The First Assassin (29 page)

“Good evening, Mr. Calthrop.”

“What do you want? Is this a robbery?”

“No, I’m afraid it’s something else entirely.”

“Who are you?”

“You disappoint me. A man with your keen ear and you don’t know who I am?”

“You’re the fellow with the Schiller book. I can tell by your voice.”

“How perceptive. It’s a remarkable ability you possess. A little too remarkable, unfortunately.”

“I don’t understand. If it’s money you want—”

“Money is the last thing I need from you, old man.”

“What do you want, then? I’ve done nothing to you.”

“That’s not quite true. You have done something to me. You learned a piece of information about who I am. It may not sound like much, but we can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I really did enjoy our time together this morning. You were quite helpful. Everything was going well for both of us until you made that remark about Cuba.”

“What are you talking about? You said you weren’t from Cuba.”

“I did say that. Did you believe me? It hardly matters. The fact is you know too much.”

“How can I know too much? I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m called Mazorca.”

Calthrop paused for a moment. It was an odd name. “You didn’t have to tell me that,” he said. “Please, sir, I mean you no harm. What do you want with me?”

“I’ve come to give you a piece of advice.”

“What’s that?”

“You should have stayed in the music business.”

In the dark, Calthrop could discern only the outline of a figure moving toward him. Then he saw a flicker of light in the man’s hand. It was the glint of a knife. It was the last thing Calthrop saw.

“So you say Scott held an emergency meeting Sunday night?” asked Violet Grenier. She thought the pleasantries had gone on for long enough. Now it was time to get down to her business before she let her guest get down to his.

“It was called in a great hurry. Fortunately, I was able to make it.”

“Well, you are one of the sharpest men in town,” said Grenier, staring wide-eyed at the man in the facing seat of the tête-à-tête in her parlor. “What did General Scott discuss?”

“He’s in a panic over what happened in Baltimore, and especially over losing the telegraph wires. The general devoted most of the meeting to the defenses of Washington. He ordered the perimeter of the city strengthened and the major buildings barricaded. You’ve probably already seen the result of that.”

“It’s hideous. They’re turning the city into a fort.”

“It’s for everybody’s protection. If we’re attacked, these preparations will be vital to our defense.”

“But people are supposed to live here too. It won’t be long before there’s nothing left to defend—everyone will have gone away.”

“You’re right, Violet. That’s a big problem. Too many people are evacuating the city.”

“What else did General Scott talk about?” she pressed, trying to sound like an excited schoolgirl—inquisitive, but innocent.

“He’s desperate for more troops to arrive—specifically, the New York Seventh. There was also some discussion of what to do with the president in the event of a Southern attack on the city.”

“Was anything decided?”

Grenier’s visitor hesitated. She put her hand on top of his and began to rub gently.

“There is a whole plan,” he said at last.

“A whole plan? To protect the life of the president?”

“We’ve tried to consider every contingency.”

“What is the plan? What will happen to Mr. Lincoln if the city is attacked?”

Again her guest seemed reluctant to answer. Grenier pulled her hand away from his and pouted. “You’re distant tonight,” she said. “It’s not like you.”

“I’m sorry, Violet. It’s just that this is privileged information. We don’t disclose everything to the public, in the interests of security. You must understand.”

“Am I the public? Are you and I together in the public? No, we are not, my love. We are private—very private. This is a discreet relationship. I certainly privilege you. Why won’t you privilege me in return?”

“There’s no reason you need to know any of this.”

“It depends what you mean by need. Now you’ve made it a challenge, and I need you to tell me,” she said, folding her arms and putting on a pout. “I can’t think of a reason why you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t know, Violet. Your sympathies lie with the South—”

“And yet I lie so often with the North.”

Her visitor understood the pun. Grenier was glad, because sometimes she thought he could be a little dim. She noticed his eyes drop to her low-cut dress. It was not the first time this evening they had done so, but it was the first time she had detected something other than desire in them. There was judgment in them too, as if he were calculating risks and rewards. She raised her hand and began fidgeting with her necklace. The move blocked his view. Her other hand returned to his. She gave it a slight squeeze.

“This is a test,” she said when his eyes met hers once more. “I’ll probably forget it all in a few minutes. But I want you to tell me because I want to know everything about you.”

Grenier removed her hand from her necklace and lowered it a few inches to the edge of her dress, exposing part of her bosom again. Her visitor did not fail to notice.

“Oh, very well. You are right, Violet. There is no harm in telling you.”

Grenier lifted herself off her seat and gave her guest a quick kiss on the lips. “I’m so happy you see it this way,” she said, making sure her breasts brushed his arm. “It makes me feel close to you.” She kissed him again, this time a bit longer, and pulled away. She was ready for the information.

Her visitor smiled. “If the city is attacked and the fighting is intense, the president will be removed from the White House and placed in the Treasury.”

“He wouldn’t flee from the city? Not even in the middle of the night, the way he did when he arrived here?”

“That certainly was embarrassing, wasn’t it?” chuckled her guest. “No, he won’t flee except in the most desperate of emergencies. He felt the sting of criticism in February from some of his friends. I don’t think he cares to feel it again.”

“That makes sense. He definitely seemed like a coward the way he came here.”

“There is at least one member of our council who would have him become a coward again.”

“Really? Who is that?”

“Colonel Rook.”

“The man who was in charge of security for the inauguration?”

“Yes. He’s also been involved in the defenses of Washington, including the personal safety of the president.”

“How would he have Mr. Lincoln become a coward again?”

“At the meeting, he said recent events in Baltimore justified the president’s decision to pass through that city unobserved in February. Today he would practically confine the man to the White House. It’s quite an overreaction, but that’s not even the worst of it. He would additionally have the military wage a major spy campaign against the citizens of this city.”

“A spy campaign?”

“He apparently believes that the secessionist element here presents such an enormous threat that our soldiers should quit guarding the bridges and start monitoring the activities of people like you.” Grenier joined her guest in laughing heartily at this comment. He continued, “To think that he considers you a bigger threat to the republic than Robert E. Lee!”

Grenier roared with laughter. “You delight me with these tales. What did General Scott say to the colonel?”

“He was completely dismissive and was quite sharp with Colonel Rook in front of the whole group. I’m not sure that man has much of a future in the military.”

“Apparently not.”

“This is a real victory for people like you, Violet. It’s no secret that you hope secession prevails. But there is a matter of decency at stake here. Gentlemen do not spy on ladies.”

“So there is no surveillance?”

“No. There is none. Scott has specifically forbidden it.”

“That’s welcome news,” said Grenier. “Shall we retire to my chambers?”

Upon hearing that suggestion, her guest jumped out of his seat. He had a big grin on his face. “What a splendid idea,” he said.

“You know the way,” said Grenier. “You lead and I’ll follow.”

Her enthusiastic visitor was halfway to the next floor before Grenier even made it to the staircase. She paused at a window, pulled back a curtain, and peeked onto the street. It was dark outside, except for a few gas lamps. There, on the corner, she saw him: the same thick-mustached man who had stood outside the day before. He was looking right at her house.

“Are you coming, Violet?”

What a fool, Grenier thought as she let the curtain fall back in place.

“Here I come, dear.”

Even fools sometimes deserved rewards.

If there had been a better way to disguise the murder of Charles Calthrop, Mazorca would have pursued it. Several plans had come to mind, from pushing the bookbinder down the steps of his second-story shop to disposing of him in an alleyway in what might have been made to look like a robbery that turned fatal. But Mazorca rejected these as too hazardous. The astrologer or one of her customers might hear the fall. Anything on the streets involved the risk of discovery. Mazorca had chosen instead to follow the old man home. Seeing that Calthrop lived alone had made the decision easy.

Now he was left with a body—and the problem of what to do with it. Still in the dark of Calthrop’s short hallway, Mazorca weighed his options. The simplest thing would be to leave the body alone. By killing Calthrop, Mazorca had accomplished his main goal. Everything else was secondary. Yet the body would be found at some point, and when that happened the stab wounds would show that an assailant had murdered him. Mazorca wanted to make sure that no investigation into the bookbinder’s death pointed in his direction. He was certain that nobody had spotted him tailing the old man home. The only clues of any interest to the authorities would be found at the crime scene.

How long would it take before anybody came in search of the old man? The bookbinder did not conduct much business. Perhaps several days would pass before his failure to open the shop would draw attention. The next day was Wednesday. Thursday or Friday might arrive before Calthrop’s failure to come to work seemed unusual, and maybe a day or two beyond that before anybody thought it was sufficiently unusual to start looking for him. Arousing curiosity was one thing, and provoking scrutiny quite another. Maybe a whole week would go by.

That was probably too much to hope for. There was at least a good chance Calthrop’s body would be found the very next day, perhaps even by the early afternoon. Mazorca considered how he might confuse the people who would search for Calthrop.

The body lay twisted on the ground, in one of those contorted positions that only a lifeless form can take. The bookbinder’s clothes had absorbed most of the blood. The body could be moved and nobody would be the wiser. Stashing it somewhere in the house entailed the fewest immediate risks. Yet this would not prevent discovery. The house was small, and stink would soon fill it.

Dumping the body somewhere in the wilderness was a more attractive option—Calthrop’s remains might never be found. Yet the risks were far higher. Mazorca did not care to be seen in the company of a bag that was the shape and size of a corpse. There was no way he could cross one of the bridges into Virginia without drawing the attention of a soldier. That left Maryland, which he could enter discreetly, but it did not solve the more fundamental problem of unfamiliarity with the area. He simply was not sure where he could go to get rid of the body and avoid detection. And he knew soldiers were on patrol.

Perhaps there was a closer option. Mazorca was aware of his approximate location just south of the Capitol, but he had not explored this part of the city. He needed to get his bearings. From his pocket he pulled out his small guidebook and consulted its map. He had forgotten about the canal. It was closer than he had realized.

In a bedroom, Mazorca removed a blanket and sheet from a neatly made bed. He wrapped the corpse in them and decided to wait a couple of hours, when the streets would be even more desolate.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1861

The sun’s rays had just started to touch the crane poking through the top of the half-built Capitol dome when Nat Drake heard the whistle blow. He always looked forward to the overnight train pulling in from Virginia at dawn. The load was sometimes big, and he was usually tired from hours of work, but its arrival marked the end of his shift. He could go home and sleep as soon as this last chore was done. This morning, the train was a little ahead of schedule. Nat hoped he would be walking toward his bed before the whole Capitol building was lit.

When he arrived on the platform, though, Nat frowned. Two members of his crew had not yet appeared. They were on the day shift, and they were supposed to show up in time to help unload the Virginia train. Nat knew what they were doing because they had done it plenty of times before: they were choosing to come in late. They would get away with it too, because they were white. Nat and the other night-shifters were black.

Nat understood that there was no point in complaining. He might have been a free black man, but that did not make him as free as the white people. He accepted this reality even as he did not like it. When the day shifters failed to show up on time, Nat just had to finish his job without them. He only wished they would treat him with the respect he thought he deserved as a fellow worker.

As the four members of his crew waited silently for the train to pull in, Nat remembered the morning, about two months earlier, when Abraham Lincoln had arrived. Nat was scheduled to work a double shift that day to prepare for the president-elect’s arrival in the afternoon, but the man appeared on a Baltimore train first thing in the morning. Instead of the celebration that would have greeted Lincoln later in the day, a handful of somber-looking men escorted him away from the train station and into the city without fanfare.

Nat did not know what to expect from the new president. He had heard all the talk about Lincoln freeing the slaves—it was something his neighbors discussed almost daily, though never in the presence of a white person. When Nat set his eyes on Lincoln that morning, a part of him wanted to quit what he was doing and applaud the man who had become the symbol of so much hope. But Nat kept on working, partly because he did not want to draw attention to himself and mostly because he was a natural skeptic. He worried that Lincoln was just another white man who did not show up at the station on time.

The Virginia train was fairly empty, as it had been for weeks. His crew opened a car that normally would have been full of cargo only to discover that it was mostly vacant.

“Gimme a hand with this one, Martin,” said Nat when he saw a square box in the corner. “It’s kind of bulky.”

Another man came over and they lifted the box together. Nat did not think it was too heavy, but the weight of it seemed to shift around inside. He was glad someone was helping him carry it out.

“I think this is the last one,” said Martin as they moved the box off the car. “Unloadin’ is quick when nobody wants to come to Washington. I could get used to this.”

“You could also get used to not having a job,” said Nat. “If this keeps up, there won’t even be a train station here.”

Nat thought he felt the weight of the box shift around again. “Hey, Martin, keep this thing balanced,” he said.

“What’re you talkin’ about? You’re the one who can’t hold it straight.”

“It’s not movin’ around because of me. That leaves you,” said Nat as they lowered the box onto the platform.

“Give it up, Nat.” Martin let go of his end of the box when it was still a foot off the ground. Nat could not prevent it from dropping hard onto the ground.

“Ouch!”

Nat thought the box had landed on Martin’s foot, but Martin had already stepped away. Then it occurred to him: the voice came from inside the box. He stood up and looked at it for a moment. Was he hearing things? He shook his head and started to walk off.

Then he heard a sharp knocking sound. He spun around and listened. It was definitely coming from the box. Something inside was trying to get out.

“Martin, get over here,” he yelled.

As Martin approached, he heard the knocks too. The top of the box started to budge. All of a sudden, it burst into the air. Beneath it stood a small woman in crumpled clothes. She arched her back, spread her arms, and groaned loudly.

Nat was dumbfounded by the scene in front of him. The woman squinted. “Is this Washington?” she asked.

“Yes it is,” replied Nat.

Portia smiled briefly before a look of pain crossed her face. She twisted around, trying to loosen her muscles from the long trip.

“Who are you?” demanded Martin.

Portia did not answer. She stepped out of the box, almost falling over. Her head whipped around, looking for an exit. Then she stumbled off and disappeared from view.

Nat and Martin looked around the platform, then at each other, and finally at the empty wooden box. Apparently nobody else had seen the woman. They were not even sure they had seen her themselves.

“Don’t say a word about this,” said Nat.

“I don’t think anybody would believe me if I did.”

Grenier leaned into her back door and pressed it closed. She let out a deep sigh. Finally rid of him, she thought. At least he was worth the effort. The men who came into her bedchamber were rarely there because of Grenier’s raw attraction to them. The only thing that drew her to this latest bedmate was his willingness to provide details on the inner workings of the government. This was plenty. He was an exquisitely well-placed source.

Her informant must have recognized her keen interest in his work. She was constantly asking him questions about it. The key, of course, was that he provided the answers. Sometimes it took a bit of enticing, but he never failed to give her what she wanted. He got what he wanted in return. Grenier wondered if he even knew their relationship was based on a transaction. It was conceivable that he did not know, and that his vanity kept him from understanding her actual motives. Or he could have been willfully blind—vaguely aware of his own recklessness but refusing to confront it because he enjoyed the reward so much.

Whatever awkward justifications went on inside his head were of little interest to Grenier. If he kept providing information, she would keep arranging rendezvous. As far as she was concerned, they could go on like this for as long her friends south of the Potomac found it helpful—and so far they had found it extremely helpful.

Unless somebody tried to stop them. Before last night, surveillance of her activities had been nothing more than a theory—the knowledge that it might happen. Now there was actual proof: her recent guest’s information about Rook’s interests and her own observation of the man who was watching her house.

Grenier was not a woman to ignore a problem. She locked the back door and headed for the staircase. This morning would be dedicated to solving problems, she decided.

Her cat squeaked a greeting as Grenier entered the second-floor study. The animal was on her desk, sprawled across loose papers. She rubbed his head and listened to his loud purr. With her other hand, she yanked a piece of paper from under the cat’s paws. “This letter has weighed on me all night, Calhoun,” said Grenier, glancing over the Bennett correspondence once more. “I don’t want to call off Mazorca. What good would come of that? I want him to succeed. It took months of planning to get him here, and we can’t afford to let more time pass while we search for a replacement.”

She put down the letter and walked to the window, looking out toward the president’s mansion. “If Mazorca fails, then he fails—and we are no worse off than we would be if we terminated his assignment. And if he succeeds…” Her voice trailed off, and her lips curled into a smile. “I have an idea,” she said, settling into her chair by the desk. “I will write two letters.” The cat sensed that it was time to leave. Still purring, it hopped to the floor. Grenier removed two small envelopes and some stationery from a drawer.

On the first envelope, she wrote “Mr. Mays” followed by Mazorca’s address at the boardinghouse. Then she scribbled a short note:

She folded the paper and stuffed it into an envelope. Then she placed the second envelope in front of her. For a moment, she stared at its blankness. Finally, in a careful script, she wrote the name of its intended recipient: General Winfield Scott.

Nat Drake finished unloading the other cars on the Virginia train, but he could not stop thinking about the woman in the box. When his crew was just about done, he returned to the open box. A cloth lay inside, along with a gimlet, some crumbs of bread, and an empty pouch that probably had contained water. He could not believe that this small space actually had enclosed a whole person. From the slight stench, he could tell that she had been in it for a while. He shook his head in disbelief.

The lid of the box rested a few feet away, upside down. Nat flipped it over. It was addressed to “H. Brown, Washington City.” The name sounded familiar, but he was not sure why.

Then it dawned on him: H. Brown was short for Henry Brown, which was the proper name of Box Brown, the slave who had escaped to the North in a box. Nat had heard the story many times. He recalled the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass criticizing its notoriety. Douglass thought the method should be kept secret, to prevent publicizing a successful method of liberating men and women from slavery.

Nat figured the woman was a slave. The only thing that made him wonder was the address on the box. Slavery was still legal in the District of Columbia. Box Brown had been shipped to Philadelphia, in the free state of Pennsylvania. That made sense, even if it was not foolproof. Fugitive laws covered the whole country, meaning that slave owners could reclaim their escaped slaves in states that did not permit slavery. There was no truly good place for runaway slaves to go except Canada or Europe, which many of them actually did. But free states were better destinations than slaveholding ones. Why would a boxed-up slave from the South allow herself to be taken to Washington when Philadelphia was only a little farther away? Nat could not think of a good reason. The box and its former occupant continued to puzzle him.

He decided that although he might not know the motives of the woman in the box, he might be able to protect her, assuming she was in fact a runaway.

“Martin!” he called out. Martin was carrying the last crate off the Virginia train. He set it down and came over to Nat.

“What, boss?”

“Did you mention this to anybody?” said Nat, pointing toward the box.

“No. I haven’t done anything but unload.”

“Let’s keep it to ourselves. I don’t think any good will come from it if we start talkin’.”

“Do you think that woman was a—”

“Stop right there. We should forget it even happened.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Go home now. See you tonight.”

When he was gone, Nat put the lid in the box and moved them off the train platform. He was not sure where to put them, but just about anywhere was better than leaving them where they had been unloaded, in plain sight. He carried them out of the depot. The first thing he saw was the Capitol. He headed toward it.

Before long, Nat was in a construction yard. There were piles of coal and wood. Columns in various states of disassembly lay strewn about, plus blocks of marble, keystones, and iron plates. He set the box down by a pile of rock chips and grabbed a small ax lying by a wheelbarrow. He pried and chopped until only a pile of scrap wood remained.

Leaving the work area, Nat thought he heard a foot scrape against the ground behind a tool shed. He hoped that nobody had seen him. When he heard the noise again, he went around to the back of the shed. There she was: the woman from the box. She was crouched low, with her arms folded across her chest. She was not well dressed for the brisk morning weather, and she shivered a bit at the cold. Had she followed him here? Nat was not sure. He could tell she was exhausted and confused. This did not surprise him, considering what she had just gone through. How long had she been in that box? One day? Two days? More? It was amazing she had even survived.

Yet her ordeal was not over. For a moment Nat considered leaving her there. As a free black, he knew his position in Washington was tenuous. He was not a slave, but helping one escape would make him lose what few rights he did have. It was a problem he did not need or want.

Just then, some life appeared in the eyes of the woman. She looked up at Nat. Her lips parted and her voice was weak.

“Please help me.”

Grenier’s guest slipped through an alleyway behind her house. He moved with a mixture of caution and speed, pausing in the shadows but also determined to get away as quickly as possible. The last thing he needed was for somebody to recognize him here. It would lead to questions he did not want to answer. He wished he had left when it was still dark.

At least it was early. The day had only barely begun. At Seventeenth Street, he stood in the gap between two houses and waited. When he was certain that nobody was on the street, he turned left and walked toward H Street. There he made another left. He tried to act indifferent to his surroundings, but at the corner of Sixteenth and H he could not resist a glance toward Grenier’s house.

He did not love her, but he imagined that it would be nice if she loved him. Sometimes he even let himself believe that she really did. It would have struck him as romantic to see her peering from her bedroom window, hoping to catch one more look at him. Perhaps he would risk a little wave, something to make her smile as he set off for another day of important meetings with top officials in the government.

No such luck. The curtains were drawn. The front of her house was as blank as the others nearby.

He crossed the street and entered Lafayette Park. He sat on a bench, aware that he had some time to pass before his first appointment of the day: a security meeting with General Scott and his top advisors.