The Whiskey Rebel

I stared at the chaos, hardly knowing how to respond. I must have remained there a few moments, transfixed by the lunacy around me. At last I heard a whisper in my ear. “Curious, is it not?”

It was Lavien, and he wore a look of extreme satisfaction. “I wondered how long it would take you to find your way here. Come sit for a moment.”

He led me to a table and called for tea. I called for porter. Our drinks arrived with relative dispatch, and Lavien leaned back, to watch the confusion of the room around me in which men in fine suits acted as though they had been possessed by devils. I could make nothing of it, but my companion watched the proceedings as though it were a race conducted with horses whose skills and particulars he knew well.

“What brings you here?” he asked me.

“Once again, you hope to get information from me yet offer nothing in return,” I answered. “But I will be more generous than you. I look for a William Duer. Do you know if he is in Philadelphia or has been recently?”

He pointed. “The one waving papers in both hands-that is Duer.”

Hamilton, who evidently had not troubled to inform Lavien of his lies, was now exposed, and I looked over at the man the Secretary of the Treasury was so anxious I not meet. The madman in question was not very tall. He had narrow shoulders and delicate, nearly feminine features, though he had a high and balding forehead and hair cut short with a dandyish curl to it. He wore a crushed velvet suit, dark in its blueness, almost purple, and he would have appeared comical had he not conducted himself with the most astonishing seriousness. I found nothing compelling in him myself, but the men in the room appeared to attend to his every sound, his every gesture. A mere shift in the direction of his small eyes was enough to change the course of whatever lunacy took place before me.

“Why are you looking for Duer?” Lavien asked me. His expression betrayed nothing.

“Oh, this and that,” I said. “Any thoughts on why Hamilton would tell me that Duer was not in Philadelphia and had not been for some time?”

Lavien paused, but only for a blink of an eye. “I doubt Hamilton remains informed of Duer’s comings and goings. Tell me how the two of you happened to discuss him.”

“How odd. I don’t recollect. But what can you tell me about him?”

“He is the king of the speculators,” Lavien said. “He is both daring and reckless, caring for nothing but his own profits. In my opinion, he is plotting something this very minute.”

“What?”

“I don’t know precisely, but I have seen him consistently shorting six percent government issues-that is, gambling that they will lose value. He is important enough that when he predicts stocks will decline, others presume the same and follow suit.”

“Is that illegal?”

“No,” said Lavien. “Merely interesting.”

A fter another hour of commotion, the frenzy died down. Men settled at their tables. Clerks ceased their writing. Most of the speculators now turned to the business of drinking tea or left the tavern altogether. Duer sat at a table speaking with a pair of speculators Lavien did not know. All appeared easy and jovial.

“You very obviously want a word with him,” Lavien said. “Let me introduce you.”

“Why are you helping me? I thought you and Hamilton wanted me to keep my distance.”

“Merely showing some respect for a brother of the trade,” he answered, his face typically, troublingly, blank.

I did not believe. I think he knew Duer would prove uncooperative and I would learn there was nothing I could accomplish on my own and that attempting to meddle with a government inquiry would prove a waste of time. It is what I would do, were I in his place.

Duer was in the midst of some tale about how he had extricated himself from the decline of value that the Bank of the United States scrip had suffered the previous summer. According to the little I heard, the value reached a low point and would have caused financial disaster throughout the country had Duer not convinced Hamilton to take action. Once Hamilton did so, the value of scrip rebounded. It was, in other words, the precise opposite of the version Hamilton had told me: namely, that he, the Secretary of the Treasury, had refused to be swayed by friendship and had defied Duer for the benefit of the nation.

The story came to a rather abrupt end when Duer noticed us standing within earshot. He coughed rather ostentatiously into his fist and sipped at his coffee. “Mr. Levine is it? Have I not told you I have no more to say to you?”

“It is Lavien, sir, and I am not here to speak to you myself but to introduce this gentleman. Mr. William Duer, may I present Captain Ethan Saunders.”

“Captain Saunders? Where have I heard that name? Nothing good, I think.” He waved his hand, as though I were a fly to be shooed. “Wasn’t there some business about betraying your country? I’ve no time for traitors.”

“And yet here I am, making time for traders. Ironic, don’t you think?”

He did not answer.

“And what of Jacob Pearson?” I asked. “Have you time for him?”

“Is he here? What of it? He has more to fear from his creditors than I have from him.”

“His creditors?” I said.

Duer clucked like a schoolmaster reviewing some unsatisfactory work. “Have you not heard? Pearson is in dangerous straits. He’s been selling off his properties all over the city, though it shan’t be enough, I’ll warrant. A reckless man, and reckless men always stumble.”

“And what is your co

“I know him from about town, of course. He has proposed business with me on more than one occasion, but I ca

“One moment, Mr. Duer. Are you familiar with a large Irishman?” I asked. “Bald-pated, red-mustached, muscular?”

“You must have mistaken me for a juggler,” he said, “or perhaps a bearded circus performer. I know no one of that description. Good day.”

He began to walk away from us, and I immediately pushed after him. “Hold,” I called.

He quickened his pace. “Reynolds? Your assistance, if you please.”

I started at the name, for it was that of the man who had paid my landlady to cast me out, and it was the name that had so upset Hamilton. From the corner of the tavern came a rugged fellow, rather tough-looking in his stature and homespun clothes, a large wide-brimmed hat draping over deep-set eyes. The hat shaded his face but did not entirely obscure a massive scar that reached from his forehead, over his eye, and descended to his chin-a wide pink swath of old injury.

He stepped between us and Duer and gri

While we were so charmingly engaged, Duer and his friends hurried away, leaving us alone with his ruffian. I might have pushed the issue-with Lavien present, it would have been safe to do so-but there seemed to me no point. I wanted to speak to William Duer, one of the wealthiest men in the country. He could not simply disappear. If I did not get him today, I would soon enough. In any case, I had business enough here.

“Tell me, fellow,” I said, “why would you have me cast from my home? It was the name of Reynolds that the villain gave when he paid my landlady to put me out.”

“Fuck your landlady,” Reynolds offered, by way of helpful explanation.

“While I appreciate your advice,” I answered, “it does not answer my question.”

“Then you must live with confusion,” he said.

Sensing he meant to give me no more, and that he was the sort to delight in crude resistance, I turned my back on this Reynolds and retrieved my porter. I raised it in salute to the ruffian. Content that his master had made his escape, he glowered at us, meeting my gaze and then Lavien’s, making certain to communicate his fierceness before stepping out the front door.