by David Liss
He stepped between us and Duer and grinned in a most feral manner, showing us rather pointed teeth. Reynolds was large, in need of a shave, and possessed of an evil breath. “Mr. Duer requests the two of you would be so kind as to fuck off.”
While we were so charmingly engaged, Duer and his friends hurried away, leaving us alone with his ruffian. I might have pushed the issue—with Lavien present, it would have been safe to do so—but there seemed to me no point. I wanted to speak to William Duer, one of the wealthiest men in the country. He could not simply disappear. If I did not get him today, I would soon enough. In any case, I had business enough here.
“Tell me, fellow,” I said, “why would you have me cast from my home? It was the name of Reynolds that the villain gave when he paid my landlady to put me out.”
“Fuck your landlady,” Reynolds offered, by way of helpful explanation.
“While I appreciate your advice,” I answered, “it does not answer my question.”
“Then you must live with confusion,” he said.
Sensing he meant to give me no more, and that he was the sort to delight in crude resistance, I turned my back on this Reynolds and retrieved my porter. I raised it in salute to the ruffian. Content that his master had made his escape, he glowered at us, meeting my gaze and then Lavien’s, making certain to communicate his fierceness before stepping out the front door.
Certainly Reynolds was possessed of no uncommon name; there might be a dozen such or more in town. And yet I was not satisfied this was coincidence. The man who had run me from my rooms called himself Reynolds, but this man looked nothing like what my landlady had described. That man had worn spectacles and possessed gray hair and a gray beard. This man had brown hair, no beard, and no spectacles. Something curious had happened here, and given Hamilton’s violent reaction when I mentioned the name to him, I thought it best to find out.
At once I set down my drink. “Hold here,” I said to Lavien, and left the tavern. When I reached the street, I saw the back of Reynolds, who was already half a block distant. Leonidas sat on a bench out front. I tapped him on the shoulder.
“That man there, he’s important. Follow him, find out where he lives, and anything else about him.”
He nodded and hurried off. I turned to reenter the City Tavern. As I did so, I pushed past a man who appeared, in some distant recess of my mind, familiar. When I turned, I saw he was the frog-faced gentleman I’d observed the previous evening in the Crooked Knight. He had been sitting alone the night before, watching me with his froggish eyes. Now he looked at me, smiled in a knowing way I did not like, and touched the brim of his hat. I had not a moment to think of how to respond, and before I could stop or ask him who he was, he was gone. I had not the luxury of time to dwell upon this man, who might be of no importance at all, only a familiar face, so I headed inside the tavern.
Many of the financial men, having concluded the morning’s trades, were gone or leaving, drifting off to their various homes and offices or retiring to different taverns to conduct more particular business. I rejoined Lavien, who sat sipping his tea, looking pleased with himself.
“Duer,” he said, “does not like to make himself available to men who are not of immediate use to him.”
“He is a speculator and Hamilton is Secretary of the Treasury. Good Lord, he even used to work at Treasury. Cannot he be made to cooperate?”
“With you?”
“Well, ideally, but at least with you. He seems to treat you rather contemptuously.”
“Hamilton’s powers here are limited,” Lavien said. “If Duer does not wish to speak, Hamilton cannot compel him. Of course, Duer takes certain risks in rebuffing Hamilton, but Duer may believe himself too powerful to care.”
“Then they are no longer friends?”
“Oh, I think they are friendly, and Duer will always seek favors and information from Hamilton, but there is a lack of trust. They are like old friends who find themselves on different sides, not precisely during war but certainly during a time of increasing hostility between two nations. Duer wants the United States to emulate Britain, where men of influence have always had their way before the public good.”
“And what does Hamilton want the United States to be like?”
“He wants it to be like itself,” Lavien said, “and that is an ever more challenging goal.”
Lavien was being surprisingly forthcoming, and I could see no reason to withhold any longer the secret I had uncovered. “I suppose so, particularly in light of the threat to his bank.”
He nodded his approval. “You learned of that quickly.”
“How long have you known?”
“We’ve been aware that there may be a plot against the bank for a week now.”
“What sort of plot?”
He shook his head. “We don’t know. The bank itself is located in Carpenters’ Hall, and it could be a threat against the physical space, though I find that unlikely. A move to take over the bank through acquisition of the shares, perhaps. A move to devalue the shares and cause a run. It could be anything.”
“And Duer’s involvement?”
He shrugged. “Likely none that he is aware of. Duer has borrowed a great deal of money from the bank, and he no doubt intends to return to that well again and again. He would not do anything to stop its flow.”
“But you said he owes the bank a great deal of money. Might he not want to see it fail to avoid repayment?”
“That would be like a man setting himself on fire to avoid paying his surgeon’s bill. If the bank were to face some major crisis, all financial instruments would suffer, and that would destroy the market and so destroy Duer. But the fact that he is not involved in a plot does not mean he does not know something. He may know more than he is aware.”
“Again, I must point out that you are being remarkably cooperative.”
“I hope for a trade,” he said.
“Of what sort?”
“Well, I depend upon your honor, for I have already given you what I have to offer—information about Duer and the bank—and now I want something from you, though in giving it to me, you will also be helping yourself.” He took from his pocket a piece of paper and showed it to me. It was written in code, one that looked, on first glance, identical to the simple one I’d cracked the night before.
Lavien whisked it away, before I could even begin to effect a decoding.
“Retrieved from the enterprising Miss Fiddler,” I said.
He nodded. “I could take it to someone at Treasury, but the fewer people who know about it, the more comfortable I will be. It is probable that Jefferson has spies at Treasury. Duer may have men loyal to himself as well. I may not want you involved, but I do trust you.”
I nodded, and he handed me the paper again. Without my asking, while I continued to look it over, he brought me a fresh piece of writing paper, a quill, and ink, but I did not need them. I had worked through the code just the night before, and it was fresh in my mind. It took me but a moment to read the following:
WD. JP suspects efforts with Million B. I took action as discussed. D.
Was WD William Duer? JP Jacob Pearson? Who then was D if not Duer, and, perhaps most important, since it appeared to be the heart of the message, what was Million B?
I posed that question to Lavien.
“The Million Bank,” he said, looking thoughtful. “I have not paid it much mind, but it is an effort to capitalize on the current enthusiasm for banks. It will be launched in New York City within the next week or two, but it is regarded by almost everyone as a foolish venture. I cannot think that either Pearson or Duer would have anything to do with it.”
“And yet, here is this note,” I said.
“This note, written by we know not who and intended, if we are to be honest, for the same. It is easy to imagine it is for Duer, but we have no real evidence.”
It was true enough. “Then Duer will have to answer my question,” I said.
“He has ma
de a point of avoiding me. You think he will be less elusive for you?”
“No,” I said. “But I mean to catch him all the same.”
Later that evening, I quenched my thirst at the Man Full of Trouble, ate a dinner of cold meats and potatoes, and most likely would have passed the night there had not the barman come to me with a piece of paper.
“Just delivered. It is a message for you.”
I grabbed the paper from his hand. “Very kind,” I murmured. I opened up the note and saw by the dim light of the tavern that it was from Leonidas. He wished to meet me at the corner of Lombard and Seventh. He said it was urgent. I finished my drink and set out.
Leonidas was leaning against redbrick, puffing upon a pipe, sending up thick clouds of smoke against the light of the streetlamp. “You took your time,” he said.
“I was upon important business.”
“So I smell.”
“You can’t expect a man to reform instantly. Now, what are you doing upon this corner?”
“Expanding the boundaries of our inquiry,” he said. “Keep your eye upon that building.” He pointed to a house three doors in from the corner, on the other side of the street.
“What shall I see?”
“Something interesting, I hope. I was afraid you might miss it, but this is the house belonging to the rough man, Reynolds. He lives there with a woman—his wife, according to the neighbors. I’ve not looked upon her, but everyone says the same thing—that she is the most extraordinarily beautiful woman they have ever seen.”
“Do go on.”
“I followed Reynolds here. He left after an hour, and I continued to follow him, but though he did not see me, he seemed to sense there was someone watching him, and I was forced to let him go. He returned later, and now he has another visitor, which is what I wanted you to see.”
“Who is it?”
“There are some things,” said Leonidas, “that a man must see for himself.”
We waited in the darkness. I wished I had taken the time for another drink before leaving, for it would have been pleasing to pass the time in a kind of numbness, though I suppose I achieved something like that anyway, watching the orange glow of Leonidas’s pipe flare and fade.
At last I saw silhouettes pass before the curtains of the front room. Then the door opened, and two men appeared against the dim interior light. Reynolds seemed to be almost a different person, for he bowed before the second man, whom he evidently considered his superior. I could not at first identify him, though he seemed familiar in his shape and stature.
The stranger came out of the house, walking with his shoulders stooped, his gait quick but not sprightly, like a man rushing to get indoors during a storm. He cast his gaze back and forth, as though wishing to make certain no one would see him, and then stepped out into the street. He kept his head down and walked with sharp lashing strides like the jerky thrusts of oars into water. Only briefly did he pass into a splash of lamplight, but in that instant I saw his face, hard and set in anger, or possibly despair. It was Hamilton.
I let out my breath in a long steady stream and waited for him to pass. Then I spoke in a whisper. “Hamilton tells me he is on the outs with Duer, so why would he personally visit the home of Duer’s lackey?”
“It is about money,” Leonidas said. “Hamilton handed Reynolds a heavy purse.”
Hamilton giving this man money? I had no idea what it meant, but for the first time since I’d taken on the search for Pearson, I began to feel unequal to the task before me.
It is only natural to feel anxiety when circumstances are larger than a man’s ability to manage them. I learned this during the war, just as I learned that the only cure for such feelings is action. A man might not always be able to do all he must, but he can do something. There was no action for me to take, not right now, but at least there was always movement, and so, dismissing Leonidas, I walked through the streets of Philadelphia, keeping to the better neighborhoods, avoiding the taverns where I knew I might find drink to help me forget. I did not want to forget, I wanted to understand.
I had stumbled onto a dangerous situation, one I had no business involving myself in except that it concerned Cynthia Pearson, and that meant I had no choice. So what was it that I knew? I knew that Hamilton feared a plot against his brainchild, the Bank of the United States, an institution designed to invigorate the American economy, and which had set off a frenzy of reckless trading. The man in charge of inquiring into that threat, Kyler Lavien, was the same man who inquired into the disappearance of Cynthia’s husband. It would be foolish to imagine that these two things were unconnected. My inquiries into the matter had so far led me to an unknown Irishman and to William Duer, Hamilton’s former assistant, and to Duer’s own underling, Reynolds, who bore the name of the man who had urged my landlady to cast me out of my rooms. And now, it seems, Reynolds was involved in some kind of secretive dealings with Hamilton himself.
All these things were bound together, but that did not mean they originated from the same point. Another thing I had learned during the war was that unrelated threads become entangled because important men can be important in more than one sphere at a time. Hamilton’s secretive dealings with Duer’s man might have nothing to do with the threat against the bank or Cynthia’s husband’s disappearance. On the other hand, just because these things might begin as unrelated didn’t mean they stayed that way, and it would be best to assume connections even when there could be no logical reason for them to exist. Mysterious actions and unknown plots are uncovered not by understanding motives but by understanding men.
So I told myself as I returned to my boardinghouse. I walked with my head down, murmuring to myself like a drunkard, though I was perfectly sober. I felt it useful to speak aloud everything that troubled me, to give each difficulty some dimension in speech that I might comprehend it better. I hardly looked where I walked, for all that interested me was inside my mind. I was on the stairs to Mrs. Deisher’s house, lost in thought and strategies, when the fist struck me in the stomach.
My attacker must have been crouched, hiding in the shadows of the stoop, for I had already begun to climb to the door when I saw movement in the darkness, a shifting of dark clothes, a glimmer of reflected light upon a button, a pair of eyes, teeth behind lips pulled back in a grin or perhaps a grimace.
I had no time to react, only to see it coming, this human form uncoil, and when the blow struck, it struck hard. I felt my feet actually lift from the stairs and I fell backward, landing hard upon my arse. I fought not to fall over entirely, but the force of the blow drove my head down. My skull struck with a jarring force—an angry thud that sent pain halfway down my back—but I hit not brick but dirt, the little circle of earth surrounding a tree. The pain ran down in a spiked wave, followed by a sprinkling of silver lights, but I knew at once I had not taken a deadly blow. Even in that moment I felt a foolish relief that the damage was all to a place that would be invisible to others. It would not do to have further wounds upon my face.
Now all at once I saw what I should have seen before. The lamp outside Mrs. Deisher’s house was out. The lamps by the neighbors’ houses were out. Were I not so out of practice I would have sensed the ambush, but I could not undo what had been done. I could only move forward.
The dark figure—a big man, stocky, probably muscular, wearing a wide-brimmed hat; I could see no more—stood over me on the stairs, perhaps savoring his moment of advantage. He reached into his belt for something and held it up. In the dim light of cloud-covered moon and dim stars and distant lamplight I could see the faint twinkle of polished steel. It was a blade, and rather a long one. From where I lay, even with the wind blowing between us, I could smell him: the rank sourness of unwashed clothes, old sweat, and the peculiar acrid scent of wet, moldy tobacco.
I knew several things now. This man, whoever he was, had not come to kill me. Had his first blow to my stomach been made with that knife, I would now be dead or dying. The blade was to frig
hten me or to hurt me without killing me. Even so, I knew if I was not careful I might yet end up dead.
My head ached, and I felt a dull, painful heaviness in my gut, but I ignored it. The man loomed closer, only three or four steps away. I was on my back, propped up on my hands. He would think me helpless and at his mercy, but it wasn’t quite so.
Any encounter such as this one is like a game of chess. He had his moves to make and I had mine. We could go only certain ways. Each move creates a new series of possible countermoves. Most important, perhaps, victory goes not to the player who is stronger or more ready to attack but to the player who can see and anticipate the farthest into the future, who can map out the multiplying strands of possibility. This is what I told myself.
He had made his first move, and now it was time for mine. Under the circumstances, I needed to buy time and distract him. Asking him who he was or what he wanted, begging for mercy, telling him I could pay him well to leave me be—none of these things would do. Not because they had no chance of working, but because they were all too predictable. I chose to speak nonsense, but nonsense that would make him stop to think.
“I began to think you would never make your attempt,” I said.
In the dark, I saw the outline of his head shift in birdlike curiosity, as though he took a moment to consider. He took a step toward me, and I believe I as much as saw his mouth open, though I know not that he would have spoken.
He never had the chance because at that moment Mrs. Deisher slammed open her front door and stood there, a dark and billowing figure in her dressing gown, a candle burning behind her, holding something long with a comically flaring end. It took me a moment to identify it as an ancient blunderbuss.
