Franklin Affair (17 page)

He followed Harry up a flight of stairs on the north side of the lobby, behind and to the right of the ticket windows. There Harry pushed a button, a glass door buzzed open, and they were admitted to a private waiting area for first class and other privileged passengers. An attendant at a desk verified that Harry rated the privilege. The place was quiet and private, with some comfortable chairs and couches, hot coffee and cold drinks, and a few things to read.

Harry led R to the rear of the long narrow club room to a soundproof conference room that, according to a small sign, was
UNOCCUPIED
.

They went inside and closed the dooor.

“The five-minute clock is running,” said R, sitting down at a six-chair conference table across from Harry.

“I have in my pocket two pieces of paper. One is a check, the other is a contract,” Harry began. “The check is for half a million dollars, the contract is for a book to be delivered within a year—working title
Ben Three.
”

R closed his eyes and tried to digest what he had just heard. Half a million dollars? Did this idiot just say he had a check in his pocket for half a million dollars?

“A second half million will be paid to you upon final delivery of, and sign-off on, a satisfactory manuscript. In other words, the advance is one million dollars. That puts you up there in the best-seller league of the book-writing world, Dr. R. Raymond Taylor.”

One million dollars. The idiot said one million dollars. Let's see, at the level of life I'm now living, thought R, that should last me until the age of eighty—with a lot left over for the kids. Kids? There are no kids. Samantha, do you want to have some kids? Maybe we should talk about that. How old are you, by the way? Isn't it interesting that I don't know?

“No, thanks,” said R. He made a motion to stand.

“You promised me five minutes. I would argue that you are not selling out Wally at all. For God's sake, R, if you wrote
Ben Two,
that means awarding the Pulitzer Prize to Wally was an act of deceit—”

“If that's the case, then, goddamn you, Harry, you're as guilty of the deceit as anyone else!”

Harry glanced away, but only for a second. “Damn me all you wish. The fact is, Wally would want it corrected.”

“That is the purest of a pure lie, and you know it. If he had something he wanted corrected he would have done so while he was still alive—or even after his death—in some kind of written statement. Maybe even in his will.”

Harry was smiling.

“What's your problem?” R said, his manner still most hostile.

“I think you just confirmed that you wrote
Ben Two.
”

Until recently, R had not been a violence-prone person. He had never raised a hand or a fist to anybody in his life; not even when he was a kid did he get into fights. His quarterback skills at high school football centered not on brawn or aggressiveness but on his throwing arm, agility, and brains.

But here he was again, as he had been with Rebecca a few days ago at Elbow's party, aching to beat the last breath out of somebody—this time, Harry Dickinson.

Harry must have sensed something along that line. He lowered his voice and said, “Look, R, I understand your emotions on this. Wally was a friend of mine too. He lived a lie and, yes, I helped him live it. But you not only have a right to expose the lie, you have a responsibility to the public and to your profession.”

R was calming down a bit. Harry's life was no longer in danger.

“You're a man of history, R. You have dedicated your life to the pursuit of the truth. How in hell can you stand by—stand back, really—and let a falsehood of authorship and accomplishment continue?”

R stood up.

“What if I blow the whistle on you anyhow?” Harry said. “What if I say publicly that
Ben Two,
a book I edited, was published and praised and honored under false pretenses? What if I tell the world that Wally Rush, a good and honorable man, did not in fact write
Ben Two,
and I believe the real author was none other than his longtime assistant, R Taylor?”

Harry stood and removed two items from an inside breast pocket of the dark blue blazer he was wearing. He laid them out on the table between them.

R didn't want to glance down but he simply could not stop himself.

There was a light green Green Tree Publishers check for $500,000, made payable to R. Raymond Taylor. The other item was a sheath of legal-size papers,
AUTHOR CONTRACT
at the top of the first page.

R looked but did not touch. “Harry, this is the end of our discussion. Without my confirmation you have nothing. There is no one else who knows anything about what happened with
Ben Two.
All I will say to you now is that it is not—was not—as simple, as black and white, as you believe.”

R had spoken softly. The steam was gone from the exchange—from him.

Harry put the check and the contract back in his pocket. R probably imagined it, but he seemed wilted.

“My early presidency book is still available if you'd like to make an offer,” R said, at the door to the conference room.

“I'll take a pass, but thanks,” said Harry.

“Why
did
you go ahead and publish that book under Wally's name?”

“It was a superbly written, well-researched book that was clearly going to be a critical and a popular success. That's my business. I publish such books.”

“Even if Wally didn't write it—or so you suspected?”

“I figured what I only suspected—but didn't know for sure—wouldn't hurt me.”

“Do you realize that in most other businesses you could go to jail for what you did?”

Harry laughed out loud at the absurdity of such a thing happening in
his
business.

• • •

“Surprise!”

When Clara Hopkins said this playfully to R the second he stepped inside Gray House, he almost yelled again. The last thing in the world he wanted right now was another surprise. His reaction was annoyance and more—anger.

But he held his tongue and followed her into Wally's old study. A standing easel there was covered by a large piece of white cloth that had the appearance of a bedsheet.

“Here goes,” she said, whisking the cloth away in the ta-da! manner of a TV quiz show prize unveiling.

There, fully exposed on the easel, was a large piece of heavy posterboard with small portraits across the top. Under each was a column of words and numbers; at the very top in heavy black writing was
SEPTEMBER
7, 1788.

“Ask and you shall receive,” said Clara. R noticed she was still as gorgeous as ever—maybe even more so. She was dressed today in a tailored dark brown suit that showed off her hair, complexion, and eyes. . . .

She's a professional historian, a Ph.D., a scholar!
R shifted his concentration to what was on the easel.

Across the top there were five-by-seven pictures of Ben, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and Washington. Underneath was a chronology for each man for that day in large black block letters.

“Do you want me to run through it for you?” said Clara. She was clearly proud of her work.

“Please . . . yes, that would be great,” said R, clearly impressed by her work.

Clara grabbed a two-foot-long silver pointer. She placed the tip on Ben's portrait, which was a black and white copy of the so-called fur-collar painting done in Paris by Joseph Siffred Duplessis in 1778. Ben liked it so much he refused ever to pose for another, telling all other pleading artists simply to copy the Duplessis.

“Let's begin with our man. He was already very sick then, as you know. Gout, stomach pain, intestinal infections—who knows what-all was hurting.”

She moved the pointer down the information below Ben's picture.

“→Awoke in Market Street home in Philadelphia.

→Lunched at home.

→Spent afternoon in bed.

→Doctor visited before dark.

→Ate dinner in bed.”

Clara said, in summary, “Ben never left the house all day.”

“How sure are you of that?”

“Ninety-five percent.”

“Why not one hundred?”

“I'm not one hundred percent sure of my own name.”

R smiled. This woman really was a professional.

She moved the pointer to John Adams. He was scowling, per usual.

With her pointer, she went through his day:

“→In Quincy, at home until late morning.

→Had lunch in Boston with old friend Thaddeus Wilson.

→Returned to Quincy, spent afternoon writing letters.

→Ate early dinner, was in bed, presumably asleep, by dark.”

“A typical day for old John, in other words,” said R, trying to hide his delight at what the pattern was so far. “Did he growl at anybody, profess his righteousness to anyone?”

“The record is silent on that,” said Clara, “but one can only assume that it was a day like any other day and he did one or the other—or both.”

Alexander Hamilton was next. His usual expression said loud and clear that he was intellectually superior to all humans, most particularly on matters concerning finance and commerce. R believed Hamilton to be right about that. None of the other Founding Fathers, including Ben, were in Hamilton's league on economics. Jefferson and Madison operated their own farm operations in the red. Some scholars claimed Washington had to marry rich to keep a roof over his head. Ben made a lot of money and was a terrific businessman, but his knowledge of high finance was never on the scale of Hamilton's. Samantha would have been much wiser to have chosen Hamilton rather than Hancock. R himself briefly considered once trying to do the once-and-for-all book on the duel with Aaron Burr that cost Hamilton his life. Someday, maybe after the early presidency book, he might do it yet.

Clara went through Hamilton's September 7, 1788:

“→In New York City, at his house on Fifth Avenue.

→Met all day, or much of the day, with various legal clients.

→No word on lunch or dinner.

→No record on evening activities.”

“So he could have left the city?”

“Yes, but not for long. He was definitely at a meeting the next morning—on the eighth—with several bankers downtown. There are written accounts of the meeting. The discussion was about creating a central federal bank.”

On to James Madison. There was very little written under his photograph.

Clara said, “He was a most meticulous man, as you know, R. but for some reason there's not much about his activities that day. The people who tend to his papers in Charlottesville think it's most likely he was in Montpelier, at least for part of the day. But they—I—need more time to fill out the rest. The records must be somewhere. We just haven't found them yet. I will pursue it further.”

R had always believed that Madison, the tiny man with the giant brain, had been shortchanged by the American Revolution historian community. Maybe, like Ben, his time would eventually come.

They moved their attention to George Washington. There was a long list of items below his picture, which was a copy-machine replica of the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait.

“→Spent the night before at Leesburg, Virginia, having ridden there by horseback from Mount Vernon.

→Rode on west, crossed Shenandoah River at Harpers Ferry, proceeded to Charles Town.

→Dined as a guest of James Nourse at his home, Piedmont.

→Spent night two miles down the road at home of brother, Samuel Washington.”

She turned to face R, the pointer held in front of her like an at-ease baton. “End of presentation, sir.”

R clapped his hands. Clara bowed, accepting the applause.

“This really is an impressive performance, Clara,” R said. “Thank you very much.”

“Now will you say why you asked me to do this?” she said. “Will you please,
please,
tell me what's going on?”

“Sorry, I can't do that.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “I'm going over to Clymer's office now.”

“Do you want me to call first, to make sure Elbow's there? I heard . . . somewhere . . . that he may have had travel plans for the day.”

“I'll chance it. Thanks.”

And he was out the door.

Yes, R wanted to talk to Elbow Clymer. But, more important, he wanted time to consider the message of Clara's little easel-board presentation.

There could not possibly have been a meeting of Ben, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and Washington on September 7, 1788!

So. The whole thing was a hoax, like the Prophecy? Those papers were manufactured and then stuck in the lining of that old cloak to be found someday?

But who would do something like that? And why?

Questions. Oh, yes, there were many natural follow-up questions. But what mattered right now was that there had been no Founding Fathers jury of peers gathering on September 7, 1788.

Hooray! Hooray for Ben! Hooray for Wally!

TWELVE

Gray House was five blocks from the BFU administration building where Clymer's office was located. R had walked only three of those blocks, barely inside the campus, before he stopped and sat down at Deborah Read Franklin Park, the only place on earth named for Ben's terribly treated and neglected wife. It was a small place with a couple of beds of roses and a few stone benches.

Even Wally never made an effort to defend the atrocious way Ben treated Deborah. “Like an ugly unwanted stray dog,” was the way Wally once put it. The only thing Ben did for her was agree to take her as his common-law wife after her legal husband, a low-life crook, ran off to the Caribbean to avoid the law. She bore Ben two children, one of whom died in childhood, and stayed in Philadelphia while Ben was living high and well in London and later in Paris. When told that Deborah was dying, Ben didn't even rouse himself to get on a boat to go home. Wally used to say their letters had all the warmth, feeling, and passion of credit rating reports. If Ben's conduct toward her bothered him very much he kept such confessions to himself. Maybe Clara was right to see if there was a way to finally give the poor woman her due. . . .

R took out his cell phone and called Wes Braxton in Eastville.

“I have a buyer for the papers, Wes,” he said. “Are you in a position to sell?”

“The Ross family has said it's fine with them,” said Wes. “We have twelve members on our board, and I've talked to all but two of them. So far, it's fine.”

“Good . . . that's good.”

“What kind of price is your buyer talking about?”

R. took a breath—a thought—and said, “Even more than I expected. Twenty-one thousand dollars.”

“Oh, my God!” Wes Braxton was almost squealing. “That'll do it—it's a deal! I know the other two board people will go along.”

R said that was terrific, and they both added a few more words of mutual congratulation.

Then Wes asked, “Who is the buyer, if I may ask?”

“As a matter of fact, he wants to remain anonymous,” said R. “He will pay me, and I will send you my personal check for twenty-one thousand. OK?”

“Great. This may do it.”

“Do what?”

“Get me the director's job—or put me on the search list at the very least. It proves I can raise money too.”

R said he was glad to be of help.

Then he walked on to the administration building and upstairs to the second-floor office of Elbridge Clymer. The time had come to deal with the BFU offer.

But Clara was right once again. Elbow was gone—out of town for the day. His secretary, a woman in her fifties, expected R, however.

“President Clymer said you might be coming by, Dr. Taylor. He said if you did I should give you this.”

She handed him a sealed white envelope. There was a large
R
in blue on the front,
Confidential
down in the left-hand corner.

R took it back outside to his bench and opened it.

R:

Clara told me you might be coming up today. I feel terrible about what I have to tell you—and about having to do it in a letter—but I'm not going to be able to pull off the Wally institute deal after all. I am sick about it because of what I said to you. In the wake and emotion of Wally's death, I simply spoke too soon. It turns out that I was on the short list for the presidency of another quite major university. I had no idea I was going to get the job, so I continued going about my business at BFU with the assumption that I was not. That is why I spoke to you about the new Franklin research institute possibility. Well, I have been offered the other presidency. It is a position I simply cannot refuse; I am sure you will agree when it becomes public in the next few days. The formal offer came just yesterday. It means I will be leaving BFU and thus will be unable to provide resources needed to create the Franklin study institute. I am so sorry.

I look forward to speaking to you in more detail about this in person.

And—who knows—an opportunity for something similar for you could in fact develop at my new university home. Clara has agreed to keep Wally's ship afloat on an interim basis here until all matters shake down. She has turned out to be quite a find.

My best,

Elbow.

R folded the letter, returned it to the envelope, and went off in search of a taxi to take him back to 30th Street Station.

• • •

Once again, R went to the Quiet Car, which was just behind the engine on this particular Metroliner. He had no desire to talk on his cell phone or listen while anyone else talked on theirs. As a courtesy, he had called Clara from the taxi to tell her he was returning to Washington. She didn't seem surprised.

Obviously she and Clymer were in a high state of—to use Elbow's word—finding each other.

The Quiet Car was barely half full. R found a double seat all to himself, planning to sit silently by the window, meditatively watching the Eastern Corridor world of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland pass by.

The train began moving.

He felt the presence of a person in the aisle by his seat. The conductor, an attendant . . .

It was Harry Dickinson!

“I know we can't talk here,” Harry whispered. “Come with me back to the Café Car.”

R moved his head to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right. If head movements could kill, Harry Dickinson, famous editor, would have been a dead man.

“Seriously, R. We have a crisis.” Harry's face, at least the part R could see, did have an uncharacteristically grim look.

He had no choice. So he went with Harry through a regular Business Class chair car to the Café Car, which was also not crowded. They sat down across a brown Formica-topped table.

“First, I want to know how you knew I was on this train,” R said.

“I saw you go downstairs to the track,” said Harry. “I didn't tell you I planned to join you because you might have caused another scene.”

He had that right, thought R. There was no telling what kind of reaction just the sight of this world-famous editor might have triggered.

“Clara, the ashes woman—that Ph.D. scholar, superb serious human being, whatever—told me just a few minutes ago when I called that you were on your way to catch a train.”

R remembered a recent movie where two guys threw one of their mothers off a speeding train—or tried to.

Harry moved on to the crisis.

“After we talked there at Thirtieth Street Station, I stayed in the lounge and made some telephone calls to my office and elsewhere while waiting for the next Acela back to New York. Rebecca Kendall Lee has declared war, R. That's the crisis.”

R held up his right hand. “I have taken care of the problem. There will be a little something in
The Washington Post
in the morning. I've headed her off. She can't touch me.”

“It's not you, R. It's one of the other committee members.”

“Sonya Lyman said she'll be fine, too. We can survive Rebecca. What Rebecca did was pure unambiguous plagiarism. Neither Sonya nor I are guilty of anything even remotely similar.”

Harry was looking off to the right. All there was to see were the oil refineries and storage tanks along the Delaware River.

“It's not her either, R. It's John Gwinnett.”

R couldn't believe he heard right.
John Gwinnett!

Harry went on quickly, excitedly. “I'm John's editor. We have been working on his Patrick Henry opus for eleven years. The book is nearly eight hundred pages long, including graphics and footnotes, a masterpiece of research, the crowning achievement of a distinguished career. It's set for publication next year, at the top of our fall nonfiction list. First printing probably a quarter of a million, who knows. What I can tell you, R, is that it really is a terrific book. Every detail of Patrick Henry's life is there. It's a fascinating story, one that's going to awaken interest in Henry like nothing ever has before. John got access to every scrap of paper most everybody in the world has, pertaining to Henry, and wrote it beautifully. He didn't really need me much, to tell you the truth. Some of his descriptions of life in Virginia, particularly during those critical days in Williamsburg, would make a Tory-lover cry.”

Were those tears in Harry's own eyes? Yes.
I didn't know he had tears in him!

R said, “Coffee or something, Harry?”

“Great, yes. A glass of white wine. Thanks, R.”

R walked to the center of the car to the service counter and returned in a few minutes with two small twist-cap bottles of white wine and two plastic glasses.

In silence, each fixed his own drink and took a couple of long swallows. The train was now in the familiar northern outskirts of Wilmington.

“Rebecca Lee called me. She said she found an article John wrote thirty-seven years ago for a small historical review published in Georgia by Emory University. The subject was how the introduction of tobacco changed life forever in the South. There were some sentences in it that Rebecca matched to a Ph.D. thesis written by a University of North Carolina professor twelve years earlier. Rebecca says if John's ARHA committee takes any public action against her, she will spill the beans on John.”

There was the derelict bus again. The train was nearing the Wilmington station.

“How many sentences are involved?” R asked.

“Three.”

“How close are the matches?”

“Identical—almost.”

“How almost?”

“All but a couple of words are the same.”

R just shook his head. He couldn't believe this. Not John Gwinnett.

“I know, I know,” Harry said. “There's no excuse.”

“If they just weren't identical. Nobody accidentally uses somebody else's sentences exactly. It's impossible. You know that as well as I do. Paraphrasing can be done innocently. That's what she claims she caught me doing. But not identical sentences.”

“I know, I know.”

The train came to a halt at Wilmington station.

R said, after it started moving again, “What's on the table—you know, if anything—as to what to do about this?” R couldn't believe he had just used the phrase
you know
! First it was cop talk; now he was reverting to high school jock talk.

Harry lowered his head. R read this as a sure signal that Harry was not proud of what he was about to say. “Your committee—John's committee—issues a statement that says something . . . I don't know . . . that the evidence about Rebecca Kendall Lee is inconclusive and that further research and investigation needs to be done. Then it's forgotten in the course of time.”

“Did John Gwinnett ask you to talk to me about this?”

“No, no. God, no. All he did when I passed on Rebecca's threat was laugh.”

“Laugh? He sees the prospect of being accused of plagiarism funny? Is he all right?”

Harry just shook his head. “Do you think Sonya Lyman could be persuaded to back off for a while?”

“Probably,” said R.
Definitely,
he thought.

“I'm not his editor—but we publish Joe Hooper's stuff.”

Harry looked back out the window and so did R. Neither wanted to have eye contact with the other on the real meaning of what Harry had just implied. If it became necessary, Green Tree Press had the means to get Hooper to go along, although based on his statement about not lynching Rebecca, it would probably not be a major problem.

Soon the train was on the long bridge over the water of the Susquehanna River where it flows into Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore was not far away.

“Three little sentences, thirty-seven long years ago, R,” Harry said. “With the exception of murder and treason, most other crimes have statutes of limitations.”

“Fine, but what you're suggesting is giving in to the crime of blackmail by Rebecca Lee
now,
” R said. “She'll get away with really blatant plagiarism scot-free.”