the size you could fit a cocoa tin into. You got a cocoa tin?”

  “Golly, Ma keeps all o’ hers. She’d yell bloody murder if I took one. But I’ll find one, Jess, don’t you worry.”

  “That’s m’boy. Now tell me what you’re gonna do.”

  Jess listened with pride as Tad recited in perfect detail each of his instructions. When he was finished, they stood and saluted one another.

  “Make me proud, son.”

  “I will, Jess. You’ll see!”

  “Now skedaddle on outta here.”

  “Yessir! Bye!”

  “Shhhht!”

  “Bye.” Tad corralled his exuberance to a whisper and trotted off down the alley.

  So far, things were working out just fine.

  . . .

  Bundles of gray-green occupied most of the top of the small writing desk in Ford Magee’s living room by the time Addie had emptied the tin box. Startled, she checked her method a second time, certain that she must have miscounted.

  Twice she flipped through each bundle to make sure there weren’t different denominations of bills mixed into any one stack. But they were all the same. A hundred dollars in each bundle. And fifty bundles total. Each tied with a piece of brown yarn.

  How had her father managed to save five thousand dollars on a night watchman’s salary? She could understand the pile of silver dollars. She hadn’t counted them, but since working at the bank, her eye for estimating silver was fine tuned. The pile that occupied the center of the tin box probably amounted to a little over four hundred dollars.

  Addie tapped her pencil on the desk. Could he have had bonds? It didn’t seem likely, just knowing her father’s cautious nature. He hadn’t even put his funds in a bank, so it didn’t seem likely that he would otherwise do business with a financial institution.

  Maybe he owned land.

  Addie brightened at the thought. Perhaps he owned land and sold it when the city grew out close to it and made himself rich.

  Or maybe he’d taken bribes.

  Stop it, Addie.

  After all, he was a night watchman.

  Ungrateful daughter.

  Addie pulled her hands away from the stacks of worn currency. He’d told her he sent money to Aunt Lucille. How could he live here himself, save a small fortune, and still send money on his pitiful wage?

  Addie looked past the currency to the cubbyholes in the back of the drop-leaf desk. Odds and ends of string and postage and old receipts filled most of the slots, but a small bound book was slid into the slot at the far end.

  It felt very much like cheating, but Addie pulled the book out and began to flip through it. As she’d expected, it was a ledger. On the first page there were a half dozen entries marked ‘JLCMA-C’.

  She ran the letters through her head, but didn’t come up with the answer until she spoke the initials out loud. Then it all made perfect sense.

  Julia Lillabeth Carnello Magee Adelaide – Chicago.

  This was his code for recording funds sent to Addie and her mother in Chicago.

  Then, some lines below, a second entry began to appear.

  ‘JLC-W’.

  If she was correct about the first set of initials, then this had to be Jeremiah Leviticus Carnello – Williamsbridge.

  Addie stared at the entry. Her father had paid for his wife’s twin brother’s care at the institution. And handsomely, from the looks of it.

  Next to each entry was a dollar figure. Modest at first, and then increasing for Addie and her mother. Enough to make Addie squirm. But the entry for JLC-W was always the same.

  Addie paged on through the book, but each month the same two entries appeared. Until June of 1879, when the JLC-W entries stopped.

  Perhaps her father had grown tired of paying for his brother-in-law. Or his brother-in-law was able to come out of the institution. Or...his brother-in-law, the uncle she’d never known she had, Jeremiah Leviticus Carnello, had died.

  Addie dropped her head into her hands and propped her elbows on the desk. There had to be an honest answer for where this money had come from.

  She refused to doubt her father.

  But once the word ‘bribe’ had crept into her mind, it seemed the most obvious way for her father to have acquired such ample funds over the years.

  Addie leaned back and covered her face with her hands. This was all Jess’s fault. He was the one who suspected everyone of wrongdoing, and now he had her doing it.

  “Dammit, Jess!” Her fists came down hard on the little dropped-leaf. The top-heavy desk wobbled toward her, about to fall over.

  She slammed a hand on each side to stop it from tipping, but the tin box that had been perilously perched on top tumbled to the floor. Silver dollars scattered everywhere, rolling along the floor and under furniture and even out onto the balcony.

  “No-no-no-no-no!”

  Addie ran after them and caught with the toe of her shoes the ones that were in greatest danger of disappearing. When the clattering stopped, she began sweeping them back toward the desk into one pile.

  The ones that had rolled under furniture would have to wait until morning. But these she could get back into the box without too much effort.

  Addie knelt and began sweeping the pile of silver dollars back into the box with her forearm. It was the perfect opportunity to count them, but she was simply too tired.

  First the biscuits, now this. She hadn’t been this clumsy since she was—

  On the third sweep, the corner of an envelope snagged her arm. Addie hadn’t noticed an envelope on the desk, but perhaps it had fallen off with the box.

  She pulled the envelope from the pile of silver and read the address.

  Daniel Scoburn, Ventura, California. The postmark was barely readable, but Addie made out what she thought to be 1888.

  The fragile sheet of onionskin took some gentle poking to remove it from the envelope. But once it was free, Addie spread it on the floor and began to read.

  My dear Ford,

  You have probably wondered these long years since we two ghosts limped away from Andersonville what has become of me. I could write a volume of my experiences, but I shall forego that for another time.

  My purpose in writing you today is to direct you to a package that awaits you at the New York City post office. When you forced me to take your discharge stipend before I began my trek westward, I swore to you that one day you would see it returned to you ten-fold.

  Little did I know that I would not only keep that promise, but that I would instead return to you two hundred-fold the ten five-dollar gold pieces you laid in my palm that day.

  There were a thousand ways you could have used that fifty dollars, Ford, and I knew it. Why you made me take it, I have not yet reckoned.

  God has been good to me, though, and I pray he has been so to you. My oil venture near the western coast of California has amassed a veritable fortune for me and my dear Elizabeth. And we can think of nothing that makes us happier than to share with you a tiny portion of our prosperity.

  It was your faith in me that sent me West, my friend. May God reward you richly for it.

  With every kind regard,

  Jacob Sanborn

  Andersonville! Her father had been a prisoner in that horrid Confederate prison camp. Where so many had died. Addie looked to the small portrait on
the mantel. No wonder he looked so thin, so sober, so haunted.

  Tears dropped on the backs of her hands as Addie refolded the letter. It had been hidden under the pile of coins the whole time she’d been doubting her father. But she would never doubt him again. And tomorrow she’d let him know just how very much she treasured – and trusted – the father she was just coming to know.

  She didn’t deserve him. Tonight had proven that. But from this moment forward she would do everything in her power to change that.

  Addie arranged the desk as tidily as it had been before she started. But the box was not going back in, she decided. The desk was too obvious.

  Within minutes she’d spotted the perfect hiding place. The foot-warming bricks her father used through the winter months stood ignored on the floor by the bed during the summer. Addie slipped the bricks out of their flannel covering and slid the box inside.

  It fit perfectly.

  She separated the bricks and placed them in random spots about the room that wouldn’t call attention. One as a door stop, one holding down a pile of old newspapers, one beneath the little kitchen stove. And one to occupy the empty cubbyhole in the desk.

  Now you’re thinkin’ like a criminal, Addie girl.

  The words loomed out of nowhere, and Addie tried to close her mind to the voice of the man who’d angered her so. A huge yawn marked her satisfaction with her solution. And at last, emotionally exhausted from the ordeals and revelations of the day, Addie fell into bed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Patches of morning light from high barred windows brightened the upper regions of the jailhouse walls, but did little to dispel the gloom in the quiet cell block. A uniformed guard stood resolute in front of Ford’s door and refused to open it for Addie.

  “Now really, officer, I fail to see why Mr. Pepper was allowed to visit freely with Mr. Magee and I am not.” Her fingernail tapped angrily on the bottom of the plate of cookies, but she kept her voice sweet and matter-of-fact.