The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

“Thanks, Bingo. I owe you.”

  “You get somethin’ from me, you give me somethin’ down the line. Be at my parole hearing in five years.”

  “Delayed gratification?”

  “The only kind I got. But I look at it this way: If there’s no Second Amendment, think of all the money I’ll make runnin’ guns when I get outta here.”

  IT WAS AROUND three o’clock when Peter arrived again in Portland.

  The town was crowded with Saturday shoppers. He found a parking spot at the east end, near the statue of movie director John Ford, the Portlander who made John Wayne a star. Peter could have used a little of the Duke just about then, somebody to punch through all the complications and straighten everything out in one big burst of action.

  Instead, he called the Old Curiosity.

  Again, there was no answer. Strange. Saturday was the best business day of the week, especially in a strolling town like Portland.

  Peter hurried through the afternoon shadows to the bookstore. The shades were drawn. The CLOSED sign was hanging in the door. Where were they? Paul Doherty was a baseball fan, so they had seen the Bishop Sports ads. They knew that something was going to happen on national TV before the first game of the World Series. Maybe they were out looking for the Constitution themselves.

  Peter tried the door. Locked. So he went up the block, along Market Street, down an alley to the back door. It was the same door that Martin had dumped them out of a few days before. It was steel, with heavy internal locks. Good security for a bookstore that carried a lot more than the latest trade paperbacks.

  He put his ear to the door. He thought he heard something. A moan?

  He pounded on the door. No answer.

  He put his ear to the door and heard it again. Yes. Another moan.

  He tried the door. Unlocked. He opened it and stepped into the little stockroom.

  He stood for a moment to let his eyes adjust, then peered through the half-open door that led to the store. The shades were drawn, so he couldn’t see much. The sofa was to the right, the light was on in Martin’s office on the left.

  Peter waited a moment more, listening for that moan again.

  Then he realized that the floor was wet, sticky wet. Something dark.

  He felt his balls constrict in the involuntary fear response because he was standing in blood.

  Then he heard the moan again … on the floor to his right.

  Martin lay wedged between two cartons of books.

  Peter flipped on the light, crouched, put his hand on his friend’s forehead.

  Martin’s eyes fluttered. He was alive.

  Peter turned him over and realized that his intestines were still on the floor.

  “Oh, Jesus. Martin. Who—?”

  Martin whispered something. “Sh … sh … Shiny.”

  “Shiny? Shit.”

  Martin’s eyes moved, as if directing Peter. To what? To turn? Too late.

  Peter heard a whizzing sound, right past his ears. Something cut into his neck and closed with crushing force onto his windpipe.

  He grabbed at the elbows framing his head, tried to dig in his nails, but all he got was black leather, and his hands skittered off.

  He gasped and gagged for air. He shook himself furiously, but …

  Advantage: Shiny. He was bigger. He was standing while Peter was crouched. And he had the garrote.

  Over in minutes. Peter shook himself again.

  What a way to die … in the blood-soaked back room of a bookstore in Portland.

  But … grab … claw … do anything.

  He managed to twist … got a hand behind him … right hand … across his body … around his back … hit the guy’s leg … quad muscle flexed like steel cable … but light fabric trousers … maybe … higher … yes … through the fabric … his nuts … yes….

  Grab … and … rip….

  Shiny cried out and tried to twist away without losing his leverage, but they didn’t call it a death grip for nothing, and Peter was dying, so he was gripping.

  He saw a black spot floating in front of his eyes … going under … squeeze harder….

  He squeezed with all the life left in him, which wasn’t much.

  Who could hold longer, harder, and force the other to let go?

  Peter had no choice. Unconsciousness was coming. So he squeezed … squeezed …

  “Let go, you motherfucker.” Shiny was in charge. He was going to win, so, for a second, he took a hand from the garrote to grab Peter’s wrist.

  Just enough.

  Peter pulled and twisted, while he kicked out of his crouch and caught one of Shiny’s legs. Peter still had strong legs.

  Shiny lost his grip on the garrote, lost his balance, slipped, and hit the floor.

  Peter began to slither on all fours through the blood.

  The door. The front door.

  He had seconds to get out. He almost fainted as he tried to stand. But somehow, he lurched from the stockroom into the store. Sofa to his right … office door to his left …

  “Come back here you fuck—”

  It was the universal dream … of running but not moving. The last dream. The last nightmare.

  The garrote was still around his neck, the wire still cutting the flesh. Hands grabbed the garrote.

  Peter jerked back. He was going down …

  … until someone burst out the office and slammed into Shiny: Paul Doherty, covered in his own blood, all but dead, launching himself in a last fit of resistance.

  Then Doherty and Shiny were flying through the air, slamming into the sofa.

  Peter pulled off the garrote—piano wire with two wooden handles—and stumbled toward the door.

  Shiny threw off the dead weight of Paul Doherty and came at Peter again.

  Peter’s mind was clearer. Oxygen was coursing back. He turned and, with one wooden handle in his hand, he snapped the other and cracked Shiny’s nose, then he whipped it back and cracked him again.

  Shiny shook off the blows and drove a shoulder into Peter’s belly and both of them flew into the display case, shattering the glass.

  “Just for that, I’m gonna fuck you up before I kill you,” came the cold voice from the black leather.

  Peter tried to twist away. He felt his head pulled back.

  He swept his hand across the top shelf of the display case—the copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the picture of the Portland, the—

  “Fuck you up and cut you up.”

  Bang!

  Shiny slammed Peter’s head against the edge of the shelving.

  Peter was still reaching. Now he found it. Preble’s dirk.

  “Fuck you up and cut you up and kill you like these other two.” Bang!

  “Your friends should’ve killed me on the street.”

  Bang!

  “But once we’re done, no one will ever know—”

  Peter drove the dirk up, through the leather jacket, right into the heart—

  “—that the draft at—” Shiny’s last words caught in his throat. His eyes opened wide. He grabbed at Peter’s hand. Then he fell over.

  Peter sat on the floor, on the shattered glass. He did not notice it cutting into his backside and the heels of his hands. He was watching Shiny, expecting him to rise.

  All Shiny could manage was a groan, a half turn; then blood gurgled in his throat and he died.

  It was some time before Peter could stand and stagger over to the body on the sofa.

  Paul Doherty must have fought hard, and he must have been the second victim, because Shiny’s knife had been driven down at a furious angle, down behind his collarbone and into an artery, driven down so that it could not be withdrawn. That was why Shiny had come at Peter with the garrote.

  But why any of this? Why?

  Peter almost fainted again, but he held on to the back of the sofa, then straightened and stumbled into the stockroom.

  Martin was still alive. Breathing, just barely. And not for long.

  “Who was he?
” asked Peter

  Martin rasped the word, “Shiny.”

  “No … I mean, why did he do this?”

  “Phone.”

  “I’ll call 911.”

  “No. Phone. Ph—” Martin stopped in mid-sentence. The words caught there. Peter touched his carotid. No pulse.

  “Martin! Martin!” Peter leaned forward and tried CPR.

  He had never done it before, and he was shocked to feel how scratchy a man’s clean-shaven face was.

  He ignored the sensation and drove two shots of breath into his friend. Then he ran through the steps as he’d learned them: Find the xiphoid process, the little tail of a bone in the middle of the chest, give thirty compressions.

  But Martin did not breathe. And every time Peter compressed the chest, more blood oozed from Martin’s abdomen. Before long, Peter gave up. It was hopeless.

  He went into the office, grabbed the phone, called 911. He told them there had been a knifing at the Old Curiosity. They needed an ambulance and a cruiser.

  He figured he had three minutes to get out, maybe four.

  Then he saw the message light flashing on the voice mail.

  Was that what Martin meant by “phone”?

  He pressed the button. The computerized voice said: “You have three new messages and no old messages.”

  First message: “Mr. Bloom”—it was the voice of Jennifer Segal—”I’m sorry, but I told Peter Fallon I was working for you. This is all so complicated. I wish you never asked me to help. This Walter Stanley, he’s not what I thought.” Beep.

  Second Message: “It’s Stanley. Shiny will be there in ten. He has questions. There are still loose ends. We tie them up, our client’s document is in the clear.” Beep.

  Our client? Document? In the clear?

  Third Message: “It’s Peter. I hope you guys are there, I have a few …”

  Peter pressed the erase button.

  To delete all messages press twice.

  He pressed twice.

  He could hear the sirens a block or two away. There was still plenty of evidence of him around the store, but it would take a while for them to find him.

  There was a long raincoat hanging in the office. Probably Doherty’s. Peter grabbed it and threw it on to cover the blood.

  The siren was closer, but … one more thing:

  He went back to Shiny’s body, lifted the flap of the black leather coat and took the cell phone out. Then he left the way he’d come in.

  PETER SLIPPED INTO his car, wrapped his hand behind the wheel, put his head on his hands, and began to shake.

  He had been doing this work for a long time and had been in a lot of scrapes. But he had never killed a man before. And he had never left the scene of a murder covered in the blood of a friend. This was different. This was the worst.

  He opened the car door and lowered his head and let go with a dry heave.

  A passerby said, “Hey, buddy, you okay?”

  Peter straightened and closed the door. He couldn’t let anyone see the bloodstains.

  Until he found that Constitution and got Evangeline free, he had to stay alive and out of the hands of the police or anybody else who might detain him.

  He put the car in gear and started to drive.

  Where was he going?

  Out to the turnpike. Out of Portland. Out of Maine.

  Then a cell phone rang. It wasn’t his ring tone. It was the other phone, Shiny’s. He pulled it out. Caller Unidentified.

  What he remembered of Shiny’s voice: a deep growl.

  Go ahead and answer. Talk in monosyllables. Lower your voice. Turn on the radio. Background noise. Roll down the window. More noise.

  “Yeah?” He tried to grunt.

  “You finished?” The voice was calm, the question routine. You finished with that soup? You finished with the sports section? You finished with those murders?

  “Yeah.”

  “Both?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Messy? I told you I wanted it messy. Make it look different from the others.”

  “Messy as hell.”

  “That’s what they get for dabbling in forgery. Now almost nobody knows it’s a forgery. Job’s almost done.”

  Peter just drove, waiting for the voice on the other line to say something.

  “You still there?”

  Peter croaked, “What’s next?”

  “For you, nothing. Go back to New York. Watch the World Series tomorrow night. The Yanks won’t be in it, but it’ll be a hell of a game.”

  “Why?”

  “Just watch.” Click.

  First Buster McGillis, then Professor Stuart Conrad and Morris Bindle, then Jennifer Segal turned into a pillar of fright, and now the Old Curiosities …

  As Peter drove, he pictured each of them and tried to see how they had all come together, glanced off one another, and run into Walter Stanley.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  September 1998

  WHAT A NIGHT TO be an American. What an ugly night.

  In Will Pike’s ancient house, Buster McGillis sat with his wife, Esther, and their nephew and watched the president of the United States answer questions that a pimp wouldn’t ask a whore.

  Buster just shook his head. “What will people tell their kids?”

  “A damn shame,” said Esther. “A man’s private affair is his own.”

  “Not anymore,” said Tommy Farrell. “Besides, Clinton’s a hound. Like me.”

  “Shame on you, Tommy Farrell.” Esther laughed. “But we’re glad you come to visit, just the same.”

  “Nobody cooks better meat loaf than Aunt Esther.” Tommy patted his stomach.

  “Thirty years of cookin’ meat loaf every Tuesday and Thursday,” she said.

  Bill Clinton was saying, “These encounters did not constitute sexual relations as I understood that term to be defined at my January 17, 1998, deposition, but they did involve inappropriate intimate contact.”

  Buster pulled out a Lucky Strike and put it on his lip. “I can’t see how the Constitution lets them do stuff like this to the president.”

  “High crimes and misdemeanors,” said Tommy Farrell.

  “Misdemeanors,” Buster said. “You ought to know.”

  Esther slapped old Buster on the shoulder.

  “What? Tommy’s committed a few,” said Buster. “He’ll tell you that himself.”

  “At least he comes to visit us. Not like your relatives. The great Charlie Bishop, and those folks up in Maine.”

  “The branches on the family tree ain’t too close.” Buster scratched a match. “But you’re right about Tommy here. He’s a good boy. If I had any money, I’d help him out.”

  “Just put me in your will”—Tommy gave Buster a grin—”if you ever find the lost Constitution.”

  “What that bookseller come askin’ about years ago?” Buster held the match a moment too long, then shook it out as it burned his finger. “The guy I brought to the diner?”

  “I miss the diner,” said Esther.

  “He was just lookin’ for a quick buck,” said Buster. “Not a hard worker like us.”

  “I don’t mind a quick buck,” said Tommy.

  “No such thing,” said Buster. “Work hard. Like my old mother used to say, ‘This is America. In America, we get up in the morning, and go to work, and solve our problems.’ “

  “So, no Constitution?”

  “Only thing I have is some scrapbooks from the early days.”

  “You ought to give them to the historical society,” said Esther.

  “Yeah,” said Buster. “I’ll ask Morris Bindle. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Just don’t give away anything worth a lot of money,” said Tommy.

  AT HIS HOME in Newport, Marlon Secourt sat with one of his biggest contributors, Clinton D. Jarvis. He popped a beer and said, “All the energy and money I’ve devoted to the American cause and this is what we’re reduced to.”

  The president was actually saying, �
��It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.”

  Jarvis shot tracers at the screen with his eyes. “That man has to be impeached.”

  “But the Senate will never convict,” said Secourt. “Too many Democrats.”

  “Too many godless men who consider their political interests before their consciences.”

  Secourt said, “Godless? You sound like Pat Robertson.”

  Jarvis turned his eyes to Secourt. “God’s been good to me. And he’s been good to the American people. There’s nothing we can do to save them from Clinton. But we have to do something to remind them of what a grand heritage they have.”

  And Secourt said, “Did you ever hear the legend of the lost Constitution?”

  “WHAT A TRAVESTY.“ Paul Doherty sat in Mc-Gafferty’s and watched the testimony.

  “Who hasn’t lied about sex?” said Martin Bloom.

  “How would you know? You haven’t had sex since Carter was president.”

  “I know one thing: Clinton’s the victim of a witch hunt.”

  “Clinton lied to a grand jury and suborned perjury.” Doherty chomped his hamburger and talked while he chewed. “That’s not lying about sex.”

  Martin shrugged and forked a piece of broiled haddock.

  “That’s why you don’t have more sex,” said Doherty. “All that fish. Eat more hamburger.”

  The president was saying, “I think it is clear what ‘inappropriately intimate’ is. I have said what it did not include. It did not include sexual intercourse, and I do not believe it included conduct which falls within the definition I was given….”

  “What a fraud.” Doherty dumped ketchup on his french fries.

  “The whole thing is a fraud,” said Martin. “Let’s just hope there’s not something going on out there in the big world that he should be paying attention to instead of this.”

  “DID I WANT this relationship to come out? No. Was I embarrassed about it? Yes…. Did I ask her to lie about it? No. Did I believe there could be a truthful affidavit? Absolutely….”

  On the twenty-eighth floor of the Bishop Media Building, on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, Charles Bishop watched television: a single camera, poor audio, a sweating president sipping Diet Pepsi from a can between some of the worst answers ever given to some of the worst questions ever asked.