Стивен Хантер - G-Man

But he knew it wouldn’t be so, just as he knew what hope Sam had given him was lost now, bleeding out in the grass of a town nobody ever heard of, as the only man who could have saved him lay dying. He knew he had been killed too.

He went back to the car, turned the ignition, and accelerated, finding no traffic at all, as the crime scene had dammed the road. He drove less than a mile until he saw a phone booth outside a bar, cognizant, as he drove, of sirens as finally the ambulances pulled by.

He got the number out of his wallet, dropped in his nickel, the operator told him how much more it was, he dropped in another three dimes, and waited as she put the call through.

“Sorrento Social,” someone answered.

“Put D’Abruzzio on,” he said.

“Hey, who do you think you are, bud? Mr. D’Abruzzio is in—”

“I don’t care where he is. He’ll talk to me now. My name is Swagger. He knows who I am. Go get him.”

It seemed to take forever, but finally Uncle Phil was there.

“How the hell did you get this number, Swagger? What is—”

“Shut up, meatball,” said Charles. “Five minutes ago, Nelson shot and probably killed two Division agents in a town called Barrington, on Northwest Highway. He’s probably hit. Where would the nearest safe house be from there? He has to lay up. Where would he go?”

“Okay, I’ll find out. But later, you and I are going to have a talk about this phone number and what games you’re playing.”

D’Abruzzio put the phone down, and more hours, possibly even a month or two, dragged by. Finally, he was back.

“Okay, they say he’ll turn east on Palatine Road, somewhere off of Northwest up around you, just south of Barrington. It goes by the big airfield, then jigs a little at a religious place called Techny, and then it turns into Willow Road, but basically it’s a straight shot into Winnetka, which is next to Wilmette. Jimmy Murray has a house on Walnut Street, just off the downtown section: 447 Walnut. That’s his best shot, his fastest shot. But he’ll be pokey. He can’t go over the speed limit or he’ll get cops on him. If he’s cool enough to mosey along, he’ll be okay. Can you catch him?”

“Bet on it,” said Charles.

It was time to hunt.

THE OUACHITAS

ARKANSAS

The present

“Wait a minute, sniper. Something you should know. Okay, sniper. Take it straight, deal with it.”

Bob fixed him with a hard sniper’s eye.

“What are you talking about?”

“This thing became just as big an obsession for me as for you,” said Rawley. “I called around, I talked to guys who told me stories told to them by their dads or granddads, who were cellmates of this fellow or that fellow, and I know what was said about it all. On our side of the street, that is — not the shit you call history.”

Bob waited.

“This story was big in the underworld in ’thirty-four, ’thirty-five, maybe even ’thirty-six. Somehow, it got forgotten as all the action moved to the East from the Midwest, where Dewey was going after the big New York people. Then the war came, and more stuff was lost, and so nobody remembered anything. But I found some memories.”

“Go ahead,” said Bob.

“You sure? You have an image of yourself and your kin, what kind of men you were, what you stood for. What’s it going to do to you to see that challenged, threatened. As I say, can you deal with it?”

“This is bullshit,” said Nick. “This creep is playing con games because he can’t do anything straight out. It’s not in the Grumley DNA.”

“The Grumley DNA is criminal, yes indeed,” said Rawley. “But inside of it, it’s about hillbilly honor and guts. It’s about standing straight and taking it, not ratting, not running, doing what’s right by a Grumley standard, even if death is the price. And maybe that describes Baby Face too, the big villain of the piece, but he gave it all up in payback for Johnny and Homer, and, in the fight of his life, walked straight into the guns.”

“That’s what Swagger is too,” said Nick. “With that minor detail, it does right by the standards of civilization, not by some backwoods clan of peckerwoods, chicken snatchers, cousin-fucking and sister-raping inbreds.”

“This fellow needs anger management,” said Rawley with a smirk. “His rapture over stereotype is quite disturbing. Antidepressants? Cymbalta? Zoloft? Anthrax? Okay, I am not shitting you, Swagger, it got around that somebody quit. One tin soldier ran away.”

“We ran into this one too. It’s crap.”

“We’ll see.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Bob.

“No, they say one of the Division studs called in, said, ‘Enough.’ He’d seen his buds shot to bits on the playground. He couldn’t take it no more. Too much blood, and he didn’t want to end up full of lead under the swings. He went away, just when they needed him most, back to Passel O’Toads, Arkansas. No names, but all fingers would point toward Charles, the man who shot Dillinger from behind and Pretty Boy from a hundred yards away.”

“Charles Swagger didn’t have no run in him,” said Bob.

“You don’t have no run in you. Maybe he did have run in him. Maybe not. I ain’t saying. I’ll let John Paul Chase tell the story. That is, if you’ve got guts enough.”

“He’s pure guts, goober,” said Nick.

Bob turned to page 152 of “THEY CALLED HIM BABY FACE!”

WILLOW ROAD

CHICAGO

November 27, 1934 (cont’d)

She had rolled his pant legs up, counted the holes — fifteen — and applied Mercurochrome to each one, painting orange over the red.

“How bad?”

“That stuff stings! But, generally, it’s better now.”

They had passed Curtiss Airport, taken a wide jog around some kind of religious place, and the road was now called Willow. It climbed a slope, crossed Waukegan Road, and they found farm-flatness on either side. Since it was chilly November, it was now dark, even at 6, and they rolled steadily on, through the sparse traffic of the sticks, with J.P. keeping a good lookout in the rearview as he held straight on.

“Anything?”

“Nah. Saw lights a few minutes ago, but they’ve gone now. He must have turned off. You okay?”

“He’s doing fine,” said Helen. “The bleeding’s stopped, no bones broken, and the bruising hasn’t started. Baby’s going to be fine.”

“Sure you don’t want a belt of hooch, Les?”

“Never touch the stuff.”

“Okay, we’re crossing Sunset Ridge Road, which means we’re coming into a nowheresville called Northfield, and just beyond it is Winnetka, and then a couple miles to Mr. Murray’s place in Wilmette. It won’t be long now.”

“Great,” said Les, snuggling his head against the warm and ample bosom of his wife, who held him close to her, her arms locked around his shoulders, her face next to his.

“I’m thinking clear now,” Les said. “I was sort of dingy in the head after I got shot up, but everything is clear now. We’ll go to Mr. Murray’s, someone’ll know a doc or a vet, they can dig these things out of my legs, and I’ll be good as new. Then we’ll visit our pal D’Abruzzio and be on our way.”

“You know what, Les,” said J.P. “I always thought it was a screwball plan, but you pulled it off. You made it happen. It turned on sheer guts, and you did it.”

“Yeah, me and an inch of steel.” Les laughed, and banged his fist against the sheet of metal under this shirt that shielded his vitals from the bullets of the law. “Bonk, bonk, bonk!” he said, “three times Mr. Federal nailed me in the boiler room with his machino and I didn’t feel nothing. Joke’s on him. He forgot to wear his. Bet he wears it everyplace in heaven!”