The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  Scrawny snickered at that.

  Batter almost smiled. Then he turned back to Kelly. “I listen to you every day. You’re on our side, right?”

  “I believe the Second Amendment means what it says,” she answered.

  “We’re all on your side,” said Peter. “We’ve just proved it. We have Kelly working with us. We believe what you believe. So let Evangeline go.”

  Batter stood there, thinking it over for a moment; then his eye fell on Kate Morgan. “One of the other rules of good guerrilla warfare is to know your enemy.”

  “Enemy?” Kate pointed to herself. “Me?”

  “Your father.” Batter climbed aboard the ATV. He revved it once or twice and it whined like a lawn mower. “You dragged us all the way down here from Maine, and you don’t have the draft. I’m pissed.”

  “We’re not done looking here,” said Peter.

  “Looks to me like you are.” Batter aimed a finger at Fallon. “Tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night … what?” asked Peter.

  “The draft. In my hands.”

  “People have been looking for years,” answered Peter. “What makes you think I’ll find it by tomorrow night?”

  “Her father thinks so.” Batter jabbed his finger at Kate Morgan. “He’s promising to reveal something special to America tomorrow night, before the first game of the World Series. I’ve seen promos on all his stations. The Baseball channel, ANN …”

  “Bet that’s really going to boost the ratings,” said Kate.

  Batter looked at Peter. “If he puts that draft on television, and it goes against the Second Amendment, you won’t see your girlfriend again.”

  Peter said, “Doesn’t it bother you that we know who you are and we’ll have you all arrested if anything happens to her?”

  Batter simply said, “No.” Then he gunned his engine and shot up onto the ski slope. The other ATVs followed, screaming like a pack of coyotes.

  BACK AT THE antique shop: Peter was holding the second GPS tracker. They had fixed two to his BMW. He had found only one.

  “Batter is a dangerous man,” said Peter, “to think that he can frighten us like that and then just show his face.”

  “Brazen,” said Kate.

  “No,” said Orson. “Shooting a man’s seat out from under him. That’s brazen. Jack Batter and his friends are so committed that their fate doesn’t matter. That’s dangerous.”

  “Did anyone get a good look at Evangeline? Did she look all right?” asked Peter.

  “She looked fine,” said Kelly. “From what I could see.”

  “A lot of good you did,” he answered. “Miss Right Wing, can’t convince your own constituency to do the right thing. And you tell them we’re—what was the word—oh, yeah. Busted. Blew my backup plan right out of the water.”

  “Probably saved your girlfriend, too,” said Kelly.

  Kate said, “Maybe you should backtrack. Try to think this through from the time it began—when?”

  “Last Friday. When that Jennifer Segal visited me,” said Peter.

  “Which one was she?” asked Orson.

  “Professor Conrad’s graduate student at Dartmouth.”

  “In what?” asked Kelly.

  “History, of course,”

  “History? At Dartmouth?”

  “She’s a Ph.D. candidate.”

  “Dartmouth has a graduate school of arts and sciences,” said Kelly. “I know. I applied once. But they don’t offer a degree program in history. Someone is lying to you.”

  “And she’s avoiding me, too,” said Peter.

  “Where is she?” asked Orson.

  “She gave me an address in Hanover, right down the street from the college.”

  PETER WENT TO Hanover alone. He’d had enough of group efforts, so he took the BMW and sent the rest of the Boston boys back in the van.

  But before he left, he called a friend on the Dartmouth faculty, an English professor named Harrington Smithies, who taught Poetry and Prose of the Romantic era and collected first editions of the Lake District gang, as he called them—Wordsworth, Coleridge, and so on.

  Peter asked him for a favor: visit an address on Main Street and present himself at the door, pretending to be looking for someone else. “And be careful.”

  Smithies played the dotty old college professor, as innocent as the bindings on his books and as smart as what was in them. Half an hour later, he called back and said that yes, the young woman was there, and a young man was with her. Lover or associate, he could not tell.

  “Did they seem suspicious?”

  “Of an old man? Old men are invisible, especially to young women.”

  “You didn’t happen to notice a black Chrysler Sebring with Rhode Island plates parked anywhere nearby, did you?”

  “You didn’t ask, so I didn’t look.”

  “Just a hunch,” said Peter. “I owe you one early edition of Wordsworth.”

  PETER CROSSED THE Connecticut River from Vermont and came into town on Wheelock Street. He loved Hanover. It had all the vitality that made college towns mythic places in the American imagination. It thrived because of the college. Some said it existed because of the college. Town and college seemed to blend together, meeting in a lover’s embrace on the college green.

  Parking was always tight on a football Saturday, so Peter had to cruise the town twice before he found a spot in the municipal lot behind the business area.

  Then he made for Main Street and the crowd bustling along in the cool October sunshine. There were lots of orange scarves, so Princeton was in town. But Dartmouth green was the dominant color—on old alums and their wives, on young alums and their families, on gangs of raucous sophomores, frat boys with their girlfriends, girls with their boyfriends. The smell of wood smoke and sizzling burgers floated in the air, and … he cursed.

  He didn’t need this. He had a good business without all the danger, without getting his girlfriend into trouble, without having killers stalking him across New England, without feeling as if he was the only man in America protecting the truth simply because it was the right thing to do.

  But better him than somebody else.

  The address that Jennifer Segal had given him was a few doors down from Molly Malone’s Pub, half a block up from the Dartmouth Co-op: a nondescript doorway, a doorbell, three mailboxes. He peered through the door: no foyer, just a steep stairway leading up to three apartments above the local businesses.

  Peter took out his cell phone. Her machine answered on the first ring. “This is Peter Fallon. I have news about the item I have been looking for. If you’re there, I’d appreciate it if you’d pick up.”

  Pause. Wait. No pickup. Pete clicked off, stepped back, looked up at the windows of her apartment.

  “She’s still in there.”

  Peter turned: “Professor Smithies. I didn’t notice you.”

  “I told you old men are invisible.” He had a ruddy face and wore a brown tweed suit and a green tweed hat. “That’s why I’ve been able to stay out here for most of the morning, keeping an eye on the place. I want to earn that Wordsworth.”

  “And you’re sure she’s up there?”

  “Positive.”

  “What about the young man?”

  “I haven’t seen him leave, either.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Thirties. Dirty blond hair. Very fit. Looked like a weight lifter, perhaps.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be back next Saturday for the Harvard game. How about dinner with me and Evangeline afterward?” At the moment, that sounded ridiculously optimistic.

  “So long as you bring Wordsworth. Anything else I can do for you?”

  As a matter of fact … Peter asked him to wait outside. “If I don’t come down in ten minutes, call the police.”

  The old man’s cheery expression froze. “Police. What’s this about?”

  “Professor Stuart Conrad—”

  “Do these people have something to do with h
is accident?”

  Peter didn’t want this old man getting in the way. He pointed to a park bench on the sidewalk. “Just sit there and wait for me. If I don’t come down in ten minutes—”

  “Do you want backup? I’ll give you backup. I know how to handle myself.”

  Peter thanked him but no, he didn’t want backup.

  At the same moment, the apartment door swung open. The black turtleneck set off the pallid complexion. The gold rims flashed. The girl made eye contact with Peter Fallon, then walked past him and began to heel-toe along, as if she wanted to put some distance between herself and her front door.

  Peter said to Professor Smithies, “If the guy comes out, call my cell.”

  He caught up to her in front of the Dartmouth Coop. “What’s going on?”

  “He’s in my apartment.”

  “Who?”

  “Walter Stanley. Stanley Benson. Benson Burton. Burton Walters.”

  “That’s four.”

  “Four pseudonyms.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “Walter Stanley. You’ve seen him all over New England. He wears a blue blazer most of the time and carries a digital camera.”

  Peter stopped and looked back at the door.

  When he turned to Jennifer, she was walking up one of the alleys that led off Main Street along a little row of businesses: the window of an ice cream shop, the kitchen window of a restaurant.

  “He was in the shower,” she said. “I got your message. I erased it.”

  “Who is he? What are you doing with him?” Peter realized he was raising his voice. He saw eyes peering out at him from a kitchen window, a cook working over the Frialator. He lowered his voice, clenched his teeth: “Why did you drag me into this?”

  She kept walking. Her pinched face behind the wire-rims, her arms folded in front of her chest—everything about her said fear.

  But Peter’s circuits were so overloaded by his own emotions that he wasn’t reading hers, or the signals of the other people using the alley. This wasn’t some bleak passage between two old skyscrapers. The buildings were brightly painted, there was a pennant fluttering over the ice cream shop. People were coming and going, laughing, even singing fight songs.

  But Peter grabbed her by the elbow and turned her toward him. “Last week, you asked me to find something. Since then, I’ve been stalked in Newport, cornered and almost killed in Millbridge, chased through Portland, and yesterday I crashed in a plane to that took off in Vermont, sat on the ground in Rhode Island, and almost hit the goddamn Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts!”

  “And you will be killed if he catches up with you.”

  “Who is he? Your boyfriend?”

  “We’re working together.” She pulled away, began to walk again.

  He grabbed her again. “Who are you working for? You’re no student.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Stop!” Peter grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her toward him, and pinned her against the wall.

  “Who are you working for?” demanded Peter.

  “Paul Doherty.”

  “Doherty? Who is he working for?”

  “Let me go.” She pulled away.

  He grabbed her again.

  The next two things that Peter Fallon heard were “Hey!” and the thwang of a frying pan, thwanging off his forehead.

  It knocked him back, bounced him off the wall on the other side of the alley, and by the time he had his bearings, Jennifer Segal was hurrying back toward Main Street, while the fry cook and two frat boys were surrounding Peter.

  “Don’t let him follow me, please!” she shouted.

  Peter went to make a move and one of the frat boys blocked him with two hundred and twenty pounds of bulk. “Let her go, old man.”

  “Yeah,” said the other one. “She’s too young for you.”

  The fry cook just waved his frying pan.

  And Peter’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out, saw the caller ID, and said, “Professor Smithies.”

  One frat boy said to the other, “I’m in that guy’s class. Let’s go.”

  In a flash, they were gone, but the fry cook held his ground.

  Professor Smithies said, “He’s out. He’s walking toward the campus. No. Now he’s turning. I think he just saw her. She just came out of an alley, just beyond the Dartmouth Co-op…. But where are you?”

  “On my way. See you next week … I hope.” Peter closed his phone.

  The fry cook said, “This ain’t the big city. You can’t push women around here.”

  Peter gave him a smile. The frying pan had brought him to his senses. He could go after the girl. But better to go after Paul Doherty. Right now.

  So he headed back up the alley to the parking lot.

  Go fast, he told himself, before Walter Stanley figured out what was going on.

  The parking lot was full of cars cruising for spots. And they all locked on to him at the same moment. A pedestrian meant a space might be opening. He began to run, knowing that they would all converge and cause a traffic jam in the little lot.

  But as he went, he passed a car he hadn’t seen on his way in, the Chrysler Sebring. Walter Stanley’s car. And that gave him an idea.

  While the cruisers followed him, he went to his trunk, took out the GPS tracker, turned it on. Then he climbed into the BMW and started to leave.

  Immediately, three cars made for his spot, and two tried to get in at the same time. Horns blared, people shouted: parking lot rage, right there in peaceful Hanover. Perfect cover.

  He drove around the row of cars, stopped, and jumped out.

  In an instant, the GPS tracker was fixed under the bumper of the Sebring.

  The cat was belled.

  Now to confront the cat’s master in Portland.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  July 1973

  A TELEVISION IN A bookshop. A travesty. That’s what some of Martin Bloom’s customers said when he set up a black-and-white portable beside the sofa. They preferred classical music with their browsing.

  But Martin Bloom was adamant. It would have been unpatriotic not to be watching television around the clock that summer.

  If it bothered his customers, too bad. He expected to lose them anyway, because he saw no future in selling trade books. He was turning Old Curiosity into an antiquarian bookshop. If customers wanted Jackie Susann or Mario Puzo, they could go down the street.

  But Martin did not consider himself a snob. Anyone who wanted to sit on the sofa in the middle of the store and watch Sam Ervin grilling the Nixon gang was welcome, even the bums, and especially the bum who had come with the place.

  His name was Mike Ryan. He lived in a rooming house on Munjoy Hill. And he was a waterfront fixture in his battered old conductor’s hat and dirty raincoat. He had started showing up at Old Curiosity when the previous owner put out one of those Mr. Coffees for the customers. He read the paper, had his coffee, then headed off to McGafferty’s at 11:30, to convert his Social Security check to “a liquid asset.”

  “Why don’t you call the cops on that smelly old bastard?” asked Paul Doherty one day.

  “I like him,” said Martin.

  Doherty sat on the edge of Bloom’s desk and swung his leg. He acted like he owned the place because he worked for the landlord, who had hired the thick-necked Vietnam vet to collect his rents. Doherty was not averse to making a little extra money when he could, so he sometimes offered a reduced rent to someone willing to part with a stained-glass lampshade or a shelf of leatherbound books. He brought the lampshades to the antique dealers. The books he brought to Martin Bloom.

  At first, Bloom was uninterested. Then Doherty showed up with a signed copy of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s memoirs. And month by month, Doherty had gotten better at the book scouting and the antique-talk, too. He said he was a man who preferred self-education to heavy lifting or leg-breaking, so he could soon tell Tiffany from Steuben, Stickley from Morris, a true incunable from a repro or a knockoff.
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  These two would not ordinarily have had anything to do with one another, but business was business. Doherty was thirty, Bloom ten years older. Doherty had voted twice for Nixon. Bloom had cast his first vote for Adlai Stevenson, and his second, and would have kept voting for him until he won or died.

  That was why Bloom talked about his customers instead of politics when he wrote out the rent check. “Mike Ryan’s harmless. Besides, he’s been watching the hearings all morning. It seems to sober him up.”

  “So, you’re a do-gooder, too? Runnin’ a dry-out shelter.”

  Bloom raised one of those eyebrows. “It’s more than that.”

  “What, then?”

  Bloom looked out into the store. Aside from Ryan, the place was empty. “Go out and talk to him. See for yourself. He’s an interesting guy.”

  How interesting, Martin Bloom could not imagine.

  But Doherty had a way of saying things … a way of needling that forced a guy into revealing himself, even if he didn’t want to. “Hiya, Mike,” he said.

  “Big doin’s today,” said Mike Ryan. “We got John Dean testifyin’.”

  “A rat,” said Doherty, “rattin’ out the best president in my lifetime.”

  Mike Ryan turned bloodshot eyes on Doherty. “You wasn’t alive when FDR was president then?”

  “No. I missed that pile of socialist crap.”

  “Crap? FDR? Why—” Mike Ryan staggered to his feet, as if fixing for a fight.

  “Easy, there, big fella.” Doherty stepped back. “FDR was president when they got rid of Prohibition, wasn’t he?”

  “You’re goddamn right he was,” said Ryan.

  “At least he did something good. Bet you were happy about that.”

  “Fuckin’-A, I was happy.” Mike Ryan dropped back onto the sofa, as if he lacked the concentration to stay angry, especially when the talk turned to drink.

  Doherty looked at Martin and shrugged. What was interesting about this guy?

  “Hey, Mike,” said Martin. “What do you think of these hearings?”

  Before he could answer, Doherty said, “They’re unconstitutional.”