He reverted to task. Consulting the map, he immediately found the ragged wall of foundation that corresponded to the diagram, found next the window well, which was the starting spot. He’d measured, found the degrees of northwest direction from the corner of the window well to be 43, and, using a compass, established that as his line of march. The dashes on the map had to be steps, and as there were fourteen of them, he walked fourteen and, just as the map indicated, came to the trunk of an elm. The elm was still there, still magnificent, and would outlast him, as it had outlasted Earl and, before him, Charles. It was stately, magnificent, calm, unperturbable, still leafy and healthy.
Now he stepped around it, tracked five more steps outward on the same line, and stood where X marked the spot.
Digging is never any fun, unless you’re clinically insane or have an IQ of about 34. Neither of those conditions applied to Swagger. But it gets even worse if you’re seventy-one and have been shot thirteen times, cut badly once, waterboarded, and are currently working your way through artificial hip number two. Still, he did what he had to do, and the light went away, the forest grew still.
He found a rhythm for the pick, with which he scrambled the hard topsoil and scruff vegetation and weeds to clods and lumps and grit, all of it easily movable by shovel. The shoveling also demanded not only rhythm but more back, and though the work never quite achieved the threshold of sheer torture, it was never less than profoundly unpleasant. The hip was okay, being relatively new to his body, but his lower back sang an aria of hurt on each downstroke, and his chest issued squeaks of distress. The pile beside the hole grew, as did the hole itself, and as usual it seemed to violate all the rules of physics, including relativity, that such a vast heap should be drawn from such a tiny penetration.
The sun disappeared totally, and though it was not strictly necessary, he set up his big light to illuminate the task that remained. He’d always been a worker and allowed himself no lollygagging, took five off in sixty and one sip of bottled water, and kept at it till it seemed he ought to be done, unless the old bastard had gotten all the way to China and stashed it there.
In the next moment, he felt the thud of striking something hard and vibratory, surely wood. Bingo!
But still another two hours remained, even if being on the downslope of the task filled him with energy, dulled his hurting, cooled his brow, dried his sweat. On and on and on it went until at last he’d excavated what the light revealed to be a coffin.
God, I hope there ain’t no body in it.
It seemed unnecessary to actually remove the dirt that packed the bottom half of the box. Instead, he went hard at it with the pick, chopping, loosening, reducing its adhesion, and more or less freed the base of the structure from the earth that had claimed it all these years. The next issue was pulling it upward and out, and once he got it over the eighteen-inch lip of the trench, it was all right. It took all he had left in chest and arms but, in the end, wasn’t as formidable as a body might have been, since, as he totaled it, it had to be less than fifty pounds’ worth of weight.
And, finally, it was there, in the bright blaze of the light’s spot. A coffin, wooden, crusted, and stained, but evidently still intact, having yielded to no incursion over the years. The old man must have shellacked it, or slathered the Cosmoline on, or whatever, amplifying the Georgia pine’s toughness and resistance to the encroachment of moisture.
He got the crowbar, worked it under the nailed lid, and pushed. The wood yielded an inch, so he repeated this process around the edge of the box, and finally the lid raised a bit, loosened on its nails. He drove the bar in deeper, applied full strength, and with the creak of wood relinquishing its grip on nails the lid lifted a few degrees more. He repeated the same drill up and down the box. Finally, a mighty yank, and the thing stood opened.
He snatched the light to examine the treasure. Hmm, it was a batch of tightly wrapped bundles in oilcloth, each secured by an enthusiastic abundance of woven cord. He selected one that seemed the most promising by shape and weight, cut through the cord with his knife, unrolled the bundle and laid it bare to see before him Baby Face Nelson’s Monitor.
There it was, though glutinous, almost luminescent, in the freaky light, with gobs of Cosmoline, that miracle grease that protects metal against all comers for years and years and centuries, oozing off it, out of its openings, dribbling and melting. Bob couldn’t believe it. He pulled it out. By god, it was indeed the thing itself.
The familiar contours of the base Browning Automatic Rifle, though lighter at sixteen pounds than the familiar Marine Corps twenty, the incredible density of the piece, all evident, even if the magazine well was empty. He checked the geegaws that made it a Monitor instead of a BAR, and sixteen pounds instead of twenty: the shorter barrel, the shorter buttstock, and, most peculiar of all, the pistol grip descending from the trigger guard on the underside of the receiver. Only the Space Cadet compensator was missing, and that was in his pocket.
At that moment the world flashed to red, as a laser dot hit him in his eye, knocking his night vision to crazyworld. He blinked to clear away the dazzle, and when he got some focus back, he saw the dot nesting on his chest. He tracked the beam back forty yards to a scruff of brush. Then another light blinked to vivid and nailed him in the chest, holding solid and still.
“You’re busted, sniper,” came the call. “Freeze! Hands on head, knees on ground. All the slack’s out of my trigger. I don’t want to kill you, but you’re about six ounces and a twitch from it, so don’t move a whisper.”
A black shape behind one of the beams detached itself from the earth and came at him. He felt a hand quickly slip inside his coat, and the 157345C, cocked and locked on hardball, came out and was set aside. The gunman moved away, keeping the red dot plastered on the side of Swagger’s head.
The other shape came over, setting himself up close enough not to miss, but too far to be taken down by a fast move. These boys were professionals. Two large men, but not fatties, more like pro-football players of the linebacker variety, their faces hidden by balaclavas.
“Thanks for digging the guns up for us,” said one of them. “Now, you take it easy, you get out of this alive. We know you’se a tricky motherfucker, full of surprises, but don’t you be doing no fancy work on us or you will die regretting it. We are pros.” They sat him down on the edge of the hole he had dug, and one of them pulled a smallish leather case out of his jacket.
“We just gonna zip you full of sodium p and take the treasure out of here. When you wake up two days from now—”
But then he froze. There was a red dot on his chest.
“Drop the guns, fat boys. I got M4 rock and roll on you. And I’m eager to shoot.”
It was Nick Memphis, emerging from the rubble of the cabin with his carbine tight to shoulder.
The two fat things abandoned their weapons, which fell like ingots to the earth. Their hands came up.
“Joke’s on you, chubbo,” said Swagger, picking up his grandfather’s pistol. “You thought you were hunting me. All the time, I was hunting you.”
55
A BAR NEAR CENTRAL POLICE HEADQUARTERS
CHICAGO
Mid-November 1934
CHARLES HAD A BRIEFCASE full of pistols and revolvers, plus ammunition. He had a Colt .45 Government Model, a Colt Super .38 Government Model, a Smith & Wesson .38 Special Military & Police, a .38/44 Heavy Duty Smith & Wesson, a Colt Official Police .38 Special, and, finally, a Colt Detective Special .32.
He thought Sam, who had finally agreed to a shooting session, would end up with the Super .38, if he could just get the loading and cocking down. It was the easiest to shoot, had the least recoil, was more powerful than all except the .45. Many of the younger men—Ed Hollis, for one—carried them. He thought the safety, absent on the revolvers, would improve Sam’s confidence. He just had to commit to the cocked-and-locked carry mode and condit
ion himself to the easy-as-pie downstroke on the safety lever as a part of the draw. He was worried Sam would opt for the dick special in the banker’s caliber, .32, because it was light, smallish, and had even less recoil than the Super. Unfortunately, it had less power, and small guns with small sights are notoriously hard to shoot well. They’re for men who carry much but shoot little.
Sam was testy that morning, evasive and unsettled. Charles had never seen him so restless or irritable. On the six-block walk from the Bankers Building to the Chicago Police Headquarters Building at State and 11th, where Charles had reserved a booth at the shooting range, he said nothing, just grimly poked his way through the fall crowds that thronged the Loop, his topcoat tight, his scarf tight, his hat pressed down to his ears. He seemed like a grumpy insurance salesman.
Finally, they reached the big cop building, and Sam turned to Charles before they crossed the last street.
“Look, we have to have a talk, okay? Come on, let’s get a drink. Mormon exception granted by the nearest Elder, who happens to be me. Come on.”
They crossed the street and halfway down the block found a darkened place called Skip’s. They went to a deserted booth and took a seat. Skip himself ambled over in time, agreed to fetch two drafts, and did. They were the only customers.
Sam took a good big swallow.
“Are you all right, Sam?” asked Charles.
“Not really,” said Sam.
“Can I help or anything?”
“Not really,” said Sam, taking another swig.
“Look,” he finally said, “I’m going to be honest with you. Nobody’s really figured it out, but I seem to be out of wiggle room.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The guns.”
“The guns?”
“They scare the hell out of me. I don’t even like to be around them. You never see me in the arms room. If you notice, I sort of wander away when the discussion turns to shooting. I’ve been ducking you on this one for months now. I just don’t think I can do it.”
“Sam, they’re just tools. They don’t have brains, blood, feelings, souls. They don’t wear a certain size shoe or favor red ties over blue, are Catholic instead of Protestant.”
“Yes, yes, it’s silly. And silly as it is, it’s still not even the truth. Excuse me for unburdening myself. The guns are only the first part of it. It’s a bigger problem: I’m a coward.”
“Nobody’s a coward,” said Charles. “You just have to find something to fight for, that’s all.”
“No, I’m the real thing. I’m your first coward.”
“Sam, I—”
“Poor Charles. You can’t even imagine such a thing, can you? This must be so baffling to a man of your natural courage.”
“I get scared every time,” he said, even if it wasn’t true.
“Not like I do. I get physically sick, my hands shake, I can’t breathe right, and I hear a voice screaming, ‘Run! Run! Get the hell out of here!’ I backed down from at least ten fights as a kid.”
“As a kid, you were too smart to fight for the bullshit kids fight for: reputation, a gal, to get back at Jack for what he said. Damned few things worth fighting for, you saw that. I was in a whole war that wasn’t worth fighting. But some things are, and if that day comes, you’ll be fine.”
“I’m only here because I liked the ‘scientific’ part of the Division. I had a talent for organization and administration. I like making the calls, moving the parts around, solving the puzzle. It’s endlessly fascinating. But the joke’s on me: I ended up in the middle of a battlefield! The last place I wanted to be!”
“The battle’s almost over,” said Charles. “And if you don’t mind me pointing it out, I think you won it.”
“Charles, you’re trying to put it in such a good light. I opted out of every possible violent episode over the past five months. I wasn’t at Little Bohemia. I was across the street and down the block at the Biograph. You went to St. Paul, not me. You went to East Liverpool, not me. I am so glad I found you. I knew I’d chicken out, and the best thing I did was find a surrogate with guts.”
“I don’t know any such thing. I ain’t heard nobody say such a thing, and if he did, he’d have me to meet in the alley. You shoot a bit, you’ll see the guns ain’t dramatic. They ain’t. A bit. You get used to them. After a few hundred rounds, they’re just things. I see that all the time. These young guys, they get such a charge the first time, they think they’re Billy the Kid, and the second time they notice guns are heavy, greasy, dirty, they rip your clothes, and, if you don’t watch it, make your ears ring for the rest of your life.”
“Charles, you are so forgiving. But I think I need a psychiatrist, not a man killer.”
“What I really am is a range officer, and I can talk you through it. That’s all you need, is a good range officer. To hell with the witch doctors. I will say this with pride: I am the best range officer in the world, and have taught many a man the drill, and when he does the drill, the drill gets him through the fight. Saw it happen a hundred times in the war, saw it happen here, and, by god, I will get you over this.”
—
IT WORKED OUT. Sam didn’t set any records, but, guided by Charles’s gravity and precision and confidence, he found himself more or less comfortable, and, as Charles predicted, took easiest to the Colt Super, and while he’d never whack out the center of a bull’s-eye target, in a hundred fifty rounds he’d learned to keep the holes pretty much in the center of the silhouette at fifty feet. It was the same for him as anyone, not magic but an orderly process: front sight, press, recover, front sight, press.
“Well, maybe there’s some hope for me yet,” said Sam, weirdly relieved after the session, as they headed back. “I think I could even do it again.”
“Next week, same time, same place,” said Charles. “In a couple months we’ll have you blazing away with a Thompson gun.”
“That’s graduate school. I’m years from that. Look, I feel good now. Let me buy you a drink. A real drink. We have something to celebrate. I insist.”
“I try not to drink the hard stuff.”
“Make an exception this one time, that’s an order. What harm can it do?”
—
THREE SHOTS IN, Sam got a little carried away.
“Don’t you see? When we get the Baby Face thing settled, I’ll be returned to Washington. The Director will be in my corner. My hope would be to get you seconded to training, and eventually put in charge of our firearms unit. Charles, you could implement your ideas. You could make our boys the best shooters in the world and our reputation so sterling that nobody would fight us. The better our reputation, the fewer men we have to kill.”
Charles didn’t agree. If his knowledge of the world held water, there’d always be men who needed killing and men who had to kill them. But he said nothing, just sat there, as bottled up as if a cork were plugging his mouth.
“Charles, you go to the East, you have a big, secure job, a big, secure house, you contribute to society, you save lives, you get attention for your second boy, your wife isn’t so sullen and withdrawn, you give your first boy something extraordinary to return to from the banana wars—my god, Charles, what a life you will have had! Few men have had such a life!”
“It sounds pretty good,” said Charles, the booze reaching him too.
“Charles, why are you so glum? I can tell, you don’t believe a word I’m saying, and you think I’m a fool for saying it.”
“It ain’t you, Sam. I do appreciate your faith in me. I want so bad to get help for that boy. But what you predict, it ain’t gonna happen. I just know it.”
“Charles, why do you say that? Why are you so pessimistic, so down on yourself?”
“There’s things about me you don’t know. Nobody knows. But they hold me back. God is punishing me for my failings. He’s war
ning me to know my place and to stay in it.”
Why was he so loose of tongue? Was it the booze, Sam’s unfettered admiration, a particularly bad line of nightmares, anxiety over Baby Face, worried about how deep he was now in with Uncle Phil?
“Why, Charles, I’ve never heard such nonsense.”
“You yourself called it a death wish.”
“Yes, but you can make it go away. You have made extraordinary progress. You are out of your shell, a success in the big city, an object of respect for the whole community. What on earth could assail you?”
He paused. Then he just said it.
“I dream of lying with men,” he said.
Sam sure hadn’t seen that one coming. He looked like he’d been hit in the mouth with a tuna. He sat back, his expression reflecting his shock, his emptiness of word or emotion, his inability to respond.
Charles looked at him, appalled though he was at spilling his deepest secret. He’d never said it before, out loud. He’d never even put it into words. It just happened in his dreams, or in those blurry moments before he fell into sleep and his subconscious momentarily took over his conscious.
“I don’t—” said Sam, then stopped.
The rest came out, the whole thing.
“I ain’t never done it,” said Charles. “I don’t know why I want it so. But, goddammit, it’s there, and God is punishing me for it. He took my son’s mind as a warning. He made me good at killing so I’d always be apart. He made me sick and ashamed of myself and what goes on in my mind. So that’s my secret, and that’s why all that fine-sounding stuff you say ain’t ever coming true, Sam. Sorry, if you now disrespect me, but I have to keep you from backing the wrong horse.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Sam.
“It’s even worse now. I heard there’s a place in Hot Springs that could take care of me for more money than it ought to be worth. Ain’t been there, but, damn, I want to go. Got it all figured out. Thought and thought and come up with the idea to tell my wife I was going to the Caddo Gap Baptist Prayer Camp to pray to God to help me with my drinking, so I’d be gone overnight. My wife don’t know no Baptists, so she’d never say, ‘Oh, how’s Charles doing?’ and get ‘Who’s Charles?’ as a response. Don’t think nobody would recognize me, but I do realize I’d be risking everything. But, goddammit, I can’t help wanting what I want.”
G-Man Page 37