Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“Some license plates in his backseat,” said Les. “Can you believe that? Some kid, some junior G-Man, notices ’em and that’s it, buster, you’ve been ventilated.” It seemed so unfair.

“Arf, arf,” said Homer. “Me sad puppy.”

Homer: his name was Homer Van Meter; he was as Indiana as Indianapolis, a string bean with a thick gush of hair and a long, bony Grant Wood face. He had a marksman’s gift for gunwork and a sense of humor that could be likened to the sound of sheet metal being ripped by insane dogs. In his life — he was twenty-five — he had told ten thousand jokes, of which at least nine, or possibly even ten, had been funny. He kept trying, however. He was a very good bank robber.

“He didn’t even have a gun,” said Charlie in his Oklahoma twang. “As he’s running away, the cops shoot him down. They don’t even know who he is. The great Tommy Carroll.”

Charlie — Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd — was out of the Cookson Hills and mean as a splinter in your ass. He was a good shot; too stupid to know the meaning of fear, either as a word or as a concept; big, strong, sullen, bitter. And that was sober. Drunk, look out. No one would ever accuse him of genius, and he couldn’t be trusted to plan his next bowel movement, but he was solid, steady, a good man with a gun, and so obsessed with bringing financial relief to his people back in the Oklahoma hills, just about unbudgeable in determination.

“He did good at Brainerd,” said Johnny. “And he was a good man to be on the run with. No complaints, no whining, no ‘Why me?’ bullshit. He was a pro. He was there when we put Red in the ground.” Red Hamilton was another recent departee, having caught a slug at a roadblock he and Johnny had busted through on the way out of Wisconsin. They’d all been there. There were obligations, even in this little tribe of outlaws. You didn’t forget somebody just because he caught a cold from a bullet. You put him away, right and proper, or if you couldn’t, you drank a beer to him and said words. “He was an ace.”

That was as good an epitaph as Tommy was likely to get, and of course Johnny, who always had a view toward the bigger picture, was the one to give it.

And Les himself: he hated the moniker Baby Face, hung on him accidentally and not remotely accurate — he was a lithe, quick, fully developed male of a reasonable height, by the standards of the time, and had no physical oddities that compelled the name. His psychology was hammered into place by a drunken father, who hammered other things as well, namely, Les’s mother and Les himself. At some point Lester Gillis, of the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, with a hideous Windy City accent that turned all his vowels into the shrieks of geese as they were fed into a meat grinder tail first, just decided to hammer back at the world for giving him a childhood comprised mainly of getting the shit beat out of him, which didn’t bother him, but seeing his mother get the shit beat out of her, which did bother him. Smart, feral, without moral compass beyond the immediate tribe, devoted to his hot little bundle of wife and his two kids, though somewhat undone by a hair-trigger temper and an inability to conceive of getting hurt that expressed itself in a recklessness that was also sheer bravery, he was another professional, with great ambition, skill, and dedication. He wanted to be a great bank robber.

The last man here was Les’s pal Jack Perkins, no genius and way overmatched by the all-star talents in the room, but at least he could be counted on to do what he was told, and he always had a smile on his face. The only thing demanded of him was that he learn his lines and not bump into the furniture.

The chamber itself was the back room of a tavern that was, guaranteed Homer, part of the big thing the Italians had going. That is, it was connected up and therefore part of a web of activities and plots, all against the law, all nefarious, and so it could be trusted to play host to, and give suffrage and rest to, various on-the-lammers, various would-be torpedoes, even the odd actual torpedo headed to Cleveland or Chicago. It was about twelve miles out of South Bend, and all were here at the insistence of Homer, who was no Jimmy Murray when it came to spotting, planning, and pulling off jobs.

Jimmy was a master; he’d run the biggest heist in history a few years ago in Illinois and that one had been a triumph, start to finish. Money, money, money for everybody and nobody dead. Now Homer was thinking he could come up in weight class, become a Jimmy Murray — class setup guy and thus grab a double share.

“Why did the duck cross the road?” he asked.

Nobody had an answer. Each had beer before him, except for Les, who never drank and kept a clear head. The air roiled with cigarette smoke, and from the bar in the front room the music of somebody’s Chicagoland band beat on, tinnily and slightly out of sync. “It Might as Well Be Spring.”

“To get to the quackers on the other side, quack, quack,” said Homer, blowing up in laughter. Johnny laughed, though it was phony, and Homer’s cheap dame Mickey Conforti laughed, showing her horse teeth, and always polite Jack laughed, but Charlie, sour as cow piss, said, “Get on with it, goddammit, this ain’t no radio hour.”

It was the only thing Charlie and Les would ever agree on.

“Hey, a joke a day keeps Mr. Frowny Face away,” said Homer. Homer, a good man with the Winchester .351 he carried around in a billiards case, and he’d somehow glommed onto this hideous, loud skank of woman who was known to pass out sexual favors to any and all when she got a little buzzed.

“All right,” said Homer. “Merchants National, South Bend, twelve miles north of here, sis-boom-bah, home of Notre Dame, and we are the Five Horsemen, not the Four, so we can’t miss. It’s a tidy little joint, the coppers are amateurs, but it’s got all that money these Indiana farmers rack in for growing peas in pods and corn in husks and chickens with goobery red beaks. Plus, every Saturday at eleven, two postal inspectors mosey down from the Post Office with a big bag or two of cash they’ve pulled in all week selling the folks stamps. That stamp money adds up!”

“What’s the take?” Charlie asked.

“Figure fifty, easy. More than Brainerd, more than Sioux City, a good haul with minimum risk, with the stamp money boosting it. Y’all are going to thank me when you’re in Miami, going to the track every day.”

“I ain’t no track tout,” snarled Charlie. “I got family to take care of. There’s a Depression on, and nobody in Oklahoma is working — that is, them parts of it that ain’t blowed away in the wind.”

“Yes sir,” said Homer, trying to oblige. “Well, we’ll get you paid up good. Now, I see this as an in-out car job, never no split-up, so we don’t need to set a meet-up, one car for all of us, the South Bend coppers ain’t set up with radio nets, to any degree. Mr. Charlie, you’ll be the ringmaster, run the show; you got the deep voice, and you’re as scary as you are pretty.”

“I ain’t pretty a bit,” said the sour Oklahoman. What a dick he could be!

“You guys are big enough to have nicknames. Les’s Baby Face, Johnny’s Johnny D, and you’re Pretty Boy. I’m just And Others. It ain’t fair.”

“When every cop in America knows it and your face, you won’t be so crazy about a nickname,” said Charlie.

“I got a name for you,” said Les. “You’re Mr. Talks Too Much, Don’t Say Nothing.”

“Les,” said Johnny, “calm down and stick to robbing banks. Comedy ain’t your talent.”

“The feds I ran off the road in Wisconsin while you guys was shivering and shitting in the forest thought I was pretty funny.”

“Anyhow, Mr. Jack,” said Homer, trying to get back on the program, “I know you’re new to this line of work, so you’re the early bird. You just set up and make sure no coppers are around and the postal clerks have brought the stamp money along, and if it’s clear, you give us the high sign, we park, we pile out and take it. Jack, you just hang outside as the sentry. Then we all pile in, and we’re gone in three minutes flat, while the cops are still sitting in the doughnut shop talking Notre Dame football.”