“True?” he asked Phil.
Phil rubbed at stubble on his chin. “I went out to the Midwest back in ’28, got a job at Republic Steel. A tough place. Management treated us like shit, got worse after the Crash. Then we went on strike in ’37.”
He nodded, remembering. “Yeah. The Memorial Day massacre. You were there?”
“Sure was. Hundreds of us strikers marching peacefully, lookin’ for better conditions and wages, then reachin’ a line of Chicago cops. More than twenty were shot dead by those bastards, whole bunch of others were wounded, the rest got gassed. I got hit in the face by a tear gas canister. My wife… didn’t make it. So I came back here… found… something else to do.”
He didn’t know what to say. He finished his milk. Phil studied him and said, “You know what you got ahold of, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“You’re settin’ to kill one of the most guarded men in the world. You think you can do it?”
“I wasn’t picked for my damn charming personality, was I?”
Zach laughed again, softly, but Phil didn’t. “Understand you might got family issues. That going to be a problem?”
He shook his head. “No, it’ll all work out.”
“It better.”
Outside, he thought he saw a light flicker, and his hands tensed on the mug. He said, “What the hell do you mean by that?”
Zach was silent and so was Phil. A floorboard creaked. Phil said, “Not sure if you’re goin’ to be tough enough to do what has to be done. I know you heard all the plans. Most likely, damn thing is goin’ to be a suicide mission when it all gets wrapped up and the shootin’ stops. So. I got to know. Are you tough enough?”
Another flicker of light. He leaped up, grabbed the shotgun from the table, and burst out the rear door, with shouts and the sounds of chairs being upended behind him. Even with his bum leg, he could move quick, and he was around the other side of the farmhouse, yelling out, “Don’t you move again, you son of a bitch!”
The light jiggled and someone was crashing through the brush. He raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger. There was a loud boom that tore at his ears, a kick to his right shoulder, a flare of light, and a scream. Zach and Phil were behind him, Zach holding up the kerosene lamp. The three of them tore through the underbrush. A man lay on his back near the trunk of a pine tree, moaning, his pant legs torn from the shotgun pellets.
He went up to the man, kicked at his torn legs. Blood was oozing through the shredded dungarees, and the man jerked. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?”
From the yellow light of the lamp Zach held, he saw that the injured man was clean-shaven and young, wearing a brown jacket over a buttoned white shirt. He looked up, eyes brittle as glass, and said, “Screw you.”
“Bring the lamp down here,” he said, and Zach reached down. Hidden behind the lapel was a Confederate-flag pin.
“I’ll be damned,” Phil whispered.
He stood up, shotgun firm in both hands, and in three sudden, hard, vicious jabs, brought the stock of the gun down against the man’s throat, crushing it. The man spasmed, then was still.
Breathing hard, he passed the emptied shotgun with the bloodied stock over to Phil. “You were saying something about how tough I was?”
Phil took the shotgun, looked to the other man. “All right, then. Everything gets moved up. Zach, get the truck. Our man goes to Keene now. And take a good last look about this place. Me and you, we can’t come back.”
“Won’t miss it much,” Zach said.
Phil looked down at the murdered man, then at him. “Sorry about what I said back there. You got a tough job ahead of you, sure enough.”
Thinking of his family, such as it was, he answered, “We all do.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Surprisingly—maybe because of the rain—the lobby of the Portsmouth Police Department was empty except for a desk sergeant, hands folded across his belly, eyes closed, head tilted back. The police station was in a brick Victorian at the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets, sharing its quarters with City Hall. The county jail was just around the corner on Penhallow Street.
Sam went up to the second floor, where his boss had his office. Most cities had a police chief, but Portsmouth was always a bit different, even in the colonial days, and had a city marshal instead.
Sam’s desk was in a corner just outside of Hanson’s office, facing a brick wall. There was a cluster of filing cabinets, another desk for the shift sergeant, and a third desk that belonged to the department’s secretary, Linda Walton. The door to Hanson’s office was open, and Sam went up to it, looked in. His boss waved him inside.
“Have a seat, Sam,” the marshal said.
Harold Hanson was sixty-three years old, had been on the police force for nearly four decades. He’d seen the force grow and shed its horses and get Ford patrol cars and the very first radios and an increasing professionalism, trying to break the grip of the payoff pros who ran the bars and whorehouses at the harbor.
Oh, there were still juke joints and bawdy houses on the waterfront, but if they were discreet, and if nobody made too much of a fuss, they were ignored. As far as who was on the take nowadays, Sam didn’t ask questions. He didn’t care what was going on with the other members of the force, what shameful secrets they kept, for Sam had his own. But keeping quiet and staying away from whatever money was being passed around also meant that when he was a shift sergeant, he always had the night and weekend shifts. The price, he knew, of doing what he thought was right.
Hanson’s pale face was pockmarked, he wore brown horn-rimmed glasses, and his usual uniform was a three-piece pin-striped suit. Tonight the coat was on a rack, and his vest was tight across his chest and belly. His pant legs were darkened with rain splashes, but his shoes were dry and freshly shined. On the wall were framed certificates and a few photos: Hanson with a series of mayors over the years—including the most recent, Sam’s father-in-law—a couple of New Hampshire governors, a U.S. senator, and in a place of pride, the President himself, taken three years ago on a campaign swing through the state. And there was a photo of Hanson wearing the uniform of a colonel in the state’s National Guard, where he was one of the top officers in the state, working for the adjutant general. In addition to being the city’s lead cop, he had connections among the politicians in D.C. and in Concord, New Hampshire’s capital.
Hanson sat in his leather chair, and Sam sat across from him in one of the two wooden captain’s chairs. Hanson said, “I heard about the dead man over at the tracks by the Shanty. What do you know?”
“Not much,” Sam said. “A hobo from the encampment spotted him and flagged down Frank Reardon, and then I was brought in.”
“Cause of death?”
“Don’t know,” Sam replied. “The body’s been picked up for transport to Dr. Saunders’s office. I’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Not run down by a train?”
“No.”
“Nothing else apparent, then. Gunshot wound, knife wound.”
“No, nothing like that,” Sam said.
Hanson leaned back in his chair, the wheels squeaking. His face was impassive, and the lack of expression made Sam shiver a little.
Sam knew his promotion to inspector was due to political play among the police commission, his father-in-law, the mayor, and Hanson—other candidates were unacceptable, and Sam was a compromise—and he still wasn’t sure if Hanson was on his side. Hanson was loyal to his fellow officers to a point, but it was known that Hanson was loyal to Hanson, first, second, and always.