THE HOMEFRONT is a story about an Atlantic City police detective named Dave Levitan who investigates the murder of an Army recruit and uncovers an active cell of German spies, agents of Abwehr T-2, the High Command's elite special forces unit during the Second World War.
A jazz pianist girlfriend won't marry him. A police partner refuses to investigate. A gangster pressures him to take a job. The FBI won't give him a security clearance. With the fate of the Normandy invasion at stake, Levitan goes into battle aboard a PT boat to protect a strategic asset at a strategic moment in history.
The summer of 1944 was a fulcrum season. Old empires were withering and America was seizing the air, the seas, and preeminence in the sciences. Within a year, the USA would dominate the globe as no nation ever had before.
Dave Levitan inhabits that moment.
Chapter 1
By the summer of 1944, two and a half years into the war, tar balls from torpedoed ships and depth-charged U-Boats had polluted the coastline from Maine to Florida. On the morning of July 5th, because the sea breeze would not blow until the sun rose higher, the petroleum smells lay on Captain Starn’s Inlet like a blanket.
Starn’s was a sightseeing boat business at the quiet end of the Atlantic City boardwalk, the place where people either walked back to the honky-tonk they’d left a mile behind or crossed a parking lot to see how Starn’s might reward them for their exertions. To entice them, the owners had becalmed the front half of a retired cruiser in turquoise cement, put a neon sign shaped like a lobster on its roof, and made it the entrance to their restaurant.
At dawn on the morning after Independence Day, men with fishing poles and tackle boxes were boarding a party boat when they heard fish feeding on the surface under the T-shaped dock behind the restaurant. They dropped onto their bellies to peer into the shadows and saw the body of a soldier draped over a truss of dock construction, its lower half under attack by a frenzied school of little fish. When ACPD Detective Dave Levitan came onto Starn’s dock, patrolmen had just hauled the dripping corpse out of the water and laid it face up on the planks.
There were thirty thousand recruits in Atlantic City that summer, the War Department having rented the Convention Hall as a basic training center and most of the boardwalk hotels as barracks. Levitan assumed, based on the single stripe on the tattered sleeve, that the young man had recently completed his basic training and would soon have boarded a train bound for a troopship. Someone shot him before the enemy had a chance - there was an irregular hole in his forehead at the hairline. Levitan pulled the dog tag from under the GI T-shirt and copied the serial number and the name, G. Pedersen, into his pocket notebook.
Henry Canterbury, Levitan's partner, had lingered in the parking lot to help with crowd control and to chat with the uniformed men. Spotting a crab brought up with the body, the big man crushed it under the sole of his size twelve shoe.
“That thing wasn’t dead,” Levitan said.
“Yeah. So?” answered his partner, kicking the remains into the water.
Levitan shook his head and returned to the body. He pushed a shoulder to get a look at the back of the kid’s head and saw, as he’d expected, a neat hole at the base of the skull - an entry wound. In the kid’s pants pockets were coins, a Zippo lighter, and a GI wallet containing twelve dollars in soggy bills. A half-empty pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes was in the buttoned pocket of his khaki blouse.
“I’m gonna call the MPs, okay?” said Levitan.
Canterbury nodded. “I’ll wait for the doctor.”
Police car radios were receivers; policemen were supposed to call from yellow boxes mounted to utility poles if they needed to talk to anyone at the station house. Levitan usually found it more convenient to use a city nickel at a pay phone. After three nickels and five connections, Levitan’s call was put through to Lieutenant Paul Butterfield at the Convention Hall.
Levitan read him the name and serial number. “It was murder, Lieutenant. Your Private Pedersen was shot in the head.”
“You’ll send me a report; time, place, et cetera, et cetera,” Butterfield said, as if Levitan worked for him. Butterfield was a law school dropout from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in command of the 704th Army Air Corps Training Group’s Military Police Investigation Squad.
The detective allowed the implication to pass without comment. “You’ll get a copy right after it gets typed up,” he said. “You’ll be sending someone down to look at the crime scene?”
“Eventually, Detective. Last night…it was like the animals escaped from their cages. We were out on calls all night. We just sent a couple of buses full of men to the stockade at Dix. We’re up to our armpits in paperwork.”
“But this is a murder, Lieutenant. This kid was killed in cold blood. Somebody shot him in the back of the head.”
“We know our job. You just do yours if you don’t mind.”
“You’re seriously not going to come down and look at the body?”
“You know, Detective, your tone… it’s offensive. When we get out from under, I’ll send someone down to take a look.”
“I can’t keep a body on a public dock indefinitely. People have to use it. That body’s going to the Ohio Avenue morgue as soon as the Medical Examiner gets here. You should come down now.”
“I’m relying on your report. Do you think you can manage to type one up?”
God help us, Levitan thought. “I’ll send it over as soon as it’s finished,” he said evenly.
“And will there be an autopsy report?”
“Yes. As usual.”
“Very good, then.”
Levitan heard the click and looked at the telephone receiver in his hand for a long moment before returning it to its cradle.
The Military Police had more investigators in 1944 than local police forces, in spite of the fact that policemen were exempt from military service. Cops were classified 2-A, a category of civilians employed in essential occupations. By law, the Federal Government was prohibited from putting 2-A men into uniforms. But, cops being cops, they got around the draft laws by quitting their jobs. It was just him and Canterbury now, the bottom of the ACPD’s detective barrel.
Canterbury and Levitan would themselves have preferred to be in the Armed Forces, but Henry Canterbury, in his late-forties, was too old, and Dave Levitan, in his late-twenties, had been disqualified for physical reasons. He’d broken his ankle in Spain and it had healed in such a way that his left leg was an inch-and-a-half shorter than his right one, enough of a difference that Draft Board doctors had categorized him as 4-F, physically unfit for service. He’d appealed, attempting to get past the examining physicians at induction centers in Philadelphia and Trenton, swearing that he could run as fast as any other man so long as he had a lift on his left shoe, demonstrating his fitness and freedom from pain by doing jumping jacks. He’d even pulled political strings, or tried to. Nothing worked; they would not let him serve in the Armed Forces.
Levitan was a combat veteran who’d soldiered with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1937 and 1938, fighting Franco’s Fascist Army in the mountains above Teruel east of Madrid. He was a Jew with a powerful hatred of Germans. That the Government had a sound, logistical reason for denying him the right to shoot his enemy–they didn’t issue boots with lifts–consoled him not at all.
To literary agents and publishers - please contact stancutler@gmail.com
********************
A jazz pianist girlfriend won't marry him. A police partner refuses to investigate. A gangster pressures him to take a job. The FBI won't give him a security clearance. With the fate of the Normandy invasion at stake, Levitan goes into battle aboard a PT boat to protect a strategic asset at a strategic moment in history.
The summer of 1944 was a fulcrum season. Old empires were withering and America was seizing the air, the seas, and preeminence in the sciences. Within a year, the USA would dominate the globe as no nation ever had before.
Dave Levitan inhabits that moment.
Chapter 1
By the summer of 1944, two and a half years into the war, tar balls from torpedoed ships and depth-charged U-Boats had polluted the coastline from Maine to Florida. On the morning of July 5th, because the sea breeze would not blow until the sun rose higher, the petroleum smells lay on Captain Starn’s Inlet like a blanket.
Starn’s was a sightseeing boat business at the quiet end of the Atlantic City boardwalk, the place where people either walked back to the honky-tonk they’d left a mile behind or crossed a parking lot to see how Starn’s might reward them for their exertions. To entice them, the owners had becalmed the front half of a retired cruiser in turquoise cement, put a neon sign shaped like a lobster on its roof, and made it the entrance to their restaurant.
At dawn on the morning after Independence Day, men with fishing poles and tackle boxes were boarding a party boat when they heard fish feeding on the surface under the T-shaped dock behind the restaurant. They dropped onto their bellies to peer into the shadows and saw the body of a soldier draped over a truss of dock construction, its lower half under attack by a frenzied school of little fish. When ACPD Detective Dave Levitan came onto Starn’s dock, patrolmen had just hauled the dripping corpse out of the water and laid it face up on the planks.
There were thirty thousand recruits in Atlantic City that summer, the War Department having rented the Convention Hall as a basic training center and most of the boardwalk hotels as barracks. Levitan assumed, based on the single stripe on the tattered sleeve, that the young man had recently completed his basic training and would soon have boarded a train bound for a troopship. Someone shot him before the enemy had a chance - there was an irregular hole in his forehead at the hairline. Levitan pulled the dog tag from under the GI T-shirt and copied the serial number and the name, G. Pedersen, into his pocket notebook.
Henry Canterbury, Levitan's partner, had lingered in the parking lot to help with crowd control and to chat with the uniformed men. Spotting a crab brought up with the body, the big man crushed it under the sole of his size twelve shoe.
“That thing wasn’t dead,” Levitan said.
“Yeah. So?” answered his partner, kicking the remains into the water.
Levitan shook his head and returned to the body. He pushed a shoulder to get a look at the back of the kid’s head and saw, as he’d expected, a neat hole at the base of the skull - an entry wound. In the kid’s pants pockets were coins, a Zippo lighter, and a GI wallet containing twelve dollars in soggy bills. A half-empty pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes was in the buttoned pocket of his khaki blouse.
“I’m gonna call the MPs, okay?” said Levitan.
Canterbury nodded. “I’ll wait for the doctor.”
Police car radios were receivers; policemen were supposed to call from yellow boxes mounted to utility poles if they needed to talk to anyone at the station house. Levitan usually found it more convenient to use a city nickel at a pay phone. After three nickels and five connections, Levitan’s call was put through to Lieutenant Paul Butterfield at the Convention Hall.
Levitan read him the name and serial number. “It was murder, Lieutenant. Your Private Pedersen was shot in the head.”
“You’ll send me a report; time, place, et cetera, et cetera,” Butterfield said, as if Levitan worked for him. Butterfield was a law school dropout from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in command of the 704th Army Air Corps Training Group’s Military Police Investigation Squad.
The detective allowed the implication to pass without comment. “You’ll get a copy right after it gets typed up,” he said. “You’ll be sending someone down to look at the crime scene?”
“Eventually, Detective. Last night…it was like the animals escaped from their cages. We were out on calls all night. We just sent a couple of buses full of men to the stockade at Dix. We’re up to our armpits in paperwork.”
“But this is a murder, Lieutenant. This kid was killed in cold blood. Somebody shot him in the back of the head.”
“We know our job. You just do yours if you don’t mind.”
“You’re seriously not going to come down and look at the body?”
“You know, Detective, your tone… it’s offensive. When we get out from under, I’ll send someone down to take a look.”
“I can’t keep a body on a public dock indefinitely. People have to use it. That body’s going to the Ohio Avenue morgue as soon as the Medical Examiner gets here. You should come down now.”
“I’m relying on your report. Do you think you can manage to type one up?”
God help us, Levitan thought. “I’ll send it over as soon as it’s finished,” he said evenly.
“And will there be an autopsy report?”
“Yes. As usual.”
“Very good, then.”
Levitan heard the click and looked at the telephone receiver in his hand for a long moment before returning it to its cradle.
The Military Police had more investigators in 1944 than local police forces, in spite of the fact that policemen were exempt from military service. Cops were classified 2-A, a category of civilians employed in essential occupations. By law, the Federal Government was prohibited from putting 2-A men into uniforms. But, cops being cops, they got around the draft laws by quitting their jobs. It was just him and Canterbury now, the bottom of the ACPD’s detective barrel.
Canterbury and Levitan would themselves have preferred to be in the Armed Forces, but Henry Canterbury, in his late-forties, was too old, and Dave Levitan, in his late-twenties, had been disqualified for physical reasons. He’d broken his ankle in Spain and it had healed in such a way that his left leg was an inch-and-a-half shorter than his right one, enough of a difference that Draft Board doctors had categorized him as 4-F, physically unfit for service. He’d appealed, attempting to get past the examining physicians at induction centers in Philadelphia and Trenton, swearing that he could run as fast as any other man so long as he had a lift on his left shoe, demonstrating his fitness and freedom from pain by doing jumping jacks. He’d even pulled political strings, or tried to. Nothing worked; they would not let him serve in the Armed Forces.
Levitan was a combat veteran who’d soldiered with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1937 and 1938, fighting Franco’s Fascist Army in the mountains above Teruel east of Madrid. He was a Jew with a powerful hatred of Germans. That the Government had a sound, logistical reason for denying him the right to shoot his enemy–they didn’t issue boots with lifts–consoled him not at all.
To literary agents and publishers - please contact stancutler@gmail.com
********************
Low Light
Why did J. Edgar Hoover deny that there was a national crime syndicate operating in America? He claimed that criminals were too dumb to be organized. LOW LIGHT is a novel that suggests that the FBI Director might have been the victim of blackmail. The story is narrated by Al Rubin, a man seduced into taking the blackmail pictures by promises too tempting for him to refuse. Hoover pays a visit to Atlantic City during the summer of 1929, unaware that Al waits on the other side of his hotel room wall with a pair of 1929-style, high tech cameras. When the photo shoot goes awry, Al escapes into the world of bootleggers, IRA gunmen, big time gamblers, anti-Semitic sea captains, African American race jockeys, flappers, gun molls, G Men, and powerful politicians.
Readers who like the HBO miniseries “Boardwalk Empire” will find much to enjoy.
Click here to buy or download the book
Click here to send me an email
Click here to read why Stan writes
********************
Hardly a Pulse, takes place in the 1950s.
The old Atlantic City is in its death throes. Efforts at revival are stymied by the effects of television, airplanes, and air conditioning. Politicians, if they can be persuaded to legalize gambling, hold the key to saving the city. The Rubins find themselves involved in a plot to change the balance of political power by murder, extortion and blackmail.
Why did J. Edgar Hoover deny that there was a national crime syndicate operating in America? He claimed that criminals were too dumb to be organized. LOW LIGHT is a novel that suggests that the FBI Director might have been the victim of blackmail. The story is narrated by Al Rubin, a man seduced into taking the blackmail pictures by promises too tempting for him to refuse. Hoover pays a visit to Atlantic City during the summer of 1929, unaware that Al waits on the other side of his hotel room wall with a pair of 1929-style, high tech cameras. When the photo shoot goes awry, Al escapes into the world of bootleggers, IRA gunmen, big time gamblers, anti-Semitic sea captains, African American race jockeys, flappers, gun molls, G Men, and powerful politicians.
Readers who like the HBO miniseries “Boardwalk Empire” will find much to enjoy.
Click here to buy or download the book
Click here to send me an email
Click here to read why Stan writes
********************
Hardly a Pulse, takes place in the 1950s.
The old Atlantic City is in its death throes. Efforts at revival are stymied by the effects of television, airplanes, and air conditioning. Politicians, if they can be persuaded to legalize gambling, hold the key to saving the city. The Rubins find themselves involved in a plot to change the balance of political power by murder, extortion and blackmail.