Previously: Booth shoots Lincoln and breaks leg in escape. Baker saves Booth’s life at Garrett’s farm. Anna Surratt pleads for her mother’s life. Johnson grants a reprieve, but it arrives too late. Stanton plots Johnson’s impeachment. Whitman tells Gabby all the news from Washington.
Gabby Zook became accustomed to the Whitman family chaos. They lived in the basement of their Brooklyn brownstone. Tranquility came down upon the residence during the Christmas season of 1865, and remained during the first cold months of the New Year.
Mr. Walt, as Gabby called the poet, found him a job sweeping floors at a mercantile establishment a couple of blocks from home. Mrs. Walt—that was the name Gabby gave Whitman’s mother Louisa–walked him to the store of a morning and back home that night. Gabby particularly liked Louisa who seemed to have a large, loving heart, even though she complained of being sick all the time. He looked forward to the weekends because Whitman came home from Washington where he worked in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Gabby liked Mr. Walt’s stories of peculiar things happening in the government.
After Whitman told him President Johnson fired head of the Secret Service Lafayette Baker, Gabby leaned forward and wrinkled his brow.
“What does this Mr. Baker look like?”
“Well, let me see.” Whitman scratched his chin whiskers. “I’ve seen him many times myself around Washington City, and I must say I didn’t like the look of him. Which is very unusual for me. I can talk for hours with any common laborer on the street, but I never had a desire to even meet Mr. Baker. He’s not a big man, perhaps your height, Mr. Gabby. Not quite as old, and with a thick shock of red hair. He walks into a room, and you’d think he hated everyone in it and was determined to shoot and kill them all.”
Gabby’s eyes widened. “A short red-headed mean man.”
Whitman cocked his head. “Yes, I suppose you could call him mean. Yes, that would be a good word to describe him.”
“That’s him.” Gabby’s hands began to tremble. “That’s the man I’ve told you about. The man who killed Adam Christy.”
“Of course he is.” Whitman smiled and patted Gabby’s quivering hands. “Well. Let’s talk of more pleasant things. What else is happening in the capital that might amuse you?” Over the next few months, he only had more troubling news to tell Gabby.
In March, President Johnson vetoed the formation of the Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction, claiming it would impede elected Southern representatives from taking their seats in Congress. Soon afterwards, Johnson vetoed a Civil Rights Bill and asserted it contained portions of the previously vetoed Freedman Bureau bill and predicted the legislation would create a “terrible engine of wrongdoing, corruption and fraud.
“What do you think about that, Mr. Gabby?”
“Mr. Walt, all that talk about rights and corruption confuses me,” he admitted, shaking his head.
“Me too.”
“I feel I want to be on President Johnson’s side, but I don’t like the idea of keeping black people from having their rights. I didn’t have any rights when I was in the basement of the White House, and it made me feel bad.” After a pause, he added, “To tell you the truth, I don’t think the President likes black people very much. And that makes him bad. But Mr. Stanton doesn’t like him, and I know for sure that he’s a bad man. Isn’t there anyone good in the Capital anymore?”
In early April the Senate overturned the President’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill. After that, Johnson vetoed a bill to admit Colorado to the Union because many of the Southern states had yet to have their sovereign rights restored.
“Why can’t they all just find a way to get along with each other and stop butting heads?” Gabby asked.
“I agree.” Whitman smiled and looked out the window as he sipped his coffee.

Previously: Booth shoots Lincoln and breaks leg in escape. Baker saves Booth’s life at Garrett’s farm. Anna Surratt pleads for her mother’s life. Johnson grants a reprieve, but it arrives too late. Stanton plots Johnson’s impeachment. Baker tries to get dirt on Johnson.
The next evening Baker dropped by the Executive Mansion. President Johnson was pushing his wife’s wheelchair out of the private family dining room on the main floor. Behind them were their daughter Martha and her husband David Patterson. The President smiled when he saw him.
“Mr. Baker, so good to see you. You’ve met my family, I believe. Not only is my son-in-law the new senator from Tennessee, he’s the only man in this blasted place I trust to carry my wife up to our private quarters. She suffers from consumption. But she’s a fighter. She’s not giving up to her ailments.”
Patterson picked up the First Lady and with grace led the way up the staircase.
“At some point I’m afraid Eliza will have to return to our home in Greeneville. This big city living is not good for her health, it seems; but my daughter Martha will act as hostess when the time comes. Please join us upstairs.”
Baker nodded as they began up the staircase. Johnson leaned into him to whisper.
“Wait for me in my office. I have some documents to show you. It doesn’t look good for Stanton.”
“Yes, sir.”
On the second floor, the Johnson family turned toward the bedroom.
“We must get Eliza into bed before she sprains my poor son-in-law’s back.” He smiled again at Baker and motioned to his office at the end of the hall. “Go ahead. I’ll join you momentarily.”
Baker found himself alone in the president’s office. First he looked back down the hall to make sure no staff members lingered after hours. He returned to Johnson’s desk which was a jumbled mess of papers. On top of the heap was what he was expecting from Johnson’s comments—an investigation into the private affairs of Edwin Masters Stanton, Secretary of War. Pushing the report aside, Baker dug deeper into the stack where he found another report—alternatives to the Freedman’s Bureau, achieving dissolution with minimum political impact.
Taking a small notebook from his inner coat pocket, he began scribbling notes from the report. This would be information Stanton and his friends in Congress would want to see. Johnson grumbled about his displeasure with the agency for months, but no one knew what his plan of attack might be.
When the door creaked open, Baker twitched and looked up to see the president glowering at him. This was not the first time he had been caught in the act of spying. The Confederates had walked in on him often during his war years in Richmond where he pretended to be a photographer. A ready smile flashed across his face.
“I found that report you told me about, the one exposing Stanton’s background. I was just making a few notes so I might help in furthering your investigation.”
Johnson walked to him with his right hand extended. “Oh really. May I see what information impressed you so much?”
“It’s nothing much, actually.” Baker’s voice weakened.
“Nevertheless, I want to see it.” The President paused and added in a growl, “I said, hand it over.”
Baker knew he had been sloppy. He should have moved more quickly. He should have brought a second notebook, to make non-incriminating notes, which he could hand over in a situation like this, keeping the real notations hidden.
How had I forgotten the art of espionage? Did I allow myself to be caught in such a compromising situation? Did I create an excuse for Johnson to throw me out? Did I think this episode would extricate me from this ongoing political nightmare? Yes. I am tired. I want to go home to Jennie.
The President grabbed the notebook and began reading. First his eyebrows went up and then he pursed his lips before returning his gaze to Baker.
“I don’t see anything in here about Mr. Stanton.”
“Well, you see, I have devised a special code for my private purposes—“
“Interesting. You chose the words Freedman’s Bureau as code for Edwin Stanton?” He walked over to the stove, opened the iron door and threw the notebook into the flames.
“I am not a smart man, Mr. Baker. Not anywhere as smart as Mr. Lincoln, but remember this one fact: he’s dead, and I’m still alive. After years of living in poverty in the Tennessee mountains, I have developed a keen sense of smelling bullshit. I could have you thrown in prison, tried and executed for treason, but to maintain a façade of unity for the citizens of these United States I’ll simply say your services are no longer needed. Now get the hell out of here.”
Baker left without saying a word and returned to his hotel room where he slept more soundly than he had in years. His termination had lifted the awesome burden of being an evil embodiment of political expediency. Private Adam Christy’s pale, ghostly face smeared with blood no longer haunted his dreams.
The next morning he took the train back to his home in Philadelphia. He walked up the steps to his front porch. The house was not large. When he entered, he smelled bread baking.
“Who’s there?” Jennie’s voice called out. She stopped short when she entered the parlor and saw her husband. She hugged him and wouldn’t let him go. “What are you doing here? Do you have to leave on another one of your trips?”
“There’s not going to be any more trips.”
“Good.” She pulled away. “Why not?”
“President Johnson said my services were no longer needed.”
“Well, you didn’t like him anyway.” She hugged him again. “I’ve prayed for this day for a long time.”
“”I want to be in the one place where I know I’m loved.” He shut up before he started crying.
“Yes, thank God. We’re free.”
His face snuggled in her brown hair. Baker realized he was not completely free, even now.
To ensure my future safety I have to write my own version of the Lincoln assassination, as I’m sure everyone else involved will eventually do. I’ll make the book’s main subject my role in the creation of the Secret Service, a topic of interest but not daunting. By the end of the manuscript, I’ll reveal that John Wilkes Booth kept a journal from the time of the assassination to his own supposed death. I’ll also reveal I immediately handed the notebook over to Secretary of War Stanton. Eighteen pages are missing. I know there are eighteen pages missing because I was there when Stanton tore them out.

Previously: Booth shoots Lincoln and breaks leg in escape. Baker saves Booth’s life at Garrett’s farm. Anna Surratt pleads for her mother’s life. Johnson grants a reprieve, but it arrives too late. Stanton plots Johnson’s impeachment.
Raucous laughter emanated from the Executive Mansion’s basement kitchen in February of 1866. Lafayette Baker told President Johnson some of his tales of breaking up undercover rings during the war years. In particular, Baker embellished the details of how he tracked down and arrested Belle Starr, the notorious female spy. He claimed her charms held nothing for him for he was a good family man.
“So you have children?” Johnson asked, a small smile on his lips.
“Oh. No, sir,” Baker replied, a bit taken off guard. “My wife Jennie and I were never blessed with children. But I consider myself a family man because I am married and as such I—Jennie and I—we are our own family.”
“And where does she live?” Johnson’s tone lowered and his gaze was dogged.
“In Philadelphia. I was a mechanic there, before the war.” Baker heard footsteps and looked behind the president to see the butler and his wife, the cook, pass by the kitchen door and glance in. He realized they knew what he actually was and what he was capable of. Yet he still had to carry on. “She’s been my saint through all these years of separation.”
Baker didn’t know why but Johnson preferred to have relaxed conversations in the kitchen where the walls were rough hewn and the corners covered in cobwebs. Since the first of 1866, his kitchen friend had been Baker who in the months following the assassination had been more accessible to late night talks. Baker’s official job title had always been chief of the Secret Service, an agency dedicated to rooting out counterfeiters. Unofficially he handled unpleasant tasks assigned by Secretary of War Stanton. His latest job was to ingratiate himself to the new President so he could observe Johnson’s imperfections. The ultimate goal was to gather such irrefutable evidence that Congress would have no choice but to impeach and remove the President from office as soon as possible. The ruse only intensified Baker’s hatred for Stanton.
“Do you know why I like you, Lafe?” Johnson asked.
“No, sir. Why?” He clinched his jaw and hoped he would find the correct response to the president’s answer.
“Because you’re a real man. You know what it’s like to grow up snot poor. You got up and out of it. Made something out of yourself. Went out West. Did the tough work nobody else had the belly for.”
Baker’s eyes went down. “Some of it I’m none too proud of.”
“Oh, hell, pride never did nothing for nobody. I’ll be damned if I’m proud of anything I did in my life. But I’m proud to have you the head of the Secret Service.”
Baker looked up and smiled. “I’ll drink to that.” Pulling a flask from his inside jacket pocket, he extended it to the president. “Let’s share a toast to getting things done. It’s the best whiskey from your home state of Tennessee.” He could not continue to look at Johnson. One of the supreme tasks given him by Stanton was to lure the President back into his old drunken habits, a sure way to make impeachment efforts successful.
“Eliza is in the house now, along with our daughter and her husband and their children. They would skin me alive if they smelled liquor on my breath.” His face went grim when he stood. “In fact, she’ll be expecting me upstairs in a while.” He extended his hand to Baker. “Come again when you have the time. You don’t know how much these talks help me to relax.”
After Johnson left the kitchen, he walked up the stairs, his heavy boots crunching on the straw mats on the steps. Baker took a moment to compose himself before going outside through the kitchen door, turning his coat collar up to protect himself from the bitter winter winds. Going back to his room at the National Hotel, he took off his boots, sprawled across the bed, opened the flask and took a couple of gulps.
He tried to think back to a time when he decided money was more important than morality, honesty and loyalty. Baker knew. It was after he rose in the ranks of the military, each new position gave him more power. It seemed so easy. Discover the crimes of a public official. Tell the man he had two choices–submit to the humiliation of a trial or pay Baker to hide his sins.
Then, in 1862, Stanton approached him with his hare-brained scheme to kidnap Lincoln and hold him captive in the Executive Mansion basement. Baker saw this ultimate act of immorality easy to commit. He masterminded the abduction of Abraham Lincoln and manipulated simple-minded rebels to carry out the president’s assassination. He personally murdered the man and woman who pretended to be the Lincolns and drove the innocent young soldier who guarded president and the first lady to commit suicide. Those atrocious sins disgusted Baker and awoke what was left of his soul. Now Stanton coerced him into a new round of deception and murder, and Baker’s newly resurrected humanity said, “No.” Baker had to find a way to escape the grasp of Stanton. He was sick and tired of deception.
Washington City entered a new chapter of turmoil as Baker planned his personal emancipation. President Johnson began to set his own course for reconstruction, which followed neither the wishes of the late Mr. Lincoln nor the dictates of the Radical Republicans in Congress. It led into treacherous, uncharted waters. Baker saw rough sailing ahead.
In February, the President vetoed the extension and expansion of powers of the Freedman’s Bureau, which not only provided welfare relief for freed slaves but also to white refugees, now homeless after the ravages of war. Johnson wrote in his opinion that the bill was unconstitutional and, now a year after the war had ended, not needed.
Stanton summoned Baker to his office and berated him on his lack of action. Each time the war secretary slammed his fist on the desk, Baker cringed.
“What’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you forced him back into the liquor bottle? What’s going on in his mind? What other shocking steps will he take? Which bill will he dare veto next?”
“He won’t take another drink of liquor as long as his wife is in residence at the Executive Mansion.”
“That should be easily solved. The woman is an invalid. No one would be surprised by her sudden death.”
Baker glared at Stanton, but only a whisper came out of his mouth. “I’m not killing another woman for you. It’s got to stop. All this has got to stop.”
Stanton sat back in his chair. “Of all the men in Washington City, you are the last one I would suspect of turning coward.” He sighed. “Get into his office. Make notes of the documents on his desk. That should not disturb your new delicate sensibilities.”