The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  But it was enough for Halsey.

  * * *

  He returned to the hotel around five that afternoon.

  Noah said, “I think you need a shine, sir.” Then he winked.

  So Halsey climbed into the chair.

  Noah grabbed the brushes and went to work.

  Halsey could almost see Noah’s eyes roll across his head from left to right as a man crossed Sixth Street, passed the shoeshine stand, and went into the hotel.

  “Can’t be too careful,” said Noah. “Even I don’t know all the watchers.”

  “What do you have for me?”

  “My boys done the job, once I told ’em they was doin’ it for Mr. Lincoln.”

  Perhaps they were doing it for Lincoln. But Halsey was doing it for Halsey … who did not need a law degree to know that if a man held something over you, you should find something to hold over him. Perhaps McNealy had a taste for talkative whores … or for rigged card games … or for extorting money from frightened rebel sympathizers.

  As Halsey paid, Noah slipped him a few sheets of paper.

  In his room, Halsey propped his pillow against the headboard, stretched out, and was impressed by the quality of the notes. The Bone brothers had followed McNealy across Washington for two weeks and set down everything: where he went, what he did, whom he talked to.

  Teaching Negroes to read, thought Halsey, might have its advantages.

  He studied the names, the times, the addresses, and looked for patterns.

  McNealy lived in Ryan’s Boarding House near Third and East Capitol. Each day, he visited the Old Capitol Prison, no doubt to confer with Lafayette Baker. Then he went by the Pinkerton office on I Street. Playing both ends against the middle, thought Halsey … or both detective services.

  And every morning, at eleven fifteen, he sat on the same bench in Lafayette Park and opened a newspaper. He read for ten minutes, then he left, unless another man sat at the other end and opened a newspaper. Then they talked from behind the papers.

  The notebook also listed private addresses that McNealy visited. Two caught Halsey’s attention: 1150 Sixteenth Street, at the corner of K, three blocks north of the White House, and 1912 Pennsylvania, west of the White House, near Washington Circle.

  McNealy went past the Sixteenth Street address every day and often went inside.

  He had visited 1912 Pennsylvania three times around ten o’clock at night. Each time, he had gone to the barn at the rear, to a meeting of a dozen men “and one strong-voiced woman.” And there was a pattern: If McNealy met the man in Lafayette Park on a Monday morning, he would go to number 1912 on Tuesday night.

  Whatever his game was, it grew only more puzzling.

  Halsey had seen these addresses. But where? He could not cross-reference them until the middle of the night, when the telegraph office was deserted for a time.

  Then he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and removed his papers and codebooks. Beneath was a false bottom he had fashioned from an old piece of furniture. After McNealy had rifled his room, he decided he needed a hiding place for items like Squeaker’s ledger book, an envelope containing a hundred dollars in emergency cash, and spare ammunition for his pistol. Where safer than the telegraph office?

  He took out Squeaker’s ledger, flipped through it, and there it was: the address of the house on Sixteenth at K. Next to it was the name “Dunbar.” Harriet Dunbar.

  Joseph Albert McNealy was spending time with a Southern sympathizer.

  As for 1912 Pennsylvania Avenue, there was no name written next to it, nothing but a little sketch that looked like a trunk and overhanging branches. A tree? A tree?

  Harriet Dunbar … and a tree?

  In the morning, he went home by way of K Street, so that he could get a look at Dunbar’s house. It was one of eight joined façades on the northwest corner, white-painted brick, black shutters, four stories in one of the city’s better neighborhoods. Here the aroma of brewing coffee and fresh bread almost covered the smell of horseflesh and turds, like a layer of cologne on an unwashed body.

  What had McNealy been doing with Mrs. Dunbar? Were they conspiring? Were they lovers? What high-toned lady would have any interest in a slouchy snoop like Joseph Albert McNealy?

  Halsey wanted to watch the house, but he knew that a young man in Brooks Brothers would begin to look suspicious if he loitered too long.

  So he turned and noticed two black men coming in the opposite direction. One carried a pick, the other a six-pound sledge. He crossed I Street and glanced over his shoulder. Now they were following him. But the streets were busy, so they kept their distance. When he crossed New York Avenue at Thirteenth, they crossed. When he turned east on F Street, they turned, and again when he turned south on Seventh.

  In the block after D Street, there was little foot traffic. The stores were not yet open. So Halsey stopped and looked into the window of Shephard and Riley’s Bookstore. Displayed in a handsome pyramid were nine leather-bound volumes and a sign: JUST ARRIVED! GREAT EXPECTATIONS, BY CHARLES DICKENS. ENTIRE SERIAL IN A SINGLE VOLUME.

  The two young black men came by.

  The taller, whom he now recognized as Noah’s son Daniel said, “Stay away from Miz Dunbar’s house. They’re watchin’ it.”

  “Who?” asked Halsey.

  “Don’t know, but they’re watchin’,” he answered without breaking stride.

  “Yeah,” added the other, Noah’s son Jacob, “and stay away from Lafayette Park, too. We’ll go there. We’ll tell you what we see.”

  Then Daniel said, “And that Expectation book ain’t a patch on Tale of Two Cities.”

  * * *

  Halsey decided to let the young black men do the watching while he stayed in his room and wrote a letter to his sister. Sitting down with pen and paper to converse with Karen, two years younger and already a mother, gave him a sense of normalcy, a feeling that somewhere, life was proceeding in an orderly way. He imagined her reading his words in her Beacon Street parlor, in the evening, after her husband, a young doctor, had returned from work at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

  Thank you for your letter of the 21st instant. This week I do not have anything as exciting to tell as skinny-dipping with the president, only that the heat continues unbearable and the war grinds on. But the feeling is very strong that we are moving toward a new phase. Last week, Lincoln signed the Second Confiscation Act, which clarifies the Negro issue for military commanders. Slaves who reach Federal lines in battlefield states will be free. I also think he intends to move against slavery in some larger way, which may have some impact on Father’s business. Miss Samantha has proven herself a fine nurse and, if I may say so, a fine companion when we can steal a bit of time. Don’t read “between the lines” here, and don’t go telling Father, though he would love to hear that I have taken a wife and given him an heir. First, we must rescue this Union and, as I am coming to believe, free the slaves, too. Love, H.

  He posted the letter and went to sleep. He must have been exhausted because he slept until three in the afternoon, despite the heat and the noise of the day.

  When he awoke, two notes had been slipped under his door.

  The first, from McNealy:

  Meet at lock keeper’s house, Washington Canal and 17th, 4 P.M.

  The other came from Jacob Bone:

  McNealy met man with newspaper today. This means that tomorrow, he will go to meeting at 1912 Penn.

  On his way out, Halsey said to Noah, “Tell your son, I want to get close to the meeting tomorrow. See if he can find a way. He’ll know what I mean.”

  Noah nodded and touched the side of his nose.

  * * *

  The President’s Park was a green expanse south of the White House, bounded on the east by Fifteenth Street, the west by Seventeenth, and on the south by the Washington Canal. The white canvas tents of an army encampment occupied the higher areas. An elliptical horse track circled below it.

  Officers were exercising their mounts in
the late afternoon light. Drums were thrumming. Troops were marching. No one paid attention to the man in the brown suit who stood at the low canal wall and tossed stones into the filthy water.

  Nearby, the lock keeper, an old man in a straw hat, sat in front of his little stone house and swatted flies. There wasn’t much for him to do, not since the canal and its traffic had slowed to a trickle.

  Without turning, McNealy said to Halsey, “What’s your game?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “I told you, I ask the questions. You answer. You follow?”

  Halsey did not respond.

  So McNealy turned and repeated it: “You follow?”

  Halsey nodded.

  “All right, then. Why were you outside Harriet Dunbar’s house this morning?”

  “Was I there?”

  “We’re watching the house. We saw you. Why were you there?”

  Halsey tried a half truth. “The morning after the president lost his daybook, I saw Squeaker pass something to Mrs. Dunbar in the Willard. I thought—”

  “You thought you’d do my job? Three months later?” McNealy studied Halsey and said, “You’re worried, aren’t you?”

  “Worried?”

  “Don’t try to fool me. I get up at four o’clock every morning, no matter when I go to bed. If you can’t get up earlier than that—”

  “I’m not fooling you.”

  “You’ve heard something, so you’re worried. Emancipation is coming and you’re worried about what’s in that daybook you stole.”

  “I didn’t steal it.”

  “But you lost it. Now you’re worried what’s in it could queer Lincoln’s plans.”

  Halsey looked across the canal, toward the cattle grazing around the half-finished Washington Monument. “All I know about his plans is that he signed the Second Confiscation Act when Congress sent it to him.”

  “A Republican president and his Congress—” McNealy gave a spit. “—there’s a pair that’s hard to fight.”

  “I thought our job was to fight the enemy.”

  “The enemy is everywhere.” McNealy gestured toward the President’s Park—the horse track, the tents, the cavalry corral over by Fifteenth. “Everywhere. And I think there’s more emancipation news. But if you don’t, we’re done.”

  “For good?”

  “For now.” McNealy snapped the cigar butt into the canal. “You can’t be shed of me that easy.”

  Halsey said, “If I can’t tell you anything new about emancipation, and we know what the president thinks of McClellan, and I have nothing worthwhile on Congressman Wood, because his niece is my source and she’s in New York—”

  “She’s back.”

  “Back?”

  “Surprised?” McNealy pulled out a telegram. “From our people in New York. Back four days ago, along with the uncle called Fernando. Start diddlin’ her again. Get her to talk about what she sees and hears. That shouldn’t be too hard … or … maybe something might get hard. The rest will be easy.”

  “You’re a crude bastard, McNealy.”

  “No,” said McNealy. “Just a bastard. And from what I saw in the Smithsonian, she liked it. So did you.”

  Halsey didn’t say it, but he thought it: You son of a bitch, you watched us. He resolved that soon, he would have something to use against McNealy.

  * * *

  But McNealy was right. Constance had come back to Washington.

  She was waiting for Halsey in his room.

  At first, he did not even notice her. Instead, he saw his uniform on a hanger in the corner. It looked as if it had been sponged and pressed. The gilt thread on the shoulder straps glittered in the backlight from the window.

  Then he heard her voice. “That’s for later.”

  “Constance?”

  She lay propped against a pillow, with the sheet drawn up to her neck.

  He stood there, trying to decide if he was pleasantly surprised or simply shocked.

  He had tried not to think about her since she left. But he had missed her. She had more passion than Samantha, and she had given him more gifts … the softness of her breasts when he slid his hand under her chemise, the softness of her sighs when he slid his fingers down the front of her skirt …

  She said, “I had the hotel clean your uniform. We’re dining with my uncles at the Willard. They want to talk to you.”

  He closed and locked the door.

  She said, “I guess I missed the Washington heat … and you.”

  For Halsey, “shocked” was fading, “pleasantly surprised” rising.

  “I told my uncles I would have to bribe you to be in their presence.” Then she threw back the sheet. “I did not tell them with what.”

  “Pleasantly surprised” now grew into “thrilled beyond measure.”

  Constance was wearing only her underclothes—silk chemise, drawers with lace trim around the waist and the thighs, light blue stockings held up by dark blue garters.

  She reached out. “It’s wartime, Halsey. Things are different. And I’ve thought of this every day we’ve been apart.”

  He let her draw him to the edge of the bed. He sat and looked her up and down, as if she were a work of art. Where would he start?

  As if she could read his mind, she whispered, “You can start by taking off some of those clothes.”

  So he did. He took off his jacket and tie. Then he leaned forward and kissed her more gently than he ever had in the Smithsonian.

  And with his lips on hers, he touched one of her breasts. She sighed. So he slid his hand under the fabric; then he pushed up the loose silk and brought his mouth down to one of the sweet, salty nipples. She sighed again and arched her back.

  Halsey had always believed in the order of things. Until the day that he slipped the president’s diary into his pocket, he had done everything as it should be done, step by step, systematically, predictably, even in battle. But there was no order to this.

  The touches, the kisses, the sighs and strokes and sensations, all embraced and mingled and withdrew suddenly, only to mingle again.

  He slid her stockings down and thrilled to the feel of cool flesh as the fabric peeled away. She pulled his shirt up over his head. He ran his hands along her calves and milk white thighs. She caressed his chest and shoulders. He hesitated a moment, and then, through the silk of her drawers, he touched her and felt how ready she was.

  He had never traveled this far with any women—unless he paid—and even then he had been reluctant.

  But when she raised her legs and slipped those silk drawers down and off, all reluctance and all thought were gone, all surrendered to sensation.

  Everything happened quickly after that.

  When they were done, she said, “Now, let’s go see what my uncles want.”

  As he put on his uniform, he thought only briefly of Samantha, and only to remind himself that in wartime, a young man had to take his pleasures where he could.

  * * *

  When they came down to the lobby, Halsey sensed a quiet excitement in the air. The setting sun reddened the scene beyond the tall windows. Noah’s son, Daniel, was going about lighting gas lamps. Jacob was polishing the brass andirons in the fireplace. A bottle of brandy and a snifter had been set out on the low table in the corner, beside a certain chair. John Wilkes Booth was due back in town, and all would soon be in readiness for the famous guest.

  Halsey was glad that Booth was not sitting in the corner already, offering fresh remarks from behind his newspaper.

  Harvey, the desk clerk, looked up from his ledger and smiled. “Good evening, Lieutenant … and Miss Hutchinson.”

  Constance had probably presented herself again as his sister … Miss Hutchinson.

  A moment later, Halsey wished that Booth had been there, or his real sister, because sitting by the empty fireplace, in a cool blue dress and hat, hands fidgeting with a yellow telegram, was Samantha Simpson of Wellesley, Massachusetts.

  She stood and said his name.


  Constance looked at the young woman in the corner, then at Halsey.

  Samantha looked at the young woman on Halsey’s arm, then at Halsey.

  And Halsey felt as if he had been shot.…

  A young man who has spent an hour absorbed in the wonders of a woman, especially for the first time, often feels a physical exhilaration that infuses his whole being. It starts in his loins, a sensation not unlike the tingling in the gums after a glass of good brandy. It radiates warmly upward into the rest of his being, like brandy, giving him a sense of satisfaction, of pleasure, of continuing desire … all at once.

  But a young man who has betrayed a young woman for whom he has deep feelings may experience an equal and opposite sensation when he looks into her eyes. His insides wither. His stomach turns to acid.

  For Halsey both sensations met, absolute joy and the desire to crawl into a hole. Worse, he thought, than being shot.

  Three sets of eyes shifted, four if Halsey included the amused desk clerk.

  Outside, another regiment was marching past to the simple rat-tat, rat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat of a drum.

  And Halsey wondered who would blink first. Who would speak first?

  Constance. She said, “Is this your other sister?”

  “Other sister?” Samantha looked Constance over from her expensive shoes to her fine peltote jacket and said, “If I had a sister, she would not be visiting a man in his hotel in the afternoon.”

  “It’s evening,” said Constance. “And it’s wartime, Miss—”

  “—Simpson, and I know well what wartime is, Miss,” and then she added, “or is it Mrs.?”

  Halsey wanted to apologize to Samantha, but how could he in front of Constance, after what they had just done?

  The drums suddenly sounded louder. The front door was swinging open.

  And John Wilkes Booth was dropping his bags in the middle of the lobby, making a fine thespian entrance for himself. “The wandering bard has returned.”

  “Welcome back, Mr. Booth.” Harvey rang the bell for a boy.

  In an instant, a young Negro in a red jacket, whom Halsey recognized as Noah’s third son, Ezekiel, appeared.