The Devil's Dime (The Samaritan Files) Read online

  Book 1 in the Samaritan Files Trilogy

  Prologue

  New York City’s Tenderloin District

  — 1876 —

  The dark-haired young man could scarcely believe his good fortune. He tried to slow his breathing, but the plush, deep carpet felt strange beneath his feet, keeping him off balance. Between holding his breath so as not to fall over and trying not to hyperventilate, he was a trembling mess. He had to steady himself. This was the reward everyone coveted, and it had come to him.

  He focused on the deep folds of the gold-fringed drapery that hung across the entrance. Intricate nets of transparent fabric laced the ceiling, muting the light and casting the place in an unearthly, beckoning dimness.

  Pale-faced boys in black silk knee britches, gold chains looped across their chests, glided slowly about the room, filling opium jars, retrieving spilled whisky glasses that had slipped from comatose hands and rolled beneath lush potted ferns.

  The rich fabrics of elegant women’s gowns draped haphazardly across the settees upon which their owners reclined—some still adorning their mistresses, others not. Here and there a man’s head reclined in the lap or upon the bosom of a sleeping female.

  It was as they had said. The riches were right here for the taking. He stepped forward, drawn by the pocket watch that hung from the vest of a man who would not be waking for some hours yet. Cautiously he reached down and palmed the watch, looking it over as if considering the time. He looked into the face of its owner.

  Nothing.

  He twisted the fob loose from its button hole and felt the weight of the expensive timepiece in his hand. It was his now. His reward. His heart swelled.

  He stepped toward the woman and relieved her of her rings. She would never report them missing. At least she’d never dare expose where and when she’d lost them. The woman twitched, and he jumped a bit, but she didn’t waken. Her earbobs followed her rings into his pocket.

  A beautiful girl walked toward him, her dress cut in a garish fashion with glittering stones pushing up the perfect orbs of her breasts. Her hair was a tumble of black curls that swept high, then cascaded down her neck. One lock rolled across the white delicate flesh of her bosom as she stepped into the soft light. He reached out to touch it but her eyes stopped him. She looked not so much at him as through him. The rich brown pupils were hugely dilated, floating in a light opium daze. It gave her a look of contentment, of euphoria, of acceptance. It was the kind of gaze that had never been shed upon him in his entire life. Acceptance. Welcome.

  Except by one person. Except by her, the perfect Julia. The one he wouldn’t let himself think about right now.

  “Are you for me?” he whispered.

  A semblance of a smile moved across her lips and she turned. Beckoned. And he followed.

  They were right. This was indeed Heaven.

  Chapter One

  Twenty Years Later

  New York City – 1896

  Jess Pepper was a people-watcher. If he thought about it, he most likely would not remember a time when he had not been. So the large windows in his new office constantly occupied a bit of his peripheral vision as he sought to square away his space. Vague images of people moving in the city beyond the walls of his building drew him mercilessly, tugging his attention away from the battered desk he was angling out from the corner where it had sat in dusty neglect. He gave it one more nudge, then checked the view. Almost perfect.

  His tall frame stretched easily across the dry leathered inset as he pulled the desk two inches further from the wall and felt the satisfying tug at his well-toned muscles. He smiled. A guy who pounded out as many words a week as he did on his trusty Blickensderfer No. 6 could waste away in a hurry—if it wasn’t such a good workout chasing down the bad guys to get the story.

  He lifted his typewriter off the floor and off-centered it on the desk just the way he liked it. It was a heavy cuss. A few minutes a day hoisting the Blick overhead while he waited for the words to come hadn’t hurt his muscle tone a bit.

  Some men felt naked without a sidearm. For Jess it was the Blick. Take away the typewriter where he could put words on paper as fast as he could think them and he was Samson after Delilah had absconded with his hair.

  Words and the way he put them together were not only his livelihood, they were his life. Exploring the human condition was his pastime. Recording what he found in ways that prompted readers to dance or weep was his passion.

  Jess re-positioned the piles of paper within reach and rolled a clean sheet of onionskin into the Blick. He always kept it at the ready for the moment of inspiration when the words began to flow.

  In a move he’d executed countless times, his right foot hit the top of the desk at nearly the same instant that his posterior slid into the well-worn captain-style rolling desk chair. He flicked his left ankle up and across and locked his hands behind his head. The chair fit his bony backside perfectly, which was why he’d brought it with him all the way from the Denver Post to the New York Times.

  Beyond his window crowds milled, strolled, and even stalked along the boardwalks of Park Row. There were many tempos here, and familiar tempos at that, Jess realized. The slowest paced—the window-shoppers—milled about in front of lavish store displays, and wandered in and out of shops with packages in tow. Their movements were erratic, meandering, their faces animated in lively conversation with companions.

  The faster paced seemed to be just passing through. Not interested in the shops, they just kept moving. Then there was the quiet, steady rhythm of those who were bent on completing their errands, and the still, shadowed presence of the hustlers who lurked in darkened doorways, doing the same thing Jess was doing now. Watching and waiting.

  The scene was new to Jess, the buildings finer, taller, but the pace, while somehow familiar, seemed unique to this city. There was no doubt about it. New York City had its own heartbeat. The question was, how well was his own pulse going to mesh with the beat of this new town.

  Getting his first column out and fielding the reaction it garnered would go a long way toward answering that question. Jess focused on the activity beyond his windows, searching for the inspiration that would lay down the opening words of that column for him. And he was not disappointed.

  In the space of five minutes, Jess saw three women fall victim to the confidence men who scavenged along the boardwalks, duping unsuspecting innocents into miserable bargains. Where were the constables who should be watching out for this kind of unsavory activity? Busy elsewhere? Or bribed to look the other way?

  Jess followed with his eyes the path of a well-dressed young woman in a feathered hat and fawn duster, her three young ones—little girls in sashed dresses and high-button shoes—skipping alongside. No meandering here. This woman walked with a purpose.

  Her posture and pace told Jess that her mission did not appear to be a frivolous one, but her step slowed infinitesimally as she passed an elegant hat shop. Her own jaunty hat suddenly dipped sharply away from the street, and Jess knew she was sneaking a peek at the array of plumed and jeweled millinery beyond the window glass.

  A pitchman who was sizing her up from a few paces away capitalized on her momentary distraction. He slicked back his greasy hair that curled over his loosened collar and descended upon her abruptly with his sales spiel. She stopped, startled to find the shabby pin-striped suit blocking her path.

  Walk away. Walk away.

  Jess sent his strongest mental urging in her direction, willing her to escape from the man bent on separating her from her husband’s earnings. The interloper’s commanding posture and obsequious politeness were carefully calculated, Jess knew, to seduce her c
onfidence, to remind her that he—a man—knew what was best for her.

  What was he selling? A side of beef? Doctored water? Whatever it was, the sample would be delectable. The delivered product, if indeed anything ever arrived, would be suitable only for the dust bin.

  Jess dropped his feet to the floor and rested his elbows on his knees, as if leaning toward the window might lend strength to his mental urgings. The woman’s head inclined, and Jess smiled at the arrogant angle of her hat feathers as they caught the breeze.

  Good girl.

  She must have changed her tone, too, because Jess saw the children stop their playful gawking and fall into place in back of her skirts as the woman stepped away from the man. He began to close, to keep her in his circle of control, but her gloved hand came up stiffly into the space between them, stopping him cold. She swept the children to the outside, keeping herself between them and the stalker, and hurried on down the street.

  Jess’s fingers found the keys even before he pulled his gaze from the window. He was already spilling his thoughts onto the paper. This might very well do for a series of articles. A diatribe on women victims of the ‘confidence man’, perhaps, alternating with great examples like the commanding mistress he’d just witnessed, followed by a readers’ course in street defense. The auburn-haired woman was the perfect model of the female he wanted to convey, the woman who would not be managed or coerced, the woman who would fearlessly stand her ground. Jess catalogued the idea as he paused for another quick glance toward the window.

  A satisfied smile crept across his face as he watched the hawker make his way to the far end of the boulevard, his heels slamming a bit harder than necessary into the cobblestone.

  Your days on the streets are numbered, my friend.

  Jess Pepper knew well the power of his written word. After all, it had saved the lives of forty children who’d been spirited away from an orphan train and nearly shipped out of the country into the flesh trade. His investigative reporting had earned their freedom.

  And his ticket to New York City.

  But the power was not intoxicating. It was more shackling than anything. He’d made it his job to reveal, expose, defend. To modify the joys and assuage the fears of his fellow citizens through his newspaper articles. Now it seemed that a day without doing so was a day wasted.

  Yet he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  His window on the thoroughfare provided a compelling view of activity both saintly and seedy. Plenty of fodder for his first series of Times articles under the byline that had recently foisted him into the national spotlight.

  From the Salt Mines by Jess Pepper.

  The move to New York City had necessarily interrupted his investigative rhythm, and now that he was settled into his new office, his veins thrummed with a familiar adrenaline surge. Jess Pepper was impatient to get a story out.

  From the corner of his ever vigilant eye, Jess saw heads in the outer office turn in surprise toward the industrious sound coming from his windowed domain. He knew he was putting someone in the typing pool out of work, but never before had he entrusted his writing to a middle man. Or woman, as the case may be. And he certainly wasn’t going to start now. From the sounds of it, the typing pool had plenty to keep their pretty little fingers busy.

  The scenario for his new article hit the pages polished. No stopping and starting. Jess could think two paragraphs ahead while he punched out a perfectly paced story – already mentally edited – on the shiny Blick.

  The clacking stopped as words continued to race and tumble in his mind. The story needed facts. And facts meant research.

  Jess rolled the platen forward and read for the first time the words his furious fingers had planted on the page. It was good. And definitely worth an hour or two in the newspaper’s morgue to flesh it out.

  . . .

  All too soon the young violin teacher delivered her three little charges into the hands of their nanny and headed toward the streetcar stop that she knew took her near her new rooming house. The afternoon had fairly flown. Her three little students had been thrilled with the entire excursion — the ride uptown to Carnegie Hall, the backstage tour, their skipping trek down the long ramp to the orchestra pit. Everything about it had their bright faces transformed with wonder and delight.

  She’d wanted to take them onstage, but the stage manager had taken one look at the three bobbing heads and denied permission. She’d hoped to cajole him into changing his mind, but not only would he not budge, he had a stagehand escort them to the door. She was offended, miffed, with no opportunity to express it, lest she embarrass herself in front of her students.

  But when that scroungy, mangy, cocksure confidence man had approached her on Park Row, she’d let him have it with both barrels. All her disappointment at being kept offstage at Carnegie Hall had come rushing out in clipped, terse words, and she’d delivered a tongue-lashing that had the man shrinking before her very eyes.

  Oh, it had felt so good.

  But cocksure? Where had that word come from? Was she even allowed to think it? The young woman felt the flush singe her cheeks. Adelaide Magee was no prude, but if anyone had been able at that instant to read her mind, she’d have to dye her hair, change her name, and move to Timbuktu. Cocksure, indeed. New York City was having a bad influence on her already.

  . . .

  They were trying so hard not to stare at him that he almost laughed.

  The newly transplanted investigative reporter walked self-consciously through the typing pool to the main staircase. He felt eyes on his back, saw the whispering behind discreet hands, and realized he wasn’t as anonymous as he’d thought.

  Clicking typewriters seemed to lose their rhythm as he walked past. Women began furiously flipping through steno pads as he neared the longest bank of desks in the typing pool. How would they know if they’d found what they were looking for, when their eyes seemed bent on another task? The task of looking him over. Ogling him, if truth be told.

  “Well, I declare,” a chirpy southern voice suddenly erupted to his left. “Why, shugah, he looks like some kinda wild west sheriff to me. You shore he’s a—” An unnatural bevy of coughing sprang up suddenly, drowning the unguarded words.

  They could just get used to it. He was not going to cut his hair. Jess kept walking, wondering which he should be most grateful for—the southern belle’s outburst that made them all avert their eyes in embarrassment, or the fact that he was interesting enough to cause a ruckus.

  From the well-honed corner of his eye he assessed the voluptuous beauty who had modulated her tone but still managed to keep the focus on herself. She caught his eye, raised an eyebrow, and dropped a seductive wink that had Jess working hard not to break stride.

  She was a corker, all right.

  He supposed he’d have to find another route to and from his office. Running the gauntlet wasn’t altogether annoying, just annoyingly distracting. As Jess reached the foyer and began his descent, he worked hard to drag his mind back around the points he’d left his desk to research.

  He patted his pocket, checking for a handkerchief. He’d been warned he’d need it when he entered the dusty, mold-ridden basement of the Times. Adolph Ochs himself, the day he’d welcomed Jess onto the paper’s staff, had walked him to the stairwell that led to the cavernous basement. But at the top he’d stopped, turned, and admonished Jess to be wary. His tone seemed to portend of things much more sinister than mere dust and mold, but then it had been Jess’s first day, and he had been a mite nervous just being in the owner’s presence.

  Jess entered the poorly lit stairwell leading to the morgue that dated back to the newspaper’s founding in 1851. Handwritten news histories originally stored neatly in organized collections had been surrounded over the years by hodgepodge bins of hot-metal galleys and photo engravings. But there was still plenty of bookbinding and paper to supply the massive low-ceilinged room with a musty odor.

  He stepped noisily off the bottom stair and ign
ored the furtive looks from small groups of stringers huddled in dark corners among the stacks, intent on their games of craps. He’d forgotten it was payday, and stifled a grateful shudder that he was able to put things like payday out of his mind. It hadn’t been all that long since he himself had received the pittance paid to freelance news reporters who were paid by the column inch, the inches measured out on a string that always seemed to come up shorter than it looked.

  A dim glow from scattered gas lamps cast eerie shadows across signs scrawled below them on the basement’s bare brick walls. ‘1840 to 1861’ was written in four-inch letters at about eye level, with an arrow pointing left. The words ‘War Between the States’ with an arrow pointing right had been added in a different hand just below. Clearly, the history collected here predated the paper’s beginning.

  These crude signs were surprising. Most morgues he’d prowled had no organization at all. Perhaps it wouldn’t take as long as he’d thought to find what he was looking for.

  His eyes adjusted to the gloom and he saw just ahead of him the central kiosk, identifiable only by a small grill nearly hidden in the floor-to-ceiling clutter. The stern warning his editor had issued rose unbidden to his thoughts. “Don’t even think of working in the morgue without checking in with Twickenham.”

  While every possible justification for violating that rule tugged at him, Jess was determined to get off on the right foot and headed for the darkened grill behind which he hoped to find Twickenham’s desk.

  “Hello?”

  There was no echo in the damp hall, and his greeting fell dead, soaked up instantly by the tons of leather and parchment that surrounded him. He was about to speak again when a tablet was thrust through a slot in the grill, a crudely sharpened pencil dangling from it by a string.