The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  “We told them we’d try. The real fight will come if it gets out of committee.”

  “Making a big splash may be the only way it gets out of committee. So I’m officially pissed at you.” She got into the car and slammed the door.

  He went around to the other side, grabbed the handle, and saw stars. At the same moment, he heard a crunching sound inside his head. At least it seemed to be inside his head in the half-second of consciousness that remained to him.

  RINGING. NOT INSIDE his head but nearby.

  Where was it? Where was the phone?

  Where was he? In the driver’s seat of his own car, but where?

  And the phone? He fumbled in the pocket beside the driver’s seat, found the phone, flipped it open.

  “Hello?”

  “Peter?” It was Evangeline. “Peter. Are you all right?”

  “I think so … where are you?” He looked out the window. “Where am I?”

  He was parked in the lot of a little general store next to the Connecticut River, in a perfect little white square of a town.

  “You’re in Guildhall, Vermont,” she said. “And I’m all right.”

  “Evangeline, what’s—?”

  “Listen, Fallon”—a male voice came on the line—”it’s time to get serious.”

  “What? Who is this?”

  “Find that Constitution.”

  “Who hit me?”

  “I did. And I drove your car to Guild Hall.”

  “Is this Mercer?”

  “No. But you can thank him for saving you in Portland. You’ve made deals with a lot of other so-called good Americans. But we come first. We have insurance.”

  “Is this Batter? You’re the brains, and Mercer’s the muscle, right?”

  “Find that Constitution, then call your girlfriend’s cell.” Click.

  Peter jumped out of his car, crouched down, slid his hand around, feeling … feeling, under the fenders, along the rocker panels … and there, under the rear bumper: a global positioning tracker.

  Just the kind of gadget that a well-armed woodsman would like. Had they planted it in the gun club parking lot? Or during that little dustup on the road?

  It had given them the eyes to watch him go from the gun camp to Portland to the Sawyer River. Then what? Had they had run out of patience because he went to a site they’d already mined? Did they think he was just touring with his girlfriend and calling it work? Did they think that kidnapping Evangeline would make him work harder?

  At least they had been in Portland to take care of one Rhode Island thug.

  And that gave him a thought.

  He called his old friend Detective Scavullo of the Harvard police force and asked him to run that Rhode Island plate number he had gotten that morning.

  EVANGELINE WAS CRANING her neck to see under her blindfold. She had worked through terror to anger at how tightly her hands were bound and finally she’d found her way to some good honest sarcasm.

  “You know,” she said toward the front seat, “kidnapping is a federal crime.”

  “You’re not kidnapped,” said the voice from the passenger seat, the one that had been doing all the talking. “You can get out right here if you want.”

  “Like hell she can.” That was Mercer’s voice, coming from behind the wheel.

  “The Constitution says something about unlawful seizures, too,” she said.

  “Shut the fuck up,” snapped Mercer, “or we’ll gag you.”

  “There go my rights of free speech.”

  A backhand struck her in the face.

  “No hittin’,” said the other one.

  “Fuck it, Scrawny. She pisses me off,” said Mercer. “Let’s just throw her out on her head.”

  Evangeline swallowed her own blood and said, “If you do that, you’ll never get the Constitution.”

  “She’s right,” said the other one.

  The blow had knocked the blindfold loose. Evangeline angled her head so that she could see under the edge. She recognized one of the other ATV riders. He was about half the size of Mercer—hence the nickname—and had the tattoo of a bullet on his cheek. There was a rank man-smell about both of them—cigarettes and sweat and beer farts that hadn’t quite cleared the air.

  “Your driver’s license says you’re from New York.” Scrawny was pawing through her purse. “We’ll only kill you if you answer wrong: Empire or Nation?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Evil Empire or Red Sox Nation? You’re one or the other.”

  They both laughed.

  “Oh, shit,” she said, “just shoot me now.”

  Mercer growled, “I might, lady. You Maced me yesterday. I didn’t sleep too good. I’m in a bad fuckin’ mood. So shut the fuck up.”

  This, she decided, was not going well.

  She peered out at the road. They passed a sign: Route 2. It ran across the top of Vermont and New Hampshire and into the Maine woods. The sun was behind them.

  “So … we’re going back to Maine then?” she said.

  Mercer slammed on the brakes. “What did I tell you?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “You’d better keep going or you might get a ticket.”

  PETER WAS STILL in Guildhall.

  Under different circumstances he might have noticed how beautiful it was, how tiny, how New England—two churches, a library, a general store, and a building that served as town office, town hall, and post office. The library was a yellow Victorian house. The rest were Colonial—neat, white, perfect.

  Peter punched in the numbers for Judge Trask, and while the phone rang he walked onto the bridge looking for better cell reception. The Connecticut River widened quickly here, and white water riffled over the rocks.

  A car drove by and some smart-ass yelled, “Don’t jump.”

  Small chance of that. This thing had just gotten very personal.

  Peter still didn’t think there was a way to straighten it out in three days, but he wouldn’t rest until Evangeline was safe and he had the Constitution and the world knew about it, in that order.

  Judge Trask listened to Peter’s story and said, “That son of a bitch.”

  “Batter?”

  “Mercer. He was supposed to follow you, protect you if you got into trouble.”

  “The way he did in Portland?”

  “Precisely. Now let me counsel you against calling the police. Mercer and his pals … they’re armed like a modern militia. I think your girlfriend will be safe, unless you double-cross them.”

  “Are you part of this?”

  “I influence them less than you think. Now, do you have a pen and paper?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Write down an address in Peacham, Vermont. I want you to go there now. Ask for Kate Morgan. She might put your mind at ease. She knows a lot.”

  “Who is she?”

  “A friend, and she has some pretty interesting friends of her own.”

  “Will they help get Evangeline back?” Peter tried to keep the anger out of his voice, but he couldn’t.

  “I’m trying to help you, Mr. Fallon” said the judge. “I want this to end well. So go there. Kate will help, too, however she can. And tune to Kelly Cutter’s radio show while you drive. She reads e-mails at five thirty. Listen. You might understand me a little more.”

  PETER PICKED UP Route 2 heading west, clicked on the radio, pressed the SEEK function and let it run until he found Kelly Cutter, beating the rightie drum on a hundred and fifty stations from Maine to Florida.

  “It shames me that this repeal movement began in New England,” she was saying. “I’m from New England. And we like to think that we have what they call character. So how did we let some Democrat Congresswoman push this? We should know better.”

  Nothing wrong with trying new ideas, thought Peter. Then he said to the radio: “It’s how we get at the goddamn truth.”

  Kelly kept talking: “We live through seven lousy months, just to get five good ones and call our
selves lucky. We take pride in our historical roots, but we elect Democrats like Ted Kennedy and RINOs like Olympia Snow while people in the rest of the country decide that the only New England patriots are the ones playing football….”

  Toxic, thought Peter. The woman was absolutely toxic. She went on like this every day, on every subject, doing her best to poison every well of public discourse.

  “But you know, folks,” she said, “there are patriots in New England. There’s a judge in Maine, who sent me an e-mail yesterday … and that brings me to ‘E-Mails from America.’ You won’t want to miss this one. Right after the news. So stay tuned.”

  Peter’s cell phone rang. He turned down the radio.

  It was Scavullo. “I hear that you were at a murder scene day before yesterday.”

  “It seems like years ago, but, yeah.”

  “What are you after this time.”

  “The usual … pearls of wisdom from the past.”

  “So you can put a few more around your girlfriend’s neck?”

  Peter thought about telling him everything, but Scavullo was too much the cop, a Massachusetts Statie who retired to join Harvard’s criminal investigation unit. Peter had met him on the Shakespeare manuscript case and trusted him, liked the no-nonsense attitude and the smile that never quite happened, respected the strength compacted into the middleweight’s body. Still, Peter kept his mouth shut about Evangeline but told him everything about the draft.

  “Sounds valuable,” said Scavullo. “Worth more than just money these days.”

  “Every time they try to change the Constitution, somebody starts wondering what the Founding Fathers would say, including the guy in the black Chrysler Sebring.”

  “It’s a company car,” said Scavullo.

  “Company car? What company?”

  “Registered to Jarvis Real Estate Industries, of Newport, Rhode Island. And it’s not a stolen plate.”

  “Is there a Mr. Jarvis?”

  “Clinton C. Jarvis owns the company.”

  “Maybe I should start with Jarvis. Anything else?” asked Peter.

  “Not only is he a national real estate developer, he’s a writer, too. He’s coming out with something called The Rebirth of a Nation. I looked it up on Amazon. It’s scheduled to ship at the end of the month.”

  “Are there reviews? PW? Kirkus?”

  “No.”

  “Publisher?”

  “Revelation Press.”

  “Vanity,” said Peter. “That explains the lack of trade reviews.”

  “Here’s the blurb: ‘Do you believe that America has lost her way? Do you believe that the Judeo-Christian foundation on which she was built is crumbling? Do you believe that we need to destroy the temple in order to rebuild it in three days? Here, in straight talk, is the vision of Clinton C. Jarvis. Follow it and take back your children’s education, your legal system, your country itself. This is the book for all right-thinking Americans, from Main Line to Born Again, from the lovers of the Latin Mass to those who like guitars at consecration, from the Orthodox to the Reform.’ “

  “Right-thinking?” said Peter. “Or far-right?”

  “Well, there’s one of those promo quotes on the site, too, from Kelly Cutter.”

  “Our favorite rightie,” said Peter. “What does she say?”

  “A lot of blah blah about a good American writing a great book. She’s probably a friend of his,” said Scavullo. “She makes it sound pretty good. I might buy it.”

  “You do that. I might try to find Clinton Jarvis.”

  “Be careful,” said Scavullo. “And call me if you need help.”

  Ten minutes of news, weather, and commercials carried Peter past St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and up the hill toward Danville.

  Meanwhile, he tried to factor the religious right into the equation. Had Clinton Jarvis sent his minions to kill the people who were after the Constitution? But why? Wouldn’t he want it, too, just like everyone else?

  “AND, WE’RE BACK,” said Kelly Cutter. “As I was saying before the break, there’s a judge in Maine. He e-mails me regularly. Here’s his latest.”

  Peter turned up the volume.

  Kelly read: “ ‘We’re six states, jammed into the upper right corner of the American map. We’re a small place compared to the rest of the country, but we boast an identity so powerful that it seems to rise from the landscape itself.’ “

  Ain’t that the truth, thought Peter.

  “ ‘Our mountains are worn down by time, yet the tallest of them harbors the harshest climate in the world. Our foothills and forests close off the long vistas, but the seaside and the mountain notches offer views to infinity. Most of our rivers are twisty and narrow, but so powerful that they gave birth to America’s industrial revolution.

  “ ‘It’s a landscape of contradictions, which reflects the people who live here. New Englanders can be stubborn, aloof, distant, but they are always reliable. We made America’s first journey from agriculture to manufacture to high tech, but we’re not known for adapting to new ways. We organized our governments around the town meeting, the heart of true conservatism, and in many ways, we remain a conservative people, but we’ve advanced some of the most liberal political ideas in history. We have sunk stubborn roots in rocky soil, but history is filled with tales of New Englanders settling other parts of the country and ranging the globe in pursuit of wealth.

  “ ‘A real New Englander will tell you that our Constitution is not a tool for politicians hoping to make points, whether it’s a cynical Republican pushing flag-burning amendments because his poll numbers are down or a do-gooding Democrat who decides to protect us from ourselves by banning guns.

  “ ‘The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they made that Constitution difficult to amend, so let’s think hard before we mess with it.’

  “Now, folks,” said Kelly in a sultry voice, “I might not agree with him on everything—he did imply that liberals had a few good ideas—but I know a good man when I hear one, and I wanted you to hear him, too. So I’ve just read for two minutes and ten seconds. But, Judge, honey, about that flag-burning amendment …”

  Peter dialed up some music and kept driving.

  IN THE HILLSIDE strip of town called West Danville, he turned off the main road and headed south. He was driving away from Evangeline. He did not like it, but it’s what the judge had told him to do, and Kelly Cutter was right—you know a good man when you hear him, no matter which side he’s on.

  So Peter headed deeper into what he called the Vermont dream.

  There were locals in Vermont, natives, hardworking paycheck-to-paycheckers whose grandfathers had been there a hundred years before. They worked the dairy farms and the granite quarries and kept the place running. But there were a lot of flatlanders, too, refugees from every variety of urban rat race who thought it would be just great to own a small business in a beautiful place. Some of them would leave when their first Vermont winter turned to mud season. Some would go when they found out that running a B & B was harder than managing a stock portfolio. But many stayed and kept dreaming.

  You could feel the dream in the roads that waved and curved through pastures and woodlots and ran by antique shops and along the white fences of gentlemen’s farms. And every road seemed to run beside a stream, and all the streams ran toward the Connecticut on the east or Champlain on the west. Nature created the logic of everything in Vermont, and man, if he was smart, conformed to it.

  Peter drove ten miles without seeing a traffic light. Then, just south of the hamlet of Peacham, he came to a big red barn. Faded letters—in the style of the early 1900s—covered the side: FULLER’S FARRIER AND BLACKSMITH. A much newer sign above the door: MORGAN’S ANTIQUES AND FIREARMS.

  The BMW crunched across the gravel drive. Peter got out and cocked his head. Nothing. Exquisite. Silence at sunset. There was a fresh, pungent scent in the air: a cord of new-cut firewood stacked near the barn. It mingled with the scent of something sweeter, some
one’s evening fire, curling smoke into the sky.

  Beside the door a cork bulletin board was splattered with thumbtacks and papers, leaflets and circulars. There were the smiling senators again, and that caption: “These people want your guns.” There was a bake sale at the Congregational Church in Danville, a slide lecture at the Grafton Library, a meeting of the 4-H in Peacham.

  What the hell was he doing here? Trusting the judge.

  He pushed open the door. And he was greeted by a big brown bear staring straight at him.

  Then he heard the metal clang of a stove door.

  He looked toward the sound and saw more stuffed animals—an owl, a deer’s head on the wall, next to a moose.

  And guns. Cases and racks and walls of guns. All kinds—flintlocks, cap and ball, what looked like a Spencer carbine. Old guns. New guns. And not just guns. There were lithographs, engravings, old leather chairs, a mahogany chest of drawers … half an acre of stuff.

  “Beer?” The voice came from somewhere near the woodstove.

  Peter said, “Yeah. Sure.”

  He heard the soft thump of a little refrigerator door, and then a woman stood with two longnecks twined in her fingers.

  She was big but not burly, solid but not butch: a starched white shirt and jeans, short hair, lots of jewelry—rings on most of her fingers, a nice belt buckle, and turquoise pendants dangling from her lobes.

  She ambled over and held out a beer. “Did you get tickets to the ball game?”

  “Hunh?”

  “Game eight on the play-off strip, first game of the World Series on Sunday. My father brings all the interested parties together at Fenway, mecca of New England, over the one thing he thinks we can all agree on.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Kate Morgan, daughter of Charles Bishop. I use my mother’s name, so as not to be confused with my father, who’s using you to find the lost Constitution and using his television empire to repeal the Second Amendment.”

  Peter looked around at the guns. “I take it you don’t agree.”

  “When Charles Bishop found out he had a gay daughter who liked guns, it blew his mind.”

  “What part? The gay or the guns?”