The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  “And you came to Washington?”

  “And I worry about the slave catcher till I meet a white woman who know a man who write papers sayin’ I’se his freed slave. Then I go to work for myself.”

  “You’ve done well,” said Halsey, “in the shadow of the Capitol.”

  Noah looked up at the rising dome and gave a laugh. “When I got here, they had a slave pen over behind the Center Market, with a fine view of that fine buildin’ up there and a nothin’ but a little lean-to so them poor colored folks could get in out the weather. A reg’lar pen like a pigpen, where slaves was bought and sold and whipped, and families was broke up, and papa slaves was sent off to make baby slaves in other states, jess like they was animals.”

  As he listened, Halsey began to think that perhaps the Abolitionists had been right all along, and he had simply not been paying attention. He was now.

  “You never heard such wailin’. But I think, safest place for a runaway is right across from that slave pen, ’cause what runaway gonna put hisself in a spot like that? He must be a freedman, that colored bootblack. That’s how I want them slave catchers to think.”

  “Well, you’re safe now.”

  “But I never rest. Why you think I watch my world like I do? ’Cause up till a few months ago, them slave catchers could grab me and haul me off on nothing but their say-so, and no piece of paper gonna stop ’em. Now, I don’t have to fear that, thanks to Mr. Lincoln and District Emancipation. No more, no more.” He started buffing in rhythm to the words. “No more, no more.”

  Halsey said, “Would it make a difference if I told you that I need help so that I can help the president?”

  Noah looked up. “It might.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Well, sir, I used to have one rule, but now I has two. I shine any man’s shoes who pay my price. And I help any man who’s helpin’ Mr. Lincoln.”

  SEVEN

  Saturday Afternoon

  “Is Halsey Hutchinson talking yet?” asked Peter Fallon.

  “He’s whispering,” said Antoine. “So am I, because I’m in the reading room at the MHS. They hate it when somebody’s cell phone goes off.”

  “You still have that gangsta rap ringtone?”

  “You mean Ice-T doin’ ‘High Rollers’? I save that for Saturday night. My phone beeped once. I thought Fitzpatrick would throw me out.”

  “Put it on vibrate, and go out under the stairs.”

  “Hold on.”

  Peter imagined Antoine in the staid old Boston library.

  It was Peter’s favorite place to do his research, with librarian James Fitzpatrick bringing out mountains of material, no matter the subject. And hidden under the circular stairway in the foyer were restrooms, coatracks, and a courtesy phone.

  “Okay,” said Antoine. “I can talk now. But couldn’t you wait?”

  Peter supposed he could have.

  Or he could have called and apologized to Diana, who had already left an annoyed phone message about going off without telling her.

  Or he could have called Evangeline. She had left him a message telling him to buy a dress shirt and tie, because they had been invited to a reception at the Smithsonian.

  Those calls could wait.

  This couldn’t, because Peter Fallon was now in full Civil War mode.…

  * * *

  Even after Peter had saved him from shooting up a family of Civil War enthusiasts, Jefferson Sorrel had not been very friendly.

  He had explained, almost as a way to get Peter to leave, that he was a dealer himself, with his own Civil War sales site on the Web. He had bought often from Dawkins but had never expected to find a Lincoln letter in the backing of an engraving. After offering it to Diana Wilmington, he had put out word, “just to test the waters.” And a preemptory offer of three and a half million had come from a regular customer.

  Sorrel had taken it. Now he was watching his back and wondering about the mysterious “something” referenced in the letter, with its “potential to alter opinions regarding the difficulties just ended and those that lie ahead.”

  “You think it’s a diary?” Peter had asked. “What makes you think so?”

  Sorrel had made a wave of his hand, as if to chase Peter away. “I’ve told you too much already. Maybe I don’t think it’s anything. Maybe I think I’ll just take the money and go off to Florida. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.”

  But Peter had proposed a partnership rather than a vacation. He had pointed out that finding a Lincoln diary would make everyone rich, “and two heads are better than one, especially when they belong to a pair of smart guys like us.”

  Sorrel had said that he would look for it himself. But now that the secret was out, he expected competition. “A lot of guys have been watching me.”

  “Like the ones in the Nissan Versa?” Peter had asked.

  “They work for the guy I sold it to. They’re in it for politics. Others are in it for the money.”

  “As always,” Peter had said. “Who are they?”

  “You’d know some of them. And some of them, I don’t even know.” Sorrel had wiped the sweat from his forehead, and some of the hair dye came with it. “Florida’s lookin’ awful nice.”

  Then he had asked Peter to apologize to Diana Wilmington, explaining that he wasn’t very good with, “male-female stuff,” and even worse with “white-black stuff.”

  Then he had said, “Okay. We’re done. Get lost. And stay lost.…”

  * * *

  Now Antoine was telling Peter, “I need some time, especially if I’m digging through the records of the Twentieth Massachusetts. What is it we’re looking for?”

  “I can’t really say.” Peter glanced at the cabbie, who did not seem to be listening, but you could never tell.

  “It’s something from Lincoln, right?” said Antoine. “It has to be something from Lincoln. Otherwise Hutchinson and Murphy wouldn’t mean a damn. What is it?”

  “His diary.”

  “Lincoln’s diary? Lincoln’s personal diary? No fuckin’ way.”

  “Watch your language in the MHS, and don’t say that out loud again.”

  “I’m in the men’s room. No one can hear me.”

  “Well, I’m in a cab stuck in traffic.”

  They were inching their way across the Key Bridge, trying to get back into Georgetown. The walkers and bicycles were going faster. If there had been crawlers, they would have been going faster, too. For fifteen minutes, Peter had been looking down at the old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. It ran next to the river, from Georgetown all the way to Cumberland, Maryland. Once it had been a highway. Now it was no more than a historical curiosity … and a nice place to stroll.

  “So,” said Peter, “what have you found?”

  “I went through the Descriptive Roll of the Twentieth, hundreds of pages of folio sheets bound together. The adjutant or the sergeant-major would keep the records, long columns, perfect handwriting. On one side you’d get the physical description of the guy and on the other, his personal service record.”

  “What about this Halsey Hutchinson?”

  “He lived on Beacon Hill and belonged to First Parish. He was twenty-five when the war began, in his first year at Harvard Law. He’d graduated from the college in 1858 and worked for a while at American Telegraph. There was an asterisk next to that, as though it was important.”

  “It was,” said Peter. “Anyone who had telegraph experience, officer or enlisted man, eventually got tapped for the military telegraph service.”

  The cabbie cursed. The light had cycled, and the traffic on the bridge had barely budged. Peter knew what the guy was thinking: Before long, this fare might pay him for distance traveled, then hop out and leave him to deadhead home through the Saturday snarl.

  Peter said to Antoine, “Any other particulars? What did he look like?”

  “The chart tells us he was five-eleven, one-seventy.”

  “Tall for the time,” said Peter. “Wiry.”


  “He also had blue eyes, black hair. Offered to serve July 1861, sustained throat wound, Ball’s Bluff. The last entry says, ‘Transferred to the War Department telegraph office, March 1, 1862.’”

  “Yes!” Peter almost clapped his hands. He loved to find a connection that good, that quickly. This kind of work was like putting a puzzle together, a giant three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, and they had just found a corner piece.

  Peter said, “He’s working in the telegraph office, and every night, Lincoln comes over to read the news. That’s how they know each other. You deserve a bonus.”

  “Someday deserving a bonus will mean getting one.”

  “Watch the pay envelope. What about Jeremiah Murphy?”

  “He was from the fishing village of Spiddal, in County Galway, emigrated to America in 1862. Enlisted in East Boston, July 31, 1862.”

  “Sounds like one of those off-the-boat boys. When they walked down the gangplank, the recruiting agents were waiting with a bounty and a pen. After the disaster on the Peninsula, Lincoln issued the call for another three hundred thousand, but they were having a hell of a time filling it with volunteer recruits. Anything else about him?”

  “Vital stats and this: wounded at the Second Hatcher’s Run, February 1865. Discharged to hospital.”

  “One of the last engagements of the war. Send me the rest,” said Peter, “but let’s focus on Hutchinson, figure out what he was doing between Ball’s Bluff and Lincoln’s assassination.”

  “According to Fitzpatrick, the best account of the telegraph office was written by the cipher man, David Homer Bates. A lot of the famous stories come from him. You ever heard the one about the ‘down to the raisins’?”

  “Raisins?” said Peter. “No. What about them?”

  “Never mind. It’s in Bates’s book. So is the one about Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation in the telegraph office. Bates published it around 1900.”

  “He must have known Hutchinson.” Peter watched the bicycles speeding by on the sidewalk. “Find his book in Project Gutenberg and skim it. Then go to the newspapers.”

  Antoine groaned. “Come on, boss. I can’t be reading newspapers—”

  “The Washington Daily Republican is on the Library of Congress Web site. You read 1862 and ’63. I’ll go through the rest, then—”

  “That’s heavy liftin’. And this all could be a fool’s errand. I’ve read every book there is about Lincoln, and I’ve never read a word about a real diary. He scribbled notes all the time, wrote things, put them into desk drawers and whatnot, pulled them out later, rewrote them. His personal valet, a black man named Slade, wrote about burning lots of Lincoln pen-scratchings over the years, but—”

  Just then the cabbie growled, “What the fuck?” He was looking in his rearview.

  Peter said to Antoine. “Something’s up. I’ll get back to you.”

  The cab door opened and a guy jumped in. Jeans, black sport jacket, black T-shirt, the kind of outfit that looked good only on a guy who was fit, very fit. On this guy, it looked so good that he didn’t bother to pull the gun that Peter saw under his jacket. He just said, “Get out.”

  “Hey, man.” The cabbie turned around.

  Mr. Fit threw a fifty on the front seat. “That’s for you. This guy fucked my wife.”

  Peter’s door popped open and a black guy in a Redskins hat, who looked fitter than Mr. Fit, reached in and yanked him out.

  Mr. Fit slid across the seat and said to the cabbie, “The light’s green. Get goin’.”

  Redskins said to Peter, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

  “I’ll take easy,” said Peter. “Easy sounds nicer.”

  Mr. Fit began to lead Peter—or drag him—along the sidewalk, toward a big black SUV about five cars back.

  Peter glanced at the cabbie, who was folding the fifty. Thanks a lot.

  He thought about vaulting the fence and jumping down onto the towpath. He could run all day down there, and he was in shape enough to run all day anywhere. But it was a hell of a drop.

  “How about a little hint?” he asked. “Where are we going?”

  “Not far,” said Fit. “We got tired of waiting in traffic, so we decided to save everybody some time.”

  “Yeah,” said Redskins. “And the SUV is a better ride than that little Nissan Versa. You don’t want to miss the party.”

  “Party?” said Peter.

  “Big reception at the Smithsonian. VIP stuff.”

  “You guys know more than I do. What are you, FBI or something?”

  They didn’t answer that. But they seemed as confident as FBI. They’d snatched him in broad daylight, right on the Key Bridge, and they were acting as if they expected him to go with them.

  That, Peter decided, would be their mistake, because he wasn’t getting into a strange SUV with anybody.

  A bicycle went by and they all jumped out of the way.

  Another bicyclist whizzed toward them, ringing his bell.

  No bike path on the Key Bridge. So the bicyclists drove along the sidewalk beside you or came up behind you, bleating, “On your left, on your left” or “On your right, on your right,” while ringing their little bike bells like sanctimonious acolytes to the Church of All Things Green and Self-Propelled … also Self-Absorbed.

  Peter saw two more bikes coming along the sidewalk, already annoying out loud:

  “On your left, on your left.” Ring ring. Ring ring.

  This would take some coordination, but it was worth a try. At the very least, he’d make a scene. So he let Mr. Fit and Redskins lead him a bit farther until …

  “On your left, on your left.” Ring ring. Ring ring.

  Fit, who held Peter by the elbow, grabbed the door of the SUV.

  Peter pulled away and said, “Wait a minute, I left my iPad in the cab. It has—”

  Redskins said, “Fuck the iPad.”

  Fit said, “I didn’t see any iPad.”

  “On your left, on your left.” Ring ring. Ring ring.

  Redskins was standing in the path of the bikes.

  A third bike was coming right behind the first two.

  “Behind you! Behind you!”

  Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.

  Redskins turned to the sound.

  Peter didn’t have to do anything but hold him in place … if he could.

  Ring ring. Ring RING! RING RING!

  With both hands and a hip, Peter leaned on Redskins and let the bike plow into the middle of him, wheel first, right … between … the … legs.

  Redskins let out a groan and crumpled in pain.

  The skinny male rider—weren’t they all skinny?—went flying by in a flash of yellow and blue biking spandex.

  And here came the second bike. A girl was riding it. More spandex, better fitted, blue and black, soon to be black and blue. Ring ring. Ring RING! RING RING!

  She just slammed into the collision.

  The third bike couldn’t stop, and the rider didn’t know what do to—jump or stop or—Ring ring. Ring ring—yell some more:

  “On your right! No. No. Your right! Your right! No No! Behind you. Behind you!”

  Redskins was rolling on the ground and howling in pain. Not too professional, but in the leg breaker’s union, a speeding bike to the balls counted as hazardous duty.

  Mr. Fit was trying to untangle himself from the second bike, but he was stumbling on the skinny biker and the girl and …

  Everybody just stay jumbled another second, thought Peter, another second, and … Yes!

  The third bike hit. Another skinny male vaulted over another set of handlebars.

  Not very nice, but sometimes … Peter threw the third bike at Mr. Fit, snatched the first bike from the pile, jumped on, and pumped.

  A hand grabbed at him.

  He pumped again. Then another hand grabbed.

  Then. Pump. Pump. Pump. He was rolling.

  And right away, he started shouting, “On your left! On your left!”


  Mr. Fit finally pulled free and came after Peter.

  The pedestrians ahead were stopping, turning, looking.

  Pump. Pump. Pump.

  Peter heard Mr. Fit getting closer.

  But suddenly, the door of the taxi swung open and knocked Mr. Fit into a pair of joggers.

  “Hey, man, you forgot your change!” cried the cabbie.

  This time Peter meant it: Thanks a lot.

  He pulled away, sped to the end of the bridge in a few pumps, and looked down M Street: Saturday crowds choked the sidewalks, working from bar to bar and boutique to boutique. Saturday traffic was stopping, then starting, then stopping, then inching, then stopping, then sitting.

  Peter didn’t see a bit of running room.

  But if he followed the nice brick sidewalk to his right, past the park benches that looked out at the bridge, he would find a flight of stairs leading down to the canal towpath. So he took it and cruised quickly down, then came to a little staircase.

  He pounded step-over-step-over-step-over-step, standing up so that the seat didn’t bang his balls, with Mr. Fit coming again, and a skinny bicyclist right behind him.

  When he reached the towpath, he skidded. He almost went into the water. In this spot, the towpath was just a narrow dirt walkway next to the canal.

  So he jumped off the bike to avoid hitting two people strolling toward him, turned, and as Fit burst around the corner, he threw the bike.

  Fit stumbled back, stumbled into the bicyclist who was also flying down the stairs, tripped, and went right over the old retaining wall into the canal. When he hit, he sent up a huge splash of algae green water, and the sound echoed up and down the granite channel.

  Peter ran a block along the towpath; then he cut up and ran along a wide alley between two rows of buildings. Just before the Wisconsin Avenue Bridge, he grabbed a cab heading south, away from the M Street traffic, and was gone.

  * * *

  “I can see why you didn’t marry him.”

  “Pick another topic,” said Evangeline into the phone.

  “Sorry,” said Diana, “but I’m totally pissed. I told him to wait and he just left.”

  “Men. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t live with ’em.”