Стивен Хантер - G-Man

In the seventh, someone said to him, “How about a Cracker Jack, Sheriff?” putting the box in front of him, and Charles looked up and saw that the Italian called Uncle Phil had taken the seat next to his. He wore a creamy-white linen suit, a red tie, white shoes, black, circular glasses, and a Panama shading his handsome face.

“Thanks but no thanks, friend,” said Charles. “Say, are you guys watching me? How’d you know I was here? This can’t be coincidence.”

“Same way we knew where Johnny would be. We’re everywhere. Not all the time, but enough so we can keep our eyes on things. Don’t take it personally. We’re just paying attention. Knowledge is power is wealth is a long, happy life.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Nobody does, but you’ll get used to it. Anyway, I’m hearing that despite all the yakkity-yak about Purvis, it was the sheriff who handled Johnny. And did a fine job on it too.”

“I just did what my badge required,” said Charles. “It wasn’t nothing special. Any detective in this town could have handled it.”

“Knowing a few of them, I’d have to disagree,” said Uncle Phil. “They’d have ended up with dead citizens everywhere. Must tick you off to read the papers and see it’s the Melvin Purvis G-Man Heroic Hour . He didn’t do nothing but light a cigar, never went up against Johnny and his little Colt.”

“I don’t care about that. It’s beyond me. I don’t like nobody in my business anyhow, so if nobody pays no attention, that’s fine by me.”

“Give it to you, Sheriff, no need for stroking, like so many, and that stroking gets so many killed or crushed. It’s an admirable trait.”

“I don’t put on airs. No percentage in it. I don’t like them that do. What’s this about anyway? I don’t see you as no South Side ball fan.”

“It’s a good game, lots of fun. You would not believe the money that moves on it every day. It seems so straightforward here in the sun, with all the pops and kids and hot dogs, but every time one of those Apollos throws a ball, twenty million moves one way or the other.”

“I don’t know nothing about that,” said Charles. “I’m not good at numbers. I leave that to the others. Now, do you have some dope for me?”

“The latest is that Homer’s somewhere up in St. Paul but laying low while the bump in his head goes down. Baby Face cleared town but fast when you put Johnny in the morgue. He sees the writing on the wall. Pretty Boy’s too dumb to come in out of the rain, but that makes him hard to predict because he just bounces around with no plan. I think we’ll have hard info on Homer next. Pretty Boy will fall victim to his own bad luck. Baby Face will come back. He’s a Chicago boy, he knows which way the streets run and the shortcuts. But you already knew that. Here’s why I’m here: I wanted to hand this over.”

He laid an envelope on Charles’s lap. Charles looked at it.

“Just a little extra. You’re doing your job, you’re impressing people, and we like to show our gratitude.”

“I won’t take that,” said Charles. “It makes me a bounty hunter, not a cop.”

“It ain’t a payment, it’s a gift from citizens who appreciate it.”

“If I take it, I get used to it. You give me some more and I enjoy it. I buy stuff, I’m a hero to my wife, and I’m looking for more, which comes along soon enough. Then you’ve got me hooked. You own me. So let’s get this straight right now. Nobody owns Charles Swagger. He pays his own way, he walks his own path, all of it for his own reasons, explained to nobody. I won’t never meet with you again, you understand that, pal?”

“You throw ’em hard and tight, don’t you, Sheriff? Like Wyatt Earp or some other old gunman. Dodge, Silver City, Laredo, other dirt-water shitholes not worth dying for. Okay, you want to play it like that, that’s the way we play it.”

He smiled, picked up the envelope, and then rose and walked away.

Charles went back to watching the boys play their ball game.

MAVIS, ARKANSAS

The present

Not much remained of Mavis. It was one of those towns that had been passed by on the Interstate rush to throw concrete ribbons around America, and, far from any six-lanes, it languished. It didn’t even have a Walmart or any fast-food joints.

Where the bank had been, a Dollar Store now sold cheap Chinese goods. There was a 7-Eleven, a one-story town hall/police station/public works department, clearly a relic of the ’70s. A café sold coffee and pastry, but if you wanted food, you had to go out by the Interstate and feed at a TGIF’s or a McDonald’s or something off a gas station candy rack. No library, no Historical Society, not much of anything except people, all of whom seemed to be on welfare. Or minimum-subsistence jobs. Or crystal meth.

Nobody could answer any of his questions, as they seemed mostly to be in their twenties, the men living thirty or more miles from factory jobs in the last Arkansas town or the next Texas town. But the bank had to stand at the corner of Main and Western, and, looking at the structure, he felt it was probably the same building, though now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Ling and their emporium of plastic goods from Szechuan Province. He doubted the Lings would know a thing about Bonnie and Clyde’s visit eighty-five years ago, three months after they were killed in Arcadia, Louisiana.

He sat outside the coffee shop, sipping a cup, wondering what this trip proved.

What it proved was: yes, I am being followed.

He knew it. You get certain feelings, and if you’re a field operator like him, those feelings are honed and developed over the years. Call it ESP or spidey sense or whatever, you can feel the weight of certain eyes on you, even through binoculars. This vividness of sensation had saved his life a thousand times, and it was never wrong, unless, all of a sudden, it was.

Am I that old? Has the little gizmo gone crazy? Is the mechanism not working? Am I losing it? Is this whole thing sort of an old man’s vanity, a ridiculous concoction built on a lifetime’s sniper paranoia and having been shot at way too much for anyone’s psychological health? Do I need to be the object of some dark conspiracy, of forces that hide in shadows and pull strings? Does it make me feel… alive?

But he understood and obeyed the fundamentals of the game — the game being Man Hunting 5.0—that is, at the highest level. And that game was: if you are under observation, do not acknowledge it. Thus, you possess a microscopic advantage, which a clever operator might leverage into a victory when or if the guns came out. So, though his brain screamed at him to turn and look, to apply his still-great vision to the shadows and the horizon and the trees all the way out, he probed in another direction, along lines of staying loose-limbed, goofy, sort of pokey and old. If whoever was out there really was out there and they realized they’d been discovered, he — or they — would change their whole plan of attack, method of operation, and he might never find them until they decided it was time for the kill. To survive, he had to know they were going to kill before they did.

Keeping his eyesight determinedly local, he looked up and down the street in Mavis and noted a few of its oblivious citizens in the street, old pickups, a few automobiles of unidentifiable vintage, and not one thing out of place, different, new to the eye. No traffic had passed in ten minutes, except for a mom with a mini SUV full of squealers on the way to the Costco in the next town down the line, a State policeman of about thirteen, on patrol, and an old boy on a tractor. No sign of the Mafia, Soviet airborne, jihadhis, Japanese marines, rogue Agency cowboys, the sons, brothers, wives, daughters of men he’d killed, whatever or whoever else could be interested in him. Just daylight America, small, dying-town variety, edging quietly toward tomorrow without much in the way of drama or excitement.