by Alan Glenn
She raised her voice over the crowd. “Yes. He wrote me about it … an American charity group presented it to him last year. He doesn’t need his crutches anymore.”
They were blocked in by the crowd, still clapping, still chanting “Jobs, jobs, jobs!” He watched Walter and Reginald talking and then the crowd shifted and he lost view. When he gained the view again, the British airman was gone.
Walter was still there.
Reginald was gone.
On two legs. Not a set of crutches like before.
People were jostling and bumping them. He pulled her to a nearby utility pole, pushed her against it, and said, “You stay here. I’ll make my way across the street, talk to Walter, find out where your husband went.”
“You’re quite kind. It’s been so very long since I’ve seen him.”
Something in her voice touched him. “You must still be proud of him, a hero pilot and all that.”
Tears were in her eyes, but her face was puzzled. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Your husband. Reginald. A pilot in the RAF. You must be quite proud.”
She said, “You’re quite wrong, Inspector. Reggie was never a flier. Not ever.”
Now it seemed as though the crowd had vanished, that it was now just the two of them, staring at each other in disbelief. “You showed me his photo,” Sam said incredulously. “In uniform. He told me he was a pilot. And so did Walter.”
A firm shake of the head. “I think I bloody well know what my husband did in the service. He was not a pilot.”
Sam stared into her determined face. “What was he?”
“Royal Engineers.”
“Royal Engineers? Doing what?”
When she told him, he broke free, shoving his way through the crowd.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Running across the street, he almost got hit by a speeding Chevy as another motorcade roared by, this one carrying reporters and newsreel photographers. When he got to the post office, out of breath, Sam elbowed his way almost viciously through the crowds, feeling the same urgency and despair that had seized him yesterday when he was trying to reach his brother.
Where in the hell was Walter?
The writer had disappeared. Sam ran up the steps, looked around. There. Walter was going down the street, joining the streams of people, heading to the B&M railroad station to bid the successful President farewell.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. At long last, the Depression seemed to have met its match.
He rejoined the crowd, forcing his way through, holding up his badge, saying over and over, “Police business, move! Police business, move!” But it was like some damn festival, the people were so happy and wouldn’t get out of the way. Elbows were sharply jabbed into his ribs, and once a heavyset woman stepped on his foot with a high heel, but by the time the station came into view, he was close.
He spotted the pudgy shape moving ahead. Sam took a breath, pushed his way past an older couple, almost causing the woman to fall.
He grabbed Walter’s coat collar.
“Hey!” Walter called out, and Sam spun him around. A bout of nervous laughter came from his tenant. “Oh, Sam! Christ, what a fright you gave me. I thought I was being robbed. Or even arrested.”
Sam had his hand on Walter’s coat and dragged him to a hardware store and its doorway. He pushed Walter in and, breathing hard, said, “You’ve got one minute to tell me what the hell is going on here, or I’ll turn you over to the feds. Let’s see how your college background helps when they give you an ax and a fifty-foot pine to cut down.”
Walter tried to laugh again, but the nervous sound seemed to strangle in his throat. His white shirt was wrinkled, and his red necktie was barely tied about his plump neck. He glanced around and said, “Really, Sam, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Walter, where’s your valise?”
“My what?”
“Your valise. Your briefcase. Where the hell is it? It never leaves your side. You’ve told me that often enough.”
“I suppose I left it at home this morning when I—”
Sam slapped his face. “Don’t lie to me!” he raged. “I saw you carry it into the post office, and you were carrying it when you left with Reggie Hale!”
Tears were streaming down the bewildered older man’s face. Sam grabbed his shirt collar, twisted it, shoved him against the doorway. “He’s not a pilot, is he? He’s in the Royal Engineers. Bomb disposal unit. That’s how he lost his leg. Not being shot down by a German fighter plane. Injured when a bomb went off as he was trying to—”
The valise was gone.
Reggie Hale was gone.
An expert in explosives.
Heading to the train station.
“You …” Sam left the sentence unfinished, and ran back out to the crowded sidewalk. Now Walter was there, desperately clinging to him, trying to hold him back.
“Sam! Please! It’s too late! Sam!”
Sam tried to punch Walter, but this time the exprofessor surprised him by ducking his head and then coming back up and pleading, “It has to happen! It has to happen this way! There’s no other choice!”
“You … you’re going to kill the President!”
In a stunning move, Walter struck him, and Sam rocked back on his heels. “No!” Walter shouted. “Not a president! A dictator, an emperor: A fraud who just pledged our lives, our sacred honor, to help one of the great monsters of our time to slaughter millions. That’s what’s out there, about to leave Portsmouth. Washington, Lincoln, Wilson—those were presidents. Not that freak of nature, that accident of circumstance!”
Sam broke free, plunged again into the crowd.
What to do?
A phone in this chaos?
He looked around. No cops. No National Guardsmen.
Where the hell was LaCouture when you needed him?
The crowd swept him closer. There was the platform, and the President stood up there, waving his hat, wrapping up a speech whose words couldn’t be heard, and cheering. Sam felt his body go rigid, bracing for the platform to disintegrate in a cloud of flames and broken wood.
Bang.
He flinched.
The band started playing a Sousa march, the bass drum banging. There were more cheers, and then Long moved out of view and Sam’s throat clenched up.
This was the man who had imprisoned his brother, had imprisoned and killed so many others, and whose thugs found great joy in using his brother as a pawn to be tossed away, destroyed when he was no longer needed. Walter was right. The man wasn’t his President. He was a criminal.
And Sam’s wife and son were in a prison controlled by this man and his people.
But let him die, to stand here and let it happen … A rush of emotions surged through him, led by revenge. Let the goddamn Kingfish get killed. Why not? The bastard deserved it as much as Hitler did.
He stood still, frozen, among the happy, jostling crowd.
And yet … and yet …
There were thousands and thousands of Jewish refugees alive in the United States because of Long. Tens of thousands of Jews who hadn’t been killed, hadn’t been gassed, hadn’t been shot. And thousands more were on their way.
But Long was the key, as his boss had said. Without Long, there was no agreement. With Long dead—maybe things would improve. Maybe.
But with Long dead, thousands more—without a doubt—would die.
Sam kept moving, shouldering through the crowd, holding up his inspector’s badge, pushing ahead, seeing in his mind’s eye poor Otto, starved and beaten and away from home, Otto and his barracks mates, depending on Long’s decision, depending on the Americans, depending on Sam, goddammit.
On the platform there was a knot of people at one end, waiting to get onto the Ferdinand Magellan. The Portsmouth cops let him through, thank God, and now he was on the platform, running, the stench of fear and burnt coal in his nostrils, and up ahead were men carrying submachine guns under their coats, other people, newsreel men, and waving a b
oater, President Long, whooping it up, laughing—
Joining the crowd, walking deliberately, limping, Reginald Hale, carrying Walter’s old valise, walking straight toward Long and the crowd of people—
A Secret Service agent, large and wide in a black suit, shoulder holster visible under his coat, tried to block Sam, who shouldered him aside like the football player he once was, and he elbowed and spun—
“Hale! Stop! Right there!”
Reginald Hale turned at the sound of his name, his face suddenly white and frightened. He carried the valise with both hands. Sam pulled his revolver out, holding up his badge in the other hand, yelling loudly, “Bomb! He’s got a bomb! He’s got a bomb!”
Yells and screams and a phalanx of armed men grouped around the President, their submachine guns held up like spears of some old Roman guard. Hale was moving forward, too, the valise held against his chest like a prized possession, moving faster.
Sam shot once, and Reginald stumbled, fell to his knees. Men and women on the platform flattened to the ground, screaming as the guns opened up. Sam saw it all as the British army officer, his body jerking from the blows of the .45-caliber slugs, fell backward and rolled off the platform to the railway bed below, and as a couple of the braver guards stepped forward to fire again at him, the shattering boom! of the explosion tore them to pieces.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Sam sagged against a cement pillar, opening and closing his mouth, his ears ringing. A man came into view, kneeling next to him. Sirens were wailing. The man’s suit was soiled with coal dust and blood. He mouthed something, and Sam said, “Huh? What?”
The man yelled into Sam’s ear: “I said I need you to come with me.”
“I can’t move.”
“You better move,” he answered, “because you’re putting the President’s life in danger, you moron.” The man grabbed Sam’s arm, and Sam angrily shook it off and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“Parker. Agent in charge of the President’s Secret Service detail.”
“Is he okay? The President?”
“Oh, shit yeah, but he’s had to change his underwear. Do me a favor and forget I told you that.”
He helped Sam to his feet, Sam letting him. There were shiny spent cartridge cases and pools of blood, and by the platform edge, where Reginald Hale had fallen, there were two figures covered by stained white sheets. Expensive leather shoes poked out from under the sheets. Wooden police barricades were being set up, keeping screaming crowds and desperate photographers and newsreel men at bay. At the other end of the station platform, the Ferdinand Magellan was at rest, smoke and steam curling lazily up into the sky.
Parker gripped Sam’s arm again and said, “Come on.”
“What for? And why am I putting the President in danger?”
Parker looked at him as if he were a first-grader appearing in a high school math class. “The President wants to see you. The man who saved his life. And you’re putting him in more danger because I want him the hell out of this town. Two assassination attempts on Hitler and Long in two days is too much. The quicker I get him back to Washington, the better, and that’s why I need you.”
Sam was half dragged, half propelled to the rear of the train, which had a wrought-iron railing about the stern car, complete with presidential seal. Secret Service and two of Long’s Legionnaires stood guard there, all armed with pistols or submachine guns. “Do me a favor, okay?” Parker told Sam. “Do this thing and I owe you one, bud. Just go in there, let the President gush all over you, then get the hell out. Quicker you’re done, quicker I can get back to my job. Oh, and you need to do something for me—your sidearm. Nobody but Secret Service and his Legionnaires see him with weapons.”
Sam said, “I’m not sure where it is.”
Parker grunted, flipped open Sam’s coat, and pulled the revolver from the shoulder holster. Sam didn’t even remember putting it back after shooting Reggie Hale.
He said nothing as Parker led him past the unsmiling men. As the door opened, Sam ducked in, his ears still ringing, his legs trembling. There were men crowded in the leather- and wood-lined train car. The window shades were drawn. A Southern voice, so familiar from radio and newsreels, boomed: “Everyone get the hell out, all right? I want to see this young man, this hero, and I want to thank him myself!”
In a matter of seconds, Sam was alone with the President of the United States.
Huey Long sat on a light yellow settee, plump legs sprawled out before him on the carpeted floor. He had on a bright red silk dressing gown and blue pajama trousers. His feet were clad in black slippers, and a thick glass was in one hand. Long was grinning, but his face was red, and Sam saw his hand was shaking, making the amber-colored liquor slosh back and forth in the glass.
“So!” came that familiar voice. “The man of the hour! My personal savior. Just who the hell are you, son?”
Sam stepped forward on the fine Oriental carpeting, trying to take it all in. Part of him couldn’t believe he was here, talking to the man, and part of him was also aware of his stained and torn suit.
“I’m Sam Miller, sir. I’m an inspector with the Portsmouth Police Department.”
“You’re the one who warned us all? Who fired that first shot, eh? Against that mad bomber?”
“That’s right, sir.”
The florid face became suspicious. “You said your name was Miller. Dammit, didn’t a guy named Miller try to kill Hitler yesterday? That man a relative of yours?”
“Yes … a relative, I’m sorry to say.”
He waited, then the train seemed to stabilize as Long laughed and roared, “Damn, relatives can be a hell of a thing. If you knew what some of my relations back in Winn Parish were up to … I’m jus’ glad you were here savin’ my bacon at the last minute. How in hell did you know what was gonna happen, son?”
“Sir, it’s a fairly long story, well, I think you’d want to get out of Portsmouth instead of listening to it. It’s a pretty complex investigation.”
Long laughed again. “Damn, boy, that’s what they were tryin’ to do to me—to get my ass out of town—but hell, I told ’em, first, I don’t want to skedaddle out like some scared nigra hearing a haunt from the woods, and second, I want to meet the brave peace officer who not only saved me but saved his country.”
The President’s eyes narrowed as he took a healthy swallow. “You know that, right? You saved your country, son. Only the Kingfish could get that son-of-a-bitch housepainter over here to sign that treaty, and that treaty, son, is gonna mean millions of jobs for people at home. None of us got any taste to get into that fight over there in Europe, but if we can make some money off the deal, then why the hell not?”
Sam thought of Burdick, knew they and the others would survive with Long still alive. “That’s a good point, sir. A good deal.”
Long finished off his drink with a contented sigh. “It certainly is.” He quickly got up and extended a hand, which Sam shook. His skin was cold and clammy. Long said, “This wasn’t the first time someone tried to kill me, and it probably won’t be the last. Hey, you wouldn’t be interested in being in the Secret Service, would you? I sure could make it happen. You could be on the White House detail. Some travel but”—he laughed again—“I’m told there are some side benefits.”
“No, sir, thank you. I think I’ll stay here.”
It was an odd thing, it was as though a radio switch had been clicked somewhere behind those bright eyes of President Long; he had seemingly lost all interest in Sam. Tugging his robe closer to his ample frame, he said, “Well, son, thanks again for what you did, and for comin’ in to talk to me. If you ever find yourself in D.C., by all means, stop by, and if there’s anything I can do—”
It came to Sam like a flash of lightning from a cloudless sky. “Mr. President, there is one thing you could do for me.”
“Eh? What’s that?”
Sam took a breath. “Sir, my wife and son. They could use your help.”
&nb
sp; “How’s that?”
“My wife, Sarah, and my little boy, Toby. They’re being kept at the internment facility at Camp Carpenter, outside of Manchester. They haven’t done anything wrong. They were picked up by mistake just before the summit. I’ve tried to get them out, but …”
Long pursed his lips. “Your wife, she didn’t do anything?”
“Mr. President, she’s just a school secretary. She’s the daughter of the city’s mayor. She’s a supporter of yours for years now, and my boy, he’s only eight. How could they be a threat?”
There was silence for a few moments, just the grumbling and rumbling of the steam engine. Sam could feel sweat trickling down his neck. Long stared at him. Then he nodded. “All right. You write down their names right there on that pad, and I’ll check it out, and maybe I can get ’em sprung.”
“Mr. President?”
“Eh?”
“Could you make it an official pardon? That way, my wife won’t have to be scared about being picked up again. You know how mistakes are made.”
Sam wondered if he had pushed too hard, if everything was threatened. But Long smiled and said, “That must be some wife, you’re so desperate to get her home. All right, a pardon. I guess you deserve that after what you did for me and your nation. But I need the names, and they need to be checked out. Now, if you don’t mind, Inspector …”
Sam didn’t mind. He took out his fountain pen, scrawled Sarah and Toby’s names on the notepad, hardly believing he had pulled it off. Long took it and headed to the far door, yelling out, “All right, you sons of bitches, I got one more piece of paperwork to take care of, and then let’s get this train goin’ the hell out of here!”
Sam went out the way he’d come in, and by the time his feet were back on the platform, the sharp shrill of the train whistle cut through the afternoon air. The Ferdinand Magellan glided away, the President, and current dictator, of the United States safe and sound.
Sam looked again at the sheet-covered bodyguards, and he shuddered, thinking of the bloody mess on the tracks below. Reginald Hale, killed in a foreign land, trying to murder a foreign leader.
