The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  “Fiancée?”

  Buster laughed. He seemed to laugh easily, and he laughed a lot, a nervous little chuckle that filled the spaces between his words and sentences. Some people said “Right?” a lot, or “Okay?” a lot. Verbal punctuation. Buster had his little laugh. “Yep. Fiancée. Pretty good for an old bastard like me, eh?”

  Farrell’s Family Diner overlooked the town green. It was busy, loud, and smelled of hot oil frying handcut potatoes. Behind the counter a big woman was taking orders, giving orders, and laughing at every lousy joke. When she saw Buster, she gave him a grin and waved him to a booth. “Tommy will be with you in a minute, hon.”

  “Thanks, hon,” said Buster so that everyone heard. Then he turned to Martin. “Best place around to get a hamburger. They can have their Whoppers and Big Macs.”

  Once they were in a booth, with a view of the town green, the Millbridge Memorial Cannon, and the white steeple of the Congregational Church, a young man with a sullen expression shuffled over to take their order.

  Buster introduced his fiancée’s nephew, Tommy Farrell.

  “Hiya.” The kid barely glanced up.

  “Once we get married,” said Buster, “you’ll be my nephew, too.”

  “Yeah.” The kid flipped the little order pad. “So what would you and your friend in the bow tie like … Uncle Buster?”

  Buster chuckled and they placed their orders: Cheeseburgers. Coffee. Pie à la mode. American food, cooked live by the American woman at the grill.

  “It took me a long time to get up the courage to ask her,” said Buster. “But after the mill closed, I had some time for a wife. Once we’re married, I’ll come to work here.”

  Martin Bloom said, “How would you like it if you never had to work another day in your life?”

  Buster chuckled. “Hell … what would I do with myself?”

  “Travel. Get away from Millbridge. Get away from the mill.”

  For the first time, Buster seemed to lose his good nature. “I’d give anything if that mill was still open and the looms were runnin’. My family kept it goin’ till the seventies, then we went bankrupt. Along come some guy from New York, took big loans, kept us goin’ another ten years, but now he’s bankrupt. It’s over.”

  “Well, then”—Martin looked around, lowered his voice—”what if I said that you might have something to bring the mill back to life?”

  Buster lit another cigarette and turned up his hearing aid. “What would that be?”

  “I knew your cousin, Mike Ryan.”

  “Only met him once or twice. Sad case.”

  “Yeah,” said Martin. “Sad. He told me about a document that his mother had. He said she gave it away. She never said to whom.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a lost first draft of the United States Constitution.”

  Tommy came over and refilled their coffee cups.

  Buster leaned back and whistled softly. “That’s a big deal.”

  A big deal? Those words caught Tommy’s attention. For the first time, he made eye contact with Martin Bloom.

  Martin waited until Tommy had shuffled away, then said, “Damn right. Have you ever seen it? Four folded sheets, lots of different handwriting on it.”

  Buster shook his head. “I wish I had. But … no.”

  And Martin Bloom believed him.

  AT THE SAME time, Paul Doherty was sitting down for lunch at the Pinehurst Country Club in North Carolina.

  Outside, players were teeing off on two courses.

  Marlon Secourt glanced at his watch, then said. “Welcome to the Vatican of golf.”

  “I caddied at Poland Springs, Maine, myself.”

  “A great track, but you can’t play golf in Maine in February, not unless you’re an Eskimo.” Secourt sipped his beer. He was big, brawny through the shoulders, probably a college football player. “So, why did you come all the way down from Maine to see me?”

  Doherty explained a bit about their research. Marlon Secourt drank a beer. Doherty explained a bit more. Marlon drank another beer. He sure could drink beer.

  Finally Doherty came to the point. “What we’re looking for is a first draft of the Constitution that Maureen Ryan might have had. We wondered if she passed it to your grandparents. They would have been the richest people she knew, the kind with enough money to pay her what it was worth.”

  “Not after 1929,” said Secourt. “Lost it all. My grandmother, Florence Perkins, moved to Brookline and raised her two kids. The son died in the war. My mother married a contractor named Sam Secourt of Florida. My grandmother thought he was from the other side of the tracks. But he did well. And I’ve done even better.” Secourt looked around as if he owned the golf course. “The Secourts will never be as rich as those mill-owning Perkinses with their mansion in Newport, but I’ve done well enough to have a place here, one there, a few others, too.”

  “Investing?’

  “Venture capital. New ideas. Personal computers … some day, everybody will have one, home and office. Computers will help you to think, play games, read. Some day, the only people still selling books will be guys like you, guys who sell books as curiosities.”

  Paul Doherty was not committed to books. He was committed to making money, which he did by selling books. “Which is precisely why we’re in this business, and looking for new things to sell, like old drafts of the Constitution.”

  “Well, if you ever come across one, come to me first.” Secourt sipped his beer. “I believe in giving back. And we’re blessed in this country, blessed with our freedoms, blessed with our rights, blessed to finally have a president like Reagan.”

  “The best president of our lifetime,” said Doherty. “Stood up to the Russians. Made it safe to do business in this country again.”

  “Morning in America,” cracked Secourt. “I’d like to change the damn Constitution so he could be elected to another term.”

  “He’s getting pretty old. Let him finish this one, first.”

  Secourt ordered two more beers. “What if we found a draft that said a president could serve as many terms as he wanted? Maybe it would get people to thinking about repealing that amendment they put in after FDR. It could change the world.”

  “That’s why we’re lookin’ for this draft. To change the world.”

  Secourt pulled a business card from his pocket and gave it to Doherty. “In case you find it.”

  Doherty looked at the card: addresses in Florida and Newport. Two phone numbers: One for Aquidneck Capital, the other for the Morning in America Foundation.

  “Aquidneck Capital,” said Secourt. “Named for the peninsula where Newport is. And Morning in America is my baby. Mission statement: To support and extend the beliefs of traditional Americans.”

  “Traditional?”

  “Pro-prayer, anti-abortion, pro-gun rights, anti–big government, pro-business, anti-recycling, pro-right-to-work, pro-ambition, pro–free enterprise.”

  “The things that made the country great,” said Paul Doherty.

  “Damn straight. Newsletters and fund-raising. Mostly money, given to the right groups. Some day, I’ll do nothing but play golf and keep America moving in the direction Reagan has set. I couldn’t do anything better.”

  “A noble thought, Mr. Secourt.” Though Paul Doherty was willing to say things if he thought he might gain favor by saying them, he meant what he said just then.

  The bicentennial of the Constitution passed without the appearance of the first draft, but Marlon Secourt became a regular customer at Old Curiosity.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ON THE WAY FROM Hanover, Peter Fallon called the Old Curiosity twice.

  The first time, he left a message: He had a few questions and would Martin please call back. Nice, polite, showed nothing. That was how he liked to work.

  He clicked off, thought a bit, and decided that he’d had enough. They weren’t blowing him off again. To hell with polite. He called back.

  “Martin … Doherty
… Guys, I’ll be at your store in two hours. If you’re not there, I’m coming to your houses to find you. Find you both. You owe me a few explanations.”

  He closed the phone and threw it on the passenger’s seat.

  AFTER HE’D GONE a few miles, he calmed down and his mind turned back to Evangeline. He was certain he wasn’t going to find the Constitution between now and game time. And Kelly Cutter—too honest, too frightened, or too devious—had killed his fallback plan in Vermont. So it was time for him to do some threatening of his own.

  He called Evangeline’s cell.

  “Do you have it?” Jack Batter didn’t bother with hello.

  “Not yet,” said Peter.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I’m trying to figure out how in the hell you tracked us to that rotten old ski slope.” Play dumb. Make them think you haven’t discovered the second GPS tracker.

  Batter said, “Did you call to tell me something or just shoot the shit?”

  “I called to tell you that I’ll be outside Fenway Park, at the corner of Brookline Avenue and Yawkey Way, tomorrow night at seven. I’ll have the map case.”

  “Why there?”

  “Public place. Evangeline is your insurance. Public place is mine.”

  “You’d better have something in that map case.”

  “You’d better have Evangeline.”

  There was a long silence. Peter let it hang. So did Batter.

  The sound of the road rumbled; then Batter said, “That all?”

  “No.” Peter paused. He would enjoy this. They had surprised him that morning. He hadn’t thought on his feet. Afterwards, all he could think of were the things he should have said. Now he said them: “If Evangeline is not free—one way or the other—before that ball game, I’ll go on Bishop’s pre-game show and flat-out lie.”

  “Lie?”

  “About the annotated draft. I’ll tell the world that I’ve seen it. I’ll tell them that the Framers wanted us to pay attention to the first clause of Amendment. You know the one: ‘A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state….’ “

  There was another long pause. Again, Peter let it hang, until—

  Jack Batter spat back the second clause: “ ‘… the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ “

  “Those two clauses have been fighting with each other since they were written,” said Peter. “The truth is, I don’t really care what happens on TV on Sunday night, or in a Washington committee room on Monday morning—”

  “You better care.” Batter’s voice punched hard in Fallon’s eardrum. “Every step that repeal takes is a step closer to ratification. If it gets out of committee, it makes it to the floor. Then maybe it makes it out of Congress. Then it goes to the states, and once the moonbats and do-gooders start calling their state reps, anything can happen.”

  “Since 1787, there have been thousands of proposed amendments,” said Peter, “and only twenty seven have made it all the way to ratification.”

  “I want to kill this one in its crib. I don’t want to gamble.”

  “Are you willing to gamble that the first draft supports what your side says?”

  “If it doesn’t, it won’t see the light of day. And if you try to play games in front of a national television audience, you might not see the light of day.”

  There. Batter had said it, too. Just like Charles Bishop. Neither of them cared a bit about the truth, unless it was the truth they were looking for.

  “Hand Evangeline over tomorrow night,” said Peter, “or I tell the television audience: When the Framers said ‘a well-regulated militia,’ they meant regulated, like the National Guard, guys who handle guns regularly because they’re regulated. Get it?”

  “I get what Madison said in The Federalist. ‘The Constitution protects the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.’ Period. Full stop.” Jack Batter clicked off.

  Peter threw the phone on the car seat again. Playing hardball was not his style. But he had no choice.

  He was certain that Batter wouldn’t hurt her so long as there was a chance that Peter was prepared to lie. And if he could get Batter to divide his forces … get some of them to follow the GPS to wherever Walter Stanley ended up and maybe get in his way, Peter might gain an advantage when he faced Batter again.

  But where in hell was he going to find that draft? He had followed his protocols, done what he had done so many times before, tracing the document to every location where it had been sighted. And it hadn’t worked.

  The last autumn color was flaring along Route 89, but he barely noticed. He was running the history of the Pikes and Amorys and Mike Ryan in his mind, because somewhere back there was the last pathway, from a man who dreamed of building a ski slope to an old alcoholic who told his story to a pair of devious Portland booksellers.

  A SHORT TIME later, he pushed through Concord and got off on Route 9, which cut across New Hampshire to the Maine Turnpike. He hoped he didn’t get behind any slowpokes. When this was over, he was going to get rid of that radar detector and drive at fifty-five miles per hour for the next decade. But for now, he was driving fast. He had to.

  The phone rang. He glanced at the screen: Caller: Unidentified. Location: Walpole, Ma.

  He pressed the talk button. “Bingo?”

  “Still a good American?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “It’s hard, bein’ a good American,” said Bingo. “Gettin’ dangerous, too.”

  “How dangerous?”

  “You ever hear of a guy named Shiny, out of New York? Big bastard, about six-four. Come up here this week for a special job, but he disappeared off the street in Portland day before yesterday.”

  “I think I know who you’re talking about.”

  “They call him Shiny because he always wears a shiny black leather coat, a long one in winter, a bomber in fall, even has a black leather sport coat for the summer. Which one was he wearin’ when he went after you?”

  Peter wasn’t surprised. “Sport coat. Who is he? “It’s not who is he. It’s who is he workin’ for,” said Bingo.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Here’s the story: one of the boys in here, by the name Bobby Cobb—they all call him Corny—”

  “Real comedians. “

  “Yeah, well they don’t call him that ‘cause he likes corn on the cob, if you know what I mean—”

  “Get to the point, Bingo.”

  “Bobby Cobb comes to me and asks me about this guy, name of Walter Stanley or Stanley Walters or somethin’ like that. Bobby’s friends with Shiny, who says that Stanley heard about him and called him in for a little backup muscle.”

  “Muscle. Is that what they call it?”

  “Muscle. Strong-arm stuff. But before Shiny takes the job, he wants to know a little more about Walter Stanley. So Bobby Cobb asks me. I don’t know anything, but I know a guy. Vietnamese guy. Doin’ time for horsin’ drugs. Slant-eyed little bastard, looks at you like a snake, a fuckin’ mongoose or somethin’—”

  “I swear you’re getting old, Bingo,” said Peter. “Get to the point.”

  “We like to talk in here. Talk’s all we got. Except for the ones who like to cornhole, like Bobby Cobb—”

  “Walter Stanley. What about him?”

  “I said his name to the Vietnamese guy and … you ever see a Gook go white? Like puttin’ cream in your coffee.”

  “Walter Stanley was in Vietnam?”

  “No. Too young. The Gook said he’d been CIA, black ops, maybe, torturin’ do-bads in other countries. Then he went into private security.”

  “In the U.S.?”

  “Not at first. He started in the Wild West.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Anyplace not the U.S. He protected businessmen when they go to some fucked-up place to spread the cause of capitalism in the global economy.”

  “So he’s muscle, too,
not brains.”

  “He’s both. He started his own company. Called it Comtect. A cross between computer and protect, I think.”

  “How did the Vietnamese guy know all about this?”

  “He worked with Stanley. Security jobs in Southeast Asia. That’s where he learned how dangerous this guy was.”

  “How dangerous is that?”

  “The Gook told me about this businessman they were guarding, got snatched by Muslims in Indonesia. The businessman’s wife made the mistake of goin’ to the Indonesian government instead of lettin’ Comtect handle it. The government pushed Comtect out of the picture and went after the guy themselves. All they found was his corpse, headless and dickless.”

  “And then?” Peter wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “Stanley says, ‘No one gives my company a bad name and gets away with it.’ So he gets himself back into Indonesia. Starts trackin’ down the kidnappers. Every time he catches one, he cuts off his head and his dick. He sends the dick to the wife, sends the head to the government. Kills ten of them, then gets out.”

  “Guess he never did business in Indonesia again.”

  “No, but word got out that he was not to be fucked with. He came back here, became a small but very valuable contractor. Pure mercenary. Known for finishing what he starts. Once you hire him, you do it his way.”

  “Do you know who’s hired him this time?” asked Peter.

  “No, but one part I didn’t tell you. About that businessman?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He worked for an American TV network.” Bingo paused.

  “Yeah?” Peter was getting tired of Bingo Theater.

  “Bishop Media.”

  “You’re joking,” said Peter.

  “I joke more than I used to, but Stanley’s no joke. If he’s after you, be careful. You don’t want to end up dickless, not with that pretty girlfriend.”

  “Don’t want to end up headless, either.”

  “Not as important. When you got a girlfriend as pretty as her, your brain’s just a third testicle anyways.”