“Most of what we do… most of what I do… just like you,” Groebke said with a shrug. “A cop.” His English was impeccable but thickly accented.
“Maybe you think so. I find that hard to believe.”
Groebke stared at him.
“You don’t like Germans,” he said.
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Groebke cocked his head like a hunting dog catching a far-off scent, a sound of something rustling in the grass that must be chased and killed. “Have we hurt you in some way?”
“Yeah,” Sam replied, feeling his chest tighten. “You killed my father.”
The head moved again, slightly. “I think rather not. I have not had much experience with Americans. So I do not think I have killed your father.”
“Maybe not, but you and your people did.”
“Ah. The Great War, am I correct?”
“Yes, you are correct.”
“It was wartime,” the German said. “Such things happen during war.”
Sam thought,
“And your father,” Groebke persisted, apparently unoffended. “What happened to him?”
“He came home from the war, lungs scarred from German gas. Then he coughed his lungs out for another fifteen years before dying in the county home.”
“That was a long time ago, for which I am sorry. But what do you think of us now?”
Sam didn’t want to go any further with this German. “I’d rather not say. For reasons I’m sure you know.”
Groebke relaxed as if he knew he was winning this conversation. “I think I know Americans. You believe our leader is a dictator, a tyrant. Perhaps. But what of you? Hmm?”
Sam kept quiet. Wished LaCouture would hurry up and get back.
Groebke’s eyes narrowed. “Of you, I will say that your President is a fool and a drunkard. I will also say that my leader—he will be known as the greatest leader of this century. He took a country shattered by war, shattered by an economic depression, and brought it back in a brief time, to seize what was rightfully ours. Can you say that about your President? Your Depression still cripples you… your armed forces are an international joke… the Japanese are raping China and you stand by doing nothing… They are pushing you out of the Pacific by bribing you to abandon your bases, like the one at Guam… and you lifted not a finger when the Low Countries, France, and finally England itself fell into our laps.”
“You leader is a murdering bastard,” Sam said quietly.
Groebke was about to reply when LaCouture slammed in, banging the door behind him. “Nearly had to strangle the son of a bitch at the front desk, but it’s settled. Good. You guys okay up here?”
Groebke took his pale eyes from Sam and looked at the FBI man. “
“Good,” LaCouture said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Inspector…”
Sam got up and went to the door just as somebody knocked. LaCouture said, “Shit, see who it is, will ya, Miller?”
Sam opened the door, saw two Long’s Legionnaires standing there, cocky grins on their young faces. Carruthers and LeClerc, the ones who had come by his house last night. “Oh, it’s you,” LaCouture said. “Get your asses in here and let’s get to work.”
As he went past Sam, LeClerc bumped Sam with his shoulder, then laughed as Sam did nothing. Carruthers called out, “Oh, yeah, bud, we haven’t forgotten about that survey!”
Sam closed the door behind him, shutting out more Southern-tinged laughter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Nine hours later, Sam was back at the Rockingham Hotel, his notebook filled with scribbled notations of what the FBI was looking for—traffic control spots, restaurants to feed the arriving masses of federal agents, and rooming houses to lodge them all—but to his surprise, LaCouture and Groebke were gone. At the front desk, the harried clerk—working on a switchboard that wouldn’t stop ringing—pulled out a note and said, “Oh, Inspector Miller. Agent LaCouture said to meet him… let’s see here, meet him by the hobo encampment off Maplewood. He said you’d know where that was.”
Ten minutes later, Sam was right back where this had all started, walking up the railroad track past the Fish Shanty, past the spot where his tattooed John Doe—no, Peter Wotan!—had been found, and up to the hobo camp, the place where Lou Purdue and the others lived, the place where—
Smoke was billowing up from where the camp had been.
Sam quickened his pace, heard the low growl of diesel engines, saw black clouds billowing up. Two bulldozers from the Portsmouth Public Works Department scraped the charred ground into a burning pile, moving the crumpled boards and shingles of what been people’s homes. LaCouture was standing by a polished black Pierce-Arrow, watching the action. Groebke stood closer to the flames, talking to a Long’s Legionnaire.
LaCouture turned to Sam, looking satisfied underneath the brim of his wide black hat. His pin-striped suit was immaculate, as always. Even his shoes were unscathed. “Inspector. So glad you could join us.”
“What’s going on?”
“A little cleanup, what do you think?”
The bulldozers growled, and he watched a bureau, a chair, a child’s doll get shoved into the flames. Smoke kept billowing up, oily and stinking. “What’s the point?”
LaCouture laughed. “What the hell do you think, boy? In a week, the President hisself is going to be coming up these railroad tracks. Do you really think we’re gonna want him and the press to see a bunch of bums and their filthy shacks?”
Sam watched the orange flames do their work. A bulldozer grumbled by, scooping up trash, some dirt. Riding the top of the dirt was a Roadmaster bicycle, just like the one Toby had. Sam stared at the bicycle, willed it to fall to the side, safe, unharmed, but then the bulldozer bucked and the bicycle fell under the treads, was crumpled, chewed up, destroyed. His chest ached. What kind of place was he living in?
“There’s not enough bulldozers in this country to clean up all the places like this,” he said.
“Don’t matter none,” LaCouture said. “So long as it’s clean around here, that’s all I care about.”
“What about the people? What happened to them?”
“Trespassers all,” LaCouture said. “Those Long boys took care of ’em. Sent off to some transit camps, far away from the newsreel boys come summit day.”
Sam’s witness, Lou Purdue, had lived here, but he knew that wouldn’t get any sympathy from LaCouture. To the FBI, that matter was done.
LaCouture said, “All right, then, tell me what you got for me today.”
Sam took out his notebook, flipped through the pages, started telling LaCouture what he had learned. After a minute, LaCouture held up a hand and said, “All right, all right, type up your notes and pass it along. We’ll deal with it later.”
Sam closed the notebook. The smoke and the flames were finally dying down. The bulldozers and their operators had moved off to the side, the diesel engines softly rumbling. Talking with the Long’s Legionnaire, Groebke laughed, tossed his cigarette into the smoldering embers.
LaCouture leaned back on the fender. “You don’t like me, do you, Miller?”
“I don’t know about that,” Sam said. “You’re here, I’m working for you. Why don’t we leave it at that?”
“You know, I don’t give a bird’s fart if you didn’t vote for the Kingfish, but he is my President and yours, too, no matter if you don’t like him or me. Just so you know, I grew up in Winn Parish, down in Louisiana. You know Winn Parish?”
