The Lincoln Deception Read online

  “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 ta
lent 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.

  Chapter 21

  Watching from less than a block away, Cook could scarcely believe how Fraser walked right into it. The man didn’t have the sense God gave an ant. He could have crossed to the other side of the street. He could have run. He could have shouted bloody murder. He even might have walloped Stoneman. Fraser didn’t seem to appreciate that he was a big man and could hurt someone if he put his back into it. And he should have known that Cook was close by, able to help out. But instead, he tried just to stroll past Stoneman? That wasn’t ever going to work. Now Cook had to find a way out of this mess.

  Riding a bicycle he borrowed from outside a house, Cook shadowed Stoneman’s wagon to the pier in front of the shipping terminal. There the wagon’s contents—doubtless including Fraser—were loaded onto the Georgia. With luck, they might only beat the tar out of Fraser and dump him on some lonesome shore or island of the Chesapeake Bay. But Cook feared worse. Stoneman had to be losing patience. He would want a permanent solution to the problem of Fraser and Cook.

  He stripped off his shirt and joined the line of stevedores carrying bundles of cured tobacco leaf up the ship’s gangplank. Cook kept his head down and put the load on his right shoulder, screening his face from the boss. The other men said nothing. Hauling heavy loads in the heat didn’t make men sociable.

  He used his first trip to canvas the situation. They stacked their loads near a hatch. Others took them down a ladder into the hold. Cook had to get on to that duty. On his fourth trip up the gangplank, Cook noticed that the pile of tobacco next to the hatch was mounting. “Boss,” he said to the foreman lounging against a railing, “how about I help clear some of this off?”

  The man squinted through the smoke of his cigarette. “Why, you’re just a coon Horatio Alger, ain’t you?” Another stevedore dumped his load, then turned around.

  Cook ducked his head. “Boss,” was all he said.

  After a long drag on his smoke, the foreman flipped the stub overboard. “Go get ’em, Horatio.”

  The descent into the hold was treacherous. Cook had to tilt his load at an awkward angle to clear the hatchway. At the bottom, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the murk. Three other stevedores were stacking the sheaves. Cook figured they were delaying their next trip up the steps as long as possible. One pointed where he should set his load down. Stretching his back, Cook took a good look around, then headed back up.

  After three more trips, he had a plan. He found a spot at the front of the hold that had been left unfilled to allow a door to swing open. The door was locked, so Cook could hide there until the ship set sail. Then he would have to find a way into the rest of the ship.

  By early afternoon, the cargo was loaded. Left alone in the hold for a moment, Cook stepped into the nook in the front. His muscles objected to crouching, but he held the position while the others finished the job, one grumbling that the old guy sure had made himself scarce. Cook winced when he heard the hatchway bolt slam shut from the top. He wasn’t sure what he had gotten himself into.

  The engines grumbled. Sensing the boat’s motion, Cook ventured from his nest. The dark was near total. By memory and touch, he found the door handle and the lock underneath it. He pulled his picks out of his pocket—they were getting a lot of use—and went to work. He couldn’t judge time in that black place, but it took a long while before he was slowly easing the door open. He entered a dimly lit passage that seemed to run next to the ship’s boiler.

  They probably stashed Fraser in an equipment room or a baggage room. If they put him in an empty passenger cabin, there was little hope. Cook couldn’t wander the boat, shirtless, checking passenger cabins. So he stayed below and tried each door to an internal room. Luckily the locks were simple ones.

  The third one was the charm. It housed pipes running from the engine room, coils of rope, and a few tools. It shimmered with heat from the engine. Fraser lay unconscious on the floor, off to the side, hands and feet bound. He didn’t appear to be injured. Pulling his knife from a sheath strapped to his calf, Cook cut away Fraser’s ropes. He couldn’t revive him. Cook would never get him off the boat in that condition. More pressing, Stoneman was bound to check on his prisoner.

  Cook pushed the inert man into a far corner, behind the pipes, then donned Fraser’s jacket. It fit Cook well enough.

  He assumed Fraser’s former place on the floor. He placed his feet against a pipe to make it easier to rise quickly, then looped ropes around his wrists and ankles, and assumed a fetal position. He chose an angle that concealed his face and hands. His right hand gripped the knife. He waited in the roasting heat. His sweat made the knife handle slick. Baffles at the top and bottom of the door admitted a little light. It was better than the cargo hold.

  Twice, steps passed by but didn’t stop. Then two sets of feet paused and blocked the light at the lower baffles. The door opened and someone stepped in. A voice said, “Make sure he’s still out.”

  Cook lunged, driving the knife deep into the midsection of the first man, who grunted. Cook stabbed again and pushed the knife up. It stuck in his chest; he couldn’t pull it out. Cook desperately heaved the body away. There stood Stoneman, grinning, holding a long, evil-looking blade. With his heel, Stoneman kicked the door shut and stayed in front of it. Shifting his weight, he came forward, forcing Cook into a corner.

  At the edge of his vision, Cook saw a short section of water pipe on the floor. But Stoneman was too close. To reach the pipe, Cook would have to expose himself to Stone
man’s knife. The first man’s blood was on the floor.

  Cook dove for Stoneman’s leg, the one opposite his knife hand, driving through the knee with his shoulder. It was like slamming into a tree trunk. Cook bounced to the side and down on the floor. The impact caused Stoneman’s slash to be high. Arching his back to avoid the blade when Stoneman pulled it back, Cook scrambled to the pipe. He grabbed it and rolled back into Stoneman’s legs as the man swung again. Stoneman came down with a crash.

  Gasping, Cook spun onto his knees and swung the pipe down, two-handed, with all his strength. Stoneman grunted. Cook swung again, harder. He was angry that he couldn’t reach the man’s head. He swung again. And again. Stoneman wasn’t moving, but he had a knife. Cook swung three more times. He was hitting mostly rib cage, stoving it in.

  Still on his knees, Cook straightened and sank back on his heels. His hand was sticky with the first man’s blood. No, the blood was warm. He was cut on the upper arm. Cook reached for the wound with his other hand. The cut was high, near the shoulder. Not an easy place for a tourniquet.

  He ripped part of the shirt from the man he had stabbed. Using his teeth to hold the fabric and his good arm to tear it, he came up with a strip. He tried to tie it around his arm, using his teeth again. Blood was everywhere.

  The engine eased off; they must be nearing a port. Cook stumbled over to Fraser. He shook the man, then slapped his face. Fraser moaned and his eyelids fluttered. “Jamie,” Cook hissed. “Come on!” He shook him. “Come on!” Fraser stirred. “You got to get up,” Cook insisted. “Right now.” Fraser rolled onto his hands and knees.

  Cook stood. He had to find a way out. He grabbed a coil of rope and slowly moved into the passageway. He could hear Fraser lurching behind him. Cook tried a facing door. It was an empty office. He ran to the porthole, which was on the river side of the ship, facing the far shore. He tied the rope to a pipe in the room and went back for Fraser, who was on his feet, but shaky. His eyes weren’t clear yet.