The Lincoln Deception (16 page)

C
ook didn't mind hanging back while Fraser asked the farmers if they could sleep in the barn or shed. They never talked about doing it that way, having Fraser do the asking. First time they did it, Cook just let Fraser ride into the farmyard ahead of him. With his gentle manners, Fraser looked as harmless as the straw he was asking to sleep on. Farmers naturally liked blond, shambling Jamie Fraser. They wanted to help him get out of the weather. They trusted him not to burn the place down. So Cook stayed out of the way.

The journey was proving more difficult than it sounded. Neither of them had spent much time in the saddle. They tried to buy horses in Elizabeth, but the ones they found were either half-dead or high-spirited—real high-spirited. When a stableman watched them spook their mounts into near hysteria, he spat tobacco juice and held out the money Fraser had just paid him.

“Come on, come on,” the man called. “Get down off those things before you kill yourselves.”

He told them to try mules. When Cook objected that mules would be slow, the stableman spat again. Drops of brown juice spackled his chin. “I got a conscience, you know, but you two are fully growed. You can choose. Slow or dead.”

Fraser bought the mules, Annie and Dusty. Not that the mules knew their names or cared who was trying to ride them. In the man-mule relationship, Annie and Dusty took the leadership role. They set their own pace, a deliberate one. They stopped when they wished to graze and stayed until they were done. When an automobile roared up behind them, they trotted off in whatever direction promised the quickest relief from the machine's thunder and smoke. After one encounter with an auto, Annie didn't stop for more than a mile, leaving Fraser red-faced and even more saddle-sore. He and Cook learned to bend every effort to avoid motorized vehicles, which suited Annie and Dusty just fine. On the plus side, the mules didn't mind the rain on the second day, though the riders found it dispiriting.

Indeed, so long as their terms were honored—and the men had little choice in that matter—the mules proved willing partners. They walked steadily for up to ten hours a day, submitting without complaint to ferry rides over rivers. Crossing into northern Maryland on the third day, the men expected to reach Baltimore the next afternoon.

They didn't talk much on the road. The mules walked single file, which discouraged conversation. Fraser called out remarks on the breeze, the sun, the clouds, but Cook mostly didn't respond, neglecting Fraser into silence.

In the evenings, they pulled out Barstow's books and stared at them until fatigue got the upper hand. They made no headway with the frog book. Cook still insisted that some of the numbers stood for dates and others for dollar values, but they could pick out no patterns. They did better with the book in Confederate cipher. They puzzled out a flurry of references in early 1865 to Julius Spencer, who would become Barstow's partner. They looked for a connection between Spencer and John Wilkes Booth, but found none.

On the third night, Cook had some things on his mind. He waited until they finished their canned soup and loaf of bread. Neither of them was much for cooking.

Staring into the dwindling fire, Cook started talking about the men who were chasing them. They were serious about this business, he said, serious enough to set traps for them. What did Fraser and Cook know about them? Did they know enough to figure out how to avoid them, or even stop them?

“Well,” Fraser started, “we know Barstow's in the middle of it—”

“More like at the top.”

“—and we know something about Stoneman. And we know they call themselves the Sons of Liberty.”

“They could call themselves the Knights of the Second Coming,” Cook said. “The name don't mean anything. That's just how they fancy themselves.”

“I think it matters. The Sons of Liberty means something to them. They think they're defending a cause, liberty.”

“Brother, all it means is they're defending themselves. From us. This has to be about assassinating Lincoln, right? They're making sure to keep that covered up, making sure the trail always ends at Booth, the mad killer. If you were involved in killing Lincoln, thirty-five years don't make you any safer than you were the day he died. Someone finds out you did it, you're going to hang.”

“Okay, fair enough. How does that help us find them?”

“Can't think of anything helps us find them. They don't always wear red shirts or blue hats, or work in a building with a sign saying ‘Sons of Liberty' out front. The ones we've seen have just been regular-looking white men, right? Could be anyone on the street.”

Fraser smiled. “That one back at the train station. You scared the willies out of him.”

“He should've been scared.”

“It isn't like we were going to do anything right there on the depot platform.”

“That what you think?”

Fraser lifted his eyes from the fire. “Shouldn't it be?”

Cook took his time answering. “I think you
all
should be scared of me.” Cook met Fraser's gaze. “Playing ball, they got to be scared of me. I liked that, used it to beat them. People who're scared don't think straight. They didn't like being scared of me, a colored boy, but dangerous all the same. Maybe more dangerous because he's colored. They thought maybe I was playing some different game than they were, that it mattered more to me, that I'd do something they wouldn't. They were right.”

“What different game?”

“You know how you felt up on that bridge, swinging in the wind? Like you were trapped, nowhere to turn, nothing you can do, every move going to get you in worse trouble, even get you killed?”

Fraser nodded.

“That's being colored. Trapped. Nowhere to go. Can't afford to step wrong. Not once.” Cook stared into the fire. “Throwing me out of baseball probably saved my life. I was going to start something, sooner or later, and I would've ended up dead. I didn't know it, but they knew.”

“Must've been hard, giving up something you're really good at.”

Cook fed the fire some wood he had split with the farmer's ax. “I was hot about it, but it was out of my hands. Every ballplayer knows it's coming one day, the day you're too slow, too weak. I wasn't there yet, but I could see it.”

“I've been feeling that way about doctoring.”

“Doctoring? No such thing as too slow for doctoring. That's something
old
men do.”

Fraser smiled. “Not too slow, maybe, but losing the fire. Since my wife, Ginny, died, it feels different. Not as important. I still want to help people, get to know them. When they get sick, some people seem to become more who they really are, more than at any other time. It's like they're stripped bare. They don't have the energy to pretend. It's a privilege to know them that way.” Cook was nodding. “But with Ginny gone, when things go bad, I can't let go of it. I could talk to her about those times and get out from under them. But not now. They weigh on me. I don't know if I can keep on with it.”

“There's a big world out there, lots of things to do, 'specially for a large white man like yourself.”

Fraser laughed. “Don't you ever stop thinking about race?”

“Nope, that'd be dangerous, dangerous for any colored. You might end up acting uppity, get sassy.” They watched the fire flicker and pop. “So,” Cook started, “when I was through feeling angry and sorry for myself, that's when I decided to start this newspaper.”

“Have you ever done that kind of work?”

Cook smiled. “I've read a whole heap of newspapers and I've known lots of newspaper men. Doesn't look all that hard.” His face grew stern. “I'm through with sitting around bellyaching while the world goes to hell in a handbasket. I've got a voice and an arm, and I can lift them both against all this injustice I've been swimming through my whole life. I've got something to say. It doesn't matter how much I get to say or how many days I get to say it. The Lord never lets you know how many days you'll have. But I've got to start.”

“I envy your passion.”

“Mrs. Cook says it doesn't make me easy to live with.”

Fraser smiled. “I can see her point.” He sat up straighter and stretched his spine. “Time to talk about Baltimore?” Cook said nothing, so Fraser pressed on. “The people there—the Surratts and Sam Arnold—they're not going to be eager to talk with the likes of us. I figure John Surratt is least likely to cooperate. He never did show any remorse, just stuck to his story that the Booth conspiracy was exactly that—the
Booth
conspiracy. So let's start with him. Why don't we run at him first?”

“He should be
last,
” Cook said. “The others'll clam up as soon as John Surratt passes the word. He's the hard case. Think of it. He's the one who ran off to Europe and never looked back while they hanged his mother for his crimes. A man who turns his back on his own mother—he ain't about to make a spontaneous confession. Not ever.”

Fraser offered a compromise. They could start by checking out John Surratt. He was the only one they knew where to find, courtesy of Townsend. Surratt might lead them to his sister, or to something else.

“No matter where we start,” Cook said, “Stoneman'll be looking for us. And he'll send men who aren't just watchers. He'll send the doers next time.”

The fire was down to embers. A half-moon gave the land a ghostly pall. A mule snorted and kicked the ground.

“You figure there's any chance we work this out,” Cook said, “we actually get proof of what really happened? And that anyone will believe us if we do?”

Fraser lifted an eyebrow an inch. He shrugged even less.

Cook figured that was as good an answer as there was. Lying back on his blanket, he didn't expect to fall asleep, but he did right off.

C
ook didn't think Annie and Dusty would walk as far into Baltimore as they did. The mules' objections to traffic could no longer be ignored when two autos rumbled down a street at the same time, triggering a spasm of head shaking, shying, and even the beginnings of rising on back hooves. Cook persuaded Fraser to dismount and stable their steeds. They could manage the rest of the way on foot.

Baltimore didn't compare to New York as a city, but after four days on the road, Cook felt the lure of its conveniences. They found a rooming house with that bedraggled look he prized. Domestic thoughts washed over him: a hot bath, a kitchen-cooked meal, clean clothes from their trunks. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind.

According to Townsend's wire, Surratt worked for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, which should be easy to find. It was bound to be a nest of former Confederates. “This,” he declared, “is one Southern town. I'm telling you, it's no place to be colored.”

“You say that about every city,” Fraser pointed out.

“That don't make me wrong.”

They split up, since they were so easy to pick out when together. Fraser went to claim their luggage from the train depot. Cook wanted to look over the shipping company.

He found its terminal on Light Street, facing the harbor. A steamer, the
Georgia,
sparkled in the sunshine. At the front of the vessel, white-jacketed staff guided passengers coming down the gangplank. At the rear, a Negro freight gang shouldered bales of cotton. After hoisting a bale, sometimes teetering briefly, each man would center himself for the tramp down to the pier and a waiting wagon. The sun was strong and the air thick with humidity. The men's dark skin shone with sweat and their shirts clung damply. Cook watched from a shady spot on the street.

During a lull in the stevedores' efforts, Cook fell in with a group of them as they drained pails of beer from a nearby tavern. He said he heard the company was hiring.

“Where'd you hear that?” The question came from a medium-sized man, older than the others.

Cook said he heard that a fellow by the name of Stoneman said so. A wordless buzz passed through the group. The silence was thick. The men finished their beers and began to move back to the ship.

Cook followed the man who had spoken to him. “What'd I say? Haven't had that kind of effect since I farted in church.”

The man stopped and looked off into the middle distance. “If you're a man for Stoneman,” he said, “then don't none of us need to be with you.”

“I didn't know he had that reputation,” Cook said. “What's he look like? Where's he usually found? Sounds like maybe I need to steer clear of him.”

“Got a face,” the man said, “like a clenched fist. He's big and broad and bald. He drinks up at the Skipjack, over on Charles Street.” After starting toward the ship, he turned back. “It's your business, but I never heard of him hiring colored, not even a yellow one.”

Before leaving, Cook resolved on one more gambit. He picked up a piece of paper from the street and folded it into a message-sized packet. He walked to the offices of the steamship line. The building was brick, its multipane windows flanked with black shutters. With his hand on the doorknob, he saw a small sign: “
DELIVERIES IN THE REAR
.” A gravel walk led to a rear door. Cool air embraced him as he entered. He would gladly have spent the rest of the day there.

“Boy, what you want?” The question came from a thin young man wearing spectacles, vest and cravat, and sleeve garters.

Brandishing his fake message, Cook said, “Yes, sir. Have a message here for Mr. John Surratt.”

“My uncle's gone for the day,” the young man said. Reaching, he added, “I'll see that he gets it.”

“I'm supposed to hand it to him direct. I couldn't find him at the Skipjack.”

The young man
tsked
dismissively. “My uncle wouldn't set foot in that dump.” He narrowed his eyes. “Who are you, boy? What's in that message? Give it here.”

Cook bowed quickly and reached back for the doorknob. “I needs to check back with my boss, sir. Sorry to be a bother to y'all.” He left quickly.

Three hours later, he laughed about it as he banged a crab with a wooden mallet at a waterfront saloon. His lips burned from the pepper the crabs were boiled in. “There I was, face-to-face with Anna Surratt's son, with a scrap of paper in my hand and no more plan what to do next than that spotted dog has right now.” Cook nodded over at a skinny mongrel sitting near their table, hoping to get lucky. “I was glad to get back to the street.”

“What'd he look like?” Fraser asked.

“Scrawny, medium high, one of those little mustaches that's the best some men can do.” After wiping his hands on his trousers and taking a long pull on his beer, Cook leaned forward. “Thing is, I followed that boy most of the way home, up Charles Street.” He tried to pick a piece of crabmeat from a corner of the shell. It was a lot of work for not much nourishment. “Asked a man on the street for the Surratt place. He said I meant the Tonry house, then pointed it out.”

Fraser smiled. “That's first-rate. You found Anna Surratt in, what, six hours?”

“I think maybe I'm done with the Surratts. That boy at the steamship office, he's going to remember me. He looked at me real close.”

They decided that Fraser would approach Anna Surratt Tonry at her home. She wasn't supposed to be quite right in the head, not since her mother was hanged all those years ago. Fraser was a doctor, so he could offer his services. Cook would take care of selling Annie and Dusty, then come up to the Tonrys' neighborhood to watch for Stoneman and his men.

“Remember,” Cook said, looking up from his crab. “Call her ‘Miss Anna.' You're in the South.”

 

At ten the next morning, Fraser stood on the front stoop of a simple row house on East Twenty-Eighth Street. He told the young woman at the door that he was Dr. Robert Sanders here to see Miss Anna. He liked having another new name.

“What are you here for?”

“Her brother, Mr. Surratt, asked me to look in on Miss Anna. He thought perhaps I could assist her.”

The young woman's brown hair was tucked into a practical bun. Her face was flushed from domestic chores. She looked uncertain. Fraser adjusted his suit coat to emphasize his respectability. He held his medical bag in front to project authority and trustworthiness. She stepped back.

“I'll show you the way,” she said.

Miss Anna's bedroom was at the head of a narrow flight of stairs. “Ma,” the young woman called out, “Ma, here's another doc Uncle John sent. He's going to make you better.” Looking back over her shoulder, she whispered to Fraser, “She's been like this for more than a week.”

Fraser confronted a white-haired woman whose age wasn't clear. She lay under a light coverlet that suggested she was long and slender. In her narrow, still-pretty face, the eyes looked wounded.

She paid little attention as he performed a rudimentary physical examination. He tried conversation. How was she feeling? She grunted. Was she sleeping well? Another grunt. Was there pain? A low moan. Headaches? No response at all. He asked if something was worrying her. No answer. He sat with her for another minute. The slap of wet clothes against a washboard came from the backyard.

He had read about such nervous disorders in females but had not seen one. It seemed unlikely he was going to learn from her about her brother's role in the Lincoln assassination. He wished he could help her. With a sigh, he decided to try aspirin. He mixed the powder with some water. She drank it dutifully. He left more powder with the daughter, who gave her name as Clara. He promised to return in a day.

Next morning, Miss Anna was sitting up when he crested the stairs. She smiled. When he asked if she was feeling better, she nodded. Fraser conducted the same examination and asked the same questions. Despite her better spirits, she was still taciturn. As Fraser prepared to leave, she spoke, her full voice startling him.

“You can't help me, can you? None of the others could.”

“Your case is a confounding one.”

She shook her head. “I despair of ever feeling well again, of waking up with strength in the morning.”

Fraser found the conversation uncomfortable. Until now, he could tell himself he was seeing to her condition in good faith, even though he had another motive for seeing her. But he knew he shouldn't lie to his patient. This woman had nothing to do with killing Abraham Lincoln. Then again, she might know something useful. “I can find nothing wrong with you bodily. Certainly, though, your sentiments are preventing you from that enjoyment of life we all wish. I fear your health may be undermined by some personal loss you're harboring.”

The woman looked away from him and appeared to think for a moment. “You want to know about my mother, don't you?”

“I know of her sad fate, of course, and have wondered if it's part of your melancholy. I hope you know that everything you tell your physician is held in the strictest confidence.” When she didn't respond, he continued. “Is it, I wonder, that you miss your mother, even after all these years?”

“Of course, I do, but it's more than that.”

“Indeed.” Fraser's pulse began to race. He disciplined himself to be silent and wait.

“I feel as though I can trust you,” she said. “You have a kind face. I slept well last night for the first time in ages.”

All Fraser could think about was how he had deceived her, but he couldn't relent now. Not now. “That's welcome news,” he said. “I will leave more of the aspirin.”

“Please do, Dr. Sanders, but you are right that an unhappiness poisons my days. I'm burdened by the lies in my life, lies from my family. My brother, John, he's lied to me about so many things, but so did Mother. And I've realized that her fate was perhaps not the injustice I thought it. That's . . . crushing me.”

“What is it,” Fraser asked softly, “that's brought you to these conclusions?”

“The money.” Fraser waited. “John's money. It keeps coming, like the rain. Oh, he's cautious. He tries not to draw attention to himself. But there's too much of it and there always has been. Money doesn't arrive for no reason.”

“From where does it come?”

“New York. Some place called Spencer something or other.”

Fraser's pulse was galloping. “Why couldn't it be money that your brother is properly entitled to?”

Miss Anna smiled. “You don't know my brother. He has a talent for spending money, especially on fine clothes, but not the least idea how to make it. He never has.”

Fraser had to ask. “Forgive me if I pry. My question is not medical. You knew Booth?”

She nodded and seemed to relax her nervous vigilance.

“What was he like?”

“Wonderful. Graceful and handsome and kind. And thoughtful. Like the person we wish we could be.”

“I understand he was appealing to the ladies.”

“Oh, Doctor, he charmed every one of them, and the men, too, and the dogs and the chickens as well. But, you know, I think it was the ladies may have dragged him down.”

“What do you mean?”

A cloud passed over her face. Her eyes drifted from him and the tension in her face returned. “Oh, it was such a long time ago.” She sank back into her despond. No question from Fraser, no matter how gentle, could rouse her. He placed the aspirin mixture on her table and bade her farewell.

Walking toward North Charles Street, where he could catch the streetcar down to the harbor, Fraser's mind was ablaze. Anna Surratt Tonry would never deliver testimony in a courtroom, or even speak in public. Indeed, even when she was young and her mother's life was at stake, she had barely stumbled through the most rudimentary testimony, ending with an emotional breakdown that—to Fraser's eye—continued. Nevertheless, she described a new connection between John Surratt and Barstow. As Townsend predicted, it was the money that had left tracks, and was still leaving tracks. Barstow was the money man for Surratt now, just as he must have been for Surratt and Booth in 1865. Those payments in gold in Barstow's memo book for early 1865, those had to have been for Surratt and Booth.

And Barstow surely hadn't been operating on his own. He was a Confederate officer. Was it an official army effort? Or maybe he formed his own venture, a renegade operation dedicated to making millions with smuggled cotton? Barstow must have had allies in the North. Julius Spencer, his future partner, he was one. Who else?

Too late, Fraser noticed the man walking toward him, almost upon him. It must be Stoneman, approaching at a quick pace, with a face exactly like a clenched fist. Flight would be useless. His henchmen would be nearby. Fraser resolved to brazen it out. It was daytime on a city street. What could Stoneman do?

Making no eye contact with the powerfully built man, Fraser made to pass by. Then he couldn't breathe. Strong arms pinned his own arms to his sides. He was thrust into the dark of a wagon that smelled like a cigar store. He smelled ether.