Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services Read online

  he asked.

  They both knew who was meant.

  “Yes, gone.” Then after a second he said, “Do what you think best.” “I will,” Kennedy said. “I’ll leave tomorrow. Now I am going to find a

  hotel and a bath.”

  Chapter 2

  The Irish

  - August, 1863 (Washington)

  "That was not like you," she said. The words seemed unusually clear in the space left vacant by the waiter's retreating form. Devereux ignored a sudden urge to peer about the room in search of those who might have overheard his angry outburst.

  The Willard Hotel habitually filled its dining room for lunch. Today was no exception. Army and Navy officers sat crowded at tables intended by their makers for fewer diners. The noise was appalling. Only his name and long acquaintance with the maître d' hôtel had secured a table without a reservation.

  He glanced across the table at his wife. Her features were set in the expression of slightly embarrassed disappointment which usually greeted his occasional lapses in self control. "I am sorry, my dear. Forgive me... I am impatient today. I don't want to sit at table endlessly waiting for the man to take our order. It is bad enough that these… people will question our lunching out so soon after…"

  She considered that. A small frown spread around the corners of her mouth. As he watched her, he discovered an impulse rising in him to lean forward to kiss her pretty lips.

  Hope Devereux wore her mourning well. A high necked, navy blue dress of watered silk set off her ivory skin, blue eyes and golden hair perfectly. Half the men in the room seemed in danger of injuring their necks in attempting to get a better look. Devereux had doubts about the rest.

  "You are normally so kind to waiters and other…" she began, trailing off doubtfully.

  "Inferiors?"

  She stared stonily at him. "You know very well what I mean!" Exasperation filled her voice. "A gentleman's obligations toward servants and those, in service, are clear." Irritation with him merely accented her beauty.

  Devereux rubbed his nose, using the gesture to conceal a small smile. "Don't you recognize him?" he asked softly.

  Her eyebrows knit in concentration. "That's the same man who served us twice before in this room," she announced after a moment. "I particularly remember him at lunch with the Nevilles.

  He nodded. "You've got him. I'm sure he must be one of Baker's hounds.

  "I see. Then, you should be particularly nice to him."

  Devereux grinned, delighted with her.

  Any of the numerous observers in the room would have said that they made a somewhat odd looking couple. Claude Devereux had never been thought a handsome man. Strong, distinguished, well dressed; these were terms more likely to be used in speaking of him. The last few years had not been kind to him. A double life leaves its mark. His hair was greyer than it might have been had life and history taken a different course.

  "This means that he is still having you watched."

  "Of course, did you think otherwise?"

  She tilted her head slightly to one side in the mannerism he associated with real introspection. Hope seemed to inspect the decor of the far wall somewhere above his head.

  The Willard's dining room fit the popular taste for opulent clutter. Ferns littered the floor, giant stag horn ferns, wispy Boston ferns, exotic, vaguely threatening ferns that looked appropriate to one of the odd paintings so common in books concerning Darwin's theories. Dark wallpaper with a chocolate hue, and walnut wainscot dominated the scene. Heavy velvet draperies nearly completed the task of keeping out the light. The soggy misery of a summer day pervaded the room. There was a small, but ominous water stain in one corner of the plaster ceiling.

  The guests steamed. The more newly arrived brought with them the heat of the street.

  Devereux could feel a tiny rivulet of sweat forming slowly in the small of his back.

  He wondered how it could be that his wife never seemed to sweat in public. His mother never really appeared discomfited by hot weather either. How did they manage it in these high necked, heavy dresses? He began to run through a series of images of women he knew in a rapid survey of their perspiration potential.

  Victoria Devereux, his sister in law took shape first.

  An image of his dead brother came to him. How long before the sharp edges of Patrick's features would no longer live in his mind? Hatred for the blue figures around him welled up.

  Elizabeth Braithwaite. No, she made other people sweat.

  Amy Biddle. Amy Biddle. Stereoscopic pictures of the woman circulated in his imagination. He found one in which a faint sheen of moisture glistened on her temple. He recognized the setting. It was the funeral. His mother and Hope had stood at the graveside with Victoria, holding her elbows in fear that she might not manage. The rain had stopped. The umbrellas had disappeared, leaving all those present to suffer from the humidity. There hadn't been enough rain to cool the air, just enough to create an accurate imitation of a Turkish bath. The Biddle woman had been in black. The dress stuck in his memory as too severe, exactly the kind of monstrosity which he expected of her wardrobe. He could see her profile, just beyond Hope's.

  She looked at him.

  He saw that nothing had changed for her. She did not flinch from him. Her features were rigid, but he knew that she was his, knew the depths of her gratitude that he too, had not been taken at Gettysburg. She turned away, bending her head to listen to the priest's words. Her bosom rose and fell a little faster. Devereux thought of her breasts. They were white and large, larger than Hope's. They had never seen the light of day. Milk white they were with pink nipples and areolae. He knew there must be tiny beads of sweat forming in the deep, warm pocket between her breasts.

  Hope brought her eyes down to his. "Surely his only remaining concern with you is as a rival for Stanton's favor."

  He remembered the subject of their conversation. "Yes. Except that I fear the other interest in me will never quite disappear."

  She looked skeptical.

  The waiter in question made his way to them, carefully threading a path between the tables, watchful for sudden movement, a small tray carried aloft on one brown hand. In one, smooth, rotating motion of the wrist, he brought the tray down to the level of the white linen surface of their table. Steam rose from the dishes. "Turtle soup, ma'am! Turtle soup! Our famous turtle soup!"

  Lieutenant Kennedy arrived in Newark, New Jersey on the 7th of July. He found the city to be untidy and an unappealing place. It was not the buildings that bothered him. The three and four storey structures were familiar. They were the shabby brick construction common in big cities. It was the general layout of the town that disturbed him. Around the business district of banks and commercial establishments were packed neighborhoods in which wooden tenement buildings were everywhere. There did not seem to be a lot of indoor plumbing in these buildings. There were outhouses in the alleyways behind. Kennedy found that to be “unprogressive.” Alexandria had long had piped household water and sewage systems. Kennedy had grown up poor and Newark made him imagine bitterly that there must be other parts of this town or parts of some other town where the “decent people” of Newark lived, the people who owned the banks and businesses.

  There were saloons and churches scattered throughout the tenement areas. The saloons seemed to have more customers than the churches. Factories loomed on the horizon and along the river bank. This was an industrial and commercial city and evidence of that pre-occupation was everywhere. There were signs painted on the buildings. One sign advertised a brewery, another was for a haberdasher. A particularly large collection of buildings looked like an iron foundry. The smoke stacks were taller than any he had seen before.

  It had been an easy train passage from Baltimore. He was in funds from Devereux, came north in the best car the train possessed. He dined on oyster stew washed down with cold pilsner.

  Every sizable American town had a hotel called “The American.” Newark was no exception
. To his surprise there was no shortage of rooms in the hotel. He asked the porter who carried his bag why that was.

  “We jest opened last month, sir,” was the response. “Lots of new hotels in Newark, we had some army people a week back, but they all left yesterday.” The young man shrugged in puzzlement over that, and pocketed his tip with a nod.

  The room was clean, the bed as firm as he liked. Dinner in the empty dining room was acceptable.

  The next day, he began to carry out Devereux’s task. To do that, he needed to find a saloon called “The Volunteer.” That was the address on Claude’s scrap of paper.

  The desk clerk looked at him curiously when he asked for directions. The man glanced at the hotel registry, saw his name, smiled and wrote a note.

  He went out into the street, and walked to the nearest corner where he looked at the paper. At the top of the small page was written “Na Fianna Eireann.” Fred Kennedy was Virginia born and raised. The words meant nothing to him. His knowledge of Ireland was largely the product of fireside discussions with his father and mother. The Kennedys had left Ireland in a search for farm land and freedom from Protestant domination. In America they had found both. Ireland rapidly diminished in family memory. There was nothing like an Irish neighborhood in Alexandria, and Frederick Kennedy grew up with a sense of self in which Ireland was a minor factor. America, Virginia and Alexandria were far more important for him.

  He walked the streets until he found “The Volunteer.” This took an hour. His destination was down a narrow, dirty side street that he passed several times because it looked so unpromising.

  From across the street, the saloon was quiet and somewhat sinister even in broad daylight. The windows were opaque and black. The sign over the door displayed a painted carving of a man in 18th century clothing carrying a musket. A harp rested incongruously next to this figure in a green meadow. He crossed the street and entered, stopping inside the door for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dimness. From behind a dark, wooden bar a mustachioed man in the professional dress of a bartender inspected him. There was no one else in the place. “Whut can I do for you, sor?” the barman asked.

  “I am looking for the owner of this place.”

  “Do you not know his name,” the barman asked. A quizzical look spread across the face.

  Claude had given Kennedy a name. Devereux’s banker “friends” in Baltimore knew men in New York who cooperated with the South. The bankers had arranged a meeting with these men during a trip which Devereux and his wife had made to New York a few months earlier.

  “Joseph Fahey,” Kennedy said.

  “And who wants to speak to him? Yourself?” The barman seemed to think that was amusing.

  “Yes. I do. Are you Fahey?”

  The man said nothing.

  “I was sent by a man who met Fahey here in Newark in a carriage driven by a black man last...”

  “And how is she, the beautiful blond lady who loves her husband?” Fahey the barman asked. “What is her name? I would know her name, just her Christian name, just that. It is a rare thing to meet a woman so beautiful and so... dutiful.” The voice was pure “auld sod” laid on with a trowel.

  “Hope. Her name is Hope,” Kennedy responded, “and she is what she seems.”

  “Hope, Hope,” Fahey seemed to relish the sound and the taste of the name. “And what does Hope want of me?”

  “Not her.” Kennedy was disturbed with the emerging “bogtrotter” fraud. “Her husband sent me.”

  “The lucky captain, yes. I remember the leg. It should have come off...”

  “He showed you that? Yes, it should have come off… He has sent me to New York to hunt a man and kill him.”

  The hands disappeared beneath the counter.

  “Not you, a Yankee major, a policeman, a traitor in fact. He is from Kentucky...” Kennedy wished he had not said so much. This man would never understand.

  “Ah,” Fahey grinned, “Johnston Mitchell. It would be Johnston Mitchell. The man just transferred up from Washington? Baker’s man? Is that who it is, Mr. Kennedy? You want him? Well, we want him as well. Were you in the captain’s regiment?”

  “The desk clerk told you… Yes, I was in his regiment.”

  Fahey’s head chin moved down ever so slightly. “Yes, and we have been waiting for you half an hour. You were slow.”

  “We?”

  Two more men emerged from a back room to sit by the door. They looked him over in search of a reason to be hostile. There was a big, slow looking black haired man who avoided looking directly at him. The other was much older and bent. He had grey hair.

  “Mitchell has been here but a short time,” the old one said, “and he is already a great nuisance... Much too interested in our connections… Want some help, do you?”

  “Yes. That’s why I am here.”

  “Were you at Gettysburg? The big one asked.

  “I came from there. The captain’s brother was killed there. He was doing our work... We took his body to Baltimore to send home. I came after that.”

  The three were looking at him.

  “Did you know him? I mean the brother,” one of the men by the door asked. His grey head was badly scarred and most of an ear was missing.

  “We grew up together. He was a brother to me as well.”

  The older man considered him, and then nodded to Fahey. The barman drew a beer and put it where it was clearly within Kennedy’s reach.

  “Empty your pockets,” the grizzled one whispered hoarsely.

  They pawed through his belongings. “Frederick Kennedy?” You own a livery stable... How did you manage that?

  “The captain helped me buy it. He owns a bank.”

  “Is he Irish?”

  “No idea… Maybe.” He had never thought about this. Now that they had mentioned it, he could see that the Devereuxs must be Irish in some way.

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “More or less. Why do you care?”

  They laughed.

  “We want to know who our newest “friend” from Richmond might be,” growled the grey haired man. “Send him to John Hughes,” he rasped after a pause. “Hughes likes rebels like this one. Hughes is more or less Christian, but, altogether Catholic,” he remarked to Kennedy smiling evilly the while. “What do you know of the Draft Lottery,” he asked?

  “We have a draft, but it is not a lottery,” Kennedy answered.

  They thought about that.

  “The lottery for this abomination begins in three days,” the grizzled one commented.

  “Ours will be by lottery,” Fahey said. “and you can buy your way out if your name is drawn. Can you buy your way out of yours?”

  It was Kennedy’s turn to laugh. “Yes. If you are rich enough you can buy your way out of anything.” After a minute he said. “I was not drafted. I volunteered.”

  They saw the joke.

  “Are you an officer?”

  “Yes, but just for the war. I started by carrying a musket.”

  They nodded.

  “Good,” said the grizzled one. ”We will take you to see Hughes. He will give you shelter. You should not stay in a hotel. We will have the record here erased. We will bring you to kill Mitchell and then we will get you out of town. Agreed?”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?” Kennedy asked.

  Fahey sighed. “Unfortunately, the swine in the Detective Bureau office here know us well. They might recognize us. We want Mitchell done in but…. You are a “godsend.””

  They all looked pleased with that.

  “Why don’t they arrest you? You must have broken some law...”

  “We have friends,” the grizzled one said. “Friends, political, and others...”

  “Who is Hughes?”

  “Ah, ‘Dagger John Hughes’. That’s what your Yankee “friends” in the ‘Union League’ call him.”

  Kennedy looked blank.

  “He is the archbishop of New York.”

  Kennedy was
silent for a minute. “Jesuit?” He was thinking of Father Kruger at home.

  “No, no, just another damned priest. Don’t tell him specifically what you are going to do.”

  Kennedy looked blank.

  “You know… with Mitchell, don’t be specific about it. Do you understand? Tell him you are a deserter and seeking, seeking… Oh, we’ll think of something you are seeking. We are all seeking something.”

  “What are you going to do about the draft,” Kennedy asked.

  “We will fight. We will fight. We don’t much like you Johnnies, but we like the draft even less. We will fight.”

  “Who will you fight?”

  “Anyone, everyone…”

  “Ah, yes. I have seen this before. My uncles are like that...”

  “By the way, your lovely captain, husband of the even lovelier Hope, he lied to me,” Fahey laughed.

  “How’s that?”

  “I called him colonel, and he did not correct me…” “Why would he tell you the truth?” Kennedy laughed. They were all grinning now.

  “Where is Mitchell to be found?” Kennedy asked.

  Chapter 3

  The Auction

  The Auction

  (Alexandria, Virginia)

  Heat and humidity loomed over the throng of hopeful buyers. Whitewashed brick walls surrounded scarred pine floors that glowed with the energy collected during weeks of tiresome heat.

  It was a large room, filled in its upper parts with a complex pattern of beams and structural iron fittings. It was a renovated warehouse. Young Negroes lined the side aisles, sitting on boxes and three legged stools, operating in relays the mechanisms which drove the ropes and pulleys of rotary ceiling fans.

  Indecently bright early morning sunlight intruded through tall grimy windows along one side of the building. Dust particles billowed in slanting shafts of light.

  The residents of Alexandria; locals, occupiers, and new people alike, had hoped for the last week that the break in summer weather which regularly announced the approach of Autumn would show itself, revealing its arrival in the cool, blue light of dawn.