“Did you recognize him?” asked Anto, as the film ended in more opacity and scratches. “Yes, it was himself. He was twenty-one, had just been kicked out of his fancy university. He knew he had to return south, where his daddy would await with opprobrium and disappointment and put him to work in some dreadful department of his advertising agency. Little Tommy wasn’t yet ready for that life, so instead he floated about in the Boston underground in them days, grew the pile of hair and the guardsman’s furry brush. Too bad he didn’t have the hormones in him yet for a beard. He smoked pot, he got laid, he went to the demonstrations, he drank cheap wine, he met people, and he met other people. Somehow he volunteered to go along as tail gunner on a robbery attempt for some radical heroes of the moment. They never knew him as anything but Tommy, and he only realized later who they actually was, as all those boys and girls liked to play at IRA tricks like noms de guerre and suchlike. They was Nick and Nora to him, revolutionary pseudonyms. They gave him bus money and he left town that night for Atlanta-where you can bloody bet he shaved mustache and cut hair and became Mr. Neat n’ Trim, which appearance he clings to until this day-and ain’t been back to Boston ever since. The film was somehow stolen from the development laboratory by some kind of radical affiliate, and being hot was stored with a man who was loved and trusted by all them boys and girls of the time, the saintly commie journo O. Z. Harris. There it sat for thirty-odd years while Tom Constable built a life, enjoyed the lucky break of a father dying young and rich, and took that nice gift and expanded it into something gigantic and world famous.
“So there you have it, Sniper. Are you going to take him down for a second’s madness all them years back? Are you going to make a mockery of the name? And what about the good? What about the thousands of employees, dependent upon his lordship for their sustenance in businesses that will surely collapse when the news comes of his fall? What about the more than two hundred million in philanthropy over all them years, perhaps driven by guilt over the lives of them two fellas he gunned down? That’s a lot of good in this bad world to outweigh the moment of craziness. And you’re being the one sittin’ in judgment? You, who’s killed and killed and killed, mainly poor men doing what they seen as duty to country and cause in their own land. And for that, the mighty Bob Lee snuffed them from a mile out. Some of them sure never killed nobody nor would have, as you know most private soldiers is just marking time till they’re homeward bound. You must have killed your share of peasants without a hint of politics or patriotism on the mind, just working-class slobbos on patrol against their will when the mighty sniper took it all from them with but three ounces of pull in one finger. You’re going to judge another fella who pulled a trigger, and he in hot blood, not our sniper way of cold execution?”
Bob said nothing. He had not spoken since, “You talk too much,” which seemed from the Jurassic but was only from the Triassic BT-Before Torture.
“You haven’t reached him, Anto,” said Jimmy.
“I haven’t,” said Anto. “He won’t speak. He just looks off, his eyes going to hard little kernels of hate, like pieces of black corn. Give him a pistol at this second, and we’re all dead in the next. He’s a hard man. Unforgiving, like a bloody IRA gunman.”
“I’ll cuff him about a bit,” said Ginger. “Loosen some teeth, maybe it’ll loosen some words.”
“I’m not having that, Ginger. We’re the gentlemen sort of torturers, not the mad brutes bruisin’ our fists up. All right, Swagger, play it hard down the line. But I’m laying something on you now that may keep the sleep away, even if we leave you alone in the dark for some hours. You listen now: no better offer will you ever get, ever, never, no way in the whole black parade of a life full of so many wanton killings. Call it professional courtesy, call it sniper’s honor, call it me own damned sentimental weakness, but listen and then sleep, and then we’ll see if you can keep your silence.”
Anto took a deep breath and sat back, peering intently at Bob.
“It’s this. Here’s an offer you never thought you’d hear. Your life.”
“Anto,” said Ginger. “Have you cleared this with his lordship?”
“Hush now, Ginger. His lordship is off playing cowboy. So it’s on me, if you’re worried, but I tell you his lordship is no Clara Barton. So yes, boys, we’ll let him walk. We require only his cooperation, then his word. He can walk, go back to them daughters and that handsome woman and that farm or whatever piece of paradise it is. Think of it, Sniper. Put it in your mind: home, hearth, love. You’d bade ’em good-bye, but maybe prematurely.”
The silence in the room grew uncomfortable. Bob simply looked off into nothingness, as if what Anto had said didn’t matter.
“Next you’ll be offering him swag,” said Jimmy.
“He would spit on swag, am I right, Sniper? He’s the ideal, of which us four are only poor third-gen copies. Swag would tarnish the holiness of his cause. No, not swag but something else will buy him for us. We need to pay him in honor.”
“What are you talking about, Anto? Honor’s not a coin to be handed out.”
“It is. Here’s the offer, Sniper. You agree to walk away from all this. Being a man of your word, I know you will. And for us, the issue is finished. We’ve done our mercenary mission for his lordship. But a rub’s coming and here it is: I then move not to Spain but to some other, nastier place, and I blow the caper from there. I give you his lordship on a platter by way of a confession to the federals, with copies to all the papers and nets. I put it on the bloody Internet. I offer up some specific pieces of hard evidence, so there can be no denying. Thus is brother Hitchcock cleared and reelevated to his rightful spot. Thus is his lordship felled. Thus I blaspheme the mercenary code, and I do it the coward’s way, in some land that lacks an extradition treaty with America. I live in decadence and guilt, go to drugs, kill meself in five years on an overdose of pleasure. I don’t expect his lordship goes on trial or to prison, but I am most certain that the done thing equates to the ruin of his reputation and the hounding of him over his last few years, perhaps even hastening that end. So, Sniper, there you go: right has been restored to the world, and you yourself are alive to see it happen. A better offer no man was ever given.”
Swagger said nothing.
“In his eyes, though,” said Ginger, “I seen the reflection of thought. They widened, narrowed, and looked to sky, signifying recognition and cognition. It’s in his brain. That’s a hell of a break you’re cutting the man, Anto, and he knows it. I’d never do it. Sniper, I’d put a Browning bullet through your head, I would. You’re lucky Anto’s running things here; he’s so much smarter than we are.” Then he turned back to Anto. “He ain’t ready to talk yet, but let him sleep upon it, and when he wakes up and faces either the water eating his lungs permanently or a world with more justice than he ever dreamed, maybe he’ll make the right choice.”
“Maybe he’s just tired, Ginger,” said Raymond. “After all, he’s been up longer than we have, and I know I’m tired.”
“All right, boyos,” said Anto, “get him trussed tight in flex-cuffs again, wrists and ankles; he’s got too much movement in them manacles. Take him to his cell; we’ll give him some sack time and take some for ourselves. Then we’ll get this thing finished, one way or the other.”