Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“We are hard men. We do hard things. That’s where the money is.”

“So be it.”

“All right, now you get somebody to get to the deed registration or tax records or plat index, or whatever it is, and you find the precise location of that property in the Ouachita near the National Forest. We have to be there before Swagger. No way in hell a couple triple cheeseburgers like us going to be able to follow him through the woods without him picking up on it.”

“Got it.”

“We have to be there, hunkered down, quiet as mice when he arrives.”

“You’re a little big for a mouse,” said Kaye. “You’re even a little big for triple cheeseburgers.”

MELROSE PARK, ILLINOIS

Mid-November 1934

“Ican hardly walk,” said J.P.

“You don’t have to walk. You just have to shoot,” said Les.

“I can’t bend, I can’t twist. I don’t even think I can get my head down to the sights.”

“You can do all those things if you practice. That’s why you have to practice now. So when you use it, it won’t be new, you won’t make mistakes and get yourself killed.”

“I have a better idea. Let’s go to Reno and work for Skabootch, Doc Bone, and the guys. Let’s live to be ninety. We’re going to die for sure, under your plan.”

Helen said, “Les, J.P. has a point. This is insane. Honey, you could get killed so easy. And then—”

“You two, what is this, some sort of plan you cooked up? You’re both against me.”

His voice rose, even if he didn’t mean it to.

They sat in the small, stuffy living room of a tourist cabin off the highway in Melrose Park. It was no swank Aurora Hotel, but it was a good place to go to ground.

Les hit his fist against his chest. The sound produced was a sort of bonk.

“It’ll stop anything up to a .30 caliber, and the Division hardly ever uses its .30s,” he said. “They’ll come at us with Thompsons,45 autos,38s, buckshot, and Super .38s. The steel stops ’em all.”

“I can hardly drive in it,” said J.P.

“Helen can drive. You can drive, can’t you, Helen?”

Les’s wife scrunched up her cute little face, communicating, yet hardly expressing, disagreement, but she yielded to the force of his urgency. “I suppose,” she said.

“Are you putting her in steel?” asked J.P.

“Nobody’s shooting at her.”

“No, but they’re shooting at the car. She’s in the car.”

“Helen will be fine. Nobody shoots women. This stuff saved my life at South Bend,” said Les. “Stopped a pistol shot cold. Otherwise, I’m now drinking with Johnny and Homer in hell’s hottest nightclub.”

The steel armor had been welded together by someone Tony Accardo knew. It was solid, tough, heavy, though less clumsy than the Knights of the Round Table stuff the cops bought from the police ordnance trade, which Les had worn at South Bend. It was like a sandwich board but cut slimmer, a more reasonable silhouette. The front plate had been fabricated off an actual human shape and thus had a bulge in it so that it didn’t bang against the stomach but cupped it instead. But, for comfort, that was the only feature. Each plate weighed fifteen pounds, and they were strapped together by heavy leather. They only extended to the waist, so that pants could be worn beneath, belted tight, while a shirt, tie, and jacket could be worn over. Thirty extra pounds, and if you were upright too long, the straps cut hard into your shoulders, and the whole rig took the energy out of you fast, so that once you survived the fight and your adrenaline was depleted, you were almost flattened by exhaustion. But it was the best rig that could be had, even if it left legs, pelvis, testicles, sides, and head open to incoming fire. The federals were trained to shoot midchest, and in battles they reverted to training, which meant they’d try to put their rounds into Les’s and J.P.’s chests.

“Okay on the vests,” said J.P., finally collapsing to the sofa in the tourist cabin. “The vests aren’t really the problem. The vests make sense, if we do the plan. It’s the plan that doesn’t make sense.”

Les sighed. He loved them both. But they did not see it. They could not grasp it. It was so clear to him. It was what had to be done.

“It’s one thing to go against the Italians,” said J.P. “But to go against the Italians, we first have to go through the Division. Now, I’m not good at counting — ha-ha — but even I can count to two, and that’s all of us, plus Helen, who drives but won’t shoot. Gee, forty Division agents with Thompson guns, maybe three hundred Italians also with Thompson guns: the odds don’t seem much in our favor.”

“Honey, honey, honey, listen to J.P. This is crazy. It’s suicide!”

“We have been betrayed,” said Les. “One of four guys collected dope from all over the region, put it together, and then ratted us out to the Justice Department. He has to be paid back. He murdered men we all loved. That can’t be forgotten, forgiven, postponed. The point has to be made, even to the Italians, that there are certain men who can’t be betrayed.”

“You’re crazy with honor. Are you some kind of knight or something? Where does all this pride and screwball guts come from? I thought you were a bank robber, Les, but you’re some kind of Avenging Angel of the bank robbery religion.”

“Look,” said Les, “the whole point of driving twelve hundred miles and fronting four grand was to get a Monitor. The Monitor is God. We see the Division boys before they see us. If they see us, we put a squirt of .30 into their engine blocks, and they’re out of the fight. That’s the power of the Monitor, but also the fact that it’s easy to handle and easy to manipulate, with that pistol grip and big compensator. We vanish without the car taking a hit. Then we know who it is. Carmine DePalma, North Side. Phil D’Abruzzio, West Side. Alberto Mappa, South Side. Antonio Bastianelli, the Loop. Tony has told us where each guy lives. We wait outside his house, he gets out of his car — or maybe he don’t even get out — we pull up, and I hose him down with the Monitor. That .30 caliber goes through any car like a home run through a window. We turn him to chop suey in five seconds. Then we’re gone. Reno, here we come. They never know who hit ’em until the word reaches them: you fucked with the man they call Baby Face Nelson, and Baby Face Nelson — that is, me, Lester Gillis — I fuck back, twice as hard. But by that time we’re under the auspices and protection of Doc Bone and Skabootch, and there’s nothing they can do about it. And, who knows, maybe thinking at least it’s over, Mr. Nitto gets sloppy. We come back and turn the Monitor on him. The Monitor doesn’t care how big he is, it just cares if he’s alive, because if he’s alive, the Monitor will make him dead.”

“Okay, Les,” said J.P., with a sigh. “I love you — you know that — I’ll go along. Helen loves you too. But at least I don’t have to fuck you like she does.”

A JOINT

CHICAGO

Mid-November 1934

Cold day. The hawk snapped through Chicago’s harsh streets, lifting a screen of dust, dead leaves, debris, crumpled classified ads, whatever it could move. Grit and sting filled the swift air. Men cowered against the wind’s bite, shivering in thin coats, gathered around garbage cans with flames pouring from them, prayed for spring but knew spring was a long time coming.

Charles looked up and down the street, made sure nobody afoot or in a car had followed him. Nope, clear. He pulled his overcoat tight against the wind and slipped into the place.