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.
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.
