Стивен Хантер - G-Man

It worked out. Sam didn’t set any records, but, guided by Charles’s gravity and precision and confidence, he found himself more or less comfortable, and, as Charles predicted, took easiest to the Colt Super, and while he’d never whack out the center of a bull’s-eye target, in a hundred fifty rounds he’d learned to keep the holes pretty much in the center of the silhouette at fifty feet. It was the same for him as anyone, not magic but an orderly process: front sight, press, recover, front sight, press.

“Well, maybe there’s some hope for me yet,” said Sam, weirdly relieved after the session, as they headed back. “I think I could even do it again.”

“Next week, same time, same place,” said Charles. “In a couple months we’ll have you blazing away with a Thompson gun.”

“That’s graduate school. I’m years from that. Look, I feel good now. Let me buy you a drink. A real drink. We have something to celebrate. I insist.”

“I try not to drink the hard stuff.”

“Make an exception this one time, that’s an order. What harm can it do?”

Three shots in, Sam got a little carried away.

“Don’t you see? When we get the Baby Face thing settled, I’ll be returned to Washington. The Director will be in my corner. My hope would be to get you seconded to training, and eventually put in charge of our firearms unit. Charles, you could implement your ideas. You could make our boys the best shooters in the world and our reputation so sterling that nobody would fight us. The better our reputation, the fewer men we have to kill.”

Charles didn’t agree. If his knowledge of the world held water, there’d always be men who needed killing and men who had to kill them. But he said nothing, just sat there, as bottled up as if a cork were plugging his mouth.

“Charles, you go to the East, you have a big, secure job, a big, secure house, you contribute to society, you save lives, you get attention for your second boy, your wife isn’t so sullen and withdrawn, you give your first boy something extraordinary to return to from the banana wars — my god, Charles, what a life you will have had! Few men have had such a life!”

“It sounds pretty good,” said Charles, the booze reaching him too.

“Charles, why are you so glum? I can tell, you don’t believe a word I’m saying, and you think I’m a fool for saying it.”

“It ain’t you, Sam. I do appreciate your faith in me. I want so bad to get help for that boy. But what you predict, it ain’t gonna happen. I just know it.”

“Charles, why do you say that? Why are you so pessimistic, so down on yourself?”

“There’s things about me you don’t know. Nobody knows. But they hold me back. God is punishing me for my failings. He’s warning me to know my place and to stay in it.”

Why was he so loose of tongue? Was it the booze, Sam’s unfettered admiration, a particularly bad line of nightmares, anxiety over Baby Face, worried about how deep he was now in with Uncle Phil?

“Why, Charles, I’ve never heard such nonsense.”

“You yourself called it a death wish.”

“Yes, but you can make it go away. You have made extraordinary progress. You are out of your shell, a success in the big city, an object of respect for the whole community. What on earth could assail you?”

He paused. Then he just said it.

“I dream of lying with men,” he said.

Sam sure hadn’t seen that one coming. He looked like he’d been hit in the mouth with a tuna. He sat back, his expression reflecting his shock, his emptiness of word or emotion, his inability to respond.

Charles looked at him, appalled though he was at spilling his deepest secret. He’d never said it before, out loud. He’d never even put it into words. It just happened in his dreams, or in those blurry moments before he fell into sleep and his subconscious momentarily took over his conscious.

“I don’t—” said Sam, then stopped.

The rest came out, the whole thing.

“I ain’t never done it,” said Charles. “I don’t know why I want it so. But, goddammit, it’s there, and God is punishing me for it. He took my son’s mind as a warning. He made me good at killing so I’d always be apart. He made me sick and ashamed of myself and what goes on in my mind. So that’s my secret, and that’s why all that fine-sounding stuff you say ain’t ever coming true, Sam. Sorry, if you now disrespect me, but I have to keep you from backing the wrong horse.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Sam.

“It’s even worse now. I heard there’s a place in Hot Springs that could take care of me for more money than it ought to be worth. Ain’t been there, but, damn, I want to go. Got it all figured out. Thought and thought and come up with the idea to tell my wife I was going to the Caddo Gap Baptist Prayer Camp to pray to God to help me with my drinking, so I’d be gone overnight. My wife don’t know no Baptists, so she’d never say, ‘Oh, how’s Charles doing?’ and get ‘Who’s Charles?’ as a response. Don’t think nobody would recognize me, but I do realize I’d be risking everything. But, goddammit, I can’t help wanting what I want.”

Sam thought a while. Then, finally, he said, “I don’t disrespect you at all, Charles. In fact, now I respect you more. The weight you carry, the dignity with which you carry it. Charles, listen to me, I can help you, I will help you. This doesn’t have to be permanent. I just have to show you the way and it’s the sort of thing I can do. I had a case like it in Hawaii and I helped that man, and I can help you. It just takes trust on your part, and commitment. Charles, you have to know: there is hope. There is hope.”

Charles finished his fourth shot.

Sam said again: “There is hope, Charles. I can help you. It’ll be our bargain with each other. You help me with the guns and make me courageous, I’ll help you with your secret pain. I’ll be better, you’ll be better. You’ve already taken the hardest step, which is acknowledgment and unburdening. Now at last you’re ready to progress, and I’m here to help you.”

No one had ever made such an offer to him before, and Charles smiled tightly.

“Well,” he said, “if you can show me the way, it would mean a hell of a lot. It would mean everything. Been lost in the goddamned forest too long.”

When they got back to the office, it was deserted except for the hardworking Ed Hollis, cleaning guns, and a few guys spread throughout the squad room in pools of light, working through phone lists. Troutmouth Clegg had long since gone home, Purvis was on an inspection tour to keep his yap as far from the newspapermen as possible, and most of the others had gone home to wife, kids, girlfriends, dormitory, or movies.

Sam left soon, and Charles helped Ed clean the guns he and Sam had fired. They had a good time chumming around until finally, the guns logged in, Ed departed.

Charles went into his own office, just to make a last check. He was hungry to get home because he had a very solid feeling he’d sleep without nightmares tonight.

He picked up the phone.

He heard the operator putting the call through, heard the connection up and down the line, then the phone ringing — was she there? — and finally she answered and told the operator she’d take the call.

“Charles? Is something the matter?”

“No, things are fine,” he said. “I just wanted to check in, that’s all. Is there any news?”

“None of it good. He’s taken to burning himself with cigarettes. I think I got them away from him, but it’s getting harder and harder. This child is really disturbed. It breaks my heart.”

“I hope I have good news,” he said. “You just have to hold out a little longer. I got a fellow here who believes in me, he can help me — us — in all sorts of ways. I’m seeing a move to a big house in Washington, D.C., a job doing what I’m good at and for a good purpose, I see help for Bobbie Lee, Eastern help, the best doctors, and maybe a good place where they’ll work with him and he won’t feel like a monster.”