Стивен Хантер - G-Man

Bob took the page, put on his reading glasses, and stared at the Xerox, typed up so long ago by the ubiquitous and efficient EPD, and read:

“Noted that robbery team consisted of five different individuals whose shooting actions revealed personality traits. Two, thought to be Dillinger and Van Meter, were cool, collected, and professional. The third, possibly Floyd, exhibited poor decision making and then slow reactions…”

And so on, culminating in a set of recommendations of arrest strategies.

“Thus, Nelson demands instant-shooting action without warning (this should be cleared by legal), while great care must be exercised to take only Dillinger and Van Meter, under controlled circumstances, far from public access, and finally Floyd may be counted on to make a bad decision. The unknown suspect is thought to have little criminal experience, and less initiative, and will probably yield to arrest quickly.”

Nick said, “I’d recognize that voice anywhere, though clearly it’s been slightly edited by EPD. That’s pure Swaggerspeak. That’s someone who’s thought hard about this sort of thing, learned lessons, has insightful observations no one else in the office is capable of making. That’s Charles through a screen of bureaucratspeak.”

“I think you’re right,” said Bob. “But what’s this?”

Someone had scrawled Very good! Disseminate! in fountain pen in the margin of the document.

“If you’d ever been in the Bureau, you’d recognize the author of the comment,” said Nick. “Even today, you’d recognize it. It’s that hallowed.”

“God himself?”

“God himself. And that’s tantamount to an offer of lifetime service, with a guaranteed high finish. It’s the original FBI ticket to ride.”

“Wow,” said Bob. “Charles must have really screwed up to go from there to oblivion in so few months!”

MIDGET VILLAGE

CHICAGO

july 14, 1934

Charles was even less impressed with the future than he was with the present. The future, according to the genius architects of the World’s Fair, was a soaring white boulevard made up of cheesy buildings out of some screwball Hollywood picture show with rocket airplanes in it, like the machines Bobbie Lee so tirelessly drew as his brain decomposed further into nothingness. Charles saw lots of flags, pennants, things to blow and flap in Lake Michigan’s stout offshore breeze, all white and tall, but shaky. Towers, triangles, trapezoids, all the features of geometry, turned to stucco in imitation of stronger engineering substances meant to last a while, then go down under the steam-shovel’s grind without much trouble. Get a good blow in and the whole damned contraption-city would end up in the lagoon, and that included the giant zeppelin that hovered overhead, said to be the future of travel but looking to Charles like a bag of gas ready to dissolve in flame. He’d seen a few smaller varieties shot down on the Western Front, and nobody wanted to be near that much hydrogen lighting up.

He walked down the broad cavalcade that transected the peninsula jutting off the Chicago shore and passed by the grand exhibits from the big boys, like GM and Chrysler and Sears, Roebuck, then “Halls” of various things, such as Religion, Science, Electricity, and the U.S. Government. Mock Greyhounds transported folks on the ground, or through the air on something termed a Skyway, a big gizmo that hauled little cars of people through the blue ether on wires, tower to tower. Or you could just walk, which Charles did, noting it all with a dyspeptic heart and an abiding cynicism hard acquired through acquaintance with the century’s charnel houses and hellholes. He passed the French village, where beyond a gate and behind fencing a fraud Frog street was visible, and he wondered if you got the bonus dose of clap that was a part of every GI’s Paris experience in ’18. Other displays to the art of counterfeit included complexes from Belgium, Germany, China, and little Japan.

After a bit the grandeur wore itself thin, and the fair became the Midway, full of honky-tonks, Cracker Jacks, and Sally Rand (not showing her ass till nightfall), where hucksters of various disciplines plied their gaudy trade. He bought himself an Eskimo Pie and sat on the designated bench across from the hutch of buildings claiming to be the famous Midget Village, where all kinds of tiny delights were promised, though Charles could see nothing amusing in that prospect.

He sat but couldn’t relax. The sun was still high, but the shadows had begun to lengthen, and the lake, its blue immensity visible here and there between gaps in the busy landscape and structure of the exhibits to the far side of the Midway, provided a famous Chicago windy bluster to keep things cool and the mosquitoes from forming mobs around human flesh. He had switched, it being a hot day, to informal clothes; that is, a khaki suit, his black tie, and a new-bought indulgence, a tan fedora, brim low, shielding his eyes. He sat alert, conspicuously aware of the Government Model .45 nesting in floral-carved leather under his left shoulder, and the two full magazines of hardball wedged into a leather keeper of his own design over his right kidney. He ate the chocolate-covered frozen treat, not noticing it much because his eyes were so busy noticing other things, such as the thin crowd of humanity that trickled by, mostly adults with squads of beat-to-hell kids, all messy in melted ice cream or clingy puffs of cotton candy, as well armed with pennants, little-kid horns, all sorts of crap meant to soak the rubes’ nickels and dimes.

He couldn’t really feel at ease. If the judge his own self had come all the way out from town to deliver a message, it meant that somebody very high up in the as-yet-nameless organization had given the order, and the judge, a king in a little fiefdom, had popped to like a PFC. The judge’s involvement, instead of a mere phone call, carried its own weight in communication; it said to Charles that a decision had been reached, that plans were afoot, and he was to be a part of them, no matter what his own inclinations were.

It wasn’t long before a gent came over — he seemed to arrive from nowhere — and sat next to Charles. A well-turned-out character too, in a double-breasted blue pinstripe, shiny black shoes, and a straw Panama up top, very sporting. He was olive-skinned but quite handsome, in a picture-show kind of way, and had a whiff of cologne to him, and a white carnation bright on his lapel. It certainly wasn’t an outfit you wore to a fair, not even a World’s Fair.

He carried a newspaper with him, and paid no attention to Charles, but when he flipped the paper open, Charles saw that it was six days old, last Sunday’s Tribune , and it wore the vivid eight-column headline DILLINGER GANG STRIKES SOUTH BEND. A batch of photos darkened the center of the page, and Charles didn’t have to look to know that Mel Purvis was prominent, plus dramatic shots of bullet holes in glass, with Joe (“Heroic Teenager”) Pawlowski and detectives bending to examine spent shell casings.

The fellow seemed to notice Charles’s interest, and said, “Say, isn’t that the limit? These hoodlums go in and shoot the hell out of a nice little town like that, kill a cop, wound four, use machine guns on Main Street. What a shame!”

Charles nodded glumly.

“I hate that stuff,” the man continued. “Men with guns, shooting the hell out of everything, messing everything up. Know what we need? Strong law enforcement, men who can go gun to gun with these bandits, who can shoot better, faster, straighter. But I guess men like that are hard to find.”

“Wouldn’t know about that,” Charles said guardedly.