The Pinkerton Files Five-Book Bundle (13 page)

I carried myself with a haughty posture but looked like I could not afford to buy a cup of coffee. This was my disguise. I was a newspaper writer.

I crossed paths with enough journalists. They followed me home or posed as clients in crisis, always offering to tell my side of the Harrisburg story before making me out to be an even bigger harlot than the ones who came before.

What I learned about writers is this; they want to feel brave doing something that carries no risk. The ones who turned my name into a synonym for fallen women made it seem, in their articles, like they were putting their lives in danger to tell the truth. I knew them well enough to pull this off.

The avenue leading to Hampton Roads shipyard was empty. With the Union fighting blockade runners and Confederates firing at the Union, not even a stray shell landed on that street. It was intact and safe.

I walked down the avenue with my chest puffed out like I had challenged the devil to a fistfight. A sentry came into view. I sat beyond his firing range and took notes.

The sentry looked at me through a spyglass then called another to consult. They mulled for ten minutes. The first sentry picked up his rifle and approached.

“You there.” He said.

I didn't answer. Already missing the safety of his post, he stammered on.

“State you business or move along.”

“I'm looking for the man who posted this.”

I held out one of the amnesty notices recovered from Charleston.

“The
Tribune
wants to publish it.” I said. “I'd rather let the man who printed it have his say for our readers.”

The
Tribune
never printed the names of its writers, preferring to for the paper to take all the credit for news they broke. My cover was plausible. The sentry saw an opportunity to get ahead by bringing publicity to their cause.

I went back to taking notes. A professional writer would be aloof, forgetting the soldier as soon as he stopped speaking.

“I can bring you to that man.” He said.

I followed him to the factory floor. A dozen ships sat on the conveyor with more queuing on the winches. Soldiers drew every vessel at Hampton Roads inside.

I felt the eyes of men on me from every corner. Some pretended not to notice me. Others flexed under heavy weight so I would notice them. They were like so many apes presenting their swollen rumps.

At the back of the building, I crossed over a metal grate. Below my feet, titanic clamps held the shipyard in place on the shoreline.

I was escorted into a room. Walls were covered with technical drawings detailing every facet of a ship's design. The boat on display was to be loaded down with a propulsion system I had never seen before. It churned the very depths of the ocean. The sketches were beautiful.

“What do you want?” A man said.

He startled me. My eyes fixed on him and I was startled again.

He was hideous. His skin looked dead. It was far too thick, so tough that it seemed a strain for him to move. His body was a callous. The man's face was the same. His eyes flitted in swollen sockets. Nothing moved when he spoke; not his lips, not his brow. His face was a mask.

“I am from the
Washington Tribune
.” I said.

“I mean, what do you want . . . Detective.”

The awful man saw surprise on my face. He might have smiled. I couldn't tell.

“The warship
Cumberland
steams off the ocean.” He said. “It snares a single vessel, holds it briefly then lets it go. An airship escorts that boat to dock. Moments later, it blows up. Out runs infamous Pinkerton agent Kate Warne.”

I backed away. How could he have been watching the whole time?

“Be at ease. You are safe.” He said. “Please, what do you want?”

“Are you Major Robert Anderson?”

“Yes.”

I reached into my blazer.

“This is for you.”

I handed him the letter Harry Vinton had given Mr. Pinkerton. He read it on the spot.

“It's from the President.” He said. “He asks me to return to Washington.”

Anderson dropped the letter on a table. That it came from Abraham Lincoln was of no importance to him.

“Mr. Lincoln is going to lose this war before he even fights it.” He said.

“He is the President.” I said.

“He is a confused man who thinks he can win by not using his weapons.”

“Maybe he prefers not to slaughter his own people.”

Anderson stared at me in silence. It was the most unnerving feeling, to be looked at by that man. His face was a stone silhouette, a badly rendered statue.

“I was made this way when the steam chamber at Fort Sumter exploded.” Anderson said. “This deformity saved my life. The island exploded. I skimmed over the water like a pebble.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“I hoped to settle with General Beauregard here at Chesapeake. He isn't here.”

I didn't understand.

“None of the rebel leaders are here. They are staying away. They don't think Lincoln will last. When his ridiculous blockade is shot down in court, the government will fall.”

The man's arrogance was more offensive than his appearance.

“And you will take the President's place?” I said. “Lead the Union to victory?”

“I will force them to take up the fight.”

He was a boaster. This disgusting man with his misfit army was just like so many others. He thought he was strong because weak men followed him.

I was no weak man.

Anderson discarded the President's appeal like so much garbage. He thought the outcome of a country's war against itself could be turned by his deformed hand.

I reached into my boot for the pistol. Standing straight, looking Anderson in the eye, I shot him in the neck.

He fell against the wall. Wonderfully intricate pictures fell onto that wicked man.

Soldiers rushed in. I recognized one of them. It was the Lieutenant who visited my cabin on the Cumberland. Rifles were cocked, poised to shoot me down.

“No!” Anderson said.

He climbed back to his feet. The ball I fired was lodged in the skin of his throat. He pulled it away and dropped it on the floor.

“I have a question, Miss Warne.” He said. “I have wondered about it since my accident. You claim not to remember what happened on that train, that drugs wiped your memory away.”

The floor shook. Hampton Roads shipyard detached from the shore. Anderson went on.

“That is a lie, isn't it? I was boiled alive. If my brain could turn that memory into an empty hole, it would.”

The Lieutenant grabbed me from behind and bound my arms against my chest. Anderson's face was only inches from mine.

“You know exactly what happened on that train.” He said. “The things they say about you in the papers are close enough to the truth, aren't they? The fact is, you are one of those people who prefer the company of monsters.”

They dragged me outside. The bomber that deployed from the
Cumberland
was waiting on shore. Officers of that noble warship had mutinied and joined Anderson.

We climbed in. The shipyard was a quarter mile into Chesapeake Bay, drawing fire. The airship lifted. I saw the
Cumberland
in the distance. She pulled well back of the fighting.

“All is ready, Sir.” The Lieutenant said.

The shipyard plowed through boats, approaching the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. Anderson kept his eyes on the water as he spoke.

“The President cannot hide behind his blockade any longer.”

Hampton Roads shipyard exploded. Steam engines from every Union ship mounted on conveyors inside detonated at once.

At first, the force of the blast sucked all other ships toward it. This lasted a heartbeat before Chesapeake was swallowed in a ball of shattered earth. When that bubble burst, a screeching noise preceded a concussion so strong that it nearly swept us out of the sky.

Chesapeake Bay was gone. Everyone was dead.

“Find somewhere to land over Union territory.” Anderson said. “Miss Warne will prefer to travel on her own, I suspect.”

They left me at Georgetown. The Lieutenant who betrayed my mission to Anderson dropped a sack of supplies at my feet. He was none too happy with the decision to let me walk away. Anderson saw nothing to gain from either holding me or killing me.

I watched the airship disappear and wondered whether Anderson had been right. The weapons were at play now. America was at war.

*   *   *

Allan Pinkerton, Principal

July, 1861

Bucholz died in the Ryker's Island infirmary two days after being stabbed in his cell. He was an innocent man.

We could not say who murdered Henry Schulte. It might have been one of Schulte's hunters, as Stark's free slave suggested. Whoever it was, we knew it wasn't Bucholz.

Ernie Stark was held in solitary confinement after the fracas. A guard at the facility contacted our Chicago office to ask about his status with the Agency and to suggest we retrieve him from the mad assignment.

With Robert at Norwalk, pursuing evidence that connected the Waring farm to the Schulte murder, it was difficult for us to extract Stark. My son had made some deal with local prosecutors.

I was happy, at that point, not to have fired our lawyer Byron Hayes. He set about having Stark released. It was a tricky affair.

Kate Warne never discussed her encounter with Major Anderson in detail. She confirmed that it was him and assured Vinton that she delivered the President's letter. Beyond that, she said little. Having read her private account, her silence was worrying.

We were losing her. I didn't know what to do.

Kate withdrew from us further when Anderson's prediction, in part, came true. President Lincoln continued to defend his blockade in the courts. The case in New York loomed. The question of whether Judge Mansfield had been corrupted was still unanswered.

Amid this uncertainty, the President took a first step toward the fate Major Anderson was trying to bring about. I had wanted to keep us out of the war. Every decision I took during led us further into the conflict.

“Whereas an insurrection against the United States has broken out, I, Abraham Lincoln, call forth the Union militia to suppress said insurrection. The first service assigned to the forces will be to re-possess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union. In every event, the utmost care will be observed to avoid any devastation, any destruction or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.”

- Abraham Lincoln, May 1861

*   *   *

Repository Note:

My objection to the Justice Department's interference in our work has been dismissed. It was described as frivolous by a federal auditor and I have been reprimanded on record by senior managers here at the Library. Needless to say, my request for more staff to explore the Pinkerton papers has been quashed. It is a shame in every sense of the word. On one hand, I would like to know what became of the son's investigation. The Pinkerton cases are as intriguing to me as their political entanglements. More significantly, though, I am struggling to make sense of a history I thought I understood but does not agree with Pinkerton's claims. Not being allowed to pursue these questions will be the greatest disappointment and failure of my career.

- Diane Larimer, Chief Archivist—United States Library of Congress

Copyright © 2010 by David Luchuk. All rights reserved.

Published by Audio Joe Inc.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

FIRST DIGITAL EDITION

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information is available upon request

ISBN 978-0-9867424-1-5

Repository Note:

Files hidden among administrative papers of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency confirm that, after the election of Abraham Lincoln, Allan Pinkerton pursued a series of cases that drove his operatives into the civil war. These investigations, which included a plot to kill the President and a murder tied to the Union blockade of Confederate ports, were uncovered as part of the Library's effort to catalogue the Pinkerton archive. Our work was barred for a time by the Justice Department but a consortium of citizen groups funded by a private donor won an injunction forcing the documents to be released. It must have cost a fortune to beat Justice in court. I can't imagine why anyone would pay that bill. Whatever the reason, we are free to continue looking for new entries in Pinkerton's secret cache.

- Diane Larimer, Chief Archivist—United States Library of Congress

*   *   *

Allan Pinkerton, Principal

August, 1861

Clients are turning their backs on our Agency. As a young man, when I first stepped from behind a policeman's badge in Chicago, I knew what it was to be independent. Only now, when the vigour I have lost outweighs the wisdom I gained, do I know what it is to be alone.

I built this Agency from nothing. What lengths will I go to save it? The decision facing me now will provide an answer.

Harry Vinton visited me again. The boy has some backbone.

Bodies of dead soldiers are still being cleared at Bull Run. Neither the White House nor the Confederate capital fell in that skirmish. It produced only two outcomes. President Lincoln's militia may now be called an army and the southern rebellion is officially a war.

In spite of these blasphemies, Vinton wore a broad smile as he knocked on my door. He had not been to our offices since convincing me to send Kate Warne to Chesapeake Bay. Back then, Vinton did not hesitate in using my loyalty to Lincoln as leverage. It came as no surprise when he did so again.

He delivered a message from the White House and, as before, left an envelope behind with a note from Lincoln. I don't have to break the seal to know what the letter says. Vinton made it clear.

“You agreed to help us find Major Anderson at Chesapeake. Why would this be any different?” He said.

“Our aim at Chesapeake was to prevent war, not wage it. We also took a chance on rebuilding Kate Warne's reputation. I would say it was very different.”

“Ms. Warne has reclaimed her career . . .”

“Whatever you have her doing in Washington, she is not working as a detective.”

“ . . . and the essential point remains. The President needs your help.”

“We are not spies.”

Vinton left Chicago without a firm commitment. President Lincoln is waiting for my answer. With clients walking away from our Agency, it would be a comfort to view the choice as mere financial necessity. The White House pays handsomely.

I won't stoop to self delusion. This decision is not about money.

There was a time when opening my agents' private files troubled my conscience. Maybe I still have some of the naive Dundee cooper in me. That choice was simple by comparison.

The President would have me expose my detectives to the peril of open war. The conflict between Union and Confederates shows no sign of being resolved. Even if there was some prospect of ending the war quickly, we do not have the skills to do what the President asks.

I trained my detectives to know the criminal mind and master surveillance techniques. My operatives invested their careers, sometimes risked their lives, on the promise of these methods. My sons did the same. They put their faith in me.

Amid all my lessons, however, I never confided a simple truth. It is a fact that now compels me to consider espionage as a business opportunity. The truth is this: our profession collapses without the legitimacy that a client provides.

Ordinary people want to believe there is something exotic, even awful, about a detective. They hold to the notion that a detective has a finer natural instinct or is possessed of a power beyond everyday reach.

Citizens are afraid of criminals. They are afraid of suffering harm or losing property. They shrink from the idea that having something of value makes them a target. Because of this fear, detectives seem to come from another world.

We are few in number. We face criminals with little more than a clean mind informed by reason. Our craft can appear to be a kind of sorcery. It is nothing of the sort.

Individuals drift toward professions they are most suited to fit. A successful merchant becomes so, not due to any mysterious ability, but by managing assets and employees with care. For all these qualities, what would a merchant be without buyers? Nothing could prevent that person from being reduced to a hawker chased from every street corner.

It is the same for a detective. Our business requires inventiveness and honesty. Without clients, though, even the best detective becomes little more than a clever hooligan.

If there is anything exotic attached to our trade, it comes from the secrecy required to expose a well crafted crime. I mock that need for secrecy by reading my agent's private files. This intrusion no longer troubles me.

We are under attack. I sense it in the same way one might hear a quickening breath before a thief springs from the shadows. You don't need to see a threat to know it exists.

One of my agents is dead. Another is lost; to us as well as herself. My younger son is a criminal. We have a freelancer in prison and a slave on the payroll. Clients have lost confidence in us. President Lincoln would fill the void with rich wartime service. We are coming unhinged.

It seems impossible that so many troubles could have been orchestrated by a single enemy but I cannot ignore that they are all tied together by our recent work. Threats are gathering strength. I don't know what to do.

Soon, we will be alone. Our Agency will be nothing.

The latest screw turned after Robert's conviction. He and our lawyer, Byron Hayes, made a fool's pact. They abandoned any attempt at an acquittal in order to draw John Kennedy of the New York Police into an argument over the circumstances of my son's arrest.

Robert believes that Kennedy played some part in embezzling funds to support the Confederate south but his stunt with Hayes proved nothing.

For a brief period, after the trial, newspapers lampooned Kennedy's refusal to explain his actions. Once those stories ran their course, journalists turned to us. Kate Warne's reputation was savaged anew. There was no sport in assaulting a fallen woman so writers roasted the Agency.

By this time, Robert had duped me into putting him in charge of the Henry Schulte murder investigation. He sent a rogue agent to Ryker's Island and took a freed slave to the town of Norwalk. Robert was out of contact when the most damning pieces ran.

Worst among them was an interview with S. M. Felton of the PWB railway. Prior to the war, Felton hired us to prevent an act of sabotage against his rail line. Discoveries made during that investigation allowed us to save President Lincoln from William Hunt's Golden Circle.

In his interview, Felton claimed that we abandoned his case and showed no regard for the security of his business. These were outrageous accusations. They were also false.

Felton endorsed our change in focus when the plot against the President came to light. He participated in the investigation. I would have pushed for a retraction and public apology if I thought it might have helped. The damage was done.

Our Agency was losing contracts before the Felton article. Many clients expressed concern over Kate Warne's character in particular. I believed their worry to be unfounded. She was wickedly abused while saving President Lincoln. Sadly, I now know that her mental stability was in fact shaken by the ordeal.

Ms. Warne has become obsessed with pursuing Major Robert Anderson of the Union army. Against my wishes, in the aftermath of the disaster at Chesapeake Bay, she travelled to Washington hoping that Harry Vinton would help her apprehend Anderson.

She was a promising detective. Today, the fact that she is employed by our Agency scares clients away.

The impact of Felton's article stretched further. Robert gained a certain measure of fame during his trial. He set about becoming a public enemy as part of his absurd plan to entrap Kennedy. His notoriety made a bad situation worse.

While Robert was in Norwalk and Ernie Stark was at Ryker's Island, our client voided their contract. For the Norwalk Police to release us from an investigation already underway was a fresh blot on our reputation. It sent other clients running.

It may also send my son to prison. The suspended sentence that followed his conviction was conditional on him leading the Schulte case.

Robert and the slave were in Norwalk chasing a man they believed to be William Hunt when this occurred. As a result, I dispatched my older son, William, to Ryker's Island along with Byron Hayes to negotiate Ernie Stark's release.

It pained me to intervene on behalf of a man who stood idly by while Timothy Webster was murdered. I would rather have left him at Ryker's to meet the only fate he deserves.

We had received too much negative press. We could not have another agent die on duty.

William was to resolve the matter quickly. I needed him for the only case we had left; the Geneva bank robbery. He was the one person I knew I could trust.

William and my assistant Ginny Higgs, that is. I would not have made any progress in understanding the forces aligned against us if not for her.

Have I made any real progress? There was a time when I would have said yes.

After Webster's murder and William Hunt's escape, I felt that actors in the conspiracy would be revealed. The President's call for aid at Chesapeake Bay pushed us into the fight between Union and Confederates. I was certain that information would be jarred loose. At every turn, I felt I was on the verge of understanding. Each time, I was left looking for more.

An awful uncertainty has crept into my thoughts. Perhaps I am just an old man jumping at shadows. Are we under attack because I have not unmasked the people conspiring against us? Or are we at the brink of failure because I am trying to unmask people who don't exist?

With doubt pressing down, I must choose between two paths. If I do what the President asks we will become Union spies. If I refuse, we may cease to exist.

I hoped that our investigation of the Geneva bank robbery would help me avoid the decision. It ought to have been an easy case. With a modest success, we could have regained the trust of more significant clients. The President's offer could have been set aside.

I am reminded again of the Dundee simpleton I used to be in a former life. With age, maybe we all revert to simpler ways of looking at things even when it leads us to error.

*   *   *

Robert Pinkerton

June, 1861

For certain, I drank too much bourbon at the Emerald Tap House. My wits could have been slowed by the liquor. Even so, the manners of small town police were hard to understand.

I delivered a murder suspect into custody. I provided audio evidence that, Ray assures me, amounts to a confession of the man's role in killing Henry Schulte. I expected some enthusiasm, if not gratitude.

While patrons at the Emerald recovered from the optical stunner, Ray and I dragged one of our attackers to Norwalk police station. This man had conspired with other slave hunters to kill Schulte and take over his business. William Hunt was, that very night, on his way to a local farmhouse to recover the dead man's account log.

It was sensational progress. At the station, the overnight constable scrambled from his booth to lecture us about a committee and an annulment clause in our contract.

“Your mandate may already be void. You cannot seize a man without valid authority.” He said. “And what on earth is this?”

He motioned toward Ray.

“He's a deputy of the Pinkerton Agency.”

“My God, did this man participate in the arrest?”

The prisoner moaned, coming back to his senses while clamped in the harness restraint. He fell forward and retched. A belly full of beer and food spilled out.

“Detective, release this man.” The constable said. “You and your deputy will wait for the Captain to settle the question of your mandate.”

“When will that be?”

“The committee should break with a decision tonight. The Captain will be here by morning; six o'clock at the latest.”

It seemed we had as much chance of being arrested as the suspect. Ray was the first to act. He held our prisoner down and unlocked the restraint, winching it back into its box.

“Police say release him.” He said. “But we're not waiting. That was Hunt at the bar.”

The constable stepped around a puddle of sick. He pointed a finger at Ray.

“You do not have a valid mandate. You may not seize citizens in our county.”

Ray held out his hand. The constable recoiled from the black man's touch. He leaned away, caught between stepping back into the vomit or forward toward Ray's palm. The weasel cringed and moved off, choosing to stand in the suspect's last meal.