Lincoln's Ransom

by Tim Champlin

  Washburn mentally reviewed their statements, which a clerk had written down. Could it possibly be that Packard had betrayed his trust and gone over to the criminals? What other explanation could there be for his not having given the password so the law could spring the trap? The pay of a Secret Service agent was not great, while the dangers often were. Perhaps they had made him a much better offer.

  “Brooks, get me Packard’s personnel file out of that cabinet.”

  The assistant obediently delivered the folder to his chief and withdrew to his own desk in silence.

  Washburn turned to the last two annual performance evaluations by Packard’s previous supervisor and ran his finger down the pages, sifting the pertinent details.

  athletic...fearless in dangerous situations...skilled with a hand gun...carries out assignments appropriately, but tends to question authority. Sometimes proceeds on his own and exceeds instructions. Well-liked by fellow agents, but can be insubordinate at times if he disagrees with a directive....

  Washburn’s finger stopped on this last line. It was all he needed. He had found his scapegoat. He closed the folder and stood up, smiling faintly to himself. Perhaps something could be salvaged out of this fiasco. If not his reputation, then maybe his job.

  Chapter Fifteen

  That evening Packard lounged in the hotel lobby, smoking a cigar and scanning a recent issue of Harper’s Weekly someone had left lying on one of the overstuffed chairs. By ten o’clock he was upstairs in bed, and he slept a solid nine hours.

  He awoke, feeling almost human again, and a breakfast of ham and eggs in the hotel dining room finished bringing him back to his normal robust self. Except for the slight stitch in his left side from the old wound that he’d aggravated with the wild escapade on the runaway train, he felt fit enough to tackle anything. Like providential manna in the desert, food and rest seemed to be available just when they were most needed.

  “What’s the plan for today, boss?” McGuinn asked, leaning back in his chair with a second cup of coffee.

  While appearing to be attentive to Kinealy’s reply, Packard was really casting furtive glances at Janice who, to Packard’s eager eyes, was as radiant as a spring morning in Tennessee.

  “Well, first of all, you and I and Packard need to buy some clothes, get shaved, and cleaned up. Then I plan to send a wire, and begin to rattle some official cages.”

  “I thought you were going to let ’em sweat for a few days,” McGuinn replied, obviously disappointed that he wouldn’t have some time off to eat and drink and run through the money Kinealy had given him.

  “I’ve reconsidered,” Kinealy replied, all business. Apparently the celebrating and relaxing were over. He was once again the cool, calculating leader of the coney men. “I’ve got an encoded message ready to send to my contact in Chicago. Then he will relay my message by telegraph to the Illinois governor, demanding two hundred thousand dollars and the release of Ben Boyd. The message will be signed...The Coney Men.” This last was said with a hint of pride.

  “So the governor will think you are in Chicago,” Packard said. “Clever. But where and how will he send the money? And how will your contact correspond by telegraph with him without getting caught?”

  “The governor will be told to respond publicly by having his reply printed in the Chicago Times. His answer will be relayed to me by encoded telegraph messages. Anyone with the price of a daily newspaper will be able to follow these negotiations. There will be no secret deals or subterfuge. This will be a very public affair.”

  They all digested this information in silence for several seconds.

  Kinealy chuckled. “As to the money, you leave that to me. I’ve got a plan that will keep us safe beyond the reach of the law. If they don’t have anyone smarter than that bunch who tried to grab us at the tomb, we haven’t got a worry.”

  “I wouldn’t underestimate the enemy, if I were you,” Packard cautioned. “Not all of them will be shooting at each other.”

  Kinealy fixed him with a hard stare that he found uncomfortable. “You don’t think I’ve gotten by all these years without ever seeing the inside of a jail by being stupid and careless, do you?” he snarled with the arrogance of a treed cougar.

  Packard didn’t reply and resolved again to keep his opinions to himself. Let Kinealy bet all he had on this pot, Packard still held the winning hand. “How will your contact keep from being identified by the Western Union operator, if he sends your decoded demand to the governor?” Packard finally asked, trying to think of weak links in the chain of events.

  “How the hell should I know?” Kinealy waved his hand impatiently. “There are a dozen ways. Maybe he’ll seal the message and the fee in an envelope and hire a street urchin to take it to Western Union. Maybe he’ll go himself in disguise. He’s smart, and I trust him to cover his tracks.”

  Not having lived a life of crime, Packard apparently didn’t think as deviously as Kinealy. It was immaterial to him how it was accomplished, anyway, as long as it was done.

  “Let’s get to it,” Kinealy said, rising from the table.

  They followed. Janice retired to her room to wait. Hughes opted to lounge in the hotel lobby while McGuinn, Kinealy, and Packard walked down the hill a few blocks to a general merchandise emporium and outfitted themselves with new clothes from the skin out. Then they visited a Chinese bathhouse and, while they scrubbed and soaked, left their old clothes next door to be laundered.

  “Wait for me at Riley’s saloon,” Kinealy instructed McGuinn and Packard as they exited the steamy washhouse. “I’m going to Western Union.” He spoke casually, as if he were going to lunch. “I’ll join you in less than an hour.”

  “Right, boss,” McGuinn said as they parted company.

  It was still mid-morning, and only two early customers were in Riley’s place. They were dressed like riverboat deckhands. Packard and McGuinn stood at the opposite end of the bar and ordered beer. Riley waited on them, a sour look on his face. “What’re you doing here?” he muttered as he worked the beer taps.

  “The boss is meeting us here,” McGuinn said.

  “Damned bad idea,” the barkeep replied, sliding the foamy glasses across the polished wood. “Stay out of here unless you got business with me.”

  “Friendly sort,” Packard remarked, as Riley walked off without even taking their money.

  “Nervous as a mouse in a cage of rattlesnakes,” McGuinn muttered under his breath.

  Riley studiously avoided them as he washed glasses and mugs in a tub of water behind the bar. The saloon-keeper kept glancing out the front window, worry lines creasing his high forehead as if he half expected blue-uniformed police to come bursting through the door at any moment.

  “Barkeep!”

  Riley nearly jumped out of his white apron. One of the rivermen was holding up an empty glass.

  “Kinealy could’ve picked somebody a little steadier,” Packard remarked, sipping his beer.

  “Yeah. Don’t know why he’s so on edge,” McGuinn replied under his breath. “All he has to do is keep his mouth shut and collect his money.”

  “But after the ransom is paid and the law comes to claim the box, Riley will be implicated.”

  “He’ll probably be long gone by then,” McGuinn said. “Once the ransom’s paid, Big Jim’s going to move the box, anyway.”

  “He is?” Packard tried to keep the surprise out of his voice.

  “Yeah,” McGuinn nodded. “But I don’t know where,” he continued, heading off the obvious question. “And I don’t ask too many questions. He keeps us in the dark until he’s ready to make a move. It’s kind of insulting, but that’s the way he’s been able to stay on top all these years...by not trusting anybody but himself.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “What about her?”

  “He doesn’t trust her?”

  “Hell, I don’t know what he tells her in private. It ain’t really my concern. But he don’t seem to involve her in most of his
business dealings.”

  Packard nodded. This squared with what Janice had told him on the train car platform that night.

  “Fact is, she was more involved in this operation than she’s ever been in anything I’ve been part of,” McGuinn added.

  Kinealy sauntered in some thirty minutes later and had a drink. By then fifteen or twenty customers were lining the bar and sitting at the tables. Another bartender had come on duty, relieving Riley who was nowhere to be seen.

  “I got the ball rolling,” Kinealy said, excitement lighting up his eyes. “Now all we have to do is wait.”

  “Yeah,” McGuinn said. “We’ll all wait together.”

  They headed back to the hotel, stopping to buy razors and toothbrushes, then taking time for a leisurely lunch in the hotel dining room.

  While all this was going on, Packard’s mind was working to form a plan to elude his muscular watchdog — at least long enough so he could get off a telegram of his own. It would probably have to be at night. He was fairly certain most Western Union offices kept a telegrapher on duty twenty-four hours a day. But he would wait until the first reply was received from the Illinois officials. Then he would have to move fast, to prevent any ransom from being paid and to get word to his superiors before Kinealy moved the body again.

  They had less than a day to wait. Before noon the next day, Kinealy picked up a telegraph message from Western Union.

  “Here it is!” he said gleefully, holding up the telegram. The boyish excitement and anticipation was unlike him. Packard sometimes wondered if Kinealy lived more for the thrill of danger than for the profits of his counterfeiting business.

  They gathered in Kinealy’s room at the Patee House while he sat down to decode it. He worked with pencil and paper at a table near the light of a window.

  Packard caught Janice’s eye as she stood by her husband’s shoulder. She gave a warm, reassuring smile, as if she already knew the answer from the Illinois governor.

  Packard’s heart was pounding; he wasn’t so sure. The outcome of this whole venture could very well depend on what Kinealy was translating. He swallowed hard and tried to return Janice’s smile.

  It was a long message, and Kinealy was about three minutes decoding it.

  “I’ll be damned!” he finally muttered, his face clouding.

  “What’s he say?” Hughes demanded.

  Janice was reading over Kinealy’s shoulder, a frown on her face.

  “Governor Beveridge says he’s not paying a cent to recover the body.”

  “What?” McGuinn exclaimed.

  “He can’t do that!” Hughes put in.

  They were all taken aback. It was the one answer none of them had expected.

  Kinealy held up his hand until they fell silent. “The governor refuses to pay or release Ben Boyd from prison because Lincoln’s body is not in that coffin.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Packard felt foolish — like he’d thrown a haymaker at Kinealy’s big jaw, missed, and fallen flat on his face. How many thousands of people were reading this in the Chicago paper and howling with laughter at the gang that snatched an empty coffin? There was stunned silence in the room for a few seconds. He dared not look at Janice, and turned away to take a deep, calming breath. His insides felt as empty as a Guinness keg after an Irish wake.

  “Just another stalling tactic,” Kinealy said, his voice sounding a little forced, as if he were trying to convince himself.

  “How do you know that?” Hughes asked.

  “Just put yourself in the governor’s place,” Kinealy said with more assurance. “He wants to give the law time to work on this. He has to have time to decide what to do.”

  “What if he’s right and there’s no body?” Janice asked, voicing all of their worst fears.

  “After all, there was someone waiting to ambush us,” McGuinn added. “And when they failed, they never bothered to chase us ’cause we didn’t have nothing but an empty box.”

  “I’ve heard rumors off and on for years that his body wasn’t really in that big new mausoleum they built,” Hughes remarked. “But you know how rumors like that get started.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to be sure,” Packard said.

  “All we need is a small hole by the face,” Kinealy said thoughtfully. “Riley has some experience as a plumber. He should be able to cut that soft lead so it can be replaced without any damage to what’s inside.”

  “If there is anything inside,” Packard said.

  “If there’s nothing left but dust and bones, how we gonna know it’s him?” McGuinn asked.

  “The governor says the coffin’s empty,” Kinealy said. “If there’s anybody’s remains in there, they’ve got to be Lincoln’s. I’m betting there’s enough left to identify him.” Kinealy got up and stuffed the decoded message into a pocket. “Janice, stay here.”

  “Jim, I’ve been part of this from the start, and I’m not going to miss seeing what we’ve really got,” she told him firmly.

  A half hour later they were all in Riley’s saloon. The Irishman saw them coming and was sliding toward the rear door when Kinealy caught up with him. They watched as the two talked. Riley was shaking his head and gesturing at the customers in the room. Kinealy clearly intimidated the smaller man. Then the two came back toward the front, and Kinealy motioned them all outside. They moved off down the sidewalk a half block and paused by a vacant lot. In spite of the fact that Riley was dressed in shirt sleeves and vest in the cold air, he pulled a bandanna from a hip pocket and began mopping perspiration from his face and bald head. His eyes had the mournful air of a Basset hound as he faced Kinealy and the rest of them.

  “Jim, I can’t go messing around down in the basement with a houseful of customers. It’s just too dangerous.” His thick beard bobbed up and down as he talked, putting Packard in mind of what an Irish gremlin might look like.

  “I told you why we gotta know,” Kinealy said. “And right quick.”

  “I know. I know.” The little man bobbed his head. “Tell you what...wait until the crowd thins out in a couple hours. Then I’ll close early this afternoon, and we’ll open ’er up and take a look.” He tucked the bandanna away. “I got some tools that’ll do the trick. But....”

  “But what?” Kinealy was pressing.

  “It ain’t just lookin’ at the body...it’s...well, there’s something else almighty funny going on with that coffin.”

  “Like what?”

  “I live in the back room of my place, and I heard and saw some things in the night that you just wouldn’t believe. Strange, eerie things.” He looked at their solemn, expectant faces, then slowly shook his head. “Never mind. Come back about half past three, and rap on the side door. We’ll get the job done then.”

  “O K,” Kinealy said, and led them away. When they were out of earshot, he muttered: “I believe the old boy has been sampling too much of his own stuff. I just hope he holds together long enough for us to collect the ransom.”

  “Provided we’ve got a body,” Hughes said.

  Kinealy nodded, not appearing as sure of himself as he had earlier.

  They returned to the hotel, bathed, shaved, and were back at the saloon at the agreed time. The place appeared deserted as Kinealy knocked on the side door. It was opened, and he signaled the rest to come ahead from where they’d been lounging separately down the street.

  The basement was as dark and dank as Packard remembered it. But this time the acrid smell of burning charcoal assaulted his nose. There was a slightly smoking brazier setting on the floor off to one side. The one, tiny window open near the ceiling did little to dispel the noxious fumes. Riley and McGuinn scraped most of the dirt from the old wooden door and lifted it off the hole. They pulled the canvas cover off the upper half of the coffin, and Packard held the lantern as Riley took a hammer and sharp chisel and began tapping carefully at a spot near where the head would be. Cutting at an oblique angle, he gradually carved a hole big enough to insert one bla
de of an oversize pair of metal shears. Then it was just a matter of working the shears around in an oval, cutting the half-inch thick lead. As he struggled with the long handles of the big shears, beads of perspiration glistened on top of his bald dome in the lantern light. His harsh breathing and the slight scuffing as he shifted his position every few seconds were the only sounds in the room.

  Finally, when he had only about two inches left to complete the cut, he inserted the chisel and wedged up one edge about an inch. “Get your fingers under there and bend the flap back,” he said, looking up at Kinealy. Riley’s big, dark eyes told Packard he was fearful of inserting his own hands even that far inside the death box.

  Kinealy wiggled the fingers of both hands under the lip of the oval cut and bent the soft lead back like the lid of a tin can.

  All of them but Riley crowded in to see.

  “Hold that light down closer!” Kinealy snapped when Packard got jostled out of the way.

  “Ah, just as I thought...the governor was bluffing and stalling,” Big Jim said while they all stared down at what remained of the late President. Packard held his breath against the strong odor of mildew and chemicals that wafted out of the coffin as curiosity got the better of revulsion. Lincoln was in a remarkable state of preservation for having been dead eleven and a half years. The craggy features were darker than in life — almost a mahogany hue. The great head lay on a silk pillow, eyes closed as if he had just laid down to take a nap. The coarse black hair and beard, slightly tinged with gray, appeared to be exactly as he had seen them in Matthew Brady’s famous photographs. Even the mole on his cheek was intact.