On Secret Service (47 page)

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 lowest 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.

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.

“What are we going to do, Lon?”

“I don't know.” He'd been asking it of himself for hours. Together they watched the wick sputtering toward darkness.

 

When the light went, his time sense distorted. He sat against a bank of shelves, Margaret beside him, nestling in the curve of his arm. Silently he concocted schemes. He rejected every one. Cridge was a brute, but he wasn't stupid.

He guessed it must be morning. He heard a scurrying noise. Margaret flung herself against him. “There are rats in here. I felt one on my leg.”

He scrambled up, stamped like a Spanish dancer until he caught something under his heel that squealed. He listened.

“I think I killed it.”

The darkness filled with the sound of Margaret's strident breathing.

 

Later, he climbed the stairs again. Pounded the door again. Yelled until Cridge came back.

“What is it?”

“The lady's uncomfortable. We don't have a sink down here.”

“Use a bucket. Use the floor. She has no claim to modesty. ‘I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, and the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color—'”

“Cridge—”

“‘—having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.'”

“Damn you, have the decency to—”

“She's a whore. Let her piss in the dirt.”

“Fucking
bastard
!” Lon bashed the door so it shook.

 

They fought the terror of isolation, the knowledge that madmen were readying the assault on Andrew Johnson at the Kirkwood House, William Seward in his residence, the Lincolns and Grants at the evening performance of
Our American Cousin
at Ford's.

“Your brother may have help from people in our government,” Lon said. “Help with getting away, at least.”

“How can that be? How could anyone turn traitor after the war ends?”

“Hate runs deep, Margaret. I've heard rumors about Stanton for a long time. I have a hard time believing in a conspiracy, but why would your brother invent it?”

Silence. Faint chittering came from the direction of the stair. On his feet, he waited, tense.

The rat never approached. After ten minutes Lon sat down, incredibly sleepy. In his head a clock ticked.

God Almighty. They
had
to get out.

 

Margaret was first to fall asleep. Her head tilted to his shoulder, resting there while he sat motionless so he wouldn't wake her. He kept concocting plans, all of them flawed. He had no weapon. Well, possibly one, but no match for a pistol. Worse, he had no means of inducing Cridge to open the door.

His head ached from hunger and the blows he'd absorbed. One foot was numb. He tried not to yawn; he felt himself drifting. He imagined an hourglass with the sand running out. Bright red sand, the color of blood from a wound.

The image possessed him. He slept.

 

He woke in panic. An hour might have passed, or a whole day. Blinking in the dark, he struggled to throw off his sleepiness.

He eased himself away from Margaret; she was snoring softly. On the other side of the cellar, he unbuttoned his trousers and relieved the fullness that had come while he slept.

Standing that way, seething with frustration, he thought of Cridge shouting the words from Revelation 17. The woman on the scarlet beast. Babylon the great mother of harlots…

He caught his breath.

Back at Margaret's side, he touched her shoulder. “Wake up.”

Muttering, she came out of sleep. She found his stubbled face, caressed it. “What is it?”

“I want you to be an actress. I saw the way Cridge looked at you upstairs. You heard him call you a bad name. All right, you'll pretend to be what he thinks you are. I imagine he'll like that, fine hypocritical gentleman that he is.”

He crouched down beside her. “This is what we'll do.”

 

“Mr. Cridge?”

“What do you want, woman?” Cridge's voice had a heaviness now; a weariness. It might slow him. Lon lay curled on his side near the foot of the stairs.

“I want to wash and clean myself. The detective's asleep. You have a pistol. I can't hurt you. Open the door. Give me five minutes in the water closet, I beg you.”

Her voice dropped, husky and insinuating; Lon almost smiled at the performance. “I saw you watching me last night. You're right, I know tricks that please men. But I'm starving. A basin of water, a little something to eat—there's a loaf of bread in the painted box in the kitchen. Give me five minutes and then I'll be good to you, Mr. Cridge.”

Lon hardly dared breathe.

“If I do it, and find you've deceived me, I'll put a bullet in you.”

“You won't have to do that, I promise.”

Another silence. “All right. Wait.”

Cridge plodded away, returned moments later. “Stand away from the door.” Lon's upper teeth cut into his lower lip until he tasted blood. He'd told Margaret to step down three steps, no more.

The bolt rattled. The darkness against his eyelids lightened. Margaret said, “See, there he is. Asleep, just as I told you.”

“Come up a step at a time.”

“Oh, thank you, I'm so grateful.” Lon slitted one eye, watched her lift her skirts. Cridge carried the same lamp and revolver that he had had last night. As Margaret stepped on the top riser, within reach of him, she said, “Can you tell me the time?”

“Almost ten-thirty.”

“At night?” Her anxiety almost gave them away.

“I didn't let you out so I could answer questions. Clean yourself, then we'll go to the bedroom. Move out here so I can shut the door.”

Margaret stepped into the hall. Cridge reached for the doorknob. Her hands flew to the lapels of his coat. With an enormous sideways tug she pitched him onto the stairs.

His pistol went off. The lamp sailed out of his hand, arcing into the basement as he rolled and bounced down the steps. The lamp's reservoir broke, threw a stream of oil over the packed earth. The wick ignited the oil, which burst into a streak of fire.

Cridge sprawled on his back, gasping. Lon stamped on Cridge's arm, snatched the gun, his own five-shot. Cridge struggled upright, slid a case knife from a sheath under his coat. His clenched teeth shone with bubbling saliva. He stabbed at Lon, who sidestepped and fired a shot into Cridge's wrist. The knife spun away in a shower of blood.

Lon dropped on Cridge with both knees. Hair hung in his eyes. Cridge clawed at him. Lon knocked him back with a blow of the pistol. He threw the pistol away and pulled the watch and chain out of his vest. He wrapped the long chain around Cridge's neck.

Cridge's eyes bulged. His pudgy fingers flew up to the metal links tearing his skin. After that, Lon's memory blanked.

 

When the rage passed, he looked up to see Margaret pressing her hands to her mouth. Drops of sweat fell from Lon's chin. His breathing slowed. The watch chain had dug so deeply, it had all but disappeared, leaving a thin necklace of blood on Cridge's throat. Dizzy and nauseous, Lon pulled the watch chain loose. Cridge was dead.

He wiped the bloody chain on his torn trousers. The oily fire was burning itself out in the dirt. He opened the watch case with his fingernail. The crystal showed a spiderweb of cracks. The hands had stopped at thirty-five minutes past ten.

Margaret dropped to her knees, threw her arms around him. “We're all right, we're safe,” she said, soothing and rocking him like a child.

 

Minutes later, when he recovered himself, they ran upstairs to Franklin Square.

Fire bells rang in the distance. Soldiers and Metropolitan Police with torches surrounded the entrance to Seward's town house. Lon and Margaret hurried across the trampled grass to the cordon of armed men. He showed his badge to a police officer. “What happened here?”

“A man said he was delivering medicine from Mr. Seward's doctor. He got into Seward's bedroom with a knife. He stabbed a male nurse and a State Department messenger. The man beat young Fred Seward so bad, he's in a coma.”

“What about the secretary?”

“Had the sense to roll out of bed. Fell smack on his broken arm, but he wasn't attacked.”

“Was the culprit caught?”

“No, he escaped. That's not the worst. An assassin shot the President at Ford's a few minutes ago. Grant wasn't there, he and his wife changed their plans. Took the train to New Jersey.”

“Is the President…?”

“Wounded. They carried him to a house across from the theater. That actor, Booth, shot him, then jumped from the box to the stage and ran out the back way.”

Lon took Margaret's hand. They moved east from Franklin Square, through dark streets where crowds gathered and cavalry galloped. In Tenth Street, police with locust sticks formed a human barricade in front of Ford's. People pushed and shoved, shouting, “Burn it down.”

The house across the street belonged to a family named Petersen. Those outside were quieter than the theater mob, though as Lon and Margaret moved among them, they heard wild and contradictory rumors asserted as fact. The entire cabinet had been assassinated. The Grants had been murdered on the train to New Jersey. The President was already dead. So far as anyone knew, no attack had been made on the Vice President. Perhaps the man assigned to kill Andrew Johnson had lost his nerve.

Lon ran into a journalist he knew and questioned him. Yes, many in the audience and in the cast had identified Booth. “He dropped his pistol on the floor of the box. He shouted something in Latin when he jumped to the stage. He caught a spur on some bunting on the box and landed hard. Might have broken his leg. Better if he'd broken his neck.”

Carriages rushed physicians and general staff officers to the Petersen house throughout the night. The mob frenzy to burn Ford's wore itself out. Hundreds gathered in the chilly darkness but few spoke, and then only in hushed voices. Lon and Margaret sat on the curbstone in front of the theater. After daybreak, rain began. Lon took off his coat and draped it over her head.

Soaked and cold, they kept the vigil. At seven-thirty, a colonel opened the door of the Petersen house. All conversations stopped. The rain fell with a cold, rushing sound.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that at twenty-two minutes after the hour, the President expired.”

Margaret began to cry. She wasn't alone. Lon said, “I'll take you home. Then I have to report. I have to help catch the men who did this.”

A carriage arrived for Mrs. Lincoln. She tottered down the steps, wailing as she clung to two Army officers. Somewhere in the city a church bell tolled. Others rang and clanged and resounded until the pealing filled the sky.

“What day is this? I've lost track,” Lon said as they pushed through the silent crowd. Margaret leaned against his shoulder, the rain and her tears mingling.

“Saturday, the fifteenth. Tomorrow is Easter.”

He listened to the bells and remembered Easter sermons preached by Mathias Price. “Then Lincoln was martyred on Good Friday too.” This time there would be no resurrection.