The Patriots Club

by Christopher Reich

  They kept a record, Simon Bonny had said. They were all so worried about how posterity would treat them.

  The door to the adjoining room was locked. The keyhole was fitted for a church key, one too large to fit into someone’s pocket. James Jacklin had been faithful in his reproduction of that, too. Jenny ran her hand along the door frame, then looked inside the top drawer of the cabinet standing nearby. The key lay inside. The lock turned readily, a single tumbler. Authentic to the last detail. She freed the key and the door glided open, beckoning her inside.

  Books.

  Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined three walls, a sash window overlooking the Jacklin estate’s front lawn occupying the fourth. She closed the door and turned on an antique reading lamp with a green-glass shade. Books filled every inch of every shelf. Old books bound in leather, gold-leaf titles worn and all but impossible to read. She ran her hand over the leather spines. The room smelled musty and dank, as if a window hadn’t been opened in years. She looked behind her. In the dim light, the books seemed to close in on her, intent on imprisoning her along with the past. She pulled out one volume: Francis Parkman’s France and England in North America. Next to it, she found a first edition of Ulysses S. Grant’s autobiography. The flyleaf was autographed by the author with a note: “To Edmond Jacklin, citizen patriot, with esteem for your years of service.” Jenny returned the book to its place, feeling the floor reverberate in time to the orchestra’s tune. She checked her watch. She’d been absent six minutes. Pressing her ear to the door, she listened for any sounds in the hallway. All was silent.

  Where to start? Jenny stood in the center of the library and turned a circle. There were hundred of books, if not thousands. All were bound like the classics offered on the back page of the Sunday book section. None looked remotely like a personal journal.

  Then she saw it: a shelf spaced more widely than the others, enclosed by glass doors. The lock securing the doors was all too modern. She adjusted the reading lamp so the light shone through the milky glass. Inside rested several large, coffee-brown ledgers stacked one on the other, similar in size and style to the census ledgers she had consulted at the Hall of Records.

  Jenny hiked up her dress and wrapped her right hand in the thick muslin cloth. Stepping close to the bookshelf, she thrust her fist through the glass, shattering it. The noise was muted, a few wayward shards tinkling onto the floor. She turned her head toward the door, waiting, praying no one would come. Reaching inside, she freed first one volume, then another. Six remained. She carried the two volumes to a chair and sat down. With care, she opened the cover. The pages were brittle and yellow with age. Tea stains darkened the paper. The records. She was sure she had found them.

  The first page was blank.

  The second as well.

  Jenny’s heart beat faster.

  On the third page were photographs. Four wallet-size black-and-white prints affixed to the page by corner holders. The pictures were wrinkled with age. In each, a smiling blond child dressed in a sailor’s suit held a sailboat to his chest. The writing beneath each picture was hard to read in the dim light. Lifting the scrapbook closer, she read, “J. J. 1935.”

  She turned the page and found more pictures. Jacklin with his mother and father. With the housekeeper. With his sister. Closing the cover, she rose and checked the other books inside the glass cabinet. The Jacklin family photo albums and nothing else.

  Frustrated and anxious, she put the books back, then returned to the Long Room. She swept her eyes from one wall to the other, but saw no place where you could hide any books. She’d already checked the cabinets. She was growing frantic. They had met here. The club. She was sure of it. Jacklin’s smug tone had all but confirmed it. The horny old lech. Jenny shuddered, thinking of his hand kneading her bottom. What did he think she was made of? Cookie dough?

  She thought back to her visit to the Hall of Records. The directory of New York City published in 1796 had been in remarkably good condition. Why? Because it had been stored in a cool place, away from sunlight. She poked her head back into the library. The bookshelves were exposed to direct sunlight at least half the day. The heat was roaring, the air dry as tinder. In the summer, it would be the air-conditioning’s turn. No one would store precious journals there.

  A cool place shielded from sunlight.

  A constant temperature of sixty-five degrees.

  Just the right degree of humidity.

  Her eyes fell on the humidor. It was built as part of the burled wood cabinet, but after looking at it a moment, she saw that the cabinet had no doors. She crossed the room and flipped open the top. The rich, muscular scent of tobacco assailed her. Kneeling, she looked more closely at the cabinet, running her hands along the front and sides. A faint crack was visible at the right rear corner. Jenny slipped her fingernail into it and tried to pry it open, but the damn thing didn’t give. She stood and closed the humidor’s lid. Placing a hand halfway down either side, she lifted.

  The humidor opened like a music box.

  She peered inside.

  A leather journal peered back. It was no larger than the standard hardcover novel. She picked it up and noticed there was another under it, and another beneath that. The books were in impeccable condition. With care, she opened the cover. There, written in immaculate looping script, were the words:

  The Patriots Club

  June 1, 1843–July 31, 1878

  Minutes

  62

  “J. J. . . . a word?”

  “Yes, what is it?” replied Jacklin. “Has the President arrived?”

  “Not yet,” replied Guilfoyle, crouching at his side. “He’s due in eight minutes. His motorcade just crossed Key Bridge.”

  Jacklin smiled obligingly at his guests. Dinner had been served. The dance floor was packed to bursting. The plates had been cleared; a digestif offered. He raised the snifter of Armagnac to his mouth and took a sip. “What is it, then?”

  “Bolden’s woman is in D.C.”

  “I thought she was laid up in the hospital.”

  “Hoover just contacted me from the operations center. Cerberus spat out some credit-card activity indicating she purchased a ticket on the US Airways shuttle and rented a car at Reagan National Airport.”

  “Why are you telling me this now? Cerberus is a real-time program. It should have given us the information hours ago.”

  “The boys in the op center thought she was in the hospital, too. No one inputted her vitals until a couple of hours ago.”

  Jacklin checked his temper. He had half a mind to cuff this unfeeling robot right then and there. “And you think she’s headed here?”

  “She also purchased evening wear from a boutique on Madison Avenue.”

  Jacklin excused himself from the table and led Guilfoyle outside. A freshening breeze snapped at their cheeks. “Look at that,” he said, scanning the leaden sky. “We’re going to have one hell of an inauguration.”

  Guilfoyle looked up at the sky, but said nothing.

  “And the cop?” Jacklin asked. “You getting what you need?”

  “In time.”

  Jacklin turned suddenly and grabbed Guilfoyle by the lapels. “We don’t have time. Can’t you get that through your head? I ask for results and you bring me more problems. For all your supposed intuition, you’ve shown all the foresight of a chimpanzee. First you screw up with Bolden, then you can’t make this cop give us what we need. Now you’re telling me that Bolden’s girlfriend might be trying to mess things up. Thank God, it’s just a woman.” He released the lapels, breathing through his teeth. “What does she look like, anyway?”

  “No picture, yet. She’s thirty, tall and blond with wavy hair down to her shoulders. Reasonably attractive.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Dance. Jennifer Dance.”

  Jacklin leaned closer. “Jennifer?”

  This was the rough stuff. The stuff that happened when you got too close to the cartels, or hounded the Mob a litt
le too much. This was the stuff you read about and shook your head, and when you went to sleep that night, you prayed it would never happen to you. When they beat you up before they start asking questions, when they hit you so hard that suddenly you can’t remember the last five minutes, or where you are even, you know it’s the rough stuff. And you know how it’s going to end.

  “I’m a cop,” Franciscus said through his broken teeth, though it sounded like “Thime a thop.” “I don’t take evidence with me.”

  “Did you leave it in New York?”

  Franciscus tried to lift his head, but his neck seemed locked in a downward position. They had taken their time beating him. They’d started on his face, then worked down to his gut, going methodically step by step, like the local train stopping at every station. He was fairly certain that his cheekbone was fractured. He could still feel the punch that had done that. Contractors, he had told Bolden. The best his government could train.

  Someone hit him again in the face, directly on the busted cheek. He heard the impact from afar, the bone shattering like a china plate. His eyes remained open, but he saw nothing, just sparks from a flare exploding in the center of his brain. He passed out for a minute or two. He had no idea how long, really, except that the same goons were still there when he came to. Both had removed their jackets. Their shoulder holsters cradled 9 millimeter pistols.

  Lying on the concrete floor, he saw his thumb a few inches away. He willed it to budge, and a second later, it did, jittering as if juiced with a thousand volts. The sound of his breathing filled his ear. It was a thin, wheezing rasp, and he thought, Christ, whoever sounds like that is gonna check out pronto.

  It was then that he decided, no. He wasn’t done yet. He wasn’t going to allow these two gorillas to finish him off. He would not let them kill him here and now. Not without a fight. The drums of his rebellion pounded faintly, but unmistakably. War drums.

  A few hundred yards down the path, a hundred men and women were drinking and dancing the night away. Reach them and he was safe. He would flash his badge. He would give his name. He’d get the collar, one way or the other. Jacklin would be his.

  Franciscus summoned his resolve. He needed to act quickly, while he had enough strength to make it to the main house. He lay as still as a rock, holding his breath. One of his interrogators knew right away something was wrong. You were supposed to jerk when you got hit, not just lie there. He came closer, looking at Franciscus as if he were a landed croc that might have some bite left in him.

  “I think our man’s checked out. He’s blue.”

  The other man laughed skeptically. “Has he stopped sweating? That’s when you’ll know if he’s dead.”

  “I think it’s his heart.”

  “Let me have a look.” The man dropped to a knee and bent over Franciscus. First he put a hand on his wrist. Then he looked at his associate, and the look was enough to get the man down on the floor of the tack room, too. “I can’t find a pulse. See if you can feel anything.”

  “He’s cold. Fuckin’ Guilfoyle. I told him it was stupid to beat up on a senior. My dad’s a cop, too. I don’t want this on my conscience.”

  “Shh. I’m still listening.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Go get him. The guy’s turning bluer than a fish.”

  Jennifer Dance was reading the minutes of the Patriots Club.

  December 6, 1854

  Present: Franklin Pierce. Henry Ward Beecher. Frederick Douglass. Horace Greeley. Thomas Hart Benton.

  “. . . the Committee votes in favor of a grant of $25,000 to assist Mr. Beecher in the purchase of Sharps rifles for overland shipment to Kansas in support of the abolitionist/antislavery movement.”

  The guns were later named Beecher’s Bibles by the Northern press, and they turned the state of Kansas into a battleground that was nicknamed Bloody Kansas.

  Sept. 8, 1859

  Present: James Buchanan. William Seward. Horace Greeley. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry Ward Beecher.

  “. . . all ammunition to be provided to Mr. John Brown and sons in support of his proposed raiding of the arsenal at Harpers Ferry . . .”

  John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry failed, but his subsequent conviction for treason against the commonwealth of Virginia and his execution by hanging hastened the advent of the Civil War.

  April 1, 1864

  Present: Abraham Lincoln. William Seward. U. S. Grant. Salmon P. Chase. Horace Greeley. Cornelius Vanderbilt.

  “. . . the Committee votes against General Lee’s petition asking for a truce between the Union and the Confederacy, the Confederacy accepting the Emancipation Proclamation with all territorial issues reverting to status quo ante bellum.”

  A truce? Jenny had never heard of a failed truce between the states. Abraham Lincoln had pressed the war until the South had surrendered, exhausted, depleted, and without any chance of further victory on the battlefield.

  Jenny opened the second ledger, dated 1878–1904. She thumbed the pages until she came to the date of January 31, 1898.

  Present: William McKinley. Alfred Thayer Mahan. Elihu Root. J. P. Morgan. John Rockefeller. J. J. Astor. Thomas B. Reed. Frederick Jackson Turner.

  “We can no longer overlook the pressing requirement for our nation to acquire global colonies. At the least, a string of coaling stations across the Pacific necessary for the expanding fleet . . . it is imperative that we check the British colossus as a world power.”

  Her eyes skipped down the page.

  “. . . an incident required to galvanize the American people in support of war . . . suitable targets: Cuba, Haiti, the Philippines . . . all lands where a democratic presence would be viewed as a liberator and widely welcomed by local populace . . . Mr. Root proposed scuttling of U.S.S. Maine, second-class battleship cruising in Cuban waters.”

  Voices carried into the room from the corridor. Jenny flipped the pages forward faster, and faster yet. She was searching for one more name, a last indication that, against whatever argument she might muster, it was all true.

  March 13, 1915. Present: Woodrow Wilson, Colonel A. E. House, General J. J. Pershing, Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, Vincent Astor.

  “. . . a means to enter European conflict is now of primary importance . . . unrestricted submarine warfare an assault on civility of conflict . . . the Cunard liner Lusitania will depart New York on May 1. The War Department is shipping two thousand tons of ammunition for the Allied war effort. Items are not on manifest . . . an irresistible target for German navy . . .”

  She flipped forward to the most recent meeting. It was dated the night before. She read a paragraph, then two.

  The door burst open.

  Jacklin stood framed by the light. Two of his bodyguards waited behind him. She recognized them from the night before. Wolf and Irish. Jacklin walked slowly across the room and plucked the journal from her hands.

  “Miss Dance . . . is it?”

  63

  “Take off the restraints,” said James Jacklin, entering the guesthouse and laying eyes on Bolden. “Jesus Christ. The man’s a banker, not a convict.” The tall, grim-faced man hurried toward him, occasionally admonishing Wolf to get the job done faster. “That better, Tom?”

  Bolden rubbed his wrists. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Well now,” said Jacklin, sizing him up. “What can I get you? Beer? Scotch? Name your poison.”

  “I could use a glass of water.”

  Jacklin fired off a command for some water, and a little something to eat, but for all the talk about the restraints being some kind of mistake, he was sure to keep his bodyguard nearby. “Jesus Christ, Tom, would you care to tell me how we got so far down the wrong road? As I recall, we even made you an offer a few months back.”

  “You tell me. I think it might have started last night when Wolf, here, and Irish kidnapped me.”

  “A regrettable mistake,” said Jacklin, lowering his head as if the whole thing plain e
mbarrassed him. “I do apologize. Mr. Guilfoyle handles that side of things.”

  “Mr. Guilfoyle knows damn well that I had no knowledge of Crown or Bobby Stillman.”

  A figure stirred in the corner of the room. Guilfoyle rose from a club chair. “Maybe I can clear up the misunderstanding,” he said, hands tucked in his pockets, as close to a pleasant expression on his face as Bolden had seen. “Tom, as you know, Jefferson holds in its portfolio a good many companies active in the information technology sector—companies engaged in the manufacture of computer hardware and software, much of it with applications in the defense sector. Suffice it to say that our systems pinpointed no fewer than four indicators that you posed a threat to Jefferson.”

  Trendrite. National Bank Data. Triton Aerospace. Bolden knew the companies to which Guilfoyle referred. “I guess you’ve gotten a long way toward perfecting the code on that one. Tell me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that software designed to heighten national security? What’s Jefferson doing messing with it?”

  Guilfoyle answered matter-of-factly. “There are corporate applications we’d be foolish not to take advantage of. One of them indicated that you’d been in contact with Bobby Stillman.”

  “I’ve never spoken with any Bobby Stillman in my life,” said Bolden.

  Guilfoyle persisted. “How do you explain the calls placed from your home in New York to Ms. Stillman’s temporary residence in New Jersey?”

  “There’s nothing to explain. I don’t know the man. I never made the calls.”

  “The man?” Jacklin shook his head. “Bobby Stillman’s a woman, as I’m sure you know. Records don’t lie. You phoned her on the nights of December fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth.”