They found the stiff in the house on Seward Square,
wrapped in one of Nanny’s towels.  Bad business
in Little Bohemia.  An agent killed.
Any word from Melvin, Junior?     No, Speed;
no break on the Lindberg killer, either.

Tolson imagines a sigh.  That morning,
Crawford picked him up at the Westchester.
He thought first of the portrait by Noisette,
the doorman who dabbled in oils.  Now this.

At 413 Nanny was still in bed,
but Speed had on a dark, well-tailored suit
and new silk tie.  It had been thirteen years:
as long as he’d been chief of the Bureau.

The bulldog profile, lauded in the press
as recently as the last fiscal year,
bent down tenderly.  The manicured hands
brushed the black and tan softness of the corpse,
cologne spiking the full wet smell of fur.

He made one last try to tuck in the tongue,
and close the lids over the small dark eyes
that seized alertly on every detail
till this last, unapproachable dullness.

This done, he — not Crawford — carried it out.
A radio car of agents drove behind;
Miss Gandy knew to forward any news.

Tolson, square-jawed, still boyishly handsome,
glances across the Packard at his boss,
who says to no one,  Last Tuesday we walked
to that same newsstand on Pennsylvania.
I put the rolled up paper in his mouth
just as we got home.  Only he was slow.
He didn’t run to Nanny like he used to.
That’s when I knew.  Tolson reaches over
the little weight between them, then pulls back.
The townhouses change to suburbs and farms.

At Aspen Hill the funeral director
seems solicitous without irony.
He says, A man buries his wife because
he has to.  He buries his dog because
he wants to.  Hoover doesn’t hear.  Later,
the G-men trudge across the bright spring lawn
in fedoras and topcoats.  Minds wander
to newsreels, budgets, hearings on the Hill.
A worker with a shovel bows his head.

In Chicago, Dillinger whores around,
goes to movies.  In upper Manhattan,
Bruno Hauptmann passes a marked ten-spot.
Here, a catbird meows as agents stand
and silently guard the grave where a stone
will soon read, Spee Dee Bozo — Our Best Friend.