David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

Tindall must have understood the note of triumph in Brackenridge’s voice, for he assented. In a few minutes, the two of them sat in Mr. Brackenridge’s office across from the desk. The lawyer sat facing them, and I stood behind him, too agitated to do otherwise.

“I don’t much see the meaning of this,” said the sheriff. His cap was off and resting in his lap. Mrs. Brackenridge had offered to take it, but he assured her it was too crawling with lice to be welcome upon her hat rack. “There’s a warrant sworn, witnessed by the colonel himself.”

“I have a great deal to say,” answered Mr. Brackenridge. “To begin with, there are witnesses who will contradict the details that Colonel Tindall has provided.”

“Witnesses,” barked Tindall. “No doubt the woman’s co-conspirators. No one will credit anything such men say.”

Mr. Brackenridge smiled. “They are among the witnesses, but not the only ones. We spoke with a group of Indians who say that you hired them to harass this lady and her husband.” Brackenridge, I must point out, did not lie, but repeated a lie I had told him.

Tindall snorted. “That’s nonsense, sure enough. Those Indians are dead.”

The sheriff now turned to observe Tindall. “I am sorry, Colonel, but precisely which Indians do you believe to be dead? You do not deny hiring the dead ones?”

Tindall now blanched and cast me a gaze of unrestrained hostility. Perhaps it was meant to frighten me, but with what could I be threatened?

“I know nothing about them. This woman’s lies will come out in court. I shall see her and her fellows prosecuted, and when they are convicted I will confiscate their property.”

“You may wish to take your chances in court,” said Mr. Brackenridge. “It may strike you as a reasonable gamble, but there is no chance of confiscating anything. I have personally overseen the sale of these properties and the goods upon them.”

“They cannot be sold,” said Tindall. “They belong to me.”

“As you well know, title to the ground rents can be sold and, given the improvements made to the land, can be sold at considerable profit. I’m afraid there is nothing left for you to confiscate. You will receive your rents from the purchaser, but the stills and equipment-and, indeed, the secret to making the new whiskey-belong to the new owner.” He now turned to the sheriff. “If you must take the lady into custody, then do so. I insist upon a speedy trial, however, for I believe that information to be revealed will lead not only to my client’s acquittal but to an arrest warrant sworn for Colonel Tindall.”

The sheriff studied Tindall and then Mr. Brackenridge. My thought apparently hardly mattered in this exchange.

“Who holds the lease?” asked Tindall.

Mr. Brackenridge shook his head. “I do beg your pardon, but I cannot tell you that. It is confidential, as my client wishes.”

Tindall pushed himself to his feet. “You dare cross me, Brackenridge. The day will come when you will wish you never had.”

“But today having crossed you yields such a delightful feeling,” he answered. “Rather warm inside, like a good glass of exceptional whiskey. I believe I shall savor it. Am I correct in assuming that you are withdrawing your complaint against Mrs. Maycott?”

“Damn you, yes!” he shouted. He abruptly stormed from the room and then from the house.

The sheriff sat in silence for a moment, occupied in no more complicated an operation than the removal of lice from his hat, which he nervously cracked between his teeth. Finally, he turned to me. “We still got two dead men, missus.”

I swallowed hard. “Hendry shot Andrew. Before Andrew died, he shot Hendry.”

“Mr. Brackenridge suggests Colonel Tindall might’ve had a hand in it.”

“That is not what I saw,” I answered. This wasn’t the time to pursue Tindall. We could not prove his complicity in a court of law, for it would be our word against his-and his word had the power of wealth behind it. I would have to take him on in another way.

The sheriff nodded. He replaced his hat and nodded to us both. Then he went outside to disperse the crowd.

The new day brought much to think about and reflect on, but the first order of business was to finish my conversation with Duer. He had promised to meet me at the City Tavern, so that was where I traveled in the morning. There I found the trading room in an uproar of chaos that made my previous visit seem a scene from Easter prayer. Men were on their feet shouting at one another, red in the face. Two rather bloated gentlemen stood close enough that, in the heat of their exchange, they made each other’s faces slick with spittle. Clerks scrambled to keep track of trades, but the quick trades and angry progression made their task impossible, and most were filthy with hastily applied ink.

I watched, not knowing what to think, like a street gaper watching the aftermath of a terrible accident. I stood that way some minutes until I noticed someone now next to me, a bespectacled older fellow with gray hair and a gray beard.

He looked at me with some amusement. “Not certain what to make of it?” he asked, in accents that betrayed Scottish origins. “If this is your first time at trade, and it might be from the looks of you, you’ve chosen a bad day.”

“Not my first time, and I’m not at trade. I’m merely curious. What has happened?”

The Scotsman gestured with the back of his hand toward the room in general and at nothing in particular. “Bank shares are down, for the first time in some months. They were trading at 110 just a few days ago, but today they’ve dropped. They were trading at under 100 for a while, but there are some bargain hunters that have raised the price to 102, last I saw.”

“Are you a trader in bank issues?” I asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “I am merely an observer, like you, lad.”

I looked at the fellow again. There was something familiar about him I could not place, as if he was a man I’d never met but heard spoken of more than once. He, like Lavien, was bearded, and that was unusual enough, but otherwise he seemed unremarkable, a serious, scholarly-looking fellow in a gray suit-none the best, but not terribly bad.

“Do you know Duer?” I asked him.

“Oh, I know him.”

“Where does he sit? I don’t see him.”

The man laughed. “He’s not here. The rumor is he’s gone back to New York on the early express coach. He has fled, as they say, the scene of his crimes.”

I felt myself tense as disappointment and anger coursed through me. I ought to have made him speak to me last night when he’d been in my grasp. It seemed to me that Duer was a most effective liar. He had, after all, fooled me.

“He owes you, doesn’t he?” the Scotsman said. “I can see the disappointment.”

“Not money, only his time,” I said, affecting calm. “You mentioned he fled his crimes. What crimes do you mean?”

He gestured at the room once more. “This chaos. Before leaving, he let it be known that there are some who have borrowed from the Bank of the United States who won’t be able to pay what they owe. He cast a bomb of chaos and then fled the explosion.”

“Why?”

The man shrugged. “Perhaps he is shorting bank stock. Perhaps he wishes to buy cheap. Perhaps he merely likes to keep the markets unpredictable, since a man of Duer’s sort thrives upon chaotic markets.”

“But he’s not here.”

“Some of these men act secretly as his agents. It is not necessarily a good thing to be, but when the most powerful trader on two exchanges asks a man to be his agent, he cannot say no. If he refuses, he turns his back upon opportunities. But to Duer, these men are no more than firewood-to be used, burned, and then swept away.”