Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“I know the family,” said Braxton. Rawley cracked a pistachio between his large white molars, spit a spray of shell grit into the air, and ate the meat.

“There’s Grumley sleeping eternally underground, and four or so yet in prison because this Swagger fellow got involved in preventing a certain Grumley enterprise at the Bristol Speedway,” said Braxton.

“I know that.”

“What else do you know?”

“His daddy, Earl, was involved in the so-called Veterans’ Revolt of 1946, which was far bloodier than history tells us. Grumley deaths occurred in a plethora of Hot Springs shoot-outs, and in the end the town’s spirit was broken, and instead of becoming Las Vegas, it became another decaying Southern town that the Interstate passes by. Earl was also, for a time, the bodyguard of the famous Congressman Uckley, a power in Washington in the ’forties and ’fifties, which made him untouchable, though in the end he got touched. The father’s father was Polk County sheriff, way back in the ’twenties and ’thirties. He worked close with Judge Tyne’s machine, and whenever the machine had to enforce its will on the unruly Grumley, Grumley head got busted, Grumley tail went to prison, and Charles Swagger did the busting and imprisoning. Does all this sound familiar?”

“We are well versed in our own family history,” said Braxton. “Grumley have long memories.”

“I thought Grumley might. So listen hard, fellows… More pistachios, Braxton?”

“ I’m Braxton,” said Braxton. “I don’t eat pistachios. That’s Rawley, with the pistachios. I talk for both, but don’t think he ain’t listening because he is, very carefully. He’s the smart one. I just got the gift of gab.”

Mr. Kaye nodded, and proceeded with his story. A short time ago, he had been approached by a fine Little Rock law firm to advise them on an old piece of money. Imagine his amazement when it turned out to be an AC 1934-A thousand-dollar bill of a very rare variety. It was a Friedberg 2212-G, graded as 66EPQ by PMG. Rated “Gem Uncirculated.” Pretty close to perfect. It was easily worth ten thousand dollars on its own, and with a pack of uncirculated siblings still linked by Mint seal, its value went up astronomically. So Mr. Kaye advised the young associate who had sought the appointment and arrived with the bill, sensibly sealed in plastic. The young man was not discreet, as so many of them aren’t, and soon revealed to Mr. Kaye that it had been recovered from a strongbox in the foundation of a house being torn down. And the strongbox included some other items, including a .45 automatic, an FBI badge, an odd metal contrivance that could have been a machine-gun part, and a map of some sort that pointed to yet more buried treasure, but was oriented to the wall of a structure that was only known to the creator of the map.

“Not hard to do some inferring, now is it?” asked Mr. Kaye. “Nineteen thirty-four was the year of the big bank robberies, the Dillinger — Baby Face Nelson — Pretty Boy Floyd combine. As I say, three hundred thousand dollars in all vanished, never to be recovered. The badge and pistol suggest that the grandfather may have been, for some time at least, an agent, as any history of the Bureau will tell you that in 1934 Mr. Hoover took in a batch of Western and Southern gunfighters to go bullet to bullet against the Dillingers. Charles Swagger of Blue Eye, victor in the famous Blue Eye First National shoot-out of 1923, and First World War hero, in two armies, might certainly have been one, and they would have been well served by him. There was indeed lots of killing. Gunfights all over the Midwest, agents down, gangsters down. But, as I say, no big-money stash ever turned up.

“Now we have a direct link to those days, direct evidence of purloined money taken in robbery but also not returned to authorities, as perhaps Charles Swagger, accustomed to the Arkansas way of doing things, might have allowed himself. I have made discreet inquiries and I have learned that the grandson, Bob Lee Swagger, seventy years old but spry, also a war hero, as well as a rancher, father, businessman, and a man bent on weird quests for his own private satisfaction, is now researching his grandfather and trying to find out what happened. A necessary part of that search will be placing the map against its palimpsest—”

“Its say what, Jack?”

“Ah, its objective correlative.”

Rawley spit a large gunk of pistachio off into space. It landed on Mr. Kaye’s desk.

“Its thing, whatever it is that is the basis of the diagram. As described to me — I have not seen it — it’s a crude penciled rendering of the wall of some kind of building, with a diagonal, broken line radiating from a given point to the northwest, delineating about ten steps, orienting to and just passing a circle that must denote a tree trunk. There, X marks the spot, and I’m guessing the X might be something that Charles Swagger made off with in 1934 when his FBI career came to an end. Whatever this is will certainly be of value, perhaps great value. Would it not be a shame if, at that moment, Mr. Swagger were interrupted, his family legacy taken from him and put to other, more profitable uses. Imagine how disappointed he’d be.”

“Hmm,” said Braxton.

“You have the means to make this happen?”

“Sir, we track men for a living. This is easily doable by us, discreetly and with sophistication. So what remains is the deal.”

“Seventy/thirty?”

“Seventy for us, thirty for you.”

“Now, boys, let’s not get greedy. Standard recovery in your business is fifteen percent. I give you twice that to show good faith. You have to show good faith too. And I believe I qualify for a Grumley family discount, since Grumley accounts will be settled.”

“Perhaps. Sixty-forty, but you pick up expenses.”

“Sixty-five/thirty-five. Yes to expenses, but only with receipts. No ‘Miscellaneous: $68,925.32,’ or anything like that.”

“And,” said Braxton, “the haircut fee.”

“The haircut fee?”

624 NOYES

CHICAGO

August 1934

Charles worked fourteen straight days, after his two days off, and didn’t have another day to himself until halfway through the month. On that day, he ate the usual diner breakfast, while he read more fairy tales in the Trib and Herald-Examiner , checked yesterday’s ball scores and saw Tietje had taken another loss for the Sox, making his fine showing at the game Charles saw even more of an oddity. It was probably too late for them to make much of a move anyway, and it was equally clear the North Siders weren’t going to do anything memorable either. In a few weeks, college football would begin, but Charles had no feeling for Illinois teams and doubted the papers would pay much attention to the Arkansas Razorbacks. Maybe all this crap would be wrapped up before then and he’d get back in time to follow the season. But he doubted it, as Baby Face sightings were random and refused to fit into any pattern, and he’d heard nothing from Uncle Phil. And the same was true of others on the Public Enemies list, like Pretty Boy, Homer, the Barkers, and Alvin Karpis. Lots of work left to do.

He had two jobs to do today. First, he had to buy a car. He was tired of all this public transportation, or signing out, then signing in, a Bureau Ford or Hudson, which every hood in Chicago recognized as Division cars anyhow. The buy took an hour and a half, the transaction facilitated by him paying in cash from the squirrel fund he’d brought north with him. There was a place up Halsted, a garage run by a Mulligan, who was an ex-cop and gave the boys in blue and State Troopers, as well as G- and T-Men, good deals. Charles paid three hundred fifty dollars for a 1933 dark green four-door Pontiac, a flat-8, said to be in good shape. He was more drawn to a Plymouth coupe, but he saw that the Pontiac would do better for hauling agents around, if it ever came to that, and wife and child, if he ever got back to that.