The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday Read online

  “And mentioned Dr. Shoot-em-Up, I imagine.”

  “He didn’t come out miserably, but he hardly got canonized, neither. Virgil Earp’s wife, Allie, openly despised him. Even Josie, Wyatt’s wife, referred to him as ‘an irascible tubercular’ and ‘the misanthropic dentist.’ Said his devotion to Wyatt was more liability than benefit and the friendship only survived out of pity.”

  Friendships don’t survive out of pity, she thought. If only.

  “But that was nothing compared to the blowback from the anti-Earp contingent back in Arizona. The kindest thing Doc got called was a touchy drunk. Before she died, Mattie confided that if only people could read Doc’s letters, they’d know he wasn’t the sick, heartless bastard everybody made him out to be.”

  Lisa, flinching inadvertently at touchy drunk, said, “Shame she destroyed them then. The letters, I mean. Unless…”

  Tuck turned back from the window, pointing with his glass at the ribboned packet. “Exactly. She said she destroyed them. What if our dear Sister of Mercy lied?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Tuck had already identified a motivated buyer through channels he’d established in the world of western art and artifacts—a retired judge and noted collector who owned a ranch at the edge of the Dragoon Mountains northeast of Tombstone—but when it came time to make the call he put Lisa on the line for the pitch. The judge agreed to a rendezvous. “Why not tomorrow—there any problem with that?”

  Given the need to move quickly, Tuck had insisted she not just take the letters with her but read a few, acquaint herself with their texture, their smell, the script, the words themselves, the better to assess their value.

  “They’ve been boxed up tight for a good long while,” he’d said. “Won’t be no worse for wear if you leaf through a couple. Just take reasonable care. Besides, they’re not real, remember? They don’t exist.”

  On the drive across town to her office, Lisa suffered the relentless temptation to pull over, oblige Tuck’s suggestion. At times she even imagined voices whispering to her from within the small black Pelican case in which he’d secured the letters.

  Finally, her resistance crumbled. She pulled into the parking lot of the Asian Art Museum and mustered the gumption to venture a peek.

  Tuck had given her several pairs of cotton gloves, the kind experts preferred when handling rare documents. She supposed it made her look as though she intended not to read the letters but palpate them. Or express their anal glands.

  She unlocked the small hard-shell case and stared for a moment at the knotted ribbon, the worn velvet cloth. Inside, the antique envelopes bore three-cent George Washington stamps and postmarks from the late 1870s, early-to-mid 1880s, and she selected one at random.

  The envelope was brittle, addressed to Martha Anne Holliday from John H. Holliday. The pages inside were worn and soft but sturdy, about seven inches by four, with rough edges indicating they’d been cut by a knife from larger sheets—not recently, from what she could tell, though only an expert could determine that for certain.

  The cream laid paper gave off an indefinable scent, neither musty nor perfumed. The ink was reddish brown, not black, an effect of oxidation, typical of iron-gall, a distinctive ingredient of the time. Tuck had explained all this, as well as the blurring from corrosion and the mirror-image tracings of some of the writing caused by cellulose degradation.

  The penmanship had an elegant precision, and the folds in the pages were deeply creased, just short of tearing, suggesting the letter had been frequently, even obsessively read and re-read.

  And as easily as that, she thought, we’re prepared to believe.

  ***

  November 8, 1881

  Dearest Mattie:

  Be forewarned, my news is not good.

  I killed a man, and but for luck would have killed another, for which it now appears I will likely hang.

  Three men in all died in the affray. Make no mistake, the violence was mutual. We defended ourselves. More importantly, though hatred enflamed both sides, a fact I cannot deny, those responsible for the mortalities, myself and the Earp brothers, two of whom took bullets as well, acted under color of the law.

  That now, however, appears to matter little, for the forces aligned against us, men without principle or honor, who treat the truth like a rag to polish their mendacity, will say or do anything to watch us swing.

  Small surprise, I suppose, for if history teaches us anything, it is that men can always produce attractive arguments to justify their disgraceful actions.

  Then again, that is precisely what is being said of us. That we used the law to justify butchery.

  It is not true, Mattie, I swear that to you.

  This turn in events has me wishing that I could not just write to you, but speak directly, openly, as we so often did long into the night at the house on Cat Creek, or that summer I hid away with you and your family in Jonesboro.

  In particular, I find myself revisiting over and over the evening when we left the house and walked beneath a threatening sky, with silent lightning flashes in the distance, talking as we trudged toward shelter in a windbreak of pines.

  You told me that night that you felt you knew me better than anyone else on earth. In particular, you understood not just the elemental, intemperate fire in my spirit, but its causes—Mother’s horrible sickness and ugly death, my father’s insidious betrayals, the degrading occupation with all the scum and scavengers it legitimized.

  More importantly, you told me that you loved me. We embraced and kissed, and you let me press my hand to your heart, so that I might feel the fury of its beating.

  It is that remembrance that has intensified and clarified my feelings of regret tonight. Your face rose up in my mind’s eye with such shocking vividness as I sat here, hoping to tame my thoughts, that I nearly wept with longing for your presence.

  I will admit, I am afraid. But I need to assure you, I did not kill easily or casually. Once the smoke cleared and the damage could be assessed, I returned to my hotel room, put my face in my hands and could not help myself from muttering over and over, like a penitent before the altar of Judgment, “This is awful. Just awful.”

  I found myself praying for the men we killed and shuddered at the haphazard course of misjudgment that led to so much blood.

  Worse, I understood the ancient curse of wrath in a way I previously had not, drawing from the well of rage more deeply than I ever imagined a man could.

  What I tasted when I drank was the sin of Cain.

  I do not say this out of some perverse extravagance, or to placate your piety, nor to seek from you once again the grace of understanding or, even more impertinent, forgiveness.

  I say it to claim the truth about my own nature. The greatest sin is not murder but hypocrisy. I saw myself clearly, too clearly. I am not a good man, and absent a deluge of grace from God, that never will change.

  That is the terrible truth of sin, the absence of escape.

  I know you will pray for me and remind me of the Lord’s mercy. I am grateful for all such kindness. What I am trying to confide is that I know now, as I have never understood before, just how little I deserve such a blessing.

  I will end here, except to say that, sobered by the prospect of malicious judgment and immanent death, as well as the fact I may never get the chance to write you again, I have never felt more keenly the affection for you that I carry in my heart.

  Please know that, despite all the meagerness of spirit I have exhibited, throughout all my misspent wanderings, you have remained my true north. That will continue until my final breath.

  It is well past midnight, but not quite dawn. An hour, I suppose, that has defined my life. For it seems I have spent the vast majority of my days enveloped in darkness, waiting for that first show of light.

  With all the love in my heart,

  Your devoted, John Henry

  CHAPTER 4

  The offices of Barragan & Balamaro—“Creative Law for Creative Peop
le”—took up the whole first floor of an ivy-covered, bay-windowed Italianate mansion overlooking Fay Park on Russian Hill. The house belonged to Nico Barragan, Lisa’s partner.

  They’d met during her first year of law school at Fordham. A graduate assistant at the time, he led a symposium on art and the law at the Brooklyn Museum that basically changed her life. Good God, she’d thought. Being an attorney can be fun.

  She soon developed a walloping student crush, but as the dashing bachelor professor tended to prefer the wild, the beautiful, and the damned—angry poets, wastrel painters, fringe musicians—she contented herself with studying under him, learning from him, volunteering for law clinics, helping out with his quirky practice.

  When an eccentric aunt left him the San Francisco property, he decided to pull up stakes and head west. Unable to imagine needing the entire place for himself, he’d built out the downstairs for offices, the second floor for his residence, the third for guests and visitors, and hung out his shingle.

  When the business began to take off, he contacted Lisa and asked if she’d consider relocating. For the sake of the flattery alone, she would have said yes. And sobered by the prospect of malicious judgment, as it were, she recognized the wisdom of placing a continent between her new career and her reckless past.

  ***

  Letting herself in at the mansion’s front door, she spotted a light from the kitchen in back, beyond the offices, and ambled down the high-ceilinged corridor toward it.

  A toasty aroma greeted her as Nico, nursing a glass of white wine, turned as she entered and offered a smile—rugged man-boy in the prime of life, a cyclist’s build, strong and slender, ponytail, soul patch, jeans and plaid flannel. The hip lawyer at home.

  “Roasting eggplant and jalapeños for a tapenade,” he said. “I would’ve done it upstairs, but the thermostat on my oven’s still on the blink.” He set down his wine. “You’re working late. Make you some tea?”

  “That would be lovely.” She set the hard-shell case on the center island, scooched herself onto a stool. “I have a few things to square away before I head off tomorrow.”

  “Really.” Scouring the cabinet, searching through tea tins. “Head off for where?”

  “Arizona.”

  “Good God, why—penance?”

  “Tombstone Territory.”

  “Ah!” He turned from the cabinet. “Golden Assam, yes?”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Of course.” He put on the kettle, triggered the flame. “Tombstone. Arizona. Land of cowpokes and cacti and immigrant-bashing homophobes. My question stands—why?”

  She nodded to the Pelican case. “Let me tell you a story.”

  He glanced up, met her eyes. Something registered, as though at last he’d intuited her seriousness.

  “Mind if I make a salad while you do? I’m famished.”

  ***

  Lisa related what Tuck had told her, Nico hearing her out as he fussed with dinner, making enough for both of them.

  “So apparently, instead of burning the letters like she said she did, Sister Melanie, Doc’s cousin, secretly handed them over to this former slave named Sophie Walton. She stayed on as a servant for the family after the Civil War and lived with the wife of one of his other cousins. There’s a lot of byzantine family stuff I won’t go into now—”

  “Please,” Nico said, plucking the tops off cherry tomatoes, “don’t.”

  “—but the long and the short of it is that the nun trusted Sophie to both save the letters and also keep them secret, at least until the generation that still felt scandalized by Doc had died off. But before she could do that, Sophie herself passed away. Her name was Sophie Walton Murphy then, though no one seems to know who Murphy was.”

  “Men,” Nico offered, turning toward the sink to rinse his tomatoes.

  “The letters got stuck in a safe deposit box at a tiny African-American bank in Brooklyn that went under in the Great Depression. The U.S. Comptroller of the Currency collected up all the unclaimed boxes, and the letters just sat in a warehouse somewhere until 1985 when—again, I’ll skip the details—a woman named Savannah Murphy Royster claimed a kinship to Sophie and, after a lot of rigmarole, took possession.”

  “Happy ending,” Nico said, “tra-la-la.” He’d moved on to the cucumbers, the Persian variety, small and crisp, slicing them onto a bed of greens in a large wood bowl.

  “Kind of. Turns out Savannah was a bit of a squirrelly bird herself. Hoarder type, house a labyrinth of dusty junk. Did nothing with the letters, didn’t even look at them, apparently, for thirty years. Then, after a stroke, she decides to see if they’re worth anything. Finds out about Tuck, learns he pretty much knows everything about the Old West—”

  “Phony or otherwise,” Nico said. Glancing up, he added, “Sorry.”

  “Savannah hands them over to him to authenticate, intending them as a present for her favorite granddaughter, a young lady named Rayella Vargas.”

  “Sounds like a kickboxer,” he said. “Or a bride of the revolution.”

  “According to Tuck, she’s barely more than a kid, hasn’t had much luck in life. This could be her ticket. But before Tuck can get anywhere looking into the letters, the grandmother has a second stroke and dies.”

  “Oops.” Nico glanced up. “Let me guess. She didn’t have a will.”

  Lisa waved him off. “It was a pre-death gift, apparently, or that’s how Tuck understood it. Regardless, that’s not the point. The Holliday family will never concede that these letters are genuine, especially given what’s in them.”

  Finally, she had his full attention. “You’ve read them?”

  “One,” she admitted sheepishly. “On the drive here. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh hell yes.”

  “Getting back to the problem—the family most likely will dig in their heels, stand by the nun’s story that she burned them, and file suit.”

  “Under what cause of action?”

  “I don’t know, false light, publication of private facts, specific performance if nothing else.”

  “The nun’s the one with standing, not them. And to restate the obvious: Sistuh Melanie, she dead.”

  “You’re missing the point. Again. Rayella’s broke. She can’t afford the legal fees even if the lawsuit goes nowhere. Or pay to authenticate the letters. No known independent samples of either Doc’s or Mattie’s handwriting have apparently survived. These letters are it.”

  “Maybe she can use them for wallpaper.”

  “Tuck let her know that there are people willing to buy them, even without authentication. The money’s not inconsiderable.”

  Nico shrugged. “Black market for everything.” He returned to the sink, rinsed off his knife and cutting board. “And Tuck’s going to arrange that for her?”

  “Sort of. He’s identified the buyer. But given his past, it just seems wise for him to stay in the background. Rayella needs somebody else, somebody beyond reproach.”

  Nico slowly turned back from the sink. “I see.”

  “No,” Lisa said. “Not you. Not the firm. Just me.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Nico wrapped up his preparations, adding strawberries and anchovies and cayenne pecans, a hearty drizzle of olive oil and balsamic, the juice from a whole Meyer lemon, tossed the lot and divvied it up into individual bowls.

  They ate in silence for a while.

  Finally, he said, “Not to play the spoil-sport, but the whole thing sounds a bit screwy.”

  “I know.” Even to herself, her voice sounded a thousand miles off.

  “So…”

  She speared a slice of grilled red pepper. “Just how it is. Like I said, I’m heading off tomorrow. We’re flying to Tucson. I’m meeting the client, Rayella, at the airport.”

  “That quick.”

  “Seems so.”

  He took that in, nodded. In a conciliatory tone: “Probably a lot of Old West nuts around there. Well, okay, not nuts. That’s rude. Aficion
ados. Connoisseurs. And such.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured, thinking: motivated buyer.

  The silence returned. In time, it felt like a river running between them.

  “Know what?” He waited until she glanced up, looking at her as though she’d flunked some essential test. “Just going on attitude, okay? Body language. I don’t think you’re all that keen on this. You’re pissed. You’re afraid Ol’ Hunk Forger is lying.”

  She set down her fork. “I wouldn’t say lying.”

  “What hasn’t he told you?”

  “How could I possibly know the answer to that?”

  “What do you think he hasn’t told you?”

  “It isn’t that he hasn’t told me anything. It’s just the situation altogether.”

  “No, it’s him. It’s Hunk.”

  “Please don’t call him that.”

  “You’ve got an utterly obvious crush on the man.”

  “I do not.”

  “Client crush, then. Slightly more innocent. No less dangerous.”

  “He hasn’t been a client since I drafted his consulting agreement with Christie’s. Technically.”

  “Now that’s reassuring.”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “All the worse if he’s playing you.”

  “He’s got too much to lose. Everything he’s built these past few years. He’s made a reputation. The money’s good, better than good. Why lie? Especially about this.”

  “Well, if you’re going to revert to your old ways, might as well swing for the fences. You have to admit, if those letters are a hoax, it’s a doozy.”

  She tossed her napkin gently onto the countertop, appetite gone.

  He regarded her a moment. The brownest, warmest, hardest eyes, like those of a saint in a medieval tryptic. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “That’s not an issue.”

  “Yeah? Who is this clown willing to pay good money for a bunch of letters he’s got a pretty good idea are fake?”