“I see,” said Bob.
“So, what do you want to do with this stuff, Bob? Take it? Leave it? Report it?”
“Well, I guess the money should be turned in to Treasury. It’s clearly a bank’s, not mine, so let’s get that one over with fast. Can you take care of it?”
“No problem.”
“Then, I’d like to xerox the map, just in case, just in case of I don’t know what. Maybe something will occur to me.”
“Makes sense.”
“As for the pistol, I think I’ll take that, at least for a little while. I want to shoot it, see what I can learn from it. If it was his pistol, maybe it’ll tell me something. Maybe we can communicate through the gun, since we both loved guns so much.”
“I don’t see any problems. Just don’t sell it. You can destroy it or keep it, but if you destroy it, it might open you up to destroying government property. I have to look into the law here.”
“Got it,” said Bob.
“There must be an old briefcase around here. We’ll put it in that.”
“Great.”
“And the ‘cylinder’?”
“You keep it for now. I’ll look in various books I’ve got, maybe I can come up with something.”
“And the badge?”
“Can you keep it too? I won’t know what to do with it until I figure out who and what he was. Let’s keep it here for a bit. In the meantime, I have to look into my grandfather’s life. I have a very good friend, Nick, recently retired from the Bureau, and maybe he can help me dig out old files. I can see if there was ever a Charles Fitzgerald Swagger on the payroll for a few months in 1934. Maybe that gun has some historical provenance and it should be returned to the Bureau, though they don’t have no museum. Maybe my grandfather’s career has been expunged; he got drunk one night and shot up a whorehouse, something like that.”
“You sure you want to dig into family secrets? Some things are best left underground. I could tell you a thing or two about Sam Vincent that would surprise you and that, even now that I have made peace with them, I wish I hadn’t learned.”
“I have had the same thoughts myself and it does scare me. But now I’m hooked. Charles invented Earl, Earl invented Bob. To understand Earl, I’ve got to work that line backwards in time. I have to answer the one question Charles didn’t want asked: who was Charles F. Swagger?”
5
LITTLE BOHEMIA LODGE
MANITOWISH WATERS, WISCONSIN
April 22, 1934
LES RAN THROUGH THE WOODS BLINDLY. He was not one to panic, but hearing what sounded like gunfire, he’d looked out the window of the cabin and suddenly the tree line had erupted in machine-gun fire, and even if he wasn’t in its direct line, from the number of guns he knew the federals were here in force.
His first thought, Where was Helen? while the gunfire rose and rose, as if a whole battalion was on the attack. Then he realized she was in the main lodge with Tommy and Johnny and Homer and the boys, and there was nothing he could do except escape and survive and pray for the same outcome for her.
He had his .45 tucked in his shoulder holster, because he always did; he lived with that gun, trusted it, and kept it close for just this occasion. But from the sounds outside, he knew he needed more, and he opened the closet and there his Thompson gun leaned against the wall, as casually as if it were a golf club or something, with its bulbous and awkward drum of fifty rounds giving it weight and clumsiness. His enthusiasm for firearms filled him with energy, and the prospect of using one against human targets always made him happy—that is, if he weren’t boiling with rage, which was his other mode of being. He was a contradiction, and no one could explain him, a handsome, dapper fellow, capable, a family man, the proud father of Ronald and Darlene, the loyal husband to one wife (he never messed around, and he never left Helen for long periods of time), and, to see him, you’d think he was one of life’s little mechanics, solid, a churchgoer. But he did like to shoot things up, he liked adventure, he had an abnormal absence of fear, and killing wasn’t a thing that lingered in his mind for long.
He grabbed the weapon, feeling its heaviness, which, far from being an irritation, was an attribute that helped keep it steady when fired at the quick march. He called it a machino, and it was one of the reasons he had entered this line of work, for the thrill it gave him when unleashed righteously against those who would do him harm was beyond ecstasy. And such a moment was now upon him, happily, like the reward of a drug rush to addict. Machino held all the answers, was a god that paid for fealty with victory. It pushed out all doubts and fears. He was happy, happy, happy.
He stepped out the front door of the cabin and found himself at an angle to the tree line, whose concealed gunners continued to lay their fusillade against the large log structure fifty yards immediately to their front, which itself was now adrift in smoke and vapor from all the bullet strikes and the dust they ripped free as they buried themselves in wood or plaster.
He was not stupid, and he was not without aesthetic impulse. At this moment, he took in the dramatic spectacle of what lay before him and knew that this was where he belonged, amid the smell of burned powder and the hammering of the guns, illuminated by flashes dancing out of muzzles, the whole thing livid and clear in the coldness of an early-spring evening in the northern latitudes. It didn’t get much better.
—
HE ORIENTED THE GUN EASILY, and his finger went fast to the trigger, knowing that, against the chance of visitors, he kept the bolt cocked and the safety lever down, because if you needed it, the chances were you needed it that second. It seemed to melt into his body, so brilliantly engineered was it, and he hunched, braced, smiled, and fired.
Machino spoke. It lay a long strip of .45s against the tree line, and though he did not see the bullets strike, he saw dust kick, branches shudder, leaves disintegrate, trees vibrate, under the wondrous power of machino. The drama of the gun at full blast offered other pleasures too, the spray of spent shells ejecting like kernels of popped corn from the skillet, the building shudder of the vibration, the superspeed blur of the bolt as it rammed forward and back under the power of the firing cartridges, the flame squirting upward, almost over the gun, as the configuration of the gun’s compensated nozzle aimed it upward in order to hold the muzzle down by counterforce, the glint of the fins on the barrel, the solidity of each grip in his strong, tight hands. So much to enjoy, such pleasures to behold! It filled his anarchistic heart with joy. Some men are born to destroy, and nothing satisfies them but that. Whatever you’ve got, they want to tear it apart, from architecture and bank vaults to order and society itself, anything, just to watch it twist, shred, and die.
Then the gun ran dry. He’d dumped the whole drum in a few seconds, sending fifty half-inch death warrants out into the night, and tough luck for anyone who got served by them. This, however, issued a problem, which was, where was another drum? And, second, how quickly could he get it in? For the drums, with all that ammo, were so heavy, the engineers had come up with a sliding rather than a clicking mechanism by which to attach them to gun, and slipping the lips of the drum into the slots that were milled into the frame was never easy. But even as he identified the problem, he solved it. He had another weapon, so unique it seemed to have been just planned for this situation.
—
THUS, he dashed back in the cabin while the federal gunners ducked, pulled back, tried to gauge this new stream of incoming fire, and he picked up something as yet unseen in the world. It was built for him—he had several and had even given one to Johnny as a gift, as an acolyte gives the cardinal a small token—by a gifted gunsmith in San Antonio. It was a true machine pistol, a Government .45, but with certain adjustments to its internals so that one pull of the trigger emptied all the rounds in a three-second blast. Because it fired so fast, it needed a lot of ammo, and the gunsmith, Lebman, had carefully welded several magazi
nes together so that it held eighteen of the robin’s-egg-sized .45 ACP cartridges. Because the longer the trigger was held down, the more the recoil built, it meant rounds ten through eighteen would have been hosepiped aimlessly across the sky, but Lebman had thought this one through as well. He had mounted both the Cutts compensator and the horizontal foregrip from a full-sized Tommy to the pistol, the comp to fight the muzzle’s rise, the forestock to offer the second hand a sculpted wedge of wood with finger grooves by which it could be pulled against the same muzzle’s rise. You could zip off a magazine, therefore, with a fair chance of staying on target through the whole of the transaction, all eighteen rounds’ worth, as no force on earth or in engineering could halt the gun’s hunger for ammo once the trigger had been jacked.
So he couldn’t have been more perfectly prepared for what lay ahead. Nothing beats or satisfies like the perfect tool for the otherwise undoable job. He ducked back to the porch, cut left, and dashed down its short length. Bullets came his way, but were magically dissuaded from his flesh, or so he believed, by the charisma of his boldness and the size of his personality, and indeed a few struck nearby, tearing out splinters and debris and pulverized wood, but nothing struck him, and in a second he was off the porch and had deviated backwards, where the woods soon swallowed him.
Les was bold, but he was also lucky. He had no map, he had no particular sense of the terrain, indeed had never set foot into this part of Wisconsin until yesterday afternoon, driving up with Helen and Tommy Carroll, and even now the spurs of evergreens and as-yet-unleafed maple and elm sprigs cut at him but did not slow him down. He had no orientation, as woods skills were not among his talents, and the trees were too heavy, in any case, to make out any direction-suggesting stars. He just ran. He was young, twenty-six, full of a sense of fun, and sucking so powerfully on his badness and his glamour and yet another slick escape that no branch dared oppose him seriously, and the forest itself did not conspire against him by leading him off on twisty return trails so that he’d run like hell without advancing anywhere.
He ran, ran, ran. Behind him, the firing had stopped, and now and then he turned, swung around and looked for targets. But he could see no shadow pursuers, and when he managed to still his over-dramatic intake of oxygen, heard no crunching in the brush or thudding in the dust that might signify pursuit.
In time, the forest offered him a path carpeted with pine needles, and his night vision had adjusted to the low illumination, so the way was as sure as any of the Chicago alleys in which he’d grown up. He felt relaxed enough to steady up on his gait, sliding into something of a smooth jog, as opposed to the helter-skelter ragtime of insane escape speed. The shoulder holster held the .45 tight under his arm, as it was designed to do, and though the heft of the machine pistol grew in his hands (no holster could accommodate it because it was so big and ungainly), it rode in his hands, and he sometimes carried it lefty, sometimes righty, sometimes pointed up, sometimes pointed down, subtly shifting the point of balance and relieving his muscles. But it was too necessary to even think about jettisoning. If he fell in a lake, it would drown him, that’s how much clinging to it meant.
He drifted on, hearing the silence of the night, his powerful eyes keenly locked ahead in case of ambush. But he was not the paranoid type and so no dread crushed against him. He did not see phantoms from the Division behind every tree, and the natural sounds of the forest—the hooting of owls, the scurrying of small mammals, the click and clack of branches moving against each other in the wind, the leaves propelled by the same force rubbing—did not grow in his imagination. He didn’t have much imagination beyond guns, cars, his kids, and his wife. His whole world was feral, not planned, narrow, not broad, predatory, not nurturing, tough-guy proud, not afraid, and though not now, insane at times with rage. He needed anger management desperately but there was no anger management yet, nor were there antidepressants or other drugs that could have pulled him back to the normal range, but he’d been crazy for so long, and had enjoyed it so much, there was no getting him back.
How much time? An hour, not more than two. But at a certain point the fact that God himself is also crazy rewarded him, and he did not fall into a lake or a ditch and spare the world much pain, he came instead to a road, and in no time at all a Model A came chugging along. God was again taking care of Les.
“Goddammit,” he yelled, pointing the strange little machine pistol at the two astonished occupants. “Get me out of here, goddammit!”
He scooted into the back.
Nothing happened. Both were frozen with fear. After all, imagine what an apparition he would have seemed, a dapper, rather handsome chap, well dressed in a suit, a thick head of hair, a sprig of movie-star mustache on his square pug face, yet armed with a weapon the likes of which they had never seen even if they recognized its deadly components, most notably the yawning .45-inch bore, and the fellow was acting fully insane, red-faced, swaddled in sweat, which flew off of him as he moved like a dervish toward them, eyes as wide as a rabid dog’s. He looked like the picture-show comic boy Mickey McGuire with a real big gun, hopped up on tequila.
“Get this sonovabitch moving,” commanded the man, and reluctantly, with shivering fingers and stunted movements, the driver eased her into gear and began to move.
But the tricks weren’t done for the night, not by a long shot. The light beams filled the vault of trees curving over the road, and the car edged ahead, began to build speed, and Les had a glimpse of the perfect escape he so richly deserved. And then the lights went out.
“What the hell!” he screamed.
“Sir, I didn’t do nothing, swear to God— Oh, Christ, I don’t know—”
“I swear, sir, this here’s an old buggy, wiring’s all shot to hell, I could dicker with her under the hood, maybe get the shine on again—”
“Jesus H. Christ!” screamed Les. Yet he couldn’t imagine these two bozos conspiring against him on the spur of the moment, and he knew if he killed them, the damned gun was done for the evening, as he had no other big mag. “Goddammit, get going, take her easy, don’t pile us up, Grandpa, or I will have your ass for breakfast.”
Slowly the car crept ahead, essentially feeling its way through the woods, stopping now and then when someone’s eyes detected a problem with the road. At this rate, he’d be free and clear of Wisconsin well before Christmas.
“This ain’t working, goddammit,” he screamed at them.
“Sir, I am so sorry, I just—”
“Okay, okay. Shut up, now. See, isn’t that a house up on the left?”
“It’s Koerners’,” said the other occupant, as if Les was going to answer, “Oh, that’s where the Koerners live.”
“Pull in,” he commanded, and the rube slid the car off the road, up the driveway in front of a well-lit clapboard, back in the trees, off the road. They sat there while Les tried to figure out what to do next. Best thing: crash the house, see if they had a car, then take off in it, presumably lights running, and whiz through the night until he reached the Illinois or Iowa or Michigan state line, he didn’t know or care which. That was the best idea, and he took a deep breath and began to compose himself to issue instructions, when, absurdly, another car pulled in, just behind them, and three men got out.
Jesus Christ, was this an escape in a Keystone comedy? People keep showing up exactly where they shouldn’t be, and he’s got hostages coming out the butt. What’s he supposed to do with these hostages. Start a band?
He leapt from the car, leveled the machine pistol at the three, noting intently even in the dark that they lacked that cop deportment—he’d been studying it his whole life—which was equal parts size, steadiness, and seriousness, and screamed, “Get those paws up, you mooks, or I’ll blast you to hell.”
The three turned, hands flew up, but he knew instantly that whoever these mooks were, they knew there’d been action at Little Bohemia, and the night would be full of
spooks, gangsters, feds, and machine-gun fire. They eyed him with fear, expecting difficulty, offering no resistance, as if obedience could buy off his craziness.
“Go on, goddammit, get in the house, you two”—meaning the two he’d already nabbed—and the five of them formed into a loose confederation of civilians, with hands high, controlled from the rear by a man with a nasty pistol.
This motley crew marched into the Koerners’, and those folks looked equally stunned at the size of the menagerie that had just tromped into the living room, particularly the extremely agitated young fellow who was calling the shots, yelling orders, dancing this way and that, sweating like a boxer, his eyes racing over everything as he drank it in for information.
“All right, everybody, get on the goddamned floor if you don’t want to be in a massacre. If I have to fire, you get famous, but you’re dead, so no time to enjoy it.”
The group eased awkwardly to their knees in front of a nice sofa-and-love-seat arrangement the Koerners had set up, near the switchboard, which was how Koerner made his living.
“Okay,” he said, “sorry for the yelling, don’t mean to hurt no civilians. But I have to get out of here and I want you down and quiet. Keep your mouth shut and maybe you’ll live to tell your grandkids. You and you”—he pointed to the two men nearest the door, who happened to be in the party of three he’d just taken—“we’re going out and get in your car and drive away, got that? Play ball and you should be okay, except for the extra trip. The rest of you, stay down, stay quiet, be calm. I don’t even have time to rob you.”
He eased them out of the house, off the porch, and over to the last car in the now crowded driveway.
“Now, get in the front, and— What the—”
Astonishingly, there was already someone in the backseat. Another band member! Now what? He was just making this up.