The Lincoln Conspiracy

by Timothy L. O'Brien

“Odi profanum vulgus et arceo,” Augustus replied, looking over at Temple.

  The soldier yanked at the rifle slung on his shoulder, but Temple raised his hand, waving off the soldier.

  “He’s an educated man, seeking greater education,” Temple said. “We’re late of our lessons and I’m escorting him home. We wouldn’t press near your barracks at this hour if we meant harm. We’ll pass now.”

  The soldier held them with his eyes for a moment and then stepped back. “The war may be over, but it lingers,” he said. “Fighting just concluded at Palmito Ranch, and the Rebs staked their land with fury. The two of you best mind that. On your way, then.”

  When Temple and Augustus arrived outside the frame house on I Street, Augustus scanned the four windows on the building’s façade. There was a lantern burning in the right-hand window on the upper floor, and a white handkerchief was tied to the knob on the front door.

  “It’s clear and safe here,” Augustus said. “They’ll have our horses.”

  Augustus untied the kerchief from the doorknob and knocked three times. After pausing, he knocked again twice on the door and stepped back. When the door opened, an old and slightly built minister greeted him. The minister was dressed in a black frock, and his face, framed by a white beard and white hair and illuminated by the lantern in his hand, almost floated above and apart from his body. Augustus handed him the handkerchief.

  “I am grateful for this gift of cotton,” the minister said.

  “As grows the cotton, so grows our cause,” Augustus replied.

  “And who sends you to me?” the minister asked.

  “A friend of a friend,” said Augustus.

  Passwords exchanged, the minister nodded and waved Augustus and Temple into the house. There was a small bundle of banknotes on the table and a bag of apples. The minister handed all of it over to them and gestured to the backyard of the house, where two black horses were hitched to a post. The minister extinguished his lantern as Augustus and Temple calmed the horses by feeding them some of the apples; they mounted and left without saying another word.

  They trotted as silently as they could, taking backstreets and avoiding main thoroughfares such as Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. By the time they came out around Douglas Square, the sun was beginning to rise. All that was needed was a little more heat to bring the ground up again, and they were in a part of the city now where they would smell every foot of it: Swampdoodle. The Tiber Creek sliced through the middle of Swampdoodle, and a stench wafted up strong and clear enough to make the horses get skittish.

  Augustus broke the silence as they trotted down North Capitol to H, passing by the Government Printing Office.

  “They won’t let a Negro into this neighborhood. I’d best go look for Fiona and the others. You’ll be better off now without me.”

  “I want you to meet Nail,” Temple replied. “And no one in Swampdoodle will move against anyone who rides with me. It’s full of rounders, but I know my way about rounders, yes?”

  Augustus reined in his horse and shifted uncomfortably in his saddle as he contemplated his response.

  “Yes, rounders are indeed your specialty.”

  “Besides, a neighborhood full of hardworking Irish railroad workers can’t be populated by rounders alone. We’ll take the risk, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  As the light broke across the lean-tos and little shacks that surrounded them, cows, chickens, and goats milled about, their legs sinking into the soft, damp mud that seeped all over Swampdoodle. Temple and Augustus had ridden only a few yards farther when a pack of dogs came bounding across one of the rickety wooden bridges that spanned the Tiber. They bared their fangs and bolted toward the legs of Temple’s horse, snarling. Temple’s horse reared and Augustus’s horse retreated. Behind the dogs, a ruddy, scarred man wearing overalls and little else emerged from the morning’s shadows and marched toward them. He was carrying a thick club with a blunt end that blossomed in a knotted cauliflower burst of wood; he was smacking it against his palm.

  “You have to have a reason to be in Swampdoodle,” he snapped at Temple and Augustus, an Irish brogue enveloping each word. As he got nearer, his pace slowed and his arms, dirty and muscular, dropped to his side. He ordered the dogs back from the horses. When one hesitated, he smacked it on its haunches with his club, and the dog, yelping, ran off.

  “So it’s you,” he said, looking up at Temple.

  “Sean,” Temple said, nodding. “You’re in a mood this morning.”

  “They said you were lashed at the B&O by a gang.”

  “And I was, but now I’m out for a ride.”

  “With the carny in tow, I see,” Sean said, looking at Augustus.

  “I’m here to see Nail.”

  “Leave the horses by the bridge.”

  “They’ll be here when we return? And the dogs will stay off their meat?”

  “Both. I’ll put tots on them.”

  Sean whistled over his shoulder and three small boys scurried out of one of the shacks. Like Sean, they were covered in grime, their teeth rotting. Their mother, her eyes drooping in her face like saucers, looked out at them from inside the door of the lean-to. She had a tin mug in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun cradled in the other.

  “Them are Mammy’s boys, and she’ll help them keep a watchful eye,” Sean said. “She’ll blast the pups if they get out of line. She’ll also blast the nigger if he gets unruly.”

  Temple dropped from his horse, planted his cane in the mud, and walked over to Sean. Temple towered over the gatekeeper, but Sean stood his ground, looking up at him, expressionless. Temple placed his hand on Sean’s shoulder and leaned down into his face, steadying himself on his cane.

  “His name isn’t Nigger, Sean—it’s Augustus. And he’s coming with me to see Nail. I want his horse looked after with special care. Am I understood?”

  “You’re understood, McFadden.”

  As he and Augustus crossed the Tiber on the footbridge, Temple noticed that his boots were already muddy again. He began to say something to Augustus, but Augustus spoke first.

  “After what’s happened over the last week, I don’t imagine Fiona will care much about your new boots,” he said. “I believe she’ll let you get them as muddy as you’d like from now on.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE COGNIACS

  The B&O railroad line leaned into and then curved away from the east end of Swampdoodle, and the village clung to itself like an encampment: tough, dour, and wary, with row upon row of small shacks that immigrant and itinerant railroad workers inhabited in packs. Like the District itself, Swampdoodle had exploded in size during the war years, and its housing stock was uniformly small and flimsy—excepting a large, well-maintained rectangular warehouse that sat on stilts at the far end of the village. A dozen armed men formed a loose semicircle around the building, each with a mangy dog by his side. The building lay just beyond the last set of lean-tos, and as Temple and Augustus made their way toward it, the dogs began barking and baring their teeth.

  “The pound master came in here once to round up the dogs and the Swampdoodlians hung him from a tree,” Temple said to Augustus. “Nobody from the outside had the nerve to come in here and get him. He swung for two days.”

  With a kick, the front door of the warehouse swung open. The man who emerged from the frame wore a long cloth apron and had hands that were deeply tattooed from his forearms to his fingertips. Augustus figured he was at least as tall as Temple but far thicker, with a bull neck and heavy, muscular arms. His hair was a rusty tangle, and he smiled as he looked down from the porch at his visitors.

  “I told Dilly they couldn’t keep you down, Temple.”

  “And they didn’t, Nail. I still have a weak shoulder, but it gets better by the day. Meet Augustus.”

  The circle of guards and dogs had tightened around the warehouse as Temple and Augustus approached, but once Nail burst through the door the group parted. Nail bounded down the
stairs and held out his hand. What Augustus thought were tattoos were, upon closer inspection, ink stains.

  “I bare my arms only when I’m working,” Nail said, following Augustus’s eyes. “A sight to behold, no? When I walk the streets, I cover my mess in shirtsleeves.”

  “Wouldn’t want to attract unneeded attention,” Temple said, winking.

  “It gets harder to make a living with the war over and Mr. Stanton’s boys disowning my services,” Nail replied, turning his attention to Augustus. “I’m working hard to find a new art, but in the meantime—hello. I’m Jack Flaherty. Most everybody calls me Nail.”

  “Augustus Spriggs. Temple has mentioned you many times, but I began to think you didn’t exist.”

  “Today, I exist,” Nail said. “Getting Negroes on the streetcars is safer than taking Negroes into Swampdoodle. You’re our first. Come inside.”

  At the top of the stairs, Temple paused and turned to Augustus.

  “Mr. Flaherty, in his former pursuit, drove spikes through ties for the railroad. Better than anyone. So his mates called him Nail,” Temple said. “But, as you will see, his vocation has since changed.”

  Nail pulled back the door and plunged into the warehouse, but before the pair could enter behind him, he turned back and put his hand on Temple’s shoulder. “Everybody’s buzzing about Stump having his throat cut at the B&O,” he said. “Why were you there?”

  “I had to meet Pint and Augustus,” Temple said. “I arrived early.”

  “But why were you there? Why did you need to be there at all?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  “You’ve been helping Pint peddle stolen goods from them plantations.”

  “And what if I am?”

  “You make money however you see fit. This is America. You can make your money.”

  “Right.”

  “But I’m not raising a stink with you about your money. I’m thinking of something else. I’m thinking of the cards. You’re selling plunder with Pint to get a grubstake together. You’re gambling again.”

  “We should go inside,” Temple said.

  “You know you’ve got to mind the cards.”

  “Inside.”

  “I won’t be caught pulling you out of a jam again because you can’t control your gambling.”

  “And you won’t have to. Now let’s have a look inside.”

  Temple looped his arm through Nail’s and pulled him into the warehouse. Once inside, it took a moment for Augustus’s eyes to adjust to the shadows. There were slats in the walls, and the ceiling was arched and high. Early morning air pushed a light, lilting breeze around the cavernous warehouse, and Augustus heard the gentle, almost inaudible flapping before he was able to see anything clearly. As soon as his eyes adjusted, he dropped back a step or two, his mouth agape.

  The walls to his right and left had fifty-foot clotheslines stretching across them, eight lines to a wall. Hanging from wooden pins on each line were paper banknotes, neatly spaced and numbering in the thousands, enough to fill a small bank vault. Bright pink and black on one side and a handsome blue on the other, each piece of paper moved just slightly, but their collective fluttering reminded Augustus of a deck of cards being gently shuffled or a theater audience clapping in polite measure.

  “Fill your pockets if you’d like,” Nail told Augustus. “Take some for the kiddies.”

  Augustus walked down the center of the room, gaping up at the sea of money that surrounded him. He looked back at Temple, who was grinning. When he drew closer to the wall and touched some of the bills, he discovered that they were slightly damp. All of them were Confederate States of America notes printed in Richmond, Columbia, or New Orleans. Jefferson Davis’s face looked back at him from many of them.

  “You stole all of these?” Augustus asked Nail.

  Nail grimaced, shaking his head.

  “Each and every one of the notes is a cogniac,” Nail said before pointing to the far end of the warehouse, toward a large metal machine topped by a wooden, Z-shaped press. “Homemade, with my very own bogus.”

  His explanation finished, Nail curled his thumbs under his armpits and rocked back and forth on his heels with pride.

  “Nail is a boodler,” Temple said to Augustus. “He floods the South with counterfeits.”

  “And our government pays you no mind?” Augustus asked.

  “No, our government just pays me,” Nail replied. “They wanted to dump cogniacs all over the Secesh. The more shovers I sent to the South with fake notes, the more Chase and Stanton were willing to pay me. People feel lost when they don’t have faith in the money they carry in their pockets. You spread enough bad paper around the South and it’s just as bad as gunshots. But the war winds down and my trade expires and they’ve warned me not to turn green.”

  “Green?” Augustus asked.

  “Stanton and Chase are starting to circulate all of these greenbacks up here, these new national dollars to replace the beauties that the states made. They don’t want me makin’ cogniacs that pass as greenbacks. They’re happy to keep the Secesh on their heels with spooky money, but they want it gone up here.”

  “So you won’t?” Augustus asked.

  “Haven’t made up my mind. I’ve got many mouths to feed in Swampdoodle, and those lads and their pups out there aren’t devoted to me beyond their next meal. Besides, do Stanton and Chase believe that all these mongrels in this Un-united States are going to magically accept a single currency just because some fookin’ poliotricians in Washington tell them to?”

  “Now we’ve got him wound up,” Temple said.

  “Well, one pot of money means you’ve got to believe in a nation, and this ain’t a nation. They’re set on this, though. They chased us out of New York before the war began ’cuz we were makin’ more money up there than the banks themselves. Beautiful days, those. That’s how I met Temple—when he was workin’ Manhattan with Tommy Driscoll. They caught me and Sam Upham. But that story’s for another day. I’ll want to know how you met our esteemed detective as well.”

  Nail swiveled away from Augustus and turned his full attention to Temple.

  “And, you, didn’t you have Pinkerton on you at every moment?”

  “Ah, so you know him?” Temple replied. “He got humbugged, I hope. Fiona, Pint, and Alexander led him to Oak Hill, and that’s when we got out of Foggy Bottom. Did Dilly get here?”

  Nail considered Temple, looking him in the eye. He walked toward him without a word.

  “McFadden, you’re going to rain down grief on all of us with whatever you have in that package. This is a purposeful, muscular lot coming after you.”

  “We don’t even know what we have yet,” Temple said. “Where are they?”

  “On the table near the bogus,” Nail answered, gesturing to the back of the warehouse. “They’re sitting inside that pile of engraving plates—it was the easiest place to put them after Dilly gave them to me. It’s my homemade vault.”

  “Augustus, you look first,” Temple said. “I think fresh eyes will help.”

  The engraving plates sat in a two-foot-high pile on a table next to the Z-shaped press. Augustus lifted several plates off the top of the stack: reverse images of Jeff Davis, the Richmond capitol building, Andrew Jackson, Ceres, slaves hoeing cotton, George Washington, Stonewall Jackson, a Nashville bank, two women sitting atop a cotton bale, horses, John Calhoun, garlands, monuments, Minerva, and denominations of $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, and $500 were delicately and expertly carved into the plates, each of them a mirror of the counterfeit notes drying on the lines.

  “The Secesh use lithographs for their money, but in the North we print it with steel,” Nail shouted from the front of the warehouse. “I used steel plates for my Secesh cogniacs, to help bring our rebellious brothers into the monetary fold. Dry them, crumple them, and dip them in tobacco juice and they can’t tell the difference. Nobody trusts a crisp new note. They like ’em used and dirty.”

  As Augustus removed
more of the plates, an opening appeared in the center of the stack and he spotted the leather satchel at the bottom. He yanked out the bag and withdrew the two diaries from inside. He looked back across the warehouse at Temple.

  “Go ahead, read them,” Temple said. “One of them appears to have been written by a woman. Look at that one first, if you will.”

  It was indeed a woman’s script, each of the letters formed in careful, tight loops. It had been written by someone who had an education, an elaborate vocabulary, and was given over to random enthusiasms; exclamation points ended many of the sentences. Augustus began reading.

  “Where do you get the plates?” Temple asked Nail.

  “We bribed insiders at the banks in the South. Cotton smugglers helped us get them out. Once I had the plates, I published pamphlets for shop owners and bank clerks on how to spot cogniacs. We made sure the books said notes that looked like ours were tried and true and all others weren’t worthy of consideration. And we sent the pamphlets back down South with the smugglers; most of the shops being vigilant for fakes were using my pamphlets.”

  “Well done.”

  “Ta.”

  “How do you know Pinkerton?” Temple asked.

  “Those who got south during the war had to know him. He set up the first spy network for McClellan. And then Stanton came to hate him and he packed it back to Chicago.”

  “So he wasn’t a spy for the government?”

  “Of a sort. Stanton replaced him.”

  “With who?”

  “Lafayette Baker.”

  “L.B.”

  “I heard you had his horse.”

  “And his riding crop,” Temple said, sliding his hand along his thigh.

  “Not many people walk away from encounters with Baker.”

  “And you know Baker from …?”

  “Anybody dealing cogniacs has to know him. Willy Wood has the Secret Service now out of the Old Capitol Prison, and Baker runs it for him and Stanton. Most of what he does is police the District and other cities for phony notes. And for spies. They’ve spent the last four years ripping the shat out of people—killing some of them—in closed rooms at the prison to get information on the Secesh. They pick up anyone on the streets they want to, and Baker has the run of it. But he doesn’t surface with regularity.”