Amerikan Eagle

The Legionnaire twisted the man’s arm, and Woods winced. The Legionnaire said, “Yeah, and you’re the inspector that was in that greasy-spoon restaurant the night me and Vern had to get new tires on our car ’cause some asshole knifed ’em. Vern and me, we got ambushed and tuned up a couple of days later.”

Sam said, “Look, I don’t—”

The Legionnaire said, “You may be so high and mighty, boy, but remember this, me and Vern and everyone else like us, we’re runnin’ the show. No matter if you like it or not.”

The young man pushed Woods hard in the small of the back. “Run, you son of a bitch, run,” and Woods, stumbling a bit in the mud, started running after the moving line of prisoners. Sam saw what was going to happen next, started to yell out, “No!” In one smooth and practiced motion, the Legionnaire lifted his shotgun and fired at the back of the running man. The hollow boom tore at Sam’s ears, and Woods crumpled to the muddy earth.

“So maybe you’re a hero today, bud,” the Legionnaire said, “but you and everyone else who don’t fall in line, you’re still shitheads, and you can still get shot while tryin’ to escape, and there’s nothin’ anybody can do about it. Understand?”

Sam felt his face burning. He had just seen a first-degree murder right in front of him, and been powerless to do anything. Not a goddamn thing. He walked away.

* * *

He sat in one corner of a small green canvas tent smelling of dampness and mildew. Inside were a table and a couple of wooden chairs sinking into the soil. The flap of the tent opened, and another Long’s Legionnaire peered in. “You Miller?”

“Yeah,” he said, not wanting to see again in his mind’s eye a man murdered to prove a point. That was all. A man dragged from his home today, accused of God only knew what, and because he was last in line and easy to grasp, he was shot dead.

“Your prisoner is coming,” the Legionnaire said.

The guard seemed to be in his early twenties, with close-cropped blond hair and Legionnaire’s uniform complete with Confederate-flag pin on the lapel. The look on his face seemed to indicate he would be equally comfortable in the uniform of the SS, just like his shotgun-wielding partner. “You the same Miller who saved the President?”

“I am,” Sam said, looking out at the mass of prisoners.

“Then it’d be an honor for us to buy you a drink or six when the day is through, if you don’t mind.”

Sam fought to keep a friendly smile on his face. “That sounds great, but my schedule’s pretty packed. I tell you what, you tell your friends here that I said hello. Okay?”

“Sure,” the Legionnaire said, and then another arrived, holding a man by the elbow. The man had on a light brown tweed suit but no necktie. His shoes had no laces. His hands were cuffed, and the second Legionnaire said, “The cuffs are comin’ off, boy, but you best behave. You got that?”

The man whispered, “Yes,” and Sam noticed his left eye was bruised and swollen. The prisoner rubbed at his wrists as the cuffs were removed, and both Legionnaires left.

“Hello, Walter,” Sam said.

“Sam, what a pleasant surprise.”

“Have a seat.”

The former science professor sat down in one of the chairs, breathed an apparent sigh of relief. “It feels good to be in a real chair. The interrogations… sometimes they ask you question after question and make you stand for hours… it doesn’t sound like much, but do it for hours, and you’ll see what kind of torture it is.”

“I can imagine,” Sam said.

Walter shook his head. “No, you can’t. Unless you’ve been here or someplace similar, you can’t.”

Sam looked to his wrist, where the hidden numeral was tattooed into his skin, was. “Walter, I’m not here to debate.”

His former tenant smiled wanly. “Of course, yes, of course. How in the world did you get in here? Lawyers and family are all being kept out while we stumble through our version of Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives. Remember that, back in the ’30s? It was decided it was time for Hitler to kill or jail all his opponents, and they did. Oh, that was a time—”

“Walter, for once, will you shut the hell up?”

Walter did just that. Sam said, “I got in because I called in a favor from the Secret Service. Told them I needed to see you.”

“I take it you’re not here to free me.”

“Hardly. I’ve got two things I want to talk to you about. Remember the night I was called out for the body by Maplewood Avenue?”

“No, not really.”

“Of course you do. I had to come upstairs and unclog your sink. Who told you to do that, Walter? A couple of weeks earlier you had pulled the same stunt, clogging the sink with potato peels. You’re scatterbrained but not that scatterbrained. So who told you? Was it Sarah?”

Walter blinked. “She asked me to do something to get you upstairs for a while.”

“Did she say why?”

Walter squirmed in his seat, and Sam went on. “Sarah had a guest coming, right? Someone to go in the cellar, someone she didn’t want me to know was there. And she wanted me upstairs at a certain time so she could sneak the man in.”