The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  “Lobbyists write half our legislation, Congressman.”

  “That’s why I’m headed to Washington. Big hearings this week on tax policy. I’m introducing an important bill, something truly earthshaking. I want to be there to control the spin once the lobbyists start whining.” Then he looked at Evangeline. “And I like to be in Washington for the start of the fall session, no matter what’s happening in the district, Ms.…”

  “Carrington, Evangeline Carrington.”

  The congressman’s eyes brightened beneath groomed brows. “The travel writer?”

  And for the second time that morning, Evangeline got a nice little ego-boost.

  “I enjoy your columns,” said Milbury. “I travel a bit myself, being on the House Committee on Natural Resources. We have oversight for the National Parks.”

  Evangeline said, “I’m planning to visit a few.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Evangeline looked at Kathi. “Does everyone know my business on this train?”

  “When it comes to filming at NPS sites,” said the congressman, “I make it my business to know, especially the battlefields. I have an affinity for battlefields.”

  “Like the one you’re on now,” cracked Kathi, “right in your own district.”

  He ignored that and gave Evangeline his card. “I’m at your service.”

  As she took it, she noticed one of the other passengers, a bearded guy wearing a blue baseball cap with a blue patch and white star insignia on the crown. He was sitting at a table on the other side of the car and scrolling through the messages on his iPhone.

  And … did he just take a picture of them? Yes. Evangeline gave him a glare.

  Milbury turned to see what she was looking at. So the guy raised his iPhone, and this time he was blatant about it. Click. Click.

  “I hope you don’t mind, sir.” The guy stood and offered his hand. “I guess I’m excited to see a real congressman, especially one I always vote for.”

  “Not at all,” said the congressman in a big voice with a big grin, as if he could sense that a lot of people in the club car were now checking him out and perhaps recognizing a powerful New York Democrat.

  The man with the camera said, “I teach high school history and this is just a great treat. I’d love to show my kids that congresspeople are just ordinary folks.”

  Kathi Morganti said, “Yeah, Congressman. Show him how ordinary you are.”

  Max Milbury stepped back and said, “If you promise to e-mail me the photos, I’ll pose with the host of a new History Network series, and with one of my favorite Washington players.”

  The man said, “Oh, this is wonderful. Thanks, Mr. Congressman.” Click. Click.

  Milbury said, “Great. Remember to e-mail my office. And what’s your name?”

  “Steve. Steve Burke.”

  “Well, thank you, Steve Burke.” The congressman shook his hand.

  “Thank you, Congressman.” The man grabbed his coffee and left the car.

  Then Milbury swung back to Evangeline. “Always nice to meet the people. And may I say, Ms. Carrington … you have some fine representation. We may have our disagreements, but Ms. Morganti’s firm has my utmost respect.”

  Evangeline sensed the atmosphere changing. In Washington—or on the train to it—a little schmoozing made everyone friends again.

  “Thank you,” said Evangeline, “but I’m not in business with Ms. Morganti.”

  “No,” said Kathi, “this meeting is entirely coincidental.”

  “Kathi, you never do anything by coincidence.” Milbury winked at Evangeline. “She may say she’s not doing business with you, but she’s always doing business.”

  “That’s me,” said Kathi. “Just a lonely wanderer on the Northeast power corridor, another common nightwalker on K Street—” Kathi glanced at Evangeline. “—where the lobbying firms are.”

  “Common nightwalker,” said Milbury. “Interesting choice of words. Will I see you tonight?”

  “You might.” Kathi batted her eyes, as if she were flirting.

  “I look forward to it.” And Milbury excused himself.

  Then Evangeline said to Kathi, “Did he wink at me? I hate a man winking at me.”

  “He does a lot of things people hate, starting with his tax policies.” Kathi looked around at the people still casting sidelong glances at them, then whispered, “One of our clients is supporting a Republican lawyer who may just beat him in November.”

  “A Tea Party challenge?”

  “More like a libertarian.”

  “A libertarian? With a lobbyist?” said Evangeline.

  “They don’t believe in government,” said Kathi, “until they need something. So they need lobbyists ready to argue their case in Washington, just like everybody else.”

  They finished their coffee and went back to the quiet car.

  The stop in Philadelphia had opened up three seats, and Kathi admitted that she had to prepare for an afternoon meeting, even though it was a Saturday. So they exchanged business cards and agreed to talk again.

  Evangeline figured that was the last she would see of Kathi Morganti, the congressman, and the bearded man named Steve Burke.

  * * *

  Union Station greeted travelers the right way, thought Evangeline, with a massive barrel-vaulted ceiling and hundreds of pounds of gold leaf decorating thousands of medallions, all brilliantly restored and gleaming. Welcome to the national capital, a city of power, wealth, and public drama … but mostly power.

  By the information desk, a young woman in blue jeans and T-shirt was waving: Abigail Lynne Simon, the producer of History Travels.

  She was in her thirties, slender verging on skinny, with the driven look that all young producers had … driven because of their bosses and driven because of their ambition to be bosses. The money in television—network, affiliate, or cable—was concentrated at the top. Smart young people like Abigail had to work hard and hope for a break.

  After some “how was your trip” chitchat, Abigail got to business. “We’re scheduled in Ford’s Theatre this afternoon. Tomorrow, we shoot at the Lincoln Memorial. We’ll start early, catch the sun hitting Abe’s face, grab some B-roll. Or we may change plans and drive to Antietam tomorrow, to catch some of the anniversary events.…”

  The production van was waiting just beyond the arched doorways. The Capitol dome gleamed through trees. The traffic swirled on Massachusetts Avenue. It was hot, and the forecast promised more heat and humidity. Typical late summer on the Potomac.

  As Evangeline climbed into the van, she noticed her coffee companions: the congressman was meeting a black Chevy Tahoe; Kathi Morganti was hailing a cab; and history teacher Steve Burke was jumping into a black Chrysler 200.

  Abigail introduced the girl behind the wheel: Mary Knapik, PA, which stood for production assistant, which stood for van driver, coffee-brewer, cable puller, anything-er … the bottom of the filmmaking food chain. She was younger than Abigail, but wore the same jeans-and-T-shirt uniform. She said, “Willard Hotel, right?”

  “Yes, on the site of the original,” said Evangeline. “I want to feel the ghosts.”

  Washington had two styles of monumental architecture: Greco-Roman pillared power and fancy French grandeur. The 1904 Willard was beaux arts, a turreted French classic on the corner of Fourteenth and Pennsylvania, two blocks east of the White House.

  The lobby had so much marble, it looked like the Vatican Library … marble pillars, marble floors, marble concierge desk, and Peacock Alley, the long marbled, palm-lined hallway that led through the hotel to an exit on F Street.

  Evangeline stopped to admire it all, glanced at the guy smiling up at her from a lobby chair, looked again, and said, “You?”

  “A pleasure to see you, Miss Carrington.” Peter Fallon put down his copy of Washingtonian, got up, and came toward her.

  She said, “This better be good.”

  * * *

  They knew her at the Willard and offered
to comp her, but she never took freebies. So they gave her a nice suite with a view of the Federal Triangle: all those big, blocky buildings housing the ICC, the DOC, the IRS, the FTC, the EPA, and a lot of other letters from federal city alphabet.

  She tipped the bellman, then turned to Peter. “What are you doing here?”

  “Do you realize we haven’t been alone in a hotel room since the wedding that wasn’t?”

  She took off her jacket and threw it on a chair. “How did you get here and why?”

  “I flew down.” Peter dropped his shoulder bag and took off his blazer. “Grabbed a flight this morning to Reagan. Just made it.”

  “That’s the ‘how.’ And the ‘why’?”

  “We have a lunch date.” He opened the wrapping around the complimentary fruit basket on the coffee table and poked through it.

  “We?”

  “We’re meeting Diana Wilmington at the Eastern Market.”

  “What’s this about? And stop touching the fruit.”

  He grabbed a sprig of grapes. “The Lincoln letter was bought at the flea market there—”

  “Flea market? You came all the way down here to go to a flea market?”

  He popped a few grapes in his mouth. “Diana sounded worried about the hacking business. The man who brought her the Lincoln letter was supposed to contact her, but he seems to have gone underground.”

  “Figuratively?”

  “Let’s hope so.” He held the sprig in front of her. “Grapes?”

  “Oh, Peter—” She shook her head and stalked to the window. “—no!”

  “What? You love grapes.”

  “No to all of this. I do not have the time for this.”

  “C’mon. You don’t start filming till—”

  “I’m heading in a new direction—” She snatched the sprig and pulled off a grape and popped it in her mouth. “—and you’re just trying to pull me back.”

  “But you have to admit it. When we go after something, we always grow closer.”

  “I thought we were close.” She ate another grape and looked out at the low-slung city that, for all its pretensions, had a human scale, because nothing could rise higher than the Capitol dome. “I thought we understood each other. I thought we had an arrangement.”

  He put his hands on her arms. “I can live with the arrangement … me in Boston, you in New York, but I need my sidekick when I’m—”

  “Sidekick?” She handed him the sprig. One little raisin-sized grape remained.

  “Er”—he dropped the sprig in the trash—“how about ‘partner’?”

  She looked out the window again.

  He massaged her shoulders. “I need your—”

  “Women’s intuition?” She was trying to resist his touch, but she was always more susceptible in a hotel room. Something romantic about private moments in new places, something exciting, something that promised more than just sex, but drama … and sex.

  He whispered, “I was going to call it your instinctive yet analytical intelligence, but—” He felt his iPhone vibrate in his pocket. He took his hands away.

  She turned. “What now?”

  He was reading the phone.

  Another thing that cell phones were good for, she thought—breaking the mood.

  He said, “She wants us to meet her now. There’s a presentation at GWU that she has to attend later, needs to prepare for it. So we can go and be back here by one thirty.”

  “One thirty? No one thirtyers, Peter.”

  Some people had nooners. Peter and Evangeline had a private joke about one thirtyers.

  He said, “Plenty of time to freshen up and—”

  “Forget it. You’re trying to sweet-talk me into trouble. And I need to rehearse.” She tossed the phone on the sofa and tossed herself after it. She pulled off her boots and undid her blouse. She was wearing a powder blue bra the same color as the blouse. She noticed him staring and said, “What? What?”

  “Sometimes, you unbutton your blouse, it means yes. Today, I’ll take it as a no.”

  “I’m showering. And I’m not going with you.”

  “Well … can I stay here tonight?”

  “You weren’t supposed to be here till tomorrow night. That was our deal.”

  He grinned. “Expecting someone else?”

  “No. No boyfriends. No girlfriends. No distractions, which is what you are.”

  “So you’re turning me out in the cold cruel capital?”

  She sighed. She almost laughed. He could almost always make her laugh, even when he was exasperating her. She pulled the second credit card key from her purse and flipped it to him. “Don’t charge anything to the room.”

  * * *

  That went well, he thought.

  Now to get to the bottom of this Lincoln business. He had a feeling that whatever was going on, he was coming to it just as it sped out of control.

  He took a cab over the Hill to the East Capitol Metro stop on Pennsylvania, got out and glanced back at the great white dome. It dominated Washington. It defined what Dickens had called the city of magnificent distances. Locate the Capitol, and you knew how far you were from anything. And usually, you knew how magnificent the distance was.

  Peter had friends who said that walking anywhere east of the Capitol, you should carry a twenty-dollar bill and just give it up when the junkie stuck his gun in your face. That was an exaggeration. There were tough sections in the District, sure, places where the power of the federal government had never made an impact, where the problems of any big American city existed.

  But this was one of the oldest Washington neighborhoods … nice town houses interspersed with a few dumps, nice front yards, some filled with children’s toys, some with gardens, places where people lived and worked and raised families … a nice urban neighborhood half a mile from where they ground up the national sausage every day.

  And after a few blocks, he came to that magnificent old market.

  It dated from the 1870s and resembled a brick Victorian train station. Outdoor stalls overflowed with color—red apples, green lettuce, orange carrots, pink melons. And one look at the cast-iron skylights on the roof told Peter that inside was an enormous market hall filled with wonders. On a bright Saturday morning, the place was swarming with shoppers.

  Diana Wilmington stood under a canopy near an apple stand. She was wearing tight jeans and a white silk jersey. Her big gold hoops flashed against her skin. She looked more like the lead singer in some Motown girl-group than a college professor.

  She threw Peter big come-on-over wave. If she seemed worried about hackers or watchers, she didn’t show it. Instead, she laughed.

  It was the laugh that had first attracted him. He had heard it at a gallery opening in Boston ten years earlier. Then he had noticed the graceful legs and coffee-colored skin. Then he had watched her move, relaxed yet regal, as if the whole room were moving around her. Even though she was a lot younger, he’d made a move of his own. They’d had some good fun at Celtics games and over a few nice nice dinners in his Back Bay condo. Then they’d moved on.

  He gave her a quick hug. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

  “Welcome to one of the crossroads of the capital,” said Diana. “White and black, rich and poor, young and old, lobbyist and welfare mom. They all come here because if you can’t find it in the Eastern Market, you can’t find it.”

  “Even letters from Lincoln to forgotten lieutenants?”

  She gave a jerk of the head and led him toward a basketball court across the street. That was where they ran the weekend flea market. Dozens of tables and stalls had been set up, and people were selling … selling … selling … old furniture, from mahogany to lawn … new rugs, both hot and legal … prints and paintings, beautiful reproductions and bad originals … rare books, old books, and paperbacks without covers … DVDs and videocassettes … tables full of tchotchkes, knickknacks, junk, trash … and treasures.

  As they crossed the basketball baseline, Diana
said, “The man who offered me the letter—his name was Jefferson Sorrel—he told me he found the letter and envelope here, inside an engraving of ‘First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.’”

  “Why did Sorrel come to you?” asked Peter.

  “He said he liked my book, and he liked the idea of the African American Museum of Emancipation.”

  “Did he know how much a letter like this can be worth?” asked Peter.

  “I think so.” Diana was leading him through the crowd, toward a stall in the corner under the shading branches of a magnolia. She stopped about ten feet away. “I think that’s the guy who sold it to him. His name is Donald Dawkins.”

  “So … what to you want me to do?”

  “You’ve dealt with people like this. He may know something without even knowing it. I’ll do the talking. You just jump in anywhere.”

  The man was reading a book beside a table of Civil War memorabilia. He was black, about sixty, with a potbelly and the look of hard work ground into his big hands. Peter noticed that the book was Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. Appropriate.

  “Afternoon,” said Diana.

  “Afternoon.” Dawkins barely raised his head.

  “This sure is a fine collection of Civil War material you have,” said Peter.

  Dawkins looked it over as if seeing it for the first time himself. Framed engravings of Civil War scenes, cut from old copies of Harper’s Weekly; porcelain statues of Frederick Douglass; bobble heads of Lincoln; a framed repro of the Emancipation Proclamation; and piles of books, including an unjacketed Killer Angels. Peter picked it up: first edition. The price, written in pencil on the flap, suggested that Mr. Dawkins didn’t know his book values: $15. With a jacket, it would have been worth $915.

  Diana said, “We’re Lincoln fans.”

  “Mmmhm.” He nodded and went back to his reading.

  There were three types of sellers at flea markets. One gave you a cheery “Can I help you?” and started pitching you straight off. One said hello, busied himself with something else until you asked a question, then oozed all over you. And one acted as if he didn’t care whether you bought or not, even though he watched you the whole time from the corner of his eye. Dawkins appeared to be the last kind.