Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“He’s good. Uses it underground, a miner. He knows how it is planted and detonated,” said Jack. “He did a demo for me downstate. He was good enough to blow the hinges off a car trunk without damaging the spare inside.”

Then a shadow fell across the table, and they looked up and saw that it was Johnny, the star himself, almost as if he’d arranged his own backlighting, Hollywood-style; he looked fine, as usual, in a sharp double-breasted, a striped tie pinned tight in a round starchy collar, and a straw boater low over his eyes. He looked more like Gable than a gangster. He’d grown a little mustache, and he had the twinkle in his eye that just drew everybody in.

“Is this the Our Gang comedy cast?” he asked, heartily. “Where’s Spanky?”

That drew a laugh, and he squeezed in, gestured to the barkeep for something on tap, and looked at them all with some benevolence showing on his big face.

“So nice to be together again. The best guys I ever worked with! Les, a pleasure. Helen’s okay, I hope. And the great Mr. Murray, genius and master planner. And you other palookas, soldier boys in our war on the banks. You guys are the best!”

Handshakes and backslaps commenced all around, as with any bunch of men getting together to get lubed up a bit, smoke, and talk business. And if Johnny was the star, he didn’t play it up as much as he could have but was generous in attentions to his fellow pros. But Les, sober, had to start off on a sour note.

“Where is he?”

“Homer?” asked Johnny, struggling to get one of Fatso’s stogies lit off Fatso’s match. “Oh, you know Homer, he comes and goes. He said he’d be here, but no sign of him.”

“That sonovabitch. We need another gun on this job,” said Les.

“Maybe that slug softened his head,” said Johnny. “That was a hard conk. He said he had a headache for a month.”

“Christ!” said Les. “If he isn’t making bum jokes, he’s not showing up.”

“Les,” said Jack, “he was sure there covering for you and Johnny and me when we were getting back to the car at South Bend.”

“The one thing you can count on with that guy,” said Les, “is that you can’t count on a goddamned thing.”

“Les, just relax,” soothed Johnny, big brother of them all. “Maybe he’ll show, maybe he won’t. That’s Homer. He’s still a solid man when the lead is whistling. And anyhow, I’m sure we can run this with five guns instead of six. Don’t you think we can, Mr. Murray?”

Jimmy Murray said, “Well, Johnny, six would be better, but five will work. Depends on how much fuss these Post Office boys care to put up. And I have to say, one less split, let’s not forget that. Drink to one less split!”

He raised his drink, and all came up in unison, even Les’s glass of Coke, if a bit late and without much energy.

“Okay, Les, you’re the boss, brief me on the play and tell me what I’ve got to do to keep my new girlfriend in mink and diamonds, and cover the miserable nags that I have such a gift for picking.”

Les pretty much reiterated the Murray plan, and Mr. Murray chipped in now and then with clarifications or amendments. Even the guys who’d heard it a dozen times ate it up, and Johnny was with it in an instant.

“I’ve never worked nitro before,” he said. “I’m a little shaky there. You guys sure it’s safe?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, “this guy’s a genius with it. The best deal with nitro is, you don’t need a lot. You don’t need wires, batteries, a plunger, that kind of stuff. And you can control it very precisely, which is why it’s so helpful in coal mining. You can kind of chisel a vein out, if you need. You carry it in a box packed with excelsior. Then you put it in locks or hinges, or whatever you’re going to blow, with an eyedropper. A little dab’ll do ya.”

“How does he blow?”

“You just use a regular fused blasting cap. Drop in the soup, cram in the cap — see, I’m talking about a lock here — maybe tape it to the lock. Then just light the fuse, three seconds later the fuse pops the ignition mix — little bang — and that produces enough shock to light the soup — big bang. Very concentrated blast area, cleans out the guts of the lock or blows the hinge free.”

“Just don’t forget to bring the matches,” said Johnny, and everyone laughed.

It was a happy time. The waitress kept bringing brews from Augie, behind the bar, as well as on-the-house plates of onion rings, pork rinds, pickles, little sausages on the ends of toothpicks, even some raw oysters. It was fun being a bank robber if you got to hang out with Johnny D. Maps came out, routes were examined, Fatso updated the group on Carey’s progress with the cars, and the guys had a nice night out, as, in time, the conversation drifted to baseball — Johnny was a big Cubs guy and had been to a batch of games since South Bend. And of course, finally, broads, and everyone gave Johnny the floor, for he had a gift at picking up lookers and going all the way around the track with them. But he was a gentleman about it, not one of these so-then-she-sucked-my-cock guys, and managed to communicate the sophistication of exchange he had achieved with new gal Polly without resorting to Anglo-Saxon.

Then track tips, hot ponies being named; then Mob gossip, what was Nitti up to, who would run the South Side for him now that Alberto Mappa was in the hospital with the gout — some said syph! — and on to where were the rackets going, what was the future of armed robbery in a land where all cops were in instant communication via radio, how big would the Division get, and wasn’t this little punk Purvis a pain in the ass with his yip-yap for the papers every day? Fatso had heard that even the Director was getting sick of it!

Then, close to midnight, the new assignments were set — Jack would find a tourist cabin and a safe joint to stage from, and Fatso would put together a cache of a thousand rounds of .45 for the Thompsons, Les would scout alternative getaway routes, while Mr. Murray would monitor his Rock Island sources for any changes in the schedule, track route, train makeup, whatever. Johnny, the hottest man in America, would just stay put.

Then it was time to go, the tab was paid, and the boys filtered out, sadly giving up the comforting swish of the four-bladed ceiling fans that pushed the Wayfarer Inn’s atmosphere into motion and kept everyone cool, if not quite to air-conditioning standards. They wandered into the parking lot, now empty except for their cars, where shadows of vegetation cut intricate silhouettes into the lights from the gabled windows, the air was tropical thick with humidity and bug life, and a whisper of moon occasionally slithered free of the low clouds. “Stormy Weather” on the radio somewhere. The banshee howl of big-piston jobs turning over at Curtiss arrived and departed regularly.

Les pulled Johnny away, into the shadows.

“Really, Les,” Johnny said, misunderstanding Les’s need for a private tête-à-tête, “don’t worry about Homer. That’s just him, nothing personal. He’s a kind of a flighty guy, and this Conforti gal is teaching him stuff he didn’t know existed.”

“It’s not that, Johnny. Listen, I didn’t want to run this in front of the guys because maybe there’s some stuff you don’t want getting out.”

“Okay, kid, shoot. Out with it. What is it? Tell Father O’Malley.”

“It ain’t nothing like that. Johnny, I’m worried.”

He told him the story of the strange guy showing up on the crest, the marksman who almost nailed him on the button from a hundred fifty out with a .45 auto.

“Good shooting,” Johnny had to admit.

“Yeah, the shooting was terrific. They say the Division is bringing in Western gunfighters — you know, cowboy experts who’ve got notches on their pistolas —to take us on. No more Mickey Mouse lawyers who get scared if they have to shoot and don’t like guns because they’re so loud. Experts, cool hands, old Texas Rangers and cow-town marshals, you know the type. Gun buzzards.”