On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  “Happy to oblige.” He ran his eye over her figure in a way that made her flesh crawl. “Needn’t use the key, madam, it’s open.”

  The downstairs hall smelled of closed rooms, dust, and a strong cigar. The cigar smoke came from the parlor. Before she stepped through the arch she knew who would be waiting.

  “Cicero.”

  He sat on her best sofa in a dirty blue uniform. Somehow he’d forced a boot onto his crippled left foot, a boot with a loose sole and a run-down heel he rested on an embroidered footstool. Bits of dried mud littered the delicate needlework. He looked thoroughly comfortable with a long cigar tilted up between his teeth. “Sister dear. Greetings.”

  She tried to smile. “You certainly make free use of my houses.”

  “But you installed new locks here. However, I came well equipped, as usual.” He jingled his ring of keys.

  “Hardly a visit I expected,” she said, trying to cover her uneasiness.

  He gestured with his cigar, leaving a smoke tracery in the air. “You’ve met my lieutenant, Mr. Cridge. Cridge, this is my sister, Margaret.”

  “Yes, sir, we had a pleasant exchange outside.”

  “We need a safe haven to conduct some business, Margaret. Ordinarily we wouldn’t trouble you, but our regular meeting place, a boardinghouse on H Street, isn’t available to us. The poor landlady is so devastated by the surrender, she’s turned her boarders out and locked herself away to mourn.”

  “How did you manage to get into the city?”

  “There was absolutely no difficulty. The Signal Service, alas no longer operating in Richmond, maintained a warehouse of Yankee uniforms taken from dead prisoners. Cridge and I were welcomed here like conquering heroes. We won’t trouble you for long, though we may need the premises again later tonight.”

  “How can I deny my own brother?” she said, though she very much wanted to do just that. “Would either of you like to wash? Are you hungry?”

  Cridge perked up but Cicero answered for both of them. “No. Make yourself comfortable, Cridge. I’ll speak to my sister privately a moment.” Cicero gripped Margaret’s elbow harder than was necessary, all but shoving her into the long, musty hall leading to the kitchen.

  Angered, she wrenched away. “I don’t understand why you’re in Washington again, but I hope it has nothing to do with the work you did in Richmond. The war’s over.”

  “Not for me.”

  “What are you—?”

  “Kindly don’t ask questions. Don’t implicate yourself.” She remembered his unsubtle threats of before. Anyone could be sacrificed.

  “We’ll use your house while we must, then we’ll disappear. If anyone inquires afterward, we were never here. You saw nothing, heard nothing.” He ran the index finger of his scarred hand over her wrist, a caress that made her shudder. “I have one last mission to complete.”

  “For Davis?”

  “The cowardly Mr. Davis packed his bag and ran while Richmond burned. This mission is mine.” He waited a moment. “The tyrant will be punished.”

  “Tyrant?” she repeated, afraid that she understood him too well.

  “I believe I would like to wash my hands. If you’d be kind enough to brew some tea for us, that would be excellent. We’ve had a long walk, and frankly I’m quite worn out from all the adulation I received from the populace.” His mouth twitched in a ghastly attempt at a smile.

  “I’ll brew the tea. I must say I don’t care for your companion.”

  “Cridge? He’s a fine soldier. A Christian gentleman. I’m not sure which of us hates Lincoln the more.”

  He patted her, as though she were a wayward child. “Bring the tea, then we’ll sequester ourselves. One more visitor should arrive within the hour. I’ll admit him. I think it’s best if you remain upstairs. In fact I insist.”

  She turned and walked stiffly to the kitchen.

  Ten minutes later she carried a tray to the parlor. Cridge looked up from his Testament and smiled in a smarmy way. She thought of Lon, wished he’d walk in suddenly, then realized it would be catastrophic. He might fall on Cicero and tear him apart.

  “Thank you kindly,” Cicero said from the window where he watched the square. “I’ll pay you a more leisurely visit when the campaign’s over.” Campaign. Lieutenant. Mission. My God, did he fancy himself some kind of soldier, fighting on like General Joe Johnston off in North Carolina?

  Upstairs, in the lowering twilight, she sat with a book Lon had given her, The New Eldorado of Wealth and Health by T. Fowler Haines. The pages extolling California might as well have been printed in Russian. Her eyes blurred. Her palms sweated. She heard every tick of her bedroom clock.

  Lamps burned all around the square when noises in the lower hall announced the visitor’s arrival. She tiptoed to the stairs and craned around the newel post.

  Cicero had limped to the hall to receive the caller. He clasped the hand of a well-dressed gentleman, then gestured him to the parlor. The visitor swept off his wide-brimmed hat. Margaret recognized the dark hair and profile of the actor, Booth. Both men disappeared. The parlor doors rolled shut.

  She gazed through the cracked windowpane at blue and red fountains of fireworks splashing the sky. The explosions thudded; the colored lights flickered on her drawn face. After an hour, she saw three men in the street below. Two of them, wearing blue uniforms, shook hands with Booth before they went opposite ways. She counted to twenty and hurried downstairs.

  The silver teapot was empty. Mud speckled the fine carpet. The reek of cigars lingered. Cicero, don’t do this. The war’s over.

  She saw his shiny bald head, his queer, sad eyes, his ruined body. Heard him say, Not for me.

  She knew what she had to do. She prayed that God would forgive her afterward.

  70

  April 1865

  Lon said, “Unbelievable, there’s no other word.” He hunched at the National bar, lost among men whose rowdy jollity he couldn’t share.

  His fourth whiskey sat in front of him, between his hands. In the amber depth he saw whole blocks reduced to a few windowless walls; scavengers, white and colored, picking through rubble piles or simply wandering, stunned and disbelieving.

  “Richmond,” Sandstrom said.

  “The damned rebs burned down their own house. The city provost ordered it, to destroy government records. They’ll be years rebuilding the burnt district. A hundred years healing the scars.”

  “But the war’s over, that’s something.”

  On the Avenue, the blaring brass and ruffling drums of another parade testified to it. So did all the shouting and joking and backslapping in the smoky taproom. But Lon saw and smelled the Virginia countryside. Miles of artillery-blasted roads, hills, and fields. A miasma rising from the earth where decaying men and horses lay in a few inches of soil. Burned trees reaching into the spring air like blackened hands.

  “I don’t know how it can ever be over for anyone who lived through it, Eugene. It’ll never be over for me.” Lon drank the whiskey at a gulp.

  “What are you doing the rest of the evening?”

  Lon stared at his hollow-eyed image in the back-bar mirror. He hadn’t seen a barber in months. He needed a change of linen. Wrinkles in his black suit were so deep, he wondered if an iron would touch them. The shoulder rig bulged his coat on the left side. Gentleman Lon was dead.

  “One more drink, then I’ll decide.”

  “We’ve had four. I’m about to fall down.”

  “Hold onto the bar.” Lon snapped his fingers at his friend Mapes, signed to his empty glass.

  “What’s the time?” Sandstrom said.

  Lon pulled a fat, gold-plated watch from his vest pocket. He exposed the dial with a flick of his thumbnail. “Ten past nine.”

  “Watch’s chain’s long enough to choke an ox. New?”

  Lon held the watch so Sandstrom could read the delicate script engraved inside the cover.

  With gratitude

  for your service


  A.L.

  1865

  “The President gave one to me and another to Bill Crook for guarding him on the City Point trip. He said it was his wife’s idea, but I doubt it. These days she stares through people like they’re made of glass. I think she’s ready for a nervous collapse.” Lon shut the lid and tucked watch and chain back in his pocket.

  “I should go see Margaret. I haven’t called on her since I came back. Baker’s kept us too busy.”

  The saloon’s noise level dropped suddenly. Silence ran down the bar like a wave rolling in. “Don’t think you’ll have to go looking for her,” Sandstrom said.

  With the shot glass at his lips, Lon glanced in the mirror. Margaret’s face appeared behind him. The only woman in the room, she was clearly nervous.

  “You said I could leave a message if it was urgent. I didn’t expect you’d be here.”

  “Baker released us tonight. I intended to knock on your door as soon as I finished my drink.”

  She could count the empty glasses in front of him. “Please come outside with me.”

  A stridency in her voice cleared some of the fog from his head. He slid greenbacks over to Sandstrom, grasped her arm, and steered her to the street, passing between slyly smiling men at the bar and others at tables. Lon’s truculent expression forestalled comments.

  A dusty wind buffeted them on the Avenue. “What is it, Margaret? You look upset.”

  “I am. My brother and a man named Cridge came to the house earlier. Lon, they’re planning some kind of violence. I think it’s directed at Lincoln.”

  He was awake, as surely as if Mapes had served him cold water. “Now? The Confederacy surrendered.”

  “Cicero said Davis had no part in this. He claims it’s his scheme. You know he’s never been the steadiest of men.”

  “And I know Cridge from Richmond. He’s a thug. How did he and your brother get into the city?”

  “Dressed as Union soldiers. They met with another man—”

  “Who?”

  “John Wilkes Booth, the actor.”

  “Where?”

  “Franklin Square. They were there until half an hour ago. Cicero said they’d reconvene later tonight. Some boardinghouse where they usually gather is closed because the landlady’s mourning the surrender.”

  “Then we go to Franklin Square.”

  “I have the buggy. A boy’s holding it around the corner.” Two minutes later, with Lon driving, the little piano-box buggy clipped toward the town house.

  In Franklin Square, black folk were serenading Seward’s residence again. Margaret dug her fingers in Lon’s arm. “Drive past, don’t stop. I left the house dark.” Lamplight shone in the fanlight above the entrance. He shook the reins and they sped on.

  “Drive around to the alley. I left the back door unbolted.”

  “I don’t want you to go in there with me.”

  “Oh, I’m going,” she said with a queer catch in her voice. “I may be able to keep Cicero calm enough for you to arrest him.”

  The buggy turned into the alley. “You’re sure you can let me do that?”

  “Yes. He’s doing wrong, but he’s a sick man.”

  They came abreast of a board fence. She said, “Here.” He jumped down, wrapped the reins around the whip socket, and stretched his hands out to help her alight. She fell against him, clinging a moment. He stroked her hair.

  “Be calm. It will come out all right.” He said it with no certainty that he was correct.

  They crept through the small garden where an ornamental fountain reflected the hazy moon. Lon loosened the buttons on his coat, pulled the shoulder sling forward. He eased the revolver from the leather. The back steps creaked. He hoped no windows were open.

  “Going in,” he said with his hand on the knob. He turned it, pushed. The oiled door swung silently.

  He could see the kitchen worktable and chopping block against a spill of light from the far end of a hallway. He heard conversation. “They’re in the parlor again,” she whispered. He cocked the revolver.

  “Stay behind me.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  He left the kitchen, treading softly, testing every floor-board. It seemed an age before he flattened his back against the wall beside the parlor entrance. He recognized voices and fought back the rage they induced.

  “Sniveling yellow bellies lost their nerve,” Cicero Miller was saying. “We’re down to three, plus Johnny. But they’re good men. Paine and Herold will dispose of Seward.”

  “In his house.”

  “Yes, just across the way. It should be easy, he’s still bedridden. Atzerodt breaks into Johnson’s hotel room and kills him. Booth has the honor and pleasure of dispatching the tyrant and General Grant.”

  “It’s definite that the Grants will attend Ford’s tomorrow night?”

  “The papers announced it. Lincoln has a taste for cheap comedies, as you might expect. I’ll see that Booth gets out of the city afterward. Paine and Davy Herold will ride to Surrattsville, meet Atzerodt, and go on to Port Tobacco. I really have no fear about the escape. A War Department telegrapher will be slow to issue warnings. Certain soldiers guarding the city bridges will look the other way. Certain patrols will take the wrong roads. It pays to have friends in Washington.”

  “It’s really true there are Yankees who want him dead?”

  “I wouldn’t care to sign an affidavit, Hummy, but we’ve been told so, through a long and complex chain of informants. We may not have complicity, but we’re supposed to have a measure of silent cooperation.”

  Stiff from standing in one position, Lon shifted weight to his left foot. The board under his heel squeaked. In the parlor something overturned noisily. “What the hell’s that?”

  Lon stepped into the doorway. “Gentlemen, you’re under arrest.”

  Miller blinked. “Well, our old friend Price the spy,” he said with surprising aplomb. “Or is it Rogers? How many other names do you have?” Lon yearned to put a bullet in him, and another into the mealy-faced Cridge, who sat with his hands clawed on the arms of his chair. Cridge sneered.

  “‘His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud. Under his tongue is mischief.’”

  “Shut up, you blaspheming son of a bitch. Remember the next verse? ‘He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages. In the secret places doth he murder the innocent.’ I’d say that describes you two jackals.”

  Margaret’s skirts rustled behind Lon. Cicero saw her, said to Lon, “I wondered how you knew. I should have seen the weakness in her.” Cicero screamed at Margaret, “Are you in bed with him? Is that why you sold us out, you whore?”

  “Oh, Cicero, what’s happened to you?” She slipped past Lon, reaching out with an unsteady hand. “Let us help.”

  Lon’s shouted warning came too late. Miller darted at her, one lurching step. He caught her wrist, swung her in front of him. His other arm hooked around her waist. “Go on, shoot her,” he crowed with a demented exuberance.

  Lon sensed movement to his right, started to pivot. Cridge threw a stool at his head. When he dodged, his foot slid a small rug sideways and unbalanced him. Cridge laid hands on the revolver. Lon’s finger jerked; the bullet tore through a framed chromo of a mountain lake and buried itself in the wall. Cridge wrenched the gun away, flung his arm back, and pistol-whipped Lon, two slashing blows of the barrel. Margaret cried out.

  Lon staggered and fell. He broke the impact with his hands, flopped onto his back, started to rise. Cridge’s spectacles flashed as he brought his foot back, kicked Lon’s jaw. Lon’s head struck the wooden floor. Sparkling lights danced in a darkness that quickly closed and obliterated everything.

  A flame shone, dimly at first. He smelled the kind of moldy dampness that pervaded rooms below ground. His cheek rested on a dirt floor.

  His eyesight cleared. He could see Margaret standing to his right. The flame danced in the chimney of a lamp held by Cridge. In his other hand he had a long blue Colt. Miller stood on the l
owest stair riser, grinning like a goblin.

  “Good evening again, Price, or Rogers, or whoever the hell you are. Mr. Cridge conveyed you to your new quarters while you were drowsing. The cellar has no windows, and no exit except this stair, which Mr. Cridge will faithfully guard until we finish our business tomorrow night. Johnson dies. Seward dies. Butcher Grant and his tyrant Caesar, they die with their women. I’ll be waiting behind Ford’s with horses to carry us away safely. You’ll be left to spend the rest of your life remembering you did nothing about it.”

  “Miller, if you kill anyone, there won’t be a safe place on earth. You can climb the mountains of Tibet and it won’t do any good. You’ll be hunted and hounded till you’re caught.”

  Cicero tapped fingers on his other palm, applause with a touch of effeteness. “Very pretty speech. Fruitless, though. The Union may have won the battles, but I’ll win the war. Think of that between now and tomorrow, you piece of egalitarian shit.”

  He spit; it landed in Lon’s eye. Cridge laughed. Lon struggled to sit up. Margaret restrained him.

  Cridge left the lamp on a small nail keg. He stood aside so Miller could precede him up the stairs, dragging his foot and whistling “The Bonnie Blue Flag.” The heavy door closed; the bolt shot home. Lon reached across to find Margaret’s hand, cold as marble to his touch.

  71

  April 1865

  The wick of the lamp burned blue and sputtered. Lon’s watch showed ten past two in the morning. He pounded the door at the head of the stairs.

  “Cridge!”

  It took five minutes to rouse their guard. Finally, plodding steps brought him down the hall.

  “We need oil for the lamp.”

  “I’m not opening the door.”

  Lon swore and descended to the hard-packed dirt floor of the cellar. Margaret sat forlornly on an old trunk. Whatever powder and paint had graced her face was gone, leaving it white and stark.