David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“Or careless,” observed Leonidas.

Hamilton nodded. “Precisely. Duer, I fear, may be both. He uses his undue influence-understand me that he has an influence unlike any other single man in any single market in the history of finance as we know it-he uses this power to manipulate prices to his advantage, sending up the price of shares. He planned to raise them to their limit and then sell at an enormous profit, crashing the value of bank shares as he did so. Before things could get so far out of hand, I let it be known that I thought the trading price of bank shares was inflated-and in doing so depressed the market, costing Duer a great deal of money. He was very angry with me.”

“Go on,” I said.

“This Reynolds works for Duer. I believe he may have been exacting some revenge on you in order to get to me.”

“Colonel, you and I have not spoken in ten years. Why would he use me to harm you?”

“He may have made assumptions. He knows of you from the war. Perhaps he thought I would use you to conduct my inquiries, such as the one involving Mr. Pearson. He wished to thwart me for the sake of vengeance.”

I took a moment to let the silence do some work. “So, Duer is angry with you over an incident last summer and chooses to inconvenience me now as a way of extracting revenge?”

“Revenge,” said Hamilton, “or merely to push back at me and show me he still has power, yes. That is my theory, in any case. Now you need but let the matter alone, and I will see to it that you are not troubled any longer.”

“Very kind, but you know, I think I’d like to speak to Duer myself. I presume I can find him with the other speculators at the City Tavern?”

Hamilton sighed. “Duer lives in New York. He comes here on business but has not been in town for some weeks. I believe he has some business in New York that absorbs his attention. You see, there is nothing for you to do, and this matter has nothing to do with Pearson. I am asking you to let it alone.”

I stood up. “Of course. It is hardly worth a trip to New York over something like this, and I have other things to do besides hunting down Duer’s man. I am sorry to have troubled you. Good night, Colonel.”

We strolled out of the office and past the clerks stationed outside.

“Surely you did not believe any of that?” said Leonidas.

“Of course not,” I said, “but it was hardly to our advantage to push him further. He did not want to tell us more, and he would not have done so. Pressing him would have only made him angry. For now we take what he has given us and see where it leads us.”

Leonidas was about to speak when a thunderous roar erupted from inside Hamilton ’s office. “Damn it!” cried the Secretary of the Treasury. This cry was followed by the sound of glass breaking. Several of the clerks looked up from their work, hesitated nervously, and then returned to their business.

For our part, we hurried outside and toward our next destination.

The Crooked Knight was a decidedly Jeffersonian tavern on the cusp of the Northern Liberties, a wretched place on Coats Street near the Public Landing, frequented by workingmen full of private rage masquerading as political anger. These were the sorts who read Freneau’s National Gazette aloud, jeered at each mention of Hamilton, and cheered at every reference to Jefferson. Indeed, off in one corner a spot had been roped off for a cockfight between one bird, stout and muscular and resplendent with shiny black feathers-this one called Jefferson-and another, scrawny and weak and pale-called Hamilton. Each time the larger bird attacked the lesser, the crowd cheered and cried out in praise of liberty and freedom.

This was, in other words, a tavern wholly dedicated to men of a democratic republican turn of mind. These men believed the American project to have been already tainted by venality and corruption. These were men who worshiped George Washington as a god but were willing to damn him to Hell for admitting Hamilton into his inner circle. These men had rioted against the ratification of the Constitution without having troubled themselves to read it-if they could read at all. They would only have known that some petty John Wilkes in their number had cried out that their liberties were in danger; if there was beer enough, they were always ready to answer the call.

It was not the sort of public house I frequented with any regularity. I prefer taverns where I may game or drink in quiet or talk in peace with those to whom I wish to speak, not cheer while a man I hardly know gives voice to a resentment I never knew I had.

The owner, however, was an old acquaintance, if not precisely a friend, and I had a reasonable expectation of obtaining some little help in that quarter. The Irishman outside the Statehouse had identified himself as a man of the Jeffersonian faction, and, if he drank in Philadelphia, it would likely be in the Crooked Knight or someplace like it. It was my hope that there I could find some means of learning his name or location.

It was far less wet and cold than recent nights and, as the tavern was the sort of place not likely to make a Negro feel at his ease, I asked Leonidas to wait outside. Pushing open the wooden door, I walked into a long low-ceilinged room filled with tobacco stench, wood smoke, and the scent of sausages roasting in fires. The men sat in small groups, huddled around low tables, their feet pressed into the dirt of the floor. Conversation, which had been boisterous but a moment before, at once tapered down as all inside stared at me. The Crooked Knight was the sort of place outsiders sought to avoid.

I went at once to the bar, where a man of exceptional shortness stood upon a box, polishing mugs. I knew him as Leonard Hilltop, a humorless sort with deeply lined skin that looked like carved stone and hollow eyes dark in color and bright with thick swaths of red, visible even in the poor light of that room. In his youth, he had been part of a network in occupied Philadelphia that had passed intelligence, often to me. It did not make us friends but it made us familiar, and there was undeniably trust and respect between us.

“Go back to your drink, you sods,” called the little man. “He’s all right, this one.”

The men did as they were told, and at once the space was filled with the hum of conversation.

“Well, now,” said Hilltop. “That was my first lie of the evening.”

“Let us hope it is the last,” I said.

He snorted. “What is this? You run too big a debt in every other tavern in town, and now you must drink here? A bit of a risk, isn’t it? The men here might not know your face, but they know your name and what you’re said to have done. If I were to tell them who you are, you’d be torn to bits like that there Federalist chicken.” He waved a hand toward the cockfight.

“It’s well I can trust you to keep quiet then,” I said. “In any case, you know the truth. My reputation was fouled by Federalists. Indeed, you told me so yourself those many years ago. You said it was Hamilton that exposed me. How precisely did you hear that, Hilltop?”

“Christ, I can’t recall,” he said. “It was a long time ago. It was just what I heard. Everyone said so.”

I was not hopeful he would remember, but it did no harm to ask. “In any case, I’m sure you can spare a drink for an ill-used patriot. Perhaps that most American of elixirs, which we call Monongahela rye, that drink of border men, hideously taxed by the nefarious Hamilton. Just a single glass of whiskey shall serve my purpose.”

“As you put it so,” said Hilltop with a grimace, like a man who had been outplayed at cards and now must accept defeat. He poured a hearty quantity into a mug and handed it to me undiluted. I tasted it and found it remarkably like that which the Irishman had given me.