From a distance of six inches, alas, the French gun revealed its fraudulence. The rear of the piece, just where it reduced itself in circumference to mate with the barrel proper, didn’t have the same graceful convex of angle as the thing on the desktop.
He looked at it anew and, anew, was struck by the artistry of the thing, the superiority of the metalwork. Guns being pieces of machined metal fitted together, he’d examined those pieces and the way they fit his whole life, and whoever was on the lathe for this one was a master machinist, one of those boys who over a lifetime gets so sublime at his skill, it almost beggars belief. Damn, the boy was good.
He checked his watch. Getting close to dawn in Northern Virginia. He’d gotten nowhere, learned nothing. Where was the big break, the eureka moment?
Like the thing on the desk, it was unknowable.
30
COMISKEY PARK
CHICAGO
July 24, 1934
CHARLES HAD A BAD ONE THAT NIGHT. The war, the usual stuff, the limitless landscape of mud and wire, the faces of slaughtered boys gone away for nothing that ever made any sense, the paleness of their bodies in the ever-falling rain, the delicacy of their faces, if the faces had refrained from being blown off, the hell where youth and laughter go, the silliness of the trinkets of tin and ribbon he’d come home with. He woke, all lathered up in sweat, hungry with rogue impulses about which he could not even think, consumed with self-loathing and a sense of so much Duty undone, so many obligations still owed, the infinite pain of his two sons, the sense of a universe without hope.
At 9 he rose, showered, put on his slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, but left his coat, tie, automatic, and shoulder holster locked in the suitcase under his bed and to his bed. He went downstairs to the diner—he’d forgotten to eat that whole lost Monday—and picked up the Tribune and the Herald-Examiner and ordered some eggs and bacon while he read, at last, what the world was making of the death of John Dillinger.
It bore no resemblance to any world Charles remembered. In this world, the heroic G-Man Melvin Purvis had tracked down and slain the monster almost on his own. Charles had to laugh because it was so extravagantly wrong and yet there it was, the product of the immutable logic of the odd politics of the Chicago Field Office.
Yes, Sam was boss; yes, Hugh Clegg was second in command. But, yes, at the same time, Melvin Purvis was sort of there, and him being extremely handsome, dapper, affable, and pleasant, the press congregated around him, and Charles could only assume that the longer he went on, the more the story became about him and the less it was about the Division of Investigation. If you knew the truth, it wasn’t hard to sniff the myth, but, at the same time, it was hard to hate Melvin Purvis. He wasn’t claiming to be a hero, really, and making immoderate boasts, it’s just that he was there, the reporters knew and liked him, and the easiest way for them to do the job was to put some kind of Melvin shine on everything. It would have taken a man far stronger than Melvin Purvis to turn down the temptation of self-glorification.
Charles almost laughed. He knew the old bastard “bachelor” Director, off in Washington, was in need of a triple bicarbonate of soda this morning. The fellow must be apoplectic. It was exactly what he didn’t want, but at the same time exactly what he couldn’t prevent. What could he do now, fire his “hero”?
“The Man Who Got Dillinger” one paper had headlined under a fine file photo of the dapper Purvis, looking all serious, and the story began, “It came down to a duel of two men, the Man From Crime and the Man From Justice, and, fortunately for all of us, the Man From Justice won.”
Charles had a good time pushing through the nonsense, amazed at just how wrong wrong could be, but at a certain point ran out of newspaper. He needed something to do, something to get his mind off all the politics of the office and the government man-killing trade. He thought of a movie, but that idea wasn’t appealing because of its association with Johnny’s end in Gable’s shadow. Then he remembered that Sam had mentioned a ball game and that appealed to him. He checked the paper, saw that the Cubs, the nineteenth floor’s unofficial mascot team, were on the road, and so he looked and indeed saw there was an American League game at Comiskey Park on the South Side. He knew nothing about the Sox, but that wasn’t the point: losing yourself in the spectacle, the ceremony, the anonymous camaraderie of the stands, erasing the mind and numbing the spirit, that was the point.
Thus, he mounted the El station, which was like climbing into a gigantic iron-girdered monster—maybe an old dreadnought tied up at the dock, with its constellations of iron rivets and stout timbers everywhere, and the smell of the tar with which they sealed off the wood from the elements—caught the southbound train, rocketed through the Loop, and then plunged into loud darkness for twenty minutes as whatever lay between the Loop and Comiskey fled by unseen on the surface.
He emerged in what by lore was called Bronzeville, and the ballpark customers were obvious strangers in this all-Negro world. The two civilizations regarded each other across their great gulf as the fans passed among the residents down 35th Street, approaching the thing ahead, where the ball game would be played. But it was all in good cheer, for the sun was bright, the folks happy, the prospects enticing. The streets were full of hum and buzz, not quite thronged, but still heaped with people, while the park—a castle of brick? a cathedral?—dominated the area, as from all directions citizens approached. All sorts of bright hustle assaulted the newcomers, hot dog stands, fellows selling programs, cotton candy, Cracker Jacks and popcorn, souvenir pennants, little Sox caps, the works. If it was affiliated with baseball and could be sold on the streets approaching Comiskey, it was.
He bought a general grandstand ticket, entered the half-full arena, and got a jolt of pleasure from the green of the field, which dominated the structure, against the red brick of the walls and the quasi-Medieval stylings of the towers and ramparts of the stadium. At half throng, the place was still impressive, as fifteen thousand people of basically one mind and common interest made their presence felt. Charles drifted until he found a nice vantage point of the field, about thirty rows up from the demarcation between box seats and general admissions, a little this side of third base. Really, there wasn’t a bad seat in the place, unless you were stationed behind one of the frequent steel girders that kept it upright, and Charles could see the young men on the field below him, full of life and speed and grace and strength. He made sure not to order a beer, though the whole stadium was generally a giant, circular beer barrel, and everywhere fans were overacting with the elaborate exacerbation of the nearly inebriated. Meanwhile, it was a festival of advertising, as the great American enterprises such as Coca-Cola, Standard Oil, Hamm’s Beer from the Land of Sky Blue Waters, and the Chicago Tribune purchased space on the walls to sell their goods. Pennants and flags spanked the air, the smoke of ten thousand cigarettes and two thousand cigars rose to form a kind of gloriously hazing blur atop it all. It was like a volcano getting ready to blow. Everybody was loud, everybody was happy, everybody wanted to be no other place on earth that particular day, that particular time.
Not much of a game. The enemy team hailed from D.C.—perhaps the Director was a fan—and the Sox, themselves no prize edition this year, handled them pretty easily. The Sox scored in the first inning and never trailed. Swanson, in right, got a couple of hits to lead the team to four runs, and other guys with hits included Appling, Conlon, Simmons, Bonura, and Dykes, for a total of six. A fellow named Les Tietje pitched, lasted until the eighth, and got the win. It all went as it was supposed to go, and Charles took most pleasure from the green of the grass, the white of the uniforms and ball, and the long dramas of interception when someone skied one and it floated through its arc high in the hot, bright sky, then lost energy and began its descent to where it was nabbed in the glove of this or that young fellow, who then uncorked a long trajectory throw that rose a bit, fell a bit, and landed exactly where it had been aimed and
was then tossed this way or that at speed, depending on the game situation. There was something soothing in watching the grace of these transactions, and the game, while lacking suspense, also lacked drama or intensity, both of which Charles was glad to leave behind him for a time.
In the seventh, someone said to him, “How about a Cracker Jack, Sheriff?” putting the box in front of him, and Charles looked up and saw that the Italian called Uncle Phil had taken the seat next to his. He wore a creamy-white linen suit, a red tie, white shoes, black, circular glasses, and a Panama shading his handsome face.
“Thanks but no thanks, friend,” said Charles. “Say, are you guys watching me? How’d you know I was here? This can’t be coincidence.”
“Same way we knew where Johnny would be. We’re everywhere. Not all the time, but enough so we can keep our eyes on things. Don’t take it personally. We’re just paying attention. Knowledge is power is wealth is a long, happy life.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Nobody does, but you’ll get used to it. Anyway, I’m hearing that despite all the yakkity-yak about Purvis, it was the sheriff who handled Johnny. And did a fine job on it too.”
“I just did what my badge required,” said Charles. “It wasn’t nothing special. Any detective in this town could have handled it.”
“Knowing a few of them, I’d have to disagree,” said Uncle Phil. “They’d have ended up with dead citizens everywhere. Must tick you off to read the papers and see it’s the Melvin Purvis G-Man Heroic Hour. He didn’t do nothing but light a cigar, never went up against Johnny and his little Colt.”
“I don’t care about that. It’s beyond me. I don’t like nobody in my business anyhow, so if nobody pays no attention, that’s fine by me.”
“Give it to you, Sheriff, no need for stroking, like so many, and that stroking gets so many killed or crushed. It’s an admirable trait.”
“I don’t put on airs. No percentage in it. I don’t like them that do. What’s this about anyway? I don’t see you as no South Side ball fan.”
“It’s a good game, lots of fun. You would not believe the money that moves on it every day. It seems so straightforward here in the sun, with all the pops and kids and hot dogs, but every time one of those Apollos throws a ball, twenty million moves one way or the other.”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” said Charles. “I’m not good at numbers. I leave that to the others. Now, do you have some dope for me?”
“The latest is that Homer’s somewhere up in St. Paul but laying low while the bump in his head goes down. Baby Face cleared town but fast when you put Johnny in the morgue. He sees the writing on the wall. Pretty Boy’s too dumb to come in out of the rain, but that makes him hard to predict because he just bounces around with no plan. I think we’ll have hard info on Homer next. Pretty Boy will fall victim to his own bad luck. Baby Face will come back. He’s a Chicago boy, he knows which way the streets run and the shortcuts. But you already knew that. Here’s why I’m here: I wanted to hand this over.”
He laid an envelope on Charles’s lap. Charles looked at it.
“Just a little extra. You’re doing your job, you’re impressing people, and we like to show our gratitude.”
“I won’t take that,” said Charles. “It makes me a bounty hunter, not a cop.”
“It ain’t a payment, it’s a gift from citizens who appreciate it.”
“If I take it, I get used to it. You give me some more and I enjoy it. I buy stuff, I’m a hero to my wife, and I’m looking for more, which comes along soon enough. Then you’ve got me hooked. You own me. So let’s get this straight right now. Nobody owns Charles Swagger. He pays his own way, he walks his own path, all of it for his own reasons, explained to nobody. I won’t never meet with you again, you understand that, pal?”
“You throw ’em hard and tight, don’t you, Sheriff? Like Wyatt Earp or some other old gunman. Dodge, Silver City, Laredo, other dirt-water shitholes not worth dying for. Okay, you want to play it like that, that’s the way we play it.”
He smiled, picked up the envelope, and then rose and walked away.
Charles went back to watching the boys play their ball game.
31
MAVIS, ARKANSAS
The present
NOT MUCH REMAINED OF MAVIS. It was one of those towns that had been passed by on the Interstate rush to throw concrete ribbons around America, and, far from any six-lanes, it languished. It didn’t even have a Walmart or any fast-food joints.
Where the bank had been, a Dollar Store now sold cheap Chinese goods. There was a 7-Eleven, a one-story town hall/police station/public works department, clearly a relic of the ’70s. A café sold coffee and pastry, but if you wanted food, you had to go out by the Interstate and feed at a TGIF’s or a McDonald’s or something off a gas station candy rack. No library, no Historical Society, not much of anything except people, all of whom seemed to be on welfare. Or minimum-subsistence jobs. Or crystal meth.
Nobody could answer any of his questions, as they seemed mostly to be in their twenties, the men living thirty or more miles from factory jobs in the last Arkansas town or the next Texas town. But the bank had to stand at the corner of Main and Western, and, looking at the structure, he felt it was probably the same building, though now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Ling and their emporium of plastic goods from Szechuan Province. He doubted the Lings would know a thing about Bonnie and Clyde’s visit eighty-five years ago, three months after they were killed in Arcadia, Louisiana.
He sat outside the coffee shop, sipping a cup, wondering what this trip proved.
What it proved was: yes, I am being followed.
He knew it. You get certain feelings, and if you’re a field operator like him, those feelings are honed and developed over the years. Call it ESP or spidey sense or whatever, you can feel the weight of certain eyes on you, even through binoculars. This vividness of sensation had saved his life a thousand times, and it was never wrong, unless, all of a sudden, it was.
Am I that old? Has the little gizmo gone crazy? Is the mechanism not working? Am I losing it? Is this whole thing sort of an old man’s vanity, a ridiculous concoction built on a lifetime’s sniper paranoia and having been shot at way too much for anyone’s psychological health? Do I need to be the object of some dark conspiracy, of forces that hide in shadows and pull strings? Does it make me feel . . . alive?
But he understood and obeyed the fundamentals of the game—the game being Man Hunting 5.0—that is, at the highest level. And that game was: if you are under observation, do not acknowledge it. Thus, you possess a microscopic advantage, which a clever operator might leverage into a victory when or if the guns came out. So, though his brain screamed at him to turn and look, to apply his still-great vision to the shadows and the horizon and the trees all the way out, he probed in another direction, along lines of staying loose-limbed, goofy, sort of pokey and old. If whoever was out there really was out there and they realized they’d been discovered, he—or they—would change their whole plan of attack, method of operation, and he might never find them until they decided it was time for the kill. To survive, he had to know they were going to kill before they did.
Keeping his eyesight determinedly local, he looked up and down the street in Mavis and noted a few of its oblivious citizens in the street, old pickups, a few automobiles of unidentifiable vintage, and not one thing out of place, different, new to the eye. No traffic had passed in ten minutes, except for a mom with a mini SUV full of squealers on the way to the Costco in the next town down the line, a State policeman of about thirteen, on patrol, and an old boy on a tractor. No sign of the Mafia, Soviet airborne, jihadhis, Japanese marines, rogue Agency cowboys, the sons, brothers, wives, daughters of men he’d killed, whatever or whoever else could be interested in him. Just daylight America, small, dying-town variety, edging quietly toward tomorrow without much in the way of drama
or excitement.
But why was he being tracked? Because it’s always and only about money. It’s never vengeance, justice, irony, curiosity, envy, romantic competitiveness, any human motive, except the oldest of them all: greed. Cain probably whacked Abel out of greed. He figured he’d get an extra quart of goat’s milk from the old man if his brother wasn’t there. Somewhere, there had to be a money angle in all this, but, damn, if he could find it.
He drove to the Dallas Airport for tomorrow’s flight back to Boise and his upcoming speech, and that night, in the hotel, he did what he’d done twice already. He inspected every single item with him, feeling, probing, shaking, sniffing, and if licking was suggested, he’d have licked. But nothing from sock to jock to razor to toothpaste, to the stuff you wore underneath, to the stuff you wore on top, to the thing you carried it all in, suggested a dual purpose, an intelligence usage. It was just bland, dreary stuff, like anybody’s stuff. No bugs, no microprocessors, GPSs, new spy toys, James Bond buzzers or decoder rings, just . . . nothing.
Then he rose early and spent an extra hour before breakfast looking at the car, even though it was a rental selected randomly from a row of rentals. No way anybody could have anticipated in Little Rock which car he was going to choose of ten available. He didn’t even know; he just picked the first one, and, he supposed, maybe he always picked the first one, so that’s how they knew. But that was ridiculous, because there was no possible motive for such a thing, and the expense to penetrate a car agency and plant a bug to listen to a lone man who didn’t talk to himself would be out of scale with any possible gain.