Стивен Хантер - G-Man

Les was bold, but he was also lucky. He had no map, he had no particular sense of the terrain, indeed had never set foot into this part of Wisconsin until yesterday afternoon, driving up with Helen and Tommy Carroll, and even now the spurs of evergreens and as-yet-unleafed maple and elm sprigs cut at him but did not slow him down. He had no orientation, as woods skills were not among his talents, and the trees were too heavy, in any case, to make out any direction-suggesting stars. He just ran. He was young, twenty-six, full of a sense of fun, and sucking so powerfully on his badness and his glamour and yet another slick escape that no branch dared oppose him seriously, and the forest itself did not conspire against him by leading him off on twisty return trails so that he’d run like hell without advancing anywhere.

He ran, ran, ran. Behind him, the firing had stopped, and now and then he turned, swung around and looked for targets. But he could see no shadow pursuers, and when he managed to still his over-dramatic intake of oxygen, heard no crunching in the brush or thudding in the dust that might signify pursuit.

In time, the forest offered him a path carpeted with pine needles, and his night vision had adjusted to the low illumination, so the way was as sure as any of the Chicago alleys in which he’d grown up. He felt relaxed enough to steady up on his gait, sliding into something of a smooth jog, as opposed to the helter-skelter ragtime of insane escape speed. The shoulder holster held the .45 tight under his arm, as it was designed to do, and though the heft of the machine pistol grew in his hands (no holster could accommodate it because it was so big and ungainly), it rode in his hands, and he sometimes carried it lefty, sometimes righty, sometimes pointed up, sometimes pointed down, subtly shifting the point of balance and relieving his muscles. But it was too necessary to even think about jettisoning. If he fell in a lake, it would drown him, that’s how much clinging to it meant.

He drifted on, hearing the silence of the night, his powerful eyes keenly locked ahead in case of ambush. But he was not the paranoid type and so no dread crushed against him. He did not see phantoms from the Division behind every tree, and the natural sounds of the forest — the hooting of owls, the scurrying of small mammals, the click and clack of branches moving against each other in the wind, the leaves propelled by the same force rubbing — did not grow in his imagination. He didn’t have much imagination beyond guns, cars, his kids, and his wife. His whole world was feral, not planned, narrow, not broad, predatory, not nurturing, tough-guy proud, not afraid, and though not now, insane at times with rage. He needed anger management desperately but there was no anger management yet, nor were there antidepressants or other drugs that could have pulled him back to the normal range, but he’d been crazy for so long, and had enjoyed it so much, there was no getting him back.

How much time? An hour, not more than two. But at a certain point the fact that God himself is also crazy rewarded him, and he did not fall into a lake or a ditch and spare the world much pain, he came instead to a road, and in no time at all a Model A came chugging along. God was again taking care of Les.

“Goddammit,” he yelled, pointing the strange little machine pistol at the two astonished occupants. “Get me out of here, goddammit!”

He scooted into the back.

Nothing happened. Both were frozen with fear. After all, imagine what an apparition he would have seemed, a dapper, rather handsome chap, well dressed in a suit, a thick head of hair, a sprig of movie-star mustache on his square pug face, yet armed with a weapon the likes of which they had never seen even if they recognized its deadly components, most notably the yawning .45-inch bore, and the fellow was acting fully insane, red-faced, swaddled in sweat, which flew off of him as he moved like a dervish toward them, eyes as wide as a rabid dog’s. He looked like the picture-show comic boy Mickey McGuire with a real big gun, hopped up on tequila.

“Get this sonovabitch moving,” commanded the man, and reluctantly, with shivering fingers and stunted movements, the driver eased her into gear and began to move.

But the tricks weren’t done for the night, not by a long shot. The light beams filled the vault of trees curving over the road, and the car edged ahead, began to build speed, and Les had a glimpse of the perfect escape he so richly deserved. And then the lights went out.

“What the hell!” he screamed.

“Sir, I didn’t do nothing, swear to God— Oh, Christ, I don’t know—”

“I swear, sir, this here’s an old buggy, wiring’s all shot to hell, I could dicker with her under the hood, maybe get the shine on again—”

“Jesus H. Christ!” screamed Les. Yet he couldn’t imagine these two bozos conspiring against him on the spur of the moment, and he knew if he killed them, the damned gun was done for the evening, as he had no other big mag. “Goddammit, get going, take her easy, don’t pile us up, Grandpa, or I will have your ass for breakfast.”

Slowly the car crept ahead, essentially feeling its way through the woods, stopping now and then when someone’s eyes detected a problem with the road. At this rate, he’d be free and clear of Wisconsin well before Christmas.

“This ain’t working, goddammit,” he screamed at them.

“Sir, I am so sorry, I just—”

“Okay, okay. Shut up, now. See, isn’t that a house up on the left?”

“It’s Koerners’,” said the other occupant, as if Les was going to answer, “Oh, that’s where the Koerners live.”

“Pull in,” he commanded, and the rube slid the car off the road, up the driveway in front of a well-lit clapboard, back in the trees, off the road. They sat there while Les tried to figure out what to do next. Best thing: crash the house, see if they had a car, then take off in it, presumably lights running, and whiz through the night until he reached the Illinois or Iowa or Michigan state line, he didn’t know or care which. That was the best idea, and he took a deep breath and began to compose himself to issue instructions, when, absurdly, another car pulled in, just behind them, and three men got out.

Jesus Christ, was this an escape in a Keystone comedy? People keep showing up exactly where they shouldn’t be, and he’s got hostages coming out the butt. What’s he supposed to do with these hostages. Start a band?

He leapt from the car, leveled the machine pistol at the three, noting intently even in the dark that they lacked that cop deportment — he’d been studying it his whole life — which was equal parts size, steadiness, and seriousness, and screamed, “Get those paws up, you mooks, or I’ll blast you to hell.”

The three turned, hands flew up, but he knew instantly that whoever these mooks were, they knew there’d been action at Little Bohemia, and the night would be full of spooks, gangsters, feds, and machine-gun fire. They eyed him with fear, expecting difficulty, offering no resistance, as if obedience could buy off his craziness.

“Go on, goddammit, get in the house, you two”—meaning the two he’d already nabbed — and the five of them formed into a loose confederation of civilians, with hands high, controlled from the rear by a man with a nasty pistol.

This motley crew marched into the Koerners’, and those folks looked equally stunned at the size of the menagerie that had just tromped into the living room, particularly the extremely agitated young fellow who was calling the shots, yelling orders, dancing this way and that, sweating like a boxer, his eyes racing over everything as he drank it in for information.

“All right, everybody, get on the goddamned floor if you don’t want to be in a massacre. If I have to fire, you get famous, but you’re dead, so no time to enjoy it.”