Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“It’s never that easy,” said Les. “Johnny, you know that. You got to have backup plans, meet-ups set, maps in and out, alternatives, the whole shebang. You can’t just waltz in, waltz out. Jimmy Murray always—”

“Is that your nose or are you eating a banana?” said Homer. “Jimmy ain’t here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh, I noticed when I felt the breeze blowing through your left ear and out your right,” said Les, riling up.

He riled up too easy, too fast, and he knew it. It was always a problem. He would just sail away on a sea of anger and nothing else mattered. Only Helen could calm him down.

“What did Helen say when she looked into a box of Cheerios? Oh, look, doughnut seeds.”

“You’re an idiot,” said Les. “Johnny, are you going to let this clown call the shots? His head is full of mothballs, and I’m afraid I’ll get the clap just looking at his broad. Hey, Mickey. Sooey!”

“Baby, he can’t talk to me that way.”

But he could. Though Les was average height, he was not weak, frightened, or unable to fight. If you messed with him — win, lose, or draw — you had an enemy for life.

“Hey, little man, you leave Mickey out of it, quack, quack. You got no cause to beat up on her.”

“The Twelfth Army’s got no cause to beat up on her. They all remember the night—”

“Okay, Les,” said Johnny, “you can lay off the girl. She ain’t a part of this.”

“Yeah, go home to your little woman, but be sure to bring a tomcat to sniff out the fishy stink,” added Homer.

The next thing he knew, hands were pulling him off Homer, whose face and eye were puffed up from Les’s blows, one hard, one glancing. Les himself had no memory of flying around the table and launching fists, then himself, at the hayseed, the two of them tumbling, chairs flying, beers spilling, the girl screaming, Charlie bitching, Jack pulling back, and somehow, some way, Johnny getting them apart.

“Save it for the Division,” Johnny said. “Goddammit, Les, calm down. He didn’t mean nothing, he just likes to tell a joke now and then.”

“Don’t you ever say nothing about my Helen again!” said Les. The screwball intensity of his expression would have melted a statue.

“Okay, okay,” said Homer, “I didn’t mean nothing by it. It was a joke, I’m funny — ha-ha — quack, quack — that’s me. Sorry for Tommy, sorry for Red, but now we need to get back to work, and I got us a good one. No need to get so steamed. Just because when you took her to the top of the Empire State Building and planes attacked, that ain’t my fault.”

“You knock it off too, Homer. Sometimes I don’t know which is worse, your dumb jokes or Les’s firecracker personality.”

But Les decided at this moment he would kill Homer. He would put a fat .45 into his gut and watch him bleed out in the gutter. He’d beg for Mama, he’d ask for a priest or a doctor, he’d tell Les he was sorry, he didn’t mean anything about Helen, but Les would just watch, studiously, as the life bubbled out of the man, forming a delta of red rivers on the pavement.

So when Johnny got them back to the table, yelled to Vince to bring more beer and a Coca-Cola for Les, and got the meeting back to a semblance of order, it wasn’t quite the victory he assumed it would be. It was because having sentenced Homer, Les felt an immediate calm come across him. Suddenly he felt all right. No fury, no seething in his gut, just the pleasing image of Homer afloat in a lake of blood on some raw and windy corner. That’s how it was with him; it blew in, it blew out.

“Okay,” said Homer, “I will do some more scouting. Maybe Les’s right, we need more dope before we jump. We’ll come back here and split the grab and go our separate ways until we need to fill our pockets again. But that’ll push it back a week, maybe two. I’m thinking June thirtieth. Meet-up here June twenty-eighth, the twenty-ninth I’ll take you through it, and on the thirtieth we go. Agreed?”

“I’d like this one to go real smooth,” said Johnny. “Those Division assholes think we’re on the run, all scattered and scared and hiding under the blankets, after Wisconsin. I’d like to pull off a nice, clean big job just to show them bastards.”

“See, I don’t want to show nobody nothing,” said Les. “I just want to kill some of the suckers, and that’s the way we teach them who we are.”

“Quack, quack,” said Homer.

Les drove to the Happy Hoosier Tourist Camp & Cabins site seventeen miles away, pulling in to the space in front of the little log home labeled No. 14, and saw his two kids playing in the front yard. That always filled him with a kind of bliss nothing else on earth did. Kids! They were his! He had made them, he and Helen, and they were going to be something much better than their old man!

“How’re my little cowpokes? Oh, Daddy loves his cowpokes so much!”

He grabbed Darlene and flung her skyward so that her legs flew parallel to the ground as he whirled her around. The child giggled with pleasure.

“Me, Daddy, me!” shouted Ronnie, the boy. “Oh, please, Daddy!”

He set Darlene down, where, giggling and dizzy, she sat with a bump in the grass, and picked up Ronnie to do the same. The boy squealed in mock fear as he was pulled in circles, also in defiance of gravity, by his dad.

“’Round and ’round we go,” shouted Les. “Where we end up, nobody knows.”

Finally, he slowed and then stopped, freeing Ronnie to fall dizzily, giggling.

He sat on the running board of his car, a stolen Hudson with plates from another stolen car.

“Whoa!” he said. “You guys wore me out! I’m too old for this sort of thing! Pick on somebody your own size!”

“Daddy, Daddy, can we go to a zoo tomorrow?”

“Hmm,” said Les, “maybe.” He thought Indianapolis might not be too far and there’d probably be a good zoo there. “If not tomorrow, the next day. Depending on where we go.”

“I want to see the lions,” said Darlene.

“Roarrrrrrrrr!” said Ronnie, snarling up his face and turning his little hands into claws.

“Roarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” said Les. “Yep, that’s what they do, all right. You don’t want to get too close, I’ll tell you that.”

Helen stepped out of the cabin. She was a pretty girl, in that down-home Chicago way, blue-eyed and trim, and, best of all, she was solid. She was all Les ever wanted. The other fellows with their whore girlfriends, it made Les sick. What did you get out of that except maybe a dose? With Helen, it was every time he wanted it, always good, and to have her there, to depend on, to take care of little things, to look after stuff — all that — it was so good. He never wanted anything more. Who could ask for something more, like gambling on horses — stupid — or going out to fancy places every night — stupid.

And, better yet, she was loyal. Picked up at Little Bohemia, she spent a week as a guest of the state of Wisconsin and didn’t say a thing, even if the Division boys put the pressure on her hard. She clammed up, and nothing they threatened her with got her to budge. She could be a stubborn little mule when she wanted to.

“Hi, sweetie, they run you ragged?” he asked.

“They can be a handful, but it’s not so bad I can’t handle it.”

“What’s for dinner tonight?”

“I got a nice slice of ham at the A&P and some potatoes and fresh green beans. Pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.”

Who could ask for more, especially with people starving or going on the dole all over the place.

“I can’t wait.” And it was true. He couldn’t. It sounded so good.

“How did it go?”

“Oh, you know. Johnny’s fine, he’s a good man, the others ain’t bad. That damned Homer, though, can’t abide him or his girlfriend. I don’t trust her any further than I could throw her. She’d talk her head off first chance she’d get.” In his mind, he ran a quick comparison between the slut Mickey Conforti and Helen’s decency, kindness, sweet temper, and loyalty. He’d really won that one!