Стивен Хантер - G-Man

The genius of the system was that the phone didn’t even have to be on for them to listen in. It was as if Bob was broadcasting, from wherever he went. But there were limits, if only to their own patience. They listened in whenever Bob was with anyone. Of course it made no sense to listen to Bob when he was by himself, as he didn’t talk to himself, or God, or an imaginary girlfriend, or a large white rabbit. So they stayed far away, over the horizon in those situations, and listened only when he made phone calls and whatnot. But the sessions with Nick were pure gold because that’s when he unloaded all his fears, his doubts, his frustrations.

“Okay… the way… you want to play… I’d get moving… form recognition… how bur… can be.”

“I have to figure out the best route through all this, how to use the new confirmation. What do I owe Charles? What do I owe the Bureau? What do I owe history?”

“When you see it… you’ll know it.”

Rawley and Braxton found this whole thing very interesting. It was the primitive power of narrative. Everybody loves a story and wants to know how it comes out. The saga of the strange Arkansas gunman in Chicago in the middle of the gangster war provoked them.

But there was so much to learn. Why had Charles been eliminated from FBI records? Why had he returned home in seeming shame from Chicago? Why had his life then gone into a downward spiral until he was a drunk, bitter, isolated, indifferent to his wife and son? And why had he died the way he did? All that mystery was unpenetrated. And was liable to remain unpenetrated.

“It’s impossible,” said Bob, “since no one is left alive from those days except that old lady, and she didn’t know much except that he had the smell of whiskey on him and a bandage on his ear. The kind of stuff he did, there were no records, no documents, no photos, no witness accounts, nothing. No place to go at all.”

Braxton was by this time an expert on dialogue between Nick and Bob, its nuances, its leitmotifs, its subtexts, its Mametian elisions, and he said to Rawley, “He wasn’t much on his game today. They’ve had better conversations. What was the point of going through it all over again? What even was the point of the meeting?”

They both knew Bob had called the meeting and had rushed to get there. But, for what? For this? Made no sense.

“Maybe he’s losing it. He got a big breakthrough this morning and it’s got him all mixed up. He’s supposed to be so smart. I have to laugh. He’s a dumber hillbilly than we are, Rawley. He still don’t get who we are. He only has a suspicion he’s been targeted, and he ain’t making no progress at all. Mr. Kaye’s going to be disappointed. He backed the wrong horse, and the Russians are going to send him for a deep dive in an Arkansas lake.”

Rawley smiled once for seven-tenths a second. That was his way of saying he thought that was pretty funny. It also might have communicated the message that he knew something Swagger didn’t.

“So the document is back in the archives?” Bob said, and slid a handwritten note to Nick.

Nick read the note, and then said, “Yes, but retrievable when we need it.”

The note said “Can you check with technical people on iPhone-penetration technologies. Could mine be compromised? It’s never been out of my possession and yet I get the being-followed vibe every time I’m with somebody — like now, for example. Then, when I’m alone, I get nothing. So somehow they KNOW when there’ll be chatter and when there won’t. And when there won’t, they minimize the chance of discovery by disappearing.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it. I’d get moving on the recognition issue, though. You know how bureaucracies can be,” said Nick, and wrote a response.

“I’ll call Jeff Neill. I’m not up on this stuff, but I know it’s a big item in security circles.”

Bob continued with the chatter. “I have to figure out the best route through all this, how to use the new confirmation. What do I owe Charles? What do I owe the Bureau? What do I owe history?”

When Bob was done, Nick said, “But someone believes you’re going to solve the mystery and find a treasure in guns or bills worth millions. Else why would they be following you?” During that time, Bob wrote, “Thanks. It has to be the phone. Nothing else capable of receiving and sending information is on me — no cards with chips, no GPS, my watch is fifteen years old, nothing.”

EAST LIVERPOOL, OHIO

October 22, 1934

It happened fast. The day before, Charles got the message from Uncle Phil to call him and four minutes later the mystery gangster told him that something had just broken. Someone at a pool hall near East Liverpool swore that Pretty Boy Floyd and his pal Adam Richetti had just shown up, looking like hobos, and asked the owner, Joy, for some food and a place to rest. Joy obliged but gave the nod, as the word was out that certain people were very interested in Pretty Boy. So the news reached Charles, Charles was telling Sam, and at that moment the Director called Sam, said that in Cincinnati Purvis had gotten a call from the sheriff of Columbiana County, Ohio, that they were closing in on Pretty Boy Floyd somewhere outside of the selfsame East Liverpool. It was all coming together on Pretty Boy.

The news was that Pretty Boy, Richetti, and two frails, the Baird sisters, were traveling from somewhere out East back to the Midwest. They were probably going to lay over in East Liverpool, since it was an area Pretty Boy had worked when he was just the hillbilly Charlie Floyd from the Cookson Hills, in Oklahoma. It was years before he became, as he had on Dillinger’s death, Public Enemy No. 1, and a priority for a Division that wanted him to pay the bill for the Kansas City Massacre, where two of its agents were gunned down. That had been a great Career Move for Charlie, putting him on the map in a way his somewhat obtuse mind would not have permitted, the irony being that while it made him famous, he actually hadn’t been there. He’d killed over ten men, was as bold as they came, if that dumb too, a superb shot and cunning gunfighter, and liked the fame, even if he had to explain to everybody that he would never turn the Thompson loose on anybody, even cops and Division men sitting in a car.

Anyhow, just outside of East Liverpool, a wide-open town on the Ohio side of the big river forty miles west of Pittsburgh, Charlie had managed to crack up in a ditch. Stupid is as stupid does. None of the other big bank guys ever made such a dumb-ass move and ended up like these two, wandering the countryside, waiting for the two girls (who’d walked into town) to pick up some transportation and come fetch them. Another irony was that as satisfying as it was for Charlie to be number one on the Director’s list, it also meant he was movie-star famous and couldn’t flash his mug just anywhere, as in the old days.

Once it became known that Public Enemy No. 1 was in play, things pretty much turned into a carnival, East Ohio river town — style. The sheriff and a couple deputies ran into Charlie and Adam, had a nice little gunfight with them, the result being that Adam was captured, and Charlie dropped his Tommy gun, but, slippery as ever, somehow ran into the Appalachian woods and got away. He wandered a bit, caught a ride, almost got nailed at a roadblock, skipped out again, and spent the night shivering in the forest.

By today, the Division had flooded the place with agents from Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Chicago, under the nominal control of Purvis, up by plane from Cincy, who was a little unsure how to handle the situation. He ended up with five cars full of agents more or less roaming the countryside, while two hundred local cops and State policemen set up roadblocks or did their own roaming. Cops were everywhere, and it was just a matter of time before the bedraggled Charlie ran into them or they ran into him.