From Hell (5 page)

Shops all around the area had been
shut down, windows boarded over and doors nailed tight to keep
people from breaking into the buildings, but not the taverns in
Whitechapel. No, they were thriving. While most of the people
living nearby couldn’t afford to buy lamps or furnishing or quality
meals for their kids, those shops desolate and abandoned, there was
always money for booze. That was the economy of the poor. Spirits
were a commodity everyone could afford, or could, at least, afford
to piss off on other responsibilities to satisfy the need for
liquor. It was a sad statement as to the moral depths of English
society, but for me, it was a blessing in disguise.

I had a pocket full of my uncle’s
coins and it didn’t take much of it to start lips flapping on
whatever topic I wanted to talk about. After I’d replaced my coat
and hat, I slipped into the first bar I came across and started
buying drinks. While I found out a good many places to get some
quality quim, there wasn’t anything useful with regards to Jacky
boy. Folks were scared shitless, and since most of the ones I spoke
to were illiterate or poorly read, what I got from them was little
more than a rehash of what they’d heard called out by their pals
and the morning criers spouting off the news.

By the time I’d left the first tavern,
I’d twenty descriptions of the Ripper without a single similarity
between any of them except that everyone believed him to be male
and born from my uncle’s cherry red ass. I got a good chuckle out
of the last bit but didn’t bother to correct folks. It’s hard
enough to get information without drawing suspicion. The last thing
I needed to do admit that the Devil was real and I was his nephew.
It never took much for the humans to pull out their matchsticks and
burn a fella these days. My admission would be more than enough to
rile up a mob of pitchfork wielding peasants to hunt me down. That
would seriously ruin my day.

So rather than worry about
facts, I moved on. Bar after bar I ran into the same thing. There
was no shortage of people to talk to or stories to hear, but by
about the fifth placed I’d stopped, all the descriptions of Jack
had come full circle. He was fat, short, tall, thin, Herculean,
frail, dark-eyed, light-eyed, foreign, domestic, well-groomed,
slobbish, hairless, full-bearded, both Jewish
and
Satanic, raised by wolves and
saints. Some said Jack was rich, born noble with a sadistic boredom
and years of experience with surgical schooling. Others told me he
was one of them, an East Ender with no hope or money or fear of the
law.
What could be worse than living in
Whitechapel?
one of the blokes had asked.
I had about a hundred different answers on the tip of my tongue but
chose instead to commiserate with him and bought another round.
That shut him up right quick. A second round kept him busy enough
that I could slip away without.

Just like the police and the
committee, no one knew shit. Jack was a ghost. He drifted out of
the shadows and cut a gal up, and then disappeared, no one getting
a fair look at the bastard. I sighed. Jack was starting to piss me
off.

Hours scouring the bars for clues had
left me tired and cranky and not one tiny bit drunk. It was
frustrating. My metabolism and the constant chatter burned the
liquor off just as quick as I could drink it. Not that I’d expected
to get soused, or anything, but a comfortable high would have been
a nice counterpoint to the droning inanity of drooled
misinformation. I was just grateful my job had nothing to do with
tending bar. Putting a bullet in a killer’s brain was the lesser of
two evils when compared to dealing with drunks. Too much more time
spent around them would result in me shooting myself.

As evening crept around, I
ended up at yet another of the East End’s finest
establishments:
the Buttered
Twat
. It seemed a cheery name, so I went
inside and settled. This time, I kept my mouth shut and found a
quiet table in the back, as far from everyone as possible. I found
a seat where my back faced the wall and dropped into it with a
grunt.

A woman with several empty spaces in
her too-wide smile came over and took my order before scurrying off
to fill it. While I waited on her to return, I glanced about the
room and took stock.

The day’s crew of drunken malcontents
with nowhere else to go had thinned and the working class had begun
to take their place. There were a number of soot-faced men in dark,
stained overalls that looked every bit as dirty as the streets
outside. Heavy work boots clomped about, chairs squealing on the
roughened, wooden floor. The quiet murmur of the earlier taverns
rose to a roar as testosterone-laden men, hard of hearing from the
mines and factories they’d spent their lives in, yelled to be
understood by their mates.

The hookers had come out
of hiding, as well. That made things more interesting. While
there’d been a few here and there as I made my rounds of the local
bars, the numbers had picked up drastically since I’d come into
the
Twat
.

Yeah, I said it.

The women were scattered about the bar
as they looked for their first score. Early in the drinking shift,
the men still had some cash to spare so there was plenty of
activity in and out the door. The hookers drifted from table to
table, tarted up and wearing as little as they could get away with
up top. There was plenty of flesh on display, many a cup runneth
over, making my surveillance that much more exciting. A quick dip
to whisper in a man’s ear gave me a decadent view of the hills and
valleys. It was enough to make me want to go spelunking, but Uncle
Lou would be pissed if he found out. I was supposed to be stopping
a killer not cavorting with the local happiness guild.

By the time I’d gotten around to that
depressing thought, my drink arrived. I paid the woman and gave her
a little extra on top to ensure she’d come back around often but
not big enough to arouse suspicion or too much interest. I just
wanted a steady flow of beers without any questions. She seemed to
understand and left without any fuss, giving me a dotted grin of
appreciation.

Drink in hand and the first sip
teasing my taste buds, I let my eyes wander from the women to the
men, saddened by the effort. Soft, pale and pleasing skin was
replaced by grimy lines and bearded chins. They weren’t much to
look at, let me tell you. Hardened by lives in the dark and dirty
interiors of London, I swore I could hear their faces creak when
they smiled. Life hadn’t been easy for them and each and every one
had seen their fair share of death at their jobs. Men died all the
time, caught in a machine or trapped under rubble.

Just in the short time I watched them,
three scuffles had broken out about some inconsequential thing or
another. While none were particularly brutal, each quelled almost
immediately after they started, there was no doubt there was plenty
of pent up hostility brewing just below the surface. I watched the
men complain and manhandle the women whose asses would soon be
chafed against the wall in some back alleyway and left to pick up
the coins cast in the mud. They weren’t really showing humanity in
its brightest light.

I sighed at the thought. Any of these
men could be the killer I was looking for.

Whitechapel stewed with the anger and
despair of its populace, a pot ready to boil over and scald the
surrounding neighborhoods. It was no wonder the Ripper had chosen
the area to commit his crimes. He knew as well as anyone else the
value of the lives here. While there might be an outcry at his
cruelty, eyes drawn to it through the newspapers reporting of the
murders, no one looked twice at a man taking what he wanted from
the women who worked the streets. Sadism was the norm and no one
would say much of anything as long as the woman could earn her
wages the next night. That was simply life for the Whitechapel
hookers. My mother’s disapproval rumbled in my skull and I found
myself nodding. She wouldn’t have done well in this era, not that
things had worked all that out great in hers. My stomach knotted
with memories.

I growled and shook the past from my
head, drowning stray thoughts with a deep swig of my beer. This was
a job my uncle had sent me on not some personal vendetta against
abusive men. I’d have to be satisfied with ridding the world of
just one of them on this trip.

My gaze slowly wandered across the
bar, shifting from the factory men, who gathered close as though
they were so used to the contact they didn’t know when to separate,
over to the outlying tables where the crowds were
sparser.

There were a variety of men taking
advantage of the tavern’s services. An older man sat at a table,
one of the women perched on his lap. The two cuddled and shared a
drink. She ran her hand through his beard—and probably his
pockets—but he didn’t seem to mind whatever she was doing. He
grinned, a crack lightening in the wild forest of his
face.

Another group of men sat at a table
near the opposite side. They leaned and whispered, their voices not
carrying outside of their circle. I’d bet one of Baalth’s nuts
these weren’t factory men grown ignorant of personal space, but
criminals in the middle of planning a heist of some sort. That
pretty much ruled them out. While I was curious as to what they had
in mind, the killings had been a solitary venture. Jack hadn’t
escaped notice this long by flapping his gums.

A third table seated a broad man with
a pug nose. There was no mistaking his predilection for fighting.
It might not have been his job, but from the looks of him, it was
something he did often. He wore his coat, even in the relative
warmth of the bar, and the sleeves clung to his shoulders and
biceps as if he’d forced them inside. His eyes were narrow and kept
me from seeing the color. One meaty hand rested on a mug of beer
while the other cupped the hip of a redheaded woman who hovered at
his side. She smiled and leaned in close, whispering something, her
full lips brushing his ear. He sat there stone-faced, as if his
features had been carved in granite, barely nodding as she spoke.
He didn’t even glance at the woman’s assets on display just inches
from his face. That drew my attention.

Unless the guy was blind or liked to
bugger boys, there was no way he’d pass up the opportunity to cast
a glance down her blouse. The fact that he didn’t made him suspect
in my book. The woman stood and ran a hand across his shoulders,
disengaging and walking toward the crowded front of the bar. I
couldn’t blame her. She wasn’t gonna get paid with stone face. His
eyes drifted to me, and I felt the chill of his
attention.

I let my senses loose, more out of
habit than anything. It was always good to know what I was up
against before I started something. A loud noise grabbed my
attention just as I did. My head snapped around to catch the start
of a fight, several of the factory workers swinging at each other
as the redhead and the other women scrambled to get out of the way.
It was then my senses tingled, a spider crawling along my spine.
Vague recognition whispered at the wisps of magical energy, but I
couldn’t be sure where I’d felt it before.

As the fists flew, I turned back
toward the man at the table only to find him gone. My eyes darted
around the bar, and I spied him just as he slipped through the
door, his muscled frame making him easy to identify. The flutter of
my senses dulled at his departure.

I jumped out of my seat and ran after
him. Unfortunately, the scrappy workers had infected their
companions. The fight spilled over into a full out brawl. Men
crashed into one another and chairs and tables went flying. The
musky scent of beer welled up as mugs toppled to the floor. I
stomped through a puddle of spilled alcohol as I fought my way
through the jostling crowd. The amber liquid pooling on the floor
was a sad sight, but there was no time to mourn the loss of the
innocent alcohol. I did manage to squeeze in a quick dose of
revenge, however.

As the crowd jostled me, I snatched up
a stool from near the bar. It was a solid thing, thick wood at the
seat, stumpy legs like tree trunks; heavy. I put it to good use
right away, thumping a man across the back as he stumbled into me.
The stool collided with his spine, wood crashing into bone and
meat. He let out a short, sharp gasp and dropped into the crowd. I
kicked him aside and raised the stool over my head. Folks
scattered.

Finally outside, I tossed the stool
back into the tavern. Dusk had settled in overhead. I looked up and
down the street but the man was nowhere to be seen. I spotted an
alley just a few dozen yards from the tavern and ran to it,
thinking it was the closest cover to be found. He had to be there.
At the corner, I peered around only to realize I was wrong. The man
wasn’t there; only small piles of trash littered the narrow
passageway. To be sure, I crept down the alley, stepping gingerly
around the detritus to keep from making too much noise. About
halfway down, a soft breeze tickled the back of my neck. I spun
around to see Scarlett standing about ten feet back, grinning at
me.

“
I knew I’d find you
playing in the trash.”

“
And you came here for me.
What does that say about you?”

Her smile slipped from her luscious
lips to be replaced by a sneer. Scarlett only had two expressions:
smiling because she was making fun of me or pissed because she
wasn’t as witty. I much preferred seeing the latter.