light gray paint that was flaking and peeling. The air smelled of salt air and exposed mudflats, and radios blared jazz and swing from the windows, and somewhere, a baby was wailing. Clotheslines spanned the alleyways. There was shouting in the distance and a sharp
Sam went up the front door of the building, which was open, the doorknob having been long ago smashed out. A single bulb, dangling from a frayed cord, illuminated the interior of the hallway and a second door. He went up to the door and knocked on it.
No answer.
He pounded with his closed fist. A muffled voice from inside, then the snapping sound of locks being undone. The door opened an inch, then two inches, held back by a chain. A woman in a dark red robe, her hair bristling with curlers, glared at him. “Yeah?”
“Need to see Kenny Whalen. Now.”
She said, “He’s not here,” and started to close the door.
He jammed the toe of his shoe between the door and the frame and pulled out his leather wallet, showed the badge to the woman. “Kenny Whalen, dear, or if I think you’re lying, I break the door down, tear the place up, looking for him. And then you can ask the city to reimburse you for the damages I cause, and they might get back to you. By 1950 or thereabouts.”
She muttered something, turned, and yelled, “Kenny! Get over here!”
Sam spotted Kenny coming over, buttoning a flannel shirt over a soiled white T-shirt, his hair uncombed. “Ah, shit, hold on, Inspector.”
Sam said, “I pull my shoe back, that door better be open in ten seconds. Clear?”
“Oh, yeah, Inspector, I don’t want no trouble.”
Sam pulled his shoe back, the door clunked shut, and there was a tinkling sound of a chain being worked. Before the door opened, Sam took the lapel pin off. Party membership, to a guy like Kenny, wouldn’t mean shit. Kenny stood there, managing a smile, but on his face the expression looked as inviting as that of a mortgage officer reviewing a foreclosure.
“Inspector, what can I do for you?”
“I need a few minutes to talk to you. In private.”
Kenny glanced back toward the living room. “Dora has ears the size of saucers. Let’s go out in the hallway, okay?”
The two men stood in the hallway, a breeze making the dim lightbulb sway. Kenny said, “Well?”
Sam thought about lines crossed, about what was to be done, and why he was doing it, and thought of that dead man, dead and alone and cold in his city’s morgue, with that tattooed wrist. Branded like fucking cattle, Sean had said. Why?
“I need you to make me some documents. Official identification.”
Kenny stared at him in disbelief. “Shit, I don’t know what’s going on, but no way. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but it sounds like entrapment to me. No way in hell.”
It was as if somebody else were mouthing the words, for Sam couldn’t recognize his own voice when it answered, “You do this for me, and I’ll knock off one of those felony charges for uttering a false instrument. Get you to serve in the county lockup instead of state prison. Sound fair, Kenny?”
“Sounds crazy, that’s what. Couple days ago, you almost arrested me for requesting the same thing. What’s different?”
“Times have changed. That’s all you need to know.”
Kenny stared at him for a moment. Then he said, “You mean that, right? You’ll broom one of those felony charges, let me get a lesser sentence?”
“That’s right.”
“Shit… All right. What kind of papers you looking for? A check? Birth certificate? Union card?”
“I need FBI identification. And something sharp and good, Kenny, something that will pass muster.”
“Are you nuts? The FBI? Jesus Christ… and whose mug should I put on it? Huh?”
“Mine.”
Kenny burst out laughing. “Hey, Inspector, feel free to put that felony charge back on my sheet, ’cause there ain’t no way I’m messing with the feds. Do you think I’m a loon? I get caught making paper like that, that’s a federal beef, that means my ass gets in a labor camp, and that’s it, story finished. Good night. And I’ll see you when my trial starts.”
The forger turned back toward the door. Sam blocked him. Kenny stopped.
“All of it,” Sam said, still not believing what he was saying.
“What do you mean, all of it?”
“All of the charges. They get dropped. Swept away. You never serve a day in jail, don’t even have to face a judge.”
Kenny kept on looking at him, blinking. “Man, you must need this something awful.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“None of your goddamn business.”
“Then you got yourself a deal, Inspector. Let’s get to work.”
Work was in the crowded and dark basement of the tenement, in a corner that had been blocked off by a wooden wall that swung out on hidden hinges, revealing an area of about twelve feet by twelve feet, with a dirt floor and walls made of fitted rocks. There was a long workbench, a small printing press on top of another table, rows of cast-lead letters, bottles of ink, and cameras and tripods. Kenny brought Sam into the room and sat him down on a stool and said, “Just to be clear here, Inspector, what you see here… it’s um, going to stay here, right?”
“Yes,” Sam replied. “Everything I see here will stay here.”
Kenny rubbed his hands. “Very good. We’ll get to work,” and then he laughed.
Sam said, “What’s so funny?”
“Funny? What’s so funny is that I was right last time we talked. You told me you couldn’t be bought, and I said you had a price. Lucky for me, you came up with a price.”
The forger busied himself, gathering up film and camera lenses. Sam bit his lip. Then he said, “Kenny, you say anything like that again, I’ll break your nose. And then you’ll still make me that FBI identification, but you’ll be doing it through a broken and bloody nose. Okay?”
“Oh, of course, Inspector. Now, if you need this tonight, let’s get to work.” Kenny sounded apologetic, but there was no missing the glee in his eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
About twelve hours after Kenny had produced an FBI identification card that looked as good as the one Sam had seen earlier in LaCouture’s pudgy and manicured hands—“Lucky you’re in a grim mood, so I didn’t have to take another picture,” Kenny had said—Sam sat in a passenger compartment on the Green Mountain local, going up into Vermont. His train travels had begun in Portsmouth, then to Boston, then to a train going west, to Greenfield, Massachusetts. From there, he caught the local, heading north, one of the stops being a small town called Burdick. Before leaving Greenfield, he had rented a small locker at the B&M station, where he had placed his real papers and identification. Now he was traveling with his new FBI identification, which named him as Special Agent Sam Munson.
Kenny had helped him choose his new last name. “One of the many things I have learned over the years, Inspector, is that a false name should be similar to real one,” he had advised.
Sam cupped his chin in his hand, watching the rural landscape rush by. What a world he now lived in, where he was following advice from a forger he had promised to keep out of jail. What a world.
