The Lincoln Deception (11 page)

S
weat ran down Cook's face as he stood before the back entrance to the Cotton Exchange. The light was softening at eight p.m., though the air was still dense with heat. He had two keys, both from the porter with the hollow leg. Cook had to return them in two hours. No time to waste.

Hinges protested as he eased the door open, the sound magnified by his nerves. His lunchtime beers were barely a memory. He always enjoyed the tense moments during ballgames, when his senses were charged and his concentration sharpest. He often felt most calm in those moments.

He took his time climbing the three-and-a-half flights of darkened stairs, up on his toes, carrying his canvas bag out to the side so it didn't bang into anything. He stopped every few steps to listen. He heard only a faint scrabbling, probably rodents in the cellar.

The offices for the Spencer, Barstow firm were on the top floor. Windows at either end of the corridor yielded dusky light. Though he stayed on his toes, the wood floor underneath the carpet complained quietly.

He fitted the second key into the door lock. The door handle yielded easily. A small screech from the frame made his fingers tingle. The door swung open. Cook stepped in and closed the door behind him.

After pausing to settle himself, he pulled a small lantern from the canvas bag. He lit it at a low setting and shielded it with the canvas bag. A door to his left led into a corner office, which would be Barstow's. If the man had confidential records here, that's where they should be.

Cook walked behind Barstow's desk, which faced the room's entrance. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down an arm, but he still felt solid, contained. Keeping the lantern low, he began his search. He passed on the desk drawers. Desk drawers should contain current items about current business. He was looking for something thirty-five years old. It would be concealed.

He approached a locked file cabinet in a far corner. The lock looked simple and he had his old picks with him. He was clumsy at first, out of practice or more nervous than he thought. The lock clicked. He worked the drawer open, unable to avoid the scrape of metal on metal. It held only documents of recent vintage. A waste of time. He locked the cabinet with the same low click.

He had to work faster. It was near dark outside, which would amplify the lantern's glow through the window. He re-draped the canvas bag over the light.

He noticed a door tucked into the room's interior corner. A closet. Kneeling at its entrance, he felt along its floor. In the back, his left hand hit a metal box. He placed it next to the lantern. The padlock was a pin-and-tumbler design. He used a wrench to steady it while he worked the pick. It was a five-pin lock, so he had to be patient, take one at a time. It must have been ten minutes before the final pin yielded. Relief flooded through him.

The lid stuck. When he yanked, it gave way with a loud rasp. Cook froze. He slowed his breathing. He heard nothing.

Inside was a stack of Confederate currency, worthless for anything but starting a fire. He unfolded a document declaring Samuel Justice Barstow a major in the Commissary Corps of the Confederate States of America. A daguerreotype depicted a slender young man in a uniform with proud epaulets. He wore a drooping mustache and side whiskers. It had to be Barstow.

Cook pulled out a leather-covered book that fit in his hand. Its opening page had an ink sketch of a frog with sleepy eyes and a bow tie, every bump and wart lovingly noted. Several more pages were covered with columns of numbers. Cook put the book in his jacket pocket.

And then there it was, a tattered memo book, tied to a small dictionary with a piece of string. The pages were stiff with age, filled with notations that had to be in code or cipher. He turned the pages quietly, trying to pick up a pattern in the markings.

There. He stopped his breath. Steps? Two people. Maybe three. Cook slipped the memo book and dictionary into his other jacket pocket and snuffed the lantern. He heard the door to the suite swing open. He took a long breath. No time to put the box back. Clutching the canvas bag, he moved across the room to keep Barstow's big desk between him and the intruders. Crouching behind it, he had to hope whoever was out there wouldn't find him. Almost immediately, he realized his mistake. Whoever it was had no light. That meant they knew he was here. He was trapped. His heart began to race. He worked to calm his mind.

Two figures came through the doorway, their features dark. One was tall, Cook's size. The other seemed thicker. Cook tensed. The power of his first move would determine whether he left under his own steam.

The intruders paused, side by side, just inside the door. Cook sprang, stepping on the desk and vaulting over it. He aimed between the men, splitting them and bursting through the doorway. In the anteroom, Cook brushed aside a third man like some flyweight second baseman.

In a few strides, Cook was leaping down the stairs, taking three at a time in the near darkness. Halfway down, he heard steps above him. That didn't bother him. He was faster than they were, as long as he didn't miss a step.

He burst out the building's rear door, his heart hammering. He ducked behind a colony of dustbins to the side. Better to lie low than be chased. A black man running down a street could draw the wrong type of attention.

When the three men broke through the rear door, Cook's hand went to the knife in his waistband. It would be better not to use it. He pulled it out of its sheath and held it to his side.

His pursuers looked in all directions. A voice spoke. “Damned coon is fast.” Another chimed in, “Not fast enough. We'll get him.” Two headed up Pearl Street and the third set off west on William.

Cook waited ten full minutes, long enough to start to resent his partner, the upright Dr. Fraser. You didn't see him sneaking into buildings, risking arrest, then fleeing from a gang of toughs who no doubt were well-armed. You didn't see him crouched among the trash cans. Oh, no, Dr. Fraser enters by the front door in the daylight, shakes hands with powerful men, and eats off fine china.

Cook brushed off his clothes and walked to the saloon on Beaver Street. His lunchtime companion was there, deep in communion with a schooner of beer. Cook could not imagine how much the man had absorbed that day. A gift. Cook handed over the office keys along with a five-dollar gold piece. That would keep the beer flowing.

Back on the street, Cook took no time to look at the books in his pockets. He needed to get out of that neighborhood. The light in Barstow's office had been too dim for the men to tell anything about Cook except his size, yet they knew he was colored. Either they watched him enter the building or they knew who he was. Cook was inclined to believe the second explanation. Either way, he didn't like it. They could recognize him. A colored man his size was easy to recognize.

He walked up Broadway, moving fast but not so fast as to stand out. After twenty blocks, he hopped on a northbound stage.

I
t was near midnight when Fraser left the uptown Delmonico's, the one at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Fourth Street. This was rich living. On a single day, he had eaten at both branches of the famed restaurant. With a firm grip on Samuel Barstow's upper arm, Fraser steered the cotton tycoon across the sidewalk to his waiting carriage.

Floradora
had been an inspired choice. For all of Barstow's highfalutin' talk about Shakespeare, he loved the show's sweet ditties and pretty chorines. Over dinner, the older man proclaimed his passion for the theater, trumpeting his charter membership in The Players Club, which Edwin Booth had founded. Barstow boasted that he had been a pallbearer at Edwin's funeral. Creston Clarke, he confided, could not hold a candle to The Great Edwin, but then no one could. “An actor of force and subtlety,” Barstow said. “It's rare enough to find either quality, but to find them together!”

Between the heat and the tobacco haze, the dining room had been oppressive. Bending its rules, the restaurant allowed gentlemen to peel off their suit coats and dine in vests and shirtsleeves. Fraser had ordered the porterhouse. It proved just as inappropriate as the lunchtime lobster. Nevertheless, its herculean proportion was a virtue in itself. The steak was as thick as a medical text and considerably tastier.

On his fourth brandy and third cigar, Barstow yielded to Fraser's prompting and began recounting tales of running the blockade from the Virginia coast. Fraser asked, perhaps too pointedly, how he coordinated those efforts with the rebel government. Barstow smiled knowingly in response. He even might have winked. But he never answered the question. When Fraser said he had heard that some Northerners aided the cotton smuggling, Barstow grinned affably. “We certainly wouldn't have gone to such lengths to get the cotton out,” he said, “unless we knew men who were prepared to buy it.”

Both men sweated clear through their vests. Then the talk reached the last months of the war.

“That must have been a terrible time,” Fraser said, “with the Union armies rampaging through the South.”

“Ah, Dr. McIntire,” Barstow said with a mournful look. Fraser enjoyed being addressed by his new name. It was like being a new person. “If ever there was a time for inspired leadership. It was not too late, mind you. The South had great strengths yet. A lasting peace was possible, as were ways to finance it. Do you know that a single pit in the Virginia woods held 200,000 bales of cotton? All that wealth, just sitting there rotting.”

Barstow blew his nose noisily. He pointed at Fraser with the hand that clutched the handkerchief. “Instead of inspired leadership, what did we have? A prissy old lady in Jeff Davis. On the other side, human battering rams like Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant! Perhaps the nation's greatest tragedy was forged in those months. Reconstruction didn't have to be, this lingering ill will between North and South didn't have to be, nor this endless cosseting of the Negroes.”

“How should peace have been achieved,” Fraser asked, actually curious, “after all the bloodshed and slaughter?”

“Dr. McIntire, is Ohio such an Eden of nigger loving that these thoughts have never penetrated there?”

“I can't speak for others, but this is an object of some wonderment for me.”

“You know your Shakespeare—remember the dying king's advice to Prince Hal?”

Fraser struggled to focus. The brandy was making him immune to the room's sodden heat, but it also obstructed thought. He read that one,
Henry IV,
on the train to New York. The phrase was close, floating nearby. Something about foreigners. He looked up triumphantly. “He should ‘busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels'!”

“Bravo, Doctor, bravo! What a perfect opportunity it was for North and South to join together, to merge their armies. Why, between us we had over a million men under arms. It was the largest military force in the world. We could have seized Canada with its broad lands and Mexico with its glittering silver. Who, sir, could have stopped us? We could have created a great bounty for every American. Surely even an Ohio man can see the truth in that.” Barstow's eyes glistened with excitement.

Fraser could not stifle the objection that formed in his mind. “But after all the fighting the people had been through, how could anyone have persuaded them to start two new wars?”

Barstow snorted with derision. “Who would you rather fight—some Mexican peasants and some Canadian fancy boys, or the battle-hardened legions of the Union and Confederate armies? Imagine George McClellan, Robert E. Lee, and William T. Sherman leading armies into Montreal and Mexico City. What glorious days we were cheated of! It would have required little more than a few long marches, the easiest assignment our soldiers would have had for four years. And, my good sir, it would have enriched the nation. All that stood between us and that stupendous destiny was a few lily-livered men in Richmond and a few stubborn ones in Washington.”

The tycoon finished his brandy. “Some very powerful men,” he said, “on both sides, endorsed that course. A terrible missed opportunity. You do see that?”

“Of . . . of course,” Fraser stammered. “I suppose, with some luck, and some—well, wait, Mr. Barstow. Would President Lincoln have considered such a course?”

Barstow's eyes flashed a malevolence that shattered the brandy haze. In an instant, his expression returned to that of the genial fellow with friendly white mustaches. He stood to greet another aging gent who approached their table.

“Why, Jimmie Smith, as I live and breathe,” he cried, extending the hand that did not hold his handkerchief. A slim, stooped man in a white linen suit shouted with hilarity at the sight of Barstow. After the two men finished family inquiries, Barstow introduced “a scoundrel and a gentleman, Senator James Smith of the great state of Arkansas.”

Barstow summoned a chair from a passing waiter. Three brandies appeared. Smith had recently been at the Democratic National Convention in Kansas City. He regaled them with tales of William Jennings Bryan, who had been nominated for a rematch against President McKinley in the fall. Senator Smith asked what Barstow thought of Bryan's prospects.

“You know,” Smith addressed Fraser while patting Barstow's forearm fondly, “Major Barstow has been the leading strategist for every Democratic candidate since the war—hell, even
during
the war. A veritable Warwick.” An impish smile creased the old man's face.

Barstow grinned even more broadly. “Didn't I tell you about this rascal? You can't believe anything he says.”

“And I offer the same advice about your companion,” the senator said to Fraser. “He hails from the great state of cotton, which is on nobody's side and everybody's side.”

“Cotton's done well for you, Senator,” Barstow said, “once you started trading it and gave up trying to grow it.”

Fraser took this turn in the conversation as his cue to repeat his interest in a cotton investment. At the prospect of business talk, Senator Smith excused himself.

In response to Fraser's inquiries, Barstow explained with a patronizing gentleness that the cotton market was unsettled. Opportunities were scarce. Were Dr. McIntire willing to look beyond cotton, the old man added, one very interesting prospect had just emerged.

With careful courtesy, Fraser explained that his partners in Ohio were dead set on cotton. He would have to consult with them by telegraph to see if they would consider anything else. He, of course, would greatly value the chance to invest with the legendary Mr. Barstow. Barstow replied that McIntire could review this investment prospect firsthand if he came to Barstow's office that Saturday at 5 p.m. Fraser agreed.

When Fraser attempted to acquire the bill from the waiter, he found that Barstow had already settled it.

 

After depositing the tycoon in his carriage, Fraser paused to admire his surroundings. Despite the late hour, most of the people of New York seemed to be out on Fifth Avenue, enjoying the slightly fresher night air. For a moment, he missed the sweet vapors of Cadiz, the breezes that curled on a summer night. A small Oriental man jostled him from his reverie, reminding Fraser of the range of human sizes, shapes, and colors that occupied that single street corner. What were all these people like? Where did they live and how did they pay for themselves? What did they do all day in that overwhelming city? Where were they going at that hour, especially those who stepped with such purpose? What could possibly be that important so late at night?

Fraser decided to proceed on foot to where he thought the omnibus line ran down to Avenue A. He was in no rush to reach tonight's hotel, which was even more disreputable than its predecessors. Yes, a walk, he decided. It would clear his mind and allow him to reflect on some of the astonishing things Barstow had said.

Embarking west across Fifth Avenue, Fraser marveled at Barstow's notion that North and South should have joined to invade Mexico and Canada. Could any sane human being have entertained that view in early 1865?

Fraser decided to take the proposition seriously. Barstow admitted that Lincoln would never have pursued that plan. Was that why Booth and his gang were sent to remove Lincoln, Grant, Johnson, and Seward from the United States Government? Would a Union led by Lafayette Foster and an army led by William Sherman have undertaken that audacious foreign adventure? But the theory didn't match the facts. Lee had surrendered by the time of the assassination. The soldiers of his Army of Northern Virginia had started their long walk home.

Perhaps Barstow was leading Fraser on, intentionally misleading him with a fantastic story of continental conquest. For that to be true, though, Barstow would have to know a great deal about Fraser. He would have to have pierced Fraser's false identity as Dr. John McIntire. Fraser believed that Barstow was connected to the Sons of Liberty; after all, Weichmann gave him Barstow's name on that last day in Indiana. It was true that the Sons of Liberty had tracked Fraser's visit to Weichmann, but Fraser was using his own name then, and wasn't changing hotels every day. Fraser doubted that Barstow knew his real identity.

Oblivious to the river of bodies passing on either side of him, Fraser reached Broadway. Shouts drew his eye to a ruckus across the street. Screaming men ran through pools of light from streetlamps. Shifting for a better view, Fraser could make out a man on the ground, surrounded by others. Then he made out flailing fists and legs swinging into vicious kicks. Fraser ran to a policeman and asked why he wasn't doing anything. “Ah, don't fash yourself,” the cop answered. “It's just the boys blowing off some steam with a few niggers. Nothing to get in a state over.”

More men ran down Broadway from uptown. An elemental timbre in their shouts made Fraser afraid. People hurried past, looking away from the street. Some of the rampaging men stopped an omnibus and circled it. They pounded on the sides with pieces of wood, then began to smash windows. The horses, screaming in terror, tore loose from their harnesses and galloped uptown, scattering people before them. Fraser saw astonished black faces in the passenger compartment as white-shirted men piled in after them. Was that Cook? The one crouched near the back? The shouting men were dragging passengers off the omnibus.

Fraser rushed to the edge of the melee and then was swept into it. It took all his strength to remain upright. He pushed through surging bodies, driving with his legs, using his weight to force people aside, moving toward the focus of the crowd, the black men. When he burst through, he could see Cook at the center of an open space, fending off a half-dozen white men. They ran at him from alternating directions, often absorbing a fist or a kick or a knee from the grim-looking Negro. It was a vile mockery of the Cooks' Fourth of July romp with the colored children by the side of the stream.

Cook's face was bloody, his clothes torn, one eye swollen. Fraser called to him, but Cook didn't hear. If the attackers could corner him, he'd be done for. Then the other whites, the ones who were wary of Cook's powerful blows, would pile on. A short man stepped out from the crowd and smashed a board against Cook's side. Cook's knees buckled.

Fraser pulled his pistol from his coat jacket and fired into the air. The rioters halted for a moment, looking for the source of the shot. Fraser pointed the gun at Cook. He screamed at the top of his lungs: “This man is my prisoner, and I'll shoot any man who stands between us.” Addressing Cook, he added, “Come quietly, you black bastard, or I'll shoot you down like the dog you are.” Cook, hunched over, arms clasped around his chest, stared at the pistol. Fraser quickly crossed to him, grabbed an elbow, and began to haul him through the startled crowd. Miraculously, the people parted for them. Fraser kept his pistol at shoulder height, pointing upward, conspicuous.

With the riot stretching north, Fraser dragged Cook downtown, ignoring his groans. There was no time to attend to any wounds. They had to get away. Looking back over his shoulder, Fraser could see flames, carriages on fire. Men were building bonfires in the street. More white men ran by. For the first time Fraser could make out their yells. “Get the niggers!” echoed down Broadway.

They had gone two blocks when Cook doubled over and started to cough blood. Fraser propped him against a building. They were in a darker patch between streetlights. Cook slid down to a seated position. They had to get off the street, away from the whites, but Cook couldn't keep walking. Fraser had to leave him and find a hack, hoping that no rioters happened upon Cook.

At the curb, Fraser waved madly, but no cab ventured so close to the riot. Acrid smoke from the fires mingled with the heat. The scene was infernal, the marauding men like imps from hell, delirious with their ability to damage and hurt. Should he try a cross street? Fraser looked back at Cook. He hadn't moved. No one was molesting him.