The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “General McClellan can outtalk a country preacher on a Sunday mornin’, but when it comes time to do something, he catches a case of the slows.”

  “The slows, sir?”

  “It was hard enough to get him to move. Once he hatched his plan for the Peninsula, taking the whole army south by boat, then marching them north against Richmond, I had my doubts, but I said, ‘at least he’s in motion.’ Then—” Lincoln caught himself. “I would not share my thinking with you, Lieutenant, except that I trust you will keep it to yourself.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Folks don’t need to know what I’m thinking until I’m ready to tell them.”

  “No, sir. That would not be a good thing. But I must warn you, sir—”

  Lincoln cocked a brow and fixed an eye on Halsey’s face.

  Halsey saw no benevolence, no playful humor in the president’s gaze. He thought he saw suspicion. And his damaged throat tightened around his words, stopping them on the way out. He stammered and fell silent. His momentary resolve to tell Lincoln the truth, that the presidential daybook had fallen into the hands of an enemy, either military or political, passed as quickly as it came.

  He would not submit to the embarrassment of his own stupidity. He could not admit to the president that he had killed three men and still failed to rectify his mistake.

  “Warn me of what?” asked Lincoln.

  “Warn you that the soldiers like McClellan, despite the ‘slows.’ At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  “I like him, too,” said Lincoln. “If he delivers us the rebel capital, I shall like him all the more. Good night, Lieutenant.”

  * * *

  On his way home the next morning, Halsey left a card at the Willard for Miss Constance Wood. He wrote on the back of it, Viewing Megatherium today, with previously planned preliminaries.

  Then he stepped to the bar, ordered a brandy, and sauntered to the doorway of the dining room. Harriet Dunbar was sitting at the same table, sipping coffee. She looked as if she was waiting for someone. The Squeaker? He would not be coming. But she raised her head and studied each man who entered, then looked away in disappointment.

  Halsey was back in the Willard at noon, and Constance was waiting in the ladies’ parlor on the second floor. The room was not reserved for ladies. But certain male activities—drinking (anything but tea), cussing, and spitting—were frowned upon. Gentlemen were expected to be gentlemen.

  Constance was sitting at a table by the south window. The Washington Daily Republican was spread out in front of her.

  “Miss Wood.” He took a seat opposite her.

  She looked at the newspaper. “It says here that a gambling den called Squeaker McDillon’s was invaded yesterday by a gunman who killed three men, including one whose initials are—” She looked up. “—McD.”

  “That, I assume, would be the owner,” said Halsey.

  She pointed to his shoulder. “If I were to ask you to lift the flap of your suit, I would see a holster. If I asked for the pistol, would I smell gunpowder?”

  “You would smell gun oil. I keep my weapons in excellent working order. All of them.” He did not think she would catch the extra meaning in that remark. He never spoke to ladies in double entendres. But for some reason, he felt that he had earned it.

  In response, she looked into his eyes and ran her tongue across her upper lip, as if his second meaning appetized her. And she said, “Did you do it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you have something for me, something to show to Frederick Douglass? Words from a presidential diary, perhaps?”

  “Until I read Douglass, I have nothing for Douglass.”

  That last response made her flop back in her chair and screw up her lips. “If you tell me you have nothing, I’ll believe you. But if you tell me you know nothing, I won’t. Is Lincoln planning a general emancipation?”

  “He hasn’t told his lieutenants. He’s the president. He has his plans. He will tell the world what he wants them to know when he wants them to know it.”

  And she smiled, one conspirator to another. “Would you think me terrible if I said I find it quite exciting to be in the presence of a man who can kill three antagonists so skillfully with—what was it?” She found the paragraph in the paper and read. “‘Four shots, three heads and a heart, all as if the shootist were on a target range’?”

  He had managed to reveal nothing to her. He had tamped down his guilt at killing three thugs. He was ignoring his guilt over losing the daybook and dissembling with the president. All perhaps because he now felt something very much like … lust. Whatever he had done and failed to do in the last few days, this young woman had been his only constant. He had not thought of her constantly. But when he did think of her, he saw her conspiratorial smile, heard her honeyed voice, smelled her intoxicating aroma, and for a few moments forgot his descent into darkness.

  It seemed that she felt the same something, because she stood suddenly and said, “The Megatherium awaits.”

  * * *

  Soon, they were in the West Range, beneath the high, arched ceiling, beside one of the Gothic pillars. It was quiet but for the distant voices echoing from the library.

  She looked at the face of an Indian and said, “As black as a Negro.”

  “Another problem to solve,” said Halsey, “once we settle the question of slavery.”

  Then there was silence between them.

  Somewhere outside, the drums were thrumming. His heart pounded. So did her breathing. He could see it as her breasts rose and fell beneath her dress.

  He slipped a hand around her waist and turned her into the shadow. She let him press her against the pillar, and before she kissed him, she reached up and took the sides of his face in her hands. The feel of her fingertips on his cheeks was as electric as if she had touched his manhood.

  He brought his mouth onto hers. And she met his hard kiss with an open mouth, soft, moist, pliable.

  Then she whispered, “It was Lincoln’s diary, wasn’t it?”

  That was a question to cause a man to lose his manly momentum. He pulled back and looked at her. A shaft of sunlight fell through the arched windows, highlighting her strawberry blond hair. And he asked himself if she was simply using him.

  But before he could ask her, or kiss her, or tell her the truth about the daybook and the death of McDillon, he saw the face of Detective Joseph Albert McNealy.

  It appeared from behind the pillar. Then a pistol came straight at Halsey’s head.

  Constance Wood screamed.

  * * *

  Halsey Hutchinson lost track of time beneath the burlap sack.

  He could hear the rumble of voices, the dripping of water, the thump of shuffling feet, and the thrumming of drums, like the boiling of water in a giant steam engine.

  He flexed his shoulders to uncramp his arms, which were cuffed behind him.

  Then he heard footsteps. The burlap bag was pulled away.

  A single lantern hung from a beam above his head. Somewhere in the distance light fell through an open door. Figures hulked in the darkness between.

  He said, “I am Lieutenant Halsey Hutchinson, of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, seconded to the War Department telegraph office. I demand to—”

  “Save it, Lieutenant.”

  Halsey could not see the man. He spoke to the darkness: “What am I doing here?”

  “I ask the questions.”

  “Where am I?”

  The answer arrived in the form of a leather gauntlet across his face. “I told you, I ask the questions. Now, then—” The man thrust his face into the light, a bushy black beard, dark eyes, black brows, a blue civilian suit. “—do you know who I am?”

  Halsey took a moment to calm the ringing in his ear, then said, “Lafayette Baker.”

  “Very good.” The man straightened, his face disappearing into the shadows. “Then you
know from whom I derive my power.”

  “Secretary Stanton.”

  “From Executive Order Number One, transferring control of all political prisoners and the investigation of all suspected traitors to the War Department.”

  “That does not explain why I’m here,” said Halsey. “Wherever I am.”

  Baker’s shadow turned, took something from a shadow behind him, and held it in front of Halsey’s face. “They say you are an expert in handguns. Can you identify this?”

  “A pistol,” said Halsey as mildly as he could.

  “It’s an Adams thirty-one-caliber pocket revolver. Note the manufacture—barrel, grip, and frame all of single piece. Note the handsome engravings. I always say that a good gun should be a thing of beauty, expressing the care that goes into making it.” Baker looked over his shoulder at the other shadow. “It’s like the care in a good investigation, eh, Detective?”

  “Yes, sir.” That was McNealy’s voice.

  Baker turned back to Halsey. “Note the ease of handling.” With nimble fingers he popped the cylinder out of the pistol, then popped it back in, then pointed the gun at Halsey, who told himself not to flinch. Instead, he made eye contact … first with the barrel and then with Baker, who squeezed the trigger.

  The hammer retracted and snapped down on an empty chamber.

  “Double action,” said Baker. “Very smooth. No wonder that British officers in the Crimea came to rely on this weapon.”

  “It’s the main competition for the Colt Wells Fargo,” said Halsey.

  “Now manufactured in your own town of Boston. Is that where you bought this?”

  “Yes. I was carrying it when I was arrested.”

  Baker gave the barrel a sniff. “Fired recently. Did you shoot anyone with it?”

  “Not since Ball’s Bluff.”

  “Good answer. I’d say ‘Not since Ball’s Bluff’ to every question, if I had your record.” Baker turned. “Don’t you think it’s a good answer, Detective?”

  “An excellent answer. Deflects a lot of suspicion.”

  “But”—Baker turned back to Halsey—“why does this pistol smell of powder?”

  “I shoot targets at the range on Mason’s Island. It keeps me sharp.”

  “So, you shoot targets with an Adams thirty-one-caliber revolver, serial number 2342, which we find on your person. But we also find, at the McDillon murder scene, an Adams thirty-one-caliber revolver, serial number 2343. How do you figure that?”

  Halsey said, “Coincidence?”

  Baker laughed. “I’ve been told you have an answer for everything. ‘Coincidence’ can’t be one of your best.”

  Halsey agreed. These detectives had been to the murder scene. They had gotten the pistol that Squeaker’s boys had stolen from Halsey. What else had they gotten?

  “Just answer this,” said Baker. “Did you kill three men in McDillon’s yesterday?”

  “I killed no one.”

  “That’s not what Detective McNealy thinks.” Baker handed the pistol back to McNealy. “He thinks you shot the place up because they killed your cousin and stole his pistol. And Detective McNealy is a man of great insight.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Halsey.

  “And I’ve heard that you’re a lawyer.”

  “I was in law school when the war began.” Halsey shifted in the chair and moved his arms. “I decided the law could wait with the survival of the Union at stake.”

  Baker said, “I came from a place where there was no law, and no lawyers, and no courts, where a man might be killed for a shovel, or a piece of beef, or a ticket home. I’m talking about San Francisco, in the Gold Rush. Some of us took the law into our own hands back then. They called us vigilantes. Now I am a vigilante for the Union.”

  “Then you agree. The law can wait when the survival of the Union is at stake.” Halsey sensed that it was the answer that this Lafayette Baker wanted to hear.

  “I’m not bothered by the killing of three men who needed killing. But something else bothers me, Lieutenant. There was word in certain low places that Squeaker was peddling something that belonged to the president, a daybook. And we know that he lost one on your watch in the telegraph office.”

  “We know that he lost it,” answered Halsey. “But who can say where?” He was getting better at lying, or at least it was coming more easily to him.

  Baker studied Halsey. In the distance, the voices rumbled, the water dripped, the feet shuffled. But Baker seemed to be searching for a truth in Halsey’s eyes that had not revealed itself in his answers. Then he turned to McNealy. “He’s yours. Lock him up. Let him go. Do what you will. I have other fish to fry.” And Lafayette Baker was gone.

  Now, McNealy’s beard and brow appeared in the lantern light.

  Halsey said, “Nice to see a friendly face.”

  McNealy reached into his pocket for—what? A sap? A pistol? Halsey prepared for pain. It would either be immediate, or the long-term pain of imprisonment, at least until he could communicate with Major Eckert or his father.

  But McNealy produced a key and unlocked Halsey’s cuffs. Then he handed him back his pistol and said, “Get up.”

  With a relief flooding him, Halsey followed McNealy up a rickety flight of stairs and out into the courtyard of the infamous Old Capitol Prison.

  The sky was still light. It must have been around seven o’clock.

  McNealy led him down Capitol Hill to Armory Square, then along the hospital barracks and out the other side to Seventh Street.

  Halsey realized that McNealy was reversing the escape route from the day before, proving without words that he had watched every move Halsey made.

  The drilling had ended on the Mall. The dust had settled. The drums were silent. Somewhere in the distance, a bugle blew.

  McNealy led Halsey onto the Seventh Street bridge and stopped. He put a foot on the lower rail. And he looked up at the Capitol, which reflected the rose red light of dusk. “You don’t like me very much, do you, Lieutenant?”

  Halsey thought the question was rhetorical, so he didn’t answer.

  “But I believe in the Union,” said McNealy. “I think you believe in it, too.”

  “I do.”

  “I also believe”—McNealy looked into the dirty canal—“that if I wanted to catch typhoid, I could drop into that water right now and pull out a bag containing a butcher’s apron and hat and some old clothes, couldn’t I?”

  Halsey said, “I wouldn’t know.”

  McNealy laughed. “You are persistent in your lies, Lieutenant. That’s what I like about you. Persistent, smart, and stupid, too, because you underestimate your accusers.”

  “Disliking you doesn’t mean underestimating you.”

  “Fair enough.” McNealy pulled out two cigars and offered one to Halsey, who accepted, even though he seldom smoked.

  McNealy struck a match and lit both cigars. After a few puffs, he said, “Do you know how the detective service recruits its people?”

  “No.”

  “However it can. We have thousands of undercover operatives, looking for disloyalty, treason, corruption, spying … all over Washington and all over this busted country. We read all the newspapers. We watch all the depots. We even slip behind enemy lines. How do you think Pinkerton can give such good information to McClellan?”

  “Some wish McClellan paid less mind to Pinkerton and more to his troop returns.”

  “McClellan is fighting to bring the South to its senses, so we can put Secession behind us. We can deal with the nigger business later.”

  “If that works, I’m for it,” said Halsey.

  “But there are enemy spies everywhere. So we must watch. And now, Lieutenant—” He took a puff of his cigar, the flame glowing in the fading light. “—you’re one of my watchers.”

  “Watchers?”

  “If I ask, you will answer. If I suspect, you will surmise. If I say to fetch me coffee from the War Department basement, you will jump. Or I’ll tell Baker
I agree with his suspicion that you stole the president’s daybook and sold it to the highest bidder.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “He thinks it was either Harriet Dunbar or Benjamin Wood who bought it.”

  Halsey was impressed by how close they had come to the answer.

  “You may be able to help us find the truth,” said McNealy. “So, if I want you to trail Wood, you’ll do that, too. You follow?”

  Halsey said nothing.

  McNealy barely paused. “You may even get to keep kissing that niece of his when you spy on her.”

  “Spy on her?”

  McNealy laughed. “You’ve been Frenchin’ a rebel spy in the Smithsonian.” Then he stopped laughing and brought his face closer to Halsey. “Now, get me straight. I don’t care about dead gamblers. And I don’t care about the president’s daybook, if he’s too sloppy to care about it himself. But from now on, I run you, Lieutenant Halsey Hutchinson of Boston, Massachusetts, son of privilege, family friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson. And if you fail me, I will give you back to that vigilante you just met, and you’ll spend the rest of the war in a dark hole in the Old Capitol Prison. You follow?”

  “I follow.”

  FIVE

  Saturday Afternoon

  “Some flea market.” Peter slid into the cab next to Diana and slammed the door. Then he put his head back and wiped the sweat from his face. Good that the cab was air-conditioned. Good that he’d left his blazer in the hotel.

  Diana said, “What did that guy mean about you skinning the little guy?”

  “He was mad that he’s one of skinnees. But I’m thinking I should go back and buy that book by Benjamin Wood. Dawkins said it was in the same lot as the Proclamation picture. The names on the endpaper might be important. And you ought to go back and sweet-talk Dawkins. Tell him we can make a deal. Tell him that we’re on to something worth seven figures. Tell him he’s in for half if he helps us.”

  “If I get it, I want it for the museum,” said Diana, “or for my next book.”

  “Ever the scholar,” said Peter. “There’ll be plenty for everybody if Dawkins helps us.” Peter glanced out the rear window to get a fix on the cars behind him; then he said, “Do you have Sorrel’s address?”