The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  “It’s a little slow for a Sunday afternoon in October.” He leaned back. “But that sofa’s had a lot of use after hours, if you know what I mean.”

  Peter noticed Evangeline eyeing the cushions. Looking for stains?

  “Now, what can I do for you?” asked Farrell.

  Peter said, “As I told you on the phone, I’m interested in doing business with your late uncle’s friend, Morris Bindle.”

  “Nice guy,” said Tommy.

  “Did you know that he has a scrapbook that belonged to Buster?”

  “Scrapbook?” Tommy showed the dog teeth, pretending to smile, perhaps because he was hearing something for the first time. “Buster had a bunch of scrapbooks. Clippings, letters, old stuff like that. Some old ancestor of his filled them. Buster said he planned to show them to Bindle some time.”

  “He did. And Bindle sold a letter out of one of them for Buster.” Peter paused. He could have offered more but he wanted to see if Farrell bit on anything he had said. “Any objections to that?”

  “That he sold something for Buster? Unh … no. Why should I? Bindle was a good friend to Buster. And he keeps his eye on that complex for me.” Farrell swept his hand toward the photograph of the mill. “Having the historical society in there looks good. Looks like something is happening while I get the financing together. Mixed use, restaurants, retail, condos.”

  Peter said, “A big headache to develop such an old place.”

  “Yeah,” said Evangeline. “Much easier to build another strip mall.”

  Tommy Farrell showed her the dog teeth. “Have you ever bought a pizza? Ever needed to get your oil changed? Bought a gallon of milk at Cumberland Farms? Nothing wrong with strip malls.”

  “I didn’t say there was,” she answered.

  “Strip malls are part of my vision. So are wharves. So’s Pike-Perkins.”

  “You have to have a vision,” said Peter.

  “Damn right.”

  “Now, about Uncle Buster,” said Peter.

  “A good old soul. Married late. Never had kids. I tried to visit him once in a while, tried to get him to make out a will. Never got around to it. Died in his recliner, with the ashtray full of butts and the oxygen tank empty and the ball game on TV.”

  “What about the Pikes?” asked Peter. “Are you the only one left?”

  “I’m not a Pike. Buster married my aunt back in the eighties. But she was good to me, so I made sure I was good to Buster after she passed.”

  “Are there any Pikes around?” asked Evangeline.

  “None with the name, but descendants all over New England. We don’t hang out. And Buster had no money to bring out the vultures. I didn’t even know who to call when he died. But now, I get this in the mail—” He held up two tickets to the Bishop Media Box at Fenway Park for game eight on the strip of play-off tickets.

  Peter let out a whistle. Pure envy. “If they beat the Yanks, that will be the first game of the World Series.”

  “Charlie Bishop, the media king. He’s one of Buster’s blood relatives. He wants to bring all the descendants together at the”—Tommy held up the note accompanying the tickets—” ‘mecca of New England.’ “

  “For a kind of memorial to Buster?” asked Evangeline.

  “Either that or he wants to put in his dibs on the house in Millbridge. Everyone gets a piece of the house, once the probate court decides.”

  “Back to our business,” said Peter. “Do you think the rest of the family will come after Bindle if we sell a letter for a lot of money out of that scrapbook?”

  “If Bindle has a bill of sale, I’ll vouch for Buster’s sanity. I saw him a few days before he died, and he was sharp as a tack.” And he flashed the dog teeth one last time.

  “ANY THOUGHTS,” SAID Peter when they got outside.

  “I need a little ocean air to clear my head,” said Evangeline. “Let’s take a stroll on the Cliff Walk. Then we can drive back to Boston and I’ll cook you dinner.”

  “Works for me,” said Peter. “And while we’re strolling, come up with an answer to this: What does a small-time developer from Rhode Island have that someone like Charles Bishop could want so much that he’d waste a World Series ticket trying to get it?”

  “Beats me. You’re the baseball fan.”

  Peter turned the BMW toward Bellevue Avenue, away from the harbor, where old Newport had been born as a haven of religious freedom in the seventeenth century, had outstripped New York as a trading port in the eighteenth, and had then died. Resurrection had come in the 1850s, when a local real estate man decided to cut a road along the cliff that faced the Atlantic. The breeze there was steady and cool on hot afternoons, and the view stretched all the way to England. Within a few years, it had become the most valuable real estate in America, where the rich built their grand summer “cottages” and the Gilded Age went to glitter in the sun.

  Most of the “cottages” were museums now. But names like the Breakers, Kingscote Mansion, and the Elms still resonated with the sound of money in its most refined forms—the clatter of china and glassware, the harmonies of a string quartet playing an evening waltz or late-night ragtime, the thump of a tennis racket striking a ball, and the laughter of the ones with the money, sometimes gentle, sometimes mirthful, sometimes simply smug.

  Along these shaded avenues, behind these high walls, across these broad lawns, a handful of people—just four hundred according to the social register—had balanced themselves for generations atop the pyramid of American capitalism, as secure in their wealth as the mansions were on that granite cliff.

  Whenever he parked on Ruggles Avenue, at the public access to the Cliff Walk, Peter glanced up at the windows of the Breakers and expected to see rich ghosts peering out, wondering why this son of a Boston bricklayer was trespassing on their turf. But the rich ghosts were as dead as their servants. And Peter didn’t let anyone, living or dead, rich or poor, intimidate him out of any neighborhood.

  So he followed Evangeline onto the Cliff Walk.

  “Welcome to one of the fifty places of a lifetime,” she said. “That’s what National Geographic Traveler calls this.”

  “Leave it to you to know that.”

  “A three-and-a-half-mile path along the rim of the Atlantic, right through the backyards of all those glorious monuments to robber-baron empire building.”

  “It’s really a monument to fishermen,” said Peter. “When they saw the houses going up, the locals said no one was going to keep them from fishing on the rocks. So they fought for a path.”

  “Leave it to you to know that,” she said.

  There weren’t many people on the Cliff Walk as the October light faded. A young couple was meandering, stopping every now and then to take in the view and steal a kiss. A mother was hustling along with two squalling kids in a twin stroller, promising in strained but sweet tones that they’d be home soon. A black Chrysler Sebring was pulling up on Ruggles Street and a young man with a digital camera was getting out.

  “Come on.” Evangeline started to move briskly along the path. “Let’s go to the Forty Steps and back.”

  “Are you power walking? No power walking,” said Peter. “Power walking is for people who want to look like they’re exercising when they’re not. Either walk or run.”

  “I’m walking fast. And I’m feeling better.” She picked up her pace. “The smell of salt air and old money always helps.”

  “Reminds you of your family.” Peter followed after her.

  “Tommy Farrell reminds you of yours.”

  “No one in my family was ever that sleazy,” said Peter. “Or that ambitious.”

  “He doesn’t seem too bothered by whatever Buster sold.”

  “And he doesn’t seem to have a clue about Henry Knox and his contemporaries.”

  “So he’s clueless,” she said, “like us.”

  For a while, they didn’t say any more. The Cliff Walk was a place to move and think and look. They would have an hour in the car for ta
lking.

  In some places, the path was right at the edge of the cliff, with a wall to lean on while you watched the waves crashing on the rocks below. In other places, it was a garden path, flanked by evergreens or expanses of lawn from which to view the big houses, which seemed all the more enormous in the gloaming.

  When Peter and Evangeline reached the Forty Steps, he asked her if she wanted to go down onto the rocks.

  “No,” she said. “I shouldn’t have had that Diet Coke. I need to get to a bathroom.”

  “Too slippery down there anyway,” said Peter.

  “And it’s starting to get dark.”

  Just then, a light flashed nearby.

  A young man was photographing the south side of the Breakers in the rose glow of sunset.

  “Evening,” he said as Peter and Evangeline approached.

  He would have been nondescript—bland features, dirty blond hair, T-shirt, Dockers, topsiders—but for the physique. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing with a camera, but it looked as if he did in the weight room. He was all shoulders and pectorals, lean muscle, built by lots of reps with light weights. “Nice night,” said Peter.

  “Would you folks do me a favor?” asked the man. “Would you take a picture of me in front of Breakers?”

  “Sure,” said Peter. “But it’s getting dark. The flash may not fill past ten feet.”

  “Let’s do two. One with, one without.” He handed Peter his Canon Elph digital.

  “I have one of these myself.” Peter raised the camera.

  The man struck a pose. “I’ve been taking pictures all over New England. I want to do a book.”

  “Smile,” said Evangeline.

  The flash fired, and Peter said, “What’s the title?”

  “Digital New England. With themes. I like themes. I’m doing the Cliff Walk at dusk every month.”

  Peter flipped a switch on the back of the camera to look at the picture. “Pretty good,” he said. Then he clicked the “back” button, which showed the Breakers in the last rays of the sun. Then he clicked it again and saw himself and Evangeline on the Cliff Walk.

  The man came over and gently took the camera from Peter’s hand. “Here.” He flipped another switch and turned off the flash. “One more for posterity.”

  And that was that. The young man headed toward the Forty Steps, Peter and Evangeline toward their car.

  But as soon as Peter turned onto Ruggles Street, he sensed that something was wrong. His BMW was tilted to the driver’s side.

  Two flat tires. Not low. Absolutely flattened.

  Evangeline made a crack about the luck needed to hit the same nail with two wheels.

  Peter grabbed the jack, cursed a few times, and went to work. Before long he had the car’s tail in the air and the lugs off.

  “Wow.” The guy with the camera came strolling up. “Twin flats. Don’t see that too often.”

  Peter dropped the last lug nut into his hubcap.

  Evangeline was standing beside the car, holding the spare up with her fingertips.

  “Here, let me help.” The guy took the spare from Evangeline, and as Peter lifted the flat off the car, he raised the spare, slid the tire onto the wheel, and screwed the lugs loosely into place.

  Peter checked the sidewall, but there were no slash marks. So maybe he really had been unlucky enough to drive over the same nail twice. Then he ran his hands over the treads and felt nothing, no nailheads, no holes, just a few pieces of gravel stuck in the treads.

  “That’s the damnedest thing,” he said.

  “Damnedest things always seem to happen at the damnedest times. My name is Stanley, by the way, Stanley Benson.”

  Peter introduced himself and Evangeline, and she thanked Stanley Benson, too.

  Then Stanley Benson said. “Why don’t I take the flat up to that gas station in town, get it fixed, and bring it back. Meanwhile, you can jack up the front and have it ready.”

  Evangeline said, “The station must have a ladies’ room.”

  “Most do.” Without waiting for Peter to say yes or no, Stanley Benson picked up the flat rear tire and flung it into his trunk. Then he opened his passenger door for Evangeline.

  “Do you want anything?” she asked Peter.

  “No. Unh … do you really have to—?”

  “Yes. I really do,” she said, and she got into Benson’s black Sebring.

  And Peter made a snap decision: This guy is all right. She’ll be safe with him. And he watched them drive away.

  Then he made one of those after-the-fact justifications to convince himself that he had made a good decision, even if a voice in the back of his head was saying otherwise: If Evangeline is with him, Stanley Benson won’t drive off with the tire, and the guy in the gas station will fix it faster, because Evangeline can be very persuasive. Besides, she’s traveled the world on her own. She’s relied hundreds of times on the kindness of strangers. She has a sixth sense about people.

  So Peter tightened the nuts on the rear wheel, then lowered the car and took the jack to the front and fitted it under the frame.

  And then a thought struck him: If he believed, even for a moment, that the guy might steal the tire, why would he let Evangeline get into the car with him?

  So he went back to convincing himself: They were in Newport. There was no crime in Newport. Crime happened in big cities, not tourist towns in October. But once upon a time, Newport had been home to pirates, slavers, privateers, troublemakers of every kind….

  SEVEN

  August 1787

  WILL PIKE REACHED RHODE Island in five days.

  Through scores of towns and across dozens of rivers, he had prayed that the winds would be contrary, for a schooner making six knots around the clock could surely get to Newport before a coach that stopped each night.

  In South Ferry, Will took passage across Narragansett Bay, bound for the ancient capital that was renowned for a fine harbor, for religious tolerance, and since the Revolution, for hard times, too.

  Newport had been occupied by the British and then by the French, and while one was enemy and the other ally, neither had done any good for the seafaring economy that once thrived there. As the ferry master said, “Only a few shippers made it through the war, mostly the ones who was good at smugglin’ and privateerin’.”

  Will asked if Thornton Corliss was one of them.

  “Was and is. Was and is. One of the last shippers to own a wharf, so he must be makin’ money somehow.”

  It was raining when the ferry docked, and getting dark earlier each night.

  Even in August, the New Englander could sense the coming of winter in the shortening of the days. And Will knew that if he did not find his brother, his reputation would face a lifelong winter in the minds of men who mattered.

  He had swallowed his trepidations so often recently that they had become a source of sustenance. He swallowed them once more, picked up his bag, and started walking. He made his way along the waterfront, past the taverns and counting houses and working wharves, and the loudest noise he heard was the patter of the rain.

  What the ferryman said was true. Newport’s day had passed.

  Lights burned in a ship chandler’s. A few people hurried with their heads down in the deepening darkness. A lone fishing boat unloaded a catch. But it was not until he approached Corliss Wharf that Will sensed any life.

  Laughter, fiddle music, and golden lamplight poured from a tavern, along with a staggering of sailors and their doxies. And if sailors were carousing, thought Will, it meant that they had gotten paid, which meant that a ship had come in. He needed to go only a short distance down the wharf to find the name Pretty Eve on the transom of a big black-hulled schooner.

  And his trepidations rose again, like the bilious puke that woke him that last morning in Philadelphia. His brother had gotten there first.

  No lights burned aboard the ship, so Will turned to the tavern.

  The sign hanging over the door showed two eyes looking
in opposite directions and the words WALLEYED FRANK’S above a frothing tankard. Will wiped his hands down the front of his waistcoat, then stepped into the tobacco smoke and noise.

  And every eye turned to him. Some were bleary, others sharp. Some looked him down from hat to boots; others looked first at the burlap bag in his hand. Even the fiddle player glanced up but kept scratching out a jig that kept a pair of sailors dancing.

  This was no City Tavern, thought Will. It wasn’t even Conkey’s. It was the kind of place his brother had told him about, “where a man needed a knife in his belt and a third eye in the back of his head.”

  Will had hoped that his brother might be among the drinkers. But there was no North Pike to be seen. So he went to the bar, dropped the bag on the floor between his feet, and asked for a pint of ale.

  The publican was bullwhip-skinny and seemed to be looking around you when he looked right at you. This, Will surmised, was Frank. He said, “Two shillin’s.”

  Will flipped a coin from his waistcoat and a mug appeared on the bar. As he reached for it, a hand came from behind him and grabbed it.

  The hand belonged to a sailor with a chest like a cask, breath like bilge, and a face that looked like three bungholes driven into a hogshead. “It’s custom at Wall-Eyed Frank’s for strangers to buy everyone a drink.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have the money to buy but one, sir.” As soon as he said it, Will knew it sounded too polite.

  “Then this one’s for me.” The sailor slid the mug toward himself.

  “Let the lad alone,” said Wall-Eyed Frank, and from beneath the bar, a club appeared and came whistling down on the sailor’s wrist.

  The hand flew back, Will snatched the mug before it spilled, and the sailor lunged at Frank, who cocked the club again: “Come closer, and your brains’ll be on the floor.”

  And the fiddler kept fiddling, as if this were all in a night beneath the sign of the wall-eyes.

  The sailor spat, looked at his two friends in the corner, jerked his head at Will.

  “I’m warnin’ you, Curly Bill Barton,” said Frank, whose wall-eyes seemed to miss nothing. “This stranger paid me coin. Hard money, which be what Old Man Corliss likes.”