Amerikan Eagle (26 page)

* * *

Sarah said, “I’ll try to call you the moment we’re settled in if the damn phone’s working.”

He kissed her and said, “You sure you’ve got everything packed?”

She squeezed the back of his neck and whispered, “Not really, but I’m leaving all my frilly things behind for later … for another rain check.”

Another kiss exchanged. “When it’s all over, I’ll come up to fetch you. The city’ll owe me some time.”

Sarah got into the front seat of the Oldsmobile. “Dad could come get us.”

“I owe him too much already.”

From the rear seat, Toby called out, “So I can go swimming? Really?”

“If your mother says so.”

“Good,” his boy said, and then, “Dad? Make sure my models are okay, will you?”

“Sure, Toby,” he promised. “Nothing will happen to them.”

He closed both car doors and walked up to his father-in-law. “Larry, thanks. I mean it. Thanks.”

“Always nice to know I can fill in when you can’t. Just need to discuss—”

For the benefit of his wife and boy watching from the
Oldsmobile, Sam smiled up at his father-in-law. “Let’s not keep my wife and boy waiting. All right?”

Lawrence said, “Just one moment, that’s all. Look, I understand you’ve taken my advice. To become more active in the Party.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“I see.” Lawrence’s voice turned frosty. “But I’ve been told you’re probably going to become more active under the sponsorship of Marshal Harold Hanson.”

“Look, can we get into this some other time, because—”

“No, we don’t have to go into it some other time. You’ve made your choice, and you’ll have to live with it. You’ve tossed your lot in with the marshal. That’s fine. And when budget time comes, don’t think you can come to me looking for help if your position in the police department is eliminated. When it’s eliminated.”

“Is that a threat, Larry? What, you think I’m your slave? Someone you can order around because I owe you?”

“Owe me? For what? Taking my daughter and grandson up to Moultonborough?”

“You know what I mean,” Sam said. “Everyone knows how I got my inspector’s job. You pulled some strings and talked to the Police Commission and—”

Lawrence laughed. “You stupid little dope. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“It was common—”

“Some smart inspector you are. I lobbied
against
you, you numbskull. Even knowing it might hurt Sarah. It would have been worth it to see you fail and stay a sergeant. Got that? And I still don’t want you to make it—a
punk like you, son of a drunk and brother of a criminal, with my only girl. And having you active in the Party … besides everything else, I just wanted you somewhere I had you by the short hairs. That’s all. And now that you’re sponsored by that fool Hanson, I know you’re going to fail. I’m going to enjoy every damn second of it.”

Sam took a breath, thinking of the secret he knew about this man, the one he had pledged he would never divulge. “The only thing I’m looking for now is to see you get the hell off my porch.”

Sam went in and closed the door, then stood at the window to see the Oldsmobile back out of the driveway and head away. He watched until it made the corner, turned, and his family was gone.

* * *

He didn’t bother going to the police station after his family left. Instead, he headed straight to the Rockingham Hotel. Two army MPs stood at the entrance, clipboards in their hands. Their khaki uniforms were pressed and their boots and helmets gleamed. So did their Sam Brown belts and the holsters for their Colt .45 pistols. Their faces were lean and serious, as if they spent a lot of time saying no to people.

“Sorry, pal,” the MP on the left told Sam. “Place is closed for the duration.”

“I’m sure, but I’m here to see Agent LaCouture of the FBI.”

“Name and identification?” the MP on the right said.

“Sam Miller. Of the Portsmouth Police Department.” He showed his inspector’s badge, his police identification
card, and just for the hell of it, his officer’s commission in the New Hampshire National Guard. All three were scowlingly examined by the MP on the right while his companion checked the clipboard and nodded. “Yeah, he’s on the list. ID check out all right?”

“Sure enough,” the other MP said, passing the identity cards back to Sam, who pocketed them. The lobby was chaotic, with piles of luggage, army and navy officers in full-dress uniform, and newsreel and radio reporters all thrust up against one another. He slipped through the crowd, went upstairs, and knocked on the door of Room Twelve.

Agent LaCouture opened the door, dressed for the day in shirt and tie and seersucker suit. Groebke was sitting at the room’s round table, a pile of papers in front of him. The Gestapo man was dressed plainly again, in a severe black suit with a white shirt and black necktie.

“Glad to see you, Inspector,” LaCouture told him. “You’re early.”

“Want to get a jump on the day,” Sam answered. The room smelled of cologne and stale tobacco and strong coffee. He wondered what the two of them talked about when they were alone together. Did they trade war stories about the Kingfish and the Führer?

LaCouture went to the desk, picked up a set of papers. “Here,” he said, handing them over. “Your task for the day. Here’s a listing of restaurants, hotels, and boardinghouses in your fair city. I want you to go to each of them, see how many people they can feed and house on a daily basis, get a master list together, and be back here by five o’clock. Got it?”

Sam looked at the papers. “This looks like something a clerk can do.”

“I’m sure, but this particular clerk I’m looking at is a police inspector and thereby knows everybody he’ll be talking to. And this particular clerk will know if someone is bullshitting him. So yeah, Inspector—a clerk can do this job, but I’m giving it to you.”

Sam said nothing, just folded the papers in half. The Gestapo officer was grinning. LaCouture said, “You don’t like it, do you?”

“I’ve had worse jobs,” Sam replied.

The day became a long slog of going through most of Portsmouth. As much as he hated to admit it, LaCouture was right: Anybody else would have been faced with some bullshit talk about availability and prices, but such crap wasn’t going to fly with him today. From the Irish landlady to the White Russian exile to the descendant of the first family into Portsmouth from 1623, he knew all of the lodging house owners, and he got the information he needed about the number of available rooms.

He was chilled at how quickly the checkpoints had been set up. It was like a newsreel from occupied Europe: soldiers with rifles over their shoulders, standing in the streets, mobile barriers made of wood and barbed wire blocking intersections and sidewalks. Several times
he saw people held apart at the checkpoints as their papers were checked and rechecked by FBI or Department of Interior agents in dark suits with grim faces.

Now, having given the list to LaCouture, who appeared to have a phone receiver permanently attached to his ear, with Groebke sitting next to him, scribbling furiously with a fountain pen … well, he could now head home.

But home to what?

He went back to the police station, back to what he knew was ahead for him, another long night.

He had a dinner of fish chowder and hard rolls at his desk, watching the clock hands wander by, waiting and waiting. He had tried to call Moultonborough three times through the New England Telephone operator, and each time the call was interrupted by a bored male voice: “All long-distance phone calls from this county are now being administered by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Is this an official military phone call?”

“No, it’s a call from—”

Click
, as the line was disconnected.

Two more tries, using his police affiliation, got the same result.

So he gave up.

The marshal’s office door opened and Harold Hanson came out, his suit and shirt wrinkled, eyes puffy behind his glasses. “Time to ride, Sam,” he said quietly. “Let’s go.”

Sam got up from his desk, wiped his hands on a paper napkin, and followed the city marshal to the station’s basement. He smelled gasoline and fuel oil from the department’s maintenance garage on the other side. There was a crowd of off-duty cops, all wearing civvies,
talking in low voices. Large cardboard boxes were set by the near brick wall.

Hanson stepped up on a wooden box, held up a hand. “All right,” he told them. “This isn’t going to be easy, but it’s something we’ve been ordered to do. This is a National Guard action. We’re heading out in a few minutes.”

“Boss,” came a voice. “What the hell’s going on?”

“The summit’s taking place in a few days. We’re under orders from the White House to clear out all undesirables in the city. This place has to look perfect for the radio, newsreels, and newspapers.”

The basement was silent. Sam thought about that hobo encampment, bulldozed and burnt to the ground. What about Lou Purdue? Where in hell had he gone, with what he knew about a witness? One more loose end about Peter Wotan …

“So that’s what we’re doing.” Hanson’s voice was hesitant, unlike his usual style. “We’ve got flophouses and other places to check out. Anyone who’s a refugee, anyone who doesn’t belong in Portsmouth, we’ve got to remove. That’s orders straight from the White House.”

“Remove them to where, boss?”

“Not our problem. The army will have transports set up, and they’ll be taken out to a resettlement camp.” He rubbed his eyes. “Look at it this way, guys. We’re just following orders. All right? Just following orders.”

* * *

From the cardboard boxes, military gear smelling of mildew was hauled out: old-style round metal helmets from the last war (
Like one Dad probably wore
, Sam
thought), canvas web belting, wooden truncheons, and green cloth armbands that said
GUARD
in white block letters. He put his gear on, feeling as if he were dressing up for Halloween, and joined four other cops—Pinette, Lubrano, Smith, and Reardon—in an old Ford cruiser that took three tries to start up. He sat in the rear, silent, with the helmet in his lap. There was joking and laughing from the others about being in the Kingfish’s army, but he didn’t join them.

Lubrano said to Reardon, “You know, I’ve always wondered how we got so many Jews and refugees in town. Bet you they paid off Long and his buds to look the other way when they got smuggled in.”

Reardon laughed. “Too bad they can’t get their money back after tonight.”

They pulled up at Foss Avenue, a narrow street about a block away from the harbor, with sagging buildings of brick and wood, dirty trash bins on the crooked sidewalks. Sam knew the street well: taverns, flophouses, and boardinghouses. A place for people struggling to make a go of it. The luckier ones moved on to better neighborhoods. The others never left except in ambulances or funeral home wagons.

There was another reason for remembering this place, for something Sam had done on Thurber Street, two blocks over, just before he and his very pregnant Sarah had bought their house. Thurber Street. Even being this close to the street made him uncomfortable. He turned away. There was a wooden and barbed-wire barrier overseen by two regular National Guard troops in uniform, gear spotless, boots shiny, Springfield rifles hanging from their shoulders. Sam noted their grins as he and the
others got out of the cruiser with their surplus gear. The real National Guard and the play National Guard.

Sam hung back as other cops dressed in helmets and gear approached. From the gloom came a man in a dark blue suit, Confederate-flag pin on his lapel, carrying a small flashlight and a clipboard stuffed with papers. “Eddie Mitchell, Department of Interior,” the man said. “Listen up, okay?”

Sam and the others gathered in a semicircle around Mitchell, a tall man with glasses who spoke with a soft Tennessee accent. “The other end of this street is sealed off, and we’ve got the alleyways covered as well. Y’all gonna be used as chutes. There’s a place down there, the Harbor Point Hotel. In about”—he put the flashlight beam to his watch—“ten minutes, we’re gonna have that place raided and trucks backed up to take the undesirables away. Y’all just gonna be flanking the front entrance. Just make sure nobody gets away. Got it?”

A murmur of voices, but Sam kept quiet. He wished he was in his empty home, taking a bath and having a beer. Any place else than here.

A rumble of approaching truck engines, and Mitchell waved a hand. The regular National Guardsmen pulled the barrier aside. Two army deuce-and-a-half trucks growled by, canvas sides flapping, diesel fumes belching. Mitchell yelled, “Let’s go, boys. Follow ’em!”

The more eager of the bunch followed the truck at a half-trot. Sam pulled up the rear, walking at a brisk pace, truncheon in hand, helmet hard and uncomfortable on his head. Ahead, voices were yelling, and there was a throng of people in front of the hotel, some wearing uniforms, others not. Flashlights were being waved around,
and there were other guys in suits directing the flow of people, blowing whistles. The place was three-story, wooden, with a rotting porch out front, a blue-and-white wooden sign announcing
HARBOR POINT
. One of the trucks backed in, the tailgate rattling open. Sam took a position by the porch as lights blazed, as the other officers in helmets and webbed gear made up two lines leading to the truck.

Amazing, too, was what followed. Wooden tables were unfolded, chairs lined up. It was strange, like seeing a voting booth set up in the heart of a riot. Then people started filing out of the grandly named hotel. They were old and young, the men clean-shaven or bearded, some women wearing colorful kerchiefs on their hair, some holding children by the hand. Most carried small suitcases, as though they had always expected this night to come.

He heard a jumble of voices—French, Polish, Dutch, British—but the faces all looked the same. Pale, shocked, wide-eyed, as if they could not believe this was happening to them in this supposed land of liberty. All had the look of having been put through this before, but with soldiers in gray uniforms and coal-scuttle helmets, soldiers with crooked cross symbols on their vehicles, not white stars.