Amerikan Eagle

The other cops just hunched their shoulders up against the driving rain, stayed quiet. That was the way of their world, Sam thought. Just do your job and keep your mouth shut. Anything else was too dangerous.

CHAPTER TWO

From the rainy gloom, another man stumbled toward them, swearing loudly, carrying a leather case over his shoulder, like one of the hordes of unemployed men who went door-to-door during this second decade of the Great Depression, peddling hairbrushes, toothbrushes, shoelaces. But this man was Ralph Morancy, a photographer for the Portsmouth Herald and sometime photographer for the Portsmouth Police Department.

He dropped the case on the railroad ties and said, “Inspector Miller. Haven’t seen you since your promotion from sergeant to inspector, when I took that lovely page-one photo of you, your wife, the police marshal, and our mayor.”

Sam said, “That’s right. A lovely photo indeed. And I’m still waiting for the copy you promised me.”

Ralph spat as he removed his Speed Graphic camera from the case. “Lots of people ahead of you. Can’t do your photo and be accused of favoritism, now, can I?”

“I guess not. I remember how long it took you to get me another copy of a photograph, back when I was in high school.”

The older man rummaged through his case, clumsily sheltering it from the rain with his body. “Ah, yes, our star quarterback, back when Portsmouth won the championship. How long did it take for me back then?”

“A year.”

“Well, I promise to be quicker this time.”

Sam said, “Just take the damn photos, all right?”

Ralph put a flashbulb in the camera with ease, like a magician performing the same trick for the thousandth time. “Anything special, Inspector?”

“The usual body shots. I also want the ground around the body.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I want photos of what’s not there,” Sam said.

Frank Reardon stirred. “What’s not there? What kind of crap is that?”

Sam played the flashlight beam around the corpse, the raindrops sparking in the light. “What do you see around the body?”

“Nothing,” Leo said. “Mud and grass.”

“Right,” Sam said. “No footprints. No drag marks. No sign of a struggle. Just a body plopped down in the mud, like he dropped from the sky. And I want to make sure we get the photos before the body’s moved.”

He kept the flashlight beam centered on the corpse. The rain fell in straight lines, striking the dead man’s face. To Sam, the dead man looked like a wax dummy. There was a sudden slash of light, and Sam flinched as Ralph took the first photo. As Ralph replaced the bulb, he groused, “Plenty of time for me to make tomorrow’s edition.”

“No,” Sam said. “You know the arrangement, Ralph. We get twenty-four hours, first dibs, before you use any crime scene photos in the paper.”

Another flash, and Sam blinked at the dots of light floating before his eyes. “Come on, Inspector, give me a break,” Ralph muttered. “Twelve hours, twenty-four hours. What difference does it make?”

“If it’s twenty-four hours, it makes no difference at all. If it’s twelve hours, the department makes arrangements with another photographer. You’re an educated man, Ralph, you know what the jobless numbers are like. You really want to dick around with this sweet deal?”

A third flare of light. “Some goddamn sweet deal, getting rained on in the cold, taking photos of a dead bum.”

Sam gave him a gentle slap on his back. “Just the glamour of being a newsman, right?”

“Some fucking glamour. My boss got a visit last week from some jerk in the Department of the Interior. Wanted to know how we’d survive if our newsprint ration got cut again next month. So my boss got the message—tone down the editorials, or the paper gets shut down. Yeah, that’s glamour.”

Sam said, “Spare us the whining. Just get the photos.”

“Coming right up, Inspector. I know how to keep my job, just you see.”

* * *

This was Sam’s first untimely death as an inspector. As a patrolman and, later, sergeant, he had seen a number of bodies, from drowned hoboes pulled from Portsmouth Harbor to sailors knifed outside one of the scores of bars near Ceres Street. But as a patrolman or a sergeant, you secured the scene and waited for the inspector to arrive. That had been old Hugh Johnson, until he died of bone cancer last year.

Now it was Sam’s job, and what he did tonight could decide whether he got to keep it. He was on probation, a month left before he turned in the silver shield of an inspector on tryout, before getting the gold shield and a promised pay raise that would give his family some breathing room, a bit socked away in savings, something that would put them at the top of the heap in this lousy economy. So far, all of his cases had been minor crap, like burglaries, bunco cases, or chasing down leads for the Department of the Interior on labor camp escapees who had ties to the area. But if this turned out to be a homicide, it could help him with the Police Commission and their decision on his ultimate status.