Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“Charles, please, shake my hand. Outstanding.”

“I heard we hit two gals.”

“It’s nothing. Grazed them. They don’t even have to go to the hospital. They’re already bandaged and giving our folks statements.”

“That’s good.”

“Charles, I know you must be exhausted, both physically and mentally. I want you to get away from this circus, go to the office, file your report, then go home and take the next couple days off. See a ball game, have a drink or two, ride the roller coaster at Riverview or the zeppelin at the World’s Fair, go to the big science museum. Or just sleep. I don’t want to see you until Wednesday.”

“Yes sir.”

“And I don’t mind telling you, the Director is immensely pleased. I was on the phone with him when the shooting occurred. We could hear the shots. It was a tense few minutes until the news arrived. I shouldn’t have worried. As I said, this time we had the gunfighter.”

“Just want to know: was he armed? I fired before I saw a gun, but he sure as hell wasn’t reaching to itch a mosquito bite.”

“Colt .380 Pocket Model, loaded and cocked. Another half second and he could have shot you or some poor lady in rhapsody over Gable.”

“Good. Good to know. Sometimes it happens, but I don’t cotton to shooting the unarmed.”

“Don’t you worry, Charles. You saved a batch of lives here tonight — your own, Hurt’s and Hollis’s, people in the crowd, and all the people he may have killed on down the line. And you may have saved the Justice Department’s Division of Investigation.”

GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS

July 23, 1934

It was a good dream. Les was in the Forest Preserve on a beautiful fall afternoon, with Helen and Ronnie and Darlene. J.P. was there, and so were Fatso and Jimmy Murray and the others. Then Johnny came along, on a bicycle, with his gal, Billie Frechette, waving and rushing to join them. The sun was bright but not hot, the waters sparkling, the pines filling the air with that spruce perfume, and everybody was happy. Even goofy Homer showed up, with that whore gal nobody liked, but Homer was on his best behavior and, for once, his jokes were actually funny.

Then it dissolved. Someone was shaking him. He forced his eyes open to see Helen’s grave face just above him and knew from her drawn and pinched look that something bad had happened.

“Uh—” He struggled to find some clarity of mind and vision. The bed was so warm, he wanted to curl deeper into it, sink into its safety and protection. He didn’t want to be awake. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say and to deal with it. But there was no escape.

“Les! Les, they killed Johnny last night. They shot him outside some movie show downtown. It’s in all the papers and all over the radio.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Les.

“Federals. They shot him down like a dog. He didn’t even get his gun out!”

Les cranked upright, putting his bare feet on the cold floor, hoping to shock some electricity into himself. Oddly, he felt no grief, only the arrival of a large bundle of confusion. What did this mean? What else was happening? Who talked? Were the detectives outside even now? How much time did he have? He was going to see his kids tonight, was that off? Would his mother assume he had been killed too? That’s the way her mind worked these days. Where were Fatso and J.P.? What about the big Rock Island train job? What would—

But then the grief struck.

It struck hard, heavy, and hurtful. It amazed him how much pain he felt. Johnny, gone! How could that be? He’d just met with the big guy a day ago. Johnny: bigger than life, with a lopsided smile for everybody, a glad hand, a twenty-spot for every loser, cool when lead was flying, smart where the planning was needed, able to hold everything altogether on force of personality. It was as if a huge hole had been ripped in the sky and was sucking stuff out into nothingness, and he felt inadequate to patch it, to save what remained.

“I told him to be careful. But the big dope thought everybody loved him so much, nobody would ever rat him out. If they were waiting, he was ratted. The idiot. He had to live like a king ballplayer instead of a guy on the run, which is what he was. Some clerk notices him going in and calls the Division, and they show up and hose him down.”

Helen hugged him to make the pain stop hurting. It didn’t work much, but he appreciated the softness and looseness of her breasts against him, the warmth of her body, the sensation that she would give him everything she could and never let him down, and that she, and a few others, stood for what was worth preserving in the world.

Of course next to arrive, as if by on-schedule railroad, was the rage.

The Division! Those bastards. They were so new at this stuff, how’d they get so good so fast when at Little Bohemia they’d been clowns and fools, tripping on their own size 14s. In his mind, he saw them standing over poor Johnny and pumping bullet after bullet into him, maybe with a big Thompson gun, laughing and hooting. In fact, he knew it had to be that lanky champion who’d stood still as a sculpture on Wolf Road while Les’s squirts raised the dust all around him and he just coolly returned fire, even clipping Les’s brim! That guy! That guy!

“Les, are you all right?”

“I am, I am. Just shook-up a little. Honey, put a pot of coffee on, I need it to get my brain working straight. I’m going to hop in the shower. Where’s J.P.? Does he know?”

“He hasn’t showed yet.”

“Okay, after the coffee, we have to pack. We’ve got to make tracks until this settles down and—”

“But the kids!”

“I know, honey, I’m disappointed too. But I’m telling you, we’ve got to scram. We’ll go somewhere else, to a town that ain’t so hot, I’ll get a big score set up, and then we’ll be out of the life. It’ll all work out, you’ll see.”

Les was out of the shower by 7:20 and into his glen plaid double-breasted over fresh white shirt with red foulard tie by 7:30. Always had to look sharp! What was the point of gangstering if you didn’t look the part?

At 7:35, J.P. showed with the car. Les poured him a cup of joe.

“You heard about Johnny?”

“Just a few minutes back, Les. Jesus Christ, we just were drinking with him a night or so ago.”

“Shows how fast it can happen. Anybody on you?”

“Nah. Empty streets all the way over. None of those black Fords with two guys in ’em. We’re clear.”

“For now.”

“What’s our move?”

“Our move is, out of town, fast and far. Like… by eight.”

“Jesus, you ain’t messing around.”

“J.P., we don’t know one damned thing about this yet, and I ain’t hanging around for further developments. Maybe the Italians ratted out Johnny and—”

“The latest — I just heard this on the radio, it’s not in the papers yet — is some bimbo he was renting a room from blew the whistle. She made him and then used him to leverage a beef with Immigration. Some foreign dame, they want to ship her out. She tipped off the Division boys, and wore a red dress so they could spot her at that movie. They’re calling her the Lady in Red. She’s the one who—”

“I ain’t buying that. They always put out some cover story to make it sound like it was nothing but dumb luck. That way, they cover up what’s really going on, and who they’re really talking to, and until we know what’s really going on, we have to make ourselves scarce. Are you ready for a long drive?”

“Sure, Les. I’m with you, you know that. I always am. What about Fatso and Carey and Jimmy Murray?”

“Right now, it’s every man for himself. But they’re small fry, no way the Division is going to waste manpower on them.”