The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  “Always looking for Old Abe material,” Diana went on. “And I heard, about a week ago, you had a nice repro of the Ritchie engraving, First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.”

  Dawkins raised his head. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “From the buyer,” said Diana.

  “Why’d he tell you?”

  Diana looked at Peter for a bit of help.

  Peter said, “Occasionally we buy for the African American Museum of Emancipation.”

  “We?” Dawkins gave Peter a squint. “You ain’t black.”

  “I’m Black Irish.”

  “Yeah, and we’s all brothers under the skin,” said Dawkins. “Did you buy it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you see that feller, tell him I want to buy it back. Tell him to return my phone calls. Tell him I’ll pay him another fifty dollars for it.”

  “Why?” asked Diana.

  “Because I sold it late in the day. I wanted to go home with somethin’ in my pocket, so I made a bum deal. The next weekend, I could’ve sold it for more.”

  Now Peter cocked an eye at Diana. How much more? Did someone know what had been in the backing of that engraving? Someone who had come late?

  Peter asked, “Where did you get it?”

  Dawkins scowled. “What do I look like? A chump? I’m a dealer in Civil War memorabilia, tellin’ the African American story. What’s here is for sale. But don’t be asking me where-all I bought or who-all I bought from or—”

  “You can’t blame me for trying,” said Peter. “I’m in the business, too.”

  “Then you ought to know better.” Dawkins picked up his book again. “I find things everywhere … flea markets in Virginia, book bins in Baltimore, barn shops in Pennsylvania. I don’t tell folks where I find stuff, and neither do you, I’m bettin’.”

  “You got me there.”

  “All right, then,” said Dawkins. “Now, if you ain’t buyin’, I’m readin’.”

  Diana said to Dawkins, “Do you have a receipt for the engraving?”

  “Now you’re playin’ me for a chump,” said Dawkins. “And you’re a sistah.”

  Peter winked at Diana, as if to say that she was on her own, and he moved over to the next table.

  The proprietor gave Peter a yellow-toothed grin. He was white, wore shorts and sandals with socks. His gray T-shirt had a picture of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson above a caption, VIRGINIA HERITAGE. He said, “A fine collection of books here, sir.”

  Peter glanced at a trade paperback of Grant’s Memoirs. Then he picked up a much older volume: Fort Lafayette, by Benjamin C. Wood, published in New York, 1862.

  Meanwhile, Diana was asking Dawkins, “Why do you think someone else wanted that engraving.”

  “So now what do I look like? Bill Cosby or somebody, givin’ up the daddy-talk to anybody who asks? We got the Proclamation anniversary comin’ up. We got a big museum show openin’ at the Smithsonian. So anything connected with it ought to get premium price. So buy somethin’ or leave me alone.”

  “I’m not buying today, but—” She picked up another book from his table.

  Peter saw the title: The Racism and Resolve of Abraham Lincoln. He folded his arms and waited for the reaction when Diana said, “I’ll be glad to sign this.”

  “Sign it? What do you mean, sign it?” Then it dawned on him. “You wrote it? You’re Diana Wilmington?” Dawkins smiled for the first time. “I seen you on TV. That’s one damn fine book. I didn’t want to resell it after I read it, but it’s got a message folks ought to hear. Even Lincoln had his blind spots.”

  Now, thought Peter, she had him.

  Dawkins pulled out a pen and said, “Make it out to Dick and Savannah.”

  After a bit more conversation, they had the address of the buyer, the man named Jefferson Sorrel. Then they tried to get the address of the seller, too, but Dawkins was not that impressed.

  “You just tell that Sorrel he took me,” said Dawkins, “and I don’t like being took. See if you can convince him to sell it back.”

  “We’ll do our best,” said Peter. He did not add that the law of the flea market was as simple as the law of the jungle: No refunds, no exchanges. If you bought it, you owned it. If you sold it, you didn’t, even if it included a hidden letter worth seven figures.

  As they turned to leave, the guy in the next stall said, “So I can’t interest you in Fort Lafayette? It’s a good value.”

  “It’s dogshit,” said Dawkins. “That’s why I sold it to you.”

  “It’s historical,” said the other dealer, “a first edition of a book written by an anti-Lincoln congressman.”

  “Racist garbage,” said Dawkins. “It justifies secession. It justifies slavery. But it came with the Proclamation picture.”

  That remark got Peter’s attention. He picked up the book again.

  And the guy in the ponytail kept talking … kept selling. “Yes, sir, that’s the oldest book in my collection.”

  Peter’s curiosity was piqued, so he went into bargaining mode. “You want five hundred for a book with worn headbands and torn endpapers, printed on acidic paper?”

  “But it’s rare.”

  “But it’s from the mid-nineteenth century, so it’s burning.”

  “Burning?” said the guy. “It’s not burning.”

  “Someone ought to burn it,” said Dawkins.

  Peter held the book up to his nose. “You can smell combustion, a slow motion burn as the acid they used to break down the fibers of wood pulp keeps working a hundred and fifty years later, except now it’s breaking down the paper itself.”

  The guy with the ponytail said, “But can’t you conserve it or somethin’?”

  Peter shook his head. “Not worth it.”

  “Gotcha, Dougie.” Dawkins laughed and said to Peter, “Sold it to him for a C-note, now he thinks he can talk you into five hundred.”

  “Because,” said the guy, “it’s a real rare book.”

  “Rare because it sucks,” said Dawkins. “No one even knows who that Wood dude was.”

  “A New York congressman,” said Diana. “He opposed Secession and Emancipation, too. He also owned the New York Daily News. Wrote awful things about Lincoln, got shut down. He’s obscure today, but more interesting than people know.”

  “So,” said the guy with the ponytail, “what do you think of that, Mr. Big-Deal Boston book buyer?”

  “How do you know I’m from Boston?” said Peter.

  “Everybody in the book business knows Peter Fallon, even flea market paperback peddlers like me.” He offered his card. His name was Douglas Bryant. “I love your catalog. Never had the money to buy anything from it, but—”

  “Thanks.” Peter flipped through the book again. There were a few names on the endpapers, but little else.

  “And even if I didn’t know who you were,” Bryant continued, “I might be wondering what kind of big deal you were, considering the guy taking pictures of you.”

  “Pictures?” said Peter and Diana at the same time.

  “Yeah,” said Bryant. “A big guy in a blue T-shirt and a blue ball cap with a white star on it, white star and blue patch. It looks like the Bonnie Blue Flag, one of the first symbols of Confederate resistance. That’s why I noticed him. I thought it was a cool cap. I thought he was taking candids for a photo spread on how the smartest book man in the business skins the little guys. That’s why I’ve been smiling like an ass.”

  “No,” said Dawkins. “That ain’t why.”

  “Where did he go?” asked Peter.

  “He headed for the market.”

  Peter gestured for Diana to follow and then he picked up the pace and shouted over his shoulder, “Five hundred bucks for that book … that’s a skinning.”

  He led Diana past the flea market stalls, past the baseline, and as they stepped through the chain-link fence, they saw the guy. And he saw them.

  Diana shouted, “Hey, you!” And suddenly, she was runni
ng. “Hey!”

  The man looked at them for another second, then turned and ran up the ramp that led through swinging doors into the market itself.

  Diana took off right after him.

  Peter cursed. He’d been in Washington two hours and already he was in a scramble. He decided to go in the far end and come at the guy from the opposite direction. So he began to run.

  Someone shouted, “Hey, slow down there.”

  A dog walker with two pit bulls pulled on his dogs. One of them started to bark.

  Peter sprinted past the dogs and all the way to the far end of the long brick building. He dodged a dozen people who were leaving with bundles and pushcarts of food. He went in by the west door. He all but leaped over a little girl holding her mother’s hand. He bumped through the inner doors and burst onto the market floor itself. Then he stopped for a second to survey the place.

  A cheese vendor said, “Fontina?”

  “What?”

  “We have a nice fontina today.”

  Peter shook his head. He saw nobody wearing a blue cap with a white star, nobody with a camera. He could see Diana, however, standing tall in the middle of the market, her eyes scanning the crowd.

  Peter went up to her. “Why did you chase him? I was going to play it subtle.”

  “Subtle is when you’re watching your back in the halls of academe and no one has it,” she said. “On the street, be street.”

  And on the street, someone was watching. Someone was in competition.

  She said, “So, what’s next?”

  “This.” Peter pulled out his cell phone and texted Antoine Scarborough in Boston:

  Any word on Lincoln, Hutchinson, Murphy, telegraph office? Need info NOW.

  FOUR

  April 1862

  As dawn approached, Halsey Hutchinson was dreading the day. Dread came to life when he sensed a presence at the office door: Detective McNealy.

  Halsey kept his eyes on his work as McNealy’s shoes crossed the carpet and stopped beside the desk. Then Halsey inclined his head slightly, glanced at the tracked-in mud, and said, “There are boot scrapers at all the entries, Detective. You should use them.”

  “Treat me with respect, Lieutenant. I may be your best friend. I may be your only friend.”

  “Every man is my friend, until he’s not.”

  “Did you get my note?”

  “Did you get mine?”

  McNealy pulled it out of his pocket. “‘Whatever you seek, you will find it elsewhere.’ Very pithy. The story of a man’s life could be written in those words.”

  Halsey had not expected philosophy. On reflex, he offered a bit of his own: “‘Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

  “A family friend I suppose?”

  “Actually, yes, even though he’s an Abolitionist.”

  “You like to flash your Boston friends and your book-learnin’, don’t you?”

  Halsey reminded himself not to goad. It would do no good to goad. He put down his pen and sat back. “How can I help you, Detective?”

  “You know the power I wield?”

  “I know you can arrest a man on almost any suspicion and call it treasonous.”

  “That power derives from the man who works on the other side of that screen door.” McNealy jerked his head toward Stanton’s office. “He gets it from the president.”

  “It certainly doesn’t derive from the Constitution.”

  “You forget, Lieutenant—” McNealy brought his face close. “—we are at war.”

  Halsey angled his head to show the scar at his neck. “I need no reminding.”

  That caused McNealy to settle back. “I’ll ask you plain, Lieutenant: What the president says he lost—his daybook—was that what I saw you stuff in your pocket yesterday morning?”

  “It was my own daybook.” Halsey thought that was a good lie. “I assume you read it when you rifled my room.”

  “I did.” McNealy grinned. “So you can also assume that I know about your stroll to the Smithsonian with the niece of the most anti-Lincoln legislator in Washington.”

  Halsey turned to his work, pretended to finish a requisition, and planned his next reaction. A bullet in the neck was a shock for which one could not prepare. But an interrogation could be like a line of bait leading to a leg hold. Proceed cautiously and avoid the trap.

  “So,” said McNealy, “when you walked past Lafayette Park with a man in a checkered suit, when you indulged a disloyal congressman in talk over fried oysters”—he cocked his head for better eye contact—“you must have known I’d be watching.”

  Halsey stood and tugged his vest. “I told you yesterday—”

  “Yes, yes … your integrity.” McNealy took off his porkpie and wiped the sweat from the hatband. His hair was thinning into what they called a widow’s peak.

  Halsey folded his arms. “If you have a question, Detective, ask it.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Who?”

  “The man in the checkered suit?”

  Halsey had already decided there would be no dissembling over this. “He was my cousin, John Charles Robey, a contract seeker from Boston.”

  “Did you say was?”

  Be careful, Halsey told himself. “Was, yes. You asked me, who was that man.”

  McNealy nodded. “He’s now a permanent was.”

  Halsey steadied himself against his chair, looked out the window, then back into McNealy’s face … all planned gestures, such as Booth might have used, were he playing this scene on the stage. “Was?”

  McNealy told of the discovery of the body while Halsey sat and feigned shock.

  McNealy seemed to buy the act. He said, “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to do your cousin harm?”

  “Next to himself, my cousin loved faro, females, and whiskey, in that order.”

  “There are hundreds of gambling hells in Murder Bay, and by the latest count, four hundred and fifty-three whorehouses in the District. You need to be more specific.”

  “My cousin and I are not close, so that’s the best I can do.”

  “All right.” McNealy pulled out a business card and gave it to Halsey: HANNASSEY UNDERTAKING, PENNSYLVANIA AND 6TH. “When the body is released, we’ll send him here. Hannassey prices fair, but he charges double for a colonel over a captain, double for a lieutenant over an enlisted man. Don’t know what he’ll charge for a war profiteer, but he’ll do his best with your cousin’s face—have you seen the face?”

  Halsey looked up slowly. “Before or after you say he was pistol whipped?”

  “Hannassey’ll fix the face and put your cousin on a fast train to Boston.” McNealy turned, then stopped and said, “But one more thing, Lieutenant.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why did you show him your sidearm yesterday? You opened your coat and showed him that little Adams popgun.”

  “He wanted me to introduce him to the president. I told him the president has bigger worries. I told him I’d shoot him if he kept bothering me … or the president.”

  “Shoot him?”

  “A figure of speech.”

  “Well,” said McNealy, “he showed no bullet holes, so I reckon you’re in the clear on that, but … do you have your pistol with you?”

  Halsey knew that if he could not have produced a pistol, the beam passing through the magnifying glass of McNealy’s brain would have been a light of pure suspicion. But Halsey pulled out the second Adams and put it into McNealy’s hand.

  McNealy looked at the barrel. “No blood or hair.” Then he smelled it. “Hasn’t been fired lately.” He handed the gun back. “You’re in the clear, for now.”

  Just then, Major Eckert stepped into the office. He looked at McNealy the way soldiers looked at maggoty meat. “What are you doing here?”

  “Asking a few questions. Lieutenant Hutchinson says that he doesn’t know anything about the book the president lost,
or about the murder of his cousin last night.”

  “Murder?” Eckert looked at Halsey.

  “We found him in the Willard,” said McNealy, “hanging from a hook in his own wardrobe. Beaten so bad, he looked like uncased sausage. As dead as Andy Jackson.”

  “My cousin had high hopes but low tastes,” explained Halsey.

  “That’s it, then,” said Eckert to McNealy. “Can’t be stated more clearly than that. Are we done here, Detective?”

  “For now.”

  “Make it for good,” said Eckert. “There’s no disloyalty here. So don’t be bothering my men. In fact, stay the hell out of this office.”

  McNealy pulled out a cigar, bit the tip, spit it toward the spittoon, and left.

  Eckert said, “That man is a pain in the ass. I prefer detectives who do all their work undercover. At least you don’t know when they’re bothering you.”

  He was more than a pain, thought Halsey. He was pure danger, so best change the subject before it infected Halsey’s relations with the man he respected most in the office.

  Major Eckert wore a trimmed mustache and a neat suit, but he had the bulk of a man who could bend a fireplace poker in his bare hands. Halsey had seen him do it, just to prove the poor quality of War Department pokers. But Eckert’s best feature was his calm. He appeared calm in the morning, remained calm in front of Secretary Stanton’s tirades, and would surely display calm in a crisis.

  But before Halsey spoke, a tall figure appeared in the doorway, shrouded in a white canvas duster and floppy felt hat. He pulled off the hat and said, “Favor seekers are out early.”

  “I’m sure they won’t recognize you in that getup, Mr. President,” said Eckert.

  “It helps.” Lincoln handed Eckert a paper. “Get this off to General McClellan.”

  Eckert called Homer Bates into the cipher room, gave him the message, and set him to work. Then he said to Lincoln, “Anything else, sir?”

  “Any word on that daybook I seem to have lost?”

  Eckert shook his head.

  “Oh, well, no matter.” Lincoln asked for the overnight traffic, flipped through the pile without any comment, then glanced at the clock and said, “Major, I’ll beg an escort from Lieutenant Hutchinson. His shift must be nearly over.”