The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

“Where is it?” He turned his hand, gave the old man another shot of oxygen. “Where’s the lost Constitution. You know where it is, don’t you?’

  “What the fuck?”

  A turn of the hand, closing the valve. A gasp from Buster.

  “Where is it?”

  Buster shook his head.

  “Where is it, old man?”

  “I don’t fuckin’ know, I tell ya. What the hell—”

  “If I have to look around myself, I’ll be mad. I might leave this thing off till I’m done tearin’ your house apart. You want that?”

  “I … I don’t know nothin’ about this.”

  “What did you tell that Dartmouth professor?”

  “I didn’t tell him nothin’!”

  Walter Stanley gave the oxygen valve one more turn, so tight that the old man would not be able to turn it back on. He took the telephone receiver with him. Then he went through the house, lifting pictures, opening drawers but disturbing nothing. When he got back to the living room, the old man was still gasping.

  Stanley brought his face close to Buster’s. “No oxygen till you tell me where that Constitution is.”

  “I don’t fuckin’ know!” The old man tried to stand.

  Stanley put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his chair.

  “Get your fuckin’ hand off me.” Buster tried to push the hand away.

  Stanley laughed and let go.

  Now Buster was gasping, groaning, rasping for breath. He didn’t have much strength, but he still had plenty of fight, so he reached for an ashtray to throw.

  Stanley grabbed his arm, but lightly. No bruises.

  Finally he turned on the oxygen. “I guess you don’t know, after all this.”

  Buster sucked down the oxygen. “I told ya—”

  “But I can’t let you stick around.” So he turned the valve again, then took a pillow and put it over Buster’s face.

  He could have waited, but he had evening plans and a long drive.

  THAT NIGHT, WALTER Stanley took Jennifer to dinner at the Hanover Inn.

  Over wine, he told her that he thought she was special and he was thrilled that she was helping them. And he told her again that she was doing the right thing.

  Then they headed back to her little apartment. On the stairs, they kissed. On the landing, he slipped a hand under her skirt and stroked her through her pantyhose. In the kitchen, he pulled down the pantyhose and panties.

  He had performed his romantic rituals in the restaurant. Now he turned her and bent her over a kitchen chair. And he fucked her like that, in the kitchen, both of them looking out at the people passing on the streets of Hanover.

  And she liked it. She liked the roughness and the danger. She had had enough of academics twenty years older. There was no foreplay chitchat about the latest historical monograph, no professor behind her, no softening dick. This was something different, something raw and elemental.

  He took her with rage that she mistook for passion. When they were done in the kitchen, he picked her up and carried her into the bed. And he fucked her there, too.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Walter Stanley whispered to her that he had to get back to Boston. He kissed her and went out into the cool morning air and hurried to his car.

  Even he could be touched by the beauty of the Dartmouth green at dawn, with a cloudlike mist hovering a few feet above the grass.

  But it was only for a moment.

  Once the killing started, Walter Stanley saw no reason for it to stop until the job was done. He was going to make it as clean as possible for his client. Anyone who knew anything about the lost Constitution, the draft that would call into question the annotations on the Jarvis forgery, would be out of the way.

  He didn’t do this because he had any commitment to the politics of one side or another. He did it because he was a professional. He admired a job well done. And he had a plan of his own.

  The Volvo went by a few minutes later.

  He pulled out and followed it.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  NOW THEY WERE ALL dead—Buster, the professor, Bindle, Martin and Paul, all except for the girl.

  Peter rolled slowly through the EZ Pass lane at the tolls, because he could see a police cruiser just beyond, waiting to nab the car that went through at twenty-five instead of fifteen. And good that he didn’t have to stop and dig for change because if they saw the bloodstains on his trousers, it was over.

  A forgery. Something was forged. The Old Curiosities had sold a forgery.

  It could have been anything, but …

  … it had to be the John Langdon version. The one that Jarvis had shown them, the one that Kelly Cutter said was the real thing.

  Consider the timing. Jarvis was publishing a book, a call to arms for the fundamentalists, the we-know-better-than-you crowd who feared that American society was going straight to hell.

  Sometimes, Peter agreed with them. But….

  Had Clinton D. Jarvis set out to kill anyone who knew anything about the real annotated draft? And why? So that his draft would get all the attention and none of the scrutiny that a competing draft would bring to both of them?

  Was that any way for a good Christian to act?

  But people sometimes did strange things in the name of the greater good, and from what Peter had gathered, Jarvis was definitely a “greater good” type of guy.

  As for Marlon Secourt … he seemed more realistic, a guy with strong opinions and some money to back them up. But murder?

  Did Secourt and Jarvis even know what was being done in their name?

  Peter could not imagine Jarvis issuing the order to Walter Stanley: Kill them all.

  He might have given Stanley free rein to protect the interests of the Morning in America Foundation. And Stanley had started so subtly that not even Jarvis had noticed.

  Natural causes for Buster. Tragic accident for the professor. Then the “suicide” of Morris Bindle. The almost plane crash. Then “make it messy” in Portland.

  And … the phone rang. His own phone.

  Peter didn’t recognize the number. He answered anyway.

  “It’s Jennifer Segal.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In my car. I’m driving.”

  “Where to?”

  “I can’t say. I won’t say. I’m out of this, but—”

  “Martin Bloom and Paul Doherty are dead.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Jennifer, why did you come to my office last Friday?”

  “Paul Doherty sent me.”

  “You said you were a student of Professor Conrad.”

  “Paul Doherty and Martin Bloom were paying me.”

  “Why me? Why did you come to me? What bait did I take?”

  “Doherty said he had to find out what you knew. Once you sold the Henry Knox letter, they figured out that you had a relationship with Morris Bindle, and they knew that he had a relationship with Buster McGillis. So he set you up by giving you your own catalogue with Buster’s obituary inside it. If you were in the hunt, Doherty wanted to beat you. Martin just wanted the draft found, so he told you what he could. But both wanted to protect you, too, I think.”

  “Protect me?”

  “From Walter Stanley. I thought Stanley worked for Doherty. Then I thought it was the other way around. Then I thought they were both working for Morning in America. But Walter Stanley works for himself.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In my apartment, taking a nap. He always takes a nap after we … stay away from him.” The fear in her voice seemed to rise an octave over the rumble of the cars. “He’s dangerous.”

  “He’s the one who’s been doing the killing.”

  “I don’t care. I just want to get away from here. So I’m gone.”

  “Where to?”

  “Somewhere that’s not New England. But there’s one thing you should know.”

  “What?”

  “He used my computer last night. He didn’t delete
his Internet files. He was visiting scalping sights, looking for game tickets. He’s going to be at Fenway Park tomorrow night.”

  EVANGELINE CARRINGTON SAT in a double-wide, somewhere in the woods. She sensed that they were closer to Boston now. Southern Maine, maybe, near Kezar Lake.

  There was a television playing. A little kid was crying at the other end of the trailer. Acorns were dropping on the aluminum roof.

  One of the guys lived here with his family. She guessed it was Hotshot, since there was a techno thriller beside the bed. She couldn’t tell how many were in the house. From the window, she could see a trailer with two ATVs. So … two at least.

  Make that three. A car was pulling up, a door slamming.

  She heard voices in the front room. Men talking. Arguing? Footfalls coming. The door to her room opened. She jumped up, and in walked Judge Carter A. Trask.

  “Is this what you guys do to liberals?” she said.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Carrington. I hope you haven’t been too inconvenienced.”

  “Inconvenienced?” She looked around the tiny bedroom. “Hell, no.”

  The judge perched on the edge of the bed. “Please. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve been having a great time … the blindfolded rides around New England, the open-air bathrooms, the marvelous things your boys do with squirrel … a vacation.”

  The judge patted the bed and asked her to sit.

  Since there was nowhere else, she did. He asked, “Do you think Peter Fallon has the document yet?”

  “I don’t think he’s ever going to have it. I don’t think it exists anymore.”

  The judge opened his brief case. “I know where it was in 1935.”

  “Where? The ski slope? Don’t tell me the ski slope, because we’ve been to the ski slope.” She got up and began to pace in little circles. “And don’t tell me Livermore, because we went there, too. Peter goes to places where—”

  “Miss Carrington—”

  “—he thinks the document used to be, as if somebody might have forgotten where they left it, for Chrissakes, then he says if it’s not here, it’s moved down the timeline—”

  “Miss Carrington.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase.

  “—because he treats time like a river, and if it isn’t near the source, it’ll be down near the rapids or out at the mouth or some damn thing—” She brought her hand to her forehead. She had resolved in the car on the afternoon they snatched her that she wasn’t going to let them see any emotion out of her.

  “There’s something I’d like you to look at.” The judge held out the paper. “Documentary evidence.”

  She blinked back tears, straightened, took the sheet of paper: a filing at the Worcester County Registry of Deeds, dated November 15, 1927.

  “It’s a loan agreement between the American Immigrant Bank of Millbridge and Bill and Sarah McGillis, who took control of Pike-Perkins after the flood and the Manchaug bankruptcy. It lists the assets put up as collateral for a loan to purchase the mill. Page one lists real property: looms, dyeing tubs, raw material, the building itself. But on the second page, you’ll see a listing of personal property that the owners have put up.”

  She read:

  House at 65 Blackstone St., Millbridge, Mass … 12,000

  All contents thereof, including mahogany dining room set, silverware, oriental carpets (two at 6 × 9, one at 9 × 12, one at 11 × 18), paintings, and miscellaneous … 2, 190

  Various papers, family letters, and historical documents … 500

  Then she looked at the judge. “Five hundred dollars for historical documents? Then it can’t include the Constitution. That would have been worth a lot more.”

  “Bear with me,” he said. “I got to thinking about Bartlett Pike, who lost control to the people from Perkins Holdings. So I looked him up. I found an article on his burial service in The Blackstone Valley Weekly. I went from there.”

  “To what?”

  “To considering his descendants. Charlie Bishop has been looking for it now since the Clinton impeachment. And we know that none of the Amorys got it, because then I’d have it. So what’s logical? Perhaps it went to the descendants who stayed at the mill and fought the good fight, and most likely it went to them between the date of the 1927 loan and the end of the Depression.”

  More acorns splattered on the roof of the trailer.

  The judge chuckled. “I had to spend Thursday in the registry in Worcester, Massachusetts, to find this material. And Friday at the Blackstone Valley Weekly.”

  “All this tells me is that there was a relationship between a bank and the McGillises.” Evangeline studied the document, stamped, Paid in full, November 20, 1932. “It was a five-year note. They paid it.”

  “Then there’s this, from the Blackstone Valley Weekly, just a year later: ‘Bad news at the Pike-Perkins Mill. Twenty workers were laid off this week.’ “ The judge thumbed through a few more sheets. “Two weeks later, twenty more laid off. Ten more the following week.”

  “Bad times,” she said.

  “The worst,” said the judge. “Then, there’s this: ‘The employees of the Pike-Perkins Mill got an early Christmas present, when the McGillises announced that they were rehiring all the workers laid off in the last month.’ “

  “So?” said Evangeline. “They got another bank loan.”

  “But they didn’t. It would have been recorded at the registry. Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless they put up personal property for collateral with a single lien holder. Then there would be no requirement for a filing under existing statutes, which predated the UCC. That’s Uniform Commercial Code.”

  “Stop with the alphabet soup, Judge. Cut to the chase.”

  “What did they have that would be valuable enough to enable them to pay their bills, rehire, and keep going? They didn’t take another loan until the recession of 1938, a commercial loan, duly registered. That got them to World War II, when everyone did well, and they hung on until the seventies.”

  “Would a local bank have records of another transaction?”

  “Possibly. The problem is that American Immigrant Bank failed in early 1934.”

  “What about the FDIC?”

  “It was just coming in. Didn’t help the owner. Third generation Lebanese named Chory, loved America, loved American memorabilia, decorated his bank with it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  The judge waved another piece of paper. “Obituary, January 15, 1934.”

  “He died suddenly?’

  “Very suddenly. When the rope snapped. He hanged himself.”

  “So … just a theory with a dead end … so to speak.”

  “No,” said the judge. “I think there’s another synapse to jump.”

  Evangeline sat on the edge of the bed. “The mill, the money, the dead bank president…. If the bank failed, what would happen to the collateral?”

  “The state banking commissioner would auction it. I found the auction records at Worcester, too. But there was no draft of the Constitution put up when the bank’s assets went on the block.”

  “Like I said, a dead end.”

  “But what if the bank president knew his bank was going down? Say that he decided to put a wad of cash into something that was portable and easily hidden, something the bank examiners might never find.”

  “A form of money laundering?” said Evangeline.

  “Maybe. But his conscience got the best of him. It happened a lot in those days.”

  Another splattering of acorns rattled on the roof.

  “So,” she said, “where does that leave us?”

  “I’m not sure,” said the judge. “But we’re close. So we just have to keep thinking. This is America, don’t forget. In America, we get up in the morning and go to work and solve our problems.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “It’s something Grandpa Aaron used to say. It’s like the family motto.”
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br />   “I think you should call Peter.”

  “As soon as I get cell coverage.”

  “IF YOU’VE FIGURED this much out,” said Peter to the judge, “why are you telling me about this bank president named Chory? Why don’t you and your boys just go and find the thing?”

  “They’re not ‘my boys.’ If they were, your girlfriend would be free. I don’t trust them any more than you do.”

  Peter was back in his brother’s warehouse, talking on the speaker phone. “I want Evangeline.”

  “I’ll do my best.” The judge’s voice echoed, all tinny and distorted. “But Jack Batter will do anything to stop this repeal amendment. He sees it as his duty. His duty as an American. He wouldn’t have snatched her if he wasn’t prepared for the consequences.”

  “Did she have any messages for me?” Peter wasn’t looking for words of undying love. He knew her better than that. He expected that right now she was scheming as hard as he was.

  “She said to tell you that in America we get up in the morning and go to work and solve our problems, especially in Millbridge. She said she didn’t want to say more because she doesn’t trust me.”

  “That’s why I love her,” said Peter. “She’s honest.”

  “She said she has a hunch you should follow to Millbridge. She said you’d know what she means.”

  “So,” said Antoine after they hung up, “do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you know what she means?”

  Peter had showered, put on clean jeans, combed his hair, gotten the blood off his hands but not out of his head.

  “Maybe she’s just telling us she’s safe,” said Orson.

  “If this Walter Stanley is as bad as advertised,” said Antoine, “she’s probably safer than we are right about now.”

  News of the bloody scene at the Old Curiosity had already made it onto Boston television, and it was a leading story on the Internet home pages: Murder in the Bookstore. There were photographs, none too graphic … yet. They were blaming “unknown assailant or assailants.”

  “Just so long as they’re not blaming me,” said Peter, “because I think I know what Evangeline was telling me.”