G-Man

7

He squared it with the judge, who agreed it should be kept quiet, as Charles’s absence might lure criminals. He told no one else except his deputies and his secretary where he was going and what he was doing, and them as little as possible. He packed his two suits and six white shirts and one black tie in his one suitcase, along with a pair of Sunday go-to-church brown oxford long wings, a pair of dungarees for rough work, and underwear and handkerchiefs. And his elaborately engraved .45 shoulder holster, though he left his own gun at home. He also took five hundred in cash, in small bills, from a squirrel fund he’d started on his own behalf, unknown to anybody.

His wife drove him to the station, not even in Little Rock but a full day’s drive away, across a flat and bleak landscape littered with broken-down trucks, past sad Hoovervilles rotting in the middle of nowhere, past fallow fields ruined by drought, and parched forests and dry riverbeds. The destination was Central Station in Memphis, where no one would see him by accident.

Bobby Lee had the backseat. He was handsome enough, a towhead, long and lithe at eight, who should have been the leader of the gang. But his hair was always a thorny mess, his mouth full of drool that spilled onto and encrusted his lips, and his tongue never seemed quite right, the way it probed and rolled like a mollusk of its own accord. He couldn’t sit still either, and was always twisted up as if his own limbs were rope, ensnaring him, and he squirmed and bumped against them.

“Da go bye,” he said.

“Yes, Bobby,” said Charles. “For a time, Da go bye. You be good and take care of Mommy.”

“Da go bye,” Bobby said again, for answering wasn’t his forte.

She finally said, “Where will you stay?”

“Well, guess I’ll rent a studio somewhere. One room, foldout bed. Can’t have roommates, my nightmares’d wake them up.”

“You should get help, Charles.”

“Some doctor asking me questions about my secrets? It’s just war things, no way to get rid of them. I’ll just sweat them out. Nobody needs to know my business.”

“You don’t share much with me. You’re so locked up.”

“You knew that. It ain’t like I pulled it on you.”

“I thought you’d soften. But that war just hardened you. You’ll never soften.”

“Da go bye,” said Bobby from the rear, and in the mirror Charles saw that his boy’s nose had leaked a gobbet of snot and, leaving a glistening trail, it had lodged in the corner of his mouth.

He caught Illinois Central 244 to Chicago. It was a rum-dum old thing, its black steam engine a manifesto of industrial purpose, in the colors of grime and grease, spewing cumulus roils of smoke as it went out into the world in general, and its own nine cars in particular, so that no window was clear, the smell of carbon lurked everywhere, and tears came to the eyes. The caravan behind it was all pre — Great War stock, with the smell of must and mold in the cars, to say nothing of sweat, vomit, and blood. A lot of living, and even some dying, had been done in those old cars. At least the government had sprung for a sleeping berth in the Pullman car and he didn’t have to ride sitting up with all the poor Negroes headed north in hope of better times. The meal in the dining car, served by waiters in jackets that may have once been white but were no more, was certainly edible, but well beneath the mythical standard of the fabulous Panama Ltd., one of the most luxurious trains in America, which had regularly run this up from New Orleans route until two years ago, but as the Depression wore on and times got harder, no matter what Mr. Roosevelt promised, the big money went away, and luxury services like gilded vacation trains with it.

The Bankers Building, 105 West Adams, upon whose nineteenth of forty-one floors nested the Chicago Office of the Justice Department, Division of Investigation, was a brawny structure; its gigantic profile would block the sun for miles if it weren’t for all the other equally brawny structures on the same mission. Charles had seen Chicago and was not impressed, as he had seen London and Paris and Miami and not been impressed either. The size and breadth of the Bankers Building meant nothing to him, nor did its immense stairway design, steps for a giant to reach heaven, all in brick, with friezes of Greek ideals of the foundation of civilization standing ceremonial guard over the glorious, shiny brass and mahogany of the Adams Street entrance.

To Charles, buildings hardly registered, nor did the thousands of Chicagoans who filled the street of the nation’s second-largest city. You couldn’t fathom a Depression here, as the suited-and-hatted citizens ran this way and that, dodging the heavy traffic, wincing at the smell of the thousands of cars, telling themselves to ignore the insane clamor of urban life at its full intensity, while, like circling Indians, the elevated trains roared around them in the circular conceit called the Loop. Charles wasted no time gawking, swallowing, and Wow! — ing. He was too old. He was too salty. He had killed too many men. Besides, there was something that had to be handled. Its name was Melvin Purvis.

“You’ll like Mel,” Cowley had said, after having lassoed Charles into the job. “He is a decent man, an intelligent man, a brave man, and an honorable man.”

“Yes sir. May I ask, what is his problem?”

“He is one of those men cursed by beauty.”

Charles had nodded. As an analyst of human strength and weakness, he knew that the handsome ones could be tricky. It’s something an infantry officer and a cop pick up on fast.

They get used to being the center of attention. They expect things to go their way. They don’t like to take orders, especially from the many less attractive than they are. They move at their own pace. Sometimes they seem not to hear what is said to them. They are very stubborn, not out of commitment to a certain line of logic but to the idea that their beauty confers on them certain divine rights. The moving pictures and the fancy magazines have only exacerbated these problems, for on-screen the handsomest man is always the best, the champion of the show, the lure of all the gals, the hero of all the guys, and your real-life pretty fellow too often comes to assume the same of himself, except he has yet to do a thing to earn that reputation. So problems — little, knotty difficulties, little spats, grudges, pissing contests, garbled communications, slights too slight to mention but annoying to suffer, a sense of self-importance — all make every transaction with the handsome man more bother than it should be.

Charles’s strategy in all things was aggression, which is why he wanted to get himself set up with this handsome man early on, and before even glancing across the crowded squad room that dominated the floor, he went straight to Purvis’s office, told the secretary who he was and hoped the office chief had a few minutes for him.

Or was he the office chief? That was the issue here. The Director sometimes liked things a little blurry so that the after-action reports could be adjusted most favorably, and who exactly was in charge of this group of Division investigators was unclear. Purvis got all the attention and, called the Clark Gable of the outfit, was the face the public knew, for better, for worse. He was learning that with fame went criticism, always. Sam basically ran the place as an investigative entity, and he was a wheeler-dealer, an organizer, an insanely hard worker, with his own line to the Director, and he talked with the august personality many times a day, while Purvis was more or less out of the inner circle.

“And you will do me a favor, if you can,” Sam had said. “To all outward purposes, please treat Mel as if he’s in charge of the office. The men will become restless if they know there’s confusion at the top. All details should reach me through Mel. I don’t want him feeling bypassed. Is that all right?”

“I think I can handle that,” said Charles. He knew from the army and county politics that organizations were seldom as straightforward in life as they were on paper. You had to play to the real, not the ideal.

“And then there’s Clegg,” Sam had said. He went on to explain that Clegg, another inspector who was supposedly the tactics genius, was technically in charge at Little Bohemia, and if the public didn’t know his name, the men of the Division did. Thus, he took most of the unofficial blame. But he was old Division, actually predated the Director’s appointment, and so no official approbation could be affixed to him. And he was the sort quite happy to pass the blame along and act as if nothing had happened. His career would not be affected. But he had been delicately “adjusted” out of the tactics-and-training job and now was almost purely an administrator.

That left the tactics part of the job open, and Charles had a pretty good idea who’d get it, first because he knew a thing or two about such matters, having led more than fifty raids in the Great War, and also because as an outsider without a constituency he could be easily sacrificed if things got balled up again. He sensed that going in, and had no problem with it, as he planned to let nothing get balled up.

Purvis turned out to be quite a nice fellow — if anything, even softer than Sam Cowley had seemed. As Sam had said, he was remarkably handsome, maybe thirty, with movie-star blond hair smoothed back, as was the Hollywood style, an aquiline profile, and white even teeth. He dressed impeccably, also like a movie star, his shirt starched, his tie, held rigid by collar bar, of the latest foulard plumage in deep red, his suit a three-piece example of top-of-the-line tailoring, glen plaid in the style made fashionable by the Duke of Windsor, everybody’s candidate for best-dressed man in the world, and he put out a handful of manicured fingers and said, “Call me Mel, Sheriff. Glad to have you aboard.”

As he stood and reached, Charles noted another unfortunate reality. Purvis was short. Handsome and short: tricky combination.

“Very pleased to be here, sir.”

“Please sit down. Light up, if you care to. I’m going to have a cigar myself, care for one?”

“No thank you, sir. I’m an old country boy, committed to rolling my own.”

Purvis took out, trimmed, and lit up a stogie as big as a torpedo, enjoying each step in the ritual to full sensual potential, and also using it to forestall his little lecture, as if even now he hadn’t planned on what to say. Charles noted the stall while he rolled a tailor-made to perfection — a small skill God gives those with gifted hands — and lit and enjoyed his own smoke break. He picked a fleck of loose tobacco off his lip, then turned to face his new semi-demi-quasi-partial-who-knew-what boss.

Purvis started with flattery, not realizing Charles was invulnerable to it, even if he appreciated the energy.

“You may be country, but you’re no hick, not if the records are any indication. All those raids in the war. Victory in seven gunfights, including the famous Blue Eye First National affair, you against three city boys, heavily armed, and you polished them off.”

“Luck had something to do with it.”

“Luck and marksmanship and guts, I’d say. Anyhow, right now my name is mud around here — around everywhere, as a matter of fact — because of that mess in Wisconsin. If I believed the rumors, I’d be packed and have my tickets back to South Carolina in my pocket. You know that?”

“I am aware, sir. Don’t know the details.”

“Here are the details. We screwed up. No one is interested in any excuses, they just want results. Clegg screwed up, I screwed up, our people with the guns screwed up. Too much shooting, none of it to any purpose. The wrong people hurt. An agent lost. My standing with the Director is mud too. So if you can nab me Dillinger, not only are you doing your country a great favor, you’re helping Melvin Purvis of Florence, South Carolina, quite a bit too.”

“Yes sir.”

“We want you running a marksmanship-and-tactics class, maybe at the Chicago police firing range, twice a week. That’ll be a tricky sell, but our boys need to learn to shoot. They’re good fellas, smart too, but they joined to be professors of crime, not Western gunfighters. We have to get them up to the level of the men they’ll be fighting, and the truth is, these gangsters seem to be good shots and very bold in action. They should never be taken lightly. They are a formidable opponent. It is said that the one called, however improbably, Baby Face is the best marksman in the country with a Thompson gun, and Homer Van Meter and Red Hamilton aren’t far behind.”

“I will happily run a shooting-and-tactics course. The best tactic is: shoot first.”

“Excellent. Unfortunately, we fired first in Wisconsin and hit three innocent boys and alerted the gangsters.”

“Bad intelligence.”

“I’ll say. Okay, a few rules. First off, no talking to the press boys.”

“Got that.”

“Second, no glory. The Division gets the glory, not the agents, and the Director is the Division. I made a mistake early on and let myself become known. I talk too much, I can’t seem to make myself shut up. That’s why I’m in hot water. But I don’t know how to get out of it, because all the newspaper boys expect me to make a statement, and if I don’t, they’ll think something’s wrong. So the more I do my job, the worse off I am. Don’t make that mistake, Sheriff.”

“I won’t, sir.”

“Coat and tie, trimmed hair, clean-shaved, every day. I don’t need to tell you that.”

“Not a problem.”

“All communications and co-operations with other agencies, federal or local, through this office or Mr. Cowley’s.”

“Yes sir.”

“No shared intelligence with other entities, federal or local, without permission from myself or Cowley.”

“Check.”

“The Director wants his fellows to be clean livers. That means if you’re a drinking man, keep it quiet. If you need to cohabit, keep it quiet. No muss, no fuss. Got a car?”

“After I’m settled, I may bring mine up here.”

“We’ll issue you one until then. Mileage is half a cent per. No per diem unless you’re sent somewhere temporarily or it’s overtime. Incidentally, no overtime per se, not even in the form of a thank-you, and there will be plenty of twenty-four-hour days. Also, I’ll get you a list of Chicago joints where we’d not like to see you, gin joints, clubs, brothels of course, other known gang spots.”

“Yes sir.”

“Certain practices you have to get used to. This is a Mob town. We’re not interested in them, that’s for Treasury. They got Capone, not us. The Director has made Dillinger and the other bank boys our main focus. So you may have to show a blind eye to certain activities you run into that put money in the banks of fellows with Italian names, like Nitti.”

“I can handle that.”

“If you develop snitches, you have to share the intelligence with myself or Special Agent Cowley. We can’t have, and the Director will not abide, lone wolves, glory hounds, solo artists.”

“I understand.”

“Finally, I’d be delighted to see your new training ideas on paper. Can you do that?”

“If you don’t mind a misspelling or two.”

“I can live with that. I’ll have Clegg show you around. He’s tricky, very sour on his situation, but I know you can handle him.”

“Yes sir.”

“You’ll draw a weapon from the arms room. Most of the boys carry a .38 Colt revolver. There are some .45 automatics we got from Postal. Plus, of course, ten Thompson guns, five of the big Browning rifles, and five more of the Remington Model 11 riot guns. As for the handgun, you get to choose.”

“I’m a .45 fellow. The army taught me how and now I’ve got the taste.”

“Suit yourself. And this.”

He opened his drawer and took out a badge, a chunk of oval bronze, well-worked, dull, and heavy.

“This makes it official. The younger boys like a swearing-in ceremony, but I’m guessing you’re a little grown up for that.”

“I don’t need no ceremony. Pinning it on is ceremony enough.”

Purvis pushed it over, Charles took it up.

“It is a war,” Purvis said. “Young, inexperienced troops against professionals of long standing and great tactics and courage. This is a great opportunity for you, but it’s also very dangerous. You’ll be point man on all engagements, you will get shot at a lot, you will have to shoot to kill, maybe a lot. Any day can be your last, and you won’t have Frank Hamer backing you up but Dink Stover instead, fresh out of Yale.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Mr. Purvis,” said Charles.

Clegg would be trouble. He wore dark attitude on his face and knew, unofficially at least, that Charles was his successor as tactics boss and he didn’t like it. He was heavyset, out-of-shape, shifty-eyed, well-dressed, and was called, as Charles would soon learn, Troutmouth by the boys, for his small but prehensile and overactive set of lips, always atwitch or aflutter or puckered up in sourness. His whole performance was smile-free, charmless, condescending, and self-important. Charles wouldn’t take this from any man, normally, but first day on the job had its own rules, so he wouldn’t be bracing Troutmouth for some time. But he looked forward to it.

“I doubt you’ve ever seen a squad room so big,” said Clegg, gesturing to the pen before him that filled almost half the nineteenth floor. Actually, Charles had, as Dallas, Atlanta, and Kansas City all had big, busy detective departments, and he’d been welcomed in them all.

Charles simply gazed at the large room, filled with grim government furniture, stacks of paper on desks, the typewriters that justified such a spread, telephone lines, wanted posters on the wall, the whole cop squalor and messiness that was universal from Scotland Yard to the NKVD to the Tokyo Municipal Police. In this room, men scurried, talked on the phone, worked paper, consulted and kibitzed. None of them had caught on yet to who Charles was, so nobody paid him any attention.

“Suit coats on, that’s how the Director likes it. Ties up, no rolled-up sleeves. No feet on desk. No loud talking or laughing. Business first, last, and always. Shined shoes, trimmed, clean fingernails. You have to present well around here as well as work hard, pay attention, don’t crack off to any superior, and return all your phone calls. Suits only. No sport coats.”

“I don’t own no sport coats,” said Charles.

“Wonderful,” said Clegg. “You’re already ahead of the game.” It was doubtful he meant it as a compliment, for it carried the heavy weight of irony with each word. Clegg, also Southern, had a “high” aspect to him; coming from a fine family, he was a little too good for a fellow such as Charles, who fractured grammar, had big, strong, splayed hands and a bony, raw vitality, which he would consider red-dirt hillbilly compared to his own manner and tastes. He deserved better, he seemed to be saying.

“Now, this way, let me show you the arms room.”

“Yes sir.”

He took Charles out of the big room and down an interior corridor lined with doors to smaller rooms, ticking off their purposes languidly.

“Teletype. Interrogation, interrogation, interrogation, with one-way mirror and observation room available, Mr. Cowley’s office—”

“He’s back here?”

“It’s his preference. No name on the door, no receptionist’s office, no secretary. He’s in there by himself, and he types his own memos. Most days, you won’t see him, as he’s going over reports, on the phone with Washington or other field offices, talking to various law enforcement entities, that sort of thing. He makes assignments, keeps track of case progress, looks to cut down on duplicated effort or step in if communication breaks down somewhere. But every morning there’s a fresh memo on the bulletin board, and if you’re mentioned in it, it’s a good sign.”

“He seemed like the no-bull sort, didn’t need much attention.”

“That would describe him perfectly. Even though he was a minister for two years, saving heathen souls in Hawaii, he’s a technical. Everything by the book, then recorded in the book, the book then sent to Washington for the Director’s pleasure. Here we are.”

Clegg led him into a large room, clearly a rough or wet room, meant for gunwork. A bench stood against the wall, with gunsmith’s tools, and jars of Hoppe’s No. 9 and Rem Oil, the pungent stench of the Hoppe’s clouding the air almost visibly.

“Is there an armorer?”

“We have a young agent named Ed Hollis who has recently inherited this room as one of his administrative duties. He’s more of a glorified clerk than an actual armorer, much less a gunsmith. He keeps track of ammo, records the guns coming in and going out, fills out a report if anything is damaged in a fight, ships guns to D.C. for lab work — really, it’s a hard, crummy, filthy job. But he earned it. He was at Little Bohemia and did not distinguish himself, so I thought it better to take him out of the lineup, so to speak, for a bit.”

It was your plan, thought Charles.

“He also runs the motor pool now, and maybe he’s tending to that. But on a day-by-day if you’ve got the possibility of a serious engagement and you need to check out a bigger weapon, you file with me and I’ll approve it and unlock the vault.” He gestured to the large steel door in the wall. “We store them in there. When you return, you bring your chit back to me for filing. That way, we always know what’s out, what’s not. The last thing we want to do is misplace a Thompson. The newspapers would fry us.”

Troutmouth added, “The reason the gun room is here is because that”—he pointed—“was already there.”

It was a grating, behind which, in squalid splendor, rough-walled, dirty, its paint peeling, lit by a single bulb, was a freight elevator. “We had it rewired so it only stops here on nineteen and in the lower-level garage, where our cars are. If we load for bear, that’s how we get to our vehicles. Don’t want to be storming through the lobby with machine guns and Browning rifles, looking like one of those army raiding parties.”

Charles nodded.

“Any questions?” asked Clegg.

“I’ll have much business for Hollis later today. Does he, by the way, know anything about guns?”

“I don’t know if he can take them apart or not, but I do know he has no idea when to shoot them.”

Charles realized that it was, therefore, Hollis who had fired first on the three civilians getting into their car after dinner at the Little Bohemia Lodge. What was he supposed to do? Let them escape? Why wasn’t there an alternative plan, or a fallback against just this situation? Why hadn’t it been anticipated, as, after all, the agents had had time to fly up to northern Wisconsin, rent cars, and move to the lodge two hours from the Eagle River Airport? So this wasn’t an operational mistake, it was a tactical one: poor planning by Clegg here, and it’s Hollis who gets hung out to dry. He’d seen it all over the army.

“Now, one last thing,” said Clegg. “This way, please, Sheriff.”

He took Charles back to the squad room, and when they entered — and this time, word having gotten around — all the typing stopped, as did the chatting, the writing, the paper-shuffling. Charles felt eyes upon him but did not acknowledge them.

Clegg led him to a big wall and upon it were the faces of the men they were hunting.

“You’d best get to know these faces like your own children’s,” said Clegg, annoying Charles because of course he already did.

Clegg rattled off the names. “Homer Van Meter, Harry Pierpont, Pretty Boy Floyd, the little pug is Les Gillis, known as Baby Face Nelson, a name he’s said to hate. And that one there, that’s the big dog, John Dillinger himself, Public Enemy Number One.”

Dillinger didn’t look like much more than a potato-faced fertilizer salesman in a small Indiana town, which is how he might have ended up had he not been sentenced to twenty-five years for a rather minor crime when he was nineteen. In prison, he learned a trade, and like any trained man, when he got out he looked for a way to make a living practicing that trade.

“He’s no genius, believe me, and possibly not even the leader of the gang. He doesn’t make plans or anything, he doesn’t scheme and plot, and there’s no record of him having a particular need to hurt or kill. He wasn’t a tough guy in the joint. In fact, they once found him snuggled in bed with another guy, so who knows what’s going on. This one is the psychopath.”

Clegg’s elegant, polished finger came to rest on the square face of a guy who could have been in the Our Gang comedies, for he resembled the little picture-show boy Mickey McGuire more than anybody else, with a square, uptilted nose that spread his nostrils, a tumble of lengthy, pomaded hair full of blond highlights, a pair of small but not menacing eyes, and a blur of matinee-idol, make-believe mustache.

“Don’t know what makes him tick,” said Clegg. “But he’s a monster, that’s for sure, and poor Carter Baum found out the hard way at Little Bohemia. Baby Face killed Carter in one second. If you see Baby Face any other way than over a gunsight, he’s probably going to kill you.”

8

Nobody was in a good mood, except for that idiot Homer. But Les was in the worst mood of all. Tommy Carroll’s death hit him the hardest. He’d driven into Little Bohemia with Tommy sitting next to him, Helen in the back, and as old friends and colleagues who’d been on the wrong end of enough cop gunfire to know and trust one another well, the trip had been fun. Helen liked Tommy too; he was a big, handsome lug from Montana whose jaw had been busted in his boxing days and never set right, so that at its new angle, it looked like a lantern, making him look stupid, but of course he was not stupid.

But the way Tommy Carroll had died had been stupid. Not on a job, not in a police ambush, not in a betrayal or a plot, but just by the dumb-bunny roll of the dice.

He makes it out of Little Bohemia, the federals blazing away with choppers and filling the air with a blizzard of hardball and not a one comes near Tommy. And he gets downed by two hick detectives in a town called Waterloo, Iowa. The coppers probably didn’t even know who he was.

“When your time is up, your time is up,” said Johnny. “That’s our business. That’s the risk.”

Johnny would know. “Johnny” to his pals, he was John Dillinger, the most famous bank robber in the world. He had a gift for publicity, a vivid personality, a terrible beauty, and a sublimely cool aspect that enchanted everyone, friend or foe. Plus, a genius for escape, over and above his criminal skills. Twice he’d wriggled out of tough joints, once with pals and once on his own genius with three cents’ worth of scrap wood and shoe polish. He was a great criminal.

“Some license plates in his backseat,” said Les. “Can you believe that? Some kid, some junior G-Man, notices ’em and that’s it, buster, you’ve been ventilated.” It seemed so unfair.

“Arf, arf,” said Homer. “Me sad puppy.”

Homer: his name was Homer Van Meter; he was as Indiana as Indianapolis, a string bean with a thick gush of hair and a long, bony Grant Wood face. He had a marksman’s gift for gunwork and a sense of humor that could be likened to the sound of sheet metal being ripped by insane dogs. In his life — he was twenty-five — he had told ten thousand jokes, of which at least nine, or possibly even ten, had been funny. He kept trying, however. He was a very good bank robber.

“He didn’t even have a gun,” said Charlie in his Oklahoma twang. “As he’s running away, the cops shoot him down. They don’t even know who he is. The great Tommy Carroll.”

Charlie — Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd — was out of the Cookson Hills and mean as a splinter in your ass. He was a good shot; too stupid to know the meaning of fear, either as a word or as a concept; big, strong, sullen, bitter. And that was sober. Drunk, look out. No one would ever accuse him of genius, and he couldn’t be trusted to plan his next bowel movement, but he was solid, steady, a good man with a gun, and so obsessed with bringing financial relief to his people back in the Oklahoma hills, just about unbudgeable in determination.

“He did good at Brainerd,” said Johnny. “And he was a good man to be on the run with. No complaints, no whining, no ‘Why me?’ bullshit. He was a pro. He was there when we put Red in the ground.” Red Hamilton was another recent departee, having caught a slug at a roadblock he and Johnny had busted through on the way out of Wisconsin. They’d all been there. There were obligations, even in this little tribe of outlaws. You didn’t forget somebody just because he caught a cold from a bullet. You put him away, right and proper, or if you couldn’t, you drank a beer to him and said words. “He was an ace.”

That was as good an epitaph as Tommy was likely to get, and of course Johnny, who always had a view toward the bigger picture, was the one to give it.

And Les himself: he hated the moniker Baby Face, hung on him accidentally and not remotely accurate — he was a lithe, quick, fully developed male of a reasonable height, by the standards of the time, and had no physical oddities that compelled the name. His psychology was hammered into place by a drunken father, who hammered other things as well, namely, Les’s mother and Les himself. At some point Lester Gillis, of the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, with a hideous Windy City accent that turned all his vowels into the shrieks of geese as they were fed into a meat grinder tail first, just decided to hammer back at the world for giving him a childhood comprised mainly of getting the shit beat out of him, which didn’t bother him, but seeing his mother get the shit beat out of her, which did bother him. Smart, feral, without moral compass beyond the immediate tribe, devoted to his hot little bundle of wife and his two kids, though somewhat undone by a hair-trigger temper and an inability to conceive of getting hurt that expressed itself in a recklessness that was also sheer bravery, he was another professional, with great ambition, skill, and dedication. He wanted to be a great bank robber.

The last man here was Les’s pal Jack Perkins, no genius and way overmatched by the all-star talents in the room, but at least he could be counted on to do what he was told, and he always had a smile on his face. The only thing demanded of him was that he learn his lines and not bump into the furniture.

The chamber itself was the back room of a tavern that was, guaranteed Homer, part of the big thing the Italians had going. That is, it was connected up and therefore part of a web of activities and plots, all against the law, all nefarious, and so it could be trusted to play host to, and give suffrage and rest to, various on-the-lammers, various would-be torpedoes, even the odd actual torpedo headed to Cleveland or Chicago. It was about twelve miles out of South Bend, and all were here at the insistence of Homer, who was no Jimmy Murray when it came to spotting, planning, and pulling off jobs.

Jimmy was a master; he’d run the biggest heist in history a few years ago in Illinois and that one had been a triumph, start to finish. Money, money, money for everybody and nobody dead. Now Homer was thinking he could come up in weight class, become a Jimmy Murray — class setup guy and thus grab a double share.

“Why did the duck cross the road?” he asked.

Nobody had an answer. Each had beer before him, except for Les, who never drank and kept a clear head. The air roiled with cigarette smoke, and from the bar in the front room the music of somebody’s Chicagoland band beat on, tinnily and slightly out of sync. “It Might as Well Be Spring.”

“To get to the quackers on the other side, quack, quack,” said Homer, blowing up in laughter. Johnny laughed, though it was phony, and Homer’s cheap dame Mickey Conforti laughed, showing her horse teeth, and always polite Jack laughed, but Charlie, sour as cow piss, said, “Get on with it, goddammit, this ain’t no radio hour.”

It was the only thing Charlie and Les would ever agree on.

“Hey, a joke a day keeps Mr. Frowny Face away,” said Homer. Homer, a good man with the Winchester .351 he carried around in a billiards case, and he’d somehow glommed onto this hideous, loud skank of woman who was known to pass out sexual favors to any and all when she got a little buzzed.

“All right,” said Homer. “Merchants National, South Bend, twelve miles north of here, sis-boom-bah, home of Notre Dame, and we are the Five Horsemen, not the Four, so we can’t miss. It’s a tidy little joint, the coppers are amateurs, but it’s got all that money these Indiana farmers rack in for growing peas in pods and corn in husks and chickens with goobery red beaks. Plus, every Saturday at eleven, two postal inspectors mosey down from the Post Office with a big bag or two of cash they’ve pulled in all week selling the folks stamps. That stamp money adds up!”

“What’s the take?” Charlie asked.

“Figure fifty, easy. More than Brainerd, more than Sioux City, a good haul with minimum risk, with the stamp money boosting it. Y’all are going to thank me when you’re in Miami, going to the track every day.”

“I ain’t no track tout,” snarled Charlie. “I got family to take care of. There’s a Depression on, and nobody in Oklahoma is working — that is, them parts of it that ain’t blowed away in the wind.”

“Yes sir,” said Homer, trying to oblige. “Well, we’ll get you paid up good. Now, I see this as an in-out car job, never no split-up, so we don’t need to set a meet-up, one car for all of us, the South Bend coppers ain’t set up with radio nets, to any degree. Mr. Charlie, you’ll be the ringmaster, run the show; you got the deep voice, and you’re as scary as you are pretty.”

“I ain’t pretty a bit,” said the sour Oklahoman. What a dick he could be!

“You guys are big enough to have nicknames. Les’s Baby Face, Johnny’s Johnny D, and you’re Pretty Boy. I’m just And Others. It ain’t fair.”

“When every cop in America knows it and your face, you won’t be so crazy about a nickname,” said Charlie.

“I got a name for you,” said Les. “You’re Mr. Talks Too Much, Don’t Say Nothing.”

“Les,” said Johnny, “calm down and stick to robbing banks. Comedy ain’t your talent.”

“The feds I ran off the road in Wisconsin while you guys was shivering and shitting in the forest thought I was pretty funny.”

“Anyhow, Mr. Jack,” said Homer, trying to get back on the program, “I know you’re new to this line of work, so you’re the early bird. You just set up and make sure no coppers are around and the postal clerks have brought the stamp money along, and if it’s clear, you give us the high sign, we park, we pile out and take it. Jack, you just hang outside as the sentry. Then we all pile in, and we’re gone in three minutes flat, while the cops are still sitting in the doughnut shop talking Notre Dame football.”

“It’s never that easy,” said Les. “Johnny, you know that. You got to have backup plans, meet-ups set, maps in and out, alternatives, the whole shebang. You can’t just waltz in, waltz out. Jimmy Murray always—”

“Is that your nose or are you eating a banana?” said Homer. “Jimmy ain’t here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh, I noticed when I felt the breeze blowing through your left ear and out your right,” said Les, riling up.

He riled up too easy, too fast, and he knew it. It was always a problem. He would just sail away on a sea of anger and nothing else mattered. Only Helen could calm him down.

“What did Helen say when she looked into a box of Cheerios? Oh, look, doughnut seeds.”

“You’re an idiot,” said Les. “Johnny, are you going to let this clown call the shots? His head is full of mothballs, and I’m afraid I’ll get the clap just looking at his broad. Hey, Mickey. Sooey!”

“Baby, he can’t talk to me that way.”

But he could. Though Les was average height, he was not weak, frightened, or unable to fight. If you messed with him — win, lose, or draw — you had an enemy for life.

“Hey, little man, you leave Mickey out of it, quack, quack. You got no cause to beat up on her.”

“The Twelfth Army’s got no cause to beat up on her. They all remember the night—”

“Okay, Les,” said Johnny, “you can lay off the girl. She ain’t a part of this.”

“Yeah, go home to your little woman, but be sure to bring a tomcat to sniff out the fishy stink,” added Homer.

The next thing he knew, hands were pulling him off Homer, whose face and eye were puffed up from Les’s blows, one hard, one glancing. Les himself had no memory of flying around the table and launching fists, then himself, at the hayseed, the two of them tumbling, chairs flying, beers spilling, the girl screaming, Charlie bitching, Jack pulling back, and somehow, some way, Johnny getting them apart.

“Save it for the Division,” Johnny said. “Goddammit, Les, calm down. He didn’t mean nothing, he just likes to tell a joke now and then.”

“Don’t you ever say nothing about my Helen again!” said Les. The screwball intensity of his expression would have melted a statue.

“Okay, okay,” said Homer, “I didn’t mean nothing by it. It was a joke, I’m funny — ha-ha — quack, quack — that’s me. Sorry for Tommy, sorry for Red, but now we need to get back to work, and I got us a good one. No need to get so steamed. Just because when you took her to the top of the Empire State Building and planes attacked, that ain’t my fault.”

“You knock it off too, Homer. Sometimes I don’t know which is worse, your dumb jokes or Les’s firecracker personality.”

But Les decided at this moment he would kill Homer. He would put a fat .45 into his gut and watch him bleed out in the gutter. He’d beg for Mama, he’d ask for a priest or a doctor, he’d tell Les he was sorry, he didn’t mean anything about Helen, but Les would just watch, studiously, as the life bubbled out of the man, forming a delta of red rivers on the pavement.

So when Johnny got them back to the table, yelled to Vince to bring more beer and a Coca-Cola for Les, and got the meeting back to a semblance of order, it wasn’t quite the victory he assumed it would be. It was because having sentenced Homer, Les felt an immediate calm come across him. Suddenly he felt all right. No fury, no seething in his gut, just the pleasing image of Homer afloat in a lake of blood on some raw and windy corner. That’s how it was with him; it blew in, it blew out.

“Okay,” said Homer, “I will do some more scouting. Maybe Les’s right, we need more dope before we jump. We’ll come back here and split the grab and go our separate ways until we need to fill our pockets again. But that’ll push it back a week, maybe two. I’m thinking June thirtieth. Meet-up here June twenty-eighth, the twenty-ninth I’ll take you through it, and on the thirtieth we go. Agreed?”

“I’d like this one to go real smooth,” said Johnny. “Those Division assholes think we’re on the run, all scattered and scared and hiding under the blankets, after Wisconsin. I’d like to pull off a nice, clean big job just to show them bastards.”

“See, I don’t want to show nobody nothing,” said Les. “I just want to kill some of the suckers, and that’s the way we teach them who we are.”

“Quack, quack,” said Homer.

Les drove to the Happy Hoosier Tourist Camp & Cabins site seventeen miles away, pulling in to the space in front of the little log home labeled No. 14, and saw his two kids playing in the front yard. That always filled him with a kind of bliss nothing else on earth did. Kids! They were his! He had made them, he and Helen, and they were going to be something much better than their old man!

“How’re my little cowpokes? Oh, Daddy loves his cowpokes so much!”

He grabbed Darlene and flung her skyward so that her legs flew parallel to the ground as he whirled her around. The child giggled with pleasure.

“Me, Daddy, me!” shouted Ronnie, the boy. “Oh, please, Daddy!”

He set Darlene down, where, giggling and dizzy, she sat with a bump in the grass, and picked up Ronnie to do the same. The boy squealed in mock fear as he was pulled in circles, also in defiance of gravity, by his dad.

“’Round and ’round we go,” shouted Les. “Where we end up, nobody knows.”

Finally, he slowed and then stopped, freeing Ronnie to fall dizzily, giggling.

He sat on the running board of his car, a stolen Hudson with plates from another stolen car.

“Whoa!” he said. “You guys wore me out! I’m too old for this sort of thing! Pick on somebody your own size!”

“Daddy, Daddy, can we go to a zoo tomorrow?”

“Hmm,” said Les, “maybe.” He thought Indianapolis might not be too far and there’d probably be a good zoo there. “If not tomorrow, the next day. Depending on where we go.”

“I want to see the lions,” said Darlene.

“Roarrrrrrrrr!” said Ronnie, snarling up his face and turning his little hands into claws.

“Roarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” said Les. “Yep, that’s what they do, all right. You don’t want to get too close, I’ll tell you that.”

Helen stepped out of the cabin. She was a pretty girl, in that down-home Chicago way, blue-eyed and trim, and, best of all, she was solid. She was all Les ever wanted. The other fellows with their whore girlfriends, it made Les sick. What did you get out of that except maybe a dose? With Helen, it was every time he wanted it, always good, and to have her there, to depend on, to take care of little things, to look after stuff — all that — it was so good. He never wanted anything more. Who could ask for something more, like gambling on horses — stupid — or going out to fancy places every night — stupid.

And, better yet, she was loyal. Picked up at Little Bohemia, she spent a week as a guest of the state of Wisconsin and didn’t say a thing, even if the Division boys put the pressure on her hard. She clammed up, and nothing they threatened her with got her to budge. She could be a stubborn little mule when she wanted to.

“Hi, sweetie, they run you ragged?” he asked.

“They can be a handful, but it’s not so bad I can’t handle it.”

“What’s for dinner tonight?”

“I got a nice slice of ham at the A&P and some potatoes and fresh green beans. Pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.”

Who could ask for more, especially with people starving or going on the dole all over the place.

“I can’t wait.” And it was true. He couldn’t. It sounded so good.

“How did it go?”

“Oh, you know. Johnny’s fine, he’s a good man, the others ain’t bad. That damned Homer, though, can’t abide him or his girlfriend. I don’t trust her any further than I could throw her. She’d talk her head off first chance she’d get.” In his mind, he ran a quick comparison between the slut Mickey Conforti and Helen’s decency, kindness, sweet temper, and loyalty. He’d really won that one!

“This one isn’t going to be rough, is it? You said it would be easy.”

“I said it should be easy. You can’t never predict these things. Look at how poor Tommy checked out. One minute as happy as a pig in clover, the next he’s riding the handcart to hell because of a coupla Iowa hicks. I won’t lie about that, sweetie, never have, never will. It can be a dangerous game. But nobody’s been born yet can get the drop on me. I should come out of it flush, and that’ll give us a stake for the next year, we can move somewhere nice and put the kids in a good school.”

“Oh, Les, that would be so swell.”

“Quack, quack,” said Les, because he was so happy.

9

There wasn’t much Charles left in blue eye. There wasn’t even much Earl left. In fact, there wasn’t much Blue Eye left in Blue Eye.

Bob ordered himself not to mark the changes out loud. It could turn the afternoon into an ordeal. Remember when Nickerson’s Five-and-Dime stood here, now it’s a Mexican laundromat. Oh, and over there, that was a Winn-Dixie, at least until Mr. Sam built out by the Interstate and closed it down. And Fred’s, where all the farmers had breakfast between 4 and 6 every morning, that’s long gone. Now there’s a Sonic. What the hell is a Sonic?

No, he wouldn’t be that guy. He just reacted numbly to the undeniable reality that what had once been a little town out of which a sheriff named Andy Griffith could have operated was now mostly shuttered and bleak, and all the action seemed to be in fast-food restaurants set up on the bypass. It wasn’t all that much different, he supposed, from Cascade, Idaho, a similar spot of highway blight he called home.

It wasn’t quite dead, though. Andy Vincent, Sam’s grandson, Jake’s nephew, ran the Allstate Insurance agency, and was doing well enough to afford a tribe of kids who called Swagger Mr. Bob, and still had reputation enough to open doors in the town. That’s because he was also the mayor.

For example, when they went to the Blue Eye Star-Clarion, though it was owned by an out-of-state newspaper chain, the receptionist went and got a managing editor who was most decent, and once they’d explained why they were there, had told them that the old papers — then it was just the Clarion, “Western Arkansas’s Democratic Voice for a New South”—no longer existed anywhere except on microfiche, but they could be accessed in the library, and he’d make a call over there to ensure Bob was well taken care of, not fobbed off on some seventeen-year-old intern.

“That’s very kind of you,” said Bob. “It’s much appreciated.”

“Is there a story in your returning?” the newspaperman asked. “It seems like you haven’t been around in a long time.” And, true enough, as it had been a while.

“No sir. It’s just family business, is all. My grandfather. Realized I didn’t know a thing about him and it was time to learn a little something.”

“Got it,” said the journalist. “A trip to your own past. It should be private, then, and it will be private.”

At the library, a nice young lady set Bob up on a microfiche reader, and it took him a bit of time to get used to the mirror-backwards manipulations necessary to bring the pages under the magnifier, but he got the hang of it quick enough.

“We went to this just before the whole cyberspace thing broke,” said Ms. Daniels, as plain as a pie but small-town friendly and helpful in every way, God bless her sweet soul, “and I guess we thought it would make us so modern. And we were obsolete two weeks after we got it set up.”

“Ms. Daniels, to me indoor plumbing seems like a miracle, so this is just fine by my standards. I hate the computers anyhow. I do know left from right, so I should be all right.”

Mayor Andy went to sell a policy or run a council meeting or something, leaving Bob alone in the pages of the Clarion, January through December 1934.

It was so very long ago. Everything was different, but everything was the same. The cars were beasts, but in their humps and gropes toward smooth, you could see lines that would eventually permutate into today’s Big Mac — mobiles. All were black too, or a shade of gunmetal gray, maybe navy, maybe green. Men wore coats and ties and hats in those days, everywhere, all the time, frequently with vests, always with cigarettes, pipes, or cigars. Pipes! Hadn’t seen a pipe in years. No sunglasses. Ties never loosened except at a ball game or when going bowling. The hats were fedoras mostly, and the fashion that year demanded a circular, downward slope to the brim, no snappy little uptick to the rear like a duck’s ass. Some wore theirs atilt, rakishly, but most just pulled it down to the eyebrows, to keep the sun or the snow out, and forgot all about it. No “sport clothes”; casual clothes were merely last year’s suit pants and beat-up, worn-down work shoes. The women all wore stockings, all wore girdles (he supposed) and almost always wore hats, usually little feathery constructions that curled around and were nested in their carefully tended hair. Veils were rolled about the hats, and the dresses were big-shouldered, also flowery in both material and corsage, waists trim but not cinched in to wasp dimensions. Nobody was trying to look sexy; they left that to movie stars. And they looked like they did their vacuuming in heels and pearls. Also: no feet. The foot was taboo. Toes even more so, none glimpsed in the pages of the Clarion, January 1, 1934, through December 31, same year. Farmers wore dungarees and had open shirt collars but the same fedoras. A few straw boaters revealed themselves in the newspaper pages, standing out like bright coins in the universe of gray-black dots that was printing in those days. Lots of shots of trains, the dominant mode of transportation, and many civic ceremonies seemed to take place at the station, in front of some gigantic locomotive leaking steam and grease from a dozen portals. No airplanes, except now and then a War Department — released shot of “Our New Pursuit Ship,” a biplane with a clear plastic hood over the cockpit and a long telescopic-tube gunsight along the fuselage just fore of the windscreen, where the pilot could convert to sniper and put the crosshairs on — who? Hun? Jap? Red? They had no idea of the hurricane of violence that lurked a few years ahead and would consume so many of these happy, content, tie- and girdle-wearing citizens.

A figure known as “The Sheriff” was occasionally seen, though he faded into the background of photographs and usually looked away from the camera at the moment of the snap. Who was this man? His star, always in focus; his face, never. Was he hiding something? There was something about him that seemed not to want to be pinned down, held to account.

He was everywhere, even as he was nowhere, a blur, a phantom, an image of rectitude on the move. Bob tried to get a fix on him, bringing the magnification of the machine up as high as it would go, but at a certain point the image separated into dots and only the dots were visible.

Who are you, Charles Swagger? What’s your action, your ken, your mission, your passion? For a hero, you’re quite vague, scattered, separated. You never sit still long enough for anyone to pin you down. What are you hiding?

It occurred to him to mark his grandfather’s appearances in the Clarion and so he started at the beginning and began the laborious process of examining every page for every day, every month, through the entire year.

“Hard at work?” said Andy Vincent, returning in late afternoon from his obligations.

“Trying to get a fix on what he was up to in that year,” said Bob.

“Learn anything?”

“Well… yes. He’s in the paper, photoed either at an emergency or a crime scene or at some stupid ceremony or other, about three times a week, from January through June. That’s what you’d expect from a small-town sheriff who’s part of the administration, is elected on the party ticket, is wired into the establishment, so to speak. But then, mysteriously, he sort of disappears halfway through June. No announcement, no discussion, no reference to illness or whatever, he’s just gone. Some deputy named Cyril Judd becomes the main man for law enforcement. ‘According to Deputy Cyril Judd’—you must have seen that in the paper a hundred times. But then, in December, he’s back again, same as always. ‘Sheriff Swagger said today that the county raised over $900 in speeding fines over the fiscal year,’ et cetera, et cetera. He just went there, he did what he did, he came back, and nobody speculated. If he was missed, it never reached the level of official scrutiny and went unnoticed in the Clarion. I’d guess Judge Tyne, who seemed to be the boss of the county in those days, had a hand in telling the paper what it could publish or not. It ain’t a cover-up so much as an agreement between consenting adults.”

“I wish I could tell them what to cover and what not to,” said Andy, with a kind of scoff in his voice.

“It sure was different in them days,” said Bob.

And finally, the grave.

“Did you want some privacy?” asked Andy.

A breeze rushed through the cemetery. It was for veterans, and you could work up a tear or two by looking to the long ranks of white stones rolling off toward the ridge, against the green of the grass and the here-and-there plumage of tree or bush. But Bob ordered his emotions to shut down because he was here on some sort of business that didn’t have a thing to do with young boys shot down before they even got fucked, for a cruel bitch that old and withered men had dressed up under the phony name Duty, to make them go without complaining. He’d been mourning them since he came out of his coma in the Subic Bay Naval Hospital.

“Nah,” he said. “I don’t have no feelings toward him, and won’t be feeling much. This is just an obligation of some kind.”

“Duty?” said Andy.

“Yep,” said Bob.

They walked the pathways through the garden of stone until at last they came to the site that had been registered to Charles Swagger.

“I guess as a town celeb, he got more than a stone.”

“Would that make him a success?”

“In the way they figured in those days, I suppose,” said Andy.

Still, it wasn’t much to show for a man’s life, a war hero and public servant, or so the official record insisted.

“Bob, Dad’s not far from here. I think I’ll go over there and pay a visit while I’m here.”

“Your dad deserves a visit,” remembered Swagger, and Andy trotted off.

That left Swagger alone with a chunk of marble inscribed with the six-pointed star of the official law enforcer, over the inscription

As to the last line, Bob thought, maybe so, maybe not. We’re sure going to try and find out.

But there was another revelation and it carried an echo. His grandfather had been an officer. In a short war he’d made major. Which was odd, not because it confirmed Charles’s combat effectiveness and leadership ability but because his own father, Earl, had been so committed to remaining an NCO, something that had seemed DNA-level deep in the Swagger men, as Bob, despite offers, and in some cases pleas, had also chosen to so remain, and Bob’s son, Ray, who hadn’t even been raised by Swaggers but by his original Philippine adoptive family, also went the sniper’s way, and also stayed an NCO despite blandishments, and Ray was really smart, smarter than most generals.

Bob tried to think this through. Why would such a thing be? One possibility had to do with the Swagger freakish shooting talent, way beyond the norm and way off the charts. Most Swagger men were shooters. That gift stood them well especially in war or gunfights in civilian society, but it meant that knowing that about themselves and taking pride in such a talent, they’d be drawn to ways to use it most productively. Thus, sniping, machine-gun-nest destroying, and highway patrolling, gangster hunting. So the Swagger preference would be to stay close to the gun, and a commissioned officer’s role would take him away from the gun and the man he was to a man who he would have to pretend to be.

But another reason might be that Earl was decreeing his distance from Charles. If his father had risen beyond his shooting talents into the officers’ ranks, he would not. He was declaring himself to be not the same man. I will not my father be, Earl was saying. And thus Bob’s dynamic, a generation later and haunted by the death of the man he still considered the greatest he ever knew, is: I will my father be.

Which brought Swagger back to Charles F. Swagger, moldering in the grave under an eroding chunk of marble, unvisited, unremembered, possibly unloved. But he died with the reputation for Duty, so he must have — sometime, somewhere, somehow — impressed someone.

His phone buzzed and — it was never a sure bet — he heard it. He looked, saw the caller was Nick Memphis from Virginia.

“Nick?”

“How are you today, Doctor?”

“My feet hit the ground before my nose, so that’s a good sign.”

“Very promising. Look, I’ve got some stuff here. I can’t mail it down, but the old records show some definite possibilities that your grandfather was in the Bureau. And then — er, how can I say this? — out of the Bureau. Rather suddenly, rather dramatically.”

“I’m betting he was a sonovabitch on wheels,” said Bob.

“On wheels?” said Nick. “He may have been the first one through the sonovabitch sound barrier!”

10

“Look, Hollis,” said Charles, “I know you’re in everybody’s doghouse because of Little Bohemia. But that was before my time, so it don’t cut no ice with me. You work hard, play square, give me two honest days’ labor for every one on the calendar, and you’ll do all right by me.”

“Yes sir,” said Hollis, who proved to be an earnest stalk of boy out of Iowa by way of law school.

“I won’t hold your education against you, fair enough? Too many well-educated fools ’round this place, not enough sheriffs or cops.”

“Yes sir.”

And Hollis did work hard, even if, by casual oral transmission, his account soon provided the field office’s staff with its nom de guerre for Charles, which was of course “The Sheriff.”

The younger men adored him. Rumors of his proficiency and victories filled the air. Someone dug out an account of his famous 1923 bank shoot-out in Blue Eye, someone used a connection to get his service record out of the War Department and learned from that that not only had he served eighteen months in our army, emerging as a highly decorated major, but before he’d spent two years in the Canadian army in the trenches, and, besides, a chestful of medals won a battlefield commission there too; suddenly he was the warrior king that all these young men knew they would never be. And the fact that he didn’t woo them made him all the more alluring; and that he didn’t recognize or pay heed to his reputation and never mentioned it himself, added to his mystique, as did his severe appearance, in his dark three-piece and low-brimmed brown fedora and the new .45 he carried in his shoulder rig, where all the others had chosen the lighter, less recoil-intense .38.

“If it don’t start with a 4, I ain’t interested,” he said — much quoted in office lore — when choosing a weapon, and picking the one he did after diddling with all of them, testing for trigger pull, tightness of slide to frame, and some indefinable something he called feel — how could manufactured items such as pistol frames have different feels? they wondered — all these un-self-conscious signifiers conferred upon him a status he had not sought and did not welcome.

First order of business: his long memo to Purvis, carbon to Cowley, on law enforcement firearm training, which argued persuasively, as opposed to successfully, for the elimination of the box concept of the shooting range in favor of a more fluid setup that would emphasize moving in and among targets, shooting on the move and from different angles and positions, snap-shooting against a clock to gauge time, caliber selection (the famous 4 again, as in .45 ACP or .44 Special or .45 Long Colt), reload and clearance drills (mandatory!), dry-fire, dry-fire, dry-fire, and basic first-echelon maintenance skills, not for gunsmithing but for field-expedient emergency clearances. He preached total flexibility, in other words, after the model of a real gunfight as fought by a real gunfighter. Then there was the issue of sighted fire, which he believed in, versus the Division mantra, “the crouch,” which mandated that the agents dip into a position where they were bent forward, the pistol itself thrust forward and down, then tipped up. The Division relied on muscle memory to get the gun on target, and Charles knew that some men have much better muscle memory than others — his own was superb — whereas all had eyes to align sights.

This document was greeted with enthusiasm by Purvis, praised, and a copy put on the bulletin board. It was bucked to Washington, where at least two, and possibly as many as three, people read it to conclusion, but one of them was not the Director and so as an enterprise it was doomed from the start.

Then he spent a long Saturday with Hollis in the arms room, examining each of the office’s weapons, looking for signs of wear, poor maintenance, bent or damaged sights, loose or stripped screws, burrs, over-lubrication or under-lubrication. He showed Hollis how to break each piece down, finding him an eager acolyte with some mechanical aptitude, and once he overcame his fear of the intricate, a skill equal to the cuckoo-clock guts of the Colt .38 revolver.

He worked the long guns too and discovered why young Hollis had been point man on the Little Bohemia debacle. It was that he had a natural feel for the Thompson and had clearly spent much time with it, knowing how to break it down already, how to sight it, what the proper firing position was, and was adroit at fast reloads, a crucial battle skill. Charles guessed that he shot it quite well. Thus, Clegg had placed him in the vanguard of the assault, even though he’d never been in a gunfight before, and thus it was him that had to make the half-second decision in the pitch dark whether to fire on three men getting into a car. His head charged with nonsense about the importance of the raid, the evil of the bandits, the one-in-a-million opportunity in front of the agents, what choice did he have but to fire? He’d fired, the whole thing had gone south, and, given the nature of large organizations, what rolls downhill rolled downhill on Hollis, while Purvis and Clegg stepped as far from the rolling as possible, not that they didn’t get splashed. But in all this, nobody seemed to notice only Hollis had hit his targets while everyone else had shot the holy bejesus out of the lodge and cabins and accomplished nothing but too many holes for tourists to gawk at for the next hundred years.

The issue of the shooting range came up sooner rather than later because Charles forced it. The only range in the city was in the basement of the new Chicago Police Headquarters, on South State at 11th, not a few blocks away, but access to it was a tricky political issue. Trainees for CPF had it every fifth week, full-time, as they ran through their cycles. At all other times it was supposedly open for voluntary fire by all local and federal law enforcement personnel, though few took advantage of the facility. However, that did not stop the officer in charge, a Sergeant O’Malley, from going all Lord of the Manor on it, and turning it into a sort of boys club for fellows out of County Cork, who hung around, kibitzed, and clucked and gossiped but didn’t do much else except use it as a treehouse.

“It’s the Chicago way,” said Purvis. “Those that have, keep. Those that don’t have, cooperate. Meaning: the Irish have, nobody else gets. O’Malley holds the cards, because he knows we’re the new boys, he hasn’t felt us out yet, he’s not sure if we’ll be around awhile or we’re just a flash in the pan. I could write letter after letter to Commissioner Allman, but they’d all get lost, and if I complained, my complaints would get lost. It’s a tough situation. And let me be frank, Sheriff: to prevail, I’d have to use a lot of juice, and I don’t have much juice since Little Bohemia. I’m sure Sam Cowley would tell you the same.”

“I ain’t one for going from boss to boss,” said Charles, earning a smile from Purvis. “Would you mind if I took a crack at this O’Malley on my own? Unofficial-like?”

“I don’t know what you have planned, Sheriff, and I’m not sure I want to. But go ahead. Just don’t get caught.”

So Charles looked into it, then ambled over one afternoon all by his lonesome with a couple boxes of government-issue hardball in his suit pockets. It was a pleasant summer day in Chicago, with a cooling wind blowing in off the lake, and the eight-block walk took him straight down State, past the big department stores, under the roar of the elevated trains that formed the south side of the Loop, past a couple of burly houses, and finally to the new building, which looked like a brick set on its end. It was thirteen stories of rectitude, with a couple stories of fraudulent frill plastered on the bottom two stories to disguise the grim utility of the place. He came into the lobby and took an elevator down one story.

Nothing new here. Just a shooting range behind a sign-in desk, the thumps and bangs of cops on remedial missions echoing beyond the soundproof walls. He showed his badge, was assigned a lane, stuffed his ears with cotton — a few others did so, but it was not required — and stepped into familiar damp cement darkness, the smell of burned powder, the litter of spent casings on the floor, and the long hallway of booths. He went to his assigned booth, fetched a target, and reeled it out to twenty-five yards, which was the range’s ultimate challenge. He set his pistol down, removed the three loaded magazines he carried on his belt, placed the two GI boxes on the shelf before him. It was one of those absurd silhouettes where the guy just stands there, all in black to show up better in the raw light of the range, in a kind of rigid please-kill-me posture. It had nothing to do with gunfights.

This was his first time with the new Colt Commercial he had signed out of the inventory. It felt like all the other Colts he’d fired, and it was nice and tight, with no wobble to the slide as they sometimes had, with a dull shine slightly incandescent in the bright light. He fired one-handed, off the ninety-degree orientation to the target that was the consensus style of police gunwork, because he didn’t want to showboat.

In short order he had blown the black centers out of the silhouettes. The pistol shot well enough, though when he had time, he’d like to take a file to it, knowing all manner of little tricks that could be applied to Mr. Browning’s geometry within the frame to make a good pistol into a superb one. He left twenty-nine rounds in the second box and carefully threaded seven apiece into his three carry mags and the mag that went in the pistol. That one he placed in the pistol, jacked a round into the chamber, applied the safety, removed the magazine and replaced the round with the one left over, and slammed it into the gun, for an eight-round combat load on the first draw-and-shoot. He slid the cocked and locked pistol back in its elaborately carved holster tight under his left arm, turned and discovered that his shooting had drawn an audience. At least ten cops stood well back, clearly astonished at the marksmanship, the likes of which had been rarely seen down here.

“Gents,” he said, nodding as he eased through the crowd, and they parted easily to let him through.

Outside, the patrolman clerk told him the sarge would like to see him and gestured him toward a nubby little office off to one side.

“Pretty good shooting, I hear,” said O’Malley, whose face appeared evolved from a large shoulder of beef, and his body from other large aspects of the bovine species. His blue tunic was tight and all the brass gizmos well shined. Hair parted in the middle and well brilliantined, he was a dapper addition to the world, looking every square inch — and there were many of them — the proper Irish cop. “Word’s got around, we have a real serious marksman on the range. You’ll always be welcome here, federal man.” He gestured for Charles to sit.

“Thanks, Sergeant. I have fired a pistol a time or two in my time.”

“I hear some man killing was involved.”

“The war of course. Seemed such a waste of life, even German, but you have to hit them before they hit you. Then, on duty, had to face some armed boys, and my skill at marksmanship got me through the day. The truth is — and I’d only admit this to a man in blue — I sort of like it.”

“We all do, Sheriff. Though I’d admit that only to a man with a badge himself. Anyhow, I wanted to say hello, welcome to the gunman, and make it clear you’re always welcome here. Maybe my own fellas can pick something up from him?”

“I’d be happy if that happened,” said Charles. “But now that we’re here alone, Sergeant O’Malley, I’d like to be square with you on another issue. Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” said O’Malley.

“I’m hoping to bring my boys over in a nice orderly fashion,” said Charles, “and see if I can’t lick some sense into them so the kind of nonsense that took place at Little Bohemia won’t never happen again. I want the best gunfighters in the city.”

“Ah, now,” said O’Malley, “isn’t that commendable? Pass on the knowledge, get all those lawyers and accountants up to snuff on the shoot-to-kill issues their fine and proper educations may have not offered them.”

“That’s it,” said Charles.

“Oh. But, see, there’d be a problem. We don’t like to commit the range to no outsiders on a regular basis. If Commissioner Allman is showing his various official visitors the department, he likes to let me know in advance and I scare up some boys in blue so that when the commissioner comes down, all the lanes are full and everybody’s banging away. We even dig out some Tommies, so it looks like our own are always on it, the very model of modern police training. It makes the commissioner happy. And if the commissioner’s happy, I’m happy.”

“So I can’t get no two afternoons a week out of it? Only individuals can come over here and shoot?”

“The sheriff can shoot anytime he wants, as his reputation as righteous officer of the law is well known and to be respected. The others, I’m afraid it ain’t possible. They can come, and if we have the room, it’s onto the range they go. But that’s all. That’s just the way it is around here, Sheriff, sorry to say.”

“I suppose I could make a donation to some Hibernian Lodge of your specification and that might ease the crowding issue?”

“Why, ain’t that a nice thing to say! I do like a man with a charitable inclination. It certainly might help your cause. You do catch on fast.”

“Don’t let the drawl fool you. I might actually know a thing or two.”

“I like a man who understands without being told.”

“The problem is, we are low-budget and don’t have the petty cash to put into the party fund of St. Mary’s FOP District 1.”

“Well, Sheriff, see the thing is, much as I am liking and respecting you, I’d have to advise you that’s your problem, it ain’t mine.”

“Would you consider this one of your problems: a certain Italian gentleman named Lucente Barrio, also known as Lucky Bananas, was seen visiting the offices of FOP District 1 last Tuesday, where it’s rumored he makes a weekly contribution. However, since FOP District 1 is a public entity, under federal license as a charity, its financial records are on file. I done looked at ’em. Your outfit claims donations of under fifteen thousand dollars a year. Now, if Treasury were to pick up Lucky Bananas and he were offered ten years in prison against testifying how much he actually contributed, and if that money went unreported — not taxed, mind you, as a charity is not required to pay taxes on contributions, but it sure as hell has to report ’em — Treasury could close FOP District 1 down in a week. Under federal, not Illinois, statute. Treasury is hot these days because of putting Big Al away. That would be a problem for you, wouldn’t it, Sergeant O’Malley? And that house you’re building in Petoskey, where the fishing is fine and the water clear, maybe there wouldn’t be enough left in the kitty to pay off that mortgage.”

“You bastard,” said O’Malley.

“Ain’t no bastard at all,” said Charles. “Just introducing my friends in the Chicago PD to the Arkansas way.”

11

“Ever hear of the memory hole?” Nick asked.

“Uh, from somewhere, yeah.”

“It’s from 1984 by George Orwell. The hero’s job is to rewrite the past. It’s a dictatorship, and the state motto is ‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.’ So this guy goes back into the London Times files and erases people who are now considered traitors. He rewrites the news articles without them, then drops the original in a ‘memory hole,’ where it’s incinerated. See, the memory hole is really the anti-memory hole.”

“Okay, I’m getting it.”

They were sitting in Nick’s den, near his glory wall displaying artifacts of what had been a stellar FBI career, his collection of John Wayne DVDs, his CDs of Shostakovich symphonies, and his library of American history books. The house was a big Colonial on a tree-shaded cul-de-sac in this D.C. bedroom community, his wife was off somewhere prosecuting someone, it was afternoon, and the two friends felt such comfort in each other’s presence, it was like old whiskey, which in fact Nick was drinking, if Bob was not.

“Look here,” said Nick, gesturing to his worktable.

Stacks and stacks of Xeroxes lay across it in piles, each with a yellow Post-it marking contents — John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Homer Van Meter, and on and on.

“Now,” said Nick, “I have gone through them very carefully. No mention of your grandfather. No Charles Swagger. He didn’t exist. He’s the man who never was, officially.”

“I’m with you,” said Bob. “But still—”

“Yes, there is a ‘But still,’ a giant ‘But still.’”

Bob took a sip on his warm Diet Coke; the ice had melted, degrading the taste significantly. It was like caramel cut by deer urine.

“Boy, I wish I could join you,” Nick said, hoisting a glass of Buffalo Trace on the rocks. “But, you know, doctor’s orders. What can I do?” He took a sip, enjoyed the smoothness all the way down.

“Damn, that stuff smells good,” said Bob.

“Brother, you should see how it tastes! Anyhow, back to the memory hole concept. Your grandfather, certain evidence suggests, was dumped into the memory hole and disappeared.”

“You have my attention,” said Bob.

Nick picked up his first exhibit, a page out of the Dillinger file. Bob could see that a few words had been magic-markered in translucent yellow. He looked hard at one, seeing a common word.

“Most of the typing in the Chicago Field Office was done by a very capable woman named Elaine Donovan, Purvis’s secretary,” Nick said. “She was an excellent, strong typist, no doubt about it, and a very hard worker, absolutely first-class. You see her initials EPD all over the place, on the other side of slash marks identifying the author, MP or HC or SC—Purvis, Clegg, or Cowley — the three kings of Orient. But about every fourth page in several of the files was typed by someone else. Same typewriter, same office, different typist. If you look carefully, you see that Mrs. Donovan’s left hand was very strong, and she really hit the Q, W, E keys hard. But whoever typed the odd pages wasn’t a lefty, and his Q, W, and E strikes are much weaker. Don’t get me wrong, he’s good, he doesn’t make mistakes, he’s a virtuoso on the board, but he lacks a certain strength in one of the strands of muscle in his left hand.”

Bob looked at the yellowed word and saw that it was so, the E’s especially, since there were so many of them, giving the game away. These E’s were at least a magnitude fainter, sometimes not being struck hard enough for the entire letter to print.

“And these were inserted in—”

“Yes, yes,” said Nick, “we’re not talking about extra pages added at the start or finish but contiguous pages — that is, in the body of the work, that read naturally from the page before to the page after. What I’m saying is, someone retyped those pages alone, threw out the originals, and slid the new ones in. What do the new pages have in common? Good question. Too bad you didn’t ask it.”

“What do the new pages have in common?” asked Bob.

“They’re all pages where an agent named Stephen T. Wharlis is cited.”

Bob looked at the document again, this time noting that this agent’s name was highlighted in red.

“All right,” said Bob, “never heard of him, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Nobody has ever heard of him. That does mean something. He’s in no memoirs, he’s not listed by the Bureau, or by the retired agents’ association, or in the index of any of the histories of the 1934 campaign against the gangsters.”

“He’s a fraud?”

“Not just a fraud, a very specific fraud, a designer fraud. The name Stephen T. Wharlis has seven letters, a one-point-five-space middle initial, and seven more letters to the surname. The Christian and surnames have the same typeface space value as Charles F. Swagger, meaning that if the documents were retyped, the spacing would remain the same and not be thrown off. You could just retype the pages with Wharlis’s name and not have to retype the whole file.”

Bob let it sink in. Someone, not Elaine Donovan, had gone to a great deal of trouble to replace the pages with Charles’s name in them with pages where a fictitious agent was named. That is, if Charles’s name were in fact on the original pages.

“Why on earth would someone do that?”

“It means also the pay records were removed, the evaluation reports, all paper traces of Charles’s term with the Division. Or I should say it could mean that, as it’s not ipso facto evidentiary. But it could also hardly mean anything else. The chances of someone coming up with a name exactly the numeric space value by Underwood Office Typemaster Model 11-7B are highly unlikely.”

“I get the picture. He got very powerful people mad at him.”

“Madder than hell,” said Nick. “And he ended up in the memory hole.”

12

Jack looked nervous. He lounged near the Merchants National’s prosaic entrance — it was no Deco/Egyptian temple to money but instead a mid-block storefront on Michigan Street under a jutting clock, between a jewelry store and a pawnshop. He smoked a cigar, his lips drawn, his face pale. He wore no overcoat because he carried no long gun.

But he gave them the nod, signifying that on schedule a postal inspector had arrived with all the loot from the Post Office. Though, indicating by finger, only one, not two.

“Okay,” said Johnny. “Money come in.”

“That boy’s going to shit up his pants like a drunk hobo locked in a boxcar,” said Homer, trying as always for the chuckle. None of the others in the boxy Hudson said a thing as Homer cruised along the street. They were nervous too, as no matter how professional you got, how much experience came into play, when the guns came out, when force was applied, when lead flew, it was a dangerous time.

Instead, harsh breathing, a kind of obsessive fondling and checking of the guns, a kind of willed relaxation meant to calm the heebie-jeebies that flew through the car like insects, threatening to land anywhere at any time. Only Johnny was completely relaxed.

“He’s fine, he’s fine,” he said after a bit. Then he added, “No parking yet. Go around the block again, will you, Homer?”

“Cock-a-doodle-I-will-do,” said Homer, driving, his eyes darting this way and that for signs of cop.

Meanwhile, Les, Thompson drum-charged with forty-nine .45s under his three-sizes-too-big suit coat (it hung down past his fingers, making him look childish, and the hat, too large, pulled too low, didn’t help: Mickey McGuire with machine gun), was thinking about killing Homer as a way of keeping his mind off the thirty pounds of steel bulletproof vest he wore under his shirt and the little ants of sweat tracking down his body.

“We’re in the money,” sang Homer.

“Clamp it, vaudeville,” said Charlie Floyd. “Save them jokes for the showers when the niggers get you.”

It was like a family. Nobody liked anybody except all liked Johnny. He was the big brother.

Silently, Homer navigated the big Hudson, turning off Michigan to Wayne, then turning off Wayne to Main, Homer driving carefully because things could go wrong off a little bumper scrape or a cop seeing a stop sign or a yellow-light run. This block of small Indiana city on a sunny Saturday morning rotated past the right-side windows as Homer circled, yielding visions of American life that had no meaning to the car’s occupants for they had conspicuously chosen to live outside its neatness, its primness, its orderliness, its optimism, its regularity and consensus. What drove them collectively was not merely greed to have what wasn’t theirs but the need to be the outlaw, that figure who played by no rules, who was big by his own definition, who dared to flamboyantly grab, and though knowing doom was sure, would revel in reputation and respect until the last cop bullet found its mark and dumped each into the gutter to bleed out, waiting for an ambulance that nobody remembered to call.

The car turned right again on Jefferson, then eased around the last corner and back onto Michigan Street, and since nobody had bothered to pull out, Homer came to a halt in the traffic lane and double-parked. And why not? It was going to be a quick in-out against rubes and hicks.

“Gee,” said Homer, “we might get a parking ticket.”

He left the car running, set the parking brake, and pressed his .351 Winchester tight against the denim leg of his sloppy overalls, as he had dressed country so they didn’t look like a team.

A last check with Jack, who fed them another nod, this to indicate no cops inside, none on the street, nobody suspicious hanging around.

It was time to go to work.

“We’re in the money,” said Homer, tracing the idiot rhythm of the picture-show song, “we’re in the money.”

As designated barker, it was Charlie’s call. He hit the double doors hard, stepped up into a not-as-fancy-as-some-banks-he’d-seen interior, and let Johnny slide to the gate that led to the tellers’ cages from behind, and then pulled his big, brutish Thompson out, waved it dramatically like in a picture show, and shouted, “Everybody on the floor!”

Nobody went to the floor. Nobody even noticed. The place was crowded with customers, all, it seemed, with urgent financial issues and all, therefore, bent over their little account books with rapt concentration, or standing next to the ornate high tables and diddling with checkbook mechanics, because of course none trusted the banks, these being Midwesterners, and so they would calculate their interest to the penny, in fountain pen.

Charlie had a moment not of panic but utter frustration. What was wrong with these idiots? He shot a look to Johnny, whose hand had slipped inside his jacket to rip out his .45. As bagman, he couldn’t have a long gun.

Johnny shot him a what-the-hell look and a nod, and Charlie raised the muzzle of the unnoticed Thompson to the ceiling, thumbing the safety lever down, making it hot, continued to raise it, and when it was adequately skyward, he pressed the trigger.

Les never entered. His job was to slide down the block and station himself at the corner of Michigan and Wayne, since any big cop action would come hauling ass down Main and it was his job to persuade them to seek other objectives with a few T-gun bursts that would send them crashing onto curbs or into parked cars. He sort of hoped it would happen. There was nothing he loved more than the hydraulic surge of the gun’s recoil, the spew of spent shells, spurting gases, a radiance like a sustained photo flash from his muzzle, and above that wonderful drama, a vision of the world gone to chaos and anarchy, as his bursts ripped anything they touched.

Then he heard the burst from inside the bank.

Oh, boy, he thought, this is going to be fun.

Then he heard a shot from the bank entrance, where Homer patrolled with his long rifle.

Homer saw the cop before the cop saw him. Homer had no joke for the cop, since all humorous impulses had left him and now he was down to business, to his own personality, which consisted of little other than the willingness to use force and the hunger to succeed as a bank robber. The money wasn’t even the important part. His bad jokes hid an ambition to be good at his job. It got him nice clothes, late-model cars, and hot women like Mickey Conforti who knew stuff he didn’t even realize existed.

But even though images of Mickey’s creamy thighs were never far from his mind, when he heard the Thompson burst from inside, knew it was loud enough to rattle teacups and window frames and policemen, he knew instantly that everything had changed, that what was to be a quick in-out would now be a crazed gun battle, and if you didn’t push the attack, you ended up caught in an alley.

At the same time, he immediately found the cop, who had been directing traffic in an intersection, approaching with caution, a kind of low infantryman’s jog, unsure, wary, but his revolver in his hand. Homer didn’t wait a second. The .351 went smoothly to shoulder exactly as the finger found the trigger and the muscles locked the gun tight against the body and the dominant eye found the bead sight, brought it into focus, while behind it the blue tunic of the officer seventy-five yards out was fuzzy. His finger, educated in trigger craft, pressed nicely and the rifle fired, much of its recoil absorbed by the mechanics of the automatic function, ejecting an empty, admitting a new round to chamber, locking it in, resetting the trigger. The cop seemed to elongate under the impact of the center-chest hit, then lost all energy, tried to keep upright with compensatory leg action but instead twisted, turned, and went hard to street, where he lay, flattened and splayed. But then there was nothing else to shoot at, as it seemed the crowds on the street had panicked and people were racing crazily to get out of the fire zone. Homer hunted for targets in blue.

With the shot, Les abandoned all pretext of being man hiding machine gun and became man holding machine gun. It came out from under, and he felt a surge of love for the big thing, true beauty in his eyes, feeling his fingers clutch hard into the front grip, clutch hard into the pistol grip (no need for safety switch off, because he didn’t believe in safeties and went everywhere with his guns hot), buttstock wedged between his arm and pressing ribs.

The image alone — gangster man, heavily armed, pivoting and swinging the muzzle of the Thompson, face grim and merciless, jaw clenched, fedora low, from half a hundred picture shows — drove the masses at his end of the street into panic, and he watched — it was almost funny, people dropping their bags, moms snatching up babies, dads putting themselves between the gunman and their kids — as all seemed to go into spasms and lurches, all thoughts of dignity gone, running wildly, some tripping, sprawling, picking themselves up. They looked like clowns! This was fun!

Then he got shot.

Plaster fell from the ceiling where Charlie’s shots had torn it up. As expected, all customers went into paralysis, then, on Charlie’s second order, fell to the ground in sloppy, demeaning fear. Johnny busted through the gate, holding his .45 and yelling, “Tellers, hands up, don’t be no hero, the bank don’t care.”

Fast and professionally, Johnny scooted down the aisle, pulling out a clutch of flour bags tucked into his pants under his coat and flipping one to each teller.

“You throw the big bills in, take as many of the small ones as you can get into your pockets, cinch up the bag, and hold it out for me. That means you too, sister,” putting the .45 close to the head of an older woman, who had momentarily frozen.

She swallowed and unfroze.

“Attagirl,” he said, “knew you wouldn’t let me down.” He threw her a wink.

He moved down the aisle until he’d passed out six bags, moved back, picked each one up, felt each heavy with wads of cash. But that wasn’t the big money. With the six bags looped over his left arm, he kicked in the door to the administrative office, where men in suits stood, gray-faced, in a nest of desks and adding machines.

“I am John Dillinger,” he said, “and you know why I am here. Where’s the postal money? You, pops, you look important, where is it?”

He had chosen wisely. The old man had no need to defy him, no urge for heroics, no desire for trouble or pain, and weakly gestured to the two canvas sacks, secured by padlocks, on the desk, U.S. MAIL, in official typeface, emblazoned hugely on the outside.

“That’s what we came for, pops, you’re a peach!” Johnny said, and as a strong fellow had no trouble scooping up the two bags in his left hand while keeping the .45 in motion, sweeping the rigid managers and vice presidents.

“Nice doing business with you folks,” he said, smiling in his charming way, then turning to join Charlie, and as they turned to leave, at that moment it seemed that the Great War had come back to the earth again and landed square on Michigan Street, U.S.A.

It occurred to Les he wasn’t going to die, though it felt like someone had kicked him in the center of the chest. He fogged a second, then remembered: bulletproof vest! What a smart move that had been. But in the next instant rage flashed hot and white and spastically, and he turned, seeing no shooter, and decided, what the hell, this’ll get their heads down.

He squeezed off a long burst in the general direction of everywhere, and his bullets danced everywhere, and everywhere they shattered storefront windows in cascades of sleet, pulled hurricanes of debris up from the street, or whanged hard with thrumming vibration as they drilled half-inch blisters into fenders and hoods of abandoned cars.

That was so much fun.

And then — what is it with these people, first he gets shot, then this! — some monkey lit on his back and began smacking at his arms, as if he was trying to get him to drop the gun.

You sonovabitch, thought Les, and he drove himself hard backwards against the wall, felt the man on his back flatten with the impact, wriggled an arm free from the pinioning arms engulfing him, and managed to drive three or four hard elbows into the monkey’s rib cage. Then he rammed the cargo against the wall again, heard the creature grunt in pain, all the while Les twisting energetically to break the grip.

It had all gone away. No bank robbery, no Tommy gun, no goddamned South Bend, just this sonovabitch riding him, holding on hard for life, as if Les were some kind of bucking animal, and at last Les felt his grip loosen, so again he smashed backwards and this time, groaning in pain, the hero slipped off.

Les spun to confront him, discovering a teenager under a mop of disheveled hair, stepped back as the boy raised his hands in fear, as if to ward off what fate had in store for him, so Les drove gun butt into face, feeling a wet, satisfying thud on impact, driving the kid back into plate glass, which surrendered, and the boy went down in a waterfall of sparkles and lay, covered by diamonds and shards and splinters, in a jewelry-store window frame.

“Asshole,” cried Les at the boy, then killed him, raking the fallen boy with a splatter of .45s that brutalized yet more vapor and debris into the air. He turned back, and still aflame with rage at the world for denying him the dignity and grace he required of it, unleashed another long burst in the general direction of everywhere, and with his superb marksmanship, hit that target squarely.

His moment of kingly conquest, however, vanished when, too damned close, a car window atomized as someone had rushed a twelve-gauge blast at him, missing and blowing out the window instead, and he turned to answer, seeing no shooter, so he just finished the drum into the city. It took a few seconds to unsnap it, pull it out, then toss it, grab the second one, which had been wedged through all this in his pants at the small of his back and had not come loose, and rolled away and slid the heavy thing into place — you had to thread the metal lip into slots milled into the receiver on each side for tight locking. Then he rammed back the bolt atop the beauty and, presto, he was back in the fight.

“Oops, folks, ain’t done with you yet!” yelled Johnny, gesturing with his .45 at the bank officers in the office. “Get your asses out here and earn your cut.”

The three men exchanged worried glances, but Johnny’s big Colt was the more convincing argument, and so they obeyed, even as outside someone was refighting the Somme.

“Make a little circle around us, fellows,” said Johnny. “And relax, your friends ain’t gonna shoot you. Who’d foreclose on ’em then?”

The three took positions around Johnny and Charlie, and together the five began an awkward shuffle-dance to the door and out, where the police — many had arrived to take up positions behind abandoned cars — instantly opened fire.

Homer hunted for targets, taking a shot at a cop with a shotgun who’d just blown a hole in a car window next to Les, aiming low, not to kill but to send the fellow running. It seemed like there were cops everywhere — who knew they had so many in this shithole? — and he went after them, but always put the bullet near, but not into, the cop, forcing him to spin and duck away. But if he was missing them, they were missing him, and the lead filling the air like ice pellets was generally useless.

He looked over at Jack on the other side of the entrance, saw him to be frozen, and yelled, “Goddammit, open up! Drive ’em back, don’t just stand there!”

Jack nodded, swallowed behind his cigar, and came out with a revolver of some sort, which he proceeded to fire to no purpose other than noise and maybe a fractured window here and there.

At that moment the bank doors blew open and a mob emerged, revealing itself to be Johnny and Charlie and three hostages. If the cops paused, it was for less than a second, because immediately they opened up, and some jackrabbit in blue had worked over to the left with a pump gun and he blasted at the group twice, though low, and the hostages went down as Charlie whirled in pain, then regained his composure and sent a fleet of hardball slugs off to punish the shooter.

“Let’s get out of here!” screamed Johnny. “I got the swag.”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s go,” yelled Homer in reply, grabbing Charlie to point him, though his leg trailed blood from the charge of twelve, toward the car.

Homer, jokester and vaudeville fool, was magnificent. After launching Charlie, he stood upright, clicked in another magazine of .351s, and went into the statue mode, calm, strong, without tremor or doubt, providing aimed fire near, but not into, the cops, while the three others staggered to the car, like the drummer, the fifer, and the flag bearer of Yankee Doodle Dandy legend. They got in, and Homer screamed at Les, just coming up from a reload, to join them.

Les nodded, rose, and ran, covering himself with one-handed shooting, yielding much noise but little consequence, while Homer, again heroic beyond reproach, stood, firing calmly, driving the cops back with well-aimed marksman’s rounds that instructed the recipient to keep his head down if he cared to survive.

When at last Les had made it, Homer raced his own self to the car, careful to weave around the front and thereby not expose himself to Charlie’s fusillade as it poured from the rear window, another careful example of shooting at everything and hitting nothing, except putting a bullet mustache on the face of a movie poster on the air-conditioned picture-show palace across the street. Charlie, in his rush, may have thought Gable was a cop.

Homer threw in his now empty .351, slid into driver’s seat, and then it felt like he caught a Dempsey haymaker in the side of the head, saw a flash in which he and his brothers threw apples at Billy Dawes and his brothers in a war they had fought in 1912, and then went to sleep.

No dignity! None! He ran like a comedy hobo, with his pants on fire and a mob after him with a rope, as clouds of spray and grit flailed him. All the cops in the world were shooting at him!

Les turned slightly, raising the Thompson with one arm, and squeezed, sending a crowd of missiles a half inch wide into space. It was as much for his own morale as it was to drive the cops back, though indeed it did seem to quiet the less aggressive police shooters.

“Come on, goddammit!” yelled Homer, who stood like a monument, dishing out his rifle rounds, stopping to reload in a dazzling blur, while simultaneously the small knot of robbers reached the idling Hudson and — no dignity here, either — piled in.

Somehow, Les made it to a safe zone behind the fender only to feel Homer’s strong farm-boy hand on his arm, pulling him toward the rear door, still open for him.

“Cock-a-doodle, don’t get tagged,” yelled Homer, really shoving him face-first into the melee that was already two men deep, with Charlie trying to squirt up to get gun to window to fire, and poor Jack, scared witless, trying to untangle himself from Charlie. When he landed, Les felt a blow to his nose, which was issued by Jack’s plunging knee, bellowed, “OW!” and slid to the floor like a child, as Jack sort of segued over him with, of all things, a bag in his hands. Then the roar of Charlie’s Thompson, as he finally got it into play and began hosing down Michigan Street.

Les got himself up but couldn’t get close enough to the window to get his hose-gun muzzle out and he didn’t want to fire inside, as the recoil could bounce it around the car cab.

The driver’s-side door opened, Homer tossed in his rifle, slid in, and put foot to pedal, one hand to wheel and the other hand to brake — then suddenly snapped, elongating to full length, as he was hit in the head. Les could almost feel the vibration as the bullet blew into Homer’s thick, slicked-down hair and threw blood spots across the upholstered ceiling of the car.

Purvis came rushing out of his office, climbed on a desk, and began to bellow.

“All right, the bastards have shot the hell out of South Bend, nobody knows how many dead. We have good preliminary IDs on Dillinger and Pretty Boy, and you can bet the other whiz kids are there too. Mr. Cowley is on the phone with Washington, we’re trying to get a Tri-Motor ginned up at Metropolitan. Mr. Cowley will stay here and coordinate with Washington, the Director, and the various agencies involved, and there are a lot of them. Clegg, you and your people stay here with him and give Mr. Cowley your total support. If I hear— Well, let’s just put it this way: any order from Mr. Cowley is to be viewed as an order from me. If we have to move fast and I’m not available, he may call directly on field agents, and you jump too if that happens. Any questions?”

“Do we have time to pack?”

“Nope. You can wash out your drawers in the sink, and we’ll go in together on razor blades and shave cream and toothpaste. Sam will rent us some rooms in the town. He’ll have that by the time we land, but we won’t be sleeping, except on the plane, until tomorrow night. I want to get there while the scene is hot. We’ll see if you science geniuses can come up with an actual clue or something.”

“Mel, what about logistics?”

“I will have Mrs. Donovan along, not right away but tomorrow by train, to handle typing up reports and keeping us up with anything from the Director that doesn’t come to Sam or me directly. Anything more?”

That seemed to be it. The guys were young, bunked together in apartments, five to the joint, or just married and had prepped their wives for this sort of action. But Mel covered that too.

“The rest of you call wives, or whatever, and tell ’em, tell them you’re on the road until further notice. Hollis, you get the Thompsons issued, and plenty of .45 and .38.”

“BARs?” asked Hollis. The big .30 caliber guns were so penetrative, they were seldom issued.

“No, not this time. If we think we’ll need ’em, we’ll send for ’em. Sheriff, you’re on the South Bend team, we want you looking hard at the shooting aspects. Big gun battle, tell us what happened and how. Jesus Christ, it’s still smoking. Okay, people, why are you still here? Let’s go!”

“Christ!” yelled Johnny, and in a flash had yanked Homer’s corpse under while going over, and again though it was without dignity, it was not without proficiency. Johnny was fast in action, and everything he did was right and smart and not driven by the panic that Les could sense riding in the desperate muscles of both Charlie and Jack on either side. He cracked a grin. Johnny! The best! Always!

Johnny clutch-pumped into gear, veered into the street, found a path through the obstacle course of shot-up cars on the road ahead, took the car through several sharp and squealy turns, riding two tires as it cranked around the corner, while Charlie emptied his drum into the sky, the bag in Jack’s hands turning out to be full of carpet tacks, which he seeded the road with behind them. There was nothing for Les to do except hope that Johnny could outdrive the law.

Soon enough, Johnny found a stretch of empty, straight highway out of town and hammered it. Like a beast, the great Hudson in-line eight delivered its full-throttle roar, spewing exhaust as it ate the pavement.

The world turned to blur, and Johnny held at eighty, gracefully passing slower cars ahead of him, driving oncomers into ditches with his bravado, and the car sailed along toward the empty Indiana horizon, soon into fields of corn and wheat and roads so straight that it seemed they had entered fantasy.

“We’re in the money,” came a voice from somewhere, and, damn, if Homer, blood sopping the left side of his face, didn’t pull himself up with a grin.

13

“Twenty-eight grand!” Les shouted at Homer. “We went through the battle of Verdun for a lousy twenty-eight grand! I got shot for twenty-eight lousy grand!”

Homer didn’t really respond to him. He was glassy-eyed, tending to drift into and out of reality, and had a killer headache.

“He ain’t right,” said Johnny. “The bullet didn’t go through, but you take a bash like that and your brains are scrambled. It’ll be a couple weeks before he’s back to himself.”

Mickey Conforti had wiped the blood off his face and improvised a kind of bandage from a dishrag. She’d soaked another one in cold water and curled it over his brow. He lay on a beat-up sofa in the back room of the Green Cat Tavern, where the gang had gone for refuge after meeting another confederate in another Hudson, dumping the original, and picking their way back here over back roads. All that remained was the split-up and the trip home, wherever that might be.

“So let’s get it over, goddammit,” said Les. “I got to raise some cash for the winter months. I got kids to feed, I got a wife who needs a new coat.”

“When she molts, you can trade that in for some new scales and rattles,” said Homer from the sofa.

“See, he ain’t hurt. He’s just hiding down there so he doesn’t have to say, ‘Hey, I screwed up, there wasn’t any stamp money to speak of, why don’t you boys take my share to make up for my mistake.’”

“Calm down, Les,” said Johnny. “He earned his share. Twenty-eight isn’t a bad day’s take.”

“Less than six apiece, Johnny. Chicken feed! When Jimmy Murray set a job up for us, he never put us in a place where we took out less than fifty. And we didn’t have to shoot our way out. Those cops were just about to call in the artillery.”

“Okay, guys,” said Charlie Floyd, “I got my take, I’m hitting the road. Time to get scarce. I won’t say it’s been a pleasure because it ain’t, but now’s the time to find a hole, preferably a broad’s hole—”

“Charlie!” said Johnny, “there’s a lady here.”

“It’s all right, Johnny,” said Mickey. “I heard worse.”

“Anyhow, anybody got any good-byes or hugs for me? No, I didn’t think so. Then I’m gone.”

With that, his Thompson disassembled already and packed in a suitcase, his fifty-six hundred dollars crumpled into the same suitcase, he gave a nod and headed out.

Les’s verdict: “Dumb cluck’ll hit a trooper roadblock and get himself killed or captured, and if he’s captured, he’ll rat us out in a second.”

“Charlie’s okay,” said Johnny. “Les, you have to calm down.”

“Easy for you to say, Johnny. You didn’t get clipped in the gut, then jumped by some hick trying to be a picture hero. I feel like Dempsey teed off into my chest. You just walked in and walked out.”

“Someone had to keep his head,” said Johnny.

“I didn’t lose my head. I needed to keep the cops down and away and that’s what I did. If I didn’t empty two drums into your home state, we’d be looking at life-plus-forever at Crownsville. And, this time, no wood gun will get us out. You only get to use that trick once.”

“Les, there’s no quieting you when you get a rage on like this. Chase, can’t you take him to Helen and she can talk some sense to him?”

“We’ll go after dark,” said Chase, who’d driven the new Hudson down to pick them up at the old Hudson.

Chase was a tall, angular man, by no means unattractive, by no means an exemplar of the gangster charisma and lifestyle, who always dressed neat and who, for some reason or other, had been infatuated with Les ever since they met performing mysterious errands in Reno a few years earlier. Who knew the chemistry of the connection, and who could even understand it? He was one of a series of minor-league hitters in orbit around Les. John Paul Chase would always be there for Les, and if you wanted to work with Les, John Paul was the price you paid, though it wasn’t a high price since the guy was pretty solid in his own right.

And Chase was one of the few who could talk sense into Les, control him, get him settled down and halfway rational again. That was half his value right there.

“But, Les,” he now consoled, “Johnny’s right. No sense staying all het up about it. You got out clean, nobody’s dead, nobody’s bleeding out, nobody’s hooked, you copped some good dough, times being what they are, and Helen’ll give you a nice back rub when you get back to the cottage.”

“Did you call her? I’m worried all the radio reports will have her worried.”

“I did. She’s swell. Making spaghetti for dinner.”

“Okay,” said Les.

“You got room in that big tub for Homer?” asked Johnny.

“Cock-a-doodle, no,” said Les. “It ain’t up to me to get him and his nun girlfriend back to St. Paul. I got John Paul, Jack, my two kids and Helen.”

“Thanks for the compliment, Les,” said Mickey from the sofa, where Homer was resting his head on her lap.

“That wasn’t very nice, Les, you should know better than that,” said Johnny.

“She knows it was a joke. Mr. Laugh-a-Second, that’s me.”

“All right, Homer,” said Johnny, “get ready to move in a couple hours. Looks like I’m the guy who’ll drive you back to St. Paul.”

“You’re a prince, Johnny,” said Mickey. “Always count on Johnny for being a good guy. He never lets anyone down. Unlike some other guys who ain’t so noble.”

“I don’t have room for that mook,” said Les. “And I ain’t no chauffeur.”

Things settled down, as each fellow decompressed from the shoot-out in different ways, Homer by aching and moaning; Johnny by smoking cigars and sipping Pikesville rye in shirtsleeves on the porch, watching the sun set over Indiana’s green fields; Jack by being innocuous and, secretly aware he didn’t belong, swearing to never do this kind of work again; and Les by slowly cooking off his rage and hatred at the world for again denying him the dignity he felt he had earned.

By nightfall, he had settled into a kind of dull spell and didn’t feel like much fun at all. He was like a reptile, all heated up and feisty in the hot weather, dolorous and numb in the cold. John Paul had to take the initiative.

“Okay, I’m going to get him back to Helen now, and then to Chicago.”

“Don’t forget his cut. He’ll go nuts again if he thinks he’s been cheated out of his cut.”

“Got it,” said Les. He patted his suit pocket where his near six grand had been wadded into a big roll. The Thompson had been broken down, buttstock separated from the receiver, the drums laid flat, the whole thing wrapped in canvas and stored in a large suitcase. Les still had a .45 aboard, and his .45 full-auto pistol between the seats, if it came to shooting, though with kids in the car, he knew he could never blast it out with the cops.

On the drive back to the cottage, as flat, dark Indiana slipped by, Les said to John Paul, “When we get back — first thing, we got to look for some new jobs or opportunities. Put out the word we’re looking for action, any action. Last time I’ll let Homer set anything up. He ain’t got the brains of a squirrel.”

“And with a bullet squashed against his skull,” said John Paul, “that would be a dumb squirrel.”

14

After three twenty-hour days, they were pretty much done. Every witness had given a deposition, every bullet hole marked and charted, every surface read for fingerprints (none), every spent shell located, every square inch of the rather large crime scene examined, and examined in depth, then examined again. It was scientific crime fighting at its best, with pix of the suspect sent out by wire nationally, all small-town sheriffs and police chiefs notified: “These men are heavily armed and dangerous. Do not approach. Contact Justice Department, Division of Investigation, Washington, D.C.”

Now a last meeting, in the grand ballroom of the South Bend Excelsior, where the fifteen tired agents gathered, with shorthand notes taken and transcript typed by Mrs. Donovan, as all conclusions were hashed out and formalized.

Finally, Purvis got around to Charles.

“Sheriff, you looked at the shooting aspects of the event. I saw you on your knees most days, taking close notes over spent casings, so I’m betting you have something for us.”

“Well, Mr. Purvis, I don’t think I come up with anything you and all these bright young fellas don’t already know. I do have some observations.”

“Please, go ahead.”

“Here’s what I got, not IDs so much as personalities. Maybe some help when we get close and have to figure how to arrest. What I see is two cool hands, one dumb ox, one nothing, and one nutcase.

“Johnny and Homer are the cool hands. They make this robbery work, and, in a funny way, they keep the casualty numbers down. First, look at Johnny. Never fires a shot, or at least I could find no .45 shells on the floor inside the bank that, under the magnifying glass, didn’t have the little ejector-nick characteristic of Pretty Boy Floyd’s Thompson. So Johnny doesn’t shoot, and he even jokes with the folks he’s robbing, that’s how calm he is, but, at the same time, he knows it puts them at their ease, so they don’t panic and bust for the door, which would mean Pretty Boy would hose them down. We owe Johnny on that one. It stays a robbery and doesn’t become a massacre because of Johnny’s coolheadedness. Meanwhile, outside, Homer and his .351 are holding off the cops. He plugged one dead — Officer Wagner, God rest his soul — but after that he shoots accurately, driving cop after cop back, and I have to believe that as good a shot as he is, he could have killed cop after cop. But he knows that America sort of loves its bank robbers and that makes him feel good, that’s part of what he’s after, to be a ballplayer figure as much as an armed robber, and he knows if he kills ten small-town cops, it’ll be a different game. He won’t be no hero but instead a rabid mutt to be shot on sight. He needs that wide sense of public celebration to operate and he skillfully preserves it while taking fire. Also, while he’s up there taking fire, he’s letting all the others get to the car. Maybe he’s dead now, as several witnesses say they saw him take one in the head, and that’s a hit you don’t come back from too often. Anyway, he’s the hero of the bank crew, give it to him.

“Then there’s the dumb ox. That’s Pretty Boy. He’s really the fool that turned the whole thing into a gun battle. He makes a stupid decision when nobody obeys him and fires a thirteen-shot burst into the ceiling, walking the gun all over the place. It was a dumb move, the dumbest. He could have got their attention with one shot. And on the outside, what’s one loud noise? Could be a backfire, a bucket of paint falling off a ladder, one tenderfoot ramming another tenderfoot’s Model A, a door slamming, the baker hitting his wife, anything. Folks’d wonder, but that’s all. A good man on a Thompson don’t even have to move the lever to semi-auto, he’s got a light touch and can feather off a single. Ed Hollis over there can fire singles on full auto all day long, I’ve seen him do it. Not Pretty Boy, and once the sub gun goes rat-a-tat-tat, the jig’s up. And from then on he don’t do much except spray, pray, and take up space. Didn’t hit anybody, could only come up with a few bullet holes in windows, which means he was mostly hitting sky. Oh, he did manage to hit Clark Gable in the head on the movie poster across the street.

“That leaves two. The least interesting is the lookout. No long gun because he had to stand outside so long trying to be invisible, no spent shells, which means he never reloaded his wheel gun. I guess he was their tip-off man, but other than a nod, he didn’t do much. Again, I couldn’t find anything he hit, but if you get around to digging all the bullets out of all the walls, you might find a few was .38s, and that’d be his contribution. The names I hear are John Paul Chase, Jack Perkins, Fatso Negri, all Baby Face cronies. Maybe it’s one of them, maybe he’s a Johnny fan or even, God help us, another Oklahoma sodbuster. Don’t know.

“Finally, Nelson. This punk has a firecracker where his brain ought to be. He’s a hophead who don’t need no hops. Don’t know what makes him tick, but he don’t have no trouble spraying a city street full of moms and kids with his Tommy gun, and if he didn’t hit nothing, it wasn’t for lack of trying. God must have had his eye on South Bend that day. I counted, all told, seventy-seven spent .45 casings with the mark of his Thompson extractor on them, meaning he ripped off one full drum, reloaded, and ripped off half of another. Then he stood over that hero kid, Joe Pawlowski, and put rounds into him, though by the grace of God and Nelson’s excitability, he managed to miss everything but the boy’s hand.”

“Sheriff, is he the most dangerous?”

“Yes sir. By far. He’d be shoot-on-sight, in my opinion. Tricky, nasty, crazy sonovabitch. You see him, put him down hard, that’s my advice, and if I get a chance, that’s what I’ll do without a second thought. He’s too dangerous to take alive.”

“And the others?”

“Charlie will do something stupid to get himself killed. He won’t think nothing out. Mr. X is a pussycat, he’ll go into the cuffs without a fuss. He knows he ain’t got the constitution for Thompson gunwork. Johnny and Homer could go either way. Both are smart and disciplined. I don’t quite see them as shoot-on-sight, but you got to hit them with maximum manpower so that they see no escape is possible from the get-go. Cornered, they’ll give up. Johnny’s escaped already twice, and he believes he can get out of any jug. Probably the same with Homer, so it’s in them that tomorrow is another day, and on that day they’ll pull a wood-gun trick and go free. Plus, they ain’t haters. They’re in this for the money and the glory, not to burn the world down. They really ain’t trying to hurt nobody, whereas Baby Face likes to hurt folks and gets his laughs thinking about all the tears been shed.”

“Mrs. Donovan, did you get all that?”

“I did.”

“Great, Sheriff. One more question: since you know so much, how many banks have you robbed?”

There was a lot of laughter, and even Charles rewarded Purvis with a rare-enough smile, enough to insert him further into legend, but then he said, “None that I can tell you Yankees about,” and more laughter busted out.

When it had died down, Purvis addressed them all.

“Please mark that if you get yourselves into an arrest situation, Nelson gets a slug in the face; the others, depending. Fair enough? Okay, anything else?”

A few minor questions about per diems came up, another big laugh — say, wasn’t this turning into vaudeville? — and Purvis fielded them gracefully enough, and then said, “Okay, fellas, good work, y’all did well, you have an hour to pack, and Mr. Cowley already has our Tri-Motor on the runway. Sleep late tomorrow, but the duty day will start at one p.m., and I expect to see you in the office. Sheriff, got a sec?”

“Sure,” said Charles.

When the room was empty, Purvis said, “As I said, I think that’s good work. We don’t get that kind of thinking. But you have to understand — and think this through — you can’t just crash ahead. That’s what we did wrong at Little Bohemia.”

“Just trying to apply common sense,” said Charles.

“Gunfighter’s common sense, hard-won. Anyhow, this is personal, I didn’t want to say anything in front of the men, but your wife called the Chicago Office and she needs to talk to you. They said she sounded kind of upset. If you come to need a weekend off, just let me know and it can be easily arranged.”

Charles had a sinking feeling. Had Bobbie Lee wandered off into the woods again and this time nobody could find him? Or maybe he’d been hit by a car. The weight of the damaged child was never far from Charles’s shoulders.

“Yes sir.”

“I’m going to get some lunch. Go to my room and call from that phone. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll see you in a bit.”

Charles thanked his supervisor, acknowledging the thoughtfulness of the offer, took the key, and went upstairs.

He found himself in the Excelsior’s best room — no surprise — as befits the celebrity that Purvis had become, and the maid had already come through, so it was immaculate and impersonal. But it had probably stayed that way, as Purvis’s personal neatness was already a legend.

He picked up the phone, got the hotel operator, and after the connections were made, heard his own phone ringing, the operator asking her if she wanted to take the call, and finally he was on the line with the woman he married, the mother of his sons.

“Hello,” she said, her voice crackily over the long-distance wires as they hopped from connection to connection.

“It’s me. They said you called. Anything the matter? Is Bobbie Lee—”

“He’s fine.”

“You have to watch that fool kid. He’ll end up facedown in a pond or eaten by bears.”

“Charles, he’s fine, he’s been quiet. He stays in his room and draws rocket airplanes. Every once in a while, he says, ‘Where Dada?’ That’s the only thing.”

“You know I don’t believe that. He don’t even know who I am.”

“He loves you very much, Charles, if you’d let him. Anyway, got a letter from Earl. He made corporal. He likes the field, he says he hasn’t been in a fight yet, but his mind is all set for it if it happens.”

“He’ll do well. He’s got sand, even if he’s no booster of his mean old father. You’re getting the money okay? They said it would take a while for the paperwork to go through.”

“We’re fine, Charles. Better off than most. You provided for your family, Charles, when so many weren’t able to.”

“So what’s this about?”

“Charles, the judge came by yesterday.”

“What?”

This was unprecedented. The judge rarely left the courthouse. It meant something significant.

“Yes. He said he had a message from some folks in Hot Springs. He said — and I wrote it down — he said that you should go to the World’s Fair Saturday at four p.m. and sit on a bench across from an exhibit called Midget Village. They have a whole town there of little midget people.”

“Ain’t that something?” said Charles. The sarcasm was lost on her, however.

“Go there, sit there, have an ice-cream cone. A man will come and talk to you. Do you know what this is about?”

“No idea,” he said. But he had an idea. If this came out of Hot Springs, it meant someone from the Italians was reaching out, because the Italians had connections and influence everywhere.

“Anyhow, anything else?”

“No, Charles.”

“Okay,” said Charles, and hung up.

15

Bob had come to Nick’s under urgent entreaty. Nick had something. Good old Nick.

“I can’t wait to hear this,” said Bob. “I ain’t got nothing but the Underwood stuff.”

“Well, this is substantive, but it’s not empirical. As I said before, not ipso facto evidentiary. But it is solidly circumstantial.

“I’ve read these reports over and over again,” he continued, “and after a while you learn the tone and the way of thinking behind them. Mostly, they’re assembled by lawyers, and they seem to be very thorough legal documents. They proceed logically, they conform to format and outline, they’re put together in such a way as to yield their information quickly — for prosecutors, that is, other lawyers. It’s like you’re reading internal memoranda from a law firm. If I remember, I went to law school three thousand years ago and even passed somebody’s bar, so I think I know what I’m talking about.”

“Makes sense.”

“So I’ve read all the Dillinger reports and all the Nelson reports, going back to Itasca, Illinois, October 3, 1930. Lots of others. Plainfield; Hillside; Peoples Savings of Grand Haven, Michigan; First National of Brainerd, Minnesota; Security National in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; First National in Mason City, Iowa; and, finally, South Bend.”

He gestured at the stacks of Xeroxes of ’30s-style typing, with the odd diagonal designations of CLASSIFIED or FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY randomly stamped across them. They lay on the worktable in Nick’s office/den.

“They’re all the same, and, frankly, they’d put a sugared-up child to sleep. But finally, in South Bend, I get— Well, you read it yourself. I’ve marked it in yellow.”

Bob took the page, put on his reading glasses, and stared at the Xerox, typed up so long ago by the ubiquitous and efficient EPD, and read:

“Noted that robbery team consisted of five different individuals whose shooting actions revealed personality traits. Two, thought to be Dillinger and Van Meter, were cool, collected, and professional. The third, possibly Floyd, exhibited poor decision making and then slow reactions…”

And so on, culminating in a set of recommendations of arrest strategies.

“Thus, Nelson demands instant-shooting action without warning (this should be cleared by legal), while great care must be exercised to take only Dillinger and Van Meter, under controlled circumstances, far from public access, and finally Floyd may be counted on to make a bad decision. The unknown suspect is thought to have little criminal experience, and less initiative, and will probably yield to arrest quickly.”

Nick said, “I’d recognize that voice anywhere, though clearly it’s been slightly edited by EPD. That’s pure Swaggerspeak. That’s someone who’s thought hard about this sort of thing, learned lessons, has insightful observations no one else in the office is capable of making. That’s Charles through a screen of bureaucratspeak.”

“I think you’re right,” said Bob. “But what’s this?”

Someone had scrawled Very good! Disseminate! in fountain pen in the margin of the document.

“If you’d ever been in the Bureau, you’d recognize the author of the comment,” said Nick. “Even today, you’d recognize it. It’s that hallowed.”

“God himself?”

“God himself. And that’s tantamount to an offer of lifetime service, with a guaranteed high finish. It’s the original FBI ticket to ride.”

“Wow,” said Bob. “Charles must have really screwed up to go from there to oblivion in so few months!”

16

Charles was even less impressed with the future than he was with the present. The future, according to the genius architects of the World’s Fair, was a soaring white boulevard made up of cheesy buildings out of some screwball Hollywood picture show with rocket airplanes in it, like the machines Bobbie Lee so tirelessly drew as his brain decomposed further into nothingness. Charles saw lots of flags, pennants, things to blow and flap in Lake Michigan’s stout offshore breeze, all white and tall, but shaky. Towers, triangles, trapezoids, all the features of geometry, turned to stucco in imitation of stronger engineering substances meant to last a while, then go down under the steam-shovel’s grind without much trouble. Get a good blow in and the whole damned contraption-city would end up in the lagoon, and that included the giant zeppelin that hovered overhead, said to be the future of travel but looking to Charles like a bag of gas ready to dissolve in flame. He’d seen a few smaller varieties shot down on the Western Front, and nobody wanted to be near that much hydrogen lighting up.

He walked down the broad cavalcade that transected the peninsula jutting off the Chicago shore and passed by the grand exhibits from the big boys, like GM and Chrysler and Sears, Roebuck, then “Halls” of various things, such as Religion, Science, Electricity, and the U.S. Government. Mock Greyhounds transported folks on the ground, or through the air on something termed a Skyway, a big gizmo that hauled little cars of people through the blue ether on wires, tower to tower. Or you could just walk, which Charles did, noting it all with a dyspeptic heart and an abiding cynicism hard acquired through acquaintance with the century’s charnel houses and hellholes. He passed the French village, where beyond a gate and behind fencing a fraud Frog street was visible, and he wondered if you got the bonus dose of clap that was a part of every GI’s Paris experience in ’18. Other displays to the art of counterfeit included complexes from Belgium, Germany, China, and little Japan.

After a bit the grandeur wore itself thin, and the fair became the Midway, full of honky-tonks, Cracker Jacks, and Sally Rand (not showing her ass till nightfall), where hucksters of various disciplines plied their gaudy trade. He bought himself an Eskimo Pie and sat on the designated bench across from the hutch of buildings claiming to be the famous Midget Village, where all kinds of tiny delights were promised, though Charles could see nothing amusing in that prospect.

He sat but couldn’t relax. The sun was still high, but the shadows had begun to lengthen, and the lake, its blue immensity visible here and there between gaps in the busy landscape and structure of the exhibits to the far side of the Midway, provided a famous Chicago windy bluster to keep things cool and the mosquitoes from forming mobs around human flesh. He had switched, it being a hot day, to informal clothes; that is, a khaki suit, his black tie, and a new-bought indulgence, a tan fedora, brim low, shielding his eyes. He sat alert, conspicuously aware of the Government Model .45 nesting in floral-carved leather under his left shoulder, and the two full magazines of hardball wedged into a leather keeper of his own design over his right kidney. He ate the chocolate-covered frozen treat, not noticing it much because his eyes were so busy noticing other things, such as the thin crowd of humanity that trickled by, mostly adults with squads of beat-to-hell kids, all messy in melted ice cream or clingy puffs of cotton candy, as well armed with pennants, little-kid horns, all sorts of crap meant to soak the rubes’ nickels and dimes.

He couldn’t really feel at ease. If the judge his own self had come all the way out from town to deliver a message, it meant that somebody very high up in the as-yet-nameless organization had given the order, and the judge, a king in a little fiefdom, had popped to like a PFC. The judge’s involvement, instead of a mere phone call, carried its own weight in communication; it said to Charles that a decision had been reached, that plans were afoot, and he was to be a part of them, no matter what his own inclinations were.

It wasn’t long before a gent came over — he seemed to arrive from nowhere — and sat next to Charles. A well-turned-out character too, in a double-breasted blue pinstripe, shiny black shoes, and a straw Panama up top, very sporting. He was olive-skinned but quite handsome, in a picture-show kind of way, and had a whiff of cologne to him, and a white carnation bright on his lapel. It certainly wasn’t an outfit you wore to a fair, not even a World’s Fair.

He carried a newspaper with him, and paid no attention to Charles, but when he flipped the paper open, Charles saw that it was six days old, last Sunday’s Tribune, and it wore the vivid eight-column headline DILLINGER GANG STRIKES SOUTH BEND. A batch of photos darkened the center of the page, and Charles didn’t have to look to know that Mel Purvis was prominent, plus dramatic shots of bullet holes in glass, with Joe (“Heroic Teenager”) Pawlowski and detectives bending to examine spent shell casings.

The fellow seemed to notice Charles’s interest, and said, “Say, isn’t that the limit? These hoodlums go in and shoot the hell out of a nice little town like that, kill a cop, wound four, use machine guns on Main Street. What a shame!”

Charles nodded glumly.

“I hate that stuff,” the man continued. “Men with guns, shooting the hell out of everything, messing everything up. Know what we need? Strong law enforcement, men who can go gun to gun with these bandits, who can shoot better, faster, straighter. But I guess men like that are hard to find.”

“Wouldn’t know about that,” Charles said guardedly.

“I think you would, Sheriff,” said the man, turning to face him, displaying a taut, intelligent face, exquisitely shaven, though a blue-steel blur of shadow highlighted his dark eyes, set off by a white inch of scar across the knobby cheekbone. His personality was like his wardrobe: spotless, perfectly fitted, regal, yet fluid and creamy. “I hear you’re the best shot in the Division, and they brought you in from the South to go gun to gun with Johnny and his pals. I think I spot a suspicious bulge under your jacket. Heavy iron, serious iron.”

“Okay, I’m here. This is the meet. What’s the play? Who are you?”

“No names. But you’re no hick. You know how it works and who’s doing what. You know that in most circumstances, you and the people I represent work on opposite sides of the street.”

“I get that.”

“But our interests momentarily converge. What you want, what we want. This crap has to end, for everybody’s sake, so we look at the options and we chose you as our vessel. You come highly recommended, because I know you’re not so rigid, you can’t deal with reality in an adult manner. Not like most of these kids in the Division, all full of Ohio State boola-boola, who don’t really get how it can work and want to throw everybody in the hoosegow.”

Charles finished his last bit of Eskimo Pie, wiped his lips and fingers with a napkin, and got out his makings and began to assemble a tailor-made. Getting it together deftly, he put it to his lips and fired it up with a Zippo he carried, snapped the lighter shut with a power-thumbed clack, and looked across the boulevard choked with humanity parading by.

“I’m here to listen, so you’d best make your pitch.”

“Good man, all business. Okay, here it is. I am here to talk about Johnny, Homer, Pretty Boy, and that king of all screwballs, Baby Face Nelson. You know who Roger Touhy is?”

“May have heard the name.”

“West Chicago. Tough guy, bootlegger, all-around bad citizen. Here’s the joke: Baby Face Nelson was such a nutcake that Roger Touhy kicked him out of his outfit! He was too crazy for Roger Touhy, who’s as crazy as a burning duck!”

“If I get him in my sights, I will finish that issue for good,” said Charles.

“I want to put him in your sights. That’s what this is about. We hear things. We get information from cribs, brothels, clubs, truckers, safe houses, people on jobs or on the grift. We knew two days early about South Bend, from the guy who owns the tavern they worked out of. So here’s the deal. When I have something, someone will call your office and tell you Uncle Phil wants to talk. You go across the street to a phone booth, right down on State, outside of the Maurice Rothschild main entrance. Pretend to talk on the phone, but hold the cradle lever down. When it rings, let the lever up and I’ll give you the latest.”

“Not so fast. You guys can be slippery. How do I know this isn’t some kind of deal to screw us up so bad, the Division gets closed down? I need assurances, guarantees. I’m not just rushing in with twenty agents and machine guns because some guy with whorehouse cologne tells me to.”

“Fair enough. You have to be protected. Okay, I’m going to give you info on a meet Baby Face has set up next week in Mount Prospect, in the northwestern suburbs. He needs to get going on something quick because he didn’t make the score he thought he’d make in South Bend and he needs the dough to get through the winter. He’s meeting with some pals late on a country road. Off the main stretch. You’ll get a map tomorrow. You check it out. You’ll see I’m dealing aces.”

“Okay, next question: why? What’s in it for you? These guys take a lot of heat, but nobody notices or talks about you. You’re not interesting compared to machine guns on Main Street.”

“Hey, Sheriff, none of your beeswax. It’s been decided, that’s all you need to know. The breeze is blowing your way. Fly your kite or go away and shut up forever.”

17

“Baby, can’t we stop, spend the night in a cabin?” said Helen.

“No, sweetie, I know it’s tough, but we’re almost there. I got to make this meet.”

Les pushed the Hudson through the steamy night. It had been over 100 all day, suffocating hot, but he roared through the heat like he rolled through everything, hard and remorselessly, fueled by his surging anger at everything that was not Helen. Ahead, at last, the glow of Chicago’s bright lights blurred the horizon. It had been a hell of a grind from Sausalito, almost the breadth of the continent away, where he and Helen and J.P. had headed straight off the South Bend job. Distance was safety, they all knew.

But now it was time to get to work.

“You want me to drive a while, Les?” asked J.P. from the backseat.

“No, pal,” said Les. It was a quirk of his. He liked to do the driving. He could put himself behind the wheel as the hours turned into days with few ill effects. And now, so close to the meet, he didn’t want to relinquish control — heat or not, fatigue or not. He wanted to get there, get something set up, get something started. As a professional, he had a great work ethic.

“Couldn’t we go to a club, Les?” said Helen. “I could use a Coca-Cola. You know, the Rainbow or the Crystal Room?”

“Cops are watching ’em all. You forget how famous I am now. I’m bigger than Gable!” He laughed.

“You ought to go to Hollywood, Les,” said J.P. “You’re handsome enough to be a star.”

“Aw, they put makeup on you, like a dame. Not for Les, no sir.”

Illinois rolled past, the Hudson’s engine devouring the pavement. When they were within twenty miles of city limits, Les looked for a solid north — south route, found it, and turned north. Here the lights were sparser, the roadhouse opportunities less available, mostly everything was closed down. But that also meant little traffic, and that meant few cops, and he motored on, gliding through the night.

He hit the far reaches of Touhy Avenue at about 1, right on schedule. He’d planned it perfectly. Turning east on Touhy, he took that road in, just north of Chicago, until at last he hit Wolf Road, another through and through, and turned north again. Closer in, more stuff, but most of it silent, the roadway empty — he still obeyed the occasional traffic light, just in case — and headed toward Mount Prospect, his actual destination just north of it, a little road to nowhere where he and the boys had rendezvoused before and knew well.

He hoped Jack Perkins had come up with the soup, as they called the volatile liquid explosive nitroglycerine. You’d have to blow the safe on his next objective, which wasn’t a bank but a mail car on a streamliner, meant to be intercepted just out of Chicago. Mr. Murray, who had a long record of setting up jobs going all the way back to the Newton boys, had scouted out this one and said the take would be six figures. Mr. Murray should know, as he’d set up the Newtons’ biggest robbery, at Rondout, downstate, fifteen years ago. He was a solid, reliable guy who planned carefully and knew all the tricks.

So Jack would be there to report on his nitroglycerine quest, and so would longtime pal Fatso Negri, and Carey Lieder, a mechanic with aspirations of joining the big boys who had in fact fronted Les the big chunk of luxury automobile he now drove.

Beyond Mount Prospect, he slowed. Country here, few lights, it wouldn’t get bright for another few miles, when they skirted Wheeling, which is why it was such a great spot for a meet.

“I think it’s pretty soon,” said J.P.

“Hard to find the goddamned road,” said Les. “No road markers out here or anything. No lights. Just prairie and trees. What a boring place!”

“But you don’t want no action, do you, Les?”

“You’re right. And I’m not sightseeing neither. I ain’t no tourist.”

They rolled onward, Les checking his watch—1:45 a.m. — and in a bit hit the mark.

Miller was a nondescript farm road that ran west, unpaved, designated only by a billboard on the northeast corner for Standard Oil, showing a happy family packed in the car on a vacation trip: The Open Road — It’s the American Way! it said.

“Okay, folks, we made it. Helen, honey, an hour here, read a magazine or something, and then we’ll check in someplace and you can take a shower and get some sleep.”

“It sounds so great. I’d kill for twenty-four hours of uninterrupted rest.”

“You don’t need to kill nobody, honey. That’s Daddy’s job.”

They turned left, onto Miller, and drove about a quarter of a mile, over a rise in the road, then downhill into a dip. The big Hudson tossed dust as it progressed, and then Les slid off the road and parked.

They sat quiet as the dust settled and the big car cooled down, occasionally offering a mysterious click or snap or crunch. Les patted the wheel.

“Nice doggie,” he said. “You relax now too while Les takes care of business. You okay, Helen?”

“Yeah, babe. I’m fine. I have the new Modern Screen.”

“So who do I look more like? Gable or Fredric March?”

“You remind me more of the New York guy, Cagney.”

“He’s too Hell’s Kitchen.”

“No, Les, she’s right,” said J.P. “You’ve got his pep, his quick moves, his guts.”

“Yeah, yeah, I see it now. Hey, good thing there’s no grapefruit around.”

“You better not, Les,” squealed Helen, laughing. “I’ll smack you right back!”

“I know you would, sweetie.” Les laughed, getting out of the car. He lounged against the fender, enjoying the night sky, the lower temperature after a July scorcher cramped in the car. The breeze fell gentle against his face, the crickets buzzed, occasionally a shooting star left an incandescent blur across the black vastness up top. Up there, far away, pinwheels and comets blazed, but it meant nothing to him other than display. He just saw fireworks. He glanced at his watch, whose radium dial told him it was 1:50, and just at that second headlight beams swung his direction as one car, then another, both Fords, turned off Wolf and down Miller, raising their own mild spumes of dust as they approached. He waved.

The two cars pulled off and parked not far from his, and he felt a surge of warmth as his guys piled out. Fatso and Jack were in the first car, Carey Lieder in the second.

“There they are,” said Les. “The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift and his electric corncob.”

All three laughed, and J.P. got out of the backseat of Les’s Hudson and joined in the group hug and hand-slapping-hand, hand-shaking-hand, arm-pumping, backslapping greeting scrum. It looked like Notre Dame had just beat Navy 28–3.

“Man, you guys look good.”

“Glad you’re back, Les,” said Fatso.

“Now we can get stuff rolling,” said Jack. “And this time we’ll do it right.” He bent, waved, yelled, “Hi, Helen, how’s the girl?” and Les’s wife smiled, waved back.

The five of them moved over to a space between the cars and lounged on fenders and bumpers, enjoying one another’s company, lighting up, Jack the same brand cigar he’d smoked in South Bend, J.P. and Fatso firing up cigarettes.

“How’d she run?” asked Carey, pointing to the Hudson, wanting to make sure he got credit for his only tangible contribution to this confab of authentic big guys.

“Like a top,” said Les. “That Hudson builds some kind of machine. Hey, Jack can tell you, if the Hudson doesn’t move like a bat out of hell when Johnny punches it, we’re pinched in South Bend and looking at ten-to-twenty at Crown Point.”

“Yeah, and old Homer’s got a date with a certain big chair for clipping that cop!”

“Damn, that’s the only thing we did wrong,” said Les. “Should have left Homer at the curb!”

More laughter, though Jack’s was forced, for he remembered it was Homer who’d covered them all and kept the cops back when the battle was at its most pitched.

Then Les had his scoop.

“I got something big for you,” he said. “Johnny wants in on this one. He’s shacking up with a whore on the North Side, but this deal is so sweet and easy, he wants a piece of it. Having the big guy along will make it easy. I got a meet set up with him.”

“What about Homer?” Fatso wondered. “Did that slug in the head knock any of those corny jokes out of him?”

“Mickey got him back to St. Paul. He’s okay. It’ll take a while, but he’ll be back full steam. I don’t want him, we don’t need him, it shrinks the cut, so there’s a lot of reasons to keep him out. No Charlie Floyd, either, that dumb ox. He’s probably in the basement of some Anadarko whorehouse drinking up the last of his seven grand… Okay, let’s get down to it.”

“I got a line on soup,” said Jack. “It wasn’t easy, that stuff is hard to come by. But I know a guy whose brother is a mine foreman in Kentucky, and I drove down last weekend to see if he could put us on to it. It won’t be cheap, but he’s going to drive it up and handle it for us. He says otherwise we’ll blow ourselves up. It’s tricky.”

“Is he a solid guy?” asked Les. “Our work is tricky too.”

“For five grand, he’ll be Alvin friggin’ York. Yeah, he’s solid. Miner. That’s the hardest, most dangerous work there is. Have to be a hero to even think about making a living a thousand feet down for a buck an hour!”

“Okay, good. Five grand seems okay.”

“That’s good,” said Jack. “That’ll make him happy.”

The reports went on. Carey had two cars lined up, purchased cheap from a downstate car-theft ring operating out of Cairo, on the Mississippi. He said he’d get ’em in in a week, work ’em over, make sure they did eighty on the straightaway, were lively on the pedal, and had heavy-duty shocks for any hairpins that came along.

“I hope we don’t need ’em,” said Les. “I want this one to go easy, no gunfights in downtown anywhere, no high-speed escapes.”

“Amen to that,” came the chorus.

“Have you picked a site yet, Les?”

“Nah. I want to drive the whole Illinois section and see what’s best. Also, now that I’m thinking of it, Carey, you head down there too and find a school bus you can boost. We park that baby on the track and you watch how fast that train comes to a halt.”

“Hey, that’s good, Les.”

“Damned right,” said Les.

Fatso reported on the train itself. It was Illinois Central 909, originating in Iowa City. At six of its thirteen Friday stops it picked up money sacks from federal banks, all headed to the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank. As Jimmy Murray had estimated, it could easily go over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and even stepped on five times — now six with Johnny, with the soup guy, cut in — that worked out to forty-one grand apiece, not bad for a night’s work.

“So by the time we get all this shit done and our soup up here, it’s going to be at least another month. You guys okay on dough?”

The chorus all jabbered in the affirmative.

“Great,” said Les. “Now, let’s—”

At that moment a wash of headlights rotated by and crossed them, revealing them, as another car turned down Miller.

“Shit,” said J.P.

“It’s a goddamned cop car,” said Fatso, as for a brief second the black-and-white color scheme of the vehicle stood out against the glow of Chicago to the east as it headed down the road before it disappeared momentarily behind the rise.

“Get down,” said Les. “And watch this.”

He went to his car, opened the back door, and from a briefcase on the floor removed his machine pistol and a few twenty-two-round magazines welded by Mr. Lebman.

“Helen, slip out low and get behind the wheel well.”

“Les, I—”

“It’s nothing. Got it covered,” he said, snapping in the magazines, heavy with fat .45s, and throwing the slide.

Charles got in to see Purvis near 6, just as His Elegance was freshening up, tightening and aligning his tie, gargling with mouthwash, and combing his hair, at a mirror and sink specially affixed to the wall in his big, well-lit office, where the ceiling fan sliced the air into cooling motion.

“Yes, Charles, hello, sit down, I just have to priss up, my wife is dragging me to the Opera tonight.”

“Yes sir.”

“What’s up?” said Purvis, working intently on the part, running to the left side of his handsome head.

“I have a tip, I’m sure it’s nothing, but someone said he overheard someone say that some ‘big boys’ were meeting on a country road out in far north Cook at two a.m. tonight. Anyhow, this info went to a cop and he called me. Chicago Gang Squad said, forget it, it’s nothing, and I’m sure it isn’t, since there’s no names attached, but I thought I’d go out there and park and take a look-see.”

“Did you run it by Sam?”

“He left early. It just came in.”

“You sure you don’t want to take a couple of these kids and some Thompsons?”

“Mr. Purvis, these kids have been working like dogs, and it’s 100 out. I hate to put ’em on a double shift in this heat for something so unlikely.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. What are your plans if the one-in-a-million plays out and you strike something?”

“Follow from way, way back, get an address, then we’ll set up surveillance, and if it’s a go, we’ll set up a real good raid, off of recon intelligence, just like we did in France.”

“Good thought, Charles. Very thoroughly worked out.”

“I have a car chit, sir. You need to sign for Hollis to release a car to me.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Purvis, taking the chit and dashing out his signature on the appropriate line. “Sure you don’t want to log out a Thompson now since I’m signing stuff?”

“I’ll be fine. No action tonight, I guarantee it. I just want to get the drive mostly done while it’s light out so I’m not stumbling around in the dark.”

“Good. Okay, Charles, good luck. And let me know how it works out.”

“You’ll be the first to know, Mr. Purvis.”

“Call me Mel in here, Charles. You’re smarter than I am, more experienced than I am, braver than I am, whatever the ranks say, so in here, please, it’s Mel, Mel, Mel.”

“Got it, Mel.”

Charles took the chit, went to find Hollis, and found him in the arms room cleaning a Thompson.

“You clean ’em whether they’ve been fired or not, huh?” he said.

“Sheriff, if we need ’em, we may need ’em fast, so I want to keep them sparkling.”

“Good work, Ed. Here, I have the chit, I need a car.”

“Sure. Big date tonight?”

“Ain’t been on a date but once in my life and that was my wedding date. Maybe someday I’ll go on a real date, but I doubt it. Anyhow, no, I got a tip to run out. Help me figure out how to get out there.”

With that, the two went out to the main squad room, where a bank of rolled-up city and state maps hung on the wall. They unspooled Greater Cook County and spent several minutes locating the site, as indicated by the map Charles had just received from Uncle Phil, and the best way out there, considering the play of traffic.

“You want me to come, Sheriff? No problem. I’ll call Jean.”

“Nah, go home, take some time off. I’m sure this’ll turn out to be nothing but farmers sitting on the fence, talking pennant race, the kind of thing farmers talk about when they ain’t complaining about the weather.”

“Okay, Sheriff, whatever you say.”

The best route appeared to be a run out Michigan until he hit the Outer Drive at Oak Street, stay on that a few miles north of downtown, then head west on either North or Belmont.

“I’m guessing Belmont would be little lighter, though you do go by Riverview, the big amusement park. Maybe traffic will back up.”

“Nah, not in this weather, unless they figure out how to air-condition fun houses.”

“After the park, you run through River Grove, Franklin Park, and Bensenville. Belmont T-bones into Wolf. You go right on Wolf and, according to this map here, it’s about five or six more miles to this Miller.”

“He said there was a sign, a big Standard Oil billboard, on the corner. I’ll park there and mosey on down with binoculars and see what’s up.”

“You sure you don’t want me along?”

“Nah, it’ll be nothing, I’m almost certain.”

“I’ve got six cars left. The number thirteen Hudson is the best.”

“Let’s do number thirteen, then.”

All the paperwork taken care of, Charles took the freight elevator down to the underground lot and found number 13 by license plate number, and it started right up.

He exited onto Adams Street, hit State left, fought the Loop traffic for a bit, then took a right, which took him out of the Loop, passing under the looming fortress of the El station, then turned left on Michigan, heading out of town, finally hitting open highway on the Outer Drive, as they called it, which let him speed along the lakefront until it was time to turn west on Belmont.

The two-hour drive went pretty much as planned. The intersection of Miller and Wolf, set in farmland halfway to hell, or Wisconsin, whichever came first, was prosaic, and without the billboard, you’d never notice it. He scanned the field and saw that it was fallow, not plowed, and would be easy to traverse. He’d arrive, lights off, park, go diagonally across the field, hit Miller and ease down it, seeing if he could get close enough for a look, or even to overhear any chatter, assuming anybody showed up.

His plans made, he got back to his car and drove down Wolf, and ten miles farther on in Mount Prospect found a restaurant and had a meat-and-potatoes dinner. He read the papers while he waited for the food, forced himself to eat slowly, had coffee and rolled a cigarette to burn time. But time wouldn’t be burned, not readily.

He got back in his car, found a service station, and refueled, making sure to save the receipt for expenses. Then he drove stupidly around Mount Prospect in the dark, seeing nothing, until at last he came upon a movie theater on the outskirts of a town called Wheeling. He hated the pictures, but, what the hell, it would kill some time.

The only thing playing was a drama called Manhattan Melodrama, a Gable picture, and he paid his nickel and watched the thing. It was actually pretty good, if a little dopey, but who didn’t love Gable, with his commanding air, his self-deprecating humor, his easy way with the ladies, the sparkle of brains behind his eyes and a smile that would melt hubcaps even as it showed spade-like teeth, all polished and shiny. It was about two kid pals grown up to be a big gangster and the governor. The plot was full of stuff, but it came down to the governor, William Powell, another mustache guy, having the power to commute gangster Gable’s chair date, but Gable wouldn’t let him do it. “Let me have the death I’ve earned,” he said. That was fine with Charles.

He got out at midnight, found another diner, had a cuppa and a piece of pie, being the only customer, a real nighthawk sitting alone with nothing to look at but a brutal slab of dark through the window amid hard, dark angles. Soon enough, a couple came in, all lovey-dovey, and they had burgers and Cokes and paid him no attention, and neither did the counterman, who was too busy cleaning the intricate coffee machine to notice much.

Finally, it was moving on toward the appointed hour, so he paid his bill, went to his car — still hot, but maybe not as much — and started back down Wolf Road.

It was a twenty-minute drive, with no traffic oncoming or trailing, and with hypnotic regularity the darkened outposts of civilization passed on either side. His headlights illuminated the dash-dash-dash painted line at highway’s center dividing it into north and south lanes. A mile out from the Miller intersection, he turned his lights off, confident that no cars were headed his direction on the long straightaway ahead, and eased along at about thirty, orienting on the painted line but peering up every few seconds to look for the big Standard Oil billboard.

He saw it, and in the light of the half-moon, saw the intersection, saw the silver band of road running off to the right, slowed to stop, and then heard the unmistakable spasm of a burst of machine-gun fire.

The car halted just short of Carey’s vehicle, the last in the line. Crouching behind Carey’s rear fender, sure that he was invisible even in the moonglow, Les saw the marking ILLINOIS STATE POLICE on the car’s white door. He could make out motion inside, identifying two shapes moving without urgency or suspicion in the dark containment of the front seat. The driver rolled down the window, switched on a searchlight mounted on the fender, and guided it to the three cars.

“Everything all right, folks?” came the cry.

Les stepped from behind the car.

“It’s just fine, Officers,” he said, and then fired.

The gun of course fought him, being small and light against the force of twenty-two hardballs spitting out of it jackrabbit fast, and its flash was a genie emerging from a bottle, leaping crazily into the sky above the muzzle in a slithering, flickering undulation, the superfast thrust and recoil of the slide pulling the muzzle up and to the right as the gun ate its ammunition, the hot spray of ejected empties flying to the right like a squad of pursuit planes climbing to apogee, then diving to attack. But his left hand, locked solid onto the Thompson front grip Mr. Lebman had welded on the dustcover, kept the fire stream steady into the police cruiser. The fleet of slugs all found glass to pierce, web, and atomize, and the two silhouettes yanked and twisted and shuddered as the bullets tore into them.

Then it was over. The machine pistol had gobbled its magazine in less than a second. The sweet smell of gun smoke drifted to Les’s nose and he sucked at it through his nostrils like an aphrodisiac. He had to have more. It smelled so good. He felt so slick, man-with-a-smoking-automatic-gun triumphant, this was the moment he so loved, he lived for, it was so GREAT! Coolly, he thumbed the mag-release catch, felt the empty slide out and caught it with his off hand, as he didn’t have too many of them, welded up so skillfully to take three times the normal number of cartridges, and couldn’t afford to discard it. Pocketing it, he fished another one out, slid it into the grip, where it disappeared with oily slickness until the mag catch snapped, locking it in. Then he pulled back on the locked-back slide, unlocking it, and it shot forward with a determined metal-on-metal clack, signifying the machine pistol was fully loaded and ready to go again.

He started to walk around the car. Had to finish them off. A burst in each body, no doubt about it, and they were food for vultures, and his war against those symbols of authority whom he had hated and feared his whole life had claimed two more definite kills. He circled around back of the car, aware that while one of the cops slumped over the wheel, the other had collapsed in his seat but had enough left in him to open the door, spill out, and begin a bloody crawl to the ditch.

Too bad for you, Mr. State Policeman, with your saddle-shoe cruiser, with your black uniform and tie, all spic-and-span, too bad for you but I’m going to saw you in half.

Suddenly a puff of dirt erupted at his feet, and in the same split second the crack of a heavy pistol reached his ears. He turned, and on the crest a hundred yards away, silhouetted against the glow of the city, isolated and stoic, erect and unflinching, stood a man with a gun, the last thing Les expected. The man fired again.

Charles stepped on it, the Ford spurting ahead, squealed through the right turn onto Miller, chewed up a ton of dust as his tires fought the surface of the country road for traction, and went like a dart to the crest of the hill.

He braked and spilled out. Maybe there were ten mobsters with Thompsons down there, and he didn’t want to drive into that kind of a mess. Instead, he stood on the crest, and since his eyes were already accustomed to the darkness, he had no trouble seeing what lay perhaps a hundred fifty yards beyond him, which was three cars pulled off to the side of the road, a black-and-white State cruiser, and a fellow hunched and bent with a gun walking around the back of the car with, by his posture, a depraved heart. The .45 came to Charles’s hand with raw speed, and he locked knees, hips, torso, elbows, shoulders, hands, after snicking off the safety, for an impossibly long shot.

He held off and high to the moving figure, and when his internal machinery told him he was on, it also fired the pistol. The crack, the flash, the jump of recoil, the trajectory of spent shell, and back on target, before time in flight had ended for the bullet. He saw the dust kick up maybe five yards this side of the mark, and a man ahead, and so quickly calculated adjustments, but by this time the man had stopped moving, considered, and bent in to his weapon. He and Charles fired at the same time, but where Charles fired once, Mr. Gangster fired ten times in half a second, the flash rising off the gun muzzle a gigantic blot of white heat.

Dust floated into the air as the burst dashed against the ground, erupted, and released the debris in rows of geysers, all neat and pretty unless it hit you. Charles didn’t care; he was shooting, and the only thing in the universe was the front sight, now adjusted a third time — two and a quarter men high and half a man forward — and he fired, seeing a splinter of a second later the man take a ragged step back as if hit.

The gun came to Les naturally, and without thinking he jacked off half a magazine. His good instincts at flash shooting rained lead on the statue-like figure assaulting him from afar. He saw the dust kick, and expected in the next second to see a lurch, a spin, at the least a sprint, to cover. Instead, he saw a flash and felt the sting of dust way too close for comfort.

Knows what he’s doing came to his mind, even as a wave of astonishment hit him. The guy hadn’t buckled and run, hadn’t sought cover, but stayed hard and straight, calculating without fear the way to a hit.

He fired: flash, crack, the bullet hit the brim of Les’s hat, twisting it on his head, shredding the knitted straw.

Les pressed off another burst, emptying his piece into lock-back, and again, off his sound instinct for hip-shooting, the rounds seemed to straddle the guy even as they struck, and again they yanked dust into the air in spumes of grit, and again the fellow didn’t — wouldn’t? couldn’t? — move.

That was enough. Les launched himself, before a fourth round, perfectly adjusted for range and wind, would have caved in his skull, and sprinted back to his car. It seemed his pals had already departed the scene; J.P. was behind the wheel of the Hudson, Helen hiding on the backseat floor, and Les all but flew through the open window, at the last moment opening the door and diving in.

“Go! Go! GO!” he shouted, but J.P. had already put the pedal to the floor, and the great vehicle roared from the battleground, distributing tons of dust behind it as it hit highest velocity in a matter of seconds, and plunged into the already gushing dust the first car had ripped up in its own flight. Six fast shots erupted from the side of the road, where one of the Highway Patrol men had wildly emptied his revolver, but to no effect. Les looked back.

“What was that?”

“One of the cops. It’s nothing.”

“Is that sonovabitch coming?” J.P. said.

“I don’t see lights. He must have stopped to help the cops.”

“Jesus Christ, who was he?”

“I don’t know, but that guy could shoot. You see how close he came? One more and I’m whacked cold at a hundred fifty yards by the Lone Ranger.”

“Sonovabitch!” said J.P.

“You okay, Helen?”

“Just scared.”

“It’s okay. No damage.”

“I’m so scared, Les.”

“It’s okay, baby,” he said, and reached over the seat. Her hand came into his, and both squeezed to feel the firmness of flesh and to commemorate the joy of survival.

But Les’s mind was elsewhere.

Man, that guy had some balls.

Charles drove down the road to the cruiser, where the one officer had gotten out of the ditch and now leaned into his vehicle and was working on his more severely hit partner.

“You okay, Officer?” Charles asked.

“I’m not hit bad,” said the cop, not looking up. “Fred’s shot up pretty bad, though. Man, what kind of gun was that?”

“Some kind of jazzed-up pistol. You got radio?”

“No. Maybe we could pull him over a little, and I’ll take off for the nearest hospital.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll follow to make sure.”

The two men eased the slumped Fred over into the other seat, finding him sodden with his own fluid but breathing and conscious.

“Jesus,” he said, “I hurt everywhere.”

“Fred, I don’t see anything bleeding hard or spurting. I think he missed your arteries.”

“Just get me to the hospital.”

“Next stop,” he said, getting Fred set up for the drive.

He pulled back.

“You sure you’re okay to drive?” asked Charles.

“I’m fine, nothing seriously damaged. Say, who are you? Where’d you learn to shoot like that? You sure saved our asses. He was coming ’round to finish us.”

Charles turned his lapel to show his badge.

“Justice Department, Division of Investigation.”

“Man, you must be made of guts, the way you stood there while that sonovabitch unloaded on you.”

“Too stupid to know better, too old to care much,” said Charles.

The cop got behind the wheel and gunned the car through a tight U-turn and lit out up the road. Charles duplicated the turn and followed.

It took a while for the scene to develop at the hospital. First it was just Charles sitting in the lobby, smoking, berating himself silently for wrong decisions. If he’d had that Thompson, he might have been able to bring down the shooter and take the others. With a couple of the better kids along, law school or not, the advantage would have been with them.

On the other hand, he knew if the shooter had had a Thompson, he would have been able to bring down Charles.

Charles also realized it had to be Nelson, with that small-scale machine pistol. Its short barrel and powerful kick made it hard to shoot well at anything except within contact distance. It had to be the gun he used on Carter Baum because the surviving witnesses had remarked on the excessive flash, which was the signature of the weapon. But he also decided to keep that fact from everybody until he’d cleared it with Division. It was a nice piece of intelligence, and he might need it, because he knew he could be harshly judged for his mistakes tonight.

Calming himself with the ritual of assembling the makings, he lit another cigarette. Meanwhile, two, then three, then six more State Troopers arrived, then an older fellow in a raincoat over a bathrobe to whom all deferred and Charles presumed was the superintendent or commanding officer.

Several of the State boys came over to shake Charles’s hand and tell him how much they appreciated his work. People kept arriving, in hastily thrown-on civilian clothes, perhaps other executives, detectives, maybe the dedicated State Police surgeon, Mount Prospect patrolmen and supervisors, someone from the State Attorney’s Office, and soon the waiting room was jammed, and outside more and more cars were cramming into the parking lot.

After a bit, the disheveled older man came over.

“I’m Claude Bevens, Superintendent of the Illinois State Police,” he said, extending a hand.

Charles rose to shake it.

“Swagger, Justice Department. Are your officers all right?”

“Both will survive, I’m told. Cross was only nicked; he’ll be back on duty in a week. Fred McAllister was all shot up, hit six times. But because he was low in the car and didn’t catch one in head or throat, they think he’ll be okay too, in time.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“My boys say you saved their lives. Say you shot it out with whoever that bastard was and damned near clipped him. You didn’t duck, flinch, drop, move, or anything, all those bullets from that crazy little gun bouncing all around you. I don’t know what stuff you’re made of, Special Agent, but I wish I had a little of the same.”

“Sir, I was in the war. I’ve been shot at before. A lot.”

“Most men run and hide.”

“Didn’t think about it. Too busy trying to drop that fellow.”

“Well, our detectives would like to take a deposition. I know you want to get back downtown and write this up for Mr. Purvis. Can you give us a few more minutes?”

“Sure.”

“I’m going to schedule a press conference for four p.m. today. Maybe you could be there for that? I’d like to get Mr. Purvis out here for it too. You deserve recognition for what you did. He should know, you should get some kind of medal.”

“Sir, if you could do me a favor, it would be to leave my name out of it. Our Director is very particular about individual agents getting special credit. Between you and me, he’s a little fed up with Purvis for getting so big in the papers, and the rumors say Purvis’s position is shaky. I’d be happy to talk to your detectives, and feel free to communicate with Purvis or Mr. Cowley, but putting me behind microphones in front of cameras won’t do me no good at all.”

“You sure? These are times when we all need heroes to believe in.”

“It’s my best move.”

“Okay, Justice. It’s your call.”

18

“Nothing,” he said to Jen over the phone from his hotel room. “I am out of leads and real low on hope.”

“Well,” she said, “you are not known as a quitter, so I know you’ll break this one open just like you did with that Russian woman sniper.”

“But I had leads with Mily Petrova. Plus, I liked Mily. This old man’s an undertaker with an attitude. What’s his problem, anyhow? He won’t let anybody near.”

“He doesn’t care for fools. Sound familiar?”

“The old buzzard left nothing behind him, and there’s nothing in the records. The hints are all circumstantial, and while they suggest, you couldn’t go to the bank with ’em.”

“I know that—”

“Well, wait,” he said. “To be fair, the Historical Society let me go through the photos again, and I did fetch one from December of 1934, when he was back on the job, and no mention had been made of his five-month absence. Silly picture, ‘Sheriff Swagger awards the 1934 Crossing Guard of the Year with a gold plaque.’ Small-town-newspaper stuff not important to anyone except the little girl who was in the picture. So—”

He paused. Time passed, the universe began to move again.

“There you go,” she said.

“She’d be ninety-four, if she was still alive. The chances are small that her mind is clear. And even smaller still that she’d remember having her picture taken with a sheriff in early December eighty-three years ago.”

“But you do have her name.”

“The newspaper gives her name as a Mary Sue Bridgewater.”

“There’s your lead,” Jen said.

So the next morning he called Jake Vincent in Little Rock, asked Jake to recommend a good private detective, got an outfit the firm had worked with many times, and via Jake soon found himself talking with an investigator, and he laid the specifics before him.

“It is a long shot, Mr. Swagger,” said the professional detective. “But we have document specialists who will go through census records, tax records, newspaper obits, property deeds, anything on paper, and if ninety-four-year-old Mary Sue Bridgewater is still breathing somewhere in the continental U.S., we’ll find her for you.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.”

But that left him with but one task that he could do himself and it was as foolish a fool’s errand as any fool had ever thought up.

He had the Xerox of the strange “map” from the strongbox, where the badge, the gun cylinder — or was it from a car, an airplane, a refrigerator, a locomotive, or a popcorn popper? — the Colt pistol, and the thousand-dollar bill had been found. It was an aerial scheme of what appeared to be a wall, presumably some structure’s external wall. It sported two window wells, or that’s what he assumed the indentations in the wall had to be, and from the second one, on a northeastern angle — again assuming the map was oriented with north at the top — ten dashes stood for ten steps to a circle, which Bob assumed was a tree, and on the other side of the trunk were three more dashes leading to an X. X marks the spot. X the unknown. The X factor. Mr. X. X!

Bob realized it could be no dwelling on the Swagger property, because at no place in the house he grew up in, and Earl before him, and even Charles before that, had there ever been two windows as close together as these seemed to be, assuming they were windows, assuming this was a map and not a doodle, assuming this, assuming that.

It’s so thin, he thought. Everything about this old bastard was thin. He sure as hell didn’t want anybody poking into his business, and he’d either left no tracks or carefully erased his own.

At any rate, Swagger’s solution to this problem was short on insight, long on labor. Out of the same Historical Society, he’d come up with a telephone directory, fortunately quite brief. He guessed that his grandfather’s acquaintance circle would have mostly been prominent civic types. He was “The Sheriff,” after all. So Swagger found the town municipal guide, wrote down the names of all of 1934’s county officials — there were twenty-one — and then looked them up in the phone directory, yielding twenty-one 1934 addresses, most in what had been the “quality” section of town in those days. Then he added doctors and lawyers. So after much listing and recording, he finished up with thirty-nine addresses.

Thus, he spent the next two days visiting each one, peering from afar, as he compared windows and wall variations and tree occurrences with the map, and if he noted a possibility, he knocked, introduced himself, and was allowed to circle the house perimeter — assuming the house had been built before 1934—and of the thirty-nine addresses, thirty-three remained, him searching for that magical arrangement of windows and a single tree, along a wall that itself was oriented to the north.

The result: nothing.

Nights, he went through old Vincent family scrapbooks, just hoping, but the result was the same. The Vincents knew other old Blue Eye families, and he had access to a batch of other albums, and were he writing a book on the agrarian aristocracy of Polk County in the ’30s, he’d have been all set, for he saw lots of men in three-piece suits, ties tight, with fedoras low, at backyard parties with women in tea dresses of flowery, flimsy material, all of them prosperous and well pleased with their place in time and society. But of the man-killing sheriff and war hero, not a thing. Had the sheriff exiled himself or did he prefer people lower in the order, or, even more likely, he preferred nobody, nothing. He was a loner on his family farm, working his guns, doing his hunting, and maybe as an alpha he had some low-grade gofers around happy to do his bidding in exchange for the presence of the genuinely heroic. But if this even happened, it left no record.

At the end of his two days of labor in Blue Eye, he had learned exactly nothing.

19

When he finally left the hospital, Charles drove straight downtown, arriving at the office at 7 a.m. He went up to nineteen and sat down at his typewriter and clacked out a bare-bones report of last night’s incident over two carbons, including the info that he’d prevailed on the State cops to keep his name out of the papers, then put the original on Sam’s desk, the first carbon on Purvis’s, and the third on Hugh Clegg’s.

Then he went downstairs, went to the nearest Toddle House, and had himself a breakfast of eggs and bacon. And a pot of coffee. He figured it was better to work straight through the day than to go home, nap, and come in by 2 p.m.

When he got in, he went straight to his desk. His schedule was to work through a pile of reported “sightings” of the bad boys, most of which could be checked out by phone. If he was dissatisfied with that conversation, he’d put in for a car and put it on his list of face-to-face interviews. Then at 1 there was a meeting of the Dillinger Squad with the Gang Intelligence Squad — the police’s Dillinger Squad — at Central, to share information and coordinate strategy, though Charles thought it was mostly silliness and fantasy. From 4 to 5, he was to be at that same installation’s firing range, where he was going to run three newly arrived agents through his course of fire, evaluate them, see who had the gift and who’d best be kept behind the lines. Looking at the files, he saw one had served in the Michigan State Police for seven years, and he assumed that fellow would already know a thing or two.

But of course the incident of the night before had to be processed, and who knew how long that would take, so the schedule was pretty much up in the air. He worked steadily through the morning at his desk, on the phone, and at around 11 a call came; it was Purvis’s secretary, Mrs. Donovan, saying that Mel would like to see him. He rose and walked through the office, which was suddenly uncannily silent. When he got to the hallway that led to the offices, he turned, curious, and saw every agent in the place staring at him. And then they stood. And then they clapped.

“Swell, Charles,” said Purvis a few seconds later in his office. “As you can see, word has gotten around. Cops talk to other cops, and some of those other cops even talk to us.”

“Yes sir,” said Charles. He sat at a table across from Purvis and Clegg. Sam sat off a little, not exactly at the table, content not to face him or dominate the chat.

“You are to be congratulated,” said Purvis. “I had a call from the State Police Superintendent by seven a.m., and he told me one of my agents had saved two of his officers’ lives, and had shot it out with at least four or five heavily armed men — men with automatic guns, in fact — and had driven them away. That makes you an official hero, and, as you know, we haven’t had many heroes around here lately.”

“Thank you, Mr. Purvis.”

“We’ve all read the report by now,” said Clegg, who technically had no authority over Charles but whom Purvis had included almost as an invitation to take a swing at him and see if he could land one, as Clegg was not in the Purvis camp and therefore not in the Swagger camp. “But perhaps you’d take us through it orally.”

“Yes sir,” said Charles, and proceeded to narrate the events of the evening.

“When I left,” he concluded, “I was assured both troopers McAllister and Cross would make it and be back on duty fairly quickly.”

“Charles,” said Purvis, “after a gunfight, many men need a day off, to get rid of the shakes, to refuel emotionally those feelings which were spent in the rush under fire, to consider, to gather, to relax. Do you need that?”

“I’ve been shot at before,” said Charles, “and it ain’t fun, but I’m okay. No shakes, no nightmares, no cold sweats.”

“Agent Swagger,” said Clegg, “no one here is questioning your heroism, but it has occurred to me that certain of your judgments leading to that heroism might need further explanation.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” said Charles.

“I know you were an expedient—expeditious—hire and didn’t attend the academy, or even the one-month special crash training program that some of our recent agents have been through, and your grasp of our regulations could well be shaky. But that can’t be an excuse. So we have to look at your decisions and our regulations anyhow. Those regulations specifically preclude you acquiring sources but refusing to disclose them.”

“He did inform me of a source, let the record show,” said Purvis somewhat testily. “There was no formal ‘refusal to disclose.’ I never asked.”

“It seems rather sketchy to me,” said Clegg. “And I’m sure Washington will conclude the same.”

“I had no reason to place any faith in this source,” said Charles. “I had no idea if he was square or not. It could have been an ambush too. Or some kind of double cross. Or some prank or stunt the Chicago cops decided to play on us. So, yes, my decision, no one else’s, and against the advice of Mr. Purvis, I decided to go out alone, that’s all. If someone was going to get shot, I preferred it to be me and not anyone else.”

“Yes, but if you’d run it by all of us instead of just mentioning it on the fly late in the afternoon, we might have insisted on a full effort and you’d have been out there with ten men and ten Thompsons. Then you wouldn’t have just ‘driven them away’ but killed or arrested them.”

“I understand that. While you’re at it, I made another bad decision. Inspector Purvis tried to get me to take a Thompson. With one Thompson, I believe I could have closed them down, never mind ten. That was bad judgment on my part. I couldn’t do much but make noise with a handgun.”

“State Police investigators found a straw Panama in the gully whose brim had been shredded by a .45,” said Purvis. “That had to be your shot. With a handgun. From one hundred and fifty measured yards.”

“That was the hold. Another shot without a breeze and I’d have nailed that little peckerwood between the eyes.”

“But your superb marksmanship shouldn’t deflect from questionable judgment,” said Clegg, not looking at Purvis.

“Mr. Clegg, more men don’t necessarily mean better outcome. Little Bohemia, for example. But also the war, where I led many a raid and saw them go wrong all the time and boys killed out of stupidity. Operating with a team at night takes a lot of experience, a lot of planning, a lot of communication. I didn’t have time for none of those things, so I made a judgment it was better handled by one man. I didn’t want these kids, many of whom have never shot for blood or been under fire, running around in the dark with Thompsons and Browning rifles. Night battle ain’t twice as hard as day battle, it’s ten times as hard. We ain’t ready for it. Nobody is ever ready for it, but these young fellows, no matter how brave and enthusiastic, really ain’t ready for it.”

“Well said, and duly noted,” said Purvis.

“Well, let’s go to the issue of the Thompson, then. Or the Browning rifle. If you would have had them — hell, if you’d had the Model 94 my dad hunted deer with in the Mississippi woods, with your formidable marksmanship skills, you might have tagged Nelson and two or three of his pals.”

“It could have happened that way. But you can’t make that presumption. I rolled out of my car into a shooting position with the Colt in about one second flat, and it was that first shot that stopped the gunman from closing on and finishing the two troopers. If I’m running back to the trunk, pulling a big gun, inserting the drum, running the bolt, then heading to the crest, maybe those cops are dead. Then maybe I bring ’em down with the Browning or the Thompson or maybe I don’t. I get one, say, and by that time they’ve got three or four Thompsons on me. Sir, believe me, it’s tough to stand against three Thompsons. Two cops and an agent dead, maybe Nelson is only wounded, and all of the outlaws make it out. That’s another risk that has to be considered. It would sort of fit in with the Little Bohemia thing.”

Sam spoke for the first time.

“You’re positive it was Nelson?”

“Now I am. But the source just said ‘big boys,’ whatever that means, another reason Chicago Gang Intelligence wasn’t interested in it. But I could tell he was shooting that machine-pistol thing, short-barreled, with no shoulder stock to brace it, and a whole lot of muzzle flash, more flash than a Thompson. That’s why I’m alive. If he’d have had a Thompson himself — and I’ll bet there were several in them cars — he’d have planted it on his shoulder, aimed carefully over long sights, and I’d be goose crap now. So the fact I ain’t dead is proof that it was Nelson, because according to our findings, he’s the only one with that custom machine pistol. Agent Baum learned that the hard way at Little Bohemia.”

“I wonder if we haven’t gotten enough out of Agent Swagger,” said Purvis. “I think he’s made good account of all decisions, and while it could have had a better outcome, it also could have had a worse outcome. Much worse. We ought to consider this event closed, report to Washington, move on.”

“One last question,” said Clegg. “Your source: I think it’s time for you to formally identify him so that we can vet and approve. I don’t like being led by the nose by someone we don’t know a thing about.”

“It’s not even really a source. It’s a cop who I knew in Hot Springs and did a favor for. He got his big-city job here, and he’s worked his way up to the new headquarters, where he hears things. Anyhow, he heard that Chicago Gang Intelligence was sitting on this rumor of something someone overheard in some chatter in a known Italian joint and he went to me with it. It’s not a thing we can count on. Now, maybe this cop is just telling us a story and he does have a source and we will get more out of it. But I can’t say. But if I roust him, if we ruffle Chicago for his records, if I haul him up here or set up a meet with you fellows, it could all go off the tracks. It’s the sort of thing where patience is better than action. It happens that way sometimes.”

Like most police officers, Charles lied easily and without tremor, swallow, gulp, or shifty eyes, and he had no reason to believe anyone was on to him.

“I think that’ll have to do it for you, Hugh,” said Purvis. “We’ll let it rest. Maybe if we’re in a jam, we’ll press Charles to press Officer X, but right now let’s just enjoy a minor triumph, his good judgment in keeping his own name and the Division out of the papers, and, as I said, let’s share this provisional success with our friends in Washington.”

So that was it. But Purvis indicated with a nod that he wanted Charles to stay.

“Don’t worry about Clegg, Charles. He’s just a bitter blowhard. By rights, he shouldn’t even have been there.”

“Thank you, Mr. Purvis.”

“Mel. Anyhow, you must be beat. Want to take the rest of the day off?”

“Got lots of stuff set this afternoon.”

“Fair enough. Tomorrow.”

“Same. I’m fine.”

“Okay, Charles.”

He clapped Charles on the shoulder and Charles left. He got back to his desk, and as he half suspected it would be, there was a note from the agent on his phone.

“Charles… Your Uncle Phil called. Wants you to get back to him right away.”

20

Another country road, another hot night.

The discussion: the last country road, the last hot night.

Les was morose. It was one thing for two State Troopers to show up, and the papers said they made a habit of taking back roads home at the end of the duty day to look for people in trouble off the main roads. Their appearance was simple luck of the draw, unpredictable. It represented nothing in the cosmic scheme of things.

It was the guy — a federal, Les was convinced — who got there just in time to save the troopers’ hash and almost put one through Les’s face. What the hell was he doing there? That had to be more than coincidence, even if the papers said nothing about his arrival. In fact, that alone convinced Les he was federal, and he saw him as a sort of night-riding phantom, a man of mystery, who had magical ways of knowing, and always, just like on the radio or at the picture shows, got there in the nick of time.

“You didn’t say anything?” he queried his pals. “I mean, how could he know?”

With J.P., it was about his girl in Sausalito, Sally.

“You didn’t say a thing?”

“Why would I? She thinks I’m a tractor salesman.”

“Could she have eavesdropped or gone through your pockets, sniffed a reward, and come up with the tip.”

“Sally’s not that kind of girl. She’s pretty, and like a lot of the pretty girls, she don’t get it. She isn’t a noticer, a rememberer. She just thinks I’m a handsome guy, a salesman on the road, lots of fun, knows stuff, and that’s it. She never heard of any big-gangster crap. She doesn’t read the papers or listen to anything but music on the radio.”

Les always had a thing about women. He didn’t trust them. He felt the same about Mickey Conforti, Homer’s honeybee. But he could get no satisfaction out of J.P., so he moved on.

“It couldn’t be wiretap,” said Fatso. “Les, we’re on to that. You can always hear the click when they come on to listen. There were no clicks. It’s impossible.”

“Think! Think! Think! Did anyone overhear you? Did you talk in public? How could they get inside if—”

“Les, if it had been federals, they would have had a whole outfit out there, with machinos and Browning rifles and the works. It would have been the Fourth of July. It was one guy. He was driving by, remember, he wasn’t there at the start. He wasn’t hiding by the road. He heard your fire, turned, raced to the top of the hill, piled out, and opened fire on you. If he was planning anything, it wouldn’t have been shooting at you from a hundred fifty yards out with a pistol. He couldn’t have known. It’s just coincidence.”

“One coincidence, I get,” said Les. “First the cops just happen to show up, then this fed shows up. That’s two, one on top of the other, back-to-back. That don’t make no sense. The world don’t work like that.”

Nobody was interested in arguing how the world did or didn’t work with Les, whose ideas were pretty much etched in stone, unchallengeable, unchangeable. He might go off if you pressed him too hard with your system of logic against his. Fatso backed off fast, as did Jack, when his turn came, and finally Carey.

“You haven’t noticed anything odd at the garage?” said Les. “You got the only fixed address in the bunch. Maybe they’re on to you? Maybe they followed you?”

“Les, I swear, I’m being careful. I double-check every move, every day. I come and go by different routes. I don’t conduct any of our business over this phone. I keep that part of my life completely separate. I got a nose for guys fishing around or peeping. I don’t have a record, except for juvie shit no one cares about. I’m perfect for you! I’m good at this! That’s why I want to be with you guys, I have a talent. I don’t want to spend my life changing oil in cars I can’t afford for people who treat me like a monkey. Man, if they knew I was in with Baby Face Nelson, they’d shit a brick.”

For once Les didn’t explode when he heard the name the papers had pinned on him, which always slapped him raw since he didn’t have a baby face, he wasn’t a half-pint or a squirt, but pretty much average-sized, and good-looking, as everybody said, and he always turned out well in suits and ties. But Carey’s sheer bliss at being this close to Baby Face Nelson was enough to keep Les from throwing punches, as he’d been known to do.

“All right,” Les said. “You’re still on with the cars? And you can boost that bus?”

“Yes sir,” said Carey.

“Good kid,” said Les.

He returned to the tourist cabin he’d rented just outside of Glenview for Helen, not far from Curtiss Airport, though the planes were an annoyance. Wasn’t much to do. She shopped every day and bought the Tribune or the Herald-Examiner, going out again at night for the Daily News. He read, he listened to the radio, and every once in a while they snuck out to the movies. One night they went to Manhattan Melodrama in Mount Prospect, surprised that it was still hanging around, since it had come out two months earlier, in May. But he liked it, and it really felt good to leave his troubles in the old kit bag while he watched Gable act it up as a gangster, unlike any gangster Les had ever known, and he’d known them for years, going back to his teenage days as an errand boy for the Capone and then the Touhy mobs. Gable was too likable, too charming. Your real gangster was a man of extreme toughness, and no matter how old and how much dignity he had, he would go to fists or knives or pistolas at the drop of a hat where matters of honor or business were concerned. Edward G. got that, and Cagney, but as handsome a palooka as Gable was, he wasn’t any gangster. He wasn’t tough enough. He was big, not tough, and there’s a difference, as Les’s whole life had proven. That’s why he liked the gangsters so much: they took shit from no man and gave shit when and where it pleased them, never looking back, always having the best dames, cars, clothes, and pals. He fashioned himself on that image, if his stronger ethic was to Helen, whom he loved almost as deeply as he loved being the gangster, and she had never, ever once told him to quit his ways. How great was that?

Their only contact was J.P., who came by every day to see if anything needed doing. He had liberty and flexibility because he wasn’t famous like Les was after South Bend and he could still live a normal life. One day he and Les drove west and tracked by map the Des Moines train as it came in around 5 p.m., as per Jimmy Murray’s scouting report. They were looking for a spot to heist it and had found a good enough place just outside of Wheaton, a long straightaway with a road that led quickly enough into a forested area with lots of crossroads. They could stash a car there, hit the train, disappear back into the woods, change cars, and get out with nothing showing to give them away. Following wider circles in the farming community, they came across a lady dropping off kids in a big yellow school bus. They followed her and, sure enough, she kept it at home, outside. It would be easy for Carey to jump it that day and lay it across the tracks to get the train halted, and then the guns would come out.

“If Johnny comes in,” said Les, “it should work fine. We need a gun to hold the engineers, we need four guns to take the mail car and blow the safe and conk the crew out — and no telling how many are in a mail car. I don’t count Carey — nice guy and all — because he ain’t been in this neighborhood and I don’t know which way he jumps if it goes hot. Four guys with guns should get ’em quieted down fast, and then we’re out of there. I figure no more than five minutes flat.”

“I wouldn’t mind another gun,” said J.P., and Les always listened to his sagacious advice.

“Homer?” queried J.P.

“That piece of crap,” said Les. “He said rude stuff about Helen. I was going to kill him.”

“Les, he was cool as air-conditioning in South Bend, I hear. Some are saying none of you would have gotten out of South Bend if he hadn’t plugged a cop and kept the others back.”

“Hey, I was out there too,” said Les. “Talking about cool, I took one in the chest and didn’t bat an eyelash. Now, that’s cool.”

“No doubt. But you don’t want to work with Charlie Floyd, do you? I mean, if your choice is Charlie or Homer, who do you pick?”

“Got a point,” said Les. “It don’t make me happy, but it is a good point. We do need another gun, and as long as Homer ain’t spongy from that shot in the head, maybe if he swore to keep his yap shut, we could take him aboard. Only, I’m doing the planning. This one, I’m running. He has to get that.”

“He’ll get it. I’m going to see if we can’t get Johnny up for another meeting real soon. I can reach him through that lawyer. He’s in contact with Homer, he can bring him.”

“Say, the twenty-first?”

“That should be enough time.”

“We’ll meet at the Matty’s Wayfarer Inn, on Waukegan, in the back room. It should be clean now.”

“Got it. I’ll make it happen.”

That was pretty much it. Radio ate the time: the Cubs or Sox games devoured afternoons, and the bands on the networks nights. Neither of the ball teams would win a pennant, but the boys played hard, and Les liked to lose himself in their fortunes. In time, as the meet-up with Johnny approached, his spirits lifted some.

“Well,” said Helen, “someone is out of the dumps.”

“I’m feeling better, sweetie. Things are going along smoothly.”

“You’re not scared?”

“Sure, a little. That damned federal spooked me. Another couple inches and I’m wearing a bullet hole where my forehead used to be. I sure heard that one when it whizzed by and took my hat off. I hope that was the one with my name on it.”

“Did it get you to thinking?”

“Sure, and I know this is no good with our kids at your pop’s place. I want to raise my kids, I don’t want Pop doing it. I miss ’em bad. We haven’t seen ’em for three weeks, since just after South Bend. But I can’t get out without a big score, so we can go someplace, live nice, buy a little business, and be regular people. You need a bankroll to finance a move like that. You can’t start cold.” He wasn’t sure if he meant it. He said it frequently, sometimes meaning it, sometimes not.

“I love it when you talk this way.”

“Helen, I know how hard this has been on you. You’ve been great. You’re my girl, always there for me. You’re the heroine of this picture show. I love you so much, I think I’ll die from it, if the cops don’t get me. I am the luckiest man in the world.”

There followed some private between-couple baby goo-goo talk and then some private between-couple fucking, both great fun.

21

“And what do you do, young lady?” asked Mrs. Tisdale.

“I’m a news producer for Fox News in Washington,” Nikki said.

“I hate Fox News,” said Mrs. Tisdale.

“I hear that a lot.”

“Well, I shall try not to hold it against you, dear. People have to take what’s available. Anyway, who’s this fellow? Does he talk?”

“He’s my father. When I was late getting home from dates in high school, he sure talked. Not so much now. I think he sort of dried up.”

Mrs. Tisdale turned and fixed hard eyes on Swagger. He felt underdressed, even if he was wearing a suit and tie.

“You’re the hero? The letter said you were highly decorated military.”

“He doesn’t consider himself a hero,” Nikki said. “He considers himself lucky. He says all the heroes were killed. But he did do three tours in Vietnam, though one was cut short by wounds. On the other hand, one was extended.”

“Can you say something, please, sir?”

Mrs. Tisdale’s room labored at cheer, but the gloom of death hung everywhere. It was all yellow with artificial flowers and pictures of lambs and brooks and meadows. But it also boasted about a million dollars’ worth of equipment, most of it gleaming, with gauges and tubes and knobs everywhere, to keep people who were supposed to be dead alive for another few seconds. Some of the equipment was electric, some just mysteriously inert. Every few seconds, something beeped. Bob, as one might expect, did not care for hospitals or anything that reminded him of waking up in the Philippines with his hip shattered and his spotter, Donnie Fen, football hero and all-around good kid who had already finished his tour, gone forever.

“Hello,” said Bob. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”

“Short is the only kind of notice I have.”

The detective firm had quite expensively located ninety-four-year-old Mrs. Tisdale, née Mary S. Bridgewater, in this place, where, having outlived or gotten bored with all her tribe, not that she seemed to notice, she lay abed in a cheerful yellow gown that spoke of lively memories. She was a look-forward-to, not a look-back-at — that was clear from the proud jut of her chin, even though tethered to an oxygen tank by nose nozzle and tube, and monitored by a dozen robot contrivances, so that she looked like a creation of Frankenstein’s lightning. She’s alive!

“I’m grateful,” Bob said.

She turned back to Nikki.

“Why are you here and not in D.C. making up lies?”

“I only make them up on Tuesdays. This is Thursday.”

“Excellent riposte,” said Mrs. Tisdale. “I enjoy a girl with some snap, crackle, and pop.”

“I’m really here because I’m cute and likable and an experienced interviewer. My father is none of those things. So he asked me to come up and sort of, you know, make it go more smoothly — that’s how he put it.”

“Well, you’ve succeeded. You must be something, Mr. Hero, to raise such a lovely, smart daughter. When does she move to CNN?”

“They’ve offered. She’s too stubborn to budge. Hardheaded girl. Can’t tell her a thing.”

“Well, if I like her, I suppose I have to like you. Now… you said Blue Eye. Lord’s mercy, I left Blue Eye in 1941 when I was seventeen. And my father — Daddy was an engineer, but during the Depression the only job he could get was as a draftsman — you know, got a job working for Martin Aviation, just outside Baltimore. I’ve been here ever since, lived nicely in the valley through two husbands, six children, and I’m not sure how many grandchildren, whose names I can’t seem to remember either. As you can see, my brain is a large piece of ancient Swiss cheese, and I fear that the part that contained Blue Eye memories is one big empty bubble. May I ask, what is this in support of? If the letter said, I’ve forgotten.”

“The letter was vague,” said Bob, “nothing in it to remember. I can’t explain it too well even now. See, my father, Earl Swagger, was a great man. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for something he did on Iwo Jima in 1945, and he also took part in five island invasions in the war. He came back and was a State Trooper, and was killed in the line of duty in 1955 when I was nine. But his father is a mystery. His name was Charles Swagger, and he was a hero in World War I, in two armies, the Canadian and the American. He was the sheriff of Polk County from 1923 until his death, also in the line of duty, in 1942, just before my father was sent to Guadalcanal. I realized when some of his relics came my way that I knew nothing about this man, and it seems he wished nothing to be known. He may have even covered his tracks. But he shaped my father into something special and my father shaped me.”

“Into something special — like father, like son.”

“No, my father was a real hero, I’m just a lucky imitator. Anyhow, I have taken it upon myself to learn something about my grandfather and see what lies at the root of his mysteries. I have called homes for the elderly all throughout Arkansas, taken out ads in elder publications, dug through the photo albums of old families in Blue Eye, finally hiring a sophisticated detective agency to try to find someone who was alive and remembers when my grandfather was alive. After all that, I’ve found only one such person: you. That’s all.”

“I’m afraid I must disappoint you, then, Mr. Swagger… Colonel Swagger?”

“Gunnery Sergeant Swagger.”

“Sergeant Swagger, I have no memories of your grandfather.”

“I brought some pictures. I thought it might help. These are from the Blue Eye Historical Society.”

“All right,” she said, “I’m game. Abracadabra, bibbity-bobbity-boo, let’s see if some magic happens.”

He handed over a batch of glossies from his briefcase and the old beauty took them, scanned them, now and then stopping to meditate, or at least go into search function, and commented as she navigated.

“The trees — I do remember the trees. Elms, hundreds of them, and in the fall the whole world blazed with their coloration.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob.

“They burned leaves in those days, and from August through early November the stink of burning leaves and a fog of smoke hung everywhere. Is that right?”

“It is,” said Bob.

“Is it me or were the colors really different then? I seem to remember nothing was as hard a color as it is now. It was more pastel somehow, thinner. There was more light in the air. There wasn’t so much insistence on being noticed.”

Bob sort of got what she meant, but no words came to him.

“Not big on colors, are we, Sergeant Swagger?”

“He was too busy ducking to notice colors,” said Nikki.

“Point well taken,” said Mrs. Tisdale. “Your life has been too full of meaningful action to put up with ironic jibes from a rich old lady, Sergeant Swagger.”

“None of it had much meaning, ma’am. I take no offense.”

“Anyhow, of course homes were bigger, but hotter, no air-conditioning. I remember big black boat-cars. Everybody smoked, everybody wore hats, everybody drank. Yes, there was a Depression, but I was among people who seemed untouched by it. I remember tennis, but I think that was later, more toward the war. My father played golf and was in the country club. The black people were very subservient, and invisible, even if they were in your home… Oh, I do remember this home, I believe Billy Marlowe lived there. I think he kissed me in 1941, when I was seventeen, right before we left for Baltimore. I think I heard he died in a plane over Germany. The shoes are so funny. I don’t remember them, though I do remember saddle shoes, though maybe that was later. I think I have the ’thirties and the ’forties and half the ’fifties lumped together. I’m afraid next I’m going to remember going to the movies to see Lewis and Martin.”

“What about Shirley Temple?”

“I remember seeing those movies, I remember the theater, and my friends Frannie and Thelma, but it’s in space, just floating, not connected with anything. Sorry, I can’t help. Anything else, Mr. Swagger?”

“Finally, this one.”

“My god,” said Mrs. Tisdale. She looked at the photo, considering it carefully. In time, she squinched up her eyes so that she was regarding it like a sniper peering through a scope, only through her dominant eye.

“Here’s how it appeared in the paper, ma’am.” He handed over the cellophane-wrapped clipping from the December 11, 1934, Clarion. “Sheriff Awards ‘Crossing Guard of Year’ Medal.”

“The actual glossy has more detail,” he said. “The printed version gets all fuzzy with those dots.”

She continued to stare intently. Then at last — it seemed an hour had passed, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds — she said, “Yes, now that I see this, it does in fact conjure some memories. I cannot believe I still am capable of such.”

“Please, go ahead.”

“Ah, suppose I tell you something about this man that you won’t like?”

“I would be surprised if you didn’t. What information I’ve come up with suggests he’d just done something that resulted in some kind of scandal and returned to Polk County in shame. And I assume since it was the custom, that as part of the apparatus that ran Polk County in those days, he was party to all matter of graft, grift, and bribe.”

“Perhaps… I wouldn’t know any of that. But I did notice that he smelled like Daddy, which was my code for whiskey on his breath. I remember too that he had the sort of over-friendliness, over-politeness, over-precision that attends someone in a state of alcoholic blur who is pretending to be sober.”

“He seems to have had a drinking problem. I’m guessing it started in 1934.”

“What happened to him in 1934?”

“That’s the mystery I’m trying to solve. I know that later it got so bad that he started going to a Baptist Prayer Camp for help. But the Lord was otherwise occupied.”

“The Baptists talk to God, you know, so if they couldn’t help him, he was beyond redemption. Are you sure you want to know?”

“No. But I am sworn to try my damnedest.”

“Fair enough. All right, he was, as I said, slightly drunk. Nobody said a thing, but I could smell it. He must have favored rye, as my father did. There were other things manifest now that I remember. He was treated by all with great respect. It was clear many viewed him with awe and considered themselves lucky to be in his presence. Perhaps it was all those medals he won in his two armies.”

“He had also shot it out with some very bad fellows from Little Rock, and when the smoke cleared, he was still standing and they were not. Actually, that happened several times with various fellows, and he was always the one left standing in the end.”

“Yes, that was the aura. He was the gunfighter. But at the same time, even as I sensed that, I can remember not fearing him. He didn’t make you uneasy. He seemed a good man, to a ten-year-old girl. I remember that plaid jumper I wore on special occasions. Each of the crossing guards got a medal, but because I had never been late or missed a day, I was considered the best. I was rather proud of that medal; it remains the only prize I ever won. It also was the first time I ever succeeded at anything, and I had been considered a dull girl. But having a big important man like The Sheriff give me that medal, and hold my hand, and telling me I should be proud, that was one of my favorite moments.”

“I’m glad he was part of that for you.”

“I am too. Maybe he wasn’t the bastard you think.”

“We’ll have to see.”

“Now I am getting a memory. It’s gurgling out of my unconscious. Is it real or is it a figment? No, I think it’s real.”

They waited. The old lady closed her eyes, as if waiting for the séance to begin, then laughed.

“Oh, yes: the ear.”

“The ear?”

“You can’t see it here. His head is turned slightly. It was his right ear. The top half of it was bandaged. It could not have been a major wound. I mean, an ear. The top of an ear! But it wore some gauze wrapping and adhesive tape. Yes, definitely. Had he been in a minor accident?”

“I don’t know. I’ll go back to the newspaper and see if there’s any mention.”

He sat back, looked at Nikki, who nodded.

“I can’t tell you how much you’ve helped me. You’ve given me something I didn’t have before: an ear.”

After some farewell ceremony, they left the old woman, found a place to eat, and then headed back to D.C. He would drop Nikki off at her apartment, then head out to Nick’s, where he was bunking, to see if Nick had come up with anything.

As he dropped her off, she said, “By the way, are you aware that you’re being followed?”

22

Charles took the freight elevator down, stepped into the Chicago heat — it hit him like a hammer — and walked the few blocks to State. Chicago’s main stem was thronged. It was the season of the straw hat, that flat-brimmed pancake head cover that had always seemed ridiculous to Charles. These big-city folks, how did they think they looked? But everywhere, the disk-like things bobbed and swayed and jiggled, their wearers seeming to believe in their magic cooling powers, though faces ashine with sweat in the harsh sun seemed to belie that faith.

Charles himself, even in cotton khaki, sweated badly as he moved the two blocks to the huge hulk of the Maurice Rothschild department store and found the central phone booth outside the main entrance. Fortunately, it was empty, and wiping his brow with a handkerchief, Charles entered and slid the door shut — even hotter! — took the phone off its cradle and pressed the lever down, putting the phone to ear. He wasn’t much for pretending, but he made a halfhearted attempt to play the game, and Uncle Phil’s spies must have been efficient, for in a few seconds the phone rang.

“Swagger.”

“Well, aren’t you the hero.” It was the creamy voice of the man on the park bench, assured, vaguely New York, smoother than it ought to be.

“So what is this?”

“Your lucky day.”

“Okay.”

“No names. But there’s a cop in the East Chicago police force so crooked, he can’t find a bed to lie flat in.”

Uncle Phil waited for his laugh, but Charles wasn’t a laugher.

“Anyhow, he’s trying to sell out Johnny D.”

“All right,” said Charles, “I am impressed.”

“He knows a gal — this is the only name: Anna — she’s an ex-madam, was in the whore trade since before you were born. Her mess is, she’s some kind of European, she’s in trouble with Immigration, and they want to ship her back to her country, to which she’s in no hurry to go.”

“Got it,” said Charles, thinking, Get to the point!

“She runs a North Side rooming house, on the outskirts of respectability. It seems her newest roomer is a tall bub with a way about him. Lots of cash, flashy dresser, the dames got all their skivvies wet for him.”

“This guy would be Johnny?”

“You’re on it. So the deal is, Anna’s willing to give up Johnny in exchange for help with Immigration. That’s why the deal is coming to you, federal government, instead of local palookas, who can’t do a thing for her.”

“Give up how?”

“You’d have to discuss that with her.”

“What’s the timing look like?”

“She wants to move fast so she doesn’t end up back in Sylvania or Pennsylvania or Transylvania or wherever it is. You could have him inside of a week.”

Charles took a deep breath.

“This cop, will he be trouble?”

“No. He’ll get a message from certain folks I know to back off on this one. He’ll handle arrangements, put it together. He wants to be in on the pinch, or shoot — whichever — but he’s not a worry. He’ll either play ball or go for a swim in the lake with a refrigerator.”

“You guys play rough.”

“It’s the only way.”

The moon was a sliver, the lake a sheet of motionless gray, though here and there reflections winked. Behind them, the well-lit skyline of Chicago declared itself in dazzling illumination, the irregularity of the lights communicating the complexity of the architecture. Each vertical spurt of brightness stood for a building, too many of them to count, and between the buildings Charles could see more buildings, an infinity of buildings. Every two minutes the pulse of light from the Lindbergh Beacon atop the Palmolive Building swept over them, and when its brightness temporarily vanished, the glow of a metropolis going full blast rose in a great pink-orange crown over the skyline. The water lapped lazily against the concrete blocks of the revetment, and out there on the lake, a few lights disclosed vessels, whether yachts or barges being unknown.

There were two black Division Fords parked on this deserted stretch of shoreline a few miles north of the World’s Fair of 1933, now 1934, on new landfill extending the lakefront east, claiming it from the big waters. Someday it would be parkland, but now it looked like a bleak battlefield.

In the first Ford, Mel Purvis sat, elegant as usual, and behind him, in the backseat, Ed Hollis and Clarence Hurt sat with Thompsons, fully loaded with big fifty-round drums, bolts locked back, safety levers down, ready to pour out streams of fire in case of ambush of some sort. Both the young agents had taken their jackets off, wore bulletproof vests over their shirts, but still had their ties cinched tight, their collars starched and pinned, and hats — those straw boaters — atop. You never could tell when the Director was watching.

In the second car, Charles sat behind the wheel and Sam Cowley was in the backseat. Both were armed with handguns, and a Thompson and a Model 97 riot gun rested in the trunk, Charles was smoking, and the air felt heavier than saturated cotton.

“Are they late, Sheriff?” asked Sam.

“Still two minutes to go,” said Charles after checking his Bulova. “I hope they show. I hope this one don’t blow away like all the others.”

“But you think this Zarkovich seemed solid?”

“He knows the game. That’s not saying he’s some Angel of Virtue, but he knows the rules and doesn’t want us pissed at him because he knows how much heat the Division can stoke.”

“One of the advantages of working for the biggest boys on the block,” said Sam. “I hope I don’t have to shoot a Tommy gun tonight. I’ve never touched one in my life.”

“I’ll teach you. When I’m done, you’ll be able to shoot ducks with the goddamned thing.”

“Ha! Now, that’s optimism.”

At that point, a car turned off the Outer Drive onto this gravelly wasteland, dimmed its lights, and proceeded slowly toward the two government vehicles. It arrived, pulled off the road nearby, and went dark.

“Okay,” said Sam. “You’re on, Charles.”

Charles said nothing. He exited the car, tossed his half-smoked tailor-made away, and lounged against the fender, enjoying a bit of offshore breeze, as a figure emerged from the newly arrived car.

“Swagger?” said Detective Zarkovich.

“Yep,” said Swagger, and the man, heavyset, with a rather pouchy, glum Serbian face, came over. Blue double-breasted, Panama. Cigar.

“Is she here?” Charles asked.

“Yeah, but she’s a little fragile. Was crying all the way over. Doesn’t want to do this, but she don’t want a one-way to Bucharest either. What’s a gal going to do? I guess what she needs to do.”

“It’s a tough life if you’re a whore,” said Charles.

“I’ve noticed. Anyway, you’ve got your big man?”

“The biggest. Purvis is in the other car, the real power belongs to Cowley. He’s here to make a deal.”

“Nobody in that other car’s going to go nuts or anything?”

“They’re trained men. The best.”

“Okay, and it’s accepted, my stuff? I get to be in on the bust, I get credit. Someone tells my chief what a hero I am. I get the reward.”

“Not sure about the reward, and never said I was. The other stuff is all right.”

“Okay, I’ll get her.”

He watched the man return to his vehicle, knock on the rear window until it was rolled down. After a conference, the door opened and a leggy broad in a bucket cap and chemise stepped out, elegant in both dress and comportment, but a little shaky in the legs, as if one of her heels was loose. Even from afar, Charles could see the way her large eyes were spotlighted by the artful cosmetics around them. She looked like a silent-screen star.

Holding her arm, Zarkovich escorted her to the car. Charles tipped his hat, said, “Ma’am,” and opened the door. She slid in gracefully.

On instruction, Charles went behind the driver’s seat. Sam wanted a witness.

“Please, make yourself comfortable, Mrs. Sage,” said Sam confidently. “This is a conversation, not an interrogation. Smoke, if you care to.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, for us to help you, you have to tell us how you can help us. You understand that?”

“Of course.”

“So please proceed.”

She told the story in her vaguely foreign-shaded language, th’s becoming v’s, vowels elongating, the strange rhythms of Eastern Europe like a gravy over her words. She ran a rooming house, and had done some things in her past that made it clear that she wasn’t the sort to cry to the cops. Various folks in town found that useful, and she became used to extremely virile types overpaying for two nights and disappearing without a trace. It was known as a place where you could go to earth. A few weeks ago, a big slugger had come to rent. Handsome, well-dressed, wonderful personality, catnip to women, lots of cash. She too was attracted, even if he’d quickly taken up with one of her roomers, Polly Hamilton (“Ze noize from ze room. Mattress springs—bonk, bonk, bonk—all night long!”). Finally, she figured out who he had to be, and he read it in her eyes, and they had a friendly chat. He didn’t seem too concerned. He thought he was invulnerable. In fact, they frequently went places as a threesome, the stud and two very attractive gals. Nobody ever really noticed, it was so amazing! It was because he was so relaxed all the time, so happy and outgoing, and people were drawn to him. They’d even gone to the police station a few times!

Sam nodded, taking this in without comment.

But the situation had changed radically last Wednesday: an earlier conviction had finally caught up to her, and a letter from Immigration ordered her deported as an undesirable alien, even proclaiming a date by which she must be gone from the United States, under penalty of arrest and imprisonment. She began to weep.

“I cannot go back. There is nothing there for me, and war will come, mark my words. I have nobody in the world, and what I’ve built here is more than I’ve ever had. I cannot lose.”

“All right,” said Sam evenly, reaching out to put a calming hand on her shoulder, “let’s see what can be done. I can offer no guarantees. But if you figure significantly in the apprehension of John Dillinger, I will write a strong letter on your behalf to the Director of Immigration. Moreover, our Division has considerable influence in Washington and that influence will be deployed to the maximum. I can have a lawyer draw this up as a formal agreement or I can ask you to trust me. I’d prefer the latter, because it’s faster and less complicated, and more confidential.”

“I understand. You seem trustworthy.”

“Excellent.”

“So first I offer you this. He has had surgery to change his face. A man cut him or scraped him, he says he almost died. Polly and I nursed him. He was in bandages for a week and now he’s taken them off, obviously. I have to say, it didn’t do much good. It’s the same Johnny, only now he’s what one would call droopy or melted. But the same face, the same bright eyes, the same crooked smile and hearty laugh. To me, it was a lot of pain and anguish he suffered for nothing.”

“Good to know,” said Sam. “I’ll alert my men.”

There was a pause, as if neither could think of a ploy, Sam not wanting to seem too greedy and forceful, Anna Sage not wanting to give up Johnny without at least some Theater of Regret.

“Mrs. Sage,” Sam finally said, “I think you know where we are. This doesn’t work unless you can put Johnny in our hands.”

“You won’t hurt him?”

“We never shoot first. But… these situations can be tricky, tough to handle, even with the most experienced of men. When the guns come out, what happens next is sometimes hard to control. So I will say that it is not our intention to shoot him. I have specific instructions, to that end, from Washington and my Director.”

“I just fear some trigger-happy child with a gun.”

“Mrs. Sage, the agent in the front seat will be the arresting officer. He has much experience in these matters and is noted for his calm disposition. Why don’t you ask him?”

She turned and fixed Charles in her strangely huge and mesmerizing eyes. It was like being seduced by Gloria Swanson.

“Ma’am,” he said, “I will make no promises neither. But I can say that I have no desire, no need, no hunger to kill nobody. I’m too old and salty to give a damn about reputation or fame. I don’t need the ruckus, the attention, the paperwork. I just want to get those cuffs locked, put him in the paddy, and then go out and fall off the wagon for the first time in five years.”

She actually smiled.

“All right,” she said.

The Marbro Theatre. On Halsted. For the air-conditioning and the beauty of the movie palace itself, not the movie, which only the girls wanted to see, Little Miss Marker, with that annoying little tot Charles could not abide. Tomorrow night, probably the 7:30 show. She’d call if it changed.

23

The joint was old; it was two farmhouses joined together on a nice piece of land just east of Curtiss Field — the roar of the engines arrived with regularity — and it had been a roadhouse for what seemed like centuries, one of those quiet places that nobody notices and yet is somehow always there, a reliable second choice for hooch or food. It had green-shuttered windows, gables, a riot of vegetation curling up its walls, and stood in a grove of trees. In the night, it sent shafts of light into the trees, which pitched shadows of leaves and branches everywhere in a kind of curlicue of light-dark, very pleasant to the eye.

Les got there first, with Fatso and Jack, and chose a dark booth at the back of the bar and settled in. A waitress came by; he ordered a Coca-Cola and the others took Hamm’s on draft. Then Jimmy Murray showed, a legend in the business, who, out of deference, was always called Mr. Murray. He’d put together the biggest train job in history, in Rondout, Illinois, back in ’24 for the Newton Gang. Nobody died, a lot of dough changed hands, and it entered outlaw history as the near-perfect job, if later Jimmy was nabbed for it and did a few years.

They talked shop for a bit, spending time, until Johnny and Homer arrived, Mr. Murray more or less running the show, making sure everything had been arranged according to the specifications of his plan. He also reported on his latest intelligence on the train, due in on Friday, August 10, from Des Moines, the train among all the August trains that would probably carry the most swag, as he had found that, quite often, the smaller federal depositories moved cash only once a month, usually on the second Friday. The damned safe would be busting with cash, and he hoped they had a good guy with the soup, as that stuff was tricky, you didn’t want to get too fancy with it since you could blow up the goods along with the steel, as well as blow your arms off.

“He’s good. Uses it underground, a miner. He knows how it is planted and detonated,” said Jack. “He did a demo for me downstate. He was good enough to blow the hinges off a car trunk without damaging the spare inside.”

Then a shadow fell across the table, and they looked up and saw that it was Johnny, the star himself, almost as if he’d arranged his own backlighting, Hollywood-style; he looked fine, as usual, in a sharp double-breasted, a striped tie pinned tight in a round starchy collar, and a straw boater low over his eyes. He looked more like Gable than a gangster. He’d grown a little mustache, and he had the twinkle in his eye that just drew everybody in.

“Is this the Our Gang comedy cast?” he asked, heartily. “Where’s Spanky?”

That drew a laugh, and he squeezed in, gestured to the barkeep for something on tap, and looked at them all with some benevolence showing on his big face.

“So nice to be together again. The best guys I ever worked with! Les, a pleasure. Helen’s okay, I hope. And the great Mr. Murray, genius and master planner. And you other palookas, soldier boys in our war on the banks. You guys are the best!”

Handshakes and backslaps commenced all around, as with any bunch of men getting together to get lubed up a bit, smoke, and talk business. And if Johnny was the star, he didn’t play it up as much as he could have but was generous in attentions to his fellow pros. But Les, sober, had to start off on a sour note.

“Where is he?”

“Homer?” asked Johnny, struggling to get one of Fatso’s stogies lit off Fatso’s match. “Oh, you know Homer, he comes and goes. He said he’d be here, but no sign of him.”

“That sonovabitch. We need another gun on this job,” said Les.

“Maybe that slug softened his head,” said Johnny. “That was a hard conk. He said he had a headache for a month.”

“Christ!” said Les. “If he isn’t making bum jokes, he’s not showing up.”

“Les,” said Jack, “he was sure there covering for you and Johnny and me when we were getting back to the car at South Bend.”

“The one thing you can count on with that guy,” said Les, “is that you can’t count on a goddamned thing.”

“Les, just relax,” soothed Johnny, big brother of them all. “Maybe he’ll show, maybe he won’t. That’s Homer. He’s still a solid man when the lead is whistling. And anyhow, I’m sure we can run this with five guns instead of six. Don’t you think we can, Mr. Murray?”

Jimmy Murray said, “Well, Johnny, six would be better, but five will work. Depends on how much fuss these Post Office boys care to put up. And I have to say, one less split, let’s not forget that. Drink to one less split!”

He raised his drink, and all came up in unison, even Les’s glass of Coke, if a bit late and without much energy.

“Okay, Les, you’re the boss, brief me on the play and tell me what I’ve got to do to keep my new girlfriend in mink and diamonds, and cover the miserable nags that I have such a gift for picking.”

Les pretty much reiterated the Murray plan, and Mr. Murray chipped in now and then with clarifications or amendments. Even the guys who’d heard it a dozen times ate it up, and Johnny was with it in an instant.

“I’ve never worked nitro before,” he said. “I’m a little shaky there. You guys sure it’s safe?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, “this guy’s a genius with it. The best deal with nitro is, you don’t need a lot. You don’t need wires, batteries, a plunger, that kind of stuff. And you can control it very precisely, which is why it’s so helpful in coal mining. You can kind of chisel a vein out, if you need. You carry it in a box packed with excelsior. Then you put it in locks or hinges, or whatever you’re going to blow, with an eyedropper. A little dab’ll do ya.”

“How does he blow?”

“You just use a regular fused blasting cap. Drop in the soup, cram in the cap — see, I’m talking about a lock here — maybe tape it to the lock. Then just light the fuse, three seconds later the fuse pops the ignition mix — little bang — and that produces enough shock to light the soup — big bang. Very concentrated blast area, cleans out the guts of the lock or blows the hinge free.”

“Just don’t forget to bring the matches,” said Johnny, and everyone laughed.

It was a happy time. The waitress kept bringing brews from Augie, behind the bar, as well as on-the-house plates of onion rings, pork rinds, pickles, little sausages on the ends of toothpicks, even some raw oysters. It was fun being a bank robber if you got to hang out with Johnny D. Maps came out, routes were examined, Fatso updated the group on Carey’s progress with the cars, and the guys had a nice night out, as, in time, the conversation drifted to baseball — Johnny was a big Cubs guy and had been to a batch of games since South Bend. And of course, finally, broads, and everyone gave Johnny the floor, for he had a gift at picking up lookers and going all the way around the track with them. But he was a gentleman about it, not one of these so-then-she-sucked-my-cock guys, and managed to communicate the sophistication of exchange he had achieved with new gal Polly without resorting to Anglo-Saxon.

Then track tips, hot ponies being named; then Mob gossip, what was Nitti up to, who would run the South Side for him now that Alberto Mappa was in the hospital with the gout — some said syph! — and on to where were the rackets going, what was the future of armed robbery in a land where all cops were in instant communication via radio, how big would the Division get, and wasn’t this little punk Purvis a pain in the ass with his yip-yap for the papers every day? Fatso had heard that even the Director was getting sick of it!

Then, close to midnight, the new assignments were set — Jack would find a tourist cabin and a safe joint to stage from, and Fatso would put together a cache of a thousand rounds of .45 for the Thompsons, Les would scout alternative getaway routes, while Mr. Murray would monitor his Rock Island sources for any changes in the schedule, track route, train makeup, whatever. Johnny, the hottest man in America, would just stay put.

Then it was time to go, the tab was paid, and the boys filtered out, sadly giving up the comforting swish of the four-bladed ceiling fans that pushed the Wayfarer Inn’s atmosphere into motion and kept everyone cool, if not quite to air-conditioning standards. They wandered into the parking lot, now empty except for their cars, where shadows of vegetation cut intricate silhouettes into the lights from the gabled windows, the air was tropical thick with humidity and bug life, and a whisper of moon occasionally slithered free of the low clouds. “Stormy Weather” on the radio somewhere. The banshee howl of big-piston jobs turning over at Curtiss arrived and departed regularly.

Les pulled Johnny away, into the shadows.

“Really, Les,” Johnny said, misunderstanding Les’s need for a private tête-à-tête, “don’t worry about Homer. That’s just him, nothing personal. He’s a kind of a flighty guy, and this Conforti gal is teaching him stuff he didn’t know existed.”

“It’s not that, Johnny. Listen, I didn’t want to run this in front of the guys because maybe there’s some stuff you don’t want getting out.”

“Okay, kid, shoot. Out with it. What is it? Tell Father O’Malley.”

“It ain’t nothing like that. Johnny, I’m worried.”

He told him the story of the strange guy showing up on the crest, the marksman who almost nailed him on the button from a hundred fifty out with a .45 auto.

“Good shooting,” Johnny had to admit.

“Yeah, the shooting was terrific. They say the Division is bringing in Western gunfighters — you know, cowboy experts who’ve got notches on their pistolas—to take us on. No more Mickey Mouse lawyers who get scared if they have to shoot and don’t like guns because they’re so loud. Experts, cool hands, old Texas Rangers and cow-town marshals, you know the type. Gun buzzards.”

“Maybe so. As yet, haven’t met a guy who could outdraw or outshoot me. But it’s changing, that I grant you. As this radio stuff spreads, it could be that—”

“It’s not that, Johnny. It’s not how good the guy was; it’s that he was there at all. What, he just shows up? How could that happen? Not a one-in-a-million chance, when the bank has already gone tilt five seconds earlier when the two State cops show. It’s like two double snake eyes, one after the other. It never happens that way.”

“Well… of course it can, and I bet it has. The dice don’t know what number is up. They just end up where they end up.”

“That’s what everybody keeps saying. But I say no. Not in this universe anyhow.”

“Okay, what are you getting at?”

“There’s a leak,” said Les.

“What?”

“Somebody’s talking.”

“How would they know? They’ve got nothing to leak. Kid, I’m just an Indiana farm boy, but who could put a picture together on us? We’re all over the place, we’re here, we’re there, we’re everywhere, we’re nowhere.”

“Only one outfit. You know, the Eye-ties and the Jews.”

“I’m not getting it. What the hell do they care?”

“I’ve got some ideas, but figure them later. Just think about it from a feasibility point of view. We sort of live with, and off, the big outfit. They control all the joints we visit, the taverns, the whore cribs, the clubs; even this joint here, they have a piece of it. If someone high up wanted to put the picture together on us, he could. Wouldn’t be easy, would require lots of calling, lots of figuring, information gathering, and organizing, this, that. Finding out what eyes are seeing and ears are hearing all over the place, then sitting down with all of it and putting it together like a jigsaw. It could be done, if for some reason Nitti wanted it done. He’d have a guy high up, probably his slickest, smartest guy, not a machino guy or an enforcer but a thinker, he’d have him put it together.”

“Just because it’s possible,” said Johnny, thinking it over, “don’t make it probable. It seems like a lot of trouble. What’s the point? We all know it’s going to be finished sooner or later, once they get the radios in all the cars and do away with the state-line or county-line bullshit and make the fast guns illegal. I know the big-score days are ending, just as you do, and, just as you do, I want one big one, one more perfect hit, and then I want to buy land and a house overlooking the Pacific in Tijuana, with you and Helen and the kids on the left and Homer and Mickey, and maybe their kids, on the right. I’ll be with Polly, and when Billie gets clear, I’ll send for her, and she and Polly can work it out, maybe Anna will sort of keep it straight, and everybody will live happily ever after.”

“That’s what I want too, Johnny, except without the Homer-and-Mickey part. But, yeah, Mexico, warm skies, sun, palms, forever. My kids would be so happy there.”

“Then we’ll make it happen. Forget about the Italians. They got other things to worry about, like where the dough’s going to come from now that Prohibition has gone away, and then there’s income taxes, as Capone found out, and which goombah wants to take over which territory and which goombah he has to torpedo in order to do that. They hate each other as much as they hate us, maybe more, and they hate each other more than they even hate the cops, and they don’t give a damn about the Division, which hasn’t even noticed them. It’s not in their interests to conspire against us.”

“Well…” said Les. Being a trifle emotional, he couldn’t keep the anguish out of his face.

“Go on, spit it out.”

“It’s not in their interests up front, that I agree with. But those guys have been at this stuff for a thousand years and they’re always thinking ahead, seeing the future. They knew Prohibition was ending and they were ready for it; they’re moving in Hollywood, they’re trying to set up a national wire so they can control gambling everywhere, they’re looking for a city to own, a gambling town, like Hot Springs, which they’ll take over hard one of these days — I’ve heard, they’re even looking at Cuba — it goes on and on. Plus, they’re unifying — Chicago, New York, Cleveland — it’s not one outfit per town but a single organization coast to coast.”

“We’re farm boys scratching for chicken feed in towns meatball never heard of, like South Bend and Sioux City,” said Johnny. “And next month, Wheaton. Do you think meatball gives a crap about Wheaton? It’s too much trouble to step on us, I guarantee it. Les, you get so wrought up sometimes. You got to stay calm for this kind of work. Listen to me, kid, I love you, but you got to find a way to put this screwball shit out of your head. You could spook the boys, and you do not want to be on a job with spooked boys. No room for mistakes in our line of work.”

“Okay, Johnny. Maybe you’re right.”

“You should be writing for the movies. You got that kind of mind.”

“Ha-ha — wouldn’t that be something? Me writing for Cagney and Robinson.”

“Crazier stuff has happened. How crazy is this? Speaking of movies, the girls are dragging me to see that little kid I can’t stand, you know, ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’”—and he jumped around like a moppet on a string, prancing it up for comic effect, and Les had to laugh hard, the big guy, broad shoulders, handsome as Gable, imitating a dancing child.

“Still, it’s a way to beat the heat,” Johnny said when he’d stopped dancing. “And I love that big house, the Marbro. It’s like a palace or something.”

“You ought to see this Manhattan Melodrama,” said Les. “It’s still around. Helen and I saw it a few nights ago. Gable is the gangster — Blackie, I think — and it’s pretty good. He’s not like any gangster I ever saw, but, still, he just makes you go with him all the way.”

“Would the girls like it? I guess they would, if it’s got Gable — they like Gable. Hell, I like Gable.”

“He should play you, Johnny. What a picture that would be. Chicago Melodrama, with Gable as Dillinger! It would make a million bucks!”

“Nah,” said Johnny, “they make you die at the end of pictures. It’s the law now.”

24

Swagger pulled away from her apartment building, drove three blocks and took a random turn down a residential street, flicked off his lights and waited.

Nothing. No car turned down the thoroughfare on his tail.

Followed? Who the hell would follow me?

But, then, Nikki was unusually sensitive to being watched or followed. Maybe it was a Swagger thing, as he himself had it; that is, the weird, hackles-rising shiver when a predator’s eyes crossed over you. It had saved his life a time or two, and he knew enough at his age to trust it. Yet he hadn’t felt it, she had.

On the other hand, his mind was all knitted up over 1934 and his grandfather. He’d been talking a blue streak on the subject, no doubt boring her to death. So he had been distracted, his mind occupied with theoretical prospects, the animal part of him even further away than it was normally. She, on the other hand, had probably stopped listening and was gazing off dully into space when her deep brain heard it, the whisper of the ax, the trill of the wolf, the snap of the hammer cocking. She’d gotten it, he hadn’t.

He was puzzled. He waited a few more minutes, alone on a dark street full of beautiful old houses under elms, since he was in the northwest quadrant of D.C., and he knew enough to realize that was where “quality” lived. But no one came, there was no further traffic, and his internal radar system picked up nothing.

He started again, drove a few blocks and wound his way back to the main drag — Wisconsin — and turned left, aiming to head down to Georgetown, take the Key Bridge to Virginia, then the parkway to the Beltway to Nick’s big house near McLean. He drove, checking mirrors for headlights that didn’t waver in their pace or distance from him, and saw nothing. At a busy intersection, he looked around, committing to memory the cars behind him, and then pulled into a street parking space to let them slide by. He waited, he waited, he waited, and then resumed his journey. At the next stoplight, he made the same quick check to see if any of the cars were from the first batch. Nope, nothing.

He drove on back to McLean, again monitoring for pace and distance behind him, saw nothing. He finally arrived at the road off of which Nick’s cul-de-sac was sited and, a street before, turned off, parked, went dark. No car followed along the road for some time, much less pulled into his street. He felt secure now, so he completed the journey to Nick’s, waiting in the driveway for any action. There was none.

He went in the house with his key, found no one awake, reset the alarm code, and went straight to the guest room to go to bed. But first, he called his wife and had a nice old-marriage chat, and then said, “Look, this is silly, but you haven’t seen anybody around, have you?”

“Around? What could that possibly mean?”

“You know, lurking, following, peeking.”

“Lord, Bob, you promised on this one, no adventures.”

“I can’t see that this is an adventure. It’s only my sordid old past. It shouldn’t be of interest to anybody, it makes no sense, but I just had a feeling I was being followed.” He edited Nikki out of the sequence to keep it simple.

“Maybe it’s just paranoia. You have many reasons to be paranoid, and I don’t know why you never are.”

The answer: his enemies tended to be dead, not in the shadows.

“Okay,” he said, “maybe it’s just that,” and signed off.

The next morning — he lingered in bed to avoid Nick’s wife, Sally, who had never been a big Bob Lee fan — he put the question to Nick over coffee.

“No,” said Nick. “Nothing.”

“No strange parked cars, no weird sensations of being observed through glass, no odd coincidence like the stranger turning up over and over again.”

“I haven’t been paying attention. But I’d like to think I’d notice.”

Bob told him of last night’s oddness.

“She wouldn’t feel something or see something if something weren’t there.”

“I’ll bump my head up to Condition Yellow for a few days,” said Nick.

“Appreciate that. See, what bothers me is not the possibility that she’s wrong but that she’s right. Because if she is, these guys were really good and when she picked them up they disengaged. How would they know their cover was blown?”

“Isn’t that an interesting question.”

“They’re so good, in fact, either a. they don’t exist or b. they’re high-skill operators and that kind of talent doesn’t come cheap, so whoever — again, if he exists — is behind this is investing big money in the op.”

“So it would seem,” said Nick.

“Now, let me ask you: you know everything I know about my grandfather, you know everything I’ve learned, maybe you know more because you’ve read the files a lot more carefully than I have, can you see any reason in any of it for anybody else to be interested?”

“Anybody else? Do you have an idea?”

“I have nothing. But, after all, I’m known to the Agency, I’m known to your folks, I’m known to various alphabet agencies that don’t exist, and it’s not impossible that one of them has opened a new file on me.”

“Maybe it’s the IRS. Have you paid your taxes?”

“Always over-generously.”

“No alimony, no back payments, no debts, no angry husbands, croupiers, environmental impact agencies, nothing from your big land deal?”

“I don’t think so. Nothing I can see.”

“Well, maybe the Agency or Homeland Security have you tabbed as an antiterror consultant, subject sniping, and they’re discreetly checking you out before they make an offer, because if you’re up to something nasty, they don’t want to go down with you.”

“I suppose. But I’ve done nothing for months but sit on the porch like a lump and, all of a sudden, I go off on this little crusade to learn about a man who’s been dead since 1942 and suddenly, somewhere, there seems to be a stirring.”

“Any organized crime irons in the fire?”

“Nothing I’ve turned up. Maybe the old bastard’s downfall at the Bureau involved organized crime somehow, but, really, that was over eighty years ago. Who would care now?”

“Well,” said Nick, “if you’re still thinking conspiracy, it’s my experience that, more often than not, if any kind of conspiracy, even potential conspiracy, exists, it’d for one reason: not intelligence, not revenge, not justice, not anger, it’s dough, it’s bucks.”

“That’s a very good point, and I agree that the profit motive is the motive in just about everything.”

“So… where’s the lost fortune? Under the X in that Boy Scout map Granddad drew? Where’s the treasure? Are you likely to turn up the lost John Dillinger millions? Did Baby Face steal an Old Master? Did any of the boys steal diamonds, stock certificates that later became Xerox, land deeds, gold-mine maps?”

This was the stumper.

“That thousand uncirculated I found in the strongbox. Maybe they think there’s more, but I can’t believe there was, as the sums those days were so much smaller. Dillinger stole about a hundred fifty thousand over all his robberies, and Baby Face was way behind him. So even if there’s a hundred fifty grand under the X in that map, that’s not so much by today’s standards.”

“No, it’s not.”

“And even if there were, uncirculated money from 1934 would be damned hard to reintegrate for profit without lots of attention.”

“That’s true,” said Nick. “So thinking about units of wealth disproportionate to their small size that could be hidden in that final X-marks-the-spot, diamonds would seem to be one of the possibles, because you could get a couple of millions’ worth of stones into a briefcase. Big uncut stones, unregistered. That might be worth mounting some kind of operation.”

“I don’t see anything about diamonds in this. All those other things, nothing either. These farm boys were strictly in a cash-and-carry business — as in, they carried a lot of cash out the door. I just don’t see any kind of hidden wealth in play here.”

“Many questions, no answers.”

“Maybe it’s just my imagination, but then there’s one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t have no imagination.”