The Third Bullet - Страница 78

Naturally, what we’re looking for somewhere down the road is a column in your Guns amp; Ammo “Reloading” column, on finding the full potential in the new offering. I think if you play with loads and the Sierra or Nosler Partition.264 140-grain bullet, you’ll be impressed with what can be done.

By the way, Lon, this is a definite exclusive. We’re not sending similar kits to Warren or Jack. It’s yours and yours alone, because we know that Lon Scott has the market clout to launch a major success, where the others don’t. You can’t get Jack to shut up about his pet.270 anyway!

Sorry to send you off to the railway station for so many pickups, but I think you’ll find it was worth the effort.

Best,

Charlie

Charles Harris

Manager, Gun Department

Abercrombie amp; Fitch

Madison Avenue

New York, N.Y.

CWH: mlb

“Maybe we ought to switch to Starbucks,” said Nick. “This stuff is beginning to taste like swamp water.”

“I think I saw a snake in mine,” said Bob, putting down his cup of Seattle’s Best. Around them hummed suburban Dallas mall life, all of it at hyper-speed and lubricated by smiles, unction, and beauty in the paneled English Department milieu of the joint, with its fancy frappo, cappo, and whatever-else-cino machines, its pastry cabinets groaning with frilly sugared bombs. Mainly, it was moms in here, with the odd lonely salesguy on break; the servers all looked about twelve.

“Okay,” said Nick. “Let’s get to it. First off, I got a good team into Richard’s while he was having his Friday-night steak. They did the house top to bottom, came up with nothing. These guys can find anything. Plus, I’ve had a wire team on Richard, not every second of every day but enough to get a fair picture. Van parked down the way, different camouflage. Again, goddammit, nothing. No microwave transmissions to satellites, nothing. A little suspicious, if you ask me. He’s too clean.”

“Absence of evidence is not evidence,” Bob said.

“Hmm, where have I heard that before? Okay, that’s from my end. Now tell me about yours.”

Bob didn’t mention synesthesia, Sir Francis Galton, or colored numbers. He didn’t have enough. “I found a letter in New Jersey. It establishes that, yeah, Lon was sent a.264 Win Mag in 1960, first year of production. So the gun in the case could be his. No serial numbers, unfortunately, but it checks out as far as it can.”

“You think it’s legit?”

“That’s my feeling,” said Bob. “I spent another hour there. Obviously, I’m not a scientific document expert. But the paper was the same weight and shade as the others in the file, even accounting for aging. Typewriter was the same font, perfect to the slight darkness in the center of the small ‘e.’ The format was in accordance with other letters from Charlie Harris, including those to Jack O’Connor at Outdoor Life and Warren Page at Field amp; Stream. The diction felt right for about 1960. The shipping reference is right; he said ‘trips to the railway station.’ That’s because guns and powder couldn’t be shipped by common carrier in those days, meaning they couldn’t be delivered. You had to go to the Railway Express office at the train station and sign for the packages. And, Charlie Harris was the manager of the gun room. I found references to him all through the literature of the time. He sold Hemingway a batch of guns.”

Nick considered. “I don’t like it. All that may be true, but it’s within the reach of professional high-end forgers.”

“Maybe, but because that’s so it doesn’t mean this is forged.”

“Too bad you didn’t bring it with you.”

“I wanted to preserve the box, for comparison purposes. And I thought to go the lab route would take too much time. If and when, we can subpoena for it. I stashed it carefully in that mess.”

“I don’t like it, Bob. If it means you go alone to that estate, out of our swift-response zone, you could be dead and buried before we get choppers in. Help is minutes away when you need it in seconds.”

“I don’t like it either. But it seems to me we have to keep going on this line or cut bait.”

“What about we bust Marty and Richard for attempted fraud and third-degree ’em. As you say, they’re not tough guys; you know they’ll fold. Meanwhile, we give that letter the full nine yards in our doc lab. Marty and Richard roll over, we go to the next link up the chain, and he rolls over. If the letter’s forged, our forgery guys will know who did it, and we round him up and bang his head against the bars. He squeals. That’s how you bring a crime lord down.”

“Yeah, but a crime lord has property, a place in the community, investments, family, all of which make him more or less stuck in place. If Hugh’s alive, he has none of that, that we can find. We have no idea where in the world he is. He can disengage in a second, and he’s clever enough to have designed break-offs in his network so he can disappear from our reach instantly. We pick up Marty and Richard, he’s gone for good. Then next year or the year after, I catch a.338 Lapua in the ear while I’m riding spring fence, and that’s the end of that. We’re close. I know we’re close. Nobody has been this close. I feel him.”

“What are you getting?”

“It has to be Hugh. He’s old, cagey, smart. He’s been in the game a long time. He knows what he’s doing. He’s no psycho; everything is rational, objective-driven. He’s subtle, he’s witty; in a funny way, he’s honorable. We left his kids alone, he’s left my family alone. I don’t know why, but I trust him for that. Like his cousin Lon, he’s a decent man, except for the few seconds when he killed the thirty-fifth president of the United States.”

“It’s your ass, so it’s your call.”

“Then I go.”

“I’ll have people close by, chopper teams, observation-”

“No, uh-uh. If Hugh has people, they’ll see it and hit eject hard, and that means he’ll hit eject. It only works if I go in alone, unobserved, no teams, no air cover, no radio nets, no backup. If I need help, I’ll call the state cops.”

“Swagger, still crazy after all these years.”

“I’m not saying I’m not scared or that I think this is wise. I am, it’s not. I just don’t see any other way.”

“That’s what they said about Iwo Jima.”

“We won Iwo Jima. Look, here’s my plan. I’ll call Richard, tell him about the letter, have him contact Marty, and set up a date for next week. Then. . I go on vacation.”

“Do you have a time-share or something? A condo in Florida?”

“No. But I have to get away. By myself, somewhere quiet. I’ll pick it at the airport. I have a lot to think about.”

“You seem to have done a lot of thinking already.”

“Not enough. I have crap in my head that I can’t figure. There’s something called synesthesia involved, which reflects a mind glitch that sees certain letters or numbers in color. Niles was a synesthete, as they’re called.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“So was Nabokov. He saw letters in color. Niles had a connection to Nabokov through synesthesia, and I think that’s why he used it to construct his bogus ID for Hugh. It was an expression of his and Hugh’s love of Nabokov, and it represented the kind of cleverness Nabokov used. Niles saw nine as red. I’m guessing the fake name that Niles gave Hugh all those years ago reflects a color or a number, probably a variation on red or nine. I’m trying to work that angle.”

“It’s thin,” said Nick. “I mean, even knowing that it’s a color or a number, a red or a nine for some reason, what use is that without a suspect pool?”

“Oh, I’ve got a suspect pool,” said Bob. “It includes everyone currently alive on the planet Earth.”

“Good,” said Nick. “That’s encouraging.”

“Then there’s something about the Charlie Harris letter. Don’t know, but I’m getting a buzz. Everything’s perfect, as I told you, but I get this buzz. Got to figure that.”

“The Swagger buzz. Admissible in all state courts. I have complete confidence that you’ll get your man.”

“I’m sure I will too. After all, Humbert got Clare Quilty at the end.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Another manhunt story. I’ll tell you later.”

Swagger!

It clawed me from unconsciousness. I awoke, as before, in a cold sweat, enfeebled, aged, overmatched. I tried to sort it out before my heart exploded and aneurism did finish me. I had directed Richard to work with a police artist to prepare a likeness of the “Jack Brophy” who had shown, possibly killed my driver, then disappeared in Dallas, and it took until that night, but. . could it be Swagger? No. Impossible. The odds were too distant. But I’d seen long odds cash in enough times not to see it as a possibility. I grabbed the drawing from my desk and bore down on it.

I had seen him, of course-that day in 1993 at the preliminary court hearing in New Orleans. I had sat behind the prosecutor’s table in gray herringbone and red bow tie. I looked like ol’ Perfesser Flibberty-Gibberty out of a Frank Capra movie, very much the Ivy paragon of diffident and eccentric genius. That was my style then, hopelessly tweedy of appearance, of mind.

I remembered: lanky, jeans, boots, some sort of cowboy jacket. For all my efforts, I couldn’t get a face. I had impressions, not images. I saw that stretched-out body, not accustomed to sitting, unsure how to arrange those legs. Wary-the word “wary” keeps coming to mind. He seemed to be watching everything evenly, without remarking, holding his cards tight to his chest, always calm, a kind of easy grace to his actions. It was easy to project that temper into a sniper, who’d need wariness, a gift for observation, patience, and could have nothing of the showy, boastful, immodest, or psychopathic about him. The work was too dangerous for show; it demanded contradictory gifts, the precision for equipment maintenance and the patience for detailed preparation, but also the imagination to project into space an enemy’s movement and predict where he might be; and beneath it all, the stubbornness to keep the imagination from inventing demons and letting panic take hold. Many men can be brave in batches, where sacrifice and support are the group norms; being brave on your own, out in Indian country, for hours and hours-that’s a trick.