“So why are the Italians helping us?”
“Because they know war makes us better and stronger. The longer the war, the better and stronger we get. Just like the army in the Great War. But what happened to the army after the Great War? It got smaller, weaker, less efficient. The good people got bored because there were no interesting fights, budgets were cut, promotions frozen. So they left, looking for more money and a sense of purpose. The army turned into a nest for the hacks, dilettantes, and timeservers, for those with shallow talent but deep ambition. For the Hugh Cleggs of the world. That’s what the Italians want: they want us to be a pathetic little group of hacks and dilettantes, men of shallow talent and deep ambition. They want the Division full of Cleggs, not Swaggers. They want to defeat us in the big war by helping us win the little war.”
50
McLEAN, VIRGINIA
The present
RAWLEY STUCK HIS THUMB in Braxton’s ribs, bringing his brother jerkily out of a wonderful dream that consisted of Dallas Cowgirl cheerleaders (all of them), white snakeskin Lucchese boots, many quality folks who called him sir, and an Escalade in gold, with gold hubcaps, grille, and aerial.
“Wha! Wha! Wha!” he said, his hands naturally clenching into hammer-like fists, for a poke in the ribs usually meant a fight was oncoming and he always wanted to get the first lick in.
But Rawley just handed him a pair of earphones that ran from the StingRay to which he himself was connected and whose LEDs displayed Bob’s cell number, and immediately, as Braxton pulled the phones on, he heard Swagger’s voice, and a new one.
“A Monitor, you say?” asked the new voice.
“That’s right.”
“Baby Face Nelson’s Monitor?”
“That’s right.”
“Verifiably?”
“I believe elsewhere in the notes it is admitted that Lebman sold Jimmie Smith, a well-known Nelson fake name, a Monitor for four thousand dollars. My grandfather, whose employment in the FBI we can now verify, never claims that it’s Baby Face’s, but the other guns in the cache would almost certainly further verify it. Two Thompsons, a Remington riot gun, a .38 Super, and, not in this cache but from the same source, a .45 automatic that can be verified as the gun that killed Dillinger. Maybe some other assorted Baby Face Nelson handguns that can be verified.”
“All of it untouched since nineteen-when?”
“Nineteen thirty-four, when all this was the news.”
“Well,” said the voice, “on the open market, it might be problematical to move the automatic weapons. The NFA act of course means that all guns had to be registered by 1984, and new ones couldn’t be added. But—”
“But what? Come on, tell me, dammit, Marty.”
“Well . . .” This Marty seemed suddenly reticent.
“Did he say where this shit was?” asked Braxton, during the pause, and Rawley nodded, scribbled a note, and handed it over.
“He said he figured the map out. The building is a hunting cabin his grandfather owned, his father owned, and he guesses he now owns, in the Ouachita Mountains.”
Braxton nodded.
“Look, without my testimony, you’re in prison,” Swagger said, “and your little scam is the talk of the industry. You’re professionally dead. Plus, you’re getting fucked every night by the Pagan Animals M.C. So I’m thinking, you owe me.”
“All right, all right, Swagger. Well, the thing most people brokering this discovery would do is try and find a museum that would take them so they could be appreciated for their historical significance. It would be a magnificent gesture, earning endless goodwill, and also, assuming the paperwork was carefully handled, a legal one. I’m not sure of the tax ramifications, but I believe a clever accountant could take a substantial deduction for the effort.”
“But that’s small-time and you know it. An operator like you wouldn’t never let a chance to make big bucks go to waste.”
“You’re so critical of me,” said Marty. “You’re so judgmental.”
“Get on with it.”
“Well, there are offshore collectors. Some in South America, some in the Middle East, some in Russia. Men of great wealth and greed with very little interest in trivial legalities.”
“So if you had the guns and the verification, you could do a deal with somebody somewhere—an oil billionaire, a cartel boss, a Russian mobster. How much?”
“I am confident those guns as described, verifiable, untouched since 1934, would be worth in toto no less than three million dollars. The Monitor is the queen of the collection. It would be an amazing addition to anyone’s collection. Three million, cash on the barrelhead. Fast, clean, no records. They’re very liquid. The problem would only be laundering the money, but an astute financial operator could handle it easily. The man in charge would need a rare combination of attributes—contacts, and a reputation in the fine-gun world, where the prices are getting astronomical, plus financial acumen: experience in moving sums around to disguise their origin and at the same time avoid the tax bite. I could name some people if you gave me a few days.”
“Yeah, Marty, get busy on that, will you?”
“I will. Thanks, by the way, for testifying on my behalf.”
“You’d steal the gold from your mother’s teeth on her deathbed, but I never thought for a second you’d be capable of taking part in a murder plot.”
“So harsh,” said Marty. “So harsh.”
With that Swagger broke contact, then called Memphis. It was a short call, just an announcement of his triumph and his plans to recover the treasure, would Nick care to come along?
“You just want me along to do the digging,” said Nick.
“Damned right,” said Swagger. “You got a back that still works.”
“Only on Tuesdays.”
“I can do Tuesday.”
“Hmm, Tuesday, November third, 2038?”
“I’ll write it down,” said Swagger.
“Maybe you ought to contact Treasury first,” said Nick.
“I’ll call my lawyer for advice, I guess. If he says we can put them in a bonded warehouse, or I can get Arkansas State Police to take temporary custodianship, that might work. But I don’t know if they’re there, I want to get that out of the way, and then we’ll see where we are.”
“Good, good.”
“I got to get up there, I figure Jake Vincent and his kids or one of the other Vincents can help me. I got to get a three-wheeler. I can find the place. It ain’t far from Hard Bargain Valley.”
“I do remember Hard Bargain Valley,” said Nick.
“I’ll bet you do. Anyway, this’ll take a little time. I’m aiming for, say, a week from now to get it all set up, the three-wheeler bought, borrowed, or rented, some picks and shovels, maybe a wagon to load the shit on behind the three-wheeler.”
“That would be the fifth,” said Nick.
“Yeah, that’s it. The fifth, write it down. Just for the security, I’ll go and dig the stuff up after dark. Can you go ahead and start talks with the historian? See if the Bureau is interested?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, talk to you later. Got some calls still to make.”
“Congratulations. Maybe the guns will tell us the story of how it all turned out.”
“If it’s worth telling.”
Braxton and Rawley waited, but Swagger evidently decided to put off calling his lawyer until the morning. When the eavesdropping phone relayed the sound of the even breathing of sleep, they disconnected.
“We got it,” said Braxton.
Rawley nodded. They shook hands, and hugged, and then a wolfish smile came across Braxton’s face. He got his own iPhone out and fingered a number.
“I just figured how to smoke a few more bucks out of our fat cat,” he said.
A few rings and the phone was answered.<
br />
“Yes? Oh, Christ, it’s late. You woke me up,” said Leon Kaye, from his bedroom in Little Rock.
“You’re about to be very glad I called,” said Braxton.
“Give me a second . . . Uh, oh, okay, let me get out of the bedroom . . . Okay, now I’m okay . . . You have some news?”
“Have I ever!” said Braxton, who then laid out what he had just learned.
At the end of it, Kaye said, “Marion ‘Marty’ Adams, he’s the dealer Swagger called. He plays his game very close to the edge. I don’t know how they know each other, but Adams is exactly the right person. I’m impressed. But, no matter. You know what has to be done?”
“I know what has to be done. Do you know what has to be done?”
“Uh, Braxton, I’m not sure I like your tone.”
“This next step has to be addressed. If we take the guns, but leave Swagger alive, he will hunt us down and hunt you down. That’s what he’s good at. That’s what he does.”
“Hmm,” said Kaye. “I don’t like discussing this.”
“It has to be discussed.”
“What are you proposing?”
“The hole that has the guns, it has to have Swagger in it when we close it up. That costs more. Get it?”
Nothing for a few seconds.
“I’m not sure I . . .”
“The alternative is a deep swim in an Ozark lake wearing a charm bracelet with a color television on it while the Russians play vodka pissing games in the boat two hundred feet above your head.”
“Do what has to be done.”
“You pay off the Russians, we take everything else. Got it? No profit for you, just survival. Got it?”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“We are hard men. We do hard things. That’s where the money is.”
“So be it.”
“All right, now you get somebody to get to the deed registration or tax records or plat index, or whatever it is, and you find the precise location of that property in the Ouachita near the National Forest. We have to be there before Swagger. No way in hell a couple triple cheeseburgers like us going to be able to follow him through the woods without him picking up on it.”
“Got it.”
“We have to be there, hunkered down, quiet as mice when he arrives.”
“You’re a little big for a mouse,” said Kaye. “You’re even a little big for triple cheeseburgers.”
51
MELROSE PARK, ILLINOIS
Mid-November 1934
“ICAN HARDLY WALK,” said J.P.
“You don’t have to walk. You just have to shoot,” said Les.
“I can’t bend, I can’t twist. I don’t even think I can get my head down to the sights.”
“You can do all those things if you practice. That’s why you have to practice now. So when you use it, it won’t be new, you won’t make mistakes and get yourself killed.”
“I have a better idea. Let’s go to Reno and work for Skabootch, Doc Bone, and the guys. Let’s live to be ninety. We’re going to die for sure, under your plan.”
Helen said, “Les, J.P. has a point. This is insane. Honey, you could get killed so easy. And then—”
“You two, what is this, some sort of plan you cooked up? You’re both against me.”
His voice rose, even if he didn’t mean it to.
They sat in the small, stuffy living room of a tourist cabin off the highway in Melrose Park. It was no swank Aurora Hotel, but it was a good place to go to ground.
Les hit his fist against his chest. The sound produced was a sort of bonk.
“It’ll stop anything up to a .30 caliber, and the Division hardly ever uses its .30s,” he said. “They’ll come at us with Thompsons, .45 autos, .38s, buckshot, and Super .38s. The steel stops ’em all.”
“I can hardly drive in it,” said J.P.
“Helen can drive. You can drive, can’t you, Helen?”
Les’s wife scrunched up her cute little face, communicating, yet hardly expressing, disagreement, but she yielded to the force of his urgency. “I suppose,” she said.
“Are you putting her in steel?” asked J.P.
“Nobody’s shooting at her.”
“No, but they’re shooting at the car. She’s in the car.”
“Helen will be fine. Nobody shoots women. This stuff saved my life at South Bend,” said Les. “Stopped a pistol shot cold. Otherwise, I’m now drinking with Johnny and Homer in hell’s hottest nightclub.”
The steel armor had been welded together by someone Tony Accardo knew. It was solid, tough, heavy, though less clumsy than the Knights of the Round Table stuff the cops bought from the police ordnance trade, which Les had worn at South Bend. It was like a sandwich board but cut slimmer, a more reasonable silhouette. The front plate had been fabricated off an actual human shape and thus had a bulge in it so that it didn’t bang against the stomach but cupped it instead. But, for comfort, that was the only feature. Each plate weighed fifteen pounds, and they were strapped together by heavy leather. They only extended to the waist, so that pants could be worn beneath, belted tight, while a shirt, tie, and jacket could be worn over. Thirty extra pounds, and if you were upright too long, the straps cut hard into your shoulders, and the whole rig took the energy out of you fast, so that once you survived the fight and your adrenaline was depleted, you were almost flattened by exhaustion. But it was the best rig that could be had, even if it left legs, pelvis, testicles, sides, and head open to incoming fire. The federals were trained to shoot midchest, and in battles they reverted to training, which meant they’d try to put their rounds into Les’s and J.P.’s chests.
“Okay on the vests,” said J.P., finally collapsing to the sofa in the tourist cabin. “The vests aren’t really the problem. The vests make sense, if we do the plan. It’s the plan that doesn’t make sense.”
Les sighed. He loved them both. But they did not see it. They could not grasp it. It was so clear to him. It was what had to be done.
“It’s one thing to go against the Italians,” said J.P. “But to go against the Italians, we first have to go through the Division. Now, I’m not good at counting—ha-ha—but even I can count to two, and that’s all of us, plus Helen, who drives but won’t shoot. Gee, forty Division agents with Thompson guns, maybe three hundred Italians also with Thompson guns: the odds don’t seem much in our favor.”
“Honey, honey, honey, listen to J.P. This is crazy. It’s suicide!”
“We have been betrayed,” said Les. “One of four guys collected dope from all over the region, put it together, and then ratted us out to the Justice Department. He has to be paid back. He murdered men we all loved. That can’t be forgotten, forgiven, postponed. The point has to be made, even to the Italians, that there are certain men who can’t be betrayed.”
“You’re crazy with honor. Are you some kind of knight or something? Where does all this pride and screwball guts come from? I thought you were a bank robber, Les, but you’re some kind of Avenging Angel of the bank robbery religion.”
“Look,” said Les, “the whole point of driving twelve hundred miles and fronting four grand was to get a Monitor. The Monitor is God. We see the Division boys before they see us. If they see us, we put a squirt of .30 into their engine blocks, and they’re out of the fight. That’s the power of the Monitor, but also the fact that it’s easy to handle and easy to manipulate, with that pistol grip and big compensator. We vanish without the car taking a hit. Then we know who it is. Carmine DePalma, North Side. Phil D’Abruzzio, West Side. Alberto Mappa, South Side. Antonio Bastianelli, the Loop. Tony has told us where each guy lives. We wait outside his house, he gets out of his car—or maybe he don’t even get out—we pull up, and I hose him down with the Monitor. That .30 caliber goes through any car like a home run through a window. We turn him to chop suey in five seconds. Then we�
�re gone. Reno, here we come. They never know who hit ’em until the word reaches them: you fucked with the man they call Baby Face Nelson, and Baby Face Nelson—that is, me, Lester Gillis—I fuck back, twice as hard. But by that time we’re under the auspices and protection of Doc Bone and Skabootch, and there’s nothing they can do about it. And, who knows, maybe thinking at least it’s over, Mr. Nitto gets sloppy. We come back and turn the Monitor on him. The Monitor doesn’t care how big he is, it just cares if he’s alive, because if he’s alive, the Monitor will make him dead.”
“Okay, Les,” said J.P., with a sigh. “I love you—you know that—I’ll go along. Helen loves you too. But at least I don’t have to fuck you like she does.”
52
A JOINT
CHICAGO
Mid-November 1934
COLD DAY. The hawk snapped through Chicago’s harsh streets, lifting a screen of dust, dead leaves, debris, crumpled classified ads, whatever it could move. Grit and sting filled the swift air. Men cowered against the wind’s bite, shivering in thin coats, gathered around garbage cans with flames pouring from them, prayed for spring but knew spring was a long time coming.
Charles looked up and down the street, made sure nobody afoot or in a car had followed him. Nope, clear. He pulled his overcoat tight against the wind and slipped into the place.
It wasn’t much. A Windy City bar and grill, largely empty at this hour, its government-green walls awash with heatless sunlight, a few thigh-and-garter calendars on the walls, a beefy thumper of a bartender. This one was called The Paragon, a little west of the Cubs’ now empty ballpark called Wrigley Field. He looked around, saw a face nodding his way from one of the dark booths in the rear, nodded in return, and headed over.
“Okay,” said Dave Jessup of the Chicago Herald-Examiner, “pigs do star in movies. You did me a favor, now I do you a favor.”
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