Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“I’m simply noting probability, not actuality. As for the actuality, he notarized his thumbprint on it. He knew that if he were going to have it published, instant authentication was part of the sale. So it’s got his notarized 1974 thumbprint and his Chicago 1934 fingerprint card. You can compare the prints. Even with the naked eye, you’ll see they’re the same.”

“Why didn’t his family publish it?”

“As you will see, they realized it tells a different story. Maybe they thought that the different story would do more harm than good. Maybe that’s an issue you’ll have to contend with as well. Wasn’t there a movie where some newspaperman says, ‘When the truth conflicts with the legend, print the legend’?”

“Liberty Valance,” said Nick, who knew of such things. “Starring John Wayne, the Charles Swagger of the movies.”

“Tell me where this manuscript is.”

“Snip, snip,” said Braxton.

BARRINGTON, ILLINOIS

November 27, 1934

Sam gave Elaine instructions to relay the Baby Face information and car ID and plate number to any agents who called in and then he went swiftly to the arms room.

“Okay, Ed,” he said, “Charles just called. I’ll explain later, but we’ve got to move fast. Nelson may be coming down Northwest Highway to Chicago. I have his make and plate. Maybe we can intercept him.”

Ed jumped.

“Sam, are you sure you don’t want to wait until we get some more fellows in? You and me against Baby Face, that’s a tall order.”

“The others will join us as they can. Charles is in pursuit from Lake Geneva. Come on, we’ve got to get cracking. What’s loaded?”

Ed keyed open the gun vault, revealing empty racks, but for one Thompson and one Remington riot gun.

“All the other stuff is out with the boys,” he said. “I just loaded up a drum for the Tommy.”

“Good, you take that, I’ll take the shotgun. I’ve fired a shotgun before, at least.” It was a short-barreled Remington Model 11, a semi-auto with a capacity of four rounds. It had come over from the Department of the Army, where it had been acquired for trench warfare.

The elevator doors opened and he and Ed stepped in.

They rode down the shaft to the government garage, headed to the Division section and toward a blue Hudson, Chicago Division car number 13. Ed jumped behind the wheel, Sam in the passenger seat; they laid the two weapons in the space beneath the dashboard and leaning upward to rest on the seat next to Sam. Ed turned the engine over, backed out of the space, and headed out of the garage. A bolt of gray sky hit them as they climbed the ramp to Adams Street.

“Go north to Touhy,” said Sam, looking at the map he’d taken out of the glove compartment. “That’s our fastest route to U.S. 14. Then we’ll head out that, with our eyes open for a shiny black V-8.”

“What if we run into him?” said Ed. “Are we going to follow?”

“We’ll just see how he wants to play it,” said Sam. “Maybe the Thompson will convince him to give up.”

“Anyone else,” said Ed, “but not this guy.”

“Can’t you go a little faster?” J.P. said. “They might be getting close.”

“We don’t want some country cop pulling us over for speeding,” said Les.

“Yeah, yeah,” said J.P., his mouth dry, no spit, his breathing hard and ragged.

The land changed after the Wisconsin border, the pines giving way to Illinois prairie, towns of no particular distinction, farm structures spread here and there in the little stands of trees.

Les looked back to Helen in the rear seat, where her seatmates were a Colt Monitor and a Thompson with a drum, plus assorted magazines and automatic pistols.

“Are you okay, honey?”

“I’m swell,” she said.

“See, no problem,” he said. “We’re way ahead of the game. That fed’s probably still trying to get his mind around it, he has no idea where we went to, he’s probably just going to file a report and call it a day. As I say, we hit D’Abruzzio without a hitch and then we’re home free. Next stop: Reno. J.P., you can get your girl Sally over from Sausalito and we can rent a house together. Helen, you’ll like Sally. You gals can go shopping, and J.P. and I’ll play golf or something. We’ll get the kids out pretty soon. It’ll be great.”

Why did none of them believe it?

Beyond Crystal Lake, the road turned due east for a while. It was flat country, though dotted with brush and clusters of trees. Two lanes, separated by a median strip, ran unerringly toward Lake Michigan, still thirty miles or so ahead. Traffic was sparse, no police cruisers were seen, and Les kept scanning his rearview mirror for evidence of a Division fleet, but nothing came over the horizon that wasn’t another civilian car dawdling through errands or sales calls. He began to relax. He could almost believe himself. Yeah, they were going to get away with it, and it would all be just fine, exactly as he had said. He cranked around and smiled at Helen.

“How’re you doing, sweetie?”

She smiled back.

“Just fine,” she said. “I hope none of these damned things go off, though.”

“They’re fine,” he said. “Just don’t get curious and start poking at them. You could blow fifty holes in the roof.”

The road turned again, though not so severely, adopting a forty-five-degree angle to the southeast. In time, they passed a wide spot in the road called Fox River Grove, of no consequence except as the locale for a well-known Mob watering hole called Louis’s and the bridge over the Fox River.

“Next stop,” said Les, who knew the road, “Barrington. Then we’re practically there.”

Charles drove. Since it was his own private car and not a Division vehicle, he had to stay just above the legal speed limit for fear of losing even more time being stopped for speeding by a local. His automatic weighed heavily under his left shoulder, though as a precaution against fast, sudden action he’d unsnapped the strap.

He ran into traffic, had to pull over for an ambulance, got caught behind an at-grade train crossing, each little incident putting him farther behind than where, ideally, he could have been. He ground his teeth, scanning the band of road ahead of him for the shiny black Ford V-8, but it never came up.

It seemed there were 8s all over the place, however, and each demanded a close examination, but none was the 1934 model year, or particularly shiny. Each one, as well, cost him some time.

He was driven by an image of Sam in a fight and the prospect ate a hole in his guts. He found himself secretly hoping that Nelson had been smart, had gotten off Northwest Highway as soon as he got into Illinois, and had chosen a less direct route into Chicago. He tried to put his mind inside that of the man he was hunting. It made sense. Knowing he’d been made by Justice, Nelson would default from the straight, clear, obvious highway into the big town and either worm his way in via the jiggly little roads of the North Shore or go wide around the city on a western arc and come into it from another direction. He might even have gone north from the Lake Como Inn and would now be headed deep into Wisconsin or would have turned again and be coursing west to Minnesota.

Why would he shoot like an arrow into Chicago? It made no sense at all.

The traffic out Touhy was not heavy, as it was still mid-afternoon, and they hit Northwest Highway by 3:15 p.m. Turning right, they began the angle out toward Wisconsin, still sixty miles distant, which would take them through small towns just at the edge of bedroom-community distance from Chicago, like Park Ridge, Des Plaines, and Arlington Heights.