The Devil's Dime (The Samaritan Files)

by Bailey Bristol

  She’d been so angry at Jess the night before, for the ugly picture he’d painted of everyone involved. But now she knew that Trumbull in particular had earned Jess’s low opinion. She’d railed at Jess, while he was simply trying to protect her from the sordid side of their dilemma. What would he do when he found out what she’d done? And what should she do until she could talk it over with him?

  The idea of getting a hotel room further out in the city crossed her mind. Perhaps Trumbull would figure out she was living in her father’s apartment and—.

  Addie’s thought was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  “Just a minute.”

  She scrambled up from her knees and checked her hair in the bathing room mirror.

  “Jess?”

  She hurried to the door and pulled it open. “Oh, Jess, I—”

  Addie stopped babbling and stared at the man who filled her doorway. She’d seen him just that morning outside Deacon Trumbull’s office. Leering at her. Eyeing her in a way that sent shivers down her spine again just recalling it.

  This time she would honor her instinct to run. She slammed the door and headed for the balcony. But his foot stopped the door and he had her by the arm before she was halfway across the living room.

  He brought his other arm around and pressed a knife to her throat and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “You’re coming with me, Miss Magee. Quietly, understand?”

  Carefully, Addie gave a small nod.

  The coins she’d just retrieved from the floor jingled softly in her pockets as he dragged her rudely to the door. He dropped the knife from her neck and let her straighten up as they moved into the hall.

  “Make a fuss and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  . . .

  His plan had seemed good at the time, but now as Tad swept the air shaft between Sutton House and Talmage’s for the fourth time, he was wishing he’d thought of some other way to keep an eye on Addie.

  He’d already found a cocoa tin and stowed a worn down pencil and paper in it ready to leave his first message for Jess. So far, there wasn’t much to report. She’d left on an errand this morning and had come back hopping mad. He could tell from the way she stomped up the stairs.

  Now he’d just have to wait until time to go to work at the hotel, and then get the message to Addie after she played. He could have given her the message from Jess anytime during the day, but Jess must have had a reason to wait until after her performance.

  Maybe that was it. Maybe he thought she’d worry about him and ruin her playing.

  Tad decided Jess shouldn’t have worried about that. Miss Addie was too good to mess up over something like that.

  At any rate, Tad wasn’t in any hurry to confess he’d used her three-wheeler without permission. Tonight would be plenty soon to face the music.

  Tad looked up at the windows he’d opened on each landing so he could hear anyone going up or down the stairs. He checked each one, and just as his eyes moved to the window of the fourth floor landing, a man and woman passed it on their way downstairs.

  He turned back to his broom and then paused. There weren’t any couples on fourth floor. He’d checked it out. Maybe someone had been visiting old Mrs. Blake.

  Tad swept slower and slower, an uneasy feeling nagging at his stomach. Finally, he dropped the broom and ran around to the front and up the steps and was halfway to the second floor when the couple rounded the corner.

  It was Miss Addie.

  With some fellow.

  Tad stopped and looked back and forth at the two.

  “Oh! Hello, Tad.” Miss Addie was speaking to him.

  “Hi, Miss Addie. I—” But Miss Addie interrupted him.

  “Now, Tad, you’ve missed your violin lesson again.”

  Tad scratched his head. He’d never taken violin lessons. Or even thought about taking violin lessons.

  “No use thinking up another excuse, Tad. We’ll just postpone your violin lesson until tomorrow.”

  This time Tad caught her lifting her eyebrows, asking him to play along. She was trying to hide it, but she was nervous as a cat in a water barrel.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Addie. I’ll try to remember next time.”

  “Well, your Uncle Jess is going to be very disappointed. Do you hear me? Now run along and tell him what a bad boy you’ve been.”

  The two started walking downstairs and Tad backpedaled to the first floor landing and swung around the corner. He flattened himself against the wall and peeked back around as Addie and the man headed out the front door.

  From this angle he could see that the man was holding Miss Addie’s hand behind her back, and just as they passed through the door Tad saw the unmistakable glint of sunlight on steel in the man’s right hand.

  Tad knew what he had to do. He raced out the back door and trampled the hollyhocks as he dragged Addie’s pennyfarthing into the alley. He jumped on and zipped round the corner and pulled up in front of the building next to Sutton House just in time to see Addie and the man disappear into a hansom cab.

  The horse moved away from the curb, drawing the carriage out into the traffic, and Tad eased his bike through the pedestrians and onto the street.

  It wasn’t hard at all keeping up with them, since he’d had so much nighttime practice on deserted streets. This was almost boring they were going so slow.

  The further they went, Tad began to wonder if he’d been wrong. Maybe Miss Addie was just joking with him. But she’d called Jess his uncle. And told him to run along and talk to Jess. She was trying to tell him to get word to Jess, he was sure of it. But what if...what if she actually thought Jess was his uncle?

  There was only one thing he was absolutely sure of. If something happened to Miss Addie while he was supposed to be watching her, Jess would never forgive him. That and the thought of a knife pointed at her back was all it took to keep Tad moving.

  . . .

  The man in the bed lifted his hand slowly and Jess clasped it in a warm greeting.

  “Doctor Haberman. I had no idea I’d actually find you.”

  Haberman laughed quietly and gestured for Jess to take a chair beside him.

  “I’ve been waiting for you twenty years.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Clarence Haberman shifted so he could look more directly at Jess. “I knew eventually someone would come looking for answers to what went on over there. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Most of the time that place has been a godsend for families who needed a place for their...special ones. But when Jeremiah was there, it went to hell in a handbasket.”

  “That would have been around ’76?”

  “The second time, yes.”

  “What do you mean, the second time.”

  Lizzie Chalmers slipped into the sunny sleeping porch and brought two glasses of lemonade and a pitcher to the bedside table. On the tray was the plate of cookies.

  “Mmmm. My favorite, dear girl.”

  Lizzie leaned over and kissed Clarence’s forehead and helped him sip the lemonade, then left as quietly as she’d come.

  Clarence watched tenderly as she disappeared into the house and then continued.

  “Yes, the second time. How much do you know about Jeremiah?”

  Jess lifted his hands and shook his head. “Nothing, really, except he had a deformed right hand and he was institutionalized here.”

  “Yes, well, that hand was the crux of it all. You see, Jeremiah was a twin.”

  “Actually, that I knew. That’s how I found out about him in the first place. A picture of them that his twin’s daughter showed me.”

  “His twin has a daughter?” Haberman raised his eyebrows.

  “A very beautiful daughter. And talented. A violinist.”

  “Ah, wonderful. Wonderful. Isn’t it grand when nature gives back so bountifully after it’s taken away so harshly?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes, it is wonderful.”

  “Ah, Jeremiah. His was a dark soul. You see, he n
ever adjusted to the sight of his damaged hand. He was obsessed with perfection, and even as a small boy he could never attain it in the ways he wanted to because his hand just wouldn’t work.”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Haberman, but the picture I saw had the little girl and little boy about...about age eight...with their parents and a baby girl, about two months. Was that the entire family?”

  “Yes, yes, sadly it was. And that’s how Jeremiah ended up in our care. You see, his jealously was rampant. He was wicked and violent toward his twin in ways you can’t imagine, and she would always defend him when his parents caught him. That just made it worse. He hated her because in his eyes she was perfect, and he wanted to hurt her, misshape her, so she’d be like him.”

  “I had no idea.” Jess wondered how Addie would react to this kind of revelation. “Go on.”

  “There were a number of episodes, things that seemed to be accidents, a near drowning, one thing after another, until his parents brought him for consultations. By that time he was lost to his demons.

  “I only saw his little twin once, but she was more of a little mother to him than his own mother. I believe she loved him in spite of what he did. She had the most wonderful brown eyes, not gray, like his.”

  Jess could not have told eye color from the sepia portrait, but gray eyes confirmed what the women had told Addie about their attacker. That fact alone would get Ford one step closer to freedom.

  “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.”