“Oh, boy,” said Les. “I have to shoot that!”
“This way, boys.”
Lebman led them to a cellar door engineered for airtightness, down the wooden steps to a chamber heaped at one end with broken lumber, stacks of newspapers, old mattresses, busted furniture, and various expendable bric-a-brac, the wall behind lined with sandbags. It smelled of gunpowder and brass, which emitted the unmistakable odor from the piles of casings that had been swept against the brick walls. Other odors generated an atmosphere as rich as it was unhealthy, much amplified by the total lack of ventilation: carbon, the stench of splattered, splintered lead, the more acrid tang of shattered copper, and the styphnate of fired primers.
“Smells good down here,” said Les. “Man, I love this place.”
It was no formal shooting range, but it let potential customers run a few rounds through whatever pleased them. He took the weapon from Mr. Lebman, reacting first to its weight—sixteen pounds, unloaded—and then experiencing its easy heft when tucked under his arm and braced against his body, the comfort of its pistol grip, the fluidity of its design that seemed to encourage firing from the hip.
“This is the aces,” he cried in delight. “Man, it feels like a million bucks. Wait’ll you try it, J.P.”
“That’ll be a toot,” said J.P.
Mr. Lebman handed over another pound of twenty-round magazine, fully loaded with .30 caliber Government, and, knowingly, Les inserted it into the mag well. Then he reached up, caught the bolt handle, and slid it back to apogee, released it, and felt it slam home with a satisfying chunk as it stripped a cartridge from the mag and locked it in the chamber.
“Here we go,” said Les. “Cover your ears.”
Les squeezed off a five-round burst and the gun cracked hard and fast, leaping, spitting, filling the air with its exhaust and the explosiveness of its muzzle blast. It flashed so incandescently, it almost obliterated reality, since the barrel was shortened and only a portion of each cartridge’s charge burned inside, the rest left to alchemize to golden radiance just beyond the muzzle. Twenty-five feet away, the chaos that had been junk furniture and other detritus seemed to detonate and fill the air with shards and splinters and pellets.
“WOW!” said Les. “Oh, boy, is that a blast! Here I go again!”
This time, confident of his control of the weapon, he hammered out the last fifteen in the mag, ripping the barricade up, down, sideways, left and right, driving yet more carbon stench, paper flecks, and hot gas, jet-spraying frags and bits into the atmosphere, sending a steady stream of brass from the blur of the bolt operation that landed with audible clinks on the pavement floor.
“HOLY COW!” screamed Les again. “That is the wildest thing I ever saw! Man, I can’t wait”—and he almost blurted a fiction-destroying wish—“to hose down a State Police car and turn the coppers inside to hamburger”—but caught himself and instead said, “to get this on the ranch and shoot up some hay bales!”
“It is a superb piece of work,” said Mr. Lebman.
“How much, Mr. Lebman?”
“Now, we have to be careful, fellas,” said Mr. Lebman. “There is this new federal law, though I do so much business with Texas law enforcement, I think I’m okay. But, at the same time, just to be safe, I’d like some discretion. No walking out with the gun over your shoulder, then going to the nearest field for an afternoon’s shooting.”
“Of course not,” said Les.
“Maybe pick it up on your way out of town. I’ll break it down, clean it, lubricate it, make sure there’s no cracks, though I’ve never seen a Colt product crack, and have it secured in a case for an after-dark pickup.”
“No problem,” said Les. “Extra mags, plenty of ammo, what’s it come to?”
“Ten magazines, five hundred rounds of .30 Government, the gun itself, the secure packing, I’m thinking, fair profit for me, economical for you, five thousand seems right.”
That was the standard underworld fee for the gun.
“Hmm,” said Les. “Man, I love this piece, but five, I don’t know. What about four, cash, right now?”
“Four?” said Mr. Lebman.
“Who knows, maybe the cops come by tomorrow and confiscate all the full-autos because of that new law. The longer you hang on to it, the more awkward it could become. The four is instant, right now, this second.”
“Hmm,” said Lebman.
“Four crisp thousand-dollar bills, you won’t go wild with ’em? You’ll sort of wait, or maybe spend them in Mexico or on a foreign buying trip, and just like we’d never tell anyone where we got the Monitor, you’d never tell anyone where you got the cash?”
“I think you’ve got a deal,” said Lebman.
“J.P., want to burn a mag?”
“No, that’s okay. I’m fine.”
They headed upstairs, and Mr. Lebman took the gun to the back of his shop. Les got out his wad, peeled off the four big ones, and laid them out for Mr. Lebman. When the gunsmith came back, he took the money without counting and slipped it into his own pocket. No accounting was necessary; they’d done enough business before.
“Now, you call me when you want to pick it up.”
“Absolutely,” said Les. “I think we’ll be in town another week. All that good Mexican food, man, I have five more restaurants at least I want to try.”
38
THE T&T & A$$ CLUB
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Two months earlier (cont’d)
“AH,” said Mr. Leon Kaye, “haircut fee?”
He didn’t like where this one was heading. It was going to cost him money and he didn’t like spending money on something of little calculable value.
“Now, look here, Mr. Kaye,” said Braxton. He put his hand on his hair. It was thick, luxuriant, golden, a pure Viking mane from the seventh century A.D. It cost Braxton about three hundred dollars a month to maintain it.
“This hair, see, I been growing it for twenty years. It’s what’s called my brand. Rawley and I are known for our hair in the way a country singer or a rock star might be known.”
“Braxton, it’s your choice how to grow your hair. It’s nothing I’d be expecting to pay a fee for.”
“It took me best part of three years to grow it out like this. It takes one of Little Rock’s best beauty shops on healthy retainer for a visit twice weekly to keep it such a brilliant blond. Same for Rawley.”
Rawley nodded. His mane, if anything, may have been a little more luxuriant, a little more blond, a little more Viking than his brother’s. It was quite a head of hair. And, taken together, the two of them looked like Siegfried and Roy on HGH from Samoa.
“See, that’s where you’re misunderstanding the situation, sir,” said Braxton. “What you ain’t getting is that in the Negro community, where we do most of our work, and as well in the low-white community, mostly of Appalachian heritage, found in trailer parks and government housing the mid-South over, this hair ain’t only a certain look—a trademark, you might say—it’s a communication, and it speaks in a certain tone to them that has to be spoken to. First off, it gets their attention fast. They ain’t the most alert folks, you see, and getting them to pay attention is part of the battle right there.”
Glumly, Mr. Kaye nodded. His pawnshops also served roughly the same demographic and he had to admit there was some wisdom in Braxton’s assertion, not that under any other circumstances, and things being what they were, he would have acknowledged it.
“And here’s the message it carries. It says to them: We wouldn’t look so ridiculous if we couldn’t kick your asses all the way to Tuesday. It says: We do this for a living. We done a lot of it. Best now you cooperate with us, you save yourself a lot of hurt that way. It says: See, we ain’t no white person all teared up and gulpy over the horrible things our kind did to your kind. We the other kind of white people. We the kind that di
d them horrible things. We do ’em again, twice as hard, twice as mean, if you don’t cooperate. That’s a language our Negro clients understand, clear as a bell, and, like as not, they cooperate. Nobody done gets smacked about, arms broke, teeth swallowed, faces swelled like a grapefruit, right, Rawley? They have to know we represent the principle that it can all go away fast.”
Rawley could speak. It was just that he didn’t very often. At this point, he elected to say something quite strange.
“Sick. Transit. Gloria Monday.”
Mr. Kaye swallowed. What the hell? Tongues? Gibberish? A lunatic’s blubbering?
“Now, see if you can’t follow where I’m going,” said Braxton. “In order to follow the hero Swagger over the next few weeks, we will have to go in mufti, so to speak. Nothing showy, nothing with style and sparkle and ritz to it. No Viking tribal chief bouffant. No, it’s hair close-cropped, dull-black Men’s Wearhouse suits. No Lucchese boots, black inset with purple and red with silver skull points. It’s Rockport walkers instead.”
“I own a Men’s Wearhouse,” said Mr. Kaye. “I can get you a good price . . .”
But Braxton hadn’t heard him.
“To get to that point, we got to stop at the barber and sit still while he shaves us near clean, as we are blond to the root. All that investment in time and care and money to attain a certain thing, all that will be gone. It’ll be gone good and far away. And when our job is done and you have your serial 1934 bills and are counting all that money they brings you, we got months of downtime, waiting for our hair to grow out. We can’t do our real jobs without no hair. Without our hair, we just two old, fat, bald white guys, and nobody is more invisible in our world today than old, fat, bald white guys. So it’s only fair we be compensated for our sacrifice.”
“Fellows,” said Mr. Kaye, “I’m known as a bargainer. As a negotiator par excellence, good with money, quick with the numbers, able to see now versus then in any exchange, and patient enough to wait for the long-haul payoff. So I did my investigating. And I know you aren’t really in a position financially—certain gambling debts, a lawsuit by the family of that boy you misidentified for that other boy—to walk away from the very generous amount of my initial offer. So I’m afraid it’ll have to stand.”
Braxton squealed with delight.
“He done ’vestigated us, Rawley,” he said. “He ain’t no fool, that Mr. Kaye! He didn’t make a fortune in the gold business by being no fool, no sir!”
He smiled, his caps glowing like the Chiclets of Death.
“Now, because we are big, you’re thinking, ‘They’s dumb.’ But, sir, here’s my news for you: we ain’t dumb. You think we could run sophisticated software-intercept programs that get us in the most amazing places and be dumb? No sir. We smart enough, most important, to know what we know, and what we don’t know. And if we don’t know a thing, we get help. Are you following me, Mr. Kaye?”
“Of course,” said Kaye, “but my position is firm.”
“So, being Grumley, we ask another Grumley for help. Grumley always help Grumley. Like the Masons, only without the goofy hats. Who needs goofy hats when you got blood working on your side?”
“Braxton, I’m a busy man. I don’t mean to be rude, but I need you to get to the point, if you have one.”
“The point is, you invested heavily in property and development of a new Vegas to be called Razorback City, in Fayetteville. You done that to get in on the ground floor when gambling becomes legal in certain areas of our state. When that happens, you will make billions, owning the prime land in Razorback City. You can develop your own casinos; you can sell land to other interests, make a ton there. The sky’s the limit, and the money just pours in. You’re in the money, you’re in the money.”
How the fuck did they know?
“He looks surprised, don’t he, Rawley?”
Rawley nodded.
“Yep, a Grumley can find anything out if he sets his mind to it. They found out that secret. And they found out the other secret too.”
Fuck! thought Mr. Kaye.
“And that is, an interest payment came due for a certain party a few weeks ago and you just didn’t have the cash, because even if you’re pawnshop and strip joint and Men’s Wearhouse rich, you’re cash poor, and so you borrowed from some nasty boys with Russian DNA now in Vegas. You expected a big surge of dough when the Recession got fixed under the new president, only it didn’t. The economy just stayed where it was, flat like a ’tater pancake.”
Mr. Kaye swallowed. Their intelligence was so good! These two . . . professional wrestlers!
“So this here game ain’t some little minor con you got going ’cause you like old thousand-dollar bills, it’s life or death because you need cash fast or the Russians will bring the big pain on you. They are not the sort to be persuaded to patience, no sir. You deliver to them when you say you will or you go for a swim with a slot machine chained to your thumbs. Sir, you are mortgaged so tight and in debt so far, you are breathing through a little tiny whisper of nostril left above the water. If you don’t come through in a very short time, you going to be permanently in the big wet glub-glub.”
Mr. Kaye said nothing. His eyes crinkled into a reptilian life-form’s and seemed to see nothing, while, behind them, images of his own lungs filling with unstoppable cold Arkansas lake water took over his brain.
“So here’s the deal. Haircut fee, five thousand dollars per man, now, in cash, from a fund not even your accountant/mistress—the Korean gal, she manages a pawn for you in Roberts, and, by the way, she’s also fucking the guy that owns the Burger King across the street, and I sort of think she likes what he brings to the table more than what you bring, but I won’t bother with the pictures for now—not even Miss Lilly Park knows about. Then, as agreed previously, a sixty-five/thirty-five split. Plenty of swag for both, gits you out of the deep lake water. And we will be with you every single step of the way so that we can follow the bookkeeping down to the penny. To the penny, sir. Miss Lilly Park will check the math.”
39
McLEAN, VIRGINIA
The present
THE TRIP TO Texas proved anticlimactic.
“More circumstantial stuff,” said Bob. “Nothing hard, empirical, subject to other analysis, irrefutable, useful.”
“Circumstantial is admissible,” said Nick. “Sometimes it’s all we have.”
Swagger threw back another swig of Diet, again looked longingly at the highball in Nick’s hand. They sat in the basement workroom, unofficial headquarters of Operation Charles Fitzgerald Swagger.
“So let’s hear it.”
“First, to Waco. Texas Ranger Museum. They have a Monitor there, only one I could find fast. Went to museum, looked at it—they say it was Frank Hamer’s—and compared my little nozzle with the comp on the Monitor, through the glass case.”
“And?”
“Yep, the same. That’s why it was such a fine piece of machinework. Colt had the best machinists in the trade in those days, their standard product of the finest quality. Mine was actually a little bit better than theirs, but it’s been sitting in a box since 1934. The Rangers probably haul theirs out to the range every six months for the fun of it and run a couple hundred rounds just to watch the dirt fly and the soda cans pop.”
“Sounds like fun to me.”
“With that, I headed to San Antonio to look into Mr. Lebman. After the passage of the National Firearms Act in June of 1934, he kept very careful records. He knew the federal hammer could drop at any second and that in the end his contacts with San Antonio law enforcement might not do him any good.”
“He could feel their breaths on his neck.”
“Exactly. So Bill Lebman, his grandson, let me look through the records. He guided me and we found it. In mid-August 1934, it’s in the book as ‘Colt Rifle IA-83-25433, sold to Jimmie Smith, Midland, Texas.’”
/> “Is that a Monitor number?”
“It is. I have a guy big in collecting circles with a contact at Colt. Called him, he made the call, called me back. It was a Monitor, one of a run of a hundred and twenty-five made in 1931, sold to Dallas Mercantile and Security in February of 1932. No further information.”
“And Jimmie is Nelson.”
“Yeah, because he’s down as buying a .38 Super Colt machine pistol from Mr. Lebman in mid-1932, and that gun was found in a Dillinger arms cache in St. Paul in ’34. Testimony from gang associates puts it as a gift from Nelson to his hero, Johnny.”
“Solid,” said Nick.
“But we can’t prove the comp in Charles’s strongbox was the comp on the Monitor sold to Baby Face. It’s not a serial-numbered part. Still, it strongly suggests that Charles had an interaction with Baby Face in 1934 and somehow came into possession of the comp, maybe the whole gun. As I said, circumstantial, provocative—it certainly would follow that Charles could have that interaction only as a member of the Bureau. But . . . it don’t prove nothing.”
“And now for the bad news,” said Nick.
“Wait, I missed the good news,” said Bob.
“You ID’d the muzzle brake. You made it to Baby Face, then to Charles. It’s getting tighter and tighter. Tight enough for public consumption. Well, I came up with something too. Or, rather, our senior historian came up with it and sent it on to me.”
“Bad news?”
“Probably not. But you should know, it should be in the air, and it’s something we should look to disprove.”
“You’ve got me all tangled up.”
“Come over here.”
Nick led him to his computer, where he opened email, selected a message topic-lined “Recording,” from the official Bureau address, and opened it.