Back bay, p.20
Back Bay, page 20
part #1 of Peter Fallon Series
Fallon noticed Evangeline helping her grandmother into the limousine at the curb. She stepped into the car, the door closed, and the black Cadillac whisked away before Fallon reached the sidewalk.
Across the street, a drunk wearing a Red Sox cap sat on the curb and sipped sauterne from a pint bottle. It was Jack C. Ferguson, and he wasn’t quite as drunk as he looked. He rarely ventured so boldly into the open, especially when he thought that Bill Rulick’s men would be around. But Ferguson had to pick up whatever bits of information were dropped at the funeral. He was a good reporter, and he never shied from an assignment.
Ferguson saw Katherine Pratt Carrington for the first time in twenty-six years, and he thought she looked pretty good. Her granddaughter wasn’t bad either. He saw Isabelle, Philip, and all the rest of the Pratts as they ducked into their limousines. He saw Rulick, paying his respects to people he hated. Then, he noticed a young man crossing the street toward him.
Jack Ferguson recognized the Irish face, but he couldn’t place it. Maybe this was one of Rulick’s men, and here was Ferguson caught like a bookie on the toilet with the cops at the door. Ferguson reached into his jacket and grabbed the handle of his switchblade. This guy gets too close or makes one wrong move for a shoulder holster, and he’ll be picking his nuts up off the street.
The young man did not even glance at Ferguson. Most people never made eye contact with a drunk on the street; they always looked the other way or pretended he wasn’t swilling his wine right in front of them. Ferguson knew it was the best way to avoid a panhandle. He relaxed the grip on his knife and studied the face as the young man walked past.
He still had a reporter’s eyes for detail. He noticed a pattern on the crimson tie, and the connections came quickly. The pattern looked like a Harvard coat of arms. Harvard led to Cambridge, which led to an address he had memorized, which led to a name and a picture in the newspaper. Ferguson’s detective work had paid off. Peter Fallon, witness to the murder of a rumdum bartender in Southie, was a family friend of the Pratts and Carringtons.
Maybe it meant nothing, maybe everything.
About the time that Christopher Carrington’s body was lowered into the earth, Peter Fallon was riding an elevator down to the microtext room buried deep beneath Harvard’s Houghton Library.
He was no longer telling himself that this was a scholarly pursuit, that he was investigating the story of the tea set in order to illuminate the character of Horace Taylor Pratt. He knew enough about Pratt already. He was looking for satisfaction. He had to be certain that there were no connections between the death of Christopher Carrington, the disappearance of Jack C. Ferguson, and the crumbling note by Dexter Lovell on August 24, 1814.
For the good of his work, for the four years he had already invested in a master’s degree and a doctoral dissertation, he hoped that his research turned up nothing. Fallon knew that if the story became more convoluted, if Jack Ferguson’s charges against the authenticity of the tea set were convincing, he would not be able to turn back to the disciplined work of writing a dissertation.
He stepped off the elevator into the concrete bunker that housed the microtexts. He hoped that he might find new leads among the old newspapers, and almost simultaneously, he wished that he had never found Dexter Lovell’s note.
He showed his card to the librarian at the entrance and asked if copies of Hubcap, Jack C. Ferguson’s weekly, were kept on film.
The librarian shook his head.
Fallon recalled that they didn’t even keep back copies of the Boston Globe at Widener, Harvard’s enormous main library. He would have to look in the Boston Public Library for Ferguson’s articles. But just as important to him were copies of nineteenth-century newspapers, which the Houghton Library had on film. He requested films of the Boston Gazette, from August and September 1814.
In the darkness of the reading room, Fallon threaded the microfilm into one of the machines. The blue projecting lamp illuminated his face, and the Boston Gazette, dated August 3, 1814, appeared on the screen in front of him. He rolled the film ahead to late August, about the time that Lovell had promised the arrival of the tea set.
He was glad that newspapers of the period were only four or five pages long, because the Boston Gazette wasn’t indexed and he didn’t know what he was looking for. He was simply hunting. He skimmed across headlines screaming alarm at the burning of Washington, editorials summoning Bostonians to the protection of the city, advertisements for felt hats and barrels of salt cod. He paid close attention to the articles usually found on the bottom of the front page. They described the murders, robberies, and other crimes which, even then, sold newspapers in Boston.
On the last page of the September 9 edition, a small article attracted Fallon’s attention:
BLACK BODY ON THE NECK
The body of a Negro man, about thirty-five years old, was found washed up on the Neck yesterday morning. He had met with foul play, having been shot twice. One ball tore a fist-sized hole in his back as it exited. The other entered near his navel, traveled upward, through a lung, and left the body beneath his shoulder blade. He has no papers of identification and is unknown to Negroes on the hill. Hence, he will be buried in Potter’s Field if his body is not claimed before tomorrow sunset. God have mercy on his Soul.
Fallon noted the date and copied the article onto an index card. He knew that Lovell had disappeared with a black freedman. Perhaps Lovell had killed him when the black was of no further use, which meant that Lovell had made good his promise and brought the tea set to Boston.
He rolled the microtext ahead. Nothing Saturday or Sunday, but a headline Monday stopped him cold.
PRATT GRANDSON DROWNS IN BACK BAY
Horace Taylor Pratt III, eldest grandson of the founder and president of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile, drowned yesterday morning in the Back Bay. His death was reported to the constable’s office by his grandfather, Horace Taylor Pratt I.
The lad, only fifteen, was foraging for blueclaw crabs in knee-deep water when he stepped into the Easterly Channel, which is about six feet deep at flood tide. Said to be a strong swimmer by his bereaved grandfather, young Pratt nonetheless panicked and drowned.
The rest of the story described the boy’s schooling, his family’s background, and the arrangements for his burial. It sounded to Fallon as though it had been written for last night’s deadline. The past drew closer. The sense of danger, vague and imperceptible after his first trip to Searidge, drawn into focus by Christopher Carrington’s death, was growing on the blue screen before him.
In his excitement to copy the article onto an index card, Fallon broke the tip of his pencil. He stepped out to the main desk to sharpen it. When he returned, a big man wearing a Red Sox baseball cap was studying Fallon’s viewer.
The man finished his reading, then smiled at Fallon. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing the Boston Gazette in your machine. When I was an undergraduate, about forty years ago, I wrote my honors thesis on journalistic styles in the nineteenth century, and I always loved the old Gazette. Great reading.”
It was too dark to see the man’s features, but Fallon noticed a fringe of white hair beneath the baseball cap. “They have almost every issue on film,” he offered. “Do you want this one after I’m through?”
“No, thanks. Too many other things to be doin’.” The man said goodbye and returned to a viewing machine in a distant corner.
Fallon had rarely seen an old grad look so tattered, but he didn’t give him another thought. He was too preoccupied with the death of a young boy in 1814 to know that the man who had just been standing beside him was Jack C. Ferguson.
No Harvard graduate, Ferguson was familiar enough with the systems to get a pass into any private library in Boston. He had followed Fallon down to the microtext room, seated himself at a nearby machine, and pretended to read wartime copies of the New York Times until he could look at Fallon’s screen.
Fallon was certain now that Lovell had gotten the tea set to Boston, and he was willing to believe that something had happened to it in the Back Bay. The death of Horace Taylor Pratt III, the week that the tea set was supposed to arrive and the day after the death of an anonymous black who was probably Jeff Grew, could not be a coincidence.
Fallon rattled through another month of the Boston Gazette and found nothing else. He couldn’t concentrate, anyway. He had to talk to someone about his findings, his theories, his suspicions. He packed up his things and left.
Professor James Hayward lived with his books and his clocks in a comfortable old house just off Brattle Street.
He had come to Cambridge in 1941 from an impoverished ranching family. The eighteen-year-old Harvard freshman brought with him an acute case of asthma, which made ranch life miserable and military service impossible, and a fascination with the people who had forced the American frontier from the Appalachians across his own Wyoming to the Pacific.
At Harvard, he found rich soil in which to nurture his passion.
He spent eight years earning degrees, while earning money as a dishwasher in student dining halls, a cab driver in Boston, and a history tutor in Kirkland House. His first book, Manifest Destiny and the American Spirit, was expanded from his dissertation. It was nominated for a National Book Award and secured James Hayward a tenured position on the Harvard faculty.
He bought his house, opened its doors to his students, and settled into a life which had continued to challenge and satisfy him. Or, as he told Peter Fallon one night, after three bourbons had left him especially cynical, “It took me eight years to scrape the cowshit off my shoes and find myself a nice soft spot in all this academic bullshit.”
Over the years, he had lost his hair and the hard edge on his Wyoming accent, while growing a paunch that looked like an air bubble expanding out of his slender body. However, he was still a commanding figure at the podium, a brilliant guide in seminar, and a friend to most of his students. His lecture course, “The West, 1803 to 1890,” began with the Louisiana Purchase and ended with the massacre at Wounded Knee. In his seminar, he turned to the east. “The War of 1812: New England and the Nation” explored the national problems created when Northern Sectionalism clashed with Southern Expansionism. It was always oversubscribed.
James Hayward’s work was his life. He had never needed anything else.
In his ninth book, Hayward was studying the effects of Eastern press coverage on the conduct of the war with the Plains Indians. He was reading an account of the Battle of Little Bighorn when the doorbell rang.
Peter Fallon was standing on the porch with the afternoon sun broiling in around him.
“Come in, Peter. Come in and sit down.”
Fallon stepped into cool darkness, and Hayward went to fetch iced tea or something stronger, depending on his mood.
The shades in the living room were drawn tight to keep out the heat. A lamp next to Hayward’s easy chair provided the only illumination. Fallon found his way to the overstuffed sofa and sank into relaxing gloom. The only sound was the gentle ticking of Hayward’s eighteen antique clocks, each beating with a different pitch and rhythm. They soothed like so many massaging fingers. When Hayward returned with two glasses of Molson’s Canadian, Fallon’s head was thrown back and his eyes were closed.
“Wake up and have a beer,” said Hayward.
“I’m not asleep.”
“Have a beer anyway. It’s after four, and I’ve been reading all day. A positively fascinating book written in 1933 by a doctor who lived with the Sioux and the Cheyennes. It’s called Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself. He got to know the old warriors who fought Custer at Little Bighorn. They told him that the men of the Seventh Cavalry panicked, and better than half of the troops committed suicide. Imagine. The vaunted Seventh Cavalry!”
Their meetings had always begun like this—Fallon catching his breath while Hayward rattled on about some new book or especially good student paper. Hayward had been the senior reader of Fallon’s undergraduate thesis and had advised Fallon all through graduate school; Fallon was Hayward’s teaching assistant. A solid friendship had developed between them, although enough formality remained that Fallon never considered addressing his teacher as anything but Professor Hayward. First-name familiarity would come with the doctorate.
“I’m having a few problems with the dissertation,” said Fallon. “I could use a little guidance.”
Hayward smiled. “That’s what I’m here for. Of course, if I had seen the last three chapters when you promised them, I could be of more help now. Any idea of when I can expect to be reading about Horace Taylor Pratt?”
“I don’t know. I’ve come across so much information about him that I really don’t know what I’m going to do with it all.”
Hayward sensed a note of defeat in Fallon’s voice. “I’ve never met a historian before who was disappointed when he ran across new information.”
Fallon did not respond directly. Instead, he described Dexter Lovell’s note and everything that followed it, including the news stories he had just read. “The point of all this,” he concluded, “is that someone is lying, or at least mistaken, about the story of the tea set, either Hannaford or the facts which I have uncovered in the last week.”
“So what?” Hayward had little patience when he thought a student was wasting time.
“I want you to tell me what you think of all this. Should I keep digging? Should I forget about it? Should I try to find this Ferguson guy?” He realized he was whining. He took a swallow of beer and lowered his voice. “I’m confused. I know it’s almost out of the question that the tea set in the museum is a fake, as this Ferguson claimed before he disappeared. I’m fairly certain that Hannaford’s researchers just made a mistake when they blamed the original theft on Captain Prendergast. I’m probably the only person who knows for certain that Lovell took the tea set.”
“Peter,” Hayward interrupted, “what bearing does any of this have on your contention that New England emerged from the War of 1812 with more political and economic power than any other section of the country?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “None! What bearing beyond a footnote or two does any of this have on your analysis of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile? None! I don’t know what’s come over you lately, but whatever it is, get out from under it. Week by week, your discipline deteriorates, the quality of your work diminishes, you disappear for days on end, and now this! Tea sets when you should be trying to draw serious conclusions about four years of work!”
Fallon tried to defend his activities as important research. “If Pratt saved his company or bought himself a little extra time by fencing the tea set in Europe, I think that knowledge has bearing on my dissertation.”
“Then use it! Don’t come wandering in here like Little Boy Lost and ask me what you should do. You’re a big boy. Plug your information in and get on with your work.”
“But right now I can’t prove that Pratt sold the tea set. I’m sure it reached Boston, but I don’t know what happened to it after that.”
“Then speculate, for God’s sake. What do you think historians do? We aren’t lawyers. We’re interpreters. If you can’t find specific evidence to support a conclusion that the tea set saved Pratt’s ass, take a stand on the basis of what you have, then be prepared to take the heat.” He was on his feet now, gesturing grandly to make each point, as though he were giving a lecture. “It’s all part of the process. You make a judgment, and somebody says it’s bullshit. You argue, and pretty soon, you’ve both learned something. The dialectic of history.”
Fallon smiled at that last phrase. It was one of Hayward’s favorites, and he found a way to sneak it into every lecture.
The Seth Thomas on the mantelpiece struck five o’clock. The grandfather in the entrance hall and the banjo in the kitchen began to sound, and within a few seconds, every clock in the house was chiming. The symphony lasted about a half minute, just long enough for Hayward to sit down and cool off.
“Peter, you’re too bright to need guidance on something like this. You’re not having trouble deciding what to do with this note. Your problem is a lot deeper. It’s been boring its way to the surface since last fall, when you started applying for jobs.”
Peter nodded. His professor knew him well. “I’ve been second-guessing myself lately. When you realize you’ve spent four years at something that offers you no immediate future, you begin to wonder if you’ve wasted your time.”
“You’ve wasted it only if you’ve learned nothing, and if you’ve been listening to me for four years, I can guarantee that you’ve learned something. Moreover, you have two job offers, which is more than most history Ph.D.s can say. This is a damn tight job market, and you should be glad you have anything, regardless of tenure. Go home and finish your dissertation, then accept one of those positions, no matter what you think of the schools.” He took out his pipe, scraped the bowl, and packed it with tobacco. In a moment, his head was enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke. “If you want somebody to solve your problems for you, I’ve just done it.”
“Stop trying to make me feel stupid.” Fallon rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands. “Every time I see my old man, he tells me I should have gone to law school. Lately I’ve begun to agree with him. That in itself makes me feel about as stupid as I can get.”
Hayward shook his head. He hated to see one of his best students so confused. “I told you four years ago that law school was a practical choice, a sensible alternative to a career in history, where there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find work. I also told you that the historian has a very important role in our society, a position of tremendous responsibility. Whether he’s a university professor, a high school teacher, a writer, he is the controlling voice in the events which have shaped our society and our national character. When he writes about the American Revolution or the Federalist Papers, the Dred Scott Decision or the campaign against the Plains Indians, he decides for the rest of us what is significant. He’s the window through which we see our past, the mirror in which we see ourselves.”
