A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  But Nick wasn’t there. Where the hell was Nick?

  So he called the number he had for Matt MacReady.

  Again, he just got the machine. “This is Matt. Leave a message.”

  “Matt, Swagger here. Boy, hate to bother you so soon before a race. One question: Recently I saw the tracks of some kind of machine. Steel wheels, maybe eight or ten inches apart, cut deep in the dirt. Hmmm, I recall all kinds of tracks in the pits when I visited you. Any idea what those kinds of tracks could be? Sure could help me. Thanks and good luck on Race Day.”

  He did catch up on the news from a Knoxville twenty-four-hour radio station. According to the reporter, the two dead men in the Johnson County Grocery Store shootings had been identified as Carmody Grumley and B.J. Grumley, both of no fixed address, both known to have organized crime connections and thought to be part of a mobile, shifting culture of strong-armed men used in various mob enterprises over the years. Each man had a substantial rap sheet. Young Terry Hepplewhite, the grocery clerk who shot it out with the robbers, was being hailed as a hero, though he had yet to meet with the press and tell his side of the story.

  Grumley, he thought. The Grumley boys. What is this Grumley? Another question for Nick, who could dig up a file on Grumley.

  Instead of going to his motel, where he thought these Grumleys might have had lookouts waiting, Bob went to the first church he saw, which was John the Revelator Baptist Church of Redemption. Just a one-story building with a steeple that hardly went up twenty-five feet, it wasn’t a mighty structure but had a rough quality, as if it had been slowly assembled brick by brick in the humblest of ways. When he entered the hushed devotional space, he first thought he’d gone astray, for two worshipers were black, and it occurred to him that their memory of large white men in jeans and boots might not be all that warm. But shortly a young black man in a suit and tie came out of a walkway and came over to him.

  “May I help you, sir? Do you come to worship? You are welcome.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Bob said. “But actually I have a biblical puzzle to solve and I thought someone here might pitch in.”

  “I can try. Please come this way.”

  The doors led Bob to a spare office with many Bibles and other books of religious persuasion occupying the shelves on one wall.

  “Have a seat. My name is Lionel Weston, I am the pastor of John the Revelator.”

  “My name is Bob Lee Swagger, and I’m greatly appreciative, sir. This has to do with a passage that has come to my attention. My daughter was interested in it before an accident she had, and I’m wondering what it could mean.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Mark 2:11.”

  “Ah,” said the Reverend Weston, “yes, of course. ‘Arise from your bed and go to your home.’ Or sometimes, ‘Arise from your pallet and go to your house.’ Christ has just performed a miracle. He had restored mobility to a paralyzed man. Doubters have assailed him even as worshipers have brought the sick and malformed to him. Not from ego, not from pride, but from compassion, he has restored this man’s limbs to strength. It’s one of the great miracles of the text. In fact, one might say those words express the pure joy of God’s power, his ability to restore the infirm through faith. Does that help, Mr. Swagger?”

  Bob’s puzzled expression evidently communicated a truth to the minister.

  “Possibly it has metaphorical meaning to your daughter. She’s saying, ‘I can walk.’ Her sickness has been cured. She’s had a revelation of sorts. Was she in spiritual or physical pain?”

  “Sir, I don’t think so. In fact, this muddies up the waters considerably. Could it be a code, a code word, a signal?”

  “Mr. Swagger, I don’t think God talks in code words. His meanings are clear enough for us.”

  “You are right, sir, and I am very grateful for your wisdom. I have to think on this and see how it fits in.”

  “How is your daughter?”

  “She’s recovering. I would ask her, but she’s still unconscious.”

  “I will pray for her.”

  “I greatly appreciate it, sir.”

  “I will pray for you, Mr. Swagger. I hope you solve your riddle and straighten things out. I see you as a man who is good at straightening things out.”

  “I try, sir. Lord, how I try.”

  Leaving the church, he checked his watch and saw it was time to head to the sheriff’s office. He contemplated whether he should slip the Kydex holster with the .38 Super on, and in the end concluded it would be a bad idea, a careless move, an accident. Detective Thelma would see that he was armed, which could lead to embarrassing questions, even charges.

  He got there at eight, pulling into the lot.

  Agh, that perpetual shroud of coal dust that hung over this neck of the woods hit him. In a second he’d have a headache. No wonder they were getting the hell out of here. Bob walked into the station and a clerk nodded him back to the bullpen area where Thelma stood by in her polo and chinos while three SWAT officers with MP5 submachineguns and AR-15 shorties were gearing up for the night’s event.

  “Mr. Swagger,”

  “Detective Fielding.”

  “This is our Fugitive Apprehension Team.” The guys, beefy cop types. Two white, one black, in their twenties with short hair, thick necks, and the look of middle linebackers, nodded at him without making any sincere emotional commitment.

  “Wow, you must be expecting some kind of gunfight. You look like you’re going on a commando raid.”

  “You just want to take precautions. I doubt Cubby has a fix on going down hard. He’s a gentle soul, as long as he isn’t lit up on ice.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “All right, sir, you drive with me, and the FAT guys will follow in their van. Let me brief you. I will park down the way and you will stay in the car; we’ll wait for the van to park and the boys will take up entry positions in the rear. Then I’ll signal Air and my brother Tom, who’s the sheriff’s helicopter pilot—”

  “Your brother’s the pilot?”

  “Tom was shot down as an army aviator three times in two wars. The last one, in Baghdad, was bad. He had some problems and had to leave the army. Maybe I started this whole drug-war thing, because I put through the Justice Department grant paperwork to get us the bird so my brother would have someplace to go.”

  “I see. Impressive. You helped him.”

  “I tried, but you know the law of unintended consequences. Now I worry that—oh, never mind. Let’s get back to it. Tom will bring the ship in, and his copilot will work the high-intensity beam in case Cubby tries to run. I’ll go in and knock and tell Cubby he’s coming with me. It should go fine, but if he bolts, he’ll just run into these fellows and if he goes violent on us, then we’ll have to run him down. But I’m not betting on trouble.”

  “Okay.”

  “You just stay in the car. When we bring him in and book him, I’ll let you listen from the next room to the interrogation. Cubby’s no master criminal, believe me; he’ll give it up fast and I’ve set it up with the Prosecutor’s office to have him indicted in the morning. Paperwork’s all done. Then it’s just a matter of making sure Tennessee justice don’t drop the ball, and I will watch that one very closely.”

  “I thank you for taking me along. I appreciate it.”

  They sat on a tree-lined street in what could never be called the nicer side of town, a run-down section east of downtown where the old houses—shacks more like it, maybe at best bungalows—leaned this way and that. And you had the sense that a lot of police action had taken place there before.

  “I’ve been busting Cubby for ten years, off and on,” Thelma said. “He’ll go clean for a while, maybe as long as six months, but he’s always gone back. Sad to see such a handsome man give his life away for nothing. He’ll gin up a lab, he’ll deal a little, he’ll snitch out somebody to buy more time, just scuffling along, waiting for a way to amp the scratch to buy another bag of the stuff. Man, it’s the devil’s bu
siness, what it does to folks. You have any addiction problems in your family, sir?”

  “Detective, I am not proud to say that I had some troubles with the bottle years back and to this day I miss my bourbon, but one sip and I’m gone. It cost me, and I finally beat it down, though now and again, under trying circumstances, I will break down and have a drink. I usually end up in the next county engaged to a tattooed Chinese woman.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his joke.

  “But my daughter’s never had a thing to do with it, and only now and then drinks a glass of wine. We’ve been so lucky.”

  “Yes, you have. The wrecked families I’ve seen.”

  “Let me ask you: You’re sure on this boy?”

  “Sure as sure is. He has a brother who has a car that matches the vehicle ID’d on the state forensics reports, the cobalt ’05 Charger. I checked this morning—it was a busy morning—and in fact Cubby had the car and in fact it’s banged up where he hit your daughter. I looked at the car and I think we can make the presence of your daughter’s paint in the gash along the side of the Charger.”

  Bob was thinking, What the hell is she talking about? Who is this Cubby? Is he working for Eddie Ferrol, or some mysterious Mister Big, the Godfather of Johnson County? How’s it all connected? What does this detective know of his connections?

  “You’ll check on his associations once you get him locked up? Be interesting to see if he was—”

  “Working for somebody. Last person he worked for was Mr. McDonald, of the hamburger chain, who fired his worthless ass in three weeks. He was never able to master the deep-fat fryer.”

  “Maybe he has other connections, criminal connections.”

  “Doubtful, Mr. Swagger, but if so, we’ll find out tonight when I run the interrogation.”

  “Yes ma’am. Now on another thing, this sheriff’s making a big splash with his chopper. But I hear the price of the stuff hasn’t gone up, which you’d expect if all the labs were being closed down. What’s the feeling?”

  “Nobody knows. Maybe there’s a superlab somewhere, but you’d think you’d smell it, because manufacturing crystal meth in quantity produces a terrible, rotten egg smell. Or maybe it’s being trucked in from somewhere. Don’t know if you know it, but there’s a shooting last night, some grocery clerk got lucky and killed two robbers. The robbers were interesting: real serious bad actors, your white-trash professional heavy hitter, with rumored contacts to a batch of mobs all over the South, and participation suspected in a dozen armed robberies. Them boys ran out of luck in the worst possible way last night. Anyhow, way my mind works, I’m thinking, maybe they muled a load of ice from somewhere deeper south, and that’s where the stuff is coming from. I don’t know what else would explain their presence here. It would go to someone who knew the area, had ambitions, and a lot of criminal skills. Don’t know who that would be. You see any criminal geniuses hiding at Arby’s on the way over?”

  “No ma’am, but there’s a shady dude at the Pizza Hut.”

  This got a laugh out of her, but her mind was elsewhere, really, as she scanned the shabby front of the house down the street.

  “Adam-one-nine, you there?” came a squawky call on the radio.

  She spoke into her throat mic.

  “Adam-one-nine copy.”

  “Adam-one-nine, we in place. You can go any time.”

  “Air-one, stat. You there, Tom?”

  “I read you Adam one-nine.”

  “Tom, you bring it on in and when you see me at the front door, you have Mike open up with the big lamp on the back of the house, you got that?”

  “I read you, Adam one-nine.”

  She turned to Swagger.

  “Please don’t make me look bad. Sheriff doesn’t know about this. But I figure the dad gets to watch as the fellow who tried to kill his daughter goes down.”

  He could tell she was uneasy, and the breath came hard and shallow. She ran a dry tongue over dry, cracked lips, and for one second did something amazingly feminine that totally contradicted the image of a tough cop about to make a bust. She grabbed a role of lip balm from the dash, and smoothed it, dainty as an expensive French lipstick, across her lips.

  “Yes ma’am,” said Bob, as she got out of the car and walked slowly to the front door.

  He wondered why they didn’t do it bigger; ten cars, lights flashing, loudspeakers. But maybe that would spook an icehead like this Cubby, legendary maker of bad decisions, and the next thing, there’d be another big gunfight. Give Thelma the benefit of the doubt. She’s done this, you haven’t. You don’t know so much, and as it is you are riding the raw edge of a term in jail on any one of a dozen charges.

  So he sat back and watched the police theater.

  Thelma arrived at the doorwell, hesitated. Her hand flew to her pistol, made certain it was where it should be and that the retaining device still held it ready and secure until the moment she drew, if she drew.

  She knocked.

  She knocked again.

  No answer.

  She slithered next to the door jamb and edged the door open. She had a Surefire in her nonshooting hand, and she used it to penetrate the darkness. He heard her yell, “Cubby? Cubby, it’s Detective Fielding. You in there? You come on out now, we’ve got business.”

  There was no answer.

  Don’t go in, Bob thought. One-on-one in the dark of a house against a violent offender whose head is all messed up on account of the skank he eats and makes every day, who’s paranoid, maybe crazy, oh lady, don’t go in, it isn’t necessary. Drop back, watch the exits, call for backup, let the boys in the Tommy Tactical outfits earn their dough.

  But Thelma slipped in.

  The moments passed, and before he knew it Bob had gotten out of the car and crouched in the lee of its wheel well, watching, waiting for shots or something.

  Oh, Christ. Through the windows, he could see the beam of her flashlight dancing against the walls and ceiling of the dark interior of the small place, which couldn’t have more than a few rooms.

  Come on, he thought. He wanted to see her come out with the suspect cuffed, and the boys with the guns come racing around the house to take him away. Nice job, great job, good work, good old Thelma but—

  From under the line of the house—it must have been a cellar window cut against a gap in the foundation—he saw someone squirm free, low crawl across the yard into the bushes lining the house next door.

  Suddenly a flash-bang erupted in Cubby’s house, the loud smack of percussion breaking the still of the night, and the helicopter dropped low and its light came on hard and bright. The sounds of windows breaking, doors being busted in told the story: The FAT guys were assaulting from the rear. Maybe Thelma had him or he’d clonked her and she’d just awakened and given the green light to the FAT team. But the shadowy figure that had slipped out and squirmed across the yard suddenly broke from his hiding place and began to run crazily down the sidewalk, trying to put as much distance between himself and his pursuers as he could. He raced right toward Bob, who had a sudden almost comic memory flash over him. It was so football, the running back, broken free of the line of scrimmage, scurrying down the sideline, the lone safety, the only man between him and the end zone. He knew it was a bad idea, a sixty-three-year-old man with a bum leg and everything, but it didn’t matter what he knew, it only mattered what he did, which was to launch himself, run through his sudden hip pain, find the right angle, and close the distance.

  At the last second, Cubby saw him and from somewhere produced a handgun. But Bob was too far gone and just plunged ahead, driving his shoulder hard into the man’s ample gut, trying to drive clean through him and bring him flat to the ground, hearing some ancient coach from somewhere back in the Jurassic scream, “Drive through him, Bobby, take his legs out, give him your whole damn shoulder, explode through him.” And that’s what he did, textbook perfect. Both men went down in a bone-bruising crack, lights flashing through each head, knees abrading bloodily on
the pavement as they tumbled, limbs flying, breaths knocked free.

  He didn’t feel the knee to the head. It couldn’t have been planned. It was just one of those football things, when two flying bodies collide and torsos hit with the smack of wet meat falling off the table, legs and arms go screwball. And it so happened that Cubby’s knee flew up in a spasm as his breath was belted out of his lungs, and the knee hit Bob flush upside the head, a little forward of the ear. It was having your bell rung, and Bob’s rang so loud it knocked pinwheels of light, illumination rounds, spasms of tracers, sparks from a bonfire, fly legs and spider heads through his brain. He went to the ground all tangled with Cubby, but his limbs and his brain were momentarily dead. In a second, he came back to consciousness first to sound. The sound of running steps. The sound of a powerful helicopter engine. Then came light as the copter nailed Bob and his prey in the bright circle of thirty-five hundred lumens, and they were like as on a stage, shadowless and drained of all color except the lamp’s eerie cold pure moonlight. He blinked, felt the pain, tried to breathe, and realized Cubby had linked himself to him with an arm around his throat tight, squeezing off the breath until Bob coughed and shook and the grip loosened a little.

  “Goddamn you, Mister, you keep still or I will put a goddamned bullet through your head,” Cubby yelled so forcefully that the message was conveyed just as eloquently by the jetstream of saliva that hit Bob. Bob saw something in his peripheral vision and felt it go hard against his head. He recognized by its circularity that it was the muzzle of a revolver.

  Oh, fuck, he thought. Now you have gone and done it.

  “Goddamn you, Thelma—you said—you said—Goddamn you, Thelma.”

  “Cubby, you hold on now. Don’t you do nothing stupid. That fella ain’t a cop, you got no grudge against him. You let him go and put the gun down and we’ll get all this straightened out.”

  He could see her, about twenty-five feet away, just out of the cone of illumination; behind her, the three FAT officers had gone into good strong kneeling positions, their weapons jacked dead on the target, which he hoped was Cubby and not himself. Aim small, miss small, boys, go to semi-auto, think trigger control and breath control, he thought, gasping for air.