by Alan Glenn
Two-fifteen in the afternoon? No, too early. The body would have been noticed way before Lou Purdue stumbled across him. So it had to be the later train, for if it were a train that went to the Portsmouth B&M station, it would have slowed before stopping. Which meant maybe John Doe was murdered on the train and tossed off. From there, start checking the train, the passenger manifest, the conductors and the train crew, and you could start making some effort to finding out just who in hell had been—
“The five forty-five P.M.,” he said. “A local?”
“Nope,” Pat said. “Express. Straight shot from Boston to Portland.”
Damn, he thought. So much for that theory. “How fast does the express go?”
“Through town? Thirty, maybe forty miles an hour.”
Sam looked back at the glossy prints of his John Doe, lying peacefully in the mud. At thirty to forty miles an hour, the body would have been tumbled in a mess of broken limbs and torn clothes. But there he was. No broken bones, no smears of mud on his clothes, no identification, half starved …
He rolled the fountain pen between his fingers. “Any unscheduled trains come through yesterday? Trains associated with the Department of the Interior?”
A pause, as though the connection had been broken, and then Pat’s voice returned. “No, nothing like that, and please never ask me that again over the phone, all right?”
Sam dropped his pen on his blotter, hearing the sudden fear in the station manager’s voice. “Sure.”
* * *
After a quick stop in the grubby men’s room, Sam went back to his desk. The phone started ringing and he picked it up as he sank into his chair. “Miller, Investigations.”
“Inspector? Inspector Miller?” From the rumble of traffic over the wire, he could tell the call was coming in from a pay phone. “It’s me. Lou Purdue. Lou from Troy. You was lookin’ for me earlier, weren’t you?”
Inadvertently, Sam touched his sore cheek. “Yes, I was.”
“Good, ’cause I want to see you again. The other night you said to call you if I remembered somethin’. And I did.” Lou coughed. “Shit, I know I only got a couple of minutes ’fore the pay phone hangs up on me. Look, meet me over at the camp, okay? I’ll be there in five minutes. Hey, will I get another buck from you?”
“You’ll get more if you tell me what you remembered.”
Another cough, and in the background, the sound of a truck driving by. “Like this, I remember standing there in the rain, waitin’ to see if a cop car was gonna come over, there was another guy waitin’, too. So what, right? But now I remember. His shoes were all muddy … and they was nice shoes, too … but they was muddy like he had walked down the side of the tracks, just like me and you and those cops. Made me think maybe he knew somethin’ about that dead guy.”
“What did he look like?”
“Oh, a nice-lookin’ fella, you could tell that—”
Click.
“Hello? Lou? You there?”
Nothing save the hiss of static. The operator had cut him off after the first three minutes.
“Dammit!” he said, banging the phone back into the cradle, shoving back his chair and grabbing his coat, leaving the station and Mrs. Walton to her typing, before she could say a word.
Back to the encampment he went, making that long walk after parking in the Fish Shanty lot. Like before, the old man who was the unofficial mayor stalked up to him and said, “You, the cop. Lookin’ for another slug?”
Sam poked him in his skinny chest with his index finger. “Are you?”
The old man laughed. “Like I said ’fore, cop, arrest me, I don’t give a shit, and—”
Sam stuck out a leg and then tripped him. He fell to the ground and squawked. Sam pressed his boot down on his left wrist, bent, and said, “I gave you that last one, pal, but don’t think you can screw with me again, all right? And maybe I’m not in the mood for arresting you, maybe I’m in the mood for breaking a finger or two, so shut up, all right?”
The old man grimaced, and Sam knew he should feel guilty, but he didn’t. He looked around at the worn-out cars and trucks, the shacks and lean-tos, the smoky fires and the children, children everywhere, thin and too quiet. “Lou from Troy. Is he around?”
The old man spat up at Sam. “Nope. He was here a few minutes ago. But he’s gone now. Jesus, step off my arm, will ya?
Sam saw three men, joking and talking by one of the shacks, ignoring him and the man on the ground. “Where did he go?”
“Lucky son of a bitch got himself a job. Ran into camp, grabbed his bundle, said he had a job up north, won’t be back for a month. A month! Lucky bastard.”
Damn, he thought. Damm it all to hell. “Did he say where he was going?”
“Nope. Jus’ that he was gone, it paid okay, and he’d be back.”
Sam stepped off the old man, who scrambled to his feet, rubbing his wrist, eyeing Sam, spit drooling down his chin. Sam slid a business card from his wallet, passed it over to the old man with a quarter and a nickel. “You save that nickel and call me the minute Lou comes back. Okay? You do that and I’ll pay you a dollar.”
The old man shook his head. “Think you can bribe me, that what you’re thinking?”
Sam said, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“Mister, that there’s a deal, no matter what you call it.”
A man emerged from one of the shacks, laughing. Sam watched him go over and josh some with his coworkers—oh yeah, they were Navy Yard guys. The four of them—in dungarees, work boots, and heavy shirts—looked at him as he approached.
“Fellas, time to leave,” Sam said.
A pudgy guy said, “Hey, take your goddamn turn, okay? We got here first.”
Sam held out his inspector’s badge. “I got here last, and you’re leaving now, and you’re not coming back. Unless you want your names and pictures in the paper.”
Eyes downcast, they moved away hastily, and as Sam left, a woman yelled at him, “Who the hell are you, huh? Mind your own goddamn business!”
He looked at the shack, saw it was the woman he’d seen before, the one collecting her dollar from the visiting dockworker. She said, “You gonna make up for these guys not comin’ back here? Huh? Are you? You got money for me, a job for me, you got anything, you bastard?”
Sam shook his head and walked on.
* * *
Parking outside the police station and walking up the sidewalk, Sam felt as though he could use a bath. The size of the camp ebbed and grew depending on the weather and the availability of jobs, but it had been in that spot by the cove for years. In other places, such as Boston and New York and Los Angeles, the camp populations were in the thousands, or so he had heard. One never saw the camps on the newsreels.
Up ahead, Sam was surprised to see who was coming toward him: his upstairs tenant, Walter Tucker, with a tentative smile, his leather valise firm in his hand.
“Hey, Walter, everything okay?”
“Oh, yes, things are fine.” Walter’s watery eyes flickered behind his eyeglasses; a soiled blue necktie fluttered in the breeze through his open coat. “You see, I was walking to the post office to mail out my latest opus, and I thought I’d come by and take you out to lunch. My work habits aren’t the best, but I do get to the post office every day at noon. So. A lunch to thank you for cleaning out my sink the other night.”
“Walter, really, you don’t have to—”
“Please, Samuel. A free hot meal that doesn’t come from a relief or a soup kitchen. Doesn’t it sound attractive?”
Sam paused, thinking maybe Walter wanted to become more friendly in exchange for a rent reduction, but to hell with it. The curse of being an inspector was being suspicious all the time. “Sure, Walter,” he replied. “Lunch sounds swell.”
They walked three blocks from the police station, joining the thin lunchtime crowd from the shops and businesses. A few of the men in the crowd were sandwich men, sad-looking fellows wearing cardboard
signs on their front and back. One said CARPENTER WITH 10 YEARS EXPERIENCE. NO JOB OR PAY TOO SMALL. PLEASE HELP. I HAVE 3 CHILDREN. Sam looked away. The signs were different, but the men all looked the same: unshaved, thin, clothes and shoes held together by tape or string. The sky was slate gray, a sharp breeze bringing in the salt air from the harbor. Walter said suddenly, “Let’s cross the street, all right?”
On the other side of State Street, Sam saw the problem. A squad of Long’s Legionnaires was outside a shuttered and closed synagogue, slapping up posters with buckets and brushes dripping glue, laughing as they plastered the paper over the dull red brick. The large posters showed President Long’s grinning face, and each poster had one of two slogans: EVERY MAN A KING or SHARE THE WEALTH.
They walked on. After a moment Walter said, “Well, it’s not ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer, but it’ll do. Sam, do you miss your Jewish neighbors that much?”
“I was just a patrolman when they left back in ’36. My dad said we lost the best deli in town and the best haberdasher. That’s all I remember. There were only twenty or so Jewish families in town at the time.”
“Can’t really blame them for leaving. When Long was elected, you could smell trouble was coming, somehow. So the Jews self-ghettoed themselves in Los Angeles and New York and Miami. Easier to help defend one another if you’re in one place. Still, a hell of a thing. Makes you wonder if they thought it through. Being in one place makes it easier to round you all up, and if that’s one thing this and other governments have learned, it’s how to round people up.”
* * *
The Rusty Hammer was a restaurant set on the corner of State Street and Pleasant Street, with a quick lunch service, and Sam hated to admit it, but he was pleased that Donna Fitzgerald turned out to be their waitress. Her uniform was tight and pink, the skirt a bit above the knees, and with a zippered top she had undone some, exposing the tiniest scrap of a white lace bra when she leaned over to give Walter his menu.
“So good to see you, Sam,” she said, putting a warm hand on his shoulder when she gave him his menu.
“You, too, Donna,” he said. “Any news about Larry?”
A wide smile, the same dimple flashed. “Yes, he came home early. And my, it’s so good to see him, but he’s tired and thin, and he can’t sleep that well. But I’m trying to fatten him up, and I hope I can get him a job here when he’s stronger, maybe even as a dishwasher, so long as he stays out of politics.”
“That’d be great,” Sam told her, and with a wink she went back to the kitchen. Walter eyed him, and Sam just stared back until he looked down at the soiled tablecloth.
Where they sat overlooked the street through a set of bay windows in a quiet corner. In the windows, as in so many other windows in the city, was a sign that said WE SUPPORT SHARE THE WEALTH. A radio in the kitchen was playing Rudy Vallee’s “As Time Goes By.” Donna came back with fried haddock chunks for Walter and a cheeseburger for Sam. She gave Sam another smile and another warm touch on the shoulder, which pleased him.
When lunch was finished, Walter delicately dabbed at his lips with his napkin and cleared his throat, “Despite all my problems, I’ve come to love Portsmouth. Here, you have one of the oldest port cities on the East Coast, a place where John Paul Jones stayed as one of his ships was being refitted. Nearly forty years ago, it was one of the great diplomatic triumphs of this new century.”
“Sorry, you lost me at that last one,” Sam said.
“What do they teach young’uns nowadays? The Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the war between Russia and Japan. Big doings here in 1905. Teddy Roosevelt was behind it all and got the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.”
“Some efforts,” Sam said. “Russia and Japan are still at war.”
“Hah,” Walter said, “but not with each other now, right?”
“True,” Sam agreed.
“You know, speaking of history, a more recent history happened here just over a decade ago, about three blocks away. Do you remember that, Sam?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to enlighten me.”
Walter moved in his chair, looked out the window, as if trying to catch a glimpse of whatever had been there ten years earlier. He said quietly, “Roosevelt came here for a campaign rally in the summer of ’32. A funny place for a Democratic candidate to be, since New Hampshire’s been solidly Republican since … God, probably since Lincoln’s time. But FDR was here and gave a little talk about the different times he had visited New Hampshire, and the Navy Yard, and just a bit of gossip. It was a Sunday, and Market Square was packed … and you know what? He could have read from the telephone directory and he would have been cheered. He had such magic in his words, such power.”
“Sounds like you were there,” Sam said.
“I was,” Walter said simply. “Took the train up from Boston. He had … he had energy, a confidence, a style that was just what we needed. He won in a landslide. And then, just before he was inaugurated in ’33, he was assassinated. Murdered by Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian with a grudge against power and powerful men.”
Sam checked his watch, was sure that Mrs. Walton was now back from lunch and was keeping careful track of his absence from the office in her all-important Log. “I’d just gotten out of high school. Don’t remember much about the assassination … more interested in girls and trying to get a job to help out my mom and dad. Walter, he was just a man. Okay? Just a man. He didn’t become President. Somebody else did. Life goes on.”
“Inspector, I’m sure you are correct about many things, many times, but you’re wrong about Roosevelt. He was what this country desperately needed. Hell, maybe even what the world needed, a real strong leader, and he was taken away before he could do one damn thing. And the man we got after his murder, his Vice President, was a Texan nonentity who bumbled through his four years and did nothing of note except clear the stage for our current glorious leader, a two-bit demagogue from Louisiana who loves being on the stage, loves crushing his enemies and jailing them, loves eating and drinking and whoring and doesn’t do much of anything else except drive this nation deeper into our own little red-white-and-blue brand of fascism. Don’t ever think one man can’t make a tremendous difference.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t have the benefit of your college education,” Sam said.
His companion smiled wearily. “Not many do. Tell me, Sam. Did you vote for the son of a bitch?”
Sam toyed with his napkin and said, “My first vote for President. And who else was I going to vote for? It was even tougher back then. My dad, he was getting sicker, needed help … and none of the hospitals or relief agencies could help him. He died at home, coughing his lungs out. So yeah, I voted for Long. He promised change so old guys like my dad wouldn’t have to die without medical help.”
“It was meant to be, Long being elected the first time around,” Walter said reflectively. “Unemployment was thirty percent, factories were cold, grass was growing in city streets, people were literally starving. When people are scared, they’ll give power to anyone they think will protect them. So he promised change, and we certainly got a whole lot of change. And none of it good. We could have been a great generation, you know, something for the history books, instead of what we’ve become.”
Sam thought of the dead man, thought about his own job. Do your job and try to keep your head down. That’s all that really mattered in these days of the Black Marias and political killings and lists.
“And me,” Walter quietly went on. “Blackballed from Harvard, and all because of something I did back in 1934 that put me on a list.”
“In ’34? You were an early hell-raiser, then.”
Another faint smile. “Me and a few dozen others. We were protesting the fact that our learned institution was honoring one of its famed alumni, Ernst Hanfstaengl, who had graduated twenty-five years earlier. Good old Ernst, varsity crew rower, football cheerleader, performer at the Hasty Pudding Club, and in 1934, devoted Nazi, head of foreign pres
s operations for the Third Reich. That Nazi bastard even had tea at the home of James Conant, the Harvard president, even though everyone knew the terror he and his friends were beginning against the Jews and others. So I protested, got on a list, and when I refused to sign that loyalty oath a couple of years ago, that’s all it took. Now here I am, back in Portsmouth—”
He stopped, as Donna dropped off the check on the table and said, “Thanks for coming by, Sam. And even with Larry back, don’t be a stranger, okay?”
“Sure,” Sam replied. “And good luck to the both of you, all right?”
“Thanks, hon,” she said. Walter watched her walk back into the kitchen, and so did Sam. “Walter, I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”
“Oh. Excuses, I’m terribly sorry. One of the many curses of being a writer. You forget other people have jobs and responsibilities and places to be.”
The college professor reached for his wallet, and Sam thought of something. “Walter, you’ve been my tenant for more than a year. This is the first time you’ve ever had lunch with me. What’s going on?”
Walter seemed to struggle for a moment and then leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “I’m … I’m sorry to say this, but I was hoping I could ask a favor of you.”
“You can ask,” Sam said. “Doesn’t mean I’ll say yes.”
Walter took that in and nervously looked around again. “It’s like this. In my time in Portsmouth, I’ve made a number of friends with our … our foreign guests. Guests who might not have the proper paperwork. I was thinking—hoping, actually—that if you were to hear word of a crackdown, you might, well, see your way through to—”
“Walter.” Walter’s face was expressionless, as though he knew he had pressed too far.
“Yes?”
“Pay the check. I’ve got to get back to work.”
Walter examined the bill, and the next few moments were excruciating, as the older man counted out three singles and then a handful of change. Sam felt a twinge of guilt. Being a police inspector didn’t earn much, but at least the pay was regular. Depending on money to arrive magically in your mailbox from magazines in New York had to be a tough life.
