Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“If Johnny comes in,” said Les, “it should work fine. We need a gun to hold the engineers, we need four guns to take the mail car and blow the safe and conk the crew out — and no telling how many are in a mail car. I don’t count Carey — nice guy and all — because he ain’t been in this neighborhood and I don’t know which way he jumps if it goes hot. Four guys with guns should get ’em quieted down fast, and then we’re out of there. I figure no more than five minutes flat.”

“I wouldn’t mind another gun,” said J.P., and Les always listened to his sagacious advice.

“Homer?” queried J.P.

“That piece of crap,” said Les. “He said rude stuff about Helen. I was going to kill him.”

“Les, he was cool as air-conditioning in South Bend, I hear. Some are saying none of you would have gotten out of South Bend if he hadn’t plugged a cop and kept the others back.”

“Hey, I was out there too,” said Les. “Talking about cool, I took one in the chest and didn’t bat an eyelash. Now, that’s cool.”

“No doubt. But you don’t want to work with Charlie Floyd, do you? I mean, if your choice is Charlie or Homer, who do you pick?”

“Got a point,” said Les. “It don’t make me happy, but it is a good point. We do need another gun, and as long as Homer ain’t spongy from that shot in the head, maybe if he swore to keep his yap shut, we could take him aboard. Only, I’m doing the planning. This one, I’m running. He has to get that.”

“He’ll get it. I’m going to see if we can’t get Johnny up for another meeting real soon. I can reach him through that lawyer. He’s in contact with Homer, he can bring him.”

“Say, the twenty-first?”

“That should be enough time.”

“We’ll meet at the Matty’s Wayfarer Inn, on Waukegan, in the back room. It should be clean now.”

“Got it. I’ll make it happen.”

That was pretty much it. Radio ate the time: the Cubs or Sox games devoured afternoons, and the bands on the networks nights. Neither of the ball teams would win a pennant, but the boys played hard, and Les liked to lose himself in their fortunes. In time, as the meet-up with Johnny approached, his spirits lifted some.

“Well,” said Helen, “someone is out of the dumps.”

“I’m feeling better, sweetie. Things are going along smoothly.”

“You’re not scared?”

“Sure, a little. That damned federal spooked me. Another couple inches and I’m wearing a bullet hole where my forehead used to be. I sure heard that one when it whizzed by and took my hat off. I hope that was the one with my name on it.”

“Did it get you to thinking?”

“Sure, and I know this is no good with our kids at your pop’s place. I want to raise my kids, I don’t want Pop doing it. I miss ’em bad. We haven’t seen ’em for three weeks, since just after South Bend. But I can’t get out without a big score, so we can go someplace, live nice, buy a little business, and be regular people. You need a bankroll to finance a move like that. You can’t start cold.” He wasn’t sure if he meant it. He said it frequently, sometimes meaning it, sometimes not.

“I love it when you talk this way.”

“Helen, I know how hard this has been on you. You’ve been great. You’re my girl, always there for me. You’re the heroine of this picture show. I love you so much, I think I’ll die from it, if the cops don’t get me. I am the luckiest man in the world.”

There followed some private between-couple baby goo-goo talk and then some private between-couple fucking, both great fun.

COCKEYSVILLE, MARYLAND

The present

“And what do you do, young lady?” asked Mrs. Tisdale.

“I’m a news producer for Fox News in Washington,” Nikki said.

“I hate Fox News,” said Mrs. Tisdale.

“I hear that a lot.”

“Well, I shall try not to hold it against you, dear. People have to take what’s available. Anyway, who’s this fellow? Does he talk?”

“He’s my father. When I was late getting home from dates in high school, he sure talked. Not so much now. I think he sort of dried up.”

Mrs. Tisdale turned and fixed hard eyes on Swagger. He felt underdressed, even if he was wearing a suit and tie.

“You’re the hero? The letter said you were highly decorated military.”

“He doesn’t consider himself a hero,” Nikki said. “He considers himself lucky. He says all the heroes were killed. But he did do three tours in Vietnam, though one was cut short by wounds. On the other hand, one was extended.”

“Can you say something, please, sir?”

Mrs. Tisdale’s room labored at cheer, but the gloom of death hung everywhere. It was all yellow with artificial flowers and pictures of lambs and brooks and meadows. But it also boasted about a million dollars’ worth of equipment, most of it gleaming, with gauges and tubes and knobs everywhere, to keep people who were supposed to be dead alive for another few seconds. Some of the equipment was electric, some just mysteriously inert. Every few seconds, something beeped. Bob, as one might expect, did not care for hospitals or anything that reminded him of waking up in the Philippines with his hip shattered and his spotter, Donnie Fen, football hero and all-around good kid who had already finished his tour, gone forever.

“Hello,” said Bob. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”

“Short is the only kind of notice I have.”

The detective firm had quite expensively located ninety-four-year-old Mrs. Tisdale, née Mary S. Bridgewater, in this place, where, having outlived or gotten bored with all her tribe, not that she seemed to notice, she lay abed in a cheerful yellow gown that spoke of lively memories. She was a look-forward-to, not a look-back-at — that was clear from the proud jut of her chin, even though tethered to an oxygen tank by nose nozzle and tube, and monitored by a dozen robot contrivances, so that she looked like a creation of Frankenstein’s lightning. She’s alive!

“I’m grateful,” Bob said.

She turned back to Nikki.

“Why are you here and not in D.C. making up lies?”

“I only make them up on Tuesdays. This is Thursday.”

“Excellent riposte,” said Mrs. Tisdale. “I enjoy a girl with some snap, crackle, and pop.”

“I’m really here because I’m cute and likable and an experienced interviewer. My father is none of those things. So he asked me to come up and sort of, you know, make it go more smoothly — that’s how he put it.”

“Well, you’ve succeeded. You must be something, Mr. Hero, to raise such a lovely, smart daughter. When does she move to CNN?”

“They’ve offered. She’s too stubborn to budge. Hardheaded girl. Can’t tell her a thing.”

“Well, if I like her, I suppose I have to like you. Now… you said Blue Eye. Lord’s mercy, I left Blue Eye in 1941 when I was seventeen. And my father — Daddy was an engineer, but during the Depression the only job he could get was as a draftsman — you know, got a job working for Martin Aviation, just outside Baltimore. I’ve been here ever since, lived nicely in the valley through two husbands, six children, and I’m not sure how many grandchildren, whose names I can’t seem to remember either. As you can see, my brain is a large piece of ancient Swiss cheese, and I fear that the part that contained Blue Eye memories is one big empty bubble. May I ask, what is this in support of? If the letter said, I’ve forgotten.”

“The letter was vague,” said Bob, “nothing in it to remember. I can’t explain it too well even now. See, my father, Earl Swagger, was a great man. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for something he did on Iwo Jima in 1945, and he also took part in five island invasions in the war. He came back and was a State Trooper, and was killed in the line of duty in 1955 when I was nine. But his father is a mystery. His name was Charles Swagger, and he was a hero in World War I, in two armies, the Canadian and the American. He was the sheriff of Polk County from 1923 until his death, also in the line of duty, in 1942, just before my father was sent to Guadalcanal. I realized when some of his relics came my way that I knew nothing about this man, and it seems he wished nothing to be known. He may have even covered his tracks. But he shaped my father into something special and my father shaped me.”