“Oh, that! My new improvement, boss. See, the casket sits down there, and then the poor bugger drops right in when I flip this thing here.” He pointed to a release lever on a pulley mechanism. “Casket close by makes it easier on this old back. These here pulleys lift it right outta the pit and I’m on my way home. Slick as a whistle.”
Trumbull cackled once, then howled with delight. “Coombs, you never stop thinkin’, do ya?”
“Reckon I will some day, boss.” Coombs looked back over his shoulder and lifted his eyebrows, asking for a signal to proceed. Trumbull took a few more steps until he was next to the lever that would drop the trapdoor.
“Let’s get to it, Coombs.”
Ford’s world seemed to move in slowed motion as Coombs set about readying the device. Somehow, the knowledge that Coombs had fixed things was supposed to make this easier. But as Ford stepped onto the trapdoor and felt the noose slip around his neck, fear overtook his reasoning.
Coombs might be playing with him. Making him think he’d walk away. Just a way of making him cooperate. And here he stood. Letting the scrawny henchman slip the knot down behind his neck.
This isn’t right. This isn’t right. There were things he needed to tell Addie. He needed to give her time with a father. He needed to tell Addie he’d had to let her go. Telling her mother the horrors her twin brother had committed out of simple hate for her would have killed her. She was the only person in the world who loved that boy. Part of her would have died with him.
Trumbull stepped close enough that Ford could smell his cigar. Sweet, earthy. He drew a deep breath, savoring the unexpected smell. His lungs felt full, strong, he felt a power in his shoulders and a peace down his spine, and for a moment he knew he would make it.
And then Trumbull spoke, right into his ear.
“We have her, you know.”
Addie? He’d taken Addie? The air flew from Ford’s lungs and panic closed his throat from taking another full, deep breath. Addie—
The sharp snick of a flipped lever seemed suspended in the air for a moment, and then the trapdoor went out from under his feet and he went down, down, and gasped a horrid, wrenching breath as his weight snapped at the end of the rope.
Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds.
His eyes began to bulge and his chest felt like it would burst before he heard someone scrambling down into the pit. The world began to roar and he let his mind hide in it.
Suddenly, something hard and rough smashed past his feet, ripping off one shoe. Somewhere above, the taut rope was freed, and he felt himself fall stupidly into what he somehow knew was his coffin.
He tried to breathe, but the rope was still knotted tight. His ribs shrieked, begging for a way to release his bursting lungs.
Ford let his body fall as it wanted, and blocked the pain of his dead weight pressing on his hands that were still tied behind his back. The fringes of his mind went gray, and sound took on an echo, like hushed tones in a long tunnel.
“What’s takin’ so long, Coombs?” Through a red haze Ford understood the words that filtered down from above.
“Just about ready t’ hoist away.”
Ford felt frantic fingers around his neck and suddenly the rope slackened, and was pulled roughly over his head. He drew a ragged breath and tried desperately not to heave, but his body jolted wickedly.
Coombs began to whistle, covering the sound of his breathing.
The next moment, the thud of a plank falling across the opening interrupted Coombs’ whistling. He grunted as he shoved something in place.
Three whacks in four locations happened in quick succession, and Ford heard Coombs scuffle away. His breath was coming in noisy gasps now, and he was powerless to stop it.
Soon, the casket began to ascend, rocking a bit as it rose. With each sway he felt his breathing quiet a bit. Not enough, though, not enough for Trumbull not to hear him once the casket reached the top. And suddenly he was there. The pulleys stopped, and the box that carried him began to move horizontally.
He was jolted as the casket sat down roughly on the stone walkway, and it was heaven in hellish proportions for him. Every second in the pit had been a nightmare.
“Lemme see ’im, Coombs.”
Ford froze. Trumbull’s voice had come from directly above him.
“Aw, hell, Chief, I’d have to take it all apart and—oh, hell, I’ll do it.”
Ford heard Coombs pull one of the pulley ropes slowly from beneath the casket. He was going to do it. He was going to let Trumbull have a look. His quieted breathing began to escalate, and his eyelids fluttered like a two--penny doxy.
“Y’ do good work, Coombs.”
The sounds of rope scraping beneath his coffin stopped abruptly, and after a mumbled thank you, Coombs began to curse.
“C’mon, ya rusty son of a whore. Ack!”
Ford could hear Coombs struggling dramatically with something.
“Shit! Gonna have to redesign this thingamajiggy here,” he complained. “It’s...Sorry, Chief, sorry! Just a sec! Ow! Dang it!”
Trumbull huffed, irritated at the delay. “Never mind, Coombs. I gotta go.”
“But Chief, it works great, really! I tested it three times!”
“I’m sure it does, Coombs. Sure it does.”
A single shot rang out, and Coombs’ body fell onto the casket, then slid slowly to the floor.
The only word Ford heard as Trumbull’s footsteps receded down the passageway was from the man on the other side of the pine box who was about to die.
“Mariah...a..a...a..”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jess kept looking over at the flowers while he shaved off two days’ worth of stubble. He was counting on them to smooth the way with Addie.
He still couldn’t get over his luck. If anyone had told him he’d visit a village just out of the city and sit at the wrong end of a sixty-year-old woman’s shotgun who just happened to have saved the one man with all the answers twenty years ago, why Jess would have laughed himself silly.
But then, stranger things had happened.
Jess yelped when he nicked his jaw. A sobering reminder, he decided, of the difficult things he would have to explain to Addie.
He checked his pocket watch and was relieved to see that right about now she’d be sailing into the last number. The girls always got at least one encore, so that would put him in front of the hotel at exactly the right time. If his blasted jaw would stop bleeding.
He looked around for something to blot it with, and tore a corner off the midweek newspaper that for some reason had been shoved under his door. He didn’t subscribe, and it wasn’t the Times. It was the New York Mind, a rather literary newspaper known for its academic bent. He flipped it over to see the date and his eye was drawn like a dagger to his own name, in large caps, in the headline of a story just above the fold.
Times Reporter JESS Pepper
Named in DENVER Scam
The lowest form of humankind is the one who turns on his own. But it seems that perhaps a new low has been reached, by one who has recently found fame in our own city. Once his history becomes known, his notoriety will surely turn to shameful infamy.
A source close to the investigation has revealed that Jess Pepper, known to our citizenry through his Times byline From the Salt Mines, did not discover by mere good sleuthing the perpetrators of the Denver scheme which he recently exposed. No, quite the contrary. He was one of the perpetrators, one of the despicable human beings who sold mere children into lives of obscene slavery. And when he saw discovery, and hence, prison, on the horizon, he used his pen to try and rewrite history, painting himself the hero.
This paper does not participate in rumor-mongoring, but feels the necessity to warn our readers who may also, on occasion, read the Times, that this man’s words are not to be believed. Further, we call upon the Times to disavow their relationship with such a vile individual.
Jess reeled, stunned, blindsided by this charge
that had come out of nowhere, and had no resemblance whatsoever to the truth. He’d nearly been killed when he got too close to exposing that evil den of child killers. And that’s what they were. More than half the children they stole and sold into sexual debauchery were dead within the year. The idea that he...that anyone could think...
He stumbled to the bowl atop the dry sink, his stomach heaving, clenching. They could accuse him of almost anything but this. Not this.
Slowly his breathing began to settle from its painful shallow shuddering as his mind trampled through the “why’s”. And in a flash of understanding his pulse calmed, his breathing restored itself, his stomach settled.
It was a smear. They wanted to discredit him, to make sure nobody believed another word he wrote. And who better to discreetly leak such information to a scholarly newspaper than the golden boy himself. Deacon Trumbull.
He had to print a rebuttal, and he had to do it fast. No time to get to the Times. He’d call it in from the corner exchange. Jess grabbed his coat and flew down the steps, across the street and sped to the glass-doored entrance of the New York City Telephone and Telegraph’s Park Row Exchange. He hurled himself through the doors and skidded to a halt in front of the low railing that separated him from ten operator cubicles. Eight were empty, and only two operators were hard at work routing calls at this time of the evening.
Jess whirled in a circle, and spied the bank of telephone cubicles lining a wall just around the corner. Four of them. All occupied.
He paced for what seemed like an hour, but in just under three minutes a young woman hung her earpiece back on the telephone box to disconnect her call, slowly and methodically collected her things, and exited the booth.
“PARK459,” Jess yelled into the mouthpiece when he’d snatched the earpiece from its hook.
“Park Row Exchange. What number are you calling, sir?”
Jess gritted his teeth and repeated. “PARK459, please!”
The seconds plodded by, and Jess kept the running words of his rebuttal circling in his head. He had just the right wording, and wanted to dictate it to someone in the typing pool exactly the way it had come to mind.
"New York Times here. To whom do you wish to speak?”
“Manager’s desk at the typing pool, please. Tell them—”
“Who’s calling please?”
“Tell them it’s Jess Pepper.”
There seemed to be a moment’s hesitation before the pleasant voice came back on the line. “Connecting your call, sir.”
He wondered who would be on duty this late in the day. But it didn’t matter, as long as they did exactly as he instructed and got his story to the press room and into Jake Mallory’s hands. Jake wouldn’t let him down.
“Jess?”
“What—who’s this?”
“It’s Gus. Jess, where are you?”
“I’m sorry, Gus, I asked for the typing pool. I have to get a story in fast. Could you—”
“Jess, hold on. You can’t...you can’t put a story in right now.”
“I have to, Gus, and Jake Mallory will switch it out for you, I know he will. He’ll pull what I submitted for tomorrow and substitute what I dictate to—”
“It’s already been switched out, Jess.”
“I don’t—what do you mean, already switched.” A slow cold dread inched down his spine. He knew what Gus was going to say before he spoke it. That was why the operator had put him through to his manager instead of to the typing pool.
He’d already been muzzled.
. . .
Ford listened a long moment, until the roaring in his ears from the gunshot so close finally diminished. Until it did, he couldn’t be sure if it was just part of the roar or if there really were footsteps circling his coffin.
His coffin.
The word pushed his heart to a sudden extreme that he was quite sure it could not survive. Long, trembling breaths became harder and harder, and shorter and shorter, and he knew again he was going to die.
And with the thought, his heart began to quiet.
As the panic left, the thunder in his ears began to dim, and Ford could almost feel the silence of the chamber.
At last he let his mind sink to a place he’d learned to escape to during those long months at Andersonville. Hunger and hopelessness could make a prisoner give up, unless he had a place like this to go.
When at last the clarity of silence began to restore him, he knew they were alone. He and Coombs.
“Coombs?”
His voice came out a hoarse whisper. The simple act of whispering burned his throat worse than two-day-old moonshine.
“Coombs?” Ford tried again, but feared the worst. Coombs was dead. Trumbull would be back to clean up his mess, or send his goons to do it for him.
There wasn’t much time.
Ford’s hands were still tied behind his back. Loosely, he thought, but they were numb from his weight on them. The heavy chains bit viciously into his ankles.
With the pine lid slowly smothering him, Ford knew he had to get out of the death box while he still had air enough to function. His feet would have to punch the lid off.
He lifted his feet, one with a shoe and one without, and poked at the lid. The foot without the shoe slid easily out of the chains, though there was no room to shake it off completely. He pushed his toes into the lid, but there was too little space to get a really effective upward force.
And the lid was nailed shut.
He needed to get the coffin on its side.
Ford had heard Coombs drop when Trumbull fired. His body had fallen forward onto the coffin, then slumped to the right, and probably lay alongside him now.
Ford began to slowly shift his weight from side to side, rocking longer toward the left than toward the right. As he picked up momentum, the coffin began to tip up on its left edge. The tiniest bit at first, then more and more.
After a dozen rocks to the left, the coffin teetered on its edge, about to roll on its side. Ford shifted his weight the smallest bit, encouraging the coffin to land on its side.
And it did.
But his shifting body in the tipping coffin sent it rolling on over onto its top. Now Ford lay face down in the coffin, his body pinning the lid to the floor.
He could play that rocking game all night, and he might manage to land on his side at some point. But now that Ford lay face down, he realized he had another option.
Slowly, painfully, he lifted his backside and brought his knees forward and out, wedging them against the sides of the casket. Like a giant inchworm.
With each gargantuan heave, he got his rear end higher, pressing against the bottom of the casket, which now had become its top. He heard the nails screeching as they began to slip their hold.
At last he’d worked his knees as far as he could, and his head was bent as far as it could bend against the boards at the casket’s head.
This was it.
Ford rested, curled into himself, regaining strength for his final surge. If this didn’t work, he was sure he’d run out of time. They’d find him like this, trapped in his wooden womb.
He felt the rage of Methuselah burning in his gut, and as the fire spread through his body and set every nerve tingling on a raw edge, Ford took a mighty breath and arched his back up against the bottom of the coffin.
The first splintery cracks gave him courage and he strained, willing his hamstrings to push harder, harder.
He gave one last, furious surge, bellowing like a wounded grizzly bear with the effort.
The nails groaned and squealed, a noise so loud it alone could wake the dead. And then the coffin box popped away from the lid and bounced like a child’s toy into the pit.
Ford gulped for air, kneeling on the floor of the room that had been his death chamber. The rage was slow to abate, and he bent his face to the cool stone, willing himself to think like a man again. His cheek absorbed the cool, welcomed it, as it traveled quickly to calm his fevered mind.
When he opened his eyes, he was inches from Coombs. Ford looked at the man who’d saved his life, and began to grieve.
And then he saw Coombs move.
. . .
Jess left the Exchange office and crossed the street. He had to have a plan, and it had to be good. It had to get Ford Magee out of jail, clear his own name, and dethrone the charlatan once and for all. It would be a cold day in hell before Deacon Trumbull would be looking at anything but prison bars. But first, he had to get Addie away to some place safe, and he knew exactly where he’d take her.
He cut across the avenue, headed back toward the stoop in front of his building, to check the hiding place where he’d told Tad to leave messages. He was just a couple of paces away when he saw a lone female figure darting across the street at the opposite corner, a violin tucked beneath her left arm.
Addie!
He straightened and took a step toward her, confused at her angry stride, her swinging arm with its gloved fist. But then she stepped into the yellow glow of the streetlamp, and her mass of red curls lit up like hot coals.
It wasn’t Addie, it was Cherise! He ran toward her, catching her off balance just as she swung toward his front door.
“Cherise, what are you doing here?”
Cherise bolted back a step, startled out of her fury for a second as she recognized Jess. But then the anger returned to spread across her face.
“Where’s Addie.”
She was angry, her voice tight, her lips pursed. Her statement was more an indictment than a question.
“Where’s Addie?” Jess echoed, now more confused than ever.
“That’s just exactly what I’d like to know. You tell that missy that I did not hire on to be the leader o’ the band, you hear?”
“Wh—you mean, she didn’t play tonight?”
“No sir, she did not. We waited and she didn’t come. We all figured she was—” Cherise stopped, her eyes seeming to take in his face for the first time. “Och, oh heav’n help us, we all but know’d she was with you! Now I feel awful! We were fit t’ be tied with her!”
THE DEVILS DIME Page 24