Стивен Хантер - G-Man

The Bankers Building, 105 West Adams, upon whose nineteenth of forty-one floors nested the Chicago Office of the Justice Department, Division of Investigation, was a brawny structure; its gigantic profile would block the sun for miles if it weren’t for all the other equally brawny structures on the same mission. Charles had seen Chicago and was not impressed, as he had seen London and Paris and Miami and not been impressed either. The size and breadth of the Bankers Building meant nothing to him, nor did its immense stairway design, steps for a giant to reach heaven, all in brick, with friezes of Greek ideals of the foundation of civilization standing ceremonial guard over the glorious, shiny brass and mahogany of the Adams Street entrance.

To Charles, buildings hardly registered, nor did the thousands of Chicagoans who filled the street of the nation’s second-largest city. You couldn’t fathom a Depression here, as the suited-and-hatted citizens ran this way and that, dodging the heavy traffic, wincing at the smell of the thousands of cars, telling themselves to ignore the insane clamor of urban life at its full intensity, while, like circling Indians, the elevated trains roared around them in the circular conceit called the Loop. Charles wasted no time gawking, swallowing, and Wow! — ing. He was too old. He was too salty. He had killed too many men. Besides, there was something that had to be handled. Its name was Melvin Purvis.

“You’ll like Mel,” Cowley had said, after having lassoed Charles into the job. “He is a decent man, an intelligent man, a brave man, and an honorable man.”

“Yes sir. May I ask, what is his problem?”

“He is one of those men cursed by beauty.”

Charles had nodded. As an analyst of human strength and weakness, he knew that the handsome ones could be tricky. It’s something an infantry officer and a cop pick up on fast.

They get used to being the center of attention. They expect things to go their way. They don’t like to take orders, especially from the many less attractive than they are. They move at their own pace. Sometimes they seem not to hear what is said to them. They are very stubborn, not out of commitment to a certain line of logic but to the idea that their beauty confers on them certain divine rights. The moving pictures and the fancy magazines have only exacerbated these problems, for on-screen the handsomest man is always the best, the champion of the show, the lure of all the gals, the hero of all the guys, and your real-life pretty fellow too often comes to assume the same of himself, except he has yet to do a thing to earn that reputation. So problems — little, knotty difficulties, little spats, grudges, pissing contests, garbled communications, slights too slight to mention but annoying to suffer, a sense of self-importance — all make every transaction with the handsome man more bother than it should be.

Charles’s strategy in all things was aggression, which is why he wanted to get himself set up with this handsome man early on, and before even glancing across the crowded squad room that dominated the floor, he went straight to Purvis’s office, told the secretary who he was and hoped the office chief had a few minutes for him.

Or was he the office chief? That was the issue here. The Director sometimes liked things a little blurry so that the after-action reports could be adjusted most favorably, and who exactly was in charge of this group of Division investigators was unclear. Purvis got all the attention and, called the Clark Gable of the outfit, was the face the public knew, for better, for worse. He was learning that with fame went criticism, always. Sam basically ran the place as an investigative entity, and he was a wheeler-dealer, an organizer, an insanely hard worker, with his own line to the Director, and he talked with the august personality many times a day, while Purvis was more or less out of the inner circle.

“And you will do me a favor, if you can,” Sam had said. “To all outward purposes, please treat Mel as if he’s in charge of the office. The men will become restless if they know there’s confusion at the top. All details should reach me through Mel. I don’t want him feeling bypassed. Is that all right?”

“I think I can handle that,” said Charles. He knew from the army and county politics that organizations were seldom as straightforward in life as they were on paper. You had to play to the real, not the ideal.

“And then there’s Clegg,” Sam had said. He went on to explain that Clegg, another inspector who was supposedly the tactics genius, was technically in charge at Little Bohemia, and if the public didn’t know his name, the men of the Division did. Thus, he took most of the unofficial blame. But he was old Division, actually predated the Director’s appointment, and so no official approbation could be affixed to him. And he was the sort quite happy to pass the blame along and act as if nothing had happened. His career would not be affected. But he had been delicately “adjusted” out of the tactics-and-training job and now was almost purely an administrator.

That left the tactics part of the job open, and Charles had a pretty good idea who’d get it, first because he knew a thing or two about such matters, having led more than fifty raids in the Great War, and also because as an outsider without a constituency he could be easily sacrificed if things got balled up again. He sensed that going in, and had no problem with it, as he planned to let nothing get balled up.

Purvis turned out to be quite a nice fellow — if anything, even softer than Sam Cowley had seemed. As Sam had said, he was remarkably handsome, maybe thirty, with movie-star blond hair smoothed back, as was the Hollywood style, an aquiline profile, and white even teeth. He dressed impeccably, also like a movie star, his shirt starched, his tie, held rigid by collar bar, of the latest foulard plumage in deep red, his suit a three-piece example of top-of-the-line tailoring, glen plaid in the style made fashionable by the Duke of Windsor, everybody’s candidate for best-dressed man in the world, and he put out a handful of manicured fingers and said, “Call me Mel, Sheriff. Glad to have you aboard.”

As he stood and reached, Charles noted another unfortunate reality. Purvis was short. Handsome and short: tricky combination.

“Very pleased to be here, sir.”

“Please sit down. Light up, if you care to. I’m going to have a cigar myself, care for one?”

“No thank you, sir. I’m an old country boy, committed to rolling my own.”

Purvis took out, trimmed, and lit up a stogie as big as a torpedo, enjoying each step in the ritual to full sensual potential, and also using it to forestall his little lecture, as if even now he hadn’t planned on what to say. Charles noted the stall while he rolled a tailor-made to perfection — a small skill God gives those with gifted hands — and lit and enjoyed his own smoke break. He picked a fleck of loose tobacco off his lip, then turned to face his new semi-demi-quasi-partial-who-knew-what boss.

Purvis started with flattery, not realizing Charles was invulnerable to it, even if he appreciated the energy.

“You may be country, but you’re no hick, not if the records are any indication. All those raids in the war. Victory in seven gunfights, including the famous Blue Eye First National affair, you against three city boys, heavily armed, and you polished them off.”

“Luck had something to do with it.”

“Luck and marksmanship and guts, I’d say. Anyhow, right now my name is mud around here — around everywhere, as a matter of fact — because of that mess in Wisconsin. If I believed the rumors, I’d be packed and have my tickets back to South Carolina in my pocket. You know that?”