THE DEVILS DIME Read Free

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 ignored 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.
    Apparently he was to register his request.
    As he wrote, Jess noted the times and dates and materials that had been sought most recently, according to entries further up on the page. The requests largely asked for information for obituaries.
    He scribbled his name, date, and interest in street crime reports for the last decade and slid the tablet back through the opening. It disappeared with the pencil into the dark cavern and Jess heard a chair scrape, followed by a shuffling. The tablet came flying back through the slot and fell neatly into his hands.
    “Wha-?”
    “Try again,” came the guttural prompt.
    “But-“
    “And this time, use your full name.”
    Jess re-read his entry.
    April 19, 1896...J. Pepper...street crimes over last decade .
    He was anxious to get on with his research, and this fellow’s rules were holding things up. Biting back a grumble, he licked his thumb and rubbed it across the penciled name, then wrote in the smudged space the legal name he tried to use as little as possible.
    Jessiah Saltingham Pepper .
    It was the grandiose name with which his single mother had so proudly burdened him before she promptly up and died. He laid the tablet back on the slotted shelf, and with a tentative finger, pushed it through.
    Jess interpreted the silence from the other side of the cubicle as permission to continue. He turned away from the grill and was startled to come eye to eye with the keeper of the rules. He hadn’t heard the man leave his desk. But now a thin, cranky face peered around the stack nearest him and looked him sharply up and down.
    Jess stopped and extended his hand.
    “Twickenham?”
    The man’s scraggly eyebrows narrowed over a perilously perched pince-nez. A straight Roman nose pointed the way to a jutting chin