The Whiskey Rebel

by David Liss

  Soon Burr rose and came over to my table. There were still men where he’d sat, but they seemed to have enough to say that they did not require his presence at the moment.

  “How may I help you, Captain?”

  “It is rather important, I’m afraid, and I must keep it between the two of us. I had hoped you might be able to tell me more about Joan Maycott.”

  “I know little of her myself,” he said. “She appeared upon the scene less than a year ago. She is a fashionable lady, a wealthy woman, and a widow. She and her husband traded his soldier’s debt for land out west, where he made something of a success as a whiskey distiller, but after he died she returned to the East. If pressed, she will speak against Hamilton’s whiskey tax on this account.” He shrugged to indicate he had no more to add.

  “When did she move to the West?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She mentioned to me once having lived in New York with her husband during the ratification of the Constitution, so it could not have been so long ago.”

  I thought about this for a moment. “How did her husband die?”

  “She has never chosen to speak of it, and a man is never inclined to inquire too deeply of a dead husband to a pretty widow. There is no shortage of opportunities for a man out west to meet his death, and yet…” His voice trailed off.

  “You have the impression that there is some bitterness there,” I proposed. “That she believes there was an injustice.”

  His eyes brightened. “That is exactly right.” He looked over his shoulder.

  “I see you must return,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “But I have told you nothing.”

  I shrugged, and that seemed to be enough for him. We rose and shook hands. He pretended not to see how badly cut and scraped was my hand and went back to his men. As he did so, I thought about how interesting he was. He could not be ignorant of my reputation, of the things said about my past, and yet he chose to attend to me in public. He could not help but notice that hardly a day went by that I did not have some injury. It seemed to me that Burr was a man like myself, one who enjoyed courting a little bit of scandal, so long as it was only a little bit. I hoped this tendency would not lead him into any great difficulties.

  In the meantime, though he thought he had told me little, he had in reality explained a great deal. Mrs. Maycott and her husband would not have traded war debt for land had they not been needy, and yet she returned from the West, after only a few years, a wealthy woman. I did not think any amount of success as a whiskey distiller could have produced significant money in so short a span. Either she and her husband had, in that time, inherited a fortune or there was far more to her past than she was making public. One thing seemed certain: Something terrible had happened to her husband out west, and if he had traded his debt for land, it seemed to me likely he had traded, directly or indirectly, with the largest and most energetic architect of these exchanges: William Duer.

  I had hired a horse in advance, so I had little to do but pass the time. I dared not sleep, lest I fail to awake in time. I therefore waited impatiently until, when the clock struck one and the rest of the world was abed, I rode out to Greenwich Village and Duer’s estate, where I did some naughty things to make that speculator’s life uncomfortable, and did them without being seen or heard. I returned late, nearly four in the morning. There was no point in attempting more sleep. I would have to begin in an hour or two at the most, so I sat in my room, drank a bottle of port, and rehearsed over and over again what I must do.

  Perhaps I fell asleep for a quarter hour or so, but when I heard the watchman call out four of the clock, I roused myself, splashed my face with cold water, and set out to make my mark upon William Duer.

  The plan was simple. I would visit Duer’s agents one by one, and then visit Corre’s Hotel, usually a venue for music and now the place where the Million Bank was due to launch. Perhaps I would see Duer there, perhaps not. I did not know which I hoped for. If Duer did not show, perhaps Pearson would not show either. If Pearson did appear, he would see Duer’s plan already in disarray and would refrain from investing. All of which, of course, depended upon my doing what yet needed doing.

  So thinking, I headed out into the cold morning.

  Speculators are an early rising lot, so it was not yet five when I visited the first of my agents, Mr. James Isser, whose removal I believed would be done without difficulty. He was a young man who lived in a busy boardinghouse on Cedar Street. My observations indicated that many men came and went from the house with regularity, particularly in the early morning hours, so, having secured a key from a chatty maid who did not mind the pockets of her skirt, I was able to enter the premises and ascend the stairs to his rooms without notice.

  I knocked upon his door and heard a faint scuffling from within. A moment later the door opened a crack and there stood a small man, a bit too fond, perhaps, of beef and beer for his young age. His eyes were red and narrow and rather dull.

  “You look sleepy,” I said, and shoved him hard in the chest.

  He stumbled backward into his room, so I stepped in, closed and locked the door, and punched the man in his soft stomach. I did so not to be cruel but to keep him from crying out.

  Quickly, I took a burlap sack from my jacket and slipped it over his head. He started to cry out again, and though I had no wish to hurt him, I had my own difficulties to think of, so I struck him once more in the stomach. I did this in part with distaste, for I am not a brutal man, and later, I knew, I would regret hurting an innocent. I always did, but in the moment I only acted.

  “My advice,” I said, my voice even and calm, “is that you not speak.”

  I grabbed his arms and tied them behind his back. He hardly resisted, not having any notion of who I was or what I wanted. I believe it never quite occurred to him that he ought to fight me. Having immobilized and blinded him, I now placed a gag in his mouth, imposed over the sack.

  “Mrs. Greenhill’s husband has sent me to you, Mr. Jukes. It is a matter of revenge, for it is a cruel thing, cruel indeed, to violate a man’s bed with his wife.”

  He mumbled and grunted, no doubt telling me that he knew no Mrs. Greenhill and was not Mr. Jukes. I, of course, pretended I could not understand him.

  “You are to leave that married woman alone, you rascal. This shall be your last warning.” Having finished my task, I departed. Upon his inevitable discovery, he would tell his tale, and it would be perceived as a simple misunderstanding. When all of Duer’s agents suffered from such misunderstandings, it would be clear that something more sinister had transpired, but by then it would be too late.

  I shan’t describe each encounter, for I used the same technique four times with the four unmarried agents. I had planned my course in advance so I could move with all deliberate speed from one to the next.

  The remaining two agents were married men with children in their homes, and I would not break open their houses and assault them where they lived. To do so would be dangerous and unseemly. Instead, I dealt with each according to his personality.

  Mr. Geoffrey Amesbury liked to go by coach each day to his place of work. This day he would take a coach to Duer’s estate, so it was no difficult thing to pay his regular coachman to fall ill and pay a substitute to take him to be robbed. The thieves I hired-a visit to the area of Peck’s Slip was all that was required to find them-would take his money and his clothes and separate him from his coach, but he was not to be harmed.

  The final victim, Mr. Thomas Hunt, lived in a large house with his wife, four children, and an elderly mother, so there could be no safe and easy way to detain him at home. Because I could not determine how he intended to get to Mr. Duer’s house, I was forced to deal with him somewhat more creatively.

  Mr. Hunt was in the prime of his manhood, tall and well made with thick brown hair and the sort of face that women find pleasing. It is not surprising that a man of his stripe had married a pretty lady, a
nd he was known to be dedicated to his wife, but such was his regard for the gentle sex that his dedication was too large to be contained by a single woman, no matter how worthy. I suspected it must be so, and a little idle coffeehouse gossip confirmed my suspicions.

  Thus it was I procured the service of a handsome woman from a local bawdy house. When Mr. Hunt left his home at eight in the morning, he was approached by the lady I had hired. She stopped him on the street and made some polite inquiries of direction, and then, once the conversation had begun, asked if he were not Thomas Hunt, the well-known speculator, who had been pointed out to her so often. She spoke those words as though she regarded stock trading as only slightly less remarkable and heroic than minotaur slaying. She had, she said, a large sum to invest and she knew not what to do with it, and perhaps so great and successful a man as he could advise her on how best to order these troublesome dollars. He told her he would be happy to advise her on the matter and would call upon her tomorrow, or perhaps even later today, but that this moment was for him bespoken. Alas, she answered, she was but in town for the day before she returned to Boston, and required an agent in New York immediately. If he could spare just half an hour she would be eternally grateful. He removed his watch and studied it with great anxiety but, once he had taken the time to calculate his duties and responsibilities, found he did have half an hour to give her, though no more.

  I watched from a safe distance as the lady led him to an empty house, one for sale, the use of which she had acquired for the day. Left to his own devices, Mr. Hunt would be occupied well past half an hour, I had no doubt. A man means to dally for but a short time, but when he is with a willing lady the hands of the clock move at a most unreliable pace. A quarter hour becomes two or three. One’s morning appointment is forgotten as noon comes and goes. Should these events come paired with a bottle or two of good claret, then so much the better. Mr. Thomas Hunt would not be available for Duer’s service, and he could blame no one but himself.

  Thus it was no great matter to procure a bucket of beer and a tankard and find a comfortable place to sit while watching the door to the house I had rented, to make certain that Mr. Thomas Hunt, hunter of whores and dollars, remained where I intended. Yes, it was cold, and yes, flurries of snow fell upon me and into my beer, but I did not mind. I was a man hardened by the trials of revolution, and a chill in the air meant nothing.

  So it was that at fifteen or twenty minutes to nine, still enough time for him to arrive at his destination without much difficulty, the door to the house flew open, and Mr. Thomas Hunt emerged, hurriedly putting his arm through the sleeve of his greatcoat. My good whore, not so much dressed as her man, with her shift falling off her shoulder, tried to hold him back, but Mr. Thomas Hunt brushed her off, and rudely too, more roughly than I like to see women treated. Mr. Thomas Hunt, it was now quite clear to me, was a bad man, and though I had better than half my beer remaining, and leaving it upon the street meant I could forget ever again seeing my deposit, I nevertheless heeded the call of duty and sprang forward.

  “Great God, sir!” I called out. “Mr. Hunt, Mr. Thomas Hunt, I say, you are in danger, sir. Go no further, take not another step, Mr. Thomas Hunt, for your life is in the balance!”

  He looked up and saw me running toward him, running with concern plastered upon my face, and he must have recognized in me the countenance of a revolutionary hero, for he paused in his tracks long enough for me to catch him.

  “Thank Jesus, you’re safe,” I breathed, holding on to his arm. “They are coming, and you must hide.” I began to lead him back up the steps to my rented house.

  Now he resisted. “Who are you, sir? Who is after me? Of what do you speak?”

  I faced the not inconsiderable problem of having no idea of what I spoke. I struggled within myself for an answer. I don’t know that I took more than a few seconds, if that long, and then I gestured toward the street with my head. “Men you have cheated,” I said.

  He was a speculator, and it seemed to me likely that he’d cheated someone. Indeed, he blanched, and without further explanation he moved toward the entrance of the house. Inside, the foyer was stripped of paintings and decorative objects, but the wallpaper and the floor covering, painted like Dutch tiles, were still there, and the house seemed a bit sterile if not precisely empty. Our footsteps echoed, however, as we pushed farther inside.

  At the end of the hallway stood the whore, waiting to see what happened next. “I tried to hold him,” she said, sounding bored by her own words, “but he wouldn’t be held.”

  I’d no time to signal her to keep her silence, and she’d not read the commands upon my face or even the irritation that came after. As for Mr. Thomas Hunt, he looked between us and in an instant understood that the danger he faced came from me and from no other quarter. He attempted to push past me, shoving hard into me with his shoulder, but I held my ground and held Mr. Thomas Hunt fast, taking his arm in my grip.

  “Just keep your peace and be still, and nothing will happen to you,” I said.

  “Whoreson,” he answered, only not in a calm and quiet voice, as it might appear on the page. No, it was loud and shrill and full of fight and fire, more like “ Whoreson!” I suppose, and he-the true whoreson if one of us must be so nominated-made to stick his fingers in my eyes. It was unexpected, vicious, and resourceful. He came at me, his fingers extended like an eagle’s talons. If I had not thrust a knee into his testicles, I would be a blind man today.

  Like his companion before him, Mr. Thomas Hunt found himself tied quite handily, his arms behind him. I had no need of his silence, we having the house to ourselves, so I concentrated only upon his hands and feet, and with him so detained, I dragged him into the front sitting room and put him upon a settee, the house being sold with some furnishings intact.

  “Keep him here until two P.M.,” I said to the woman. “Then you may let him go.” To the man I said, “When she unties you, lay not a finger upon her in vengeance, or she will come to me and I will make you pay for it.”

  “If I am to be kept prisoner,” he said, “may I have the woman’s services at least?”

  He was a practical man, and I could not fault him for it. “If he’s still interested at two this afternoon, let him enjoy himself. And then,” I added, for it never hurts to let a man know that his enemy understands how things lie, “he may return to his wife.”

  R umors of the impending success of the Million Bank had been spreading throughout the city for some weeks, so I cannot say with any certainty that if I had not hindered Duer he might still have stumbled. As it happened, he arrived at Corre’s Hotel nearly an hour late, at almost eleven o’clock. I never heard what happened at his home, but I imagined the scene. First, perhaps, Duer would be tapping his foot, waiting impatiently for at least one of his agents to show himself, yet not a one appeared. Then a servant would come running inside with the most horrific announcement. It would seem that every carriage in the house had suffered a breaking of the wheels, and, the doors to their stables having been thrown open, the horses had all wandered away. Oh, such carelessness, and on so important a day too! It was almost as though some malevolent spirit had visited Greenwich in the middle of the night to effect the chaos. With no other option, Duer and his man Whippo would be forced to find what horses they could and ride to the city. I suppose they had been in hopeful expectation of discovering their agents in place, handily purchasing every bit of stock available, their own lateness costing nothing more than the pleasure of observing a successful operation. Their arrival proved to them an unhappy truth.

  Corre’s Hotel was packed full of the angry and the agitated, a mob to be contained by a table at which sat three cashiers, far too few for the demands put upon them. The Million Bank had hoped to launch successfully, but not so frantically, not with the verve and enthusiasm that had marked the launch of the Bank of the United States the previous summer. Yet here was a throng of angry, pushing men, each hoping to buy riches cheap.

  New
York was a city of foreigners, and on hand to purchase stocks were Germans and Dutchmen and Italians and Spaniards and Jews. There were the confident and loud speculators who haunted the Merchants’ Coffeehouse, but there were other men too, more timid men of more respectable businesses who, having watched the excitement of Hamilton’s bank, hoped now to profit for themselves. There were also men of a lower order, men who perhaps brought their life savings in the hopes of, in a single moment, changing their lives forever.

  It seemed the only significant group not to be found in this hodgepodge was Duer’s agents. In the press of men, I observed this absence with some satisfaction. I was abandoned and alone, beaten and abused, despised by the world, but I had done my duty for my nation.

  From across the room I observed a new face enter into the lobby of Corre’s. It was Pearson, looking overwhelmed and a little bit like a child who has lost his minder in a crowded market. Did he know I’d already escaped his prison? I doubted it. And there he was, a man I hated above all others, the man who had murdered my greatest friend, ruined my life, married the woman I loved, and made her life into an unendurable torment. Here he was, having freshly imprisoned me, come to invest the last of his money, but upon scanning the room, it was clear he was dismayed by what he saw. All was madness and chaos, with no sign of Duer’s agents or Duer himself. Pearson and I were separated by perhaps fifty feet and perhaps a thousand men, but for an instant, across the press of bodies and the cries of impatience, our eyes locked.

  I cannot claim to understand what crossed his face-perhaps something like surprise and horror. He must have understood several things at once: that I had escaped his inescapable dungeon, that I was far more dangerous an enemy than he had reckoned, and that things would be different from now on. He also must have understood that money invested in the Million Bank was money lost. He understood that trusting Duer had been a colossal error. And he understood something else: that knowing what I did about who he was and what he had done-to me, to Fleet, to his own wife-I had still given him good advice. He stared at me now, nothing but derision and contempt upon his face for the man who had saved him, and then he left.