CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Rockingham Hotel was under a two-minute ride from the station, on State Street, and for Portsmouth it was an impressive building, brick, five-story, with two sets of narrow granite steps leading up to the wide swinging oak doors of the lobby. On either side of the steps was a massive stone lion, staring blankly out into the street.
The phones were ringing at the main desk, as people started calling in, demanding rooms, demanding reservations, demanding everything and anything for the upcoming summit. As Sam took the carpeted stairs up to the first floor and Room Twelve, he still found it hard to get his mind around what had just happened. His hometown, his Portsmouth, was hosting a summit between the world’s two most powerful men, Long and Hitler. It was one thing to grow up with history about you—the royal governors, the John Paul Jones house, the revolutionaries—but it was something else to know that history was going to happen here in the next few days and that you were stuck in the middle of it.
At Room Twelve he knocked on the door. A male voice invited him in.
“Inspector,” said Jack LaCouture of the FBI, standing up from a cushioned chair. “So glad to see you again. You remember my German traveling companion, don’t you? Herr Groebke.”
Groebke didn’t bother standing up. He stared at Sam through his cigarette smoke, his glasses obscuring his eyes. Both men wore white shirts. Both also wore holstered revolvers. Sam waited till LaCouture sat down, then sat and said, “So. How goes my homicide investigation?”
“Who cares?” LaCouture asked. “One dead guy here illegally. I only care if Hans here cares.” LaCouture said something in German and Groebke replied, and LaCouture said to Sam, “See? Hans said there are priorities, and the current number one priority is this summit meeting. So the dead guy will have to wait. You got a problem with that?”
Peter Wotan. The dead guy had a name. Peter Wotan, and I know that, Sam thought. I know that and you can’t stop me from finding out more.
Aloud he said, “No, I don’t have a problem with that.”
“Your chief, he tell you why you’re here?”
“Marshal Hanson mentioned something about being a liaison with you. He didn’t say anything about the Gestapo.”
LaCouture frowned. “Sorry if working with the Germans pisses you off, but I really don’t give a crap. We’ve got about a month’s worth of work to do in seven days, and we need to do it right. I just got a phone call a bit ago from God Himself to make sure nothing gets screwed up.”
“President Long?”
“Hell, no. J. Edgar Hoover. Chances are, Long won’t be President forever, but I can tell you that Hoover intends to be FBI director until the sun burns out. A phone call from that bastard can send you to either D.C. or fucking Boise, can make you or break you, and I’m not one to be broken. So let’s get to it.”
Sam was silent.
“Your boss probably told you boys in blue how important the next few days are going to be, a chance to do good, to shine, blah, blah, blah,” LaCouture continued. “Well, that’s just so much bullshit. The next few days belong to us and the Germans, the Secret Service and the navy. You Portsmouth guys are going to be controlling crowds and traffic. And you, my friend, you’re gonna go out now and get us info on traffic choke points, lists of restaurants and places that can maybe hold all the goddamn visitors that are going to be streamin’ in here. That’s it. Savvy?”
Sam watched Groebke stub out his cigarette, light another one. He thought of what he could be doing with the Peter Wotan case. Instead, he’d become a glorified errand boy. “Yeah, I savvy.”
“Super. Here’s something to hold on to.” LaCouture flipped over a white business card. It had the FBI seal and LaCouture’s name and a handwritten notation on the front with the Rockingham Hotel’s address of 401 State Street and phone number of 2400. On the back was another note: Bearer of card detached to federal duty until 15 May.
Sam looked up at LaCouture. “A get-out-of-jail card?”
The FBI man did not smile. “It’s a card that makes sure you don’t get your ass into jail. By nightfall this city is going to be cordoned off, there will be troops in the street, and I don’t need my liaison having to explain to some army captain why he needs to take a dump somewhere.”
The phone rang. The FBI man swore and got up to answer it. “LaCouture. Hold on. Yeah. Yeah. Crap. All right, I’ll be right down.” He slammed the receiver down. “Having a problem with the manager about the number of rooms we need. Look. I’ll go straighten it out. You two can stay here and improve German-local relations or something.”
LaCouture grabbed his coat and left, slamming the door behind him. Sam sat still, the white business card pinched between his fingers. The Gestapo man stared at him, smoking. Sam thought about the stories in Life and Look and the newspapers, the radio shows and Hollywood movies. This was how it ended for so many people over in Europe. Alone in a room with a Gestapo agent. The German had no power over him, but a part of Sam felt paralyzed by that rattlesnake gaze, the cool stare of a man who had the power of life and death, didn’t mind using it, and rather enjoyed having it.
Groebke stubbed the cigarette out in his ashtray and said, “You look … unsettled.”
“First time I’ve ever been alone with the Gestapo,” Sam said.
“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, Oh yeah, such things, and mostly from the Germans. Flattening cities like Rotterdam or Coventry. Sinking passenger liners. Being the first to use poison gas. But this man was Gestapo, friends with the FBI and who knew whom. So Sam said, “Yeah. War. Not a good thing.”
“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. “Ja. We are.”
“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.