by Alan Glenn
Sam took the chair across the desk. The Legionnaire said, “Sam. Good to see you.”
“How long?” Sam said.
Clarence Rolston, the janitor and handyman for the Portsmouth Police Department, picked up a file folder and replied, “Years and years, of course. And damn long years at that. Pretending to be brain-soaked, slow and dense, takes a lot of work. Most Legionnaires are happy to do their work in public. It takes a special talent and commitment to spend years underground.”
“Was Hanson in on it?” Sam had to ask.
Clarence’s smile was thin-lipped. “Sort of defeats the purpose of being undercover if your supposed boss knows what’s going on.”
“You were very convincing,” Sam managed to say, thinking of what Clarence must have overheard, must have seen, all the while toiling in the background of the police department. He remembered what the marshal had told him back in Burdick: That’s our world, Sam. Spies and snitches everywhere.
“Thanks, Sam,” Clarence replied, going through the folder. “Only the ones who desire to see the President and the Party succeed can be chosen for such a task. But you know what? I was proud of every second of my job.”
Sam thought, Back there, dammit, should have taken that chance, should have taken off when that kid said somebody wanted to see me. All those important papers he had … and his plans for them … oh, Christ.
He said, “Does your brother know?”
Clarence grimaced. “You mean my older brother, the honorable Robert Rolston, city councillor? He knows how to toss a vote for the right bribe, how to skim a city contract for money, and how to get booze and broads in return for city jobs. Other than that, he knows shit.”
Sam said, “I see.”
Clarence said, “Let’s get right to it, all right?”
Sam was startled at the sound of a shotgun blast coming from outside, but the firearm discharging didn’t bother Clarence a bit. Sam said, “Sure. Let’s get to it.”
The supposed janitor put on a pair of reading glasses and said, “What I have here is a collection of documents, Sam, all implicating you in a variety of anti-Party crimes and activities. For example, I have a denouncement saying that at the last Party meeting, you wrote down the names of Long, Coughlin, and Lindbergh when you were asked to list the names of local undesirables. I also have a canvassing report from two Legionnaires who detected suspicious activity at your house when they arrived for a visit. And I have an interrogation report concerning your brother and other plotters against the President. This report strongly implicates your participation. Finally, I have a request from a facility in Vermont seeking your immediate arrest and internment because of activities threatening national security.”
Sam stayed still, his ears roaring like tidal waves crashing over him, overwhelming him and everything in their path.
Clarence peered at Sam over his reading glasses. “Do you have anything to say about these documents, Sam?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you deny the information contained in these reports?”
“No.”
“Anything to say in your defense?”
Sam said, “Not a goddamn thing.”
Clarence stared, then put the papers down. “Very well, then. I have no other choice, I’m sorry to say.”
The Legionnaire lowered his hand, opened a desk drawer, and Sam watched as Clarence took out a—
Cigarette lighter. Sam was expecting a pistol, or handcuffs, or an arrest warrant.
Clarence took the papers he had read, held them over the wastebasket, and with a flip of the lighter set them ablaze. The flames quickly rolled up the sheets of paper until Clarence was forced to drop them in the wastebasket. Wisps of smoke rose to the peaked green canvas roof of the tent.
Clarence put the cigarette lighter back into the desk drawer, slid it shut. He took his reading glasses off. “Sam, you always treated me well all the years I was undercover. Every single time you saw me. Not like some of your fellow cops, who figured I was just a dummy, a moron they could ignore or tease or rough up … Anyway, how you treated me day after day, month after month, year after year, that tells me what kind of man you are. Not whatever was claimed on those sheets of paper—which, of course, no longer exist.”
The Legionnaire picked up a fountain pen. “You’re a good guy, Sam. But get the hell out of my sight, all right?”
Sam did just that.
* * *
Outside of the temporary holding areas on the football field, a small crowd of people had gathered against the fence, looking for friends or family members. A couple of the braver ones were arguing with the Legionnaires keeping guard at the gate. Sam slipped through and thought of the luck that had just graced him.
As he was going to his Packard, there was a touch on his arm and a familiar voice. “Sam? Sam?”
There was Donna Fitzgerald, face drawn, eyes puffy. She had on a shapeless tweed coat. He said, “Donna … what’s wrong?”
“Larry … he’s been rounded up … and all I know is that he’s in there somewhere.”
“What are they charging him with?”
She wiped at her runny nose. “Who knows? Who cares? He hasn’t done a thing since he’s been back from the camp, just sleeping and catching up on his eating, and now he’s gone again. Oh, Sam,” she sobbed. “Can you help me?”
His chest felt cold and tight. “Donna, I’m sorry, I’m just a local cop, and it’s a federal charge he’s up against. I can’t do anything.”
“But I saw you walk out of the compound with no problem.”
Sam was torn, God, how he was torn. He wanted so much to help his old friend, but he had to keep moving. There were so many important things going on, things he couldn’t talk about or even afford to think about too much.
“That was different, Donna. Police business. I’m sorry, there’s nothing else I can do.”
Her hand grabbed his. “Sam. Please … we’ve known each other for years … I thought I could rely on you …”
“Donna—”
Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t you remember when we were kids, how you saved me?”
He knew the look on his face said it all: He didn’t remember. She went on. “I had. I had started to develop … you know? And a couple of the neighborhood boys, the Taskers, they wanted to see my boobies … they were holding me down, they were trying to pull off my shirt. You were there, and you pulled them off of me, slugged them, and I ran home crying. You saved me, Sam, you saved me …”
She squeezed his hand and went on, faster. “I don’t have much in the way of money, but I can make it worth your while. You know I can. Pay you back … for then and now …”
For the briefest of moments, he closed his eyes. Thought about the other desperate women he had heard of, offering the only thing they had to try to free their men. How had it come to this? He opened his eyes, took his hand back from her, and gently said, “Donna, I can’t.”
By then it made no difference. Donna turned back toward the closed gate, her shoulders slumped against the biting wind, her possible savior no help at all.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Sam spent the night at the station, having no desire to go back to the wood-frame building that had once been a home. He hoped being here would push away the thought of Donna, standing alone, betrayed by her government and by the man who had been a childhood hero. By now the National Guardsmen and the cops not on regular shift had gone home, leaving him alone with a desk sergeant who was content to sit in a wooden swivel chair and read the latest copy of Action Comics. Sam dragged a cot up to his office area and made a bed there. Before stretching out, he read and reread his notes and the medical examiner’s report from those few first days when everything seemed possible, his very first homicide case, one that he would solve and get off probation and make everything safe and secure for his family.
Sarah. Toby.
The pages fluttered as he read them. He supposed he should have fought
harder when she left with his son, should have made a scene, but there was too much going on, too much knowledge—his wife a revolutionary, her own father her contact, Toby a courier as well. He had just let her go.
Would Tony have done that? Just let her go?
He doubted it. Tony was a fighter, always a fighter, even going into a suicide mission with his eyes and purpose clear.
And Sam? What was Sam Miller?
He read the report one more time, saw what he had been looking for.
The papers shook in his hands.
Who was Sam Miller?
He was going to find out.
* * *
Later that night, he got up from his cot, padded down to the lobby in his stocking feet. As he had hoped, the desk sergeant was still in his swivel chair, but he was snoring, hands clasped across his belly. Even as the department’s janitor, operating in the darkness as a spy, was probably busy signing arrest or execution warrants back at Sam’s high school playing field. Sam went back upstairs, where a desk lamp was on, illuminating both his desk and Mrs. Walton’s.
In his upper drawer he reached to the back. He pulled out a screwdriver that he used now and then to fix his own swivel chair. Not tonight. Hell, he thought, looking up at the clock, not this morning. He went over to Mrs. Walton’s desk, which smelled of her lilac scent. He knelt and jammed the screwdriver into the lower drawer. The wood squealed, and a piece of metal snapped free, and then the drawer came out.
Sitting there in plain sight was the infamous Log, the record of every upper-ranking officer in the Portsmouth Police Department. Luckily, Mrs. Walton had prim schoolteacher handwriting, for everything was as clear as day. When he got to a certain page and a certain date, he stopped, sucking in his breath. He read the entries three more times before he was satisfied, and then he tore out the page, tossed the book back inside, and closed the broken drawer.
The page now folded, he stuck it in his pants pocket and stretched out again on the cot and stared up until the morning light came through the windows. Then he got up and did some work at his desk. After that he went into Marshal Hanson’s office and propped a note on his desk blotter.
As he drove away in the early hours, he looked back one more time at the old brick building and thought, I’m never coming back.
* * *
At a small white Cape Cod house at the outskirts of Portsmouth, the county medical examiner answered the door after Sam spent nearly ten minutes banging on it. Saunders’s hair was unkempt, and he had a dull green robe wrapped around him. Saunders looked at Sam and said, “What is it?”
“The other day, at my brother’s burial, you asked me if you could trust me to do the right thing.”
“I remember.”
“The answer is yes,” Sam said. “And now I have a question for you.”
The doctor opened the door wider. “Come in and I’ll give you the answer.”
* * *
Resuming his drive just a few minutes later, he checked his watch and knew he was pushing it, since Hanson was always one of the first to arrive every morning. But there was one thing he had to see before he went on.
On State Street, he pulled up across from the brick building. The building had once housed the only synagogue within miles. It was shuttered and closed; the posters of President Long he had seen slapped up the other day were still there. Those who had worshipped here, who had raised their families here as Americans, had fled to other parts of the country during the unsettled months after Long’s election. Self-ghettoization, it had been called. He tried to recall what he had thought about it at the time and remembered hardly a thing. It was just one of those unsettling bits of news that came across, and since you couldn’t do anything about it, you kept quiet and went about your business.
For some reason, he recalled his high school days, a kid on the team named Roger Cohen, who was a halfback. During one of the training sessions, out on the football field that was now a temporary prison, someone had made a crack about Roger being a weak-kneed Jew, and Roger had practically flown across the grass to slug that other kid.
Good ol’ Roger. Not one to take crap from anyone. He wondered where Roger was, if he ever thought of his days back here in Portsmouth, if anyone else even remembered him and his family.
Did anybody remember? When did they all stop caring?
He shifted the car into drive. But before he left, he looked at the shuttered synagogue one more time, and he saw that someone had taken the time to tear away some of the Long posters from the far wall of the synagogue.
That one sight cheered him as he drove away.
* * *
At Pierce Island he stood by the shoreline, looking across the harbor to the naval shipyard. The cranes and smokestacks and buildings were still there, as well as the hulls of the submarines under construction. The wind was biting, and his hands were in his coat pockets as he stared out at the shipyard. By the dock where Hitler had landed, the decorative bunting was still up, though parts of it were snapping in the breeze. The circle closes, he thought. This was where he and Tony had played and hidden as children, this was where Tony had come when he had escaped from the labor camp, and this is where he was going to try to make it all right.
The circle closed.
The rumble of a car engine reached him. A black Ford sedan clattered over the bridge and came to the parking area, where it pulled in next to his Packard. The driver’s door opened and Marshal Harold Hanson got out, dressed in his usual suit and tie, his face puzzled.
“Sam … what’s going on?”
He walked over to his boss. “You know,” he said softly, “something I’ve always wondered about this little island.”
“What’s that, Sam?”
He looked around at the flatland and the scrub brush and trees. “This has always been a magnet for illegal activity, hasn’t it? Every few months we get sent here to make some arrests, make some headlines, and after a while, the problems return. But you know what? Why isn’t there a gate over there by the bridge? A simple gate, closed at dusk, opened at dawn, and instantly, you take care of about eighty, ninety percent of the problems.”
Hanson said, “That’s interesting, Sam, but what—”
“But there’s never been a gate, has there?” Sam interrupted. “And you know why? Because this island serves a need; it’s a safety valve. The mayor and the city council and the police commission, they’d rather have this place open so that any undesirables congregate in one place, make it reasonably safe and happy for the rest of the city.”
Hanson didn’t say anything, just stared unhappily at him. Sam said, “That’s all we do, isn’t it? We do the bidding of others, we do things either illegally or not at all, to make those higher up happy and content. Whoever the hell they are.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
Sam reached into his coat, past his shoulder holster, and took out his revolver. He cocked back the hammer—the click sounding very loud in the morning air—and Hanson held up both hands and said, “Whoa, wait a minute, Sam, what do you mean—”
“What I mean is this,” Sam said, raising up his revolver. “Petr Wowenstein escaped from a research facility in New Mexico and made his way to Portsmouth. He was coming here to reach the Underground Railroad, a station that was going to help him get to Montreal, with something very important he was carrying. A station I know you’re familiar with, with all those hints you’ve given me. Wowenstein was a courier with a package that meant the life and death of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. But the package never got delivered. Just as he was coming into Portsmouth, just as he was about to leave the train, he was murdered. His neck was snapped, and he was tossed off the train like a piece of garbage.”
Hanson said, “Well? So what?”
Sam held the revolver level and steady. “What’s what is the truth,” he said. “Harold, you were on the train that night. You were trying to get the package off Petr Wowenstein. And when you couldn’t find
it, you killed him.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
He stared at his boss, wanting to see a reaction. Except for a quiver of the lips, there was nothing. Sam said, “No reply, Harold?”
“Sam, you’ve drawn a gun on me. You’re making crazy accusations. What do you want me to say? And what the hell gives you the right to call me by my first name?”
“The right of someone who’s no longer your errand boy. You were on that train, Harold, and you murdered Petr Wowenstein.”
“Sam—”
“Then tell me it’s not true.”
“Of course it’s not true!”
Sam took one hand off the revolver, went back into his coat pocket, and took out two pieces of paper. He tossed them in the direction of Hanson, where they fluttered to the ground. “Pick them up.”
Hanson stared at him for a moment, then squatted down, picked up the slips of paper.
“The one with the blue lines,” Sam went on. “You’ll recognize it, I’m sure. It’s a page taken from Mrs. Walton’s log. You may run the department the way you see fit, but by God, Mrs. Walton demands to know where everyone is. No one dares to cross her by telling a lie. And the night the Boston express train came through, that’s where you were. It says so right there in her writing. How did you get back and forth to Boston? On the train, and with your National Guard and police marshal IDs, you could ride for free, no paperwork. Right? But remember what you told me that morning I came to see you? You said you were in Concord the day of Petr’s murder. Not Boston.”
Hanson crumpled the paper, let it drop back to the dirt. “So?”
“Check out the other paper. It’s a carbon copy of my report on my first homicide. My first homicide, Harold. Read the last two lines, will you.”
Hanson, his voice dripping contempt, said, “Since you’re holding a gun on me, I guess I have no choice.” He brought the piece of paper up and read it: “ ‘According to Dr. Saunders, his autopsy results have not yet been finalized, although he is confident in his finding of homicide. No progress has yet been made on the victim’s identification, although the investigation continues.’ ”