Brown paper grocery sacks lay on the cracked sidewalk. There were barred windows at each end of the boxcar, and hands were poking out between the bars, waving. Sam looked up and down the fence, spotted a gate. A B&M railroad detective, dressed in a brown suit, with a badge clipped to the coat pocket, was standing on the other side.
“Hey,” Sam said. “How about opening the gate, let these folks bring some food over to the train?”
The detective shifted the toothpick in his mouth. “Hey. How about you leave me the hell alone?”
Sam pulled out his badge, pressed it up against the fence. “Name’s Miller. I’m the inspector for the Portsmouth Police Department. What’s your name?”
“Collins,” he grudgingly replied.
“Look, Collins, let these people go in there. And tell you what: For the rest of the month, you can park anywhere you want, speed anywhere you want, and no Portsmouth cop will ever bother you. How does that sound?”
Collins said, “Boss’ll get pissed at me.”
“I can handle Lowengard. C’mon, let these folks go over, drop off the food, be a nice guy for a change.”
Collins shifted the toothpick again. “What’s it to you, then?”
“Guess I like being a nice guy sometimes.”
Collins scowled and spat out the toothpick, but stepped back. The crowd watched silently as he unlocked the gate. In a brusque voice, he said, “You folks go up there, pass over the stuff, then leave. Any funny business, you’ll be thrown in the boxcar with those slugs, and you’ll be in a labor camp tonight!”
Sam felt the crowd swirl about him like water parting around a rock, and there was a touch on his arm, the woman with the scarf, who whispered something foreign—Yiddish, perhaps?—and said, “God bless.” She joined the other family members streaming to the parked train, rushing over the railroad tracks. Within moments grocery sacks, bottles of Coke and Pepsi, and sandwiches were being passed up to the barred openings, the eager hands reaching down, grasping for life.
Sam walked away. Maybe Walter was right. Maybe one man could make a difference. But for how long?
He stopped and looked back at the train, thinking again of the train that had sped through late one night, the one that was sometimes in his dreams. It was similar to this one but different—there were no openings allowing air and sunlight to come in. Those boxcars had been shuttered closed, as if those in charge didn’t want anyone to see what was inside.
But they couldn’t hide the voices, couldn’t hide the screams.
And one more thing. The train that night, speeding through the darkness, had gone past a streetlight, illuminating the shuttered boxcars and…
And what else?
The paint scheme. The cars in front of him were dark red. The special train from that night was a dark color as well, but there was a difference.
Yellow stripes had been painted on the sides of those special trains.
What the hell did that mean?
Nothing, that’s what, and nothing that was going to solve this murder for him.
He went to his desk, ignored Mrs. Walton, and when she got up to powder her nose, he picked up his phone, got an operator, and made a call to Concord again, this time to the motor vehicle division of the Department of Safety. He quickly found out it would take a week to get him a listing of all yellow Ramblers registered in the state. A week… well, what the hell. Make it thorough. Maybe it was an accident, maybe it was deliberate, but the train slowing down in Portsmouth was a question mark, and he wanted that question answered. Was the train slowed on purpose so the body could be dumped?
After the phone call, he was going through his old case files when a familiar voice spoke up.
“Inspector,” said the man. “You look like you could use some hooch. And since this department is officially dry, how about a cup of joe instead?”
Sam swung about in his chair, saw a smiling Sean Donovan before him, holding two white mugs of coffee. Sean limped over and pulled a chair closer to Sam’s desk. “I understand you’ve had quite the busy day.”
“I have,” Sam said, sipping the coffee. Sean had made it the way he liked it: black, with two sugars.
Sean nodded. “No doubt dealing with the forces of darkness. I’m surprised you didn’t go home and take a bath after spending time with those two G-men.”
“Only one was a G-man,” Sam said. “The other was— Oh, I get it. A joke. FBI guy and Gestapo guy. Both G-men.”
Sean raised his mug to his lips. “So now we both have something in common, having spent time with these G-men.”
Sam swung around in his chair, glad Mrs. Walton wasn’t back yet. “They’ve talked to you, too?”
“I’m not sure if ‘talk’ is the right word,” Sean answered. “This was more like requests made, requests complied with. The FBI man wanted some files, which I happily passed over to him. And he seemed pretty eager to share what he had with his goose-stepping friend.”
Sam said, “What kind of files?”
“Hmmm,” Sean said, sipping. “Anybody else in this building, I would say none of your business. But since you’re more than the average cop, I will tell you this. Personnel files.”
“I thought the FBI would be looking into active cases. Not personnel files.”
Sean laughed. “That’s a good one. Sam, why would the FBI give a shit about criminal cases at the Portsmouth Police Department? Drunk driving? Hookers? Break-ins? Oh, I know they’ve taken away your homicide, but the real crimes the FBI and their German friends are interested in are the new ones: disloyalty, lack of enthusiasm for the new order, thought crimes like that.”
Sam heard footsteps, saw Mrs. Walton ambling her way back. He leaned over to Sean. “So. Whose personnel files were they asking for?”
“You really want to know?”
“Of course.”
Sean smiled. “Yours.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
That night Sam and Sarah went out to the movies. He was eager to slip into a make-believe world for a while, a world without the FBI or Gestapo or the Underground Railroad or rats or the Party. Sarah had tsk-tsked over the slash the knife had made in his coat sleeve, and had promised to mend it later. Still, Jesus, what a day.
Though a small city, Portsmouth boasted three movie theaters, and tonight they went to the Colonial, up on Congress Street. Throughout Sarah’s pre-movie dinner—fish stew—he kept up a steady patter of conversation, playing the good husband, playing the good father (definitely not playing the rat!), though he had hardly any appetite at all. He had a cold feeling about the meeting with the FBI earlier today, about how close he had seemed to losing it all because of Tony. If that wasn’t enough, another Underground Railroad passenger was going to spend the night in their basement. Talk about living dangerously.
And then there was that train, ready to depart Portsmouth, to drop off another load of prisoners, where there was always room in other trains for one more dissident, one more family.
During dinner Sarah had seemed more cheerful, as though determined to gloss over what was going to happen in their home later that night. And when he had mentioned the visit by the FBI and the Gestapo, Sarah paused at that, ladle held in the air. “Gestapo? Here?”
“That’s right,” he had said, buttering a piece of bread. “Assigned to the consulate in Boston. It seems my dead man was from Germany, here illegally. So it’s not my case anymore. The feds took it away.”
Sarah glanced at Toby and dipped the ladle in the stew. “It’s impossible to believe the Gestapo are here in Portsmouth. It’s bad enough to have Long’s Legionnaires here, but the Gestapo…”