The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  Private Bryant was waiting on the plaza, with his musket at parade rest. He said, “It’s a bit of a walk. Finding a parking spot along here’s like finding gold, or a rare book, eh, Mr. Fallon?”

  “How far?” said Evangeline.

  “A couple of blocks. It’s on Constitution, near Seventeenth.”

  “These are long goddamn blocks,” said Evangeline.

  “And every cab is called for, so forward march,” said Peter.

  “Glad I wore half-heels. I wish I wore sneakers.”

  They walked along the edge of the Mall, with the Washington Monument above them, so brilliantly illuminated by a circle of floodlights that you could see history written right into the stone. The construction had been suspended in 1858. By the time they got back to finishing it in the 1880s, they couldn’t find the same color granite. So it went from white to a bit … off white.

  Douglas Bryant chitchatted for most of the way about the joys of being a hard-core reenactor. None of that farbing stuff for him. “Farbing,” he explained, was a term for reenactors who didn’t embrace the whole experience, guys who stayed in motels and ate at McDonald’s after they’d done their Civil War thing.

  Bryant said that farbs never found out what it was like to go four or five days without bathing, or to feel the chafe of the wool trousers in the heat, or to eat sloosh, a mixture of cornmeal soaked in hot bacon fat then wrapped around a musket ramrod and cooked in the campfire, or to sleep on the damp ground and slap at the bugs all night after marching and “fighting” all day.

  “Why do you it?” asked Evangeline.

  “So I can know what it felt like.”

  “When I want to know what felt like to be miserable a hundred and fifty years ago,” she said, “I read a book.”

  “Hey, Mr. Boston, your girlfriend’s no fun.”

  “Yeah,” said Peter. “Way too serious.”

  Bryant’s blue van was parked under a tree on the north side of Constitution Avenue, between Fifteenth and Seventeenth. On the grass a short distance away stood the memorial to the U.S. Army Second Division: a giant hand holding a huge golden sword, low parapet walls extending on either side. In the distance beyond the monument, the White House reflected its floodlights.

  The traffic on Constitution was light, and the sidewalk on that side was deserted. But it was a warm Saturday night in September, so there were plenty of strollers and school groups and tourists across the avenue, wandering the graceful paths around the Washington Monument.

  Bryant went to the back of the van, looked around to make sure that no one was watching, and opened the doors.

  Of course, on that stretch, thought Peter, someone was always watching. A panel truck parked between the White House and the Washington Monument had probably been inspected by the U.S. Park Police, X-rayed by some FBI roving radiation van, and visited by bomb-sniffing dogs, too. And once Bryant opened the back, Peter expected all the food-sniffing dogs in the District to come running. Was it old cheese? New garbage? Something alive? Or something dead?

  The back of the van was piled with boxes, books, a couple of folding chairs, a table, and a laundry basket of dirty of clothes, including the gray jacket and butternut trousers of his Confederate uniform, a cooler, a shopping bag full of cereals and fruits, a pile of banana and orange peels, and an old drum.

  “Do you live in this thing?” asked Evangeline.

  “Only on weekends. I’m driving up to Antietam tonight. Giving demonstrations tomorrow. My wife will meet me up there. She plays Clara Barton. Hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the bloodiest day in American history. Lots of activities, lots of fun.”

  “Fun,” said Evangeline. “Yeah.”

  He reached into his box of jumbled books and produced Fort Lafayette.

  Peter pulled five C-notes from his wallet.

  They made the exchange.

  “Nothin’ like the Yankee Greenback dollar to make a foot soldier feel rich,” said Bryant. “Legal tender throughout the Union, first issued in July of 1862, shortly after the first income tax. Three percent on all incomes over six hundred dollars. Some of my friends in gray uniforms call Lincoln’s income tax the beginning of the end.”

  “A history lesson with every transaction,” said Evangeline.

  Peter said, “What about a receipt?”

  “Oh, a stickler, hunh?”

  “We like to establish the chain of ownership,” said Peter. “If this book turns out to be worth a lot, it’s always good to know that I obtained it legally.”

  “If it turns out to be worth a lot,” said Bryant. “I’ll shoot myself … or you.”

  “No,” said Evangeline. “You’ll sue him, unless he has a receipt.”

  “This lady is a real product of the twenty-first century. Sue. Sue. Sue.” Bryant went around to the driver’s side and pulled out a clipboard. “I’ll write you a receipt.”

  Peter asked, “Can you also give me a copy of your receipt from Dawkins?”

  “Dawkins doesn’t give up much. You found that out this afternoon. Go to Antietam and ask him tomorrow. There’s a big street fair in the town of Sharpsburg to commemorate the anniversary. He said he might go. But he’s a mysterious old African American.”

  “I like a long chain of ownership,” said Peter.

  Evangeline said, “Hey, boys, I’m getting a little tired of standing here while you two talk about provenance.”

  “Provenance?” said Bryant. “I’ve never been to France.”

  She didn’t know if he was joking. She stepped up onto the sidewalk and looked out at the traffic buzzing by and the Washington Monument rising above the trees. Then she turned and looked back toward the White House. And she saw … horses.

  Yes, four horses and their riders—U.S. Park Police in blue helmets—were cantering across the wide Ellipse. Every so often, they would stop and practice some maneuver or other. In the bright ambient light of the city, they looked just … beautiful.

  The beauty of them took Evangeline out of herself for a moment, so she didn’t hear the cars rushing past or the three motorcycles roaring up and pulling into a single spot about a hundred feet away.

  Peter was saying, “Any idea where he got this book and the engraving of the Emancipation Proclamation?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Bryant.

  “Did he offer you anything else?”

  “He had some old engravings of Jesus and Frederick Douglass, from 1860s editions of Harper’s Weekly. Not worth much but nicely framed … and some letters.”

  “About what?”

  “They came from brothers who had enlisted in the Colored Regiments. Their name was Freedom, of all things. And— Oh, shit.”

  Peter looked over his shoulder, past Evangeline, who said, “I do not like the sound of that.” She turned and saw three bulky men getting off motorcycles and coming toward them on the sidewalk.

  Peter said, “Unh … why, the ‘Oh shit’?”

  “Those guys want the book you’re holding,” said Bryant.

  “How do you know?” asked Peter.

  “They came around the stalls after you left today. They offered me a thousand for it.”

  “A thousand,” said Peter, “and you didn’t sell it?”

  “I made a deal with you,” said Bryant, as if the question insulted him. “A deal is a deal.”

  “That means these guys are on to something,” said Peter.

  “You’re damn right we are.” That was a familiar voice, much closer. It was the guy in the Civil War soul patch, appearing from behind the Second Division Monument. He must have been watching the van all night, waiting to call in his boys: Burke, the beard who had been on the train with Evangeline; the big one from the Eastern Market; and a smaller guy, who just hung back. Two of them were wearing the Bonnie Blue Flag ball caps. And the leader, the one with the soul patch, had changed his Hawaiian shirt to a blue T-shirt with the same insignia on the breast.

  Douglas Bryant, Private, West Virginia Volunteers, snatc
hed up his Springfield musket, pulled back the hammer, took a percussion cap from the leather pouch on his belt and put it onto the nipple. Then he shouted, “You boys don’t come any closer!”

  “That thing ain’t loaded,” said the one with the bushy beard.

  “But this is,” said another, and he pulled a big pistol from his belt. It looked like the Navy Colt that Peter had seen earlier that day.

  Bryant whispered to Peter, “Reach into the laundry basket. There’s a handgun. It ain’t loaded. Just point it.”

  The four guys kept coming. The traffic roared along. Nobody seemed to be watching.

  Douglas Bryant said, “I buy my minie balls online at Track of the Wolf, fifty-eight-caliber, sixty-grain service load. And I am loaded. So one of you is going down.”

  The four slowed at that, then stopped about fifty feet away.

  Peter pulled the pistol out. It was small, engraved, all of one piece.

  Bryant said in a very loud voice, “No need to cock it. It’s an Adams pocket revolver, double action. These jokers do anything funny, just point and shoot.”

  Peter said, “Okay,” then he told Evangeline to get in the van.

  “Oh, Peter,” she said, “I told you this was crazy, and I didn’t want any part of it.” She turned and started to walk toward the four guys. “You, in the beard, you stalked me on the train. Now you stalk me on the Mall. Who in the hell do you think you are?”

  Mr. Soul Patch said, “We’re the guys who think that you’re in the way. We warned your boyfriend this afternoon and now we’re telling you, whatever you just bought from this guy, we want it.”

  “Well,” she said, “you can’t have it!” And before anyone could react, she’d pulled a whistle from her purse and blew into it, shrill and loud.

  “Hey, stop that,” said the one called Burke.

  She did it again.

  In the distance, a horse screamed, and then came the sound that infantry had feared since men first marched: the pounding of hooves on hard ground, horses coming at the flank.

  The Park Police were galloping across the elliptical road that gave the Ellipse its name.

  The four guys gave a look toward the horses, then they jumped on the three bikes, with Mr. Soul Patch riding piggyback, and sped off in three directions. One bike went east, two went west, with one of them peeling off onto Seventeenth, right in front of the little lock keeper’s house.

  “Hide the pistol,” said Bryant. “I don’t have a permit. I just bought it from Dawkins. I don’t even know if it works.”

  “Good evening, Officers,” said Evangeline.

  “Howdy, gents. My name is Private Douglas Bryant of the West Virginia Volunteers, I just came from guarding the Smithsonian.”

  “What was that whistling all about?” asked one of the cops.

  “The lady here thought those bikers were coming to bother us.”

  “Bikers scare me.” Evangeline smiled sweetly. “But I like horses.”

  One of the big mounts snorted and banged his iron shoe on the sidewalk.

  Bryant said, “It turns out those boys were just stopping for directions.”

  A cop watched the three bikes going in three directions and said, “Either they don’t listen too good or you don’t direct too good.”

  “Don’t know about that, sir, ” said Bryant, “but I know the way to Sharpsburg in the dark. I’m headin’ there now.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said one of the officers. “For the big show tomorrow? What unit?”

  “Well, tonight at the Smithsonian, I wore Yankee blue, but tomorrow—” He reached into the back and pulled out a gray kepi. “—I may play one of Longstreet’s boys. They held the Confederate right that afternoon.”

  “Reinforced by John Bell Hood at the critical moment,” said the officer. “Have a good trip. And ma’am, don’t be so quick on that whistle.”

  When they were gone, Bryant said, “It was the accent. That cop was from down Virginia way. His ancestors might have marched with ol’ Longstreet.”

  “If they’d asked me my unit,” said Peter, “I’d have said Twentieth Massachusetts.”

  Bryant laughed. “That would have gotten us all arrested.”

  * * *

  Bryant dropped them at the hotel. As they crossed the sidewalk, Peter got a text from Diana Wilmington:

  Missed you at opening. Left before speeches. Can’t stand Milbury. And you know about Conlon. Also, getting up early for drive to Antietam. I’m signing books up there for Dawkins. May be on to something with him. And I’m shooting on battlefield with Evangeline.

  Peter texted back:

  Stay safe. Many factors in play.

  Then he said to Evangeline, “Antietam? Did you know you’re shooting at Antietam tomorrow?”

  “I just found out.” She waved her iPhone at him. “Schedule change: Lincoln Memorial Monday, Antietam tomorrow to capture local color and shoot an interview with Diana. We’re supposed to leave first thing.”

  “Perfect,” said Peter. “We’ll all go and have another talk with Dawkins.”

  As they entered the lobby, a big black man rose from a chair in Peacock Alley. At first, his silhouette seemed nothing but threatening. Instinctively, Peter put Evangeline behind him. Then a deep bass voice filled the lobby the way his bulk filled the doorway: “Well, if it ain’t my old friends.”

  Evangeline said, “Now I know we’re in trouble.”

  Peter said, “Henry Baxter, what brings you to the Capitol City?”

  “I’m hungry for half truths, partial to malarkey, and suffer from a surfeit of cynicism, so I thought I’d come to the city where such things are always in fashion.” Henry executed a bow, which wasn’t easy with the big belly that hung over his belt.

  He was wearing a blue blazer and blue turtleneck, jeans, running shoes. And as he always said, his vital stats were all about fours and forties: sixty-four going on forty-four, six-four, two-forty plus forty, .44 Magnum, licensed as a private detective in four states and the District of Columbia. Fours wild, and Peter was very glad to see him.

  Henry straightened, buttoned his blazer over his belly, and said, “I also looked into those boys in that Chrysler 200.”

  “They were on motorcycles tonight,” said Peter.

  “In cars or on bikes, they’re still trouble. So I decided to drive down and lend a little muscle to No-Pete and the E-Ticket.” He used the nicknames he’d given them when they first met in New York. “No-Pete” because Peter hated to be called Pete. “E-Ticket” because that was the best ride at Disneyland, and Henry said that for all her attitude, Evangeline always made it a fun ride, too.

  She told the front desk that she would be having another guest sleeping on the pull-down sofa, so they should send up linens and towels.

  * * *

  Room service from the Willard: twenty-dollar Black Angus burgers all around, along with bottles of Yuengling, steak fries, and at Henry’s request, chocolate sundaes.

  “Gots to lay off de sundaes, boss”—he slapped his belly—“but jess dis one time mo’.”

  Evangeline joined him. She did not admit that she had been eating more sundaes of late, especially since the wedding that wasn’t.

  Peter liked savory. So his dessert was a second beer and a bag of potato chips.

  Henry kicked off his shoes and put his feet on the coffee table. “I found a parking spot right on F Street, and tomorrow’s Sunday. So I can leave the car all day. But we may be movin’ around.”

  “I am not going on the run,” said Evangeline. “I am not going to ground. I am going to Antietam to film tomorrow, then I’m coming back to finish at the Lincoln Memorial on Monday.”

  Henry said, “I swear, No-Pete, you’d think this gal didn’t enjoy your company.”

  “Yeah,” said Peter. “She’s giving me a complex.”

  “Well, after she sees this, she’ll think about stickin’ close.” Henry pulled out his iPad. “That Chrysler 200 was a rental, so the plate didn’t give me a lot
. But I have some friends who have some face recognition software.”

  He tapped a few commands, and up popped Mr. Civil War Soul Patch, in a grainy cell phone photo. On the other side of the screen, a database of pictures quickly scrolled through to the same face, without soul patch.

  “Harrison M. Keeler,” said Henry. “Born, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1960. Educated at Ohio State and Case Western Reserve Law School. Worked in Ohio Attorney General’s Office for two years, prosecuting tax fraud, then ran for state rep as a Republican. Lost. Hung a shingle, went into tax law, three years later, ran for state senator as a Democrat. Lost. But he paid his dues and went to Washington with the congressman from his district. Worked as a staffer, more tax policy. When the congressman jumped over to a big K Street lobbying firm, he brought Keeler along.”

  “So he’s another Washington insider?” said Peter.

  “He was,” said Henry. “But he ain’t no mo’.”

  “At least he’s no biker,” said Evangeline.

  Henry went back to the computer. “He was indicted for mail fraud and obstruction of justice in 2003. A big lobbying scandal.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was pumping out all kinds of goodies, fancy trips, Redskins tickets and so on, in exchange for political favors.”

  “That’s standard, isn’t it?” asked Evangeline.

  “Up to a point. But he did a lot more of it and did it better. Never any bribery, but he bought off congressmen and senators with charitable contributions that somehow found their way into political PACs. Made sure congressmen got jobs for nephews on K Street. Did the tit-for-tat dance all across the district. It was money for the pols and fees for the lobbyists and good news for all the clients who come to Washington looking for a government hand.”

  “Or handout,” said Evangeline.

  “They don’t call lobbyists the fourth branch of the government for nothing,” said Peter.

  “Pedal to the political metal, baby. That was Keeler. His big rig was just barrelin’ down the D.C. highway till it hit a pothole called the House Ethics Committee. He ended up in the middle of a nasty old bipartisan scandal. Two congressmen went down, and so did he. Ended up doing eighteen months in the federal pen. His wife divorced him while he was in. When he got out, he went off the grid. Didn’t write a book or try to rehabilitate himself like that other lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Just disappeared instead.”