A Statue for Jacob

by Peter Murphy

  ‘Tell me about Kiah Harmon,’ Henry Shilling said.

  ‘She’s a good lawyer,’ I replied, ‘and as straight as they come.’

  ‘What does she want out of this?’

  ‘She wants some money for the family, obviously. We’ve never talked numbers. But she did make it clear early on that they’re not interested in trying to recover the compound interest calculations. They know they can’t do that. They want a reasonable settlement, and their main point is that they want the government to put up a statue in honour of Jacob van Eyck.’

  ‘A statue?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Philadelphia, sir.’

  He thought for a few moments.

  ‘OK. I guess I can see where she’s coming from with that.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I paused. ‘Do you want me to…?’

  ‘No,’ Shilling replied, ‘at least, not yet. Let’s give our solid legal case a run first and see what happens. If the judge is with us on that, all well and good. But if he’s not, then I may have to talk to the President about playing safe. Has anyone looked into what putting up such a statue might cost?’

  We all looked at each other.

  ‘No, sir,’ Harry said.

  ‘Well, you may want to give it some thought,’ Henry Shilling suggested.

  59

  Kiah Harmon

  I don’t know how I would have got through the days after the break-in without Arlene. I can’t describe the sense of violation, the sense of having been targeted in such a personal way, the shock I felt at seeing my whole professional life so maliciously shredded as if it counted for nothing. It was my personal life too that they’d destroyed with such rage. I’d lost framed pictures of my parents, my college and law school certificates, and other pieces I was attached to. I felt as if I’d been assaulted and dumped naked at the side of some country road with nothing left to me and nowhere to turn. I vomited constantly for three straight days, and I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Mercifully, Arlene had been with me when we made the discovery. Seeing my reaction, she sat me down with the blanket she kept in the office wrapped around me, and sent Jenny out, as soon as she arrived, for lots of coffee and hot soup. It was Arlene who quietly arranged for Powalski to make a thorough inspection of the premises before we called in the police, or even told the building management what had happened. If she hadn’t taken that decision, we would never have found the listening devices. She took me home during the afternoon and made sure that I was comfortable before she left, and she made sure that I called Arya and arranged to see her, and she told me time and time again that I could call her 24/7, and that I would be hearing from her if I didn’t call to let her know I was OK.

  Powalski called it as a government job almost immediately. Of course, it wasn’t until Dave Petrosian showed up that we knew that the government might have had a concrete reason for ransacking the office. Powalski called it before we had any inkling of that, and he was right. Until Dave arrived I’d assumed that this was an escalation – a serious escalation – of the harassment policy that had begun with the IRS audit. That thought alone was alarming enough. Even Powalski, with his experience of what the government was capable of, was unnerved. It felt as though we were being warned off with a vengeance. When Dave arrived, at least this latest blow began to make some kind of sense, and of course the copies of the loan certificates and the letter he had found at the Treasury were wonderful to see. But the trauma remained, and would remain, at least until we found some way of restoring order and our ability to function as a law office.

  That took days of work by Arlene and Jenny. They first had to arrange for the debris to be hauled away and for the office to be deep-cleaned. Then they had to go out and purchase new computers, and rent furniture, and buy God knows how many coffee mugs and all the other day-to-day stuff you take for granted in an office, until we had the leisure, and the insurance money, to buy what we wanted. They also had to do whatever they could to reinstate the files that had been strewn all over the office. Thankfully, although many documents bore ink stains, almost all of them were recoverable, and Arlene had meticulously backed up our computers in the Cloud and on a series of memory sticks. But throughout this time, I remained at home.

  After three days I’d been desperate to get back to work. I was going crazy, doing nothing useful at home, my only diversion being to drive myself to Arya’s and back each day; and we were losing time. But Arlene was firm. There was nothing I could do to help in the process of restoring the office, and she didn’t want me upsetting myself needlessly and getting in the way. The office was coming along, and the important thing was for me to be able to hit the ground running once it was fit for purpose again. She was right, of course. I would have fretted the whole time. But by the time I made it back to the office and we ready to work again, we had a week and a half left before we had to go back before Judge Morrow. Dave had called and said that if we needed more time, he would support us, but even with that support, we couldn’t go back to the judge without showing him what use we’d made of the time we’d already had.

  On my first day back, I found a fax from Dave, forwarding one from an FBI agent called Marty Resnik. At Dave’s request, Agent Resnik had been in touch with the FBI field office in Philadelphia, and they in turn had been in touch with the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, the headquarters of the Freemasons in the State. Jenny had already been all over their website. It had an impressive historical section, which provided us with some interesting detail of early members, including a certain Benjamin Franklin; but interesting as that was, it didn’t give us a lot to go on in discovering the identity of Jacob’s Brother. The fax was far more detailed. There wasn’t an annual membership list, but there were several lists for the period we were interested in, and in particular one compiled in 1811. The Lodge had also been able to supply details of where many of the members of that time lived, at least in general terms. I have no idea how long it would have taken Powalski to get his hands on that same information. Knowing Powalski, I would have backed him to come up with it eventually, but the FBI could open doors far more quickly than he could.

  I called Dave to thank him, and to apologise for what I’d said to him on the day we discovered the break-in. I hadn’t meant it. I was just venting. I knew that Dave would never be party to anything like that, and I felt terrible about it. He said he understood, and that it was already forgotten.

  I gathered the whole team around our rented conference table and we went over every name on the list. In the end, we concluded that the two most likely candidates were men from what looked like well-established families whose family seats were within easy striking distance of Upper Merion Township: Peter Hoare and Abe Best. This was educated guesswork, of course, and no more. Jacob van Eyck could just as easily have had close friends in Philadelphia, or even farther afield, but we knew that he had grown frail during his declining years, and there was something to be said for the conjecture that he might have concentrated on friends closer to home. Before the break-in, the plan had been to return to Pennsylvania to take Aunt Meg through the list; to keep in touch with the office as the descendants of likely candidates were put through the LDS family tree procedure; and to see if we could work it out on the ground. There wasn’t time for that now. I placed a call to Alice and asked if Aunt Meg would be prepared to talk to us over the phone.

  Two hours later, I put her on speakerphone, and we spoke with her for over an hour. Many of the names rang a bell with her. But the one that resonated most was that of Abe Best. The Bests and the van Eycks had been on good terms for many years, she said, in the old days. She had an idea that Jacob and Abe Best had been partners in some business ventures together. She wasn’t aware of any Bests living in the Merion Township area currently, or for some long time before. But the Bests had also been known for their masonic connections.

  We d
ecided to go with Abe Best. As soon as we’d said goodbye to Aunt Meg, Jenny went to work on the LDS site. An hour later, we had a printout of Abe’s family tree, from which we saw that one of his descendants was a woman called Cathy Wallace, thirty-two years old, apparently single. We had to start somewhere. I called Dave, and within an hour, Agent Resnik had got us a phone number and an address in DC, where Cathy Wallace worked as an economic forecaster for a think tank.

  60

  Cathy agreed to meet Sam and myself during her lunch hour the next day. We took her to a coffee shop near her office where we ordered soup and toasted sandwiches. She was a friendly, cheerful woman dressed in a colourful sweater and jeans. The think tank she worked for leaned towards the liberal, and apparently a dress code wasn’t one of their priorities. She seemed genuinely pleased to see us. She didn’t even ask how we’d tracked her down.

  ‘Did you grow up in Pennsylvania?’ I asked as we were taking our seats.

  ‘No. I don’t think there have been Bests in Pennsylvania for the best part of a hundred years now – not my branch of the family, anyhow. Unlike the van Eycks we were a pretty small clan, and we just drifted away over the years. I grew up right here in the DC area, and apart from four years of college at Northwestern, I’ve always lived here.’

  ‘But you know the story about the van Eycks?’

  ‘Sure. I heard all about Jacob from my parents, and now I’ve been following the case in the news, of course.’

  ‘That must be interesting for you, given your background with the family history,’ I said.

  ‘Not only that,’ she replied. ‘It’s interesting from a professional point of view.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Kiah, I’m an economic forecaster. Want to hear my forecast for the economy if the government has to pay out an unfunded 670 billion dollars?’

  It was said with a straight face and there was an awkward moment, just as the sandwiches arrived. Sam and I caught each other’s looks.

  ‘Cathy, we’ve tried to make it clear,’ I began wearily. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d had to explain the family’s position and I was getting tired of it. ‘We’re not out to collect the compound interest calculation. We’re –’

  She laughed and waved me away, a quick drop of the hand from sandwich to table.

  ‘I know, I know. You don’t have to explain. I’m just kidding. I get it, and I’m on your side, believe me. If you guys can prove that Jacob van Eyck loaned all that money, of course his family should get something back. I know you’re not out to bankrupt the government.’

  ‘It’s really important to me that you understand that,’ Sam said.

  ‘I do. Look, everyone in our family would support the van Eycks over this.’

  Gratefully, we all took another bite of our sandwiches.

  ‘What got me all riled up,’ Cathy continued, ‘is how that stupid woman Mary Jane whatever-her-name-is went after Sam about that movie. I couldn’t believe her.’ She touched Sam’s hand. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through all that you-know-what, and I thought you handled it really well.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sam replied.

  ‘So, not that I’m not enjoying our lunch, but what brings you to see me? On the phone you said there might be some information I could give you. I don’t know what it could be, but if I can help, fire away.’

  I put what was left of my sandwich down.

  ‘Cathy, from what we understand, your family – the Bests – and the van Eycks were close at one time. You understand, we’re going back to the period just after the War of Independence, very late eighteenth century to early nineteenth?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely. That’s what I was always told. Grandfather Abe and Jacob van Eyck were good friends.’

  ‘And they were both Freemasons?’

  She laughed out loud. ‘Is the Pope Catholic? All the men in my family are Masons going back to the dawn of time. It’s a family obsession. They were back in Grandfather Abe’s day and it’s the same today. My two brothers are Masons. They live in California. And all the men talk non-stop about Grandfather Abe. You know why, of course?’

  She was looking at Sam. Sam smiled.

  ‘I’m not sure I do. Why?’

  ‘Because, if you were a Mason in Pennsylvania in Grandfather Abe’s day, that meant that you knew George Washington, or Benjamin Franklin, or both. That’s why the family talks about Grandfather Abe so much. He’s our family link to Washington, our one claim to fame. No one actually knows whether he ever met George Washington, but if he was a Mason, the argument goes, he must have – even though Washington moved away after the war and became Grand Master in Virginia, so who really knows? But why spoil a good story?’

  I nodded. ‘We understand that the Bests lived in Merion Township at that time, even though, as you say, the family moved on eventually?’

  ‘Yes. That was our home during the war, for sure. It’s a sore point, as a matter of fact. We had to retreat into Merion Township. We had some other properties, a bit farther out into the countryside beyond Valley Forge, but the British took them over and used them to store munitions. They appropriated them and made the family move out. Eventually, General Washington took the property back for us, but I heard it was a real mess, the way they left it, and of course they never paid a red cent by way of compensation.’

  ‘Did you ever hear any talk about Grandfather Abe being in any way involved in helping Jacob van Eyck to try to get his loans repaid? This would be during the time the family was living in Merion Township.’

  She stared out of the window and thought for some time.

  ‘No. Not that I recall. Helping him in what way?’

  I saw Sam shake her head at me. I also had the feeling this was going nowhere. If so, we couldn’t afford to waste any more time. We needed to get back to the office and move on to the next most likely Best family contact. As a parting shot, I decided to ask her point blank.

  ‘Cathy, we have evidence that Jacob entrusted someone – we don’t know who yet – with a number of documents in connection with the loan, and that whoever it was took those documents to the Treasury to try to make them pay Jacob what he was due. This would be in 1811, or thereabouts. Does that ring any kind of bell at all? Did you ever hear anything about that?’

  ‘No,’ she replied.

  ‘Do you remember talk about anyone inheriting any of Grandfather Abe’s papers after his death, or do you know anyone in your family who could have any documents from his day?’

  To my surprise, she laughed.

  ‘You’re not from a masonic family, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I admitted.

  ‘If you were, you would know that you don’t inherit masonic documents. The regalia and books, maybe sometimes, even though strictly you’re not supposed to. But documents? Not if they have any real masonic significance. Not if they had to do with help you were giving to a fellow Mason.’

  ‘So, what would happen to documents of that kind?’ Sam asked.

  ‘You would have a storage box at the Lodge,’ Cathy replied. ‘You’d leave them there, for as long as you needed to.’

  I felt my heart start to beat a bit faster.

  ‘Cathy, do you know whether Grandfather Abe had a box?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know for sure,’ she replied, ‘but it’s a pretty safe bet that he would have. It’s an open secret. All the men in my family talked about their storage boxes, and I don’t know of any reason why Grandfather Abe would have been any different.’

  ‘Even if he did,’ Sam said quietly, ‘I’m sure his heirs would have cleared it out after his death.’

  Cathy shook her head.

  ‘No. That’s not how it would work. They may have checked the box for family papers, a will, for example, but I doubt they would clear it out,’ she replied, ‘certainly not if it contained masonic materi
als. For one thing, that would require the consent of the Grand Master. Today, it wouldn’t be a problem, but in Abe’s day they liked to keep their masonic papers in-house, and the Grand Master’s word was law.’

  She paused for a moment or two.

  ‘In any case, if the family had discovered any documents about the van Eyck loans, someone would have said something. Our family would have had no interest in keeping them, and any Mason would want to help his Brother. They wouldn’t have kept quiet about it. They would have told Jacob’s family and handed over the documents to them.’

  ‘Cathy,’ I asked, ‘am I understanding you correctly? Are you saying that if Grandfather Abe had papers like that stashed away at the Lodge, it’s possible that they’re still there?’

  ‘That’s what I’d expect,’ she replied simply. ‘The building they have today isn’t the original Lodge, obviously. I mean, the original was in a tavern that no longer even exists.’

  ‘That’s right, I said. ‘The Lodge now is the Masonic Temple, which is late nineteenth century.’

  ‘Right. What I’m saying is, I’m not sure how many times they’ve moved, and every time they move there’s a risk that something might get lost. But yes, unless someone realised that the documents might be needed for something like your case, they might be left to lie there pretty much for ever.’

  She smiled at each of us in turn.

  ‘So, that’s where I’d look if I were you.’

  ‘They won’t let us inside to look,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure of that.’

  She nodded. ‘No. You’d need a family member. Someone would have to bring proof of identity.’