by Alan Glenn
His very first homicide, taken away from him. And not by the state police; no, by Hoover’s own SS, the FBI. With the assistance of the Gestapo. And the assistance of his boss. Who would have thought?
Dammit.
He started walking away from the police station, heading south. Before him, a small gang of truant boys were huddling around something in the gutter. When they saw him approach, they looked up but kept at work, each holding a paper sack. Cig boys, picking up discarded cigarette butts to strip out the tobacco and then roll their own, selling them for a penny apiece on the streets.
Not much of a crime, but still.
“Beat it, guys,” Sam said. “You’re blocking traffic.”
They scattered, but one boy with a cloth cap and patched jacket and black facial hair sprouting through his pimples said, “Screw you, bud,” and lashed out with a fist.
Something struck Sam’s right wrist. He grabbed at his arm and stepped back, but by the time he reached for his revolver, the boys were gone, racing down a trash-strewn alleyway. He looked at his wrist. Part of the coat sleeve was torn; the little thug had sliced at him with a knife! He pushed the tattered threads together and looked down the empty alleyway, holding his arm.
A few feet in another direction … could have been buried in his chest.
He lowered his arms, kept on walking. He couldn’t do anything about those little bastards. Too much was going on. Damn Tony for breaking out and making everything even more dangerous. To add to the fun, he had been drafted twice this week: for the state National Guard, and now the county steering committee for the Party. What would Larry Young do when he heard his political rival was sponsoring his son-in-law?
Crap. Where the hell was he going?
Up ahead was the Portsmouth Hospital on a slight rise of land. It was as if his mind were directing him where to go.
Sam found William Saunders sitting at his desk, smoking a cigarette. The doctor looked up from a sheaf of papers. “Inspector Miller, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Looking to see if you’ve had any special visitors lately.”
Saunders tapped some ash from the cigarette. “Alive or dead?”
“Alive, of course.”
“Yeah, I have,” he said. “Two thugs. One working for a gangster called Hitler, the other working for a gangster called Long. Charming visitors.”
“Mind if I ask what they did here?”
“Hell, no,” Saunders said. “The usual crap about autopsy, cause of death, that sort of thing. Stayed all of five minutes and then went on their way. But one interesting thing … They didn’t want the body or his clothing. Funny, huh? You’d think a murder case that has the interest of the feds and the Gestapo would mean they’d want the body. At least to have another autopsy done by a fed coroner. Nope. Our John Doe stays with the county.”
Sam said, “I’d like to look at him again.”
Once again, Sam followed the medical examiner into the autopsy room. Saunders went to the wall of refrigerator doors. The one in the center said JOHN DOE.
Saunders opened the center door and reached in. The metal table slid out, making a creepy rattling noise. Saunders pulled down the soiled white sheet.
Sam stared at the dead man. Once upon a time this man walked and talked and breathed, was maybe loved, and had ended up here, in his city. Murdered.
Who are you? he thought.
As if he were watching someone else, Sam reached down, turned over the stiff wrist, examined the faded blue numerals again.
9 1 1 2 8 3.
“Inspector?” Saunders asked. “Are you through here?”
“Yeah, I am,” Sam said. He put the wrist down and wiped his hands on his coat. The sheet was placed back over the body, the tray was slid back in, and the door was closed.
“So what now?” Saunders asked.
“The FBI and the Gestapo have taken my case. This John Doe belongs to them. Question is, what do you do with the body?”
“Potter’s field, where else? But if need be, I can keep him here for a while. If you’d like.”
Sam remembered something from a couple of years back about old Hugh Johnson, his deceased predecessor. Hugh had been holding court one night in one of the local taverns when he loudly announced that the most important part of the job was closing the case. That’s it. Close the case and move on. Closed cases meant no open files, no pressure from the Police Commission, and a good end-of-the-year report, to keep your job for the next year.
Just close those cases, boys, Hugh had said. Close ’em up and move on.
“That’d be great, Doc,” Sam said. “Because I’m still going to work the case. It’s mine. No matter what my boss says. Or the FBI and the Gestapo.”
Saunders scratched at his throat, where the shrapnel scar from the Great War glistened out. “Your boss? The FBI? The Germans?”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck ’em all,” the county medical examiner said.
“That’s an unpatriotic response, Doc.”
“Glad I surprised you. You get this old, sometimes that’s the only joy you get—that and ticking off the powers that be.”
Sam said, “What are you driving at?”
Saunders raised a hand. “Enough. Leave me be with my dead people, okay? Christ, at least they have the courtesy to leave me alone most hours.”
* * *
When he left the city hospital, Sam knew where to go next. He walked the eight blocks briskly, thinking and planning. The Portsmouth railroad station stood at Deer Street, almost within eyeshot of his crime scene. It was an old two-story brick building with high peaked roofs, which looked as though the architect who had designed it had been frustrated that he hadn’t been born during the time of the great European cathedrals. The last time Sam had been here had been as an errand boy, dropping off that Lippman character for the Interior Department.
Sam made his way past tiny knots of people buying tickets to Boston or Portland or checking on arrivals. He went through a glass door that said MANAGER and took the chair across from Pat Lowengard. Pat was a huge man with slicked-back hair who looked like he couldn’t stand up without his office chair sticking to his broad hips. He had on a tan suit and a bright blue necktie and looked surprised to see Sam. His desk was nearly bare, and on the walls were printed displays of train schedules for northern New England.
“Something more I can do for you, Sam?”
“Yeah, there is,” Sam said. “I’m looking for more information about that five forty-five express from Boston to Portland.”
“What kind of information?”
“Let’s just say … is there anybody working at the station who might have been on that train?”
Lowengard rubbed at his fleshy chin. “Gee, I’m not sure …”
Sam waited, but Lowengard kept silent. Sam said, “Well?”
“Huh?”
Sam said, adding a bit of sharpness, “Then find out, will you? I need to know if anyone here was on that train. The sooner the better, Pat.”
The man’s face flushed. He picked up the phone, started talking to his secretary, made a second call. Sam sat there patiently. From outside there was the sharp whistle of a steam engine heading out, its engine hissing and grumbling.
Lowengard put the phone down. “You’re in luck. A stoker named Hughes was on that train. He’s in the marshaling yard. I told his boss to send him over. That all right?”
“That’s perfect.”
Sam waited, took out his notebook. Lowengard said, “Heard there was a corpse found two nights ago near our tracks. I hope you don’t think we hit him, Sam. Even though the express goes through here pretty fast, our engineers would notice something like that.”
Sam said nothing. Lowengard wet his lips with his tongue, as if he couldn’t stand having his mouth being dry.
There was a knock at the door. Lowengard called out, “Come in!” and a man about Sam’s age came in, wearing greasy overalls and a denim cap. His skin was soiled as w
ell, especially his big hands, and when he entered the office, he took off his hat. There was a white stretch of clean skin on his forehead, making it look like an errant paintbrush had struck him.
Lowengard told Sam, “This is Peter Hughes. Peter, this is Sam Miller. He’s an inspector from the Portsmouth P.D. He’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Hughes blinked and looked at Sam. “Is … Am I in some kind of trouble? Sir?”
Sam said, “No, not at all. I’m conducting an investigation, and I have some questions about the Portland express.”
Hughes was twisting his hat in his big greasy hands. “An investigation, sir?”
“A police investigation,” Sam said, flipping open his notebook. “You were on the express two nights ago, from Boston to Portland?”
“Yep.”
“Did the train hit anything when it came through town?”
“No, sir. Not at all.”
“You sure?”
“ ’Course I’m sure. When we got to Portsmouth, hell, even if we did hit somebody, it probably wouldn’t’ve hurt ’em bad, anyway.”
Sam lowered his fountain pen. “I’m sorry, say that again.”
Hughes looked to Lowengard as if for reassurance, but Lowengard’s face had paled and Hughes found no reassurance there. He said, “Well, we were coming through town at a crawl.”
“You were? How fast was the train going?”
“Oh, crap, who knows. Three—maybe four—miles an hour. A nice slow pace.”
Lowengard said, “What the hell do you mean, four miles or hour? You’re supposed to be traveling much faster through there. Was the engine having problems?”
“No, the engine was fine, Mr. Lowengard. It’s just that, well, there was an auto on the tracks. On Market Street. Damnedest thing you ever saw. An auto, just sitting there pretty as you please. A yellow Rambler. Stan Tompkins, he’s the lead engineer, he hit the brakes and we slowed damn fast, and then the car drove off the tracks and headed downtown. Damn thing slowed us down right, that’s for sure. We had to pour on the steam somethin’ awful so we’d make our schedule to Portland.”
Sam looked at Lowengard. “And you didn’t know this?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said, indignation in his voice.
“Really? Station manager for Portsmouth and a train is forced to slow way down by a conveniently parked car, and this is the first you know of it?”
“If the train hit the car, fine,” Lowengard said. “Then I’d know. But a train slowed down by a car? Christ, Sam, every day something slows down the train. Kids playing on the tracks. A stuck truck. I don’t know everything about every damn train that comes through. This is the first I heard of it. Honest to Christ.”
Sam knew what both men were thinking: In these days, companies had no patience with anyone getting noticed by the law. If you caused a problem, any problem at all, you were out. Plenty of talented people were out there in the dole lines, begging for a job.
He said, “Mr. Hughes, thanks for the information. You can go.”
In an instant, the railroad worker was out the door. Sam said, “Pat …”
“Yes?” The station manager’s face was still pale.
“I want the passenger manifest for that express train.”
“That might be hard to get.” Lowengard frowned. “Lots of paperwork. Ever since the new law about internal transportation records kicked in a couple of years back, you wouldn’t believe the stacks of paper—”
“How long?”
A shrug. “Lots of paper. A week. Maybe two.”
“All right,” Sam said. “Two it is.”
The station manager grinned with relief. “Thanks for understanding.”
“Sorry, maybe you didn’t understand me. When I said two, I meant two days.”
“Days? Two days? That’s impossible!”
“Well, it’s going to have to be possible. Or there’re going to be lots of parking tickets around this station in the future. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Lowengard said, and Sam noted his forehead was shiny with sweat. The phone on the desk rang, and Lowengard grabbed it before the second ring. After listening for a few moments, he grunted a “yeah” and tossed the receiver back into the cradle. “There’s a train here that’s not on the schedule, that needs to be watered up. You wouldn’t believe the crap I have to put up with, Sam. Would not believe it … and then you waltz in here and add to it.”
“I’m investigating a homicide, Pat,” Sam said.
Lowengard picked up the phone again. “And I’m trying to run a train station and trying to keep my ass out of said train. Grace? Get me dispatch right away.”
* * *
Outside, Sam spotted some cars parked at the other end of the station, blocking the entrance. People were running away from the cars, heading to the tracks. A few of them were yelling, raising their arms, as other cars braked, two with steam spewing from their radiators.
He followed the noise to a fence blocking off the tracks. The men and women and some children were up against the chain-link fence, holding on to it with their hands, looking out to the train yard, to a parked locomotive, eight boxcars trailing and—
Sam saw National Guardsmen standing outside the train, carrying rifles with fixed bayonets. No wonder Lowengard had been so upset. A labor camp train, stopping here for coal or water before going out west or up north or someplace where the communists, the labor leaders, the strikers, any and all enemies, foreign and especially domestic, were dumped. Something cold tickled at the back of his neck. Those people in that train … they were heading to a labor camp for choices they had made, people they had associated with, organizations they had supported.
Choices. The cold feeling increased. And what kind of choices was he making now?
“Saul Rothstein!”
“Hugh! Hugh Toland!”
“Sue! Sue Godin! Are you in there?”
One heavyset woman with a blue scarf tied about her head turned to Sam, tears in her eyes. “Sir? Can you help? Can you?” She gestured at the train. “That train … it left Brooklyn two days ago. We followed it, best we can, they no tell us where it’s going. Now we just want to bring food and drink. That all.”
Brown paper grocery sacks lay on the cracked sidewalk. There were barred windows at each end of the boxcar, and hands were poking out between the bars, waving. Sam looked up and down the fence, spotted a gate. A B&M railroad detective, dressed in a brown suit, with a badge clipped to the coat pocket, was standing on the other side.
“Hey,” Sam said. “How about opening the gate, let these folks bring some food over to the train?”
The detective shifted the toothpick in his mouth. “Hey. How about you leave me the hell alone?”
Sam pulled out his badge, pressed it up against the fence. “Name’s Miller. I’m the inspector for the Portsmouth Police Department. What’s your name?”
“Collins,” he grudgingly replied.
“Look, Collins, let these people go in there. And tell you what: For the rest of the month, you can park anywhere you want, speed anywhere you want, and no Portsmouth cop will ever bother you. How does that sound?”
Collins said, “Boss’ll get pissed at me.”
“I can handle Lowengard. C’mon, let these folks go over, drop off the food, be a nice guy for a change.”
Collins shifted the toothpick again. “What’s it to you, then?”
“Guess I like being a nice guy sometimes.”
Collins scowled and spat out the toothpick, but stepped back. The crowd watched silently as he unlocked the gate. In a brusque voice, he said, “You folks go up there, pass over the stuff, then leave. Any funny business, you’ll be thrown in the boxcar with those slugs, and you’ll be in a labor camp tonight!”
Sam felt the crowd swirl about him like water parting around a rock, and there was a touch on his arm, the woman with the scarf, who whispered something foreign—Yiddish, perhaps?—and said, “God bless.” She joined the other f
amily members streaming to the parked train, rushing over the railroad tracks. Within moments grocery sacks, bottles of Coke and Pepsi, and sandwiches were being passed up to the barred openings, the eager hands reaching down, grasping for life.
Sam walked away. Maybe Walter was right. Maybe one man could make a difference. But for how long?
He stopped and looked back at the train, thinking again of the train that had sped through late one night, the one that was sometimes in his dreams. It was similar to this one but different—there were no openings allowing air and sunlight to come in. Those boxcars had been shuttered closed, as if those in charge didn’t want anyone to see what was inside.
But they couldn’t hide the voices, couldn’t hide the screams.
And one more thing. The train that night, speeding through the darkness, had gone past a streetlight, illuminating the shuttered boxcars and …
And what else?
The paint scheme. The cars in front of him were dark red. The special train from that night was a dark color as well, but there was a difference.
Yellow stripes had been painted on the sides of those special trains.
What the hell did that mean?
Nothing, that’s what, and nothing that was going to solve this murder for him.
* * *
He went to his desk, ignored Mrs. Walton, and when she got up to powder her nose, he picked up his phone, got an operator, and made a call to Concord again, this time to the motor vehicle division of the Department of Safety. He quickly found out it would take a week to get him a listing of all yellow Ramblers registered in the state. A week … well, what the hell. Make it thorough. Maybe it was an accident, maybe it was deliberate, but the train slowing down in Portsmouth was a question mark, and he wanted that question answered. Was the train slowed on purpose so the body could be dumped?
After the phone call, he was going through his old case files when a familiar voice spoke up.
“Inspector,” said the man. “You look like you could use some hooch. And since this department is officially dry, how about a cup of joe instead?”
Sam swung about in his chair, saw a smiling Sean Donovan before him, holding two white mugs of coffee. Sean limped over and pulled a chair closer to Sam’s desk. “I understand you’ve had quite the busy day.”