Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“Well, perhaps. But there is one other thing I wanted to say, do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

“I’ve been meaning to have this conversation with you ever since you stood wide open on that hill and fired at Baby Face. But when I learned you told the boys — no, they didn’t tell me, they told a pal who told a pal who told a pal who finally was overheard by someone who was not a pal — that you went straight into Johnny’s gunhand because you knew if he got a shot off it would be into you and nobody else — I realized I had to act. That accounts for this overly engineered little tête-à-tête.”

“Yes sir?” said Charles.

“Charles… do you know what a ‘death wish’ is?”

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

August 1934

Courtesy of Helen And J.P.’s Adventuring, they stayed at the Aurora Hotel, one of the city’s nicest, a couple blocks from the old fort where the Texans had stood off the Mexicans for so long, setting a standard for bravery in the face of treachery and force for all, including bank robbers, to admire. And these bank robbers did.

But history’s charms ran out quickly enough, and soon enough they turned to nourishment, which the old city offered in abundance. They ate well, in the Aurora’s elegant dining room or the superb Mexican restaurants the town boasted. It was a streetcar city, and the amble of the big cars down the thoroughfares under wires that popped sparks at every junction was its own special pleasure, a kind of ongoing spectacle out-of-towners never tired of. But it was also a pastel-and-ocher city, in the colors of the desert, and it had the warm-climate casualness that outsiders find so appealing, and the availability of a smiling peasant class to facilitate all transactions. It was a city that wore its pride and grandeur well, like a beautiful gown.

They had plenty of money, at least for now, even if the unexpected triumph of five crisp, new thousand-dollar bills couldn’t be touched.

“That stuff is so hot we’d end up in the stir before nightfall if we tried to pass it,” Les said.

“Maybe I should have left it there. Who knew it’d be so much trouble?” said J.P. They sat on the balcony of Les and Helen’s room, which overlooked the gently Hispanic city.

“Nah,” said Les, “you were right to grab it. We’ll hang on to it. It’ll cool off, and somewhere along the line we can pass it off at a good rate, maybe in Reno. Right now, we wouldn’t get one-for-five, but by this time next year it’ll go easily for four-on-the-fiver. That’s close to standard, can’t bitch about that.”

“Good idea, Les,” said J.P., as if ever in his life he could have said, “Bad idea, Les.” His submission was as complete as it was weirdly satisfying to him. It completed him.

“Tell you what,” said Les. “We’ll peel one of ’em off and put it in the getaway bag, with a few guns and some ammo, some license plates, something to grab if the Division starts to blast us. On the run, we can spend it, because we’re moving so fast, and by the time they track it back to where it was passed, we’ll be long gone. One way or the other.”

“That’s good,” said J.P.

Both men had their feet up and were relaxed, coats off, ties loosened. Helen had gone to Frost’s, the great San Antonio department store, to buy a few new frocks, as she was sick to death of the ones in her suitcase that she washed out every night after wearing. She’d earned a few new dresses, Les thought.

“So, tomorrow Lebman. I called him, he’s expecting us at eleven and is very eager for the business.”

Hyman Lebman was a great mystery to many of his gangster clients. No doubt, he was a talented gunsmith, and could modify a good gun into a perfect gun, almost too clever to use on the job yet too lethal not to use — but what did he know about his customers and the uses to which they put his brilliance? He pretended to know nothing.

If he was faking it, he was faking it brilliantly. He could be with Les and Johnny, showing them some work of genius — like his adaptation of the Colt Government Model automatic into a machine pistol, complete with compensator, twenty-two-round magazine, and Thompson grip, which Les had used to great effect on Carter Baum the night of the escape from Little Bohemia — and at the same time be completely oblivious to their identities. He just thought, or pretended he just thought, they were new-money oil millionaires giving their adolescent selves a fun binge, with a love of guns so intense, it had taken them beyond the normal range of hunting and target-shooting firearms. Their hobbies seemed to be acquiring the still-legal fully automatics and retiring to an obscure corner of the ranch for a few hours’ and a few thousand rounds’ worth of shooting holes at anything in front of them, amid a clatter of noise, a storm of dust, and a spray of debris. It seemed to suggest a sort of polo-with-machine-guns kind of life.

If anything else was involved, it never occurred to Mr. Lebman, who either made no connection between his clients and the massacres and bullet blizzards of the Midwest or, again, did a fine job of impersonating someone who made no connection.

That was fine all around. The guns were perfectly legal, no laws were broken — well, the National Firearms Act had just been passed in June, but it seemed nobody was much interested in enforcing it for now — and it freed Mr. Lebman to his own pleasures, mainly leatherwork, as he was also extremely skilled at that craft and his saddles and bridles were prized among the high-swell class of Texan.

So the next day, at 11, just outside the Flores Street shop in downtown San Antonio, a block from city hall and the police department, across the street from the sheriff’s department, Les and J.P. pulled in. Both were smartly turned out after the fashion of the big-money gun aficionado, and they entered the store. It had the rich smell of leather to it, and was decorated with the owner’s more flamboyant enterprises — saddles with elaborate scrollwork carved into them, bridles and reins, cuffs and chaps, which displayed the same kind of bas-relief tapestry.

“Is the boss around?” Les asked a clerk behind the counter, who was showing a silver buckle to a richly appointed cowboy millionaire.

“Sir, he’s in back waiting for you.”

“Great,” said Les. He and J.P. went back, opened the door, and passed into another universe. Now they were in the world of ordnance.

No leather smell back here. Instead, the fragrance of Hoppe’s No. 9, the ubiquitous bore solvent to the shooting fraternity, mingled with odors of petroleum lubricants of various densities, for one wouldn’t oil a machine-gun bolt with the same delicate vintage one used on a tiny Colt .25 automatic pistol.

It was like a library of guns down here. The walls were lined with fine hunting rifles, many of foreign manufacture, as Lebman considered the European gunmakers far ahead of the American when it came to hunting rifles. A Mauser, a Mannlicher, or a Westley Richards far outshone their cruder American counterparts from Winchester and Remington and Marlin. Now, pistols were a different story. No one had surpassed the genius of Mr. Browning when it came to the automatic pistol, and Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson had shown the world how to build a revolver, though the Colt revolver was a treasure, particularly its Officers Model that rode in so many police holsters, or its sawed-off cousin, the Detective Special, which many a plainclothesman carried tucked away. An ample supply of all these variants, plus dozens more, lay in shelves on either side of the place.

“Mr. Lebman, sir, how are you?” Les called, all charm and willed charisma. He could be a gentleman to you if he had decided not to kill you. Besides, he loved guns, he loved Mr. Lebman, he loved this place. He felt at home, happy, safe, which might be why he kept coming back.