The Lincoln Conspiracy (7 page)

“Mr. Pinkerton, you’ve decided to join our dig,” Fiona said.

“It’s not healthy or sane to be in a cemetery late at night, Mrs. McFadden,” Pinkerton said. “I felt you might all need protection.”

“The sun arrives, Mr. Pinkerton. The light will keep us company.”

“But it will be harder for you to get your casket or your bags or whatever you will out of here in daylight, will it not?” Pinkerton said, beaming, proud to let the McFaddens understand that he had an unusual ability to make connections. “You’ll need extra hands to help you move it, yes?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Pinkerton. We’ve completed our digging.”

“And why are you here, then?” Pinkerton asked.

“We are just here,” Fiona said. “We are here to be here.”

Pinkerton stepped farther forward. Gardner was staring straight back at him, amused, as was the woman. But her husband still sat slumped on his cane, his head bent toward the ground.

“This can’t be a healthy place for your husband, Mrs. McFadden,” Pinkerton said. “He’s still recovering and he clearly lacks strength.”

A loud snore emerged from beneath the brim of McFadden’s floppy hat and his cane dropped to the ground. Not a cane really, but what looked like the leg of a table, broken off at its wide end. Curious.

Curious.

Curious.

“Oh, Mrs. McFadden. Your husband is not here after all.”

“Indeed he’s not, Mr. Pinkerton. Your powers of observation have triumphed again.”

Pinkerton stepped forward and yanked the hat from Pint’s head. Pint kept snoring, oblivious to everyone around him.

“Humbug,” Pinkerton said.

“What do you mean, Mr. Pinkerton?” Walsh asked.

“All of this. A humbug, Walsh. We’ve been tricked. Mr. McFadden undoubtedly left the house in Foggy Bottom as soon as you pulled the other men off it.”

“The horsecar, sir?” Walsh asked, confused.

“Temple said if we were elaborate, you would become careless, Mr. Pinkerton,” Fiona said, answering Walsh’s question. “You must agree, we’ve been elaborate.”

Pinkerton didn’t answer. He pulled his jacket back, revealing the Colts strapped to his sides, and he pulled one from its holster. Gardner kicked Pint in the leg, stirring him, and rose. Pinkerton cocked the hammer back and aimed his gun at Fiona’s head.

“Alexander, by the time you took a step she’d be dead,” Pinkerton said. “So don’t wander.”

The rest of Pinkerton’s men spread out around Gardner, Pint, and Fiona, encircling them.

“None of us has the answers you want,” Fiona said. “I have no idea where my husband’s gone to, or even what exactly he has. But if one of us was to be harmed in any way, I’m certain that you’ll never see a shred of what you’re after. And my husband can be a determined man when his loved ones are preyed upon, Mr. Pinkerton.”

Pinkerton’s lips tightened. He paused a moment longer, then eased down the hammer of his Colt and lowered the weapon back into its holster.

“Your husband still doesn’t recognize what surrounds him,” Pinkerton replied, signaling to his men to follow him out of Oak Hill. “Humbugs or not, I have men all over the District. Your husband can’t get far without being sighted, and what he is secreting is far, far beyond him.”

T
EMPLE WAS DRESSED
and seated on the edge of Pint’s bed, waiting in the dark. His boots were clean and dry—not a word this time from Fiona about getting them wet and slathered in mud—and he had a fresh shirt and trousers. Fiona had also brought along a light linen jacket she got for him from the boardinghouse before she packed their things yesterday. “If they’re watching you here, then they’ll follow us to our house,” she warned him. “So we must decamp from there.” His wounded left shoulder felt stiff, and if he moved that arm too much, he felt the same flashes of pain that always flared up in his leg. But he was clear-headed, rested, and fed.

Augustus slipped open the door and looked in on Temple. He nodded, and Temple pressed his cane into the rotting floorboards, rising from the bed. Temple no longer felt dizzy when he stood.

“The last two have gone from out front,” Augustus whispered.

“Off we go, my friend.”

When Augustus and Temple got to the first floor of the building,
they passed down a hallway and through a small kitchen. Behind Pint’s building there was a small, murky courtyard, laced with traces of the smog that clung to Foggy Bottom from the swamps and gasworks. A pile of abandoned bricks sat in the middle of the yard, and a pig was sprawled against it, sleeping. Clothes were drying on a line stretched across the courtyard, and hanging from a nearby tree branch was a large metal triangle that one of the matrons rang to summon everyone for dinner and supper. Any of the Irish or Germans who found Augustus roaming around here at this hour was likely to kill him, especially with Pint gone off with Fiona and Alexander.

None of Augustus’s friends dared meet them here. But there was a safe house nearby that he knew from the Underground Railroad, at 25th and I, and they could get horses there. As they neared the barracks that the army had set up in houses around Snow’s Court, Augustus paused. It was late, and two Union soldiers patrolling the neighborhood approached them.

“Who’s the dapper nigger?” one of the soldiers asked Temple.

“
Homo sum
,” Augustus said.

“How’s that?” the soldier asked.

“
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo
,” Augustus replied, looking over at Temple.

The soldier yanked at the rifle slung on his shoulder, but Temple raised his hand, waving off the soldier.

“He’s an educated man, seeking greater education,” Temple said. “We’re late of our lessons and I’m escorting him home. We wouldn’t press near your barracks at this hour if we meant harm. We’ll pass now.”

The soldier held them with his eyes for a moment and then stepped back. “The war may be over, but it lingers,” he said. “Fighting just concluded at Palmito Ranch, and the Rebs staked their land with fury. The two of you best mind that. On your way, then.”

When Temple and Augustus arrived outside the frame house on I Street, Augustus scanned the four windows on the building’s façade.
There was a lantern burning in the right-hand window on the upper floor, and a white handkerchief was tied to the knob on the front door.

“It’s clear and safe here,” Augustus said. “They’ll have our horses.”

Augustus untied the kerchief from the doorknob and knocked three times. After pausing, he knocked again twice on the door and stepped back. When the door opened, an old and slightly built minister greeted him. The minister was dressed in a black frock, and his face, framed by a white beard and white hair and illuminated by the lantern in his hand, almost floated above and apart from his body. Augustus handed him the handkerchief.

“I am grateful for this gift of cotton,” the minister said.

“As grows the cotton, so grows our cause,” Augustus replied.

“And who sends you to me?” the minister asked.

“A friend of a friend,” said Augustus.

Passwords exchanged, the minister nodded and waved Augustus and Temple into the house. There was a small bundle of banknotes on the table and a bag of apples. The minister handed all of it over to them and gestured to the backyard of the house, where two black horses were hitched to a post. The minister extinguished his lantern as Augustus and Temple calmed the horses by feeding them some of the apples; they mounted and left without saying another word.

They trotted as silently as they could, taking backstreets and avoiding main thoroughfares such as Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. By the time they came out around Douglas Square, the sun was beginning to rise. All that was needed was a little more heat to bring the ground up again, and they were in a part of the city now where they would smell every foot of it: Swampdoodle. The Tiber Creek sliced through the middle of Swampdoodle, and a stench wafted up strong and clear enough to make the horses get skittish.

Augustus broke the silence as they trotted down North Capitol to H, passing by the Government Printing Office.

“They won’t let a Negro into this neighborhood. I’d best go look for Fiona and the others. You’ll be better off now without me.”

“I want you to meet Nail,” Temple replied. “And no one in Swampdoodle will move against anyone who rides with me. It’s full of rounders, but I know my way about rounders, yes?”

Augustus reined in his horse and shifted uncomfortably in his saddle as he contemplated his response.

“Yes, rounders are indeed your specialty.”

“Besides, a neighborhood full of hardworking Irish railroad workers can’t be populated by rounders alone. We’ll take the risk, yes?”

“Yes.”

As the light broke across the lean-tos and little shacks that surrounded them, cows, chickens, and goats milled about, their legs sinking into the soft, damp mud that seeped all over Swampdoodle. Temple and Augustus had ridden only a few yards farther when a pack of dogs came bounding across one of the rickety wooden bridges that spanned the Tiber. They bared their fangs and bolted toward the legs of Temple’s horse, snarling. Temple’s horse reared and Augustus’s horse retreated. Behind the dogs, a ruddy, scarred man wearing overalls and little else emerged from the morning’s shadows and marched toward them. He was carrying a thick club with a blunt end that blossomed in a knotted cauliflower burst of wood; he was smacking it against his palm.

“You have to have a reason to be in Swampdoodle,” he snapped at Temple and Augustus, an Irish brogue enveloping each word. As he got nearer, his pace slowed and his arms, dirty and muscular, dropped to his side. He ordered the dogs back from the horses. When one hesitated, he smacked it on its haunches with his club, and the dog, yelping, ran off.

“So it’s you,” he said, looking up at Temple.

“Sean,” Temple said, nodding. “You’re in a mood this morning.”

“They said you were lashed at the B&O by a gang.”

“And I was, but now I’m out for a ride.”

“With the carny in tow, I see,” Sean said, looking at Augustus.

“I’m here to see Nail.”

“Leave the horses by the bridge.”

“They’ll be here when we return? And the dogs will stay off their meat?”

“Both. I’ll put tots on them.”

Sean whistled over his shoulder and three small boys scurried out of one of the shacks. Like Sean, they were covered in grime, their teeth rotting. Their mother, her eyes drooping in her face like saucers, looked out at them from inside the door of the lean-to. She had a tin mug in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun cradled in the other.

“Them are Mammy’s boys, and she’ll help them keep a watchful eye,” Sean said. “She’ll blast the pups if they get out of line. She’ll also blast the nigger if he gets unruly.”

Temple dropped from his horse, planted his cane in the mud, and walked over to Sean. Temple towered over the gatekeeper, but Sean stood his ground, looking up at him, expressionless. Temple placed his hand on Sean’s shoulder and leaned down into his face, steadying himself on his cane.

“His name isn’t Nigger, Sean—it’s Augustus. And he’s coming with me to see Nail. I want his horse looked after with special care. Am I understood?”

“You’re understood, McFadden.”

As he and Augustus crossed the Tiber on the footbridge, Temple noticed that his boots were already muddy again. He began to say something to Augustus, but Augustus spoke first.

“After what’s happened over the last week, I don’t imagine Fiona will care much about your new boots,” he said. “I believe she’ll let you get them as muddy as you’d like from now on.”

T
he B&O railroad line leaned into and then curved away from the east end of Swampdoodle, and the village clung to itself like an encampment: tough, dour, and wary, with row upon row of small shacks that immigrant and itinerant railroad workers inhabited in packs. Like the District itself, Swampdoodle had exploded in size during the war years, and its housing stock was uniformly small and flimsy—excepting a large, well-maintained rectangular warehouse that sat on stilts at the far end of the village. A dozen armed men formed a loose semicircle around the building, each with a mangy dog by his side. The building lay just beyond the last set of lean-tos, and as Temple and Augustus made their way toward it, the dogs began barking and baring their teeth.

“The pound master came in here once to round up the dogs and the Swampdoodlians hung him from a tree,” Temple said to Augustus. “Nobody from the outside had the nerve to come in here and get him. He swung for two days.”

With a kick, the front door of the warehouse swung open. The man who emerged from the frame wore a long cloth apron and had hands that were deeply tattooed from his forearms to his fingertips. Augustus figured he was at least as tall as Temple but far thicker, with a bull neck and heavy, muscular arms. His hair was a rusty tangle, and he smiled as he looked down from the porch at his visitors.

“I told Dilly they couldn’t keep you down, Temple.”

“And they didn’t, Nail. I still have a weak shoulder, but it gets better by the day. Meet Augustus.”

The circle of guards and dogs had tightened around the warehouse
as Temple and Augustus approached, but once Nail burst through the door the group parted. Nail bounded down the stairs and held out his hand. What Augustus thought were tattoos were, upon closer inspection, ink stains.

“I bare my arms only when I’m working,” Nail said, following Augustus’s eyes. “A sight to behold, no? When I walk the streets, I cover my mess in shirtsleeves.”

“Wouldn’t want to attract unneeded attention,” Temple said, winking.

“It gets harder to make a living with the war over and Mr. Stanton’s boys disowning my services,” Nail replied, turning his attention to Augustus. “I’m working hard to find a new art, but in the meantime—hello. I’m Jack Flaherty. Most everybody calls me Nail.”

“Augustus Spriggs. Temple has mentioned you many times, but I began to think you didn’t exist.”