Стивен Хантер - G-Man

The rustle of dry grass, the hum of double-winged navy FF-1 vectoring low toward Curtiss, a reveler’s far-off honk from a Model A.

Les had talent, more than most. Charles had genius, more than all. His speed had no place in time and his imagination saw the weapon as merely another pistol, and so he didn’t bother with the guidance of the left hand on the front grip, much less sights or hold or breath, but merely by vice-like strength of those long fingers, that thick wrist, that articulated forearm, put the gun where whatever autistic worm that lived deep in the ancient part of his brain instructed, and his wasn’t the first shot, it was the first six shots, and when Les’s finger closed on the trigger, it could but jack three useless rounds off, one of which clipped off half an inch of Charles’s ear, a wound Charles did not even notice.

Meanwhile, Charles’s Thompson delivered its cargo in less than two-tenths of a second, six reports un-separated by pause or click, sending the 230-grain missives into the night in consecrations of radiance and spark and spinning flecks of flaming powder, which yielded to yet more pyrotechnics. The T for “Training” on the drum also meant T for “Tracer,” designed to demonstrate to rookie agents the power of the Thompson. It now demonstrated that power to Les. Six red-tipped Frankford Arsenal M1 .45 slugs streaked across time and space as if such trivial human conceits didn’t exist, each leaking a plumb-line contrail of sheer incandescence that bleached the black from the darkling plain as they reached and sank into and through the middle parts of Lester J. Gillis, then, still at killing velocity, vanished into the Illinois prairie at unpredictable angles.

Darkness returned to the planet a splinter of a second later, but the bullets had done their work, arriving in a three-inch cluster, blowing out viscera, vein, and artery, coil of intestines, bits of liver and spleen and spine, gobbets of muscle, ligament, and gristle, opening a hundred roaring Mississippis of blood that no force on earth could dam.

First shim of ice on the pond, the snap of dry leaves whirling in the air on a whisper of breeze.

Les stepped back, felt his weapon disappear from his grip, tried to compensate for his sudden blast of vertigo, lost his footing, and sat down hard in the grass. He touched the wound and was amazed at the blood flow, and how quickly wet his hand became.

He looked up to the lawman, who stood ready to fire again.

“You killed me,” he said in disbelief.

“I believe I have,” said Swagger.

THE OUACHITAS

ARKANSAS

The present

“Idon’t get it,” said Nick. “That’s not the Baby Face story. Or, rather, it’s the Baby Face story but with a new ending.”

Swagger didn’t say anything.

“Did he make this up to sell books, I wonder,” said Nick. “It’s more dramatic, it’s more movie-like, it’s better, certainly, as story.”

Swagger and Memphis looked at Rawley Grumley, who returned their stares evenly. No tremble in that boy.

“Grumley, the standard story about Nelson is that—”

“I know what it is,” said Rawley. “I read the history books.”

“So why would he make this up? Or is this the truth and the official story is the fable? ‘When the facts conflict with the legend, print the legend.’”

Nobody said a thing for a bit. Blue sky, the odd spectacle of three men sitting around a ruined picnic table, a fourth man, hands bound, sitting halfway in a hole, a coffin, a pile of gun-shaped objects shrouded in tightly wrapped canvas, and a Honda Recon sitting parked, all in the lee of the remains of a cottage.

“If it’s true, Charles should be a hero. Every schoolboy should want to be Charles.”

“How about you, sniper? You got anything to say. He’s your blood.”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me just check something,” said Nick. He took out his iPhone. “Let’s see if I can get anything out here or just— Well, well, hello, Internet. Okay, let’s check on the moon. Easily done now, not so easily done in 1973 or ’4 when Chase was writing at the age of eighty in his great-granddaughter’s basement in Sausalito. Come on, Google, where are you, you bastard?”

Google arrived, and Nick carefully ordered it to look for “Condition of Moon, Central Time Zone, November 27, 1934.”

One-point-eleven seconds passed, and Google loaded the iPhone’s small screen with possibilities, and Nick, like every other Google user since the beginning of Google, chose the first entry, to find that some insane person with way too much time on his hands had indeed put together a moon phase website indexed to all the years of the calendar.

“Well?” said Swagger.

“Okay. The moon was full. It didn’t reach apogee till eleven thirty-four, which means that at six, or whenever this action took place, it was indeed low. It would have been red, because its light was passing through more atmosphere.”

“All right,” said Swagger, “it seems real. But, like Nick, I don’t know why this isn’t the story we all know, why the papers weren’t all over it, why it’s hidden or something. I don’t get it.”

“Maybe the old man killer had something up his sleeve,” said Rawley.

WILLOW ROAD

NORTHFIELD, ILLINOIS

November 27, 1934

Charles stood above the man he’d shot, who sat clumsily in the grass, his shirt rapidly loading with dark blood, whose face still showed disbelief and stupor, his open, slack fingers useless.

“Now I’m going to give you something you didn’t give nobody. You sure didn’t give it to Sam or Ed. They checked out alone.”

The man looked at him. His brain still half worked, and Charles knew he was comprehending. He blinked, maybe tried to speak but only swallowed, then coughed some blood sputum.

“You get to die in the arms of your wife with your best friend standing by.”

He turned to Helen and J.P., who were out of the car now and bearing witness to Les’s death.

“Dump the guns and get him out of here. You can take him to the hospital, if you want, but it won’t do no good. I’ve seen that wound before. All those holes. It’s always fatal. He’s got an hour or so left before he pumps dry.”

“Thank you,” said Helen. “You are a decent man.”

She ran to Les.

“Oh, baby, baby,” she said, holding him, unfazed by the copious blood that soaked his midsection, “we’ll get you out of here, we’ll take care of you. It’ll be all right, you’ll be fine.”

He’ll be fine in hell, Charles thought.

He stood by as Helen and J.P. lifted the bleeding man and took him to the car, out of which J.P. had already pulled the Monitor, a batch of magazines and cartridge boxes.

“And one more thing. Helen, you come here now.”

Helen turned from her comforting and came to Charles. She was a pretty gal, no doubt about it. Why do they give themselves away on such trash? It was one of the great mysteries of life.

“You listen to me, now,” he said. “This didn’t happen. I never ran you off the road, there was no gunfight, it wasn’t my bullets that hit him. Sam Cowley put six slugs into him in Barrington and he bled to death on account of that. There was no Swagger, nothing in a field, in a hick town, a hundred miles from anywhere, no moon, no wind, no grass blowing. That’s the story you tell in exchange for giving him the sort of death he don’t otherwise deserve. If I hear different from either of you, I will come visit and you won’t like that a bit.”