Amerikan Eagle Read online

  Amerikan Eagle is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Bantam Books Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2011 by Alan Glenn

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52760-8

  Cover deign: Carlos Beltran

  Cover photo: Jack Delano / Library of Congress

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  This novel is for my wife and my parents.

  Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.

  —The Talmud

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Interlude I

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Interlude II

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve

  Interlude III

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Interlude IV

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Interlude V

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Interlude VI

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Interlude VII

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Part Four

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Part Five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Interlude VIII

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Interlude IX

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Interlude X

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Interlude XI

  Part Six

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  PROLOGUE

  Miami, Florida, Wednesday, February 15, 1933

  His whole life had been focused on keeping secrets, and after the twelve-day voyage south here on the Nourmahal, a luxury yacht owned by Vincent Astor—his neighbor from Warm Springs, Georgia—the newly elected president of the United States looked at the swarms of people meeting him at Bayfront Park this warm evening, and amid all the waves and jokes to his aides and puffs on his cigarette, he thought, Children. They are all children, frightened at what has happened to them, what has happened to their families, what has happened to their country. That was his latest secret, then, that he looked at the 140 million Americans out there and thought of them as children, even the twenty thousand who had gathered to see him tonight. Children who needed to look to a strong father who would promise to make everything right again. He grimaced, wondering what Colonel McCormack and his damnable Chicago Tribune would do with that particular thought. Which was why … secrets, so many secrets to be kept.

  But oh, how that made sense, seeing all these people as children. Their dreams, their lives, everything torn apart since Black Tuesday nearly four years ago, as the stock market crashed and the grinding Depression followed. Despite all the soothing words of Hoover and his administration, it had gotten worse month after month, year after year. Factory after factory shutting down. Farmland turning to desert. Unemployment lines and soup kitchen lines and relief lines stretching for miles through hushed and fearful cities.

  So here he was. New York state senator, former assistant secretary of the navy, failed vice presidential candidate in 1924, two-term governor of New York, under a month away from being inaugurated the thirty-second president of the United States, and already he knew he would have enormous power and the authority to use it once he was in the White House. During the leisurely cruise south to Florida, as he fished and talked and drank his own well-made martinis, the work had been under way. He was picking his cabinet, conferring with his smart young men, eager to go to Washington to make the necessary and overdue changes. From getting people back to work to ending the embarrassment that was Prohibition to finally chopping out the rot in the capitalist system that allowed a depression to shatter so millions of lives … There was so much to do!

  The heat was oppressive, he thought as the motorcade rumbled its way through the crowds, the excited people reaching out to touch him, he waving at them, enjoying their attention, enjoying, too, the trust they were putting in him. Such a time to be alive. The problems of this blessed and rich and desperately troubled country were not unique in the world and weren’t even the worst. Japan was in Manchuria, ruthlessly slaughtering thousands of Chinese every day, hurtling threatening remarks about the Pacific and the Philippines. And Europe—ah, Europe, that would have to be faced once again, under two decades after the Great War. The global depression was devastating England and France and Germany. Now, Germany, that was a place to watch. An Austrian beer-hall rabble-rouser had just been named chancellor of Germany, and though elections were to be held there on March 5—the day after his own swearing-in—there was little doubt that Herr Hitler and his Nazi sons of bitches were going to seize power.

  And speaking of sons of bitches, there were a handful here he needed to keep an eye on, like Senator Huey Long from Louisiana, the Kingfish himself. Just last week Long grabbed control of the state’s banking system—even though, as a U.S. senator, he had no authority to do so. But the governor there, a weak character named Oscar Allen, did what the Kingfish told him to do—and Long still ran that state as his own private kingdom. Long had campaigned hard for Roosevelt, but he still didn’t trust the man, not for a second. And there was Al Smith from New York, the former governor who believed he should have been the nominee last year. Keeping his enemies and friends in line was going to take a lot of a work, a lot of work, indeed. Certainly not one term; two terms, at least. And in the futu
re, well, why not a third term? There was a tradition of only serving two terms, but the depth of the crisis—banks closing across the country, county judges lynched to prevent farm foreclosures, desperate streams of refugees going from state to state looking for work, looking for a new life, looking for hope—would surely allow for tradition be tossed aside.

  He was now sitting on the rear seat of his halted green Buick convertible, helped up by Gus Gennerich, head of his Secret Service detail, his legs with their ten-pound leg braces dangling uselessly before him. Yet another secret, his paralysis of nearly twelve years, a secret he was determined to keep from those who didn’t need to know. This was a time to be alive, but the millions of people who had voted for him might have hesitated had they known just how crippled he was.

  The mayor of Miami introduced him, to thunderous cheers and applause. As the microphone was handed down to him, though he had no prepared speech, he would say a few words that would make everyone happy.

  The crowd calmed as he talked about how many times he had visited Florida on his old houseboat, the Larooco, and how he’d had a wonderful time fishing. But he wouldn’t bore them with fishing stories, he told them, and after a few more words and some laughter from the people, he was done. He passed the microphone back to the mayor, and the crowd surged some more, and now there was a familiar man joining him in the convertible, breathing hard, face subdued. Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago and one of Al Smith’s fellows. Cermak was here to kiss and make up—the poor man had twenty thousand schoolteachers who couldn’t be paid—and he was also here, hat in hand, to seek federal aid. Politics was politics, and there was always a price to be paid, but he wouldn’t let those teachers suffer because their mayor had backed the wrong horse at the Chicago convention last year.

  Times had changed. Times were changing. The problems of a town or city or a state could no longer be settled by the locals. It was time for the federal government to take control, to improve things, to change the economy and rescue capitalism from its corrupt overseers, to give those poor children out there the flickering hope that things would improve, that something new would come, yes, that was it, the New Deal he had announced last year at the convention, a New Deal for the American people, the New Deal that would—

  Noises.

  Shouts.

  Firecrackers?

  God, his chest hurt.

  He looked down, touched his white shirt. His hand came back bloody. Not firecrackers. Gunshots. Fired at him! More screams, and he felt the Buick begin to move, heard the shouting voice of Gus Gennerich telling the driver to move, move, move!

  Now he was in the seat, on his side, his shoulders gripped by someone … Tony Cermak, it seemed like, telling him it would be all right, that he had to live, that he couldn’t leave them, not now, that this was wrong, so wrong, and the pain in his chest flared, and as the darkness grew, he tried to fight back because … it was wrong! There was so much to do, so much …

  The darkness descended upon him. The voices grew distant. Even the pain seemed to subside.

  Oh, there was so much to do.

  CONFIDENTIAL

  Partial transcript, phone call received 01 May 1943, FBI Officer in Charge, Boston Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, from Confidential Informant “Charlie”:

  CI Charlie:… sorry, it didn’t work out.

  FBI OIC: What do you mean it didn’t work out?

  CI Charlie: It didn’t work out. He’s dead. That’s it.

  FBI OIC: Did you recover anything from the body?

  CI Charlie: Not a goddamn thing.

  FBI OIC: Were you seen?

  CI Charlie: I don’t think so.

  FBI OIC: There’s going to be hell to pay.

  CI Charlie: Tell me about it.

  FBI OIC: And you should know, something huge is coming down the pike in less than a week and in your neck of the woods. You and your crew better be ready. You can’t afford to screw up again or you’ll be a dead man for sure, along with whoever else gets in the way or screws up.

  CI Charlie: But there’s going to be a police presence on this, I’m sure—

  FBI OIC: What, you think a local police badge protects anyone nowadays?

  CI Charlie: Oh, Christ.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Portsmouth, N.H., Monday, May 1, 1943

  Through the gloom and driving rain, Inspector Sam Miller glimpsed the dead man sprawled beside the railroad tracks, illuminated by the dancing glow from flashlights held by two other Portsmouth police officers. Sam had his own RayoVac out, lighting up the gravel path alongside the B&M tracks. The metal flashlight was chilly in his hand, and a previously broken finger was throbbing. It was raw and cold and he was hungry, having been called out just as he sat down to supper, but dead bodies demanded the presence of a police inspector, and Sam was the only inspector the department had.

  Minutes earlier he had parked his Packard next to a Portsmouth police cruiser, back at the nearest spot open to the tracks, the dirt parking lot of the Fish Shanty restaurant. In his short walk to the scene, he had gotten soaked from the rain, and his shoes were sloppy with mud. His umbrella was safe and dry back home. The two police officers waited, flashlights angled, black slickers shiny with rain.

  The path was getting rougher, and he had to watch his step past the wooden ties. When he was young, he’d found railroads exciting, romantic and adventurous. In the bedroom he shared with his brother, late at night, the steam whistle would make him think of all the places out there he’d visit. But that was a long time ago. Now trains still did their work, but the passenger trains were crowded, tramps often overwhelmed freight cars, and there were other, secretive trains out there that spooked him and so many others.

  Near the two cops standing in the middle of the tracks was another figure, hunched over in the rain. Beyond the tracks, grass and brush stretched out about twenty feet to the rear of some warehouses and storage buildings. To the right, another expanse of grass melted into marshland and North Mill Pond, a tributary from the Portsmouth harbor. Farther down the tracks, Sam saw the flickering lights of a hobo encampment, like the campfires from some defeated army, always in retreat.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes earlier he had been dozing on the couch—half-listening to the radio, half-listening, too, to Sarah talking to Toby, warm and comfortable, feet stretched out on an old ottoman, and he had been … well, if not dreaming, then just remembering. He wasn’t sure why—and maybe it was the onset of his finger aching as the temperature dropped—but he was remembering that muddy day on the football field of Portsmouth High School in the finals of the state championship in November, he the first-string quarterback … an overcast autumn day ten years ago, wind like a knife edge with the salt tang from the harbor … the wooden bleachers crowded with his neighbors and schoolmates … slogging through the muddy field, aching, face bruised, and the first finger of his right hand taped after an earlier tackle, no doubt broken, but he wasn’t going to be pulled out, no sir … down by three points against Dover, their longtime rival … knowing that a pretty cheerleader named Sarah Young was watching him from the sidelines, and Mom, Dad, and his older brother, Tony, were there, too, in the nearest row of the stands, the first time Tony and Dad had ever come to one of his games.

  Slog, slog, slog … minutes racing away … only seconds left … and then an opening, a burst of light, he got the ball tight under his arm, raced to the left, his finger throbbing something awful … dodging, dodging, focusing on the goalposts … a hard tackle from behind … a faceful of cold mud … his taped finger screaming at him … and then quiet, just for an instant, before the whistles blew and the cheers erupted.

  He scrambled up, breathing hard, ball still in his hands, seeing the scoreboard change, seeing the hand of the clock sweep by, and then a gunshot … game over. Portsmouth had won … Portsmouth had won the state championship.

  Chaos … shouts … cheers … slaps on the back … being jostled around … looking at the peop
le, his high school, his playing field … pushing … taking off the snug leather helmet, his hair sweaty … and there, Mom clapping, her face alight, and Dad had his arm around Tony’s shoulders, Tony standing there, grinning … Mom saying something, but he was staring at Dad, waiting, desperate for him to say something, anything, as so many hands patted his back … hands trying to get the game ball away from him … his broken finger throbbing.

  Then Dad spoke, and Sam could smell the Irish whiskey on his breath. “Great news, boy, great news! Tony got into the apprenticeship program at the shipyard. Like father, like son … ain’t that great?”

  Sam’s eyes teared up. “We won,” he said, despising himself for the humiliation in each word. “We won.”

  Dad squeezed Tony’s shoulder. “But that’s just a game. Our Tony, he’s got a future now … a real future.”

  And that winning, confident grin of Tony the school dropout, Tony the hell-raiser and hunter, Tony whom Dad cared about … not the other son, the winning football hero, the Eagle Scout, the one who—