“He left a signal for me. Something from our Boy Scout days. I went to see him at Pierce Island.”
She kept quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You’re not turning him in, are you?”
“For God’s sake, what do you think? I can’t believe you asked me that.”
Her eyes moistened. “I’m sorry. It’s just that… lately I don’t know what to think. There’s a teacher at the school, he has a son who’s in the National Guard, was about to get promoted. The son found some anti-Long flyers in a closet in his father’s office, and the son turned him in. Can you believe that? The son turned his own father in! Just so his promotion would go through.”
“Tony and I, we’ve had our rough patches. We’re not like those fun brothers you see at a Mickey Rooney movie. Sometimes I think I don’t even like him much. But I’d never betray him.”
“Then what’s going to happen?”
“I offered him a place to stay. He said no. He said he’d be leaving in a few days. It’s just that— Dammit, is there any way you can cancel tonight’s visitor?”
“No, I can’t, Sam. You know how dangerous phone calls can be. Messages sometimes get passed hand to hand, through couriers. There isn’t time.”
“We could lock the bulkhead door.”
“And do what?” she said. “Force him to sleep in the bushes? Try his luck at the hobo camp? Picked up, maybe, by one of your brother officers for loitering? He’s my responsibility.”
“All right. The last one. And Tony—forget I mentioned him. Officially, he’s still in prison. Any questions from anyone, that’s all you know. I’m sure the FBI or somebody will be checking up on him. You haven’t seen him, you don’t know where he is. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Days like this, you surprise me, Inspector. Just when I’m going to give up on you and think you’ve been seduced by Long and his people, you come back and stand up for something.”
Sam thought of Tony’s critique of him and said, “I’d rather be seduced by you than anyone else, Sarah Miller, and that includes the President. Don’t forget about that rain check.”
Sarah looked tired but pleased, may be because the argument about their upcoming guest was over. “Oh, sweetie, that’s one rain check that will never expire. Here, I’ll even show you where it’s being stored.” She brought her hands to the hem of her skirt, slowly drew it up past her thighs. He moved his hand under her skirt, on the smooth stockings. He slid his fingers up, past her thighs. Sarah played a little game with him, squeezing her thighs tight, but as he pushed ahead, past the top of the stockings and the garter snaps, she moved her legs open. The skin of her thighs was soft indeed, and he heard her take a sharp breath as he moved his hand higher and—
Toby thumped out, carrying his book bag, eyes downcast. His parents straightened up, Sam breathing hard. “I’m sorry about kicking the table, Dad. I’m ready for school. And here. See? I finished my drawing. What do you think?”
The paper showed some sort of stick figure with a big head. There was a star drawn in the middle of the torso. “See? It’s you, Dad. Do you like it?”
“I sure do,” Sam said.
“Mom?”
“You made his head too small,” Sarah said.
Sam looked at his former cheerleader. “How about his heart?”
“Not big enough,” she said, smiling back, her gaze warming him despite all that had gone on before. Still… he had the feeling that all of this had been some sort of act, from the pleadings to the upraised skirt. The cast of her eyes didn’t match the brightness of her smile.
Toby sat next to him on the big front seat of the Packard, his school bag gripped with both hands, prattling on about a new lady at the cafeteria who kept on dropping mashed potatoes on the floor during lunchtime. Sam thought about the day ahead of him, about his John Doe, about Tony out there in the woods or maybe now in the city, and about their illegal guest coming tonight.
As they went down to the end of Grayson Street, there was movement off to the right at a house that had been empty for a month. It once belonged to the Jablonski family. One day the family vanished, just like that, and no one knew why. If anyone had seen a Black Maria come up to the house late at night, no one was talking.
There was a freight truck backed up to the house, a couple with two young boys standing nearby, huddled together, as three Long’s Legionnaires directed the movers bringing in boxes and furniture. That’s how it went sometimes, in other places. But not in Portsmouth, not until today. Somebody had been denounced to the authorities, and the denouncers got to move into the house of the deported as a reward.
Sam stopped at the yellow and black stop sign and looked into the rearview mirror, watching his new neighbors move in. Then he put the car in gear and drove on.
“Ask you something, Dad?”
“Sure, sport, go ahead.”
“You’re not a rat, are you?”
He turned. Toby looked up at him, his face serious.
“A rat? What made you ask that?”
“Oh, some of the guys at school say cops are all rats. That they put dads in jail for made-up stuff. That they take money from bad guys. Stuff like that. Some guys at recess yesterday, they said you were a rat.”
His wife, operating an Underground Railroad station in their basement. His brother, living God knew how five miles from here, and he, a sworn peace officer, letting him be. Family versus duty. Good guy versus rat.
“No, Toby, I don’t take money from anybody except from the city for my paycheck. I only put bad guys in jail, for real things, not made-up things.”
His son kept his mouth shut, toying with the buckles on his school bag.
“Toby, you believe me, don’t you?”
“Sure, Dad, of course I do.” Toby didn’t say anything more until Sam drove up to the squat brick building of the Spring Street School. Across from the school was a small grocery store. Glistening red on the store’s cement wall was a painted red hammer and sickle, and below that, in sloppy letters, DOWN WITH LONG. Toby looked out the window and said, “See that kid, Dad? Over there by the fence, the kid with the brown coat? That’s Greg Kennan. He told me you were a rat. I’m… I’m gonna tell him how wrong he is.”
“Don’t get into any trouble, Toby, okay?”
“I could take him, you know. If we had a fight.” The look in his eyes, the look of the devil that sometimes reminded him of Tony.
“Don’t have a fight.”
“I just want to stick up for you, that’s all.”
“And I want you to behave and do good, okay?”
Toby’s lips trembled. “I don’t like getting into trouble. I don’t. I… sometimes it happens. I can’t help it. Mom understands. Why can’t you?”
“Understand what?”
Toby opened the big door and climbed out, a little figure running toward the fenced-in asphalt courtyard. Two boys wearing short jackets and knickers were bouncing a ball off the side of the brick wall of the school. Nearby was a small parking lot for those teachers and administrators fortunate enough to own automobiles. Three girls were on the sidewalk, playing with yo-yos. Out in the yard was Frank Kaminski, the brother of the local agitator Eric. The owner of the grocery store came out with a bucket of whitewash and a paintbrush, standing in front of the red hammer and sickle, his shoulders sagging.
“No, Toby,” Sam said to himself, shifting the Packard into drive. “I’m not a rat. And you don’t have to stick up for me.”
In the basement of the Portsmouth City Hospital, seven blocks south of the police station on Junkins Avenue, the Rockingham County medical examiner had a small office and work area next to the morgue. The walls were brick and cement block painted a dull green. The lights flickered as Sam opened the door. The medical examiner sat behind a desk covered with papers and folders, the usual debris of an overworked and underpaid county employee. On the walls hung framed photographic prints of the White Mountains, photos taken by the doctor, a hobby he was proud to show off.
