The Whiskey Rebels (70 page)

Mr. Duer rose slowly. He looked at me imploringly, as if I still had some power to undo what had been done. “I have never known such wickedness,” he said in a slow, deliberate voice. “Perhaps I have not always been honest in my dealings. What of it? I am a trader. It is what I do, and what I am. But I have never taken pleasure in the destruction of others. That you revel in my suffering is unspeakable.”

“I take no pleasure in it,” I said. “I take my revenge not out of desire but out of duty. How could I live with myself if I let you continue? I have dedicated my life to your destruction, and though seeing it may give me satisfaction, it gives me no pleasure.”

It would also make me and my partners wealthy, but I chose not to mention this part, for there he could still do me harm. Instead, I merely rang the bell and told the girl that I believed Mr. Duer had taken enough of our time.

M
y conversation must have effected a change in Duer’s behavior, one notable to his underlings, for the next morning, just as I began to make preparations to abandon my New York lodgings for good, I was approached by Mr. Reynolds. He had clearly known better than to call on me and so had been loitering outside my boardinghouse. I stepped outside to enter a hackney, but before I could reach it Mr. Reynolds stepped out before me and bowed slightly.

“Good morning, madam. Nice weather today, ain’t it?”

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, to be honest, you can give me a bit more money.”

“You have already been paid well for your silence,” I told him.

“It’s true,” he acknowledged, “but I spent that money, so I’ll be wanting more.”

I looked at him sternly. “I cannot be held accountable for that.”

He showed me his yellow teeth, and he seemed to me like an overgrown dog who has eaten his master’s dinner. “It’s looking to me like you can. You bought my silence once; I’m guessing you’ll do it again. Oh, I know, I made certain promises, but from where I’m standing, there doesn’t seem to me a lot you can do about it.”

He squared his shoulders and hovered over me, and he was far taller, far broader, and undoubtedly far more vicious than I saw—or at least more violent. Yet I would not allow myself to be intimidated by such a brute. I had faced down worse than he. It is what he did not understand, would never understand—that there were limits to what can be accomplished by physical menace. “Mr. Reynolds, I did not buy your silence, I rented it, and the time for which I required it has now passed us. You may now tell Mr. Duer what you like. I imagine he is out of sorts, which made you uneasy and is why you have come back. You feared the period in which you might apply to me would be drawing to a close, but it has already done so.”

He put his face near mine, as if we were lovers, and I smelled his scent of whiskey and tobacco. “I hope you ain’t testing me, because I mean to try your words.”

“I have told him myself,” I said. “He knows I’ve acted against him. I do hope he doesn’t owe you much money.”

Reynolds stepped back. “He pays me by the quarter, and he ain’t paid me yet this year.”

I brushed past him and allowed the coachman to open the door for me. “You shan’t see the money.” I stepped in and looked out the window at him. “I do hope you earn more than one hundred and fifty dollars a quarter,” I told him. “If that’s the case, you’ve been a loser for your efforts. Good day, Mr. Reynolds. For your own safety, let this be the last time I see you.”

And indeed it was, for I left New York that evening and made my way to the point of rendezvous with most of the others in my band. Only three remained in New York to protect the mission from Saunders. Having done so much to aid us, he could still do us harm if he managed to divine our scheme. In Philadelphia, my agents had done everything possible to lead him astray, but it was yet possible he might come to New York, so the remaining men were there to make sure he attempted nothing that would harm us, and, if he did, to use appropriate measures to stop him.

Ethan Saunders

T
he watchman had only finished crying out three in the morning when Lavien and I presented Hamilton’s letter at the government’s stable. We were given two stout well-fed beasts and, a bit earlier than agreed, we began to make our way. We rode in silence; the cold and the dark and the urgency made talk seem trivial. When dawn trickled orange into the eastern sky, we quickened our pace. The horses were sure-footed in the melting snow, and we rode hard.

We traded horses in Princeton and were at the ferry in New Jersey by two in the afternoon. Once upon the New York side of the river, we took the Greenwich Road to Duer’s mansion. It had not snowed there, and the roads were dry, so we made good time. When we arrived there was a gathering of people outside Duer’s palatial estate—maybe as many as a hundred—and they looked angry. Some appeared to be Duer’s brothers of the speculation trade, dressed in fine suits and handsome coats, their own excellent carriages parked nearby. Alongside them were poor women in tattered dresses, their hair covered with rags. A boy with a dirty face clutched the hand of an angry father. A Negro man in homespun looked somewhat dazed, as though he’d been struck in the head. Some stared at the house. Some shouted at it. One man, aging and one-armed, with the look of an old soldier, held a rock that he clearly meant to throw.

Lavien and I exchanged glances, but we did not speak. We did not need to. We had come prepared to do what we must to make Duer see reason, to make him begin reversing course. We were prepared to make him, through kindness or cruelty, begin writing letters to creditors and merchants and traders. We had not come prepared for this. We had come prepared to stop his ruin. We had not come prepared merely to witness it. It seemed we were too late.

We rode around to the stables and were admitted by the liveried servant once we showed him Hamilton’s letter. I did not know if he could read, but he seemed impressed with our earnestness. Once inside, we demanded to see Duer, and if the servant we spoke to was put off by our haggard looks or the dirt of the road upon us, he did not comment. He seemed to have troubles aplenty of his own and absently led us to the parlor.

I helped myself to some wine from the sideboard, while Lavien gulped from a pitcher of water flavored with oranges. Duer, however, did not keep us waiting long. He pushed into the room after we had been there for less than ten minutes. His suit was rumpled, as though he had slept in it, and his hair was wild. Streaks of redness shot across his eyes.

“This is all the result of your meddling,” he said. “You and Hamilton and the rest of you. Have you no idea what you’ve done?”

“What is happening?” Lavien asked. “It may be we can reverse things.”

He could not have believed it, but it was something to say. I felt a chill run through me, for I heard something in Lavien’s voice I thought unimaginable. I heard fear.

“How can you not know?” Duer sneered at him. “Word of this absurd lawsuit has gotten out, and the rumor is I am to be ruined. Now my creditors gather like starving birds, ready to pick at me until there is nothing left.”

Lavien began to pace back and forth. He put a hand to his temple. “How vulnerable are you? How much do you need to make this go away? Can you placate some of your creditors and thus make the others leave you be?”

“How vulnerable am I? I am entirely exposed, that is how vulnerable I am. And you know full well that no creditor will be satisfied until he is paid.”

“Can you not even cover your most immediate debts?” I asked.

“My debts were never designed to be covered,” he said. “I am engaged in
business.
But now that the government has seen fit to interfere, all is falling to ruin. Your drawing back the bank’s credit, and now, with the absurd suit for money I supposedly owe, Hamilton has pulled the rug from under me.”

“What is the difference between what you have and what you owe?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Not too much above eight hundred thousand.”

I walked over to Duer and shoved him so he fell back into his chair. “Listen to me, you greedy turd. You had better think of a way to escape bankruptcy. There are some very dangerous people who wish to see you fail, and we cannot let them have their way.”

Perhaps because he sensed an opportunity, he appeared unconcerned by my violence. “I cannot avoid it unless you know of some source willing to give me the money. The bank, perhaps. Yes, that’s it. The bank can lend me the money. Give it to me outright, perhaps. It is a great deal of money, I know, but surely it is worth it to save us from such confusion.”

“It cannot happen,” Lavien said. “Lending you that money would be as good as ruining the government. Once word escaped, Washington and his administration would be seen as no better than corrupt British ministers raiding the treasury for their friends.”

“We had better think of something,” I said. “The crowd sounds angry.”

Outside his window, we heard angry calls—
We want Duer! He has got our money!
—over and over again. One group had started a poetic cry of
Put Duer in the sewer,
hardly euphonious but certainly concise in its meaning. I peeked out the window and saw an old woman, bent over at the waist, leaning upon a walking stick and looking upward. “I want my five dollars!” she cried.

“Good God, man,” I said to Duer. “You borrowed five dollars from a stooped old woman? Have you no shame?”

“She would have had no complaints when I paid her what I owed.”

“You were never going to pay,” I said. “You never could pay.”

“How could it have worked when the government itself is against me?” he demanded. “Hamilton pretended to be my friend, but it was he who has brought this upon me. Hamilton restricted the credit. Hamilton prosecuted me about old debts. If my fall brings about the ruin of the nation, it will be upon Hamilton’s head.”

“You are like a murderer who blames his victim for provoking him,” I said. “Hamilton restricted credit because there was too much of it, prompting greedy men like you to abuse the aberration. He has prosecuted you for your crimes because to do anything else would be dishonest. If Hamilton is to blame, it is for not crushing you sooner and harder. Perhaps then you would never have had a chance to attempt a scheme foolish beyond reason.”

“But it made such sense,” he said. “And she convinced me it would work.”

“She? Joan Maycott?” I asked, but I believe I already knew this was her treachery.

“Yes. I know what you will say, I ought not to have taken advice from a woman, but she seemed to know what she spoke of. So charming and clever. How could I know she hated me, blamed me for her husband’s death? Whippo pushed me toward this too, and where is he now? He’s abandoned me, that’s where. He stole as much of my silver as he could carry and then slipped out in the night just ahead of the crowds.”

“You’ve been manipulated, Duer,” I said, “and we along with you. Now I want you to collect your ledgers for me.” I turned to Lavien. “You’ll need to determine how much he owes and to whom. Maybe we can put it out that he has the means to repay his debts. If we can but calm the crowds, we can perhaps calm the markets before they panic.”

“I’m no money man,” Lavien answered. “I may understand some of how these mechanisms work, but I can’t speedily interpret such things.”

“I’ll help you,” Duer volunteered, “in exchange for a promise of government assistance and an end to this absurd lawsuit, of course. Yes, we must forget about that.”

“No,” said Lavien. “You won’t bargain your way out of this. We will have to bring in a few clerks from Treasury to review your books, and the best we will be able to do is see to it that you pay first those who need it most. I don’t know if that will accomplish anything, but we must try.”

Lavien’s words were punctuated by the sound of shattering glass. A rock flew into a window in a room above us, then another to our left, and then in the room we currently occupied. We could now hear clearly the cries of the crowd. “Bring us Duer! Our money or his head!” Several angry men waved muskets. One held a blazing torch.

“Christ,” I said. “They could burn the building down.”

“We’ve got to get him someplace safe,” Lavien said.

“Where?”

“There’s only one place,” Duer said. “I’ve known it all morning, but I would not say it to myself until this threat of violence. I cannot see Lady Kitty burned out of her home. You’ve got to take me to jail. Debtor’s prison is my lot now. The mob must see me taken there so they will leave my family in peace.”

And so we did. We ushered him out of the house and drove him south to the City Jail on Murray Street, which also acted as the city’s debtor’s prison. During the stretch of the journey we were followed by an angry mob, which called after us with withering insults. Duer sat tight-lipped, his eyes clenched almost shut as, I could only imagine, images of his failed aspirations paraded before him. We were strange pied pipers, for as our coach progressed, it drew larger and larger crowds, and when we reached the prison, I feared we must be arrested for orchestrating a riot.