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
“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
