The Crescent Spy

by Michael Wallace

  The cheers died down within a few minutes, but the party raged on. Josephine closed the watch and made her way down from the levee to go home.

  Wednesday, January 1, Josephine rose early to chase down the morning papers. The city came awake around her with all of the enthusiasm of a team of surly mules. The newsboys were late and irritable, the cabdrivers made as if to run her down when she crossed the street, and two men scooping horse droppings into a cart were snarling at each other until she thought they would come to blows.

  Back in her room, Josephine spent the rest of the morning cleaning up stories she’d been working on, then wrote a note for Francesca, using her left hand. It was a trick she’d used in Washington when she wanted to disguise her handwriting. In this case it wasn’t to fool Francesca, but because the very existence of a note would be incriminating. She needed a way to deny it.

  Note composed, she set off for the Paris Hotel, arriving at a quarter to noon, where she arranged for a waiter to deliver the note at precisely twelve thirty. Then she climbed the stairs to the mezzanine to discreetly look down at the restaurant. Francesca entered a few minutes before the arranged time and was led to her table. She ordered wine and waited. Above, Josephine checked Franklin’s watch. At precisely twelve thirty, the waiter approached Francesca’s table and slipped her Josephine’s note.

  Francesca opened it. She stared at the note for a long time. From Josephine’s vantage, she saw no reaction, but knew her mother’s old friend must be boiling as she read Josephine’s response, blunt in its delivery, occluded in its message so that it would not be an additional tool for blackmailing.

  There is no body, so you have no crime to report.

  You will get nothing from me now or ever.

  Go home to Memphis or you will find your own past exposed, and your husband’s enemies will be told he is in the city.

  Without waiting to see what Francesca would do, Josephine descended from the mezzanine and left through the hotel’s front door. She didn’t hail a cab, but walked swiftly down the first side street she reached. The streets and boardwalks were nearly empty, and she relaxed as she came upon Jackson Square. A handful of drunks slept in corners of the square, surrounded by broken bottles, horse droppings, torn papers, confetti, and other refuse from the previous night.

  She was passing in front of the cathedral before she remembered the second of Francesca’s conditions. Josephine was to hand over $6,000 and then go to the square to meet the Colonel outside the Cabildo.

  She stopped short and darted her gaze toward the Cabildo. There he was, waiting beneath the very sycamore tree where she’d lingered before leaving her telegram. He had his hat off, and twisted the brim in his hands. He was staring up a side street, where the carts and cabs entered the square, or he would have spotted her already.

  Josephine expected anger at seeing him again, but as she studied his tired, worried expression, she could only feel pity. She was suddenly sure that he knew nothing of this blackmail business; that must be Francesca’s doing. If not, why would he be waiting for her, as if expecting a reconciliation? She made a sudden decision.

  He looked up as she approached. The worry dissolved on his face, replaced by a hopeful smile.

  “You came. I thought you’d changed your mind.”

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of any other way. I knew you wouldn’t listen to me, but I thought you might listen to Francesca. I hope she didn’t press too hard. She can be powerful determined.”

  “You have no idea what she asked me, do you?”

  “I don’t follow. How do you mean?”

  She glanced across the square. At any moment, Francesca might be arriving from the hotel, furious and set upon revenge. Josephine gave the Colonel a gesture to follow and started up toward the levee. He followed.

  “Your wife is trying to blackmail me,” she said when they’d crossed the street and left the square behind.

  “Over what?” he asked, sounding bewildered. “Over the contents of the box? How would that be? Anyway, I told her that wasn’t your fault. Of course you didn’t realize the value of those gemstones, as young as you were. Francesca seems to think that you did, that you sold them for thousands of dollars. That you still have most of that money and should give it back. That’s not true, is it?”

  Josephine sighed. When she got to the levee, she came to a stop. “What do you want, Colonel? Money?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “I want to be what I should have been all along. I want to be . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked out to the river, where another barge with a cannon lay anchored, waiting to be hauled down to the forts.

  “A what?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You can’t even say the word. You want to be my father?”

  He rubbed his hands together and nodded.

  “As if you even understand what that word means,” Josephine said. “What’s more, did you even have a claim in the first place? I look like my mother, not like you or any other man my mama knew.”

  “You’re right.” He tried to take her hands, but she pulled away. “But I used to watch you while you were reading your books, your face all puckered up in concentration, and thought that I could have been. I wanted to be.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” she cried. Her throat was tight, and she struggled to get the words out. “All you had to do was stay. That’s the only thing we ever asked of you.”

  “I don’t know. Something restless in my feet, that’s all I can say. They wanted to keep moving, wanted to take me to new places. Always new places.”

  “We were on a blasted riverboat, you idiot. That’s all it did, go place to place.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then explain it to me, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s not too late. We can start over. I’ll be your father if you let me.” He tried to take her hands again, but she pushed him away.

  “Don’t touch me. It is too late. My mother is dead, and I have no father. I never did. And I won’t pretend otherwise, not now, not ever.”

  “Josie.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  He stared at her for a long time. “So that’s it?”

  “Yes. Go away. Don’t bother me again.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “I already told you, your wife is trying to blackmail me. And yes, she does have something over me. Not the box, something dangerous. If you care at all, if you ever did, you will convince her to leave me alone.”

  “I’ll try. She is a strong-willed woman.”

  “So was my mother, remember? And I am more strong-willed than either of them. If you push me, I will fight back until I have destroyed you and your wife both. Do you understand me?”

  He didn’t answer, but looked at her with that sad expression, full of pain and longing.

  Josephine turned and left. It was all she could do to keep herself upright. She’d thought herself beyond his ability to hurt her, but hearing from his own mouth that he wanted to be her father left her shattered. She knew he was incapable, that if she let him into her life again, he would only disappear again. A week, a month, a year. Soon enough, he’d be gone. He’d left Mama to drown, for God’s sake.

  Yet even though she knew that she had given up nothing, lost nothing, she ached to her bones as if she had.

  Josephine didn’t return to the offices of the Crescent until January 9, a week and a half after Fein had supposedly sent her down to the Gulf. All eyes in the newsroom turned her way, and a number of them came over to pump her for information. Rumors had been flying as to her whereabouts. Some thought she’d gone up to Baton Rouge or even St. Louis, while Keller said he’d heard President Davis had summoned her to Richmond and sent her along to Washington to spy.

  She scoffed at this. “All the way to Washington and back in nine days?”

  As Keller sput
tered an answer, Fein came rushing from the back room. Ink smudged his glasses, and he was carrying a roll of paper, which he handed off the instant he saw her.

  “You!” Fein said. “Where the devil have you been?”

  Josephine reached into her satchel and pulled out a fat sheaf of papers, which she waved in his face. Heads craned trying to get a look.

  “Give me that,” Fein said.

  “Not here.”

  He dragged her into his office and shut the door, where he demanded to see the result of all of his money and her time. She had written six stories, some even legitimate, but first she handed over the big one. The big lie. He sat down to read at his desk while she stood above him.

  UNION PLOT EXPOSED!

  POOK’S TURTLES TO ATTACK NEW ORLEANS!

  FIENDISH ATTACK ON THE LEVEE!

  Fein looked initially excited, but his expression turned grim as he read. The article described a massive Union force forming in southern Illinois, led by eleven ironclad gunboats to clear the Mississippi, and eighty thousand federal troops to occupy forts seized during their sweep downriver. They would begin at Fort Henry on the Tennessee River in February, control the river to the state of Mississippi by March, and finally take Vicksburg before dropping into Louisiana to control the river all the way to the Gulf by late spring. If New Orleans resisted, the enemy would blast holes in the levee, which would flood the city just as the river was cresting with spring runoff. To divert Confederate naval forces, the Union navy would shortly attack coastal fortifications from the Carolinas to the state of Mississippi.

  She thought it was a good outline of a legitimate campaign, as sketched by a layperson with an excellent understanding of the river and its navigable tributaries, and a solid, but less thorough knowledge of military matters. She guessed that the Confederate land and river forces would have something to say about how casually she had the Union seizing all those forts, but she thought her story sounded plausible enough that it would make Richmond sweat and turn its attention from the river below New Orleans.

  The niggling worry was that she had outlined an actual Union campaign through sheer luck. In which case she might be endangering Northern forces. Not if they’d listened to her obviously superior idea about coming up the river from the Gulf to rush Fort St. Philip and Fort Jackson before attacking New Orleans from the south. But could she count on that? She had only Franklin’s word on the matter.

  “This is . . .” Fein stopped, and let out a low whistle. “Yes, this was worth it. You have more?”

  In Josephine’s second story, even more fanciful than the first, she described a clandestine meeting with a loose-lipped Union officer. He told of flagging Northern morale, of worries that Britain would shortly recognize the Confederacy due to the still simmering Union diplomatic blunder of the so-called Trent Affair. The Union officer was not optimistic about the planned assault from the north. He thought that fifty thousand Confederate troops on the upper river and reinforced fortifications would turn back any attack. And after the debacle at Head of Passes, the Union had ruled out any attack from the Gulf.

  When he’d finished reading, Fein took off his glasses and polished them with a far-off expression. When he put them back on and looked up at her, he’d only succeeded in further smearing the lenses with ink.

  “You know what Ludd will say in the Picayune, don’t you?” he asked.

  “He’ll make nasty insinuations about how I got the enemy officer to talk.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “Of course it bothers me. But it’s hardly the worst thing I’ve faced. I’d suffer that and more for the cause.”

  “Ah yes, the cause.” He pointed to the other chair in the room and told her to sit down. “Let’s talk about that.”

  She obeyed. “Yes?”

  “Did you read the story in the True Delta last week about protecting the city? No, I don’t suppose you could have, being in the Gulf. Maginnis suggested making New Orleans a free city, separate from both the Union and the Confederacy. We could trade with both sides, avoid fighting either.”

  “Sounds like treason.”

  “And ridiculous, on the face of it. Though at least half the city was against secession in the first place, the half that was in favor of it would have tarred and feathered anyone who defended the Union. That said, both sides remain in the city to this day.”

  “I don’t follow. Where are you going with this?”

  “My point is, there’s a large seditious population in New Orleans. If the Union ever captures the city, these people will trip over themselves collaborating with the enemy.”

  “Who are these traitors?” Josephine huffed. “I’ve never met any.”

  “You wouldn’t have, would you? Not with war fever raging. But it’s a safe bet that the blockade-runners and smugglers like the man who took you downstream would be the first to cross over.”

  Fein apparently didn’t know that the runner was a Confederate soldier. That man wouldn’t do any crossing over. Unless he proved completely craven and deserted, he would end up fighting for the cause, whether he wanted to or not.

  “That’s one man,” she said. “Who else?”

  “I’m not looking, mind you, but if I were, I’d turn my attention to Irish, Italians. Other foreigners. Men born in the North who came to New Orleans to make their fortune. Free blacks, runaway slaves. Old white creole families who still speak French at home and keep no slaves. Few of these people have any great affinity for Richmond.”

  “How about a German-born Jew from New York?” she asked.

  “I’m a patriot,” he said quickly. “But I’m also a realist.”

  She took a small risk and let out some of her true thoughts on the subject. “They say it’s not about slavery, but over rights, but sometimes I wonder if it’s either of those things. People are proud. Maybe that’s the only reason men go to war. Pride and honor. The South goes to war because the North marches into their territory.”

  “And that’s why you fight?” he asks. “With your pen, I mean? In defense of your native soil against invaders? That’s why you take such risks?”

  It was a valid question, although not in the way he supposed.

  Since she was a child, Josephine had traveled up and down the river dozens of times, passing from slave state to free and back again. She was under no illusion that Northerners were saints, but neither were the Southerners. One vision of the future would hold, either an empire of land and slaves in the South, with growth and energy and free labor always pressing forward in her northern neighbor, or the North would triumph utterly. In which case, it was evident to one and all that the United States would grow into a vast, continental power of unprecedented strength, while the South became a weak, broken colony of the former.

  Neither vision appealed to her, but when she remembered the slaves fleeing across the river by boat, thought about Caleb at Fort Jackson as they led him to the gallows, she could feel no soft place in her heart for Southern honor, for any great and glorious cause that would tear the country in two.

  “I don’t mean to bend you to cynicism,” Fein said after she had not answered for several seconds.

  “I’m in the news business. I’m already bent.”

  “My comment about the cause was not to make you doubt. And it was certainly not to make you question my own commitment. But should the worst come to pass, and the Union gunboats fight their way downriver as you say, don’t be a heroine. There will still be need for our services in New Orleans. To raise spirits during a dark time, to shine a light on the doings of the corrupt and powerful. And I’ll need you. You’re notorious in the North, but I’ll protect you if I can. For your part, you’ll need to be practical.”

  “I understand.”

  He took the other stories she’d written and skimmed through them while Josephine waited for his assessment.

  She was beginning to suspect that Fein was every bit as cynical as the man who’d smuggled Franklin to saf
ety in the Gulf. But then he said something that made her reassess.

  “You’ve given me plenty of material,” he said. “I want you to take a few days off. Unless I tell you otherwise, you’re not to do any writing for the paper. Instead, I want you to write a story for the War Department. I want you to write your assessment of our dire military situation for the benefit of the government. Use your most persuasive language. Assure them that what you wrote for the Crescent wasn’t mere scaremongering to sell more papers. I’ll send copies to President Davis, the War Department, and to Commodore Hollins, General Lovell, and General Lee.”

  “Will they listen to me?” she asked.

  “They had better. If not, we’ll lose the whole blasted river. Then our hopes will be very black indeed.”

  Josephine eyed Fein with new understanding. Any hope that she had found someone to whom she could confess her true purpose drained away. Solomon Fein may have been preparing for the worst, but this man wanted the South to win the war.

  Josephine’s misinformation reaped great dividends. In the first few weeks of January, only General Lovell seemed to pay attention to threats from the Gulf. Hollins steamed upriver with the mosquito fleet, where there did seem to be movement on the part of the Union. A powerful flotilla, backed by some twenty thousand or more troops under Ulysses Grant, was moving on the Tennessee River. Lovell raised new regiments for the defense of New Orleans, but Richmond ordered them upriver as quickly as they formed.

  Then, at the end of the month, curious news filtered into New Orleans. It came first via the Washington papers, who claimed that Flag Officer David Farragut had assembled a “great expedition” composed of Pensacola, Richmond, and several other massive steam frigates, together with thirty other vessels containing mortars and powerful rifled cannons. They were going to attack the Gulf fortifications of the Confederacy. The story reached the Richmond press first, then was reprinted by the Picayune on January 29.