David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

He looked at Skye. “Yet another associate.”

“He is with me,” I said, “but I’ll refrain from introducing him. I prefer to avoid names where I can.”

“I’m sure that is sound.” He waited a moment, then said, “I suppose it was inevitable you would come for me.”

“We do pay you, and quite well,” I said.

“And I do not complain, though I harbored the hope that I might continue to be paid well in exchange for doing nothing.”

“I must say I hoped the same,” I said, “but things are changing.”

He took a deep breath. “What is it you ask of me?”

“I want regular reports,” I said. “I want them sent every day. I want to know what Saunders is up to, what he plans, what he knows, and what he believes he knows.”

He took in a deep breath. “I don’t much like it.”

“You should have thought of that before.”

“Suppose I simply choose to defy you?” he said.

Mr. Skye leaned forward. “That would not be the wisest course.”

I shook my head at the man, vaguely coquettish, vaguely maternal. “It is too late for that, don’t you think? You are a man who believes in the value of keeping his word. Is that not why you are here? Captain Saunders did not keep his word to you. He promised to emancipate you, and yet he has not. He does not deserve your loyalty.”

“No,” said the slave called Leonidas, “he does not deserve it. And yet it is surprisingly hard to let it go.”

“You know who we are,” I said, “and you know what we have promised. Our enemies are his enemies, it is just that he does not know it, and if we deceive him, it is only to prompt him to do as he would choose himself, if he but knew all.”

He nodded. “I’ll do it, but if I think he will come to harm, I will not help you. If that is the case, I shall tell him everything, and then I shall be your enemy.”

“You are more loyal than he deserves, but I think you’ll find that we deserve it as well. When it is all over, you shall see. We will be reconciled.”

Leonidas nodded again. Without another word, he departed from the coach.

Through the curtain I watched him return to the house, for I wished to be sure he did not try to follow us, and Skye watched me watch him. That is, I suppose, why we did not see the man approaching from the other side of the carriage. He opened the door and joined us, taking Leonidas’s seat almost before we knew he was there.

I knew the scent almost before I knew the face, and in an instant I thought how very ironic it was, for to itemize the odors, they were nearly the same as Skye’s-tobacco, whiskey, animal hides. But there was more too. This man stank of old sweat, of clothes infrequently changed, of urine and alley assignations. He carried about him the coppery smell of blood and an indescribable but instantly recognizable scent of menace.

Even in the dark I could make out the wide swath of scar that stretched across his face. “Well, if it ain’t Joan Maycott and John Skye,” Reynolds said. “I hope I ain’t interrupting anything too important or private. I hear talk about you, Skye.”

“How did you find us?” Skye asked. His voice rose in excitement and fear. He had not learned, as I had, to mask his emotions. Give no power, no authority, when it is yours to withhold.

“I’ve been following your lady friend here for some time, trying to figure out what she’s about. It ain’t been easy, and I’ll be honest with you, I still don’t know what you are up to. I couldn’t get close enough to the coach to hear much.”

“So you know of nothing against me,” I said. “Now, I suggest you get out of the coach before I inform Mr. Duer how you’ve treated me. He will not love to hear of this rudeness.”

“Duer?” Reynolds waved a hand in the air. “He’d be through with me if he knew, no doubt about it, but you won’t tell him. I don’t know what you’re about, but I know you don’t want him to know you’re having secret meetings with Saunders’s darky. Things ain’t what they seem, Joan. They ain’t at all. Now, I don’t care much. I admire a pretty and clever woman; my own wife is plenty pretty but not so clever. On the other hand, I don’t much admire Duer. Never have. But he pays me, so you see my difficulty. If only I had some-shall we call it incentive?-to keep me from mentioning what I seen.”

“What sort of incentive?” Skye asked.

“I think a hundred dollars ought to keep my curiosity buried.”

“For a hundred dollars, I’d want your curiosity buried forever.”

“Forever is one-fifty. Bit more. One hundred only gets you a temporary situation.”

I did not like it but had no choice. “Give me a few days to get the money, and I shall pay you the larger sum. I hope, however, you are as good as your word. We can deal with this amicably and financially so long as no one is exceptionally greedy, but if you think this a well you can return to again and again, I cannot answer for your prospects. As it is, I will need to conceal this arrangement from some of my allies, men who are not so willing to seek compromise as I. I conceal it, you understand, for your benefit.”

“I take your meaning,” he said, “and I will call upon you again soon. Good evening, madam; Skye.”

He departed the coach, and I ordered the driver to move on lest we get more visitors. Skye said, “He will not be content. Not for long. There is no forever for a man like Reynolds.”

“No,” I said. “Of course not.”

“Then why did you agree?”

“Because I hope one hundred fifty dollars will buy us at least a little more time. And when he asks for more, we will give him more. If he asks for two hundred or five hundred, we will give it to him, as long as it is likely he will remain quiet.”

“He has too much power over us,” Skye said.

“We have one advantage, however. He does not know we need only a little more time. We have to hope his greed and his belief in his own cleverness give us the time we need.”

It was a new year, and I believed that Duer, Hamilton, and the Bank of the United States had only a few more months left. They did not know it, but the ice beneath them was cracking, and all would soon fall into oblivion.

Duer increasingly found that he did not wish to be without my advice, so he rented for me a set of rooms at a boardinghouse in New York upon the Broad Way. When he was in New York, he wished me there too, though we did not travel together. I was not permitted to visit him at his home or to meet Lady Kitty. Cynics will believe that he and I must have crossed beyond the boundaries of propriety, but it was not the case. It might be that he desired me, perhaps he even believed he loved me-or loved the woman he thought me to be-but he did not seek to break his marriage vows. He did not even hint that he longed for such a thing. I provided him with something else, but even I was never certain what. Perhaps I did not wish to know.

Pearson was but one man among many, more than a dozen that I knew of, whom Duer deceived to ruin, though none of them knew it yet. Some of these men each believed himself to be Duer’s closest friend in the world. Each had no idea that within weeks he would be revealed to be worth nothing, his money sunk into Duer’s colossal dreams. Duer would talk around these things, never addressing them directly. I would listen, and I would assuage his guilt by telling him of his greatness and his ambition, how what Washington was on the battlefield, Duer was on the trading floor. Had Washington won liberty without sacrificing some of his beloved soldiers? Of course not. When men play at grand strategy, I told him, they can weep for the pawns they sacrifice, but they must sacrifice them still.