The Lincoln Deception (15 page)

He extended his foot again. Nothing. A hole of dread opened inside. Wait, there it was. The slant of the beam structure meant the grips were slightly to the side, not straight vertical. He had no time to think. He dropped his left foot for the next step. He stared straight ahead at the gray steel, reached his left hand to a second hand grip, and let himself down. He was descending.

The grips were at a uniform distance. He learned how far to drop each foot, at what angle, and how far to reach down the next hand. He couldn't hurry. He couldn't look down. One grip. The next grip. And the next. After what seemed like several hours, the rain arrived. It swept across his face. His suit became heavy with water. The grips felt slicker under his hands. He worried about his toes slipping. The wind dug at him. One gust seemed to push him sideways. When it stopped abruptly, his weight lurched back. His clothes were heavy with water, his shoes threatened to slip off his feet.

He didn't look down. One foot, then the next. One hand, then the next. After another eternity, his peripheral vision picked up images of piled lumber, spools of cable. He was close. With each step down, he longed for the ground. When his left foot touched a new surface, he toed it gingerly, then flattened his foot against it. With a gasp, he slid down the girder and collapsed. Tears came, unbidden. He was down.

 

Drenched by the rain and shaken by his escape, Fraser mounted the stairs of the Miller Hotel. He dreaded Cook's reaction. He had been a fool. Stepping into their darkened room, Fraser said nothing. He dripped on the floor and shivered in a woeful fashion. Cook threw him a towel, told him to get his clothes off, then wrapped him in a blanket. When Fraser's shaking stopped, Cook listened to his tale with a steady expression. At the end, he showed neither scorn, though Fraser had earned it, nor sympathy.

“See?” he said. “It's like I been telling you. These folks ain't playing. You need to start being smart, stop thinking like you're white, you're going to live forever.”

Fraser agreed, but he said one thing more. “We're on to something, Speed. He wouldn't go to all this trouble if we weren't.”

“Wish I knew what it is we're on to. We sure know he's on to you, maybe on to me, too. Dr. McIntire just left town for good.”

Both fell asleep without any supper. The next morning, they moved to another hotel, another day of laying low and healing, deciphering Barstow's memo book, thinking about Booth's conspiracy. They had to leave New York. It was dangerous being near Barstow. Fraser traded wires with Townsend in Maryland, getting leads on the people to see in Maryland. Neither man said anything about turning back.

S
itting on a bench in the Newark train depot, Fraser tapped his foot impatiently. The Chesapeake Limited was delayed. Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican candidate for vice president, was leaving for the West that morning. His supporters, taking advantage of the break in the heat wave, had swamped the station, snarling trains all morning. Cook sat reading a newspaper.

Their misadventures in New York seemed to have reconciled them to each other. Fraser appreciated that Cook was capable, smart about the world, smart about people. And he was steadfast. After being manhandled by the rioters, he could have chosen to pack it in. Fraser's escapade on the bridge might have persuaded him that Fraser was too rash and foolish, and Barstow too dangerous, to keep going. But here he was.

As for Fraser, he was angry and getting angrier. He didn't like being pushed around. He meant to do some pushing back.

Looking down the train platform, Cook folded his paper and stretched. “Let's go take a look,” he said. “Not going anywhere till this man's done inspiring the nation.”

They walked outside to where the honored speaker stood in a vested suit on an overturned crate. They circled the crowd until they could see him. Roosevelt's high-pitched voice, bursting with fury, was clear when he rotated toward them, muted when he turned away.

His movements were violent, left fist pounding into the palm of his right to punctuate his points. Even at a distance, his large teeth looked wolfish. His eyeglasses, far from making him seem like a sissy, flashed with menace when they caught the light. They gave Roosevelt a supernatural air, a man able to see into the brains and hearts of his listeners.

He was laying into the Democrats and their demand for self-government in the Philippines. Roosevelt dismissed the natives as “Malay bandits.” Yet, he bellowed, those same Democrats schemed to deny the voting rights of “Americans of dusky color” in North Carolina.

Roosevelt's fearsome intensity grew as he spoke of the Filipino war. War was necessary, he shouted, to avoid chaos and anarchy. Americans had a duty to put down the armed resistance without pussyfooting, parleying, or faltering. “All the great masterful races,” he called out, “have been fighting races. The minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, then, no matter what else it may retain, it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal of the best. Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin.”

The crowd roared its approval. Roosevelt clasped his hands together in victory.

Cook shook his head as they stepped back toward their idle train. “What a load of bunk. That man ought to be ashamed of himself.”

“Truly?” Fraser said. “I thought you'd like the way he spoke for Americans of a dusky color.”

Cook waved the comment away. “He don't mean anything by it. He says just enough to get the votes of the few colored who still can vote. He won't do anything for us, like stop the lynching. You notice he didn't mention that riot in his own city, New York, where he was police commissioner? Or that it was his police joined in the rioting, busting colored men's heads?”

Fraser said nothing, but Cook kept on. “Makes me sick, all that stuff about the glorious war in the Philippines. He wants to get everybody on the same side, North and South, black and white, by shouting out, ‘Let's go kill us some yellow men!' ”

“He wants to ‘busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.' ”

Cook looked at him sidewise. “I suppose you could say that.”

When the Chesapeake Limited began to board, Fraser put a question to Cook that had been bothering him. “Do you still think it might make a difference in the election year if we prove that Democrats were involved in killing Lincoln?”

Cook smiled. “Can't do them any good. But even if it killed them off as a party, it wouldn't change the race hate. The haters'd start up another party, call it something else.”

As soon as they were seated, Cook whispered in Fraser's ear. When the train pulled out, he hissed, they should get off. Fraser raised an eyebrow. “We ain't alone,” Cook added, “must be Barstow's men. You go first. Stroll toward the next car like you're stretching your legs. From between cars, you jump off. We meet up at the next station.”

“What about our things?”

“I'll take care of them.”

Fraser scanned the car for the men Cook had spotted. The one in a straw boater? Too old. The bowler? Too fat. Barstow would send only the fittest on his dirty errands.

The train jerked. Its wheels screeched and their car vibrated with the throaty rumble of the engine. Fraser remembered the two thugs in Indiana, the note in his hotel room in Fairview, the Williamsburg Bridge. He had no wish to meet up with Barstow's toadies.

He walked to the rear door and out between cars. Another man was there, leaning against the doorframe, smoking a thin cheroot. He nodded at Fraser, who swung a leg over the gate between the cars, scissored the other one over, and dropped to the ground. He executed the maneuver with complete nonchalance until the landing. He fell heavily on his left leg, twisting it, then rolled down a slope not quite dry from a recent rain.

Limping alongside the tracks to the next station, Fraser regretted that he had jumped so soon. He might safely have ridden several more miles before jumping. After more than an hour, he reached the Elizabeth depot, mostly deserted in the midmorning lull.

Cook was sitting on his trunk to the side of the platform. Fraser's trunk stood next to him, supporting a medium-sized white man in a dusty gray jacket. Cook nodded and said, “Say hello to John Buckner. If that's his real name.”

Fraser stared at Cook. Cook shrugged. “While I was arranging for the baggage, I run into this man and I realized I know him. So we decided to get off here for some talk.” Cook clapped a heavy hand on Buckner's shoulder, then nodded down to his other hand in his jacket pocket, which might well hold a weapon.

“So far,” Cook continued, “Mr. Buckner's been quiet. I thought maybe he'd feel better spilling his guts to a white man. That way he gets a choice. Spill his guts to you or have this colored man spill his guts for him.” As he stood up, Cook gave the man's shoulder a last squeeze. Buckner made a face. “I won't be far.”

Fraser moaned as he sat on the trunk Cook had just vacated. His feet hurt. He pointed to Cook's receding figure. “I hope you didn't rile him up. Once he gets hot, he's hard to settle down.” Cook stopped about thirty feet away. He leaned against the depot wall and stared back.

“Honest, mister, I don't know what that crazy nigger's going on about. I was just riding the train, minding my own business, when up he comes—”

Fraser held up his hand. “Mr. Buckner, if you want to tell me my friend has a bad temper, I won't argue. You want to criticize his manners, I'll let it go. He
can
be a little rough-edged. But you shouldn't start telling me he's wrong about you and what you're up to. He doesn't make that kind of mistake.”

Buckner protested his innocence again. This time Fraser sat through it, eyes cast down at the planking on the depot platform. When the man grew quiet, Fraser asked, “You're done?”

The man nodded.

“You still see my friend there?” Cook hadn't moved. “Now listen close this time. I would describe my friend as, well, moody. You might call him crazy. Different words, but the same point. You know he's carved up white men before, don't you? They should've told you that. I don't know how many he's done. What I know, and maybe they didn't tell you, is that he doesn't mind it. I don't know, maybe he likes it.” Buckner shifted his weight.

“You can see he's close to losing his temper, and that'll be worse for you than for me,” Fraser said. “You're the only one can keep that from happening. Now why not say who sent you?”

The gray man looked across the tracks.

“Somebody hired you.” The man remained silent. Fraser sighed and stood. “That's too bad. You give me a name and address, I can send word where your people can find you. You know, after.”

Cook started walking toward them.

“Stoneman,” the man blurted.

Fraser signaled Cook to stop. “Okay.”

“I didn't sign up for no rough stuff. Not my line. It was this Stoneman, though, I done some jobs for him before, following guys, you know.”

“Tell me about Stoneman.”

“He's a big fellow, works for some shipping company. You know, private police. Out of Baltimore. He was a cop there, a rough one. Proud of it.”

“What company?”

“Don't know.”

“Has he got a first name?”

“Jed, I think. Least that's what they call him.”

Fraser pressed him for a description. Stoneman was of medium height, broad across and without much hair. He favored a wide-brimmed hat. Buckner claimed not to know any others or to be able to describe them.

“What'd he hire you to do?”

The man looked over at Cook, who was about fifteen feet away, looking full of energy. “Does he have to stand so close?”

“What were you supposed to do?”

“I started about three weeks ago. Stoneman hired me and three others, three that I knew about. Told us to be watching for you two—a big yellow nigger with graying hair and a large white man, sandy haired.”

“Why did he say you were watching for us?”

“Didn't say.” The man looked up at Fraser. “What do I care? I watch at train stations, ferry slips. When you two are together, you stand out a mile.”

“So what're you supposed to do when you find us?”

The man shrugged. “Find out where you're staying, where you're going. Tell Stoneman. After that, I don't know. Stoneman handles that. I'm just a guy who watches.” He looked over at Fraser. “You ought to know, it changed a few days back.”

“What changed?”

“Stoneman hired more guys. Said we weren't going to let you leave New York. Said you stole some things.”

“What?”

“Books. He said one's got a picture of a frog. I didn't ask about it. Like I said, I'm purely a watcher.”

Fraser tried more questions, but the man offered nothing more. Then Fraser had a thought. “When you saw us, did you send any kind of message about it, before you got on the train?”

The man denied it, but Fraser didn't believe him. They needed to get off this train platform. He waved Cook over. “Mr. Buckner here's been talking.”

Cook gave the man a hard look. Fraser added, “We're at the part where he agrees to stop following us. Keeping after us would be a real mistake.”

The man agreed emphatically.

“You want to let him go?” Cook said. “Just like that?” Disappointment suffused his tone.

“Unless you've got a better idea.”

Cook shook his head and cocked a hip. “All right. Not as messy, I guess.” Lifting his chin, he said directly to the man, “Don't let me see you again.”

The man nodded and stood. Fraser shooed him with the back of his hand and Buckner scampered away.

Cook began to smile. “Damn, Doctor, I'm thinking maybe you missed your calling, you should've signed up for something a bit rougher, collecting gambling debts and such.”

Fraser smiled. “It wasn't me he was afraid of. What'd you say to him?”

They sat down on their trunks. “Nothin'.” Cook smiled again. “Saying nothin', that can be real powerful. Also, showing a knife.”

After Fraser related what the man had said, Cook puffed out his cheeks and let out a long breath. “Okay. We're riding the tiger here. Stoneman, Barstow, they aren't fooling around. They want those books back. Funny that he mentioned the frog book.”

“Don't you see? That means we're getting closer.”

“Yeah, closer to getting killed.”

They agreed on a radical change in their travel. Stoneman was watching train stations and piers, but he couldn't cover every country road in New Jersey and Maryland. They would ship their luggage to Baltimore, buy a couple of horses, and ride there.

Fraser made a face. “That's a long ride. Why not just build a hot-air balloon and fly there?”

“Balloons are damned easy to follow.” Cook grinned. “Come on, it'll toughen up your backside.” As his grin faded, he added, “I don't have a good feeling about Baltimore. That's a Southern town, and it's Stoneman's hometown. We're walking right onto his home field.”

“You want to go back to Ohio?”

“Just letting you know how I feel.”