Back Bay (27 page)

Hayward lit a match and sucked the flame into his pipe. “I know what I’d do.”

Peter Fallon brooded his way home beneath a summer downpour that lasted ten minutes and left everything steaming. He could almost drink the rancid air in his apartment, and the floor beneath the front windows was soaked from the rain.

He took a Narragansett from the refrigerator and sat down at his desk. Hayward had made it simple enough. Drop out and go to law school. Drop out and look for the tea set. Or be responsible.

His copy of
Boston: A Topographical History
was on his desk, open to the map of the Back Bay in 1814. He had outlined the path of the Easterly Channel in red ink, and as he started at it, he began to sense that something was not quite right. The night before, he had been reading the last chapter, a hundred and fifty pages away.

At first, he thought the wind had turned the pages. However, on the rare occasions when he enjoyed a breeze, it came through the windows. To turn the pages backward, the wind would have to blow through the bathroom wall.

Someone had been in the apartment.

He yanked open the bottom drawer. His Nikon was still there. He spun round in his chair. KLH receiver and turntable remained bolted to the wall. It wasn’t a ripoff. Why were they here?

Something fell in the kitchen. Fallon froze, his heart pounding in his ears. Quickly, he calculated the distances between himself, the kitchen door, and the closet, where he kept a baseball glove and a thirty-four-ounce Louisville slugger. He sprang for the bat.

The noise again. He stopped in midair. Across the alley, Mrs. Luskinski was closing her kitchen windows. She worked nights at Elsie’s and always locked her windows, even though she lived on the third floor.

Hayward’s right, thought Fallon. You
are
crazy. No one’s been in here. Your imagination is getting the best of you.

He sat down at his desk. He sipped his beer and looked around. The whole place seemed slightly askew. He noticed little things,
subtle indications that his apartment had been searched. A feeling of revulsion crept over him. His privacy had been violated.

He wasn’t much of a housekeeper, but he was compulsive about keeping his work material and books carefully organized. He kept twenty-six piles of notecards on the coffee table, and he noticed several cards lying on the floor. They had not been there when he had left. As he picked up the cards, he saw traces of mud and water, the remains of a Cambridge mud puddle, drying on the braided rug. They were not his footprints. Desk drawers were open by an inch or two. The filing cabinet, which protected his bankbook and the completed portions of his dissertation, showed scratches around the master lock. Someone had tried to get in. He couldn’t tell if they had been successful, but he knew now that he wasn’t crazy.

Excitement quickly replaced revulsion. There was only one reason why anyone would break into his apartment and go through his papers—the Dexter Lovell note.

He had hidden the note in an old geology textbook. He jumped to the bookcase. The note was still there, but a few shelves away, he noticed that one of his pewter mugs, which he used as a bookend, was out of place. The handle of the mug was scratched and bent. It had been knocked to the floor when somebody explored his bookcases.

Had they seen the note and decided to leave it there? Had they missed it? Or had they inspected only a few books? On the shelf with the mug, Fallon kept works from the Elizabethan Renaissance—
The Pelican Shakespeare, Seventeenth Century Prose and Poetry, The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe
, Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, and
Bartholomew Fair
by Ben Jonson. He knew the intruders weren’t interested in Shakespeare. They had been looking for the note.

Fallon heard footsteps in the hallway. He locked the door and took the baseball bat out of the closet. The footsteps drew closer, passed his door, and stopped near his fire door. Fallon kept his hand tight around the bat. The footsteps started back down the hall and stopped at his front door.

Fallon could tell from the heavy step that whoever was out there weighed more than two hundred pounds. Fallon felt the
adrenaline rush through him. After several minutes, the person began to move again. The footsteps receded down the hall.

Fallon ran to the window and looked down into the street. A big man wearing a Red Sox baseball cap stepped out of the building and mixed into the pedestrian traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. It was the old grad in the library. Big, burly, white hair, and the smell of cheap wine. Fallon remembered Jane Cooper’s description of Jack C. Ferguson.

There he was—alive, well, and right on Fallon’s doorstep.

Fallon raced out of the apartment and down Mass. Ave., but Ferguson had already disappeared. For the next half hour, Fallon searched the subway stations and the local bars. But Jack C. Ferguson was a master of concealment. He would pick the time and place that they met.

June 1825

T
he breeze floated down Pemberton Hill and bathed Horace Taylor Pratt in rose perfume. The sweet smell reminded him of the roses on another June morning, and his mind drifted back.

The bombardment had kept up since first light, and the ground shook with each load of grapeshot that slammed into Breed’s Hill. Horace Taylor Pratt was twenty-four, and he had never known exhaustion like this in his life. He slumped in the trench, his brow caked in perspiration and dust, his arms throbbing. He had shoveled all night, and he didn’t think he would be able to lift a rifle, much less aim and fire one, when the attack came.

“It’s a great bright day for the battle of Bunker Hill, eh, little brother?” Ephraim Pratt, three times as big as Horace and bursting with energy, stood atop the earthworks.

“We’re on Breed’s Hill,” Horace objected.

“Well, wherever we are, we’re here to give the British a damn good drubbing. Stand up and see the best-dressed army in the world.”

Horace picked himself up and looked down toward the water. An endless line of longboats swept across the harbor from Boston, each of them carrying a cargo of scarlet coats and bayonets.

“From up here, they look like autumn leaves in a stream, all red and pretty,” said Ephraim.

At the base of the hill, the scarlet coats formed ranks and spread out. Ordered, efficient, deadly. The finest army the world had ever seen.

Pratt looked up and down the earthworks. A jagged line etched across the hills above Charlestown, and seven or eight hundred men huddled behind it for protection against the British wind.

“Ephraim,” said Horace, “I’ve dug all night. I’ve done a share. Right now, I’m of a mind to be leaving.”

Ephraim jumped down from the parapet. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. I’ll not have my brother disgracing himself and me and the name of Pratt. The call went out, and we answered it. We’ll stand and fight like good honest yeomen.”

“We’re not yeomen, and we’re not soldiers. We’re shippers.”

“And our only ship, bought with every nickel we could muster, sits down there at Hancock’s wharf, impounded by the damn British because the Pratts and men like them would take no more abuse. Stand and be a free man. Leave and take no title to the nation we build.”

“A speech like that’d bring Gen’ral ’owe ’imself up ’ere.” A young Cockney with broad shoulders and high cheekbones was standing next to Horace Taylor Pratt. His name was Dexter Lovell.

“What puts an Englishman up here aimin’ to shoot down on his own countrymen?” asked Ephraim.

“Well, sir, some would say we’re all Englishmen.”

“Amen to that,” added Horace Pratt.

“But I’ve got a girl in Boston town, and she said she’d marry me if I stood with her dad against the British Army. Ol’ Dad is nowhere in sight, but ’ere I am, true to my word like a damn fool.” Lovell laughed nervously.

“Some would say we’re all damn fools.” Horace Taylor Pratt laid his fowling piece atop the redoubt.

Ephraim smiled at his brother. “If that means you’re stayin’, amen to that, too.”

The British bombardment ended and Breed’s Hill fell silent. A cool breeze, the last of the day, idled up from the water. Then the cadence began. Fifty drums beat like one and the scarlet lines lurched forward.

All along the earthworks, they took their places, farmers and merchants, doctors and shopkeepers, boys and men. Horace Pratt smelled the sweat of fear. He rubbed his palms dry and gripped the flintlock. To his left, Ephraim had already chosen a target. To his right, Dexter Lovell was shaking. Pratt realized that Lovell was only seventeen, perhaps eighteen.

“Ephraim,” said Horace, “stand between the Cockney and me. A strong branch to hold two trembling leaves.” The Pratts exchanged places.

The scarlet machine ground forward, driven by gears that revolved to the beat of the drums. Unhurried, imperious, relentless it came, and Horace Pratt thought again about running.

Down the line, someone fired. Pratt heard the pop of the rifle, then another. And another. Random sounds hurled weakly against the pounding drums.

“Hold your fire, men. Hold your fire. Wait till they reach that big stump settin’ out there about fifty yards.” Captain Prescott walked past, settling the men who anchored the right flank. “Hold your fire.”

Pratt could see figures now in the scarlet line. Men made up the machine. He didn’t think he could shoot, but he chose a target.

“Keep comin’, keep comin’,” whispered Ephraim. “A few more steps and we’ll send you all back to England for good. C’mon, my lobsterback bullyboys. Keep marchin’ like damn fools, right into our guns.” He turned to his brother. “Did you ever see anything so damn stupid?”

Horace Pratt did not answer. The drums were pounding in the pit of his stomach. He was terrified. He pulled back the hammer and aimed at a red coat.

The first line reached the stump.

“Fire!”

Pratt closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. A mighty explosion overpowered the drums. He opened his eyes to see the line broken and staggering but still advancing through a thick blanket of smoke. He reloaded quickly.

“Fire!”

The scarlet line withered. The mightiest army on earth fell back.

On Breed’s Hill, the men cheered wildly. Lovell leaped to the top of the earthworks and shook his fist at the enemy. Horace Pratt threw his arms around his brother.

“We’ve won! We’ve stopped them!” he exclaimed.

“Don’t get so excited,” said Ephraim. “They’ll come again.”

A half-hour later, they did, and the Yankee fire drove them back once more.

The third British charge came in the late afternoon. The Americans fired their final volley, but it was too weak to break the British line. There was no more ammunition.

“I’d say we’ve done our share,” announced Ephraim. “Stay close, brother.”

“If we’re separated, we meet at Mill’s Tavern in Cambridge.”

“Aye.”

“Can I run with you gents?” asked Lovell.

“If you can stay with us,” answered Ephraim.

The scarlet line breached the earthworks and the retreat began. A few Colonials stopped to fire a final shot. Others stayed and fought hand to hand.

The Pratts and Dexter Lovell ran with the rest. They were into the saddle between Breed’s and Bunker hills when a British musket ball slammed through Dexter Lovell’s shoulder. He fell on his face and cried for help.

Ephraim stopped and turned back.

Horace grabbed his brother by the arm. “Forget him. He’ll slow us down.”

“he fought beside us. We’ll help him if we can.” Ephraim pulled away and ran back against the tide of retreating farmers.

Lovell was on his knees, staring at the hole in his shoulder. Ephraim put a hand under Lovell’s arms and tried to lift him. Lovell offered no help.

“Give us a hand, damn you!” screamed Ephraim at his brother.

Horace grabbed Lovell under the damaged shoulder. He felt a warm pool of blood filling the armpit.

“Now let’s go, boy. We’ve got some runnin’ to do.” Ephraim shook Lovell’s shoulder lightly.

Horace was not so gentle. He throttled the other shoulder, and the pain that shot through Lovell snapped him out of his shock. Lovell stood under his own strength.

“I think I can make it,” he said.

At that instant, Ephraim Pratt’s head exploded, covering his companions in a shower of blood and brain.

“Sweet Jesus! Help me! I can’t see!” screamed Horace. He dropped his rifle and tried to wipe the blood from his eyes. His left arm was torn away from his face. A musket ball shattered his elbow and lodged in the middle of the broken bone.

Lovell grabbed Pratt by the arm, and they began to run.

Pratt’s vision cleared, but still he did not comprehend what had happened. “My brother? Where is he?”

“He’s gone ahead,” screamed Lovell. “We’ll meet him at Mills’s Tavern.”

Another British volley raked across the saddle. Men fell everywhere. Pratt and Lovell hurtled up Bunker Hill, over the crest, and then down toward Cambridge. They ran and ran, never looking back, never pausing. They ran after the British had stopped pursuing. They ran until they could run no more, then they collapsed by a stream.

It was near nightfall. The aroma of wild-blooming roses hung thick in the air. Horace Pratt drank his fill and breathed deep, cleansing his nostrils of the stench of gun-powder, sweat, and blood. He closed his eyes. When he awoke, he was screaming. The saw had cut halfway through his arm.

His scream brought Abigail rushing into the room. “Father, what’s the matter?”

Pratt heard the doctor call for rum. He felt it pouring down his throat. He gagged but kept it down.

“Father, it’s all right: It’s all right.”

Pratt mumbled and gurgled and tried to speak while the stump
of his left arm flailed wildly about. He had suffered a stroke six weeks before. His right side was totally paralyzed, his speech almost incomprehensible, and the cruelest of ironies, his left side still functioned.

The coolness of Abigail’s hand at his temple drove the memories from his head. He was soothed. She brought a glass of water to his lips. He managed a few swallows before the water dribbled down his chin. He turned his head away like a child who refused to eat.