The Whenabouts of Burr Page 2

  Nate’s thin face was briefly crossed by an even thinner smile. “He didn’t sign it. Not for New York State nor for any other state. Do you know who did sign for New York State?” His friend’s head swung slowly into a blank shake. “Okay. Neither did I remember. Well, it’s not exactly classified information.

  “The delegate who signed the United States Constitution on behalf of New York State was Alexander Hamilton.” At the mention of this familiar name, Ves Romero’s face cleared… was again clouded with a frown… suddenly began to do funny little things with itself. “Hey,” said Amerigo Vespucci Romero. “Oh,” he said. “But,” he said. “Alexander Hamilton. He was, oh, he was the first Secretary of the Navy. I mean, the Treasury. He said, ‘Your People, sir, is a great Beast.’ He was, uh, uh, he was shot. Yeah! He was in a duel. He was killed. He was—” Nate nodded grimly, wearily. “Yes. In Weehawken, New Jersey. On July 11, 1804. And the man who fired the fatal shot was—”

  Ves’s memory finally came through, like money spilling out of a jackpot. “Aaron Burr!” he cried. “Aaron Burr!”

  * * * *

  The Constitution of the United States makes no mention of an F.B.I. It does not, for that matter, mention a Secret Service. Or a Flag, or a National Anthem, or—but we digress. It does, however, state, and state quite plainly, that The Congress shall have power to fix the standards of weights and measures; accordingly a Bureau of Weights and Measures was by Act of Congress set up in 1801: henceforth, a pound in Richmond, Virginia was a pound in Richmond, N.Y.; and a yard of cloth spun in Salem, Massachusetts measured a yard when purchased in Salem, South Carolina. That the utility of this office went without saying, goes without saying. Federalists and Whigs, Republican-Democrats, Populists and Greenbackers, Barnburners and Locofocos, Dixiecrats and Socialists, all observed towards the Bureau of Weights and Measures a strictly hands-off policy. That is, they did not exactly observe it.

  They never even thought about it.

  Time passes. In 1996, the voters (including for the first time those of the new states of Guam and the Virgin Islands) swept into presidential office that darkest of dark horses, Rep. Victor Gosport (Dem., Idaho), the youngest ever to hold that office—perhaps because they really wanted a Democrat in the White House. Perhaps because Luella (Mrs. Victor) Gosport, one week before election day, was safely delivered of triplets: all boys. Or, perhaps because certain aspects of the Democratic candidate’s campaign had been, with uncanny scientific accuracy, masterminded by the candidate’s friend, Dr. Dunstan Dutton.

  Dunstan Dutton (Ph.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., D.Phil.), having collected the figures on the order and location of every appearance made by every presidential candidate over the past fifty years, as well as sundry other statistics, by a process understood only by himself and one selfless assistant, correlated them all and drew up the most baffling campaign schedule in American history. Andrew Johnson had “swung around the circle,” Major William McKinley had sat on his front porch. Harry Truman got off the train at whistle-stops, or sometimes spoke from the end of the train without getting off…

  Victor Gosport sometimes zigged and sometimes zagged; one day he spoke at a county fair in Delaware and the next he showed up at a high school in Lubbock, Texas; thence to the Methodist Home for the Aged in Skaneateles, next at Pershing Square; from there by helicopter to Orange County, till that moment an enemy stronghold—

  Students of political scenes were baffled. Maybe Victor Gosport was, too. But he had faith in Dr. Dunstan Dutton. It was not Money which had brought this unassuming man to the service of the Democratic candidate, nor a desire to be a kingmaker, although he did (when pressed) describe himself as a “philosophical Democrat.” He did not even develop the winning strategy (if indeed it was the strategy which won the election, and not Luella and the triplets) for the pleasure of seeing if it would succeed. Dutton was motivated purely and simply by a political ambition, and his political ambition was a pure and simple one, indeed.

  He wanted to be the Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures. It was so arranged.

  President Gosport was not a particularly deep and devious man; if anything, he was indeed too open and disingenuous for his own, and perhaps the country’s, good. There was, however, one streak of cunning which was basic to his very nature, and it was this: he did not trust the F.B.I. and he took steps to act behind its collective back.

  “They all hate the President—whoever he is,” he said.

  He said it quietly, and under circumstances which assured him that he was not going to be overheard or bugged. He said it to his college roommate, Nathan Hale (Nate) Swift, formerly of U.S.C.G.C.S.I. Det. L, more commonly known as Coast Guard Intelligence. “I wouldn’t trust them pricks anymore than I could throw them,” he added, moodily, discussing his problem with Nate, while gloomily tugging his beard (he was the first bearded president since Benjamin Harrison). “I tell them I want something done—me, mind you: President of the United States—and that dumb prick Nephi Gundarson, I mean, J. Edgar was bad enough, but this new prick, wow! He says, ‘Well, we’ll do what we can, Mr. President,’ the prick. Then he either leaks it to the goddamn press, or else, would you believe it, Nate? Nothing happens!”

  “The pricks,” said Nate, sympathetically.

  The President meditated, a scowl upon his wholesome, craggy features. “Abe Lincoln never had these problems”, he said, after a while. “He wanted a man followed, or something, he just said to Alan Pinkerton, ‘Follow that man!’ And old Pinkerton just said, uh, ‘Yes, Mr. President!’ And that was that. My Secret Service, they couldn’t follow an elephant’s tracks in the snow, unless it had counterfeit money up its trunk…” His voice ebbed away, and again he tugged his beard.

  Nate made a sympathetic sound. After a minute he asked, “But… Vic… what about all the Defense Department intelligence groups and the C.I.A. and, mmm, the… mmm…”

  But all of these groups were diffuse, hierarchical; it was impossible to ask that a confidential mission be carried out by any of them on behalf of the President and remain confidential. “Either the guy is so low on the totem pole that a million guys above him have to know what he’s doing, or he’s so high on the totem pole that he can’t possibly do it himself. If I say, ‘Follow that man!’, it goes down on 8700 hunks of paper, it goes down on magnetic tape, it goes down on computer tape, it goes down on ticker tape and before you can blink, more people know about it than Carter has liver pills. By that time, the man I might have wanted to be followed is in Rio de Janeiro or some place, swinging it up.”

  Nate said, softly, “I begin to see the problem, Vic.”

  “Call me Mr. President,” the President said, absent-mindedly. And he went on to say that he could not assign members of his personal White House staff to any of these confidential tasks, because they were all known. Suppose the press were to ask, “Why was Presidential Aide Flanders Krum seen in Omaha last Tuesday, following a man?” How would it look? Congress would have its attention diverted and if there was one thing which the President did not want in such matters, it was to divert the attention of Congress.

  Although the people of the United States had elected a Democratic president, it (or they) had not elected a Democratic congress. A Republican congress had not exactly been elected, either; in fact, the balance of power was precariously being held by a trio of mavericks, ‘Two FOTs and a Freebi,” as Victor Gosport called them. One district in Vermont and one district in Texas had turned out their incumbents in favor of the candidates of the Fine Old (American) Traditions Party, whose platform included the designation of blueberry pie as the National Dish, and the abolition of federal income tax; while the solidly prosperous, mostly Caucasian, Silk Stocking District of Manhattan’s Upper East Side had chosen to be represented in Washington by a candidate of the Free Black Independent Party, evidently thrilled by his promise to cut all their throats at the first opportunity.

  “I’ve go
t a legislative program to get through Congress,” the President said. ‘I promised the American People. So I got to be careful that Congress doesn’t get side-tracked by diversionary tactics, Nate. The F.B.I. and the other big Snoop Sections, they’re all a bunch of spies, the pricks. Just love to embarrass me by leaking confidential info. And then what can I do about it? Nothing. No. I cannot trust them. I can trust you, Nate. Known you for years. Also, you were in Coast Guard Intelligence, one of the nation’s top spook outfits. If I say to you, ‘follow that man’, why, you are by God going to follow that man. Yourself, without letting the whole goddamn world know all about it, such as House Republican Leader Winthrop Scrannel and F.B.I. Director Nephi Gundarson, the pricks.”

  They were speaking in a White House chamber the existence of which was unknown to the public; in it were such items as a parlor suite left behind by Mrs. Heber Votaw, President Harding’s sister; God’s own number of moldering trophies shot by Col. Roosevelt; Christmas presents which had met with the disapprobation of First Ladies Hayes, Garfield, Wilson, Hoover, and Truman; and five divans inlaid with mother-in-law-of-pearl and presented by an ousted claimant to one of the Trucial Sheikdoms during the Coolidge Administration. This was known as the Clutter Room, and Luella Gosport had obtained the key from the White House’s Housekeeper on a pretext. President Gosport felt confident that it was not bugged.

  Nate Swift ran his lean hand over his dark hair. “Mr. President,” he said, “I am willing to be of whatever service I can to you, both as an old American and a loyal friend—I mean, as a loyal American and an old friend.”

  “I’m going to give you a note to Dr. Dutton, the new Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures,” the President decided. “He’s going to make you Field Observer.”

  Swift, who had been leaning back, sat up straighter. The inlaid divan had been designed for shorter, softer bodies than his own. “The Bureau of Weights and Measures? Field Observer?”

  The President smiled, pleased both at the thought of his idea and at his friend’s reaction to it, which was puzzlement. “That’s right. Principle of the Purloined Letter. You want to hide something, leave it laying right out in the open. It’ll never be observed. Now, Nephi Gundarson may be a dumb prick, but he’s after all not a hundred percent dumb. He’ll be watching like a hawk to see what new appointees are going in what slots. But he hasn’t got all the time in the world, so of course he’ll concentrate on spook sections such as the C.I.A., N.S.A., D.D.I., and so on. Will he even think of looking into the Bureau of Weights and Measures? Will anybody? Of course not! That’s what they call in Hollywood ‘the beauty part of it’, you see.

  “Nobody suspects the Bureau of Weights and Measures! And your title, Field Observer, well, that puts nobody up tight. Investigator, yes. Observer, no. You go anywhere—anywhere I send you, that is—and you look at anything and you report back to me. That is, of course, you can make some routine report for the archives of the Bureau, but that’s all. Nobody will bother about it. F.B.I. has its informants planted all over the place, but not there!”

  He got up, rubbing the base of his spine. “Think of it this way, Nate. What you’ll be doing, you’ll be helping to insure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare. You’ll take it, of course.”

  They walked towards the door. “Of course, Mr. President,” said Nathan Hale (Nate) Swift.

  * * * *

  The late Mr. Romeo Romero, an importer of the finer sorts of olive oil, antipasto, and tomato conserves, was proud of his Italian birth and his American citizenship: therefore he named his first-born son Amerigo Vespucci. His son was equally proud of both estates, and did not really disparage his own name. But noting that untutored American tongues often found it difficult to master all the syllables of it, soon came to call himself what most of his friends called him: to wit, simply Ves. The firm of Romero Associates was second to none in the field of insurance investigations, ranging from checking on applicants to looking into claims; arson, the firm did not care to handle, leaving it to well-known specialists in the field; but for all matters involving the oddly-named area of “inland marine” policies, the name of Romero was a byword, and this was hardly less so in cases of personal liability claims.

  The nature of his work, the quickness of his mind, his natural zeal and indefatigability, resulted in his meeting not only the professional criminals, but magnates and their wives, stars of stage and screen, foreign nobility, men and women in every walk (or crouch) of life; he became aware, almost by second nature, of the little signs which most of us leave unnoticed, by which the crook so often gives himself away.

  “I go into the office of the firm reporting the losses,” he explained once to Nate, over a cafe espresso at the Downtown Chess Club, “and my first question, well, it might be, ‘Who’s been taking taxicabs who didn’t used to?’ Be surprised, Mr. Swift,”—it was not yet “Nate”—“You’d be surprised how many embezzlers, they never think of giving themselves away by, say, wearing the fancy clothes to work which they might have bought with their ill-gotten gains, yet somehow they just can’t resist calling that taxicab once they leave the office.”

  Nate looked up from the dissolving heap of cinnamon-sprinkled whipped cream atop the bitter liquid. “And then what?”

  Romero shrugged. “Oh, I simply walk up to him and I say, ‘The firm is aware that somebody has abused its confidence to the tune of $17,000—or however much the firm has lost, and you’d be surprised how many of them aren’t sure exactly what the figure is—but it would rather not prosecute if this can be avoided.’ Nine times out of ten, they come clean.” He shrugged, sighed. “But… you know… nine times out of ten, it just got to be boring.”

  His eyes glistened. “And then… then, five years back, it will be five years the 11th of April, my dear wife passed away. And after that, well, the taste just seemed to go out of almost everything…”

  And it was not long after this great loss that Mr. Romero’s son and daughter both married. It happened that both his son and his son-in-law were attached to the firm of Romero Associates, and got along well together. Romero the elder called them to him, and said, “Roger, Robert. Take over the business. You know more than I did at your age because you have had educational advantages which I didn’t; also here you have a ready-made business, which I didn’t; plus you have the old man to advise you when you get into trouble, which I didn’t. This way you’ll be able to keep the family together, provide for the children which you will have, with God’s blessing, and bring them up well. Since Mom died, I don’t know, somehow I can’t keep my mind on the business the way I used to. Besides, I’m getting on in years and I deserve a little rest. Neither do I believe in keeping children tied to their elders’ apron-strings, so to speak, male or female, the way some parents do. Look at Queen Victoria, for example, who should have abdicated years before she died, the way Queen Wilhelmina did, turned the country over to her son and daughter, or however it was; sensible woman.”

  Also, he said to his son and his son-in-law, “Just pay me a small salary as Consultant, so you can justifiably keep my name on the letterhead, and a percentage of the gross—that way,” he now ceased speaking in retrospect and directed his comments entirely to Nate Swift; “That way, they don’t get the idea that they’re getting something for nothing, which in my opinion can corrupt young people quickly. So now everybody is happy,” he said with a sigh, “and I have no reason in the world to feel the least bit unhappy, which to tell you the truth, I do. Nonetheless.” And he sighed once again.

  From such a chance meeting over the chessboard and coffee sprang that most unlikely and yet fruitful partnership which, on behalf (though clandestinely, yet honorably) of the President and, through him, the People of the United States, was to solve such matters as the affairs of the knifegrinder and the abbreviated state senator, the case of the foreign agent and the Jersey City pom-pom girl, the mixed-up matter of how the Armenian A
mbassador was disentangled from the tuna net in San Pedro Harbor, and—to name but one more—the truly horrifying affair of Rev! Elmo Smith of Omaha (Nebraska) and the twenty-five piranha fish in the swimming pool of the Mayflower Hotel—stories for which the world is not yet prepared—

  —and was now to be faced with the greatest challenge yet: to find the missing original parchment of the Constitution of the United States. And to return it… unharmed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “It doesn’t,” Amerigo Vespucci Romero said for what must have been the sixteenth time, “make any sense. I mean, forget about the fact that there’s no way in the knowledge of the Human Race that such a replacement could have been accomplished; there is—and this is more important—no motive for anyone to have accomplished such a replacement. Motive is the thing, you know. There are all sorts of motives: greed, lust, fear, ambition, religious or philosophical fanaticism, hunger, rivalry, loyalty, anger, and a couple of Instinctive reactions. I forgot whether it’s fashionable right now to admit that Homo sapiens is possessed of instincts.” He was pacing back and forth in his study waving his hand—the one not holding the coffee cup—emphatically at Nathan as he spoke.

  “I have a thought on that,” Nathan Hale Swift said, balancing his coffee cup on his knee and staring into the fire. “An idea, you might say. It reminds me of something.”

  “Hah?” Romero asked, stopping in mid-wave.

  “It reminds me of something. Of college, actually.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, you see… You know, the President and I were roommates in college…”

  “You told me, maybe twenty-five times. He told me once, I remember.”

  “Yeah. Well, in college we used to do things like that. I don’t mean me, particularly; although I remember once or twice—there was the bell that kept ringing fourteen, and the bulldozer on the third floor of the ad-”