Free The Lincoln Conspiracy by Timothy L. O'Brien

pockets if you’d like,” Nail told Augustus. “Take some for the kiddies.”
    Augustus walked down the center of the room, gaping up at the sea of money that surrounded him. He looked back at Temple, who was grinning. When he drew closer to the wall and touched some of the bills, he discovered that they were slightly damp. All of them were Confederate States of America notes printed in Richmond,Columbia, or New Orleans. Jefferson Davis’s face looked back at him from many of them.
    “You stole all of these?” Augustus asked Nail.
    Nail grimaced, shaking his head.
    “Each and every one of the notes is a cogniac,” Nail said before pointing to the far end of the warehouse, toward a large metal machine topped by a wooden, Z-shaped press. “Homemade, with my very own bogus.”
    His explanation finished, Nail curled his thumbs under his armpits and rocked back and forth on his heels with pride.
    “Nail is a boodler,” Temple said to Augustus. “He floods the South with counterfeits.”
    “And our government pays you no mind?” Augustus asked.
    “No, our government just pays me,” Nail replied. “They wanted to dump cogniacs all over the Secesh. The more shovers I sent to the South with fake notes, the more Chase and Stanton were willing to pay me. People feel lost when they don’t have faith in the money they carry in their pockets. You spread enough bad paper around the South and it’s just as bad as gunshots. But the war winds down and my trade expires and they’ve warned me not to turn green.”
    “Green?” Augustus asked.
    “Stanton and Chase are starting to circulate all of these greenbacks up here, these new national dollars to replace the beauties that the states made. They don’t want me makin’ cogniacs that pass as greenbacks. They’re happy to keep the Secesh on their heels with spooky money, but they want it gone up here.”
    “So you won’t?” Augustus asked.
    “Haven’t made up my mind. I’ve got many mouths to feed in Swampdoodle, and those lads and their pups out there aren’t devoted to me beyond their next meal. Besides, do Stanton and Chase believe that all these mongrels in this Un-united States are going to magically accept a single currency just because some fookin’ poliotricians in Washington tell them to?”
    “Now we’ve got him wound up,” Temple said.
    “Well, one pot of money means you’ve got to believe in a nation, and this ain’t a nation. They’re set on this, though. They chased us out of New York before the war began ’cuz we were makin’ more money up there than the banks themselves. Beautiful days, those. That’s how I met Temple—when he was workin’ Manhattan with Tommy Driscoll. They caught me and Sam Upham. But that story’s for another day. I’ll want to know how you met our esteemed detective as well.”
    Nail swiveled away from Augustus and turned his full attention to Temple.
    “And, you, didn’t you have Pinkerton on you at every moment?”
    “Ah, so you know him?” Temple replied. “He got humbugged, I hope. Fiona, Pint, and Alexander led him to Oak Hill, and that’s when we got out of Foggy Bottom. Did Dilly get here?”
    Nail considered Temple, looking him in the eye. He walked toward him without a word.
    “McFadden, you’re going to rain down grief on all of us with whatever you have in that package. This is a purposeful, muscular lot coming after you.”
    “We don’t even know what we have yet,” Temple said. “Where are they?”
    “On the table near the bogus,” Nail answered, gesturing to the back of the warehouse. “They’re sitting inside that pile of engraving plates—it was the easiest place to put them after Dilly gave them to me. It’s my homemade vault.”
    “Augustus, you look first,” Temple said. “I think fresh eyes will help.”
    The engraving plates sat in a two-foot-high pile on a table next to the Z-shaped press. Augustus lifted several plates off the top of the stack: reverse images of Jeff