Стивен Хантер - G-Man

Rawley could speak. It was just that he didn’t very often. At this point, he elected to say something quite strange.

“Sick. Transit. Gloria Monday.”

Mr. Kaye swallowed. What the hell? Tongues? Gibberish? A lunatic’s blubbering?

“Now, see if you can’t follow where I’m going,” said Braxton. “In order to follow the hero Swagger over the next few weeks, we will have to go in mufti, so to speak. Nothing showy, nothing with style and sparkle and ritz to it. No Viking tribal chief bouffant. No, it’s hair close-cropped, dull-black Men’s Wearhouse suits. No Lucchese boots, black inset with purple and red with silver skull points. It’s Rockport walkers instead.”

“I own a Men’s Wearhouse,” said Mr. Kaye. “I can get you a good price…”

But Braxton hadn’t heard him.

“To get to that point, we got to stop at the barber and sit still while he shaves us near clean, as we are blond to the root. All that investment in time and care and money to attain a certain thing, all that will be gone. It’ll be gone good and far away. And when our job is done and you have your serial 1934 bills and are counting all that money they brings you, we got months of downtime, waiting for our hair to grow out. We can’t do our real jobs without no hair. Without our hair, we just two old, fat, bald white guys, and nobody is more invisible in our world today than old, fat, bald white guys. So it’s only fair we be compensated for our sacrifice.”

“Fellows,” said Mr. Kaye, “I’m known as a bargainer. As a negotiator par excellence, good with money, quick with the numbers, able to see now versus then in any exchange, and patient enough to wait for the long-haul payoff. So I did my investigating. And I know you aren’t really in a position financially — certain gambling debts, a lawsuit by the family of that boy you misidentified for that other boy — to walk away from the very generous amount of my initial offer. So I’m afraid it’ll have to stand.”

Braxton squealed with delight.

“He done ’vestigated us, Rawley,” he said. “He ain’t no fool, that Mr. Kaye! He didn’t make a fortune in the gold business by being no fool, no sir!”

He smiled, his caps glowing like the Chiclets of Death.

“Now, because we are big, you’re thinking, ‘They’s dumb.’ But, sir, here’s my news for you: we ain’t dumb. You think we could run sophisticated software-intercept programs that get us in the most amazing places and be dumb? No sir. We smart enough, most important, to know what we know, and what we don’t know. And if we don’t know a thing, we get help. Are you following me, Mr. Kaye?”

“Of course,” said Kaye, “but my position is firm.”

“So, being Grumley, we ask another Grumley for help. Grumley always help Grumley. Like the Masons, only without the goofy hats. Who needs goofy hats when you got blood working on your side?”

“Braxton, I’m a busy man. I don’t mean to be rude, but I need you to get to the point, if you have one.”

“The point is, you invested heavily in property and development of a new Vegas to be called Razorback City, in Fayetteville. You done that to get in on the ground floor when gambling becomes legal in certain areas of our state. When that happens, you will make billions, owning the prime land in Razorback City. You can develop your own casinos; you can sell land to other interests, make a ton there. The sky’s the limit, and the money just pours in. You’re in the money, you’re in the money.”

How the fuck did they know?

“He looks surprised, don’t he, Rawley?”

Rawley nodded.

“Yep, a Grumley can find anything out if he sets his mind to it. They found out that secret. And they found out the other secret too.”

Fuck! thought Mr. Kaye.

“And that is, an interest payment came due for a certain party a few weeks ago and you just didn’t have the cash, because even if you’re pawnshop and strip joint and Men’s Wearhouse rich, you’re cash poor, and so you borrowed from some nasty boys with Russian DNA now in Vegas. You expected a big surge of dough when the Recession got fixed under the new president, only it didn’t. The economy just stayed where it was, flat like a ’tater pancake.”

Mr. Kaye swallowed. Their intelligence was so good! These two… professional wrestlers!

“So this here game ain’t some little minor con you got going ’cause you like old thousand-dollar bills, it’s life or death because you need cash fast or the Russians will bring the big pain on you. They are not the sort to be persuaded to patience, no sir. You deliver to them when you say you will or you go for a swim with a slot machine chained to your thumbs. Sir, you are mortgaged so tight and in debt so far, you are breathing through a little tiny whisper of nostril left above the water. If you don’t come through in a very short time, you going to be permanently in the big wet glub-glub.”

Mr. Kaye said nothing. His eyes crinkled into a reptilian life-form’s and seemed to see nothing, while, behind them, images of his own lungs filling with unstoppable cold Arkansas lake water took over his brain.

“So here’s the deal. Haircut fee, five thousand dollars per man, now, in cash, from a fund not even your accountant/mistress — the Korean gal, she manages a pawn for you in Roberts, and, by the way, she’s also fucking the guy that owns the Burger King across the street, and I sort of think she likes what he brings to the table more than what you bring, but I won’t bother with the pictures for now — not even Miss Lilly Park knows about. Then, as agreed previously, a sixty-five/thirty-five split. Plenty of swag for both, gits you out of the deep lake water. And we will be with you every single step of the way so that we can follow the bookkeeping down to the penny. To the penny, sir. Miss Lilly Park will check the math.”

McLEAN, VIRGINIA

The present

The trip to Texas proved anticlimactic.

“More circumstantial stuff,” said Bob. “Nothing hard, empirical, subject to other analysis, irrefutable, useful.”

“Circumstantial is admissible,” said Nick. “Sometimes it’s all we have.”

Swagger threw back another swig of Diet, again looked longingly at the highball in Nick’s hand. They sat in the basement workroom, unofficial headquarters of Operation Charles Fitzgerald Swagger.

“So let’s hear it.”

“First, to Waco. Texas Ranger Museum. They have a Monitor there, only one I could find fast. Went to museum, looked at it — they say it was Frank Hamer’s — and compared my little nozzle with the comp on the Monitor, through the glass case.”

“And?”

“Yep, the same. That’s why it was such a fine piece of machinework. Colt had the best machinists in the trade in those days, their standard product of the finest quality. Mine was actually a little bit better than theirs, but it’s been sitting in a box since 1934. The Rangers probably haul theirs out to the range every six months for the fun of it and run a couple hundred rounds just to watch the dirt fly and the soda cans pop.”

“Sounds like fun to me.”

“With that, I headed to San Antonio to look into Mr. Lebman. After the passage of the National Firearms Act in June of 1934, he kept very careful records. He knew the federal hammer could drop at any second and that in the end his contacts with San Antonio law enforcement might not do him any good.”

“He could feel their breaths on his neck.”

“Exactly. So Bill Lebman, his grandson, let me look through the records. He guided me and we found it. In mid-August 1934, it’s in the book as ‘Colt Rifle IA-83-25433, sold to Jimmie Smith, Midland, Texas.’”