The Lincoln Deception (8 page)

He folded the note and handed it to her. With a careful dignity, Tillie took it and passed back toward her brother's library.

She returned with the folded note in one hand, her hat now in the other. “Doctor,” she said in a peremptory manner, “you should leave.”

When he reached the street, Fraser crumpled the note and was about to throw it in the gutter. When he opened it he found a single word under his question:
“Barstow.”

C
adiz looked good to Fraser when he arrived home, though his all-too-visible injuries drew concerned questions from his patients and neighbors. Fraser insisted he had fallen from a horse, though he never detailed which horse, or where, or how. Let them talk, he thought. The real story would not improve his standing as a citizen or a physician. No one wants a doctor who runs off to investigate an assassination thought to have been solved long ago, and then gets himself thrashed by strangers.

Fraser resolved to abandon his grandiose effort to solve the Booth conspiracy. He had patients to care for, medical journals to catch up on, and a hundred chores he had neglected, beginning with the loose doorknob at the entrance to his examining room. That wobble conveyed to patients an unfortunate message of carelessness. It was intolerable. The tongue-and-groove mechanism had to be replaced. The task consumed an entire evening.

But it was no use. After a week of healing, while lurid shades of purple and black bloomed between his left ear and cheekbone, the itch came back. He couldn't keep his mind from the Lincoln case. What happened to Booth and Bingham and Lincoln was so much more interesting than Mr. Van Dusen's dyspepsia or Mrs. Markham's gravel or stitching up another farmer kicked by an ill-tempered cow. Sitting in that empty house, which for him always would be Ginny's house, Fraser needed something more to care about.

Another force drove him. He was angry now. He had always been slow to anger and much slower to cool off. He wasn't going to cool off anytime soon. He was an American, with the right to know his own history. Who were those Sons of Liberty to stop him? His father gave his life for the ideals of the nation. Fraser would not dishonor that sacrifice by being scared into silence by street thugs.

Fraser pulled out his notes and chronology, then inserted what he learned from Weichmann. He didn't have much about the Sons of Liberty. With the itch still prickling his brain, he stood on Emma Bingham's front porch on a close afternoon that badly needed a thunderstorm.

She wore a sun bonnet and apron, and apologized for her appearance. Though they would be selling the house, she explained, she was hoping to get a crop of vegetables from the garden that summer. He asked to look in the library for a few additional items. After a slight hesitation, she led him there. He noted with satisfaction that their earlier efforts had quelled some of the room's chaos, though districts of disorder persisted.

“Jamie,” she said, turning to look up at him, “I fear I've caused you trouble by burdening you with my father's papers.”

“Emma, it's been my great privilege to work on these. It's been a chance to repay the kindnesses I've received from you and your father.”

“Oh, Jamie, just look at you! I know you're involved in something terrible and it's my fault.” She reached a hand toward his bruised face.

“Sheer clumsiness,” Jamie said, trying a grin intended to be rakish. “Better men grow out of it.”

“I'm not so stupid, Jamie. It's not a compliment to act as though I am. I'm sure it's something to do with Father, perhaps something he asked you to do. Really, Jamie, you never leave Cadiz for years and suddenly you're gone for almost a week and come back looking like . . . that!”

Fraser was not sure what bothered him more—that Emma was tracking him, that she thought he never left Cadiz, or that she thought he would leave only if Mr. Bingham sent him on a posthumous errand. Suppressing his annoyance, he took her hands.

“Emma, dear Emma. It's a fine thing to be worried about, especially by a friend as good as you. But I assure you, I left Cadiz for business, and your father made no request that triggered the journey. I have my own concerns, and they can take me away.”

Had her sallow complexion permitted it, she would have blushed. “Of course, I was being foolish.” He held on to her hands as she tried to pull back.

“Not foolish at all. Your heart is one of the best, but there's no cause for concern over anything other than my sorry lack of coordination.” He released her hands and nodded toward the shelves around them. “I will return everything where I find it.”

“Of course. You're always welcome. I'll be out back if you need anything.”

Three hours of reading brought precious little information about the Sons of Liberty. The group had roots in the Knights of the Golden Circle, which dated to before the Civil War and aimed to expand the nation into Mexico and Canada. He thought one of Booth's gang had been a Knight of the Golden Circle, but was disappointed to discover it was Michael O'Laughlen, one of the least important.

During the war, the Sons of Liberty were active in Ohio and Indiana, planning uprisings by Confederate soldiers held in Union prison camps. Their plans dissolved with the arrest of their leaders in mid-1864. As Cook had said, one of them was from Cadiz, a man named Lambdin Milligan. It was Milligan who challenged the way they were prosecuted, in front of military commissions. After the war, the Supreme Court ruled that he was right, that a regular court should have held the trial. The decision came too late to help the Lincoln conspirators, who also were tried before a military commission.

But Fraser found no evidence that the Sons of Liberty or the Knights of the Golden Circle survived the war. Then again, they were secret organizations. The whole point was for no one to know they existed. Could the Sons of Liberty still be around, out of sight, thirty years later? Could they be big enough to track someone as inconsequential as Jamie Fraser?

 

Fraser never much liked the Fourth of July. He remembered, as a boy, feeling sticky most of the holiday, sweat mingling with watermelon juice and slopped-over lemonade, coated with a light layer of dust. Always big for his age, he was expected to excel in the town's athletic competitions. Being slow afoot, he rarely did. His size would have helped in the wrestling, but he never entered. He couldn't see the point in fighting someone who had done nothing to make him angry.

He did enjoy the morning baseball game between Cadiz and Steubenville. He watched it every year until he was old enough to play, a lumbering first baseman who could hit the ball a long way if only he could make contact. This year he was the umpire, which not only testified to his reputation for fairness but also would protect his still-tender ribs. Yet, he resented the assignment, a clear message that his best days on the diamond were behind him, even though his best days had been on the pallid side.

Still, he smiled at the shiny morning at McGregor's field, a corner of a local farm long devoted to the needs of Cadiz's ballplayers. Nervous energy charged the air as the players warmed up, calling out greetings and insults, trying to identify the field's more pronounced dips, rills, and half-buried rocks. Steubenville usually won, a tradition since Speed Cook anchored their nine twenty-five years ago. He was the umpire, Fraser reminded himself. No choosing sides.

He didn't notice Cook until the bottom of the sixth inning, the second time he called Joe Mooney out on strikes. Joe, a rugged teamster for an express company, took exception. Fraser waved the next man into the batter's box, but Mooney didn't move, loudly describing Fraser's visual limitations. Fraser turned his back so Mooney's teammates could haul the young man out of reach. As the disappointed batter's harangue faded, Fraser saw Cook on the Steubenville side, past first base. The old ballplayer's posture carried the controlled eagerness of a hunting dog alerting to nearby prey. Fraser wished Cook were playing. Even at his age, he would be the best player on the field. Fraser raised a hand in greeting. Cook didn't respond.

After Cadiz submitted, 18-10, the combatants and spectators repaired to the nearby picnic. Fraser joined a group in a shady spot and soon was licking fried chicken batter and watermelon juice from his fingers. The conversation was politics. The Republicans had re-nominated McKinley for president, adding a combative young New Yorker named Roosevelt as his running mate. Fraser didn't join in. His politics were instinctive and he articulated them poorly. Being Republican was bred into his bones. He knew the Frasers were Republican before he knew they were Christian. Yet the prospect of reelecting McKinley depressed him. More war in the Philippines, more of the same. He decided to walk around.

He greeted friends, admired babies, turned down more food, and found a place to hose off his hands. The sun grew warmer. Fraser wiped his face with a handkerchief already soggy with sweat. Then he decided. He left to find Speed Cook.

Fraser took the path down to Liming Creek, where the colored families gathered for their picnic. He entered the cool of the woods and followed the cries of children. As he neared the tumult, he thought through what he wanted to say. It had been simmering inside him for days.

Cook crouched in the middle of a bright clearing, fifty yards from the larger gathering at the creek. A dozen children circled him, whooping and laughing and leaping, bouncing off his hard muscles and sliding down his arms and legs. He twisted and dodged, darted away from them, then slowed enough for them to dive at him again. He caught the reckless ones with his powerful hands, keeping them from collisions that might have meant catastrophe, or at least an extended bout of bawling. “Come on, come on,” he taunted, flashing a grin Fraser had never seen. “Where's the strong ones here? Can't catch up to an old man? Come on, come on!”

Four of the larger children grabbed him, two at the waist and two at the knees. Cook gave a great roar and bellowed, “Are the strong ones here? Where'd they come from?”

The younger ones shrieked and jumped as he sank slowly under the weight of the squirming bodies, crying, “Oh, no! Oh, no!” The laughter became riotous and the joyful shouts proclaimed, “We got him! We got him!”

After more minutes of mad wrestling, the quarry finally fell still, which cast the children into a state of instant boredom. A few younger ones nudged Cook, sprawled on his back. They begged him to do something, to play some more.

“You all go on now,” he said as he sat up, brushing grass from his hair. He stroked a small boy's cheek with the side of his finger. “Wash your hands in the creek before your mama sees you. She'll skin us both.” The boy followed the others toward the stream.

When Cook caught sight of Fraser at the edge of the clearing, his nod was neither friendly nor hostile.

“You're a popular man,” Fraser said.

“They're easy to please.” Cook stood with impressive quickness for a man who had recently been buried under several hundred pounds of howling boys and girls. “You're looking all right. I heard someone was dancing on your face. Heard it was bad.”

“I'm fine. Took a spill off a horse.”

“Uh-huh.” Cook smiled. “Most folks around here know what it looks like when you've been slugged.” Fraser looked at the ground. Cook turned to go.

“Wait.” Fraser walked toward him. “I wanted to talk, about the trip we took. Some of the things you said that night, you were right. I can't fix everything for you colored in this country, but I didn't act as a friend should, and I regret that.”

“That an apology?”

“Yes.”

“Not always easy to tell with you white folks.”

Fraser stuck out his hand. Cook took it without enthusiasm. “If you've got a minute,” Fraser said, “I'd like to tell you about that trip I took to Indiana.”

T
hey walked down the creek away from the colored picnic. The words tumbled out of Fraser, telling what he learned from Louis Weichmann and his archive. He talked about Nelly Starr and her baby, about Bessie Hale, and about all the money Booth spread around the conspiracy. He mentioned his unhappy encounter with the Sons of Liberty, but didn't linger on the subject.

“So?” Cook asked.

“So what?”

“So why you telling me this?”

Fraser stopped and faced Cook. “It may be crazy, I know, but I can't let this go. I came back busted up, angry with myself, ashamed to be running around the countryside like a damned fool. I figured I'd learned my lesson. A stupid escapade by a man feeling bored with his life, who once dreamed of doing great things and was starting to realize he wouldn't ever.”

Fraser had never spoken like this with anyone, not even Ginny, but he rushed on. “But this
is
important. The whole Booth business is fishy. How it was investigated, how it was prosecuted, how it was wrapped up and tied with a bow with answers that don't hold up. Mr. Bingham knew that, and I believe he knew the right answers, but he didn't trust me enough to tell me. Maybe he was right not to trust me. Maybe I'm not the one to do it, but I need to try.”

Cook stared at him without any expression.

“And,” Fraser started again, “well, I'd just like . . . I think we, you and I, could maybe get back to working on this, put together a real investigation of the Booth conspiracy. You—”

“That's it!” Cook cried out. “You're looking to get you a bodyguard, right? Figure I'll take care of all the bad men for you, that right?”

“No, that's not right.” Fraser could not keep the annoyance out of his voice. “What's right is that you can figure things out, sometimes you see things I don't. You were right about what we need to look for. It has to be something in the North, that has to be why Mr. Bingham never would say what it was. And I may see things that you don't. We match up together. We can each do different things. Together we're a lot more likely to get to the bottom of this.”

Cook looked thoughtful. “Then again, you could've used me that night you got jumped in Indiana.”

Fraser shrugged. “I could've used a small dog or a crippled nun.” He stopped. “Look, Speed, I've never taken a lot of chances. This business may involve some chances. Sure, we'd have to look out for each other.”

Cook looked at him through flat eyes. “No white man's ever looked out for me.”

“That jury in Syracuse didn't hurt you. That was white men.”

“Not what I meant.”

“Okay. You don't have to trust me. But you can.”

They started walking back the way they came. Cook asked how Fraser figured to pay for this investigation. There was a piece of land from his mother's family, Fraser said, it had been a farm. He always figured he'd sell it to pay for his old age. But he could sell it now, close his practice for a few months, and use the money to pay their expenses.

“I know this matters to you,” Fraser said. “It's part of that war you talked about, the one you said you're losing. Since we traveled together, I've been noticing things in the paper. Just last month, Negroes were lynched over in West Virginia, in Colorado, in Mississippi. North Carolina's talking about taking the vote away from them. Maybe this is a chance to turn that back, to expose the people who set all that hate and violence in motion. When will you have another chance like this?”

“That sounds nice,” Cook said, “but I'm a family man. I'd have to ask my brother to watch over my businesses. And he's still learning about business.”

Fraser drew a breath. He had planned this part of the conversation, too. “You're still serious about that newspaper?”

Cook nodded.

“Could you use an investor? Someone to help pay for getting started?”

“Sure.”

“What would you need?”

“What've you got?”

“Five hundred dollars. After I sell the land.”

“That'd help.”

“We'd have to work out my share of the business.”

“You wouldn't control what went into the paper. That's what the editor does. And this editor is going to use that newspaper to fight our war.”

“Fine.”

They sat on a log next to the creek. Fraser had to talk about the ideas and questions that he had been chewing on for the last month.

He started with Townsend, ignoring the frown that crossed Cook's face at the mention of the writer's name. Yes, Fraser said, the man was rude, but he asked a good question: How would Mary Surratt know this great secret she told Mr. Bingham? She moved between her boarding house on H Street, her tavern in Surrattsville, and her church. It had to be something she learned from Booth or her son.

So, Fraser went on, that meant the answers might be where Booth and Surratt had been—Montreal, New York City, and Richmond. The Confederate agents in Montreal were long gone, as was the Confederate government in Richmond. But New York was still there, especially the same money interests that existed back in 1865.

The small boy who had been the last to leave now strolled back toward them, tapping a stick on the ground. He ran over to Cook and climbed up on his lap. His shirt bore fresh food stains. “Joshua,” Cook said to him, “this here's Dr. Fraser. Shake the man's hand and say your how-dos.”

The boy held out a small hand and said softly, “How you do?” Fraser smiled and shook it. Cook turned back to Fraser.

“Motive,” Fraser said, “that's the big question. It wasn't an act of vengeance against a single man by a single man. It was a coup d'état, an attempt to destroy the Union government. Have you ever thought who would have inherited the government if Lincoln, Johnson, Seward, and Grant had been eliminated?”

He didn't wait for an answer. With a look of triumph, Fraser announced, “Lafayette S. Foster.”

Cook's face turned to bemusement. “Say again?”

“Lafayette S. Foster. He was president pro tem of the Senate, next in line to be president. There was some provision that the Secretary of State was supposed to call a new election for president, but Foster would have been president, Lincoln and Johnson and Seward would have been dead, so I figure Foster would've held the job easily.”

“So who was Lafayette Foster?”

“Exactly.” Fraser felt a rush of excitement. “He was a Republican from Connecticut, not a real strong Republican. He came from the eastern part of the state, where the textile mills were. During the war, those mills lived on cotton smuggled from the South. Foster understood that, even sponsored legislation about how to manage cotton lands the Union Army took from rebels. But that's not all.” Fraser made an effort to slow himself down. “Okay, so, if Booth and his gang kill everyone, who would've run the army?”

“I don't know. Sherman, I guess. He was the next biggest general after Grant.”

“Right,” Fraser said. “And not many Union generals were more pro-South than William T. Sherman.”

“A whole lot of Southerners'd disagree. I've heard them. They spit when they hear his name. The man burned down near half the South.”

“Who said those people ever knew who their real friends were? Sherman was a tough fighter, sure, but he was against abolition. He sided with Andy Johnson after the war. He was one of your race-haters, much more than Grant. Before the war he ran a school in Louisiana and he
liked
it down there. When Joe Johnston surrendered to him in April 1865, Sherman gave away everything, left the Confederate state governments in power, gave them control over all their army's weapons. Their weapons! Grant had to rush down on the double-quick to reverse the whole business.”

“Where you going with this?”

Fraser shook his head. “I don't know, but I've got to stay at it. I've got to get to the end of this trail.”

“Daddy.” Joshua was holding up the index finger on Cook's left hand. “Tell me again how that happened?” The finger bent sharply to the right at the first knuckle, then straightened out at the second.

“That one?” Cook looked at it thoughtfully. “That happened so I can tickle around corners.” He demonstrated by reducing Joshua to a squirming mass of giggles. The boy slid off his lap and sat on the ground between Cook's feet. He resumed tapping his stick.

“Okay,” Cook said, “let's say there's a new government after Lincoln's killed. Foster's president. Sherman's running the army. What happens different? The South's been beat.”

“Maybe two things. First, we know Sherman wanted the easiest possible peace terms. Maybe that's what they wanted from Foster and Sherman. Also, Foster ran for reelection as a Democrat after the war, so like I said, he wasn't much of a Republican. For someone who wanted to get rid of Lincoln, Foster may have been the perfect successor.”

“What's the second thing?”

“Second, it could have been about getting that Southern cotton and tobacco up to the North, something that involved making a lot of money.”

“Come on now, the war was ending. The cotton and tobacco was coming up anyway.”

“That's right. But maybe it was
how
it came up, who was going to make the money.”

“Killing Lincoln and those others seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to get some money.”

“That may depend on how much money, and how bad you need it.” When Cook shook his head, Fraser played his strongest card. He had researched Barstow, the name Weichmann gave him. When he found no Barstow in the Lincoln conspiracy materials, he mentioned the name to a friend who was a banker in Columbus. His friend had laughed. Samuel Barstow, a former Confederate officer, was the wizard behind the Cotton Trust in New York City. That trust had a stranglehold over the worldwide cotton trade. From Calcutta to Cairo, Barstow's name reverberated for growers, shippers, and mill owners.

“Don't you see?” Fraser said. “He may be the connection between all of it—the Confederacy, the cotton smuggling then, the Sons of Liberty now.”

They sat silent. Cook straightened and cleared his throat. “It sounds a bit too Southern to me,” Cook said.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember, Mr. Bingham said it was something that could destroy the Union. I still think that means Northerners. Where are they in what you're talking about?” Fraser stayed quiet, listening. “What about politics? The Democrats had just lost the election in 1864 and Lincoln was just sworn in, so they were stuck with him for four more years. It feels like that might figure in this somewhere. Then there's those Sons of Liberty.”

Joshua stood up. “Mama said she was going to bring out her cobbler. I want some.”

“Count me in, little man.” Cook said to Fraser, “You don't want to miss that woman's cobbler.” They followed Joshua at sashay pace. “What're you thinking about doing?” Cook asked.

“I want to start at the source. The Booths. You know, there's still Booths around. We can wire Townsend for help tracking them down.”

“That shouldn't take long. Can't imagine any of them'd care to have a long sit-down about the Lincoln assassination.”

“And we've got to go to New York. Booth went there, Surratt went there. That's where the money was, that's where the rich Democrats were, the ones backing George McClellan against Lincoln in the 1864 election. And that's where the cotton trade was. There's the Cotton Exchange there now, even the Cotton Trust. And that's where Barstow is.”

“New York's a rough town for colored. Those Irish boys don't mess around.”

“If you're afraid, I can go by myself.”

“I ain't afraid, but I ain't stupid.”

The cobbler was as good as advertised. While Fraser was eating, an older woman wearing a patchwork skirt approached him. She asked what she should do about her back pains. Another brought her little girl over so he could look at her eye, which seemed infected. It took close to thirty minutes for Fraser to work through the picnickers' ailments.

Cook rejoined him as the last patient limped away. “No way to make a living, Doc,” he said. “Shouldn't be giving it away.”

“Never got the knack of turning sick people away.” He put his hand on Cook's arm. “Speed, we've got more to talk about. I think we should go to Maryland and Washington City, too. That's where it all happened, and people there know more than they've ever said. John Surratt's in Baltimore, and so's his sister. In Washington, you've got Bessie Hale, Booth's fiancée. And there must be more.”

“All these people, you really think they're just aching to spill their guts to John Bingham's doctor and a colored ex-ballplayer?”

“Not everyone can keep a secret like Mr. Bingham could. Maybe we can figure out some reasons for them to talk to us. I keep thinking about this, too. We may be the last people who can figure this out. The people who know things, people like Weichmann and the Surratts, they're getting on in years. They're not going to live forever. We need to do this now.”