Astray (13 page)

Mullen fingers the thin slab on the top, and the thinner one below it. “I don’t reckon we’re going to need the drill and gunpowder. I could smash this open easy,” he pronounces. “Why, I could kick it open!”

“Exactly how much did you have to drink?” Hughes inquires.

“Just a little nerve tonic.”

“This one here says Willie,” says Morrissey, holding the lantern over the other tombs. “And here’s Tad, and … little Eddie.”

“Losing three sons out of four, that’s no luck,” comments Mullen, shaking his head.

“Can we get this done sometime before dawn?” demands Hughes.

“This one’s blank,” Morrissey points out.

“For Mrs. Lincoln,” Mullen tells him.

“Didn’t the other son put her in a nuthouse?”

“Naw, she skedaddled.”

“You loafing bums,” Hughes barks, “we’ve got a tomb to open. Shut pan and get to work.”

Mullen heaves the stolen ax over his head.

“Hold up there,” says Morrissey rapidly, grabbing the barman’s arm.

“Watch yourself! I nearly had your hand off.”

“The custodian’s not so far off, he might hear you. And I reckon if we can prize the slab off in one piece, we can put it back afterward and then no one will know what we’ve taken, for a while anyhow.”

“There’s a plan,” Hughes decides.

Sullen, Mullen shoves the edge of his ax under the marble, and it lifts with a creak. “Would you look at that, there’s nothing but plaster holding it on!”

Between the three of them they drag the great slab to one side and rest it against the tomb set aside for Mrs. Lincoln. Now Mullen goes to work on the thinner slab with the ax blade. Morrissey uses a chisel. They manage to break the cement and pry the lid up at one corner, but it won’t come off. “Let me smash it,” says Mullen longingly.

“Wait a tick.” Morrissey has found some copper dowels holding the sarcophagus together. “If we can just lift it clear of these pins …”

Grunting and growling, they manage it, and lay the marble across the tomb. “There she lies,” says Mullen, peering in.

“She?”

“I meant the casket. The cedar.”

Hughes is examining the end slab. “If we can pull this piece off, we can slide the thing out instead of having to lift it … Mullen, where’s your jimmy?” He crowbars the copper ties, and lays the end slab on the floor. He and Mullen take hold of the coffin by its edges, and pull it about two feet out
of the sarcophagus. Hughes straightens, wheezing a little. “I reckon it weighs about five hundred pounds.”

“Let’s take the lid off,” suggests Mullen, eyes glittering.

“What for?” asks Hughes.

“Yeah,” Morrissey laughs, “we can hardly have got the wrong fellow.”

“Just to see. I bet he’s all dark by now, like a bronze of himself. Do you reckon he still has his little chin-beard?”

“Half the men in America have his little chin-beard by now,” Morrissey quips.

“Feel that,” says Mullen, grabbing Morrissey’s fist and putting it to his waistcoat. Morrissey pulls away. “My heart, it’s going like a rattle.”

“You skeery?” sneers Hughes.

“No I am not. Just excited. This is a historic moment. The real thing. Abe Lincoln in the flesh!”

Morrissey shakes his head. “It’s only his mortal coil, that he shuffled off a long time back. The bird has flown.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Why, don’t you believe you have a soul, you heathen?”

“I remain to be convinced. What am I, exactly, if I’m not this?” Mullen asks, grabbing a fistful of his arm. “Anyhow, I knew a pickpocket with an Indian skull for a paperweight, he never had any luck.”

“I saw the Hottentot Venus in a freak show,” Morrissey told him, “her corpse, I mean.”

“How big was her quim?”

“Not as big as they said it would be.”

Hughes has yanked out his watch. “Where’s Billy Brown?”

“Yeah,” says Mullen, “we should have heard his whistle by now.”

“With all the ruckus you’ve been making, we wouldn’t have heard the Last Trumpet.”

“I’ll go find him, I bet he’s waiting in the trees,” Morrissey volunteers, handing Hughes the lamp.

“Hold on—”

“We’ll lift it easy with four,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves the crypt. He heads down the ravine, skidding slightly on the frosty grass, then circles the Monument and climbs up the other side.

This time when he taps at the glass, it is Chief Tyrrell who opens. “Ready?”

Morrissey nods.

The detectives file out, pistols drawn. “Wait a minute, men,” says Tyrrell. “It’s so dark—tie your handkerchiefs round your arms so we can see not to shoot each other.”

This procedure takes a little while. Tyrrell is still in his socks. Then they file round the corner of the Monument, Morrissey in the rear.

A shot, deafening.

“What the devil was that?”

A stammering voice. “Sorry, Chief, my cap went off.”

“Get a move on!”

They break into a run. Somebody stumbles and falls with a yelp. When they reach the crypt, Tyrrell shoves the door open with his pistol butt. “Whoever’s in there, come out!”

Dead silence.

“Just you come on out and surrender.” After a long pause, he strikes a match and steps in. “Gone,” he groans.

Ten days later, in the Hub, Mullen is tending bar in a clean apron and Hughes is dozing by the stove. “I still don’t get it,” says Mullen. Hughes yawns.

“Tilden got three hundred thousand more votes than Hayes, am I right?”

“I keep telling you, there’s more to it.”

“No, but you can’t tell me that three hundred thousand men don’t matter.”

“It’s the Electoral College that matters,” Hughes insists.

“Aw, this is all gum.”

“If you’d pay attention—”

“It’s bunkum, plumb and plain. More fellows voted for the Democrat.”

“Maybe so,” says Hughes, stroking his beard, “but Hayes is going to be President, and you owe me five dollars.”

Mullen looks up as the door opens. “Morrissey, you scallywag!”

Hughes straightens in his chair. “We thought you’d run off to Canada.”

“Naw, a patriot like me?” asks Morrissey, and they laugh.

But the fellow who has come into the saloon behind him draws and cocks his pistol at Hughes.

“What the hell—”

Mullen reaches for his gun but another man has stepped up behind him silently and has a revolver a foot from Mullen’s head.

“You boys come along with the detectives, now,” says Morrissey while they are being cuffed.

“Why, you piss-pot prick,” Hughes says between his teeth.

Mullen’s blue eyes are wide and crazy. “Morrissey? Did they catch you that night at the Monument?”

“Shut up, you dumb coot,” groans Hughes. “Say nothing.”

“No, but I need to know. Have they been leaning on you hard? Tell me you didn’t give us up too easy.”

Hughes twists in his cuffs to face his partner. “Don’t you get it, you bootlicking idiot? This boy is all bull. He’s been a bogus sham of a fake since the day he walked in here and bought you a drink.”

Morrissey looks Mullen in the eye, one last time, and says, “Now, that’s the truth.”

The Body Swap

“Jim Morrissey” was the alias of one Lewis Cass Swegles (born in Michigan in 1849), a thief turned “roper” (undercover agent) for the Secret Service, who drew a wage of five dollars a day for his infiltration of a gang of counterfeiters who broke into Lincoln’s tomb in 1876. This story owes a lot to Bonnie Stahlman Speer’s
The Great Abraham Lincoln Hijack
(1997) and Thomas J. Craugh-well’s
Stealing Lincoln’s Body
(2007).

Charged with conspiracy and larceny on Swegles’s testimony, Terence Mullen and John Hughes faced up to eight years in Illinois’s Joliet State Prison, but the jury sentenced them to just one year. After the trial, ten of the twelve jurymen sent a letter to the papers declaring that Swegles deserved a sentence of three years himself for entrapment of Hughes and Mullen. Soon after release, Hughes was sent back to Joliet for three years for passing counterfeit; Mullen, arrested on similar charges in 1880, informed against his former partner Big Jim Kinealy, who had sold Mullen’s bar and vanished with the proceeds.

By 1880 Swegles was in Joliet himself, serving twelve years for burglary. He had a wife, Laura Baker (married back in 1872). He died in New York in 1896 at the age of forty-six.

JERSEY CITY

1877

THE GIFT

Mrs. Sarah Bell

177 3rd Street

Jersey City

March 5, 1877

I need to put my little one with you. Her name is Lily May Bell, she is of one hundred per cent American parentage. Her father John Bell died unexpected when she was only three months old leaving me alone in the world and I cannot supply her needs tho’ not for want of trying. I would work and take care of her but no one will have me and her too, some say they would if she was 2 or 3 years old. She is just from the breast, her bowels have not been right for a long time. I have cried and worried over her so much I think my milk hurt her. I boarded Lily May out for some months so I could work at dressmaking but she did not thrive, and the woman said it might be the best in the end for a
fatherless mite. A neighbor told me in confidence that woman is no better than a baby farmer and doses them all stupid with syrup so I have taken Lily May out and can see no way except to throw myself on the mercy of your famous New York Society. Be kind to her for God’s sake. You must not think that I neglected her. Do not be afraid of her face, it is nothing but an old ringworm. I will try hard to relieve you of her care as soon as ever can be.

Mrs. Sarah Bell

177 3rd Street

Jersey City

March 10, 1877

Thank you for your reply and for all your goodness. I hope Lily May does not “make strange” with the nurses for long but I suppose it is only to be expected. I do get some consolation from knowing I have done the best for her in my straitened circumstances. You say every child is assigned a place to sleep and a chair in the dining room which I am glad of, except that my baby cannot sit at table on her own yet so I hope there is someone to prop her up. I appreciate how busy the Rev. Brace and you all must be what with taking those unfortunates off the streets (and more swarming off every ship it seems),
but if I may I will write from time to time to ask how mine is doing.

I am very sorry that I have nothing to send you but trust will come a day when I shall be able to pay you for all your trouble. I am in hopes of claiming Lily May before too long and God grant she will not recall a bit of it.

Please find herewith the form you sent.

This is to certify that I
MRS. SARAH BELL
am the mother and only legal guardian of
LILY MAY BELL.
I hereby freely and of my own will agree for the New York Children’s Aid Society to provide a home until
she
is of age or bind
her
out as the Managers may judge best. I hereby promise not to interfere in any way with the views and directions of the Managers.

Mrs. Sarah Bell

177 3rd Street

Jersey City

April 2, 1877

I am relieved to hear about Lily May’s bowels. You say a visit is not thought advisable, well once she is more settled in it might be a different story. I believe I could keep a hold of my feelings and not frighten her by giving way.

No one knows how awful it is to be separate from their child but a mother. You refer twice to “the orphans” but remember she is only a half, she has got one parent living. If I am spared and nothing prevents, the father of us all will permit me to have my little one back. Every night on my bended knees I pray for her.

Mrs. Sarah Bell

177 3rd Street

Jersey City

March 3, 1878

I have thought long and hard about what you say of the special trains going out west every week and the fresh air and placing out in farm homes. Institutions are confining to the young it is true and New York famously unhealthy. Do you pay these country women to take the children in? I fear that some would do it for mercenariness not kindness. Or perhaps they pay your Society, I have heard of such arrangements. But then that sounds like buying a horse at market. I am very much bewildered in my mind at the thought of my Lily May going off who knows where.

I planned by now to have put enough by to bring her back to Jersey with me but living is so dear. A
home and friends is what I should wish for my little girl, at least until we can be reunited. I do recall the paper I signed last year but circumstances forced my hand. Do not take this as ingratitude, if I do not see her again I will never be worth anything on this earth. How far off do these trains go? If she is taken in by some family, do pass on my request that they will not change her name. Perhaps you will think me too particular but only consider how any mother would feel and you will excuse me.

In answer to your question there was never anything like that in my family or my husband’s to my knowledge. Lily May is not two years old yet after all and my mother always said I was silent as the grave till I was three.

Mr. Bassett, Sheriff

Andes

New York

August 14, 1878

My wife and I have no children living, only one stillborn some twenty years back. Mrs. Bassett would like a girl between the ages of two and four, young enough to forget all that has gone before. No particular eye or hair color, except that if she is a foreigner she would stand
out in Delaware County. So long as there is no hereditary taint we do not object to her being a foundling or illegitimate. In fact, we would prefer no relations. We do not particularly require the girl to be the student type, but want a happy-natured, responsive one and refined enough to take into our home. We would want to give her a High School education and if possible have her join the church choir.

I quite understand about no money changing hands, and signing the indenture. If a grievance arises can it be canceled?