Стивен Хантер - G-Man

It wasn’t much. A Windy City bar and grill, largely empty at this hour, its government-green walls awash with heatless sunlight, a few thigh-and-garter calendars on the walls, a beefy thumper of a bartender. This one was called The Paragon, a little west of the Cubs’ now empty ballpark called Wrigley Field. He looked around, saw a face nodding his way from one of the dark booths in the rear, nodded in return, and headed over.

“Okay,” said Dave Jessup of the Chicago Herald-Examiner , “pigs do star in movies. You did me a favor, now I do you a favor.”

“We’ll see how you handle the Irish boyos that run this town, and particularly those that wear blue. I know how the Irish mind works. The cops, especially the big shots, they’re loud, and they brag and shove and throw a punch, and they have big bellies, red noses, and a fondness for the pint, but that’s all bluster. Inside, they’re clever and cunning, and they pay attention. That’s why they run all the cities in America and three-quarters of the towns.”

“I hear you,” said Jessup.

“What that means is that somewhere in that big new building at State and Eleventh, they have what they probably call The Italian File. Or maybe they call it The Wop File. Everything they know about the Italians — how they work, who they know, what they make, what their plans are, how much they pay, who they kill, and, most of all, who they are — all that’s in there. But it’s not open for anybody but the top people, and access is guarded. They sure won’t share it with Justice, or, if they will, they’ll very carefully pick out what they give, and they’ll never give the full story.”

“You want in? Why not use the badge, go all official-like?”

“See, if I go to my boss, and he goes to Commissioner Allman, and he goes to his cardinals, and they talk about it, play it, test it, consider it, finally, eventually, some kind of tit for tat is arranged, and six months from now I’ll get a peep at a small part of it. But every Italian in the city will know a Justice man is looking at them, they’ll know who he is, they’ll know all about him, and they’ll start paying attention to him, as they try to figure out whether or not to squish him.”

“Probably an accurate summary.”

“But then there’s Dave Jessup, Chicago Herald-Examiner , smart-ass, big mouth, wiseguy. He knows the system, he’s studied it hard, knows where the skeletons are: who’s smart, who’s dumb, who’s strong, who’s weak, who drinks, who don’t, who can be touched and for how much. He knows how to operate, to pull in favors, to flatter the strong, to scare the weak, to rub on the magic lantern until out pops what I want.”

“I might know a little something.”

“I bet. Here’s how I want you to use it. I want somebody to go through The Italian File. It’s too big to move, and I could never get into the room anyway.”

“You want him to take it out? It must be gigantic!”

“No, of course not. But I want him to pull the file on everyone named Phil. It’s a common name among the Italians. There’s probably at least a dozen, but I don’t think there’s so many, it would take a crate to get them out. Pull them and get them to me. Maybe I’m in a car across the street. Give me an hour with them, that’s all I need. I’m only interested in one Phil. He knows me; it’s time I should know him. A photo of him attached to a bill of particulars would do the trick. Do you get it?”

“I do.”

“Can you make this happen?”

“It’s doable. The head of Gang Intelligence has a very nice summer cottage with six bedrooms in Petoskey, Michigan. Everybody knows. The story is, he bought it with money inherited from his wife’s father, one Seamus O’Sullivan. However, what I know that nobody else knows is that Seamus O’Sullivan was a drunken firefighter in Peoria, Illinois, who died when his future wife was thirteen. Believe me, he doesn’t want anybody else to know that.”

“You play hardball. I like that.”

“I do. And if all this should put those files in your hands for a bit, what would be the benefit for reporter Jessup?”

“When I kill Baby Face, you’ll be the first to know.”

WAUKEGAN, ILLINOIS

Mid-November 1934

Les checked his watch. It was 4:30, getting dark. A cold wind blew in from the lake, but that was nothing new. His topcoat was tight, his scarf tight, his hat tight, his gloves tight — but he still felt the clammy chill of late Midwest fall.

“They ain’t coming,” said J.P. from the front seat. “They wouldn’t come this late, they don’t want to do it at night, and the sun is almost gone.”

“Les,” said Helen, behind the wheel, “he’s right. This is not the time, this is not the place.”

Les didn’t say a thing. He had the Colt Monitor across his lap, and, as usual, proximity to such an interesting, powerful weapon had him slightly jazzed. He didn’t want to give up on this place, he wanted to shoot, send a few Division cars into the gutter, trailing flame and smoke. He was also encased in his steel girdle, and though the seat supported the weight, the tightness of it and its coldness was discomfiting.

But it was indeed getting dark fast. Shadows lengthened across Route 42 on the northern outskirts of the small industrial city just beyond Chicago-commuting range, and the parking lot to the A&P was practically deserted, as most of Waukegan’s homemakers had gotten their supplies for hubby’s dinner and long since bolted for home. Across the street, a cheap motor hotel called the Acme had turned on its flashing-white-star road sign but had attracted no business yet.

He had to face it.

“Okay,” he said. “Helen, rev it up. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Okay if I put the Thompson down?” said J.P. “The goddamned thing is heavy and it’s squashing my balls… Excuse me, Helen.”

“Don’t talk dirty in front of Helen,” said Les.

“It’s all right, baby,” said Helen, as she eased the car into traffic. “J.P. was just being funny.”

“Ha-ha — I forgot to laugh. No, hold on to it. You don’t know, maybe they’re laying a few blocks off and want to jump us unawares… Hell, this thing is twice as heavy as that one.”

“Yeah, but you like it. Holding it makes you happy. It does, doesn’t it, Helen?”

“He does sort of like it,” said Helen.

The crew was getting rebellious. It was no fun sitting in a car in a parking lot on a frosty fall day in a crummy noplace like Waukegan waiting for Division gunmen to roll in. The steel was cold against their flesh; the heavy guns dented their muscles, giving off odors of lubricant, not a problem in short spells but hard to take after eight hours; and the thermos had run dry at 3, meaning they’d been without hot coffee just as the weather was turning bitter. And being this close to the lake meant the wind was windier and the cold was colder.

“All right,” he said, “we cross DePalma off the list. Tony told his number one guy that he’d heard from me, I was hanging out in Waukegan at the Acme, casing a job in Lake Bluff. If DePalma was our spy, he’d have ratted us out to the Division and we’d have gotten a batch of them today, and him tonight, and be on our way to Reno.”

“No to DePalma: I hear you. I want this done so I don’t have to wear this armor stuff ever again, but somehow I wasn’t in a machine-gun-battle-to-the-death mood today.”

“I’m always in a machine-gun-battle-to-the-death mood,” said Les.

They coursed down 42, finally reaching the civilized sectors of the North Shore, whose stylizations put humble Waukegan to shame. Now the road was called by the classier name of Sheridan, and it took them past big houses along the lakefront where the millionaires lived — Lake Forest, Highland Park, Winnetka, Kenilworth — all before reaching modest but pleasant Wilmette. There was even a casino in a little unincorporated area between Kenilworth and Wilmette called No-Man’s-Land, but its temptations were lost on the task-focused Les.