Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“Maybe so. As yet, haven’t met a guy who could outdraw or outshoot me. But it’s changing, that I grant you. As this radio stuff spreads, it could be that—”

“It’s not that, Johnny. It’s not how good the guy was; it’s that he was there at all. What, he just shows up? How could that happen? Not a one-in-a-million chance, when the bank has already gone tilt five seconds earlier when the two State cops show. It’s like two double snake eyes, one after the other. It never happens that way.”

“Well… of course it can, and I bet it has. The dice don’t know what number is up. They just end up where they end up.”

“That’s what everybody keeps saying. But I say no. Not in this universe anyhow.”

“Okay, what are you getting at?”

“There’s a leak,” said Les.

“What?”

“Somebody’s talking.”

“How would they know? They’ve got nothing to leak. Kid, I’m just an Indiana farm boy, but who could put a picture together on us? We’re all over the place, we’re here, we’re there, we’re everywhere, we’re nowhere.”

“Only one outfit. You know, the Eye-ties and the Jews.”

“I’m not getting it. What the hell do they care?”

“I’ve got some ideas, but figure them later. Just think about it from a feasibility point of view. We sort of live with, and off, the big outfit. They control all the joints we visit, the taverns, the whore cribs, the clubs; even this joint here, they have a piece of it. If someone high up wanted to put the picture together on us, he could. Wouldn’t be easy, would require lots of calling, lots of figuring, information gathering, and organizing, this, that. Finding out what eyes are seeing and ears are hearing all over the place, then sitting down with all of it and putting it together like a jigsaw. It could be done, if for some reason Nitti wanted it done. He’d have a guy high up, probably his slickest, smartest guy, not a machino guy or an enforcer but a thinker, he’d have him put it together.”

“Just because it’s possible,” said Johnny, thinking it over, “don’t make it probable. It seems like a lot of trouble. What’s the point? We all know it’s going to be finished sooner or later, once they get the radios in all the cars and do away with the state-line or county-line bullshit and make the fast guns illegal. I know the big-score days are ending, just as you do, and, just as you do, I want one big one, one more perfect hit, and then I want to buy land and a house overlooking the Pacific in Tijuana, with you and Helen and the kids on the left and Homer and Mickey, and maybe their kids, on the right. I’ll be with Polly, and when Billie gets clear, I’ll send for her, and she and Polly can work it out, maybe Anna will sort of keep it straight, and everybody will live happily ever after.”

“That’s what I want too, Johnny, except without the Homer-and-Mickey part. But, yeah, Mexico, warm skies, sun, palms, forever. My kids would be so happy there.”

“Then we’ll make it happen. Forget about the Italians. They got other things to worry about, like where the dough’s going to come from now that Prohibition has gone away, and then there’s income taxes, as Capone found out, and which goombah wants to take over which territory and which goombah he has to torpedo in order to do that. They hate each other as much as they hate us, maybe more, and they hate each other more than they even hate the cops, and they don’t give a damn about the Division, which hasn’t even noticed them. It’s not in their interests to conspire against us.”

“Well…” said Les. Being a trifle emotional, he couldn’t keep the anguish out of his face.

“Go on, spit it out.”

“It’s not in their interests up front, that I agree with. But those guys have been at this stuff for a thousand years and they’re always thinking ahead, seeing the future. They knew Prohibition was ending and they were ready for it; they’re moving in Hollywood, they’re trying to set up a national wire so they can control gambling everywhere, they’re looking for a city to own, a gambling town, like Hot Springs, which they’ll take over hard one of these days — I’ve heard, they’re even looking at Cuba — it goes on and on. Plus, they’re unifying — Chicago, New York, Cleveland — it’s not one outfit per town but a single organization coast to coast.”

“We’re farm boys scratching for chicken feed in towns meatball never heard of, like South Bend and Sioux City,” said Johnny. “And next month, Wheaton. Do you think meatball gives a crap about Wheaton? It’s too much trouble to step on us, I guarantee it. Les, you get so wrought up sometimes. You got to stay calm for this kind of work. Listen to me, kid, I love you, but you got to find a way to put this screwball shit out of your head. You could spook the boys, and you do not want to be on a job with spooked boys. No room for mistakes in our line of work.”

“Okay, Johnny. Maybe you’re right.”

“You should be writing for the movies. You got that kind of mind.”

“Ha-ha — wouldn’t that be something? Me writing for Cagney and Robinson.”

“Crazier stuff has happened. How crazy is this? Speaking of movies, the girls are dragging me to see that little kid I can’t stand, you know, ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’”—and he jumped around like a moppet on a string, prancing it up for comic effect, and Les had to laugh hard, the big guy, broad shoulders, handsome as Gable, imitating a dancing child.

“Still, it’s a way to beat the heat,” Johnny said when he’d stopped dancing. “And I love that big house, the Marbro. It’s like a palace or something.”

“You ought to see this Manhattan Melodrama ,” said Les. “It’s still around. Helen and I saw it a few nights ago. Gable is the gangster — Blackie, I think — and it’s pretty good. He’s not like any gangster I ever saw, but, still, he just makes you go with him all the way.”

“Would the girls like it? I guess they would, if it’s got Gable — they like Gable. Hell, I like Gable.”

“He should play you, Johnny. What a picture that would be. Chicago Melodrama , with Gable as Dillinger! It would make a million bucks!”

“Nah,” said Johnny, “they make you die at the end of pictures. It’s the law now.”

McLEAN, VIRGINIA

The present

Swagger pulled away from her apartment building, drove three blocks and took a random turn down a residential street, flicked off his lights and waited.

Nothing. No car turned down the thoroughfare on his tail.

Followed? Who the hell would follow me?

But, then, Nikki was unusually sensitive to being watched or followed. Maybe it was a Swagger thing, as he himself had it; that is, the weird, hackles-rising shiver when a predator’s eyes crossed over you. It had saved his life a time or two, and he knew enough at his age to trust it. Yet he hadn’t felt it, she had.

On the other hand, his mind was all knitted up over 1934 and his grandfather. He’d been talking a blue streak on the subject, no doubt boring her to death. So he had been distracted, his mind occupied with theoretical prospects, the animal part of him even further away than it was normally. She, on the other hand, had probably stopped listening and was gazing off dully into space when her deep brain heard it, the whisper of the ax, the trill of the wolf, the snap of the hammer cocking. She’d gotten it, he hadn’t.

He was puzzled. He waited a few more minutes, alone on a dark street full of beautiful old houses under elms, since he was in the northwest quadrant of D.C., and he knew enough to realize that was where “quality” lived. But no one came, there was no further traffic, and his internal radar system picked up nothing.