by Alan Glenn
A well-dressed woman slowly came up through the square opening, her eyes blinking from the dust. “So there you are, as promised,” she said, smiling.
He knelt and took one of her hands in both of his. “My God, I can’t believe it’s you.”
“I can’t stay long. I need to be at work. But here.” One of her hands went down and came back up with a brown grocery sack with twine handles. “Some more food. I know Curt is feeding you, but he’s a bachelor. This should be better. I’m sure what he gives you gets dull after a while.”
He picked up the bag and lowered it to the floor. Everything just seemed all right. The visitor before him was the prettiest thing he had seen in years.
“You doing all right?” he asked.
Her happy expression faltered. “I’m … I’m holding up. There’s a lot of danger out there. But it’s you I’m worried about. From what little I know about what you’re up against …”
He said, “That’s it. Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself, worry about what we’re all doing. You do your job, I’ll do mine, and in the end, it will all work out.”
As she bit her lower lip, her eyes became weepy. “Okay, I hear you, but I’m still so scared for you.” She swiped at her eyes with one hand. “This is when … when I think about what might have been if you had been first to ask me out in high school instead of Sam. I know that’s a horrible thing to say … I mean, damn, I’m all mixed up. I just worry about you and miss you awful. And I think of you a lot.”
“Stop that,” he said. “If I had been with you back then, you would have been arrested, too. And you wouldn’t have that wonderful boy, my dear nephew. And my brother … he’s crazy about you. So please don’t say any more.”
She wiped her eyes again. He bent down, kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right. You get going now … and thanks. This was the best gift you could have given me.”
She smiled up at him through her tears. “It’s not much. Just some sandwiches and—”
“I wasn’t talking about the sandwiches. Now go.” She started to descend, and he thought of something. “Sarah?”
“Yes?” his sister-in-law asked.
“Stop thinking about the past, about what might have been. Think about the future. Toby … we’re doing this for Toby and the world he gets to grow up in. No matter what happens, no matter how much you and Sam and even I suffer, remember that.”
“I will,” she promised, and she closed the trapdoor, and the attic suddenly got dark again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
An earsplitting whistle cut through the chatter as somebody brought fingers up to his mouth. Hanson held up his hands and said, “Guys, I’m just as surprised about this as you are. Christ … Look, for now all days off are canceled. In fact, all time off is canceled. We’ll put cots in the basement because I know it’s gonna be a long haul between now and then. Okay, I want to see all the sergeants in my office, pronto, along with Captain Stackpole and Inspector Miller. Guys, this is going to be a hell of a thing. By the end of today, this city is going to be crawling with radio newsmen, newsreelers, newspaper reporters, and every nut with a grudge. I know you got questions, but I don’t have the answers. We’ll have a department meeting at ten o’clock, and we’ll know better then.”
A voice from the rear of the room: “Boss, all right if we go home, wrap a couple of things up, then come back?”
“Yeah.” Hanson nodded. “That makes sense. You officers on duty, go back to work. The rest of you fellas, if you need to go home, check in with the wife, or whatever, that’s fine. Just be back here by ten o’clock. And pack some clothes and essentials.” He slapped his hands together. “Let’s get a move on. There’s plenty of work to be done.”
Moving through the crowded lobby, Sam went upstairs, where Hanson’s door was open and Mrs. Walton was on the phone, desperately fielding message after message. The three shift sergeants and Art Stackpole, the sole police captain, were clustered around Hanson’s desk. Hanson was on the phone, nodding, saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah” while writing something down. The sergeants and Stackpole ignored Sam as he entered. Four of his fellow officers, and four men who figured they should have had the inspector’s job instead of him.
Hanson hung up the phone. He tore off a sheet of paper and passed it over to Sam. “Change of plans, Inspector. Rockingham Hotel. Room Twelve. Get over there right now.”
“What’s going on?”
“What’s going on, Sam, is that FBI character you met the other day is still here, and he’s going to be part of the federal task force running the summit security. He wants a liaison officer with the department, and guess what, you just got picked.”
“But I can do more if—”
“Sam, just do it,” Hanson cut in impatiently. “Okay? Look, in the last five minutes, every goddamn newspaper, radio station, and newsreel outfit within a hundred miles called me. Not to mention the governor’s office and our two distinguished senators and two representatives. I’ve also got to see your father-in-law in about ten minutes. Then there’s the matter of coordinating everything with the Navy Yard and about a hundred other things have just landed on my desk, so please, Sam, just shut up and do this. All right?”
Sam folded the piece of paper, stuck it in his pocket. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good. And one more thing. Here.” Hanson passed over an embossed piece of cardboard, and Sam glanced at it, saw a bad photograph of himself pasted on one side, and a drawing of an American eagle, and some lettering. Hanson said, “Your new commission in the New Hampshire National Guard. Congratulations. Stick it in your billfold, and for God’s sake, don’t lose it.”
“It says I’m a lieutenant. How in hell did that happen?”
“What? You got problems with being an officer and a gentleman?” One of the other cops snickered, and Hanson sighed. “Don’t worry about it, Sam. Automatic official rank and all that, reflecting your position in the department. Understand now?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So glad to hear it’s all clear for you, Inspector.” Hanson reached for his phone. “And if you can get to the Rockingham ten minutes ago, that would be goddamn delightful.”
Sam turned and left. As he passed Mrs. Walton in the outer office, he heard her say, “I don’t care if you’re NBC Red, NBC Blue, or NBC Pink, you can’t speak to the marshal. And he’s not a chief, he’s a—”
He took the stairs down to the main lobby two at a time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Rockingham Hotel was under a two-minute ride from the station, on State Street, and for Portsmouth it was an impressive building, brick, five-story, with two sets of narrow granite steps leading up to the wide swinging oak doors of the lobby. On either side of the steps was a massive stone lion, staring blankly out into the street.
The phones were ringing at the main desk, as people started calling in, demanding rooms, demanding reservations, demanding everything and anything for the upcoming summit. As Sam took the carpeted stairs up to the first floor and Room Twelve, he still found it hard to get his mind around what had just happened. His hometown, his Portsmouth, was hosting a summit between the world’s two most powerful men, Long and Hitler. It was one thing to grow up with history about you—the royal governors, the John Paul Jones house, the revolutionaries—but it was something else to know that history was going to happen here in the next few days and that you were stuck in the middle of it.
At Room Twelve he knocked on the door. A male voice invited him in.
“Inspector,” said Jack LaCouture of the FBI, standing up from a cushioned chair. “So glad to see you again. You remember my German traveling companion, don’t you? Herr Groebke.”
Groebke didn’t bother standing up. He stared at Sam through his cigarette smoke, his glasses obscuring his eyes. Both men wore white shirts. Both also wore holstered revolvers. Sam waited till LaCouture sat down, then sat and said, “So. How goes my homicide investigation?”
&nbs
p; “Who cares?” LaCouture asked. “One dead guy here illegally. I only care if Hans here cares.” LaCouture said something in German and Groebke replied, and LaCouture said to Sam, “See? Hans said there are priorities, and the current number one priority is this summit meeting. So the dead guy will have to wait. You got a problem with that?”
Peter Wotan. The dead guy had a name. Peter Wotan, and I know that, Sam thought. I know that and you can’t stop me from finding out more.
Aloud he said, “No, I don’t have a problem with that.”
“Your chief, he tell you why you’re here?”
“Marshal Hanson mentioned something about being a liaison with you. He didn’t say anything about the Gestapo.”
LaCouture frowned. “Sorry if working with the Germans pisses you off, but I really don’t give a crap. We’ve got about a month’s worth of work to do in seven days, and we need to do it right. I just got a phone call a bit ago from God Himself to make sure nothing gets screwed up.”
“President Long?”
“Hell, no. J. Edgar Hoover. Chances are, Long won’t be President forever, but I can tell you that Hoover intends to be FBI director until the sun burns out. A phone call from that bastard can send you to either D.C. or fucking Boise, can make you or break you, and I’m not one to be broken. So let’s get to it.”
Sam was silent.
“Your boss probably told you boys in blue how important the next few days are going to be, a chance to do good, to shine, blah, blah, blah,” LaCouture continued. “Well, that’s just so much bullshit. The next few days belong to us and the Germans, the Secret Service and the navy. You Portsmouth guys are going to be controlling crowds and traffic. And you, my friend, you’re gonna go out now and get us info on traffic choke points, lists of restaurants and places that can maybe hold all the goddamn visitors that are going to be streamin’ in here. That’s it. Savvy?”
Sam watched Groebke stub out his cigarette, light another one. He thought of what he could be doing with the Peter Wotan case. Instead, he’d become a glorified errand boy. “Yeah, I savvy.”
“Super. Here’s something to hold on to.” LaCouture flipped over a white business card. It had the FBI seal and LaCouture’s name and a handwritten notation on the front with the Rockingham Hotel’s address of 401 State Street and phone number of 2400. On the back was another note: Bearer of card detached to federal duty until 15 May.
Sam looked up at LaCouture. “A get-out-of-jail card?”
The FBI man did not smile. “It’s a card that makes sure you don’t get your ass into jail. By nightfall this city is going to be cordoned off, there will be troops in the street, and I don’t need my liaison having to explain to some army captain why he needs to take a dump somewhere.”
“Look, I just want to—”
The phone rang. The FBI man swore and got up to answer it. “LaCouture. Hold on. Yeah. Yeah. Crap. All right, I’ll be right down.” He slammed the receiver down. “Having a problem with the manager about the number of rooms we need. Look. I’ll go straighten it out. You two can stay here and improve German-local relations or something.”
LaCouture grabbed his coat and left, slamming the door behind him. Sam sat still, the white business card pinched between his fingers. The Gestapo man stared at him, smoking. Sam thought about the stories in Life and Look and the newspapers, the radio shows and Hollywood movies. This was how it ended for so many people over in Europe. Alone in a room with a Gestapo agent. The German had no power over him, but a part of Sam felt paralyzed by that rattlesnake gaze, the cool stare of a man who had the power of life and death, didn’t mind using it, and rather enjoyed having it.
Groebke stubbed the cigarette out in his ashtray and said, “You look … unsettled.”
“First time I’ve ever been alone with the Gestapo,” Sam said.
“Most of what we do … most of what I do … just like you,” Groebke said with a shrug. “A cop.” His English was impeccable but thickly accented.
“Maybe you think so. I find that hard to believe.”
Groebke stared at him.
“You don’t like Germans,” he said.
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Groebke cocked his head like a hunting dog catching a far-off scent, a sound of something rustling in the grass that must be chased and killed. “Have we hurt you in some way?”
“Yeah,” Sam replied, feeling his chest tighten. “You killed my father.”
The head moved again, slightly. “I think rather not. I have not had much experience with Americans. So I do not think I have killed your father.”
“Maybe not, but you and your people did.”
“Ah. The Great War, am I correct?”
“Yes, you are correct.”
“It was wartime,” the German said. “Such things happen during war.”
Sam thought, Oh yeah, such things, and mostly from the Germans. Flattening cities like Rotterdam or Coventry. Sinking passenger liners. Being the first to use poison gas. But this man was Gestapo, friends with the FBI and who knew whom. So Sam said, “Yeah. War. Not a good thing.”
“And your father,” Groebke persisted, apparently unoffended. “What happened to him?”
“He came home from the war, lungs scarred from German gas. Then he coughed his lungs out for another fifteen years before dying in the county home.”
“That was a long time ago, for which I am sorry. But what do you think of us now?”
Sam didn’t want to go any further with this German. “I’d rather not say. For reasons I’m sure you know.”
Groebke relaxed as if he knew he was winning this conversation. “I think I know Americans. You believe our leader is a dictator, a tyrant. Perhaps. But what of you? Hmm?”
Sam kept quiet. Wished LaCouture would hurry up and get back.
Groebke’s eyes narrowed. “Of you, I will say that your President is a fool and a drunkard. I will also say that my leader—he will be known as the greatest leader of this century. He took a country shattered by war, shattered by an economic depression, and brought it back in a brief time, to seize what was rightfully ours. Can you say that about your President? Your Depression still cripples you … your armed forces are an international joke … the Japanese are raping China and you stand by doing nothing … They are pushing you out of the Pacific by bribing you to abandon your bases, like the one at Guam … and you lifted not a finger when the Low Countries, France, and finally England itself fell into our laps.”
“You leader is a murdering bastard,” Sam said quietly.
Groebke was about to reply when LaCouture slammed in, banging the door behind him. “Nearly had to strangle the son of a bitch at the front desk, but it’s settled. Good. You guys okay up here?”
Groebke took his pale eyes from Sam and looked at the FBI man. “Ja. We are.”
“Good,” LaCouture said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Inspector …”
Sam got up and went to the door just as somebody knocked. LaCouture said, “Shit, see who it is, will ya, Miller?”
Sam opened the door, saw two Long’s Legionnaires standing there, cocky grins on their young faces. Carruthers and LeClerc, the ones who had come by his house last night. “Oh, it’s you,” LaCouture said. “Get your asses in here and let’s get to work.”
As he went past Sam, LeClerc bumped Sam with his shoulder, then laughed as Sam did nothing. Carruthers called out, “Oh, yeah, bud, we haven’t forgotten about that survey!”
Sam closed the door behind him, shutting out more Southern-tinged laughter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Nine hours later, Sam was back at the Rockingham Hotel, his notebook filled with scribbled notations of what the FBI was looking for—traffic control spots, restaurants to feed the arriving masses of federal agents, and rooming houses to lodge them all—but to his surprise, LaCouture and Groebke were gone. At the front desk, the harried clerk—working on a switchboard that wouldn’t stop ringing—pulled out a note and said, �
��Oh, Inspector Miller. Agent LaCouture said to meet him … let’s see here, meet him by the hobo encampment off Maplewood. He said you’d know where that was.”
Ten minutes later, Sam was right back where this had all started, walking up the railroad track past the Fish Shanty, past the spot where his tattooed John Doe—no, Peter Wotan!—had been found, and up to the hobo camp, the place where Lou Purdue and the others lived, the place where—
Smoke was billowing up from where the camp had been.
Sam quickened his pace, heard the low growl of diesel engines, saw black clouds billowing up. Two bulldozers from the Portsmouth Public Works Department scraped the charred ground into a burning pile, moving the crumpled boards and shingles of what been people’s homes. LaCouture was standing by a polished black Pierce-Arrow, watching the action. Groebke stood closer to the flames, talking to a Long’s Legionnaire.
LaCouture turned to Sam, looking satisfied underneath the brim of his wide black hat. His pin-striped suit was immaculate, as always. Even his shoes were unscathed. “Inspector. So glad you could join us.”
“What’s going on?”
“A little cleanup, what do you think?”
The bulldozers growled, and he watched a bureau, a chair, a child’s doll get shoved into the flames. Smoke kept billowing up, oily and stinking. “What’s the point?”
LaCouture laughed. “What the hell do you think, boy? In a week, the President hisself is going to be coming up these railroad tracks. Do you really think we’re gonna want him and the press to see a bunch of bums and their filthy shacks?”
Sam watched the orange flames do their work. A bulldozer grumbled by, scooping up trash, some dirt. Riding the top of the dirt was a Roadmaster bicycle, just like the one Toby had. Sam stared at the bicycle, willed it to fall to the side, safe, unharmed, but then the bulldozer bucked and the bicycle fell under the treads, was crumpled, chewed up, destroyed. His chest ached. What kind of place was he living in?