Amerikan Eagle

The old man shook his head. “Think you can bribe me, that what you’re thinking?”

Sam said, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

“Mister, that there’s a deal, no matter what you call it.”

A man emerged from one of the shacks, laughing. Sam watched him go over and josh some with his coworkers—oh yeah, they were Navy Yard guys. The four of them—in dungarees, work boots, and heavy shirts—looked at him as he approached.

“Fellas, time to leave,” Sam said.

A pudgy guy said, “Hey, take your goddamn turn, okay? We got here first.”

Sam held out his inspector’s badge. “I got here last, and you’re leaving now, and you’re not coming back. Unless you want your names and pictures in the paper.”

Eyes downcast, they moved away hastily, and as Sam left, a woman yelled at him, “Who the hell are you, huh? Mind your own goddamn business!”

He looked at the shack, saw it was the woman he’d seen before, the one collecting her dollar from the visiting dockworker. She said, “You gonna make up for these guys not comin’ back here? Huh? Are you? You got money for me, a job for me, you got anything, you bastard?”

Sam shook his head and walked on.

* * *

Parking outside the police station and walking up the sidewalk, Sam felt as though he could use a bath. The size of the camp ebbed and grew depending on the weather and the availability of jobs, but it had been in that spot by the cove for years. In other places, such as Boston and New York and Los Angeles, the camp populations were in the thousands, or so he had heard. One never saw the camps on the newsreels.

Up ahead, Sam was surprised to see who was coming toward him: his upstairs tenant, Walter Tucker, with a tentative smile, his leather valise firm in his hand.

“Hey, Walter, everything okay?”

“Oh, yes, things are fine.” Walter’s watery eyes flickered behind his eyeglasses; a soiled blue necktie fluttered in the breeze through his open coat. “You see, I was walking to the post office to mail out my latest opus, and I thought I’d come by and take you out to lunch. My work habits aren’t the best, but I do get to the post office every day at noon. So. A lunch to thank you for cleaning out my sink the other night.”

“Walter, really, you don’t have to—”

“Please, Samuel. A free hot meal that doesn’t come from a relief or a soup kitchen. Doesn’t it sound attractive?”

Sam paused, thinking maybe Walter wanted to become more friendly in exchange for a rent reduction, but to hell with it. The curse of being an inspector was being suspicious all the time. “Sure, Walter,” he replied. “Lunch sounds swell.”

They walked three blocks from the police station, joining the thin lunchtime crowd from the shops and businesses. A few of the men in the crowd were sandwich men, sad-looking fellows wearing cardboard signs on their front and back. One said CARPENTER WITH 10 YEARS EXPERIENCE. NO JOB OR PAY TOO SMALL. PLEASE HELP. I HAVE 3 CHILDREN. Sam looked away. The signs were different, but the men all looked the same: unshaved, thin, clothes and shoes held together by tape or string. The sky was slate gray, a sharp breeze bringing in the salt air from the harbor. Walter said suddenly, “Let’s cross the street, all right?”

On the other side of State Street, Sam saw the problem. A squad of Long’s Legionnaires was outside a shuttered and closed synagogue, slapping up posters with buckets and brushes dripping glue, laughing as they plastered the paper over the dull red brick. The large posters showed President Long’s grinning face, and each poster had one of two slogans: EVERY MAN A KING or SHARE THE WEALTH.

They walked on. After a moment Walter said, “Well, it’s not ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer, but it’ll do. Sam, do you miss your Jewish neighbors that much?”

“I was just a patrolman when they left back in ’36. My dad said we lost the best deli in town and the best haberdasher. That’s all I remember. There were only twenty or so Jewish families in town at the time.”

“Can’t really blame them for leaving. When Long was elected, you could smell trouble was coming, somehow. So the Jews self-ghettoed themselves in Los Angeles and New York and Miami. Easier to help defend one another if you’re in one place. Still, a hell of a thing. Makes you wonder if they thought it through. Being in one place makes it easier to round you all up, and if that’s one thing this and other governments have learned, it’s how to round people up.”

* * *

The Rusty Hammer was a restaurant set on the corner of State Street and Pleasant Street, with a quick lunch service, and Sam hated to admit it, but he was pleased that Donna Fitzgerald turned out to be their waitress. Her uniform was tight and pink, the skirt a bit above the knees, and with a zippered top she had undone some, exposing the tiniest scrap of a white lace bra when she leaned over to give Walter his menu.

“So good to see you, Sam,” she said, putting a warm hand on his shoulder when she gave him his menu.

“You, too, Donna,” he said. “Any news about Larry?”