“Poor guy,” she said, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “Jessie will try to make you feel better.”
“Excellent. Now let’s order and-”
But a shadow fell across the table.
Bill looked up and was surprised to see Nick Memphis of the FBI. He almost did a double take.
“Nick, I-”
“Bill, imagine running into you here. Gosh, what a surprise.”
Was that mockery in his voice?
“Uh, Jessica, may I present Nick Memphis, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nick, this is Jessica Delph, a friend of mine.”
Nick bowed.
“Ms. Delph, a pleasure,” he said.
Then he turned to Bill and smilingly said, “Bill, you know, I think it would be a good idea if you gave Ms. Delph carfare and sent her home. I think it’s going to be a long evening.”
Bill swallowed, dammit, and looked for the joke in the agent’s face but saw no humor.
“Ms. Delph, sorry, but I think your evening with Bill here is over.”
“Bill, is anything the matter?”
“Uhhh,” Bill stumbled, at a loss for words for the first time in his life. Then he said, “I don’t know. Is anything the matter, Nick?”
“Well, Bill, that depends on how well you do over the next few minutes as we have our little chat. I’m trying desperately to find out why I shouldn’t touch this button on my pager and stand back as our crack apprehension team-this is five guys who were all tackles or guards at Nebraska-come through that door in full SWAT gear, guns drawn, and throw you to the ground, mace you, slam on the cuffs, and drag you out by your ears, your Allen Edmonds shoes dragging in the sawdust. Imagine how quickly that would get all over town. We don’t want that, do we?”
Bill had no desire to find out if Nick was bluffing.
“Jessie, here’s a twenty, honey. I’ll call tomorrow.”
Quickly, she scurried out, and Nick slipped in.
Bill took a sip of his martini, then another, and ate the olive.
“Am I allowed to order another?”
“Sure.”
“And you’re not drinking, I’m guessing.”
“You got that right.”
Bill gestured Vito Corleone over and sent for another vodka martini.
“Okay, Nick, I’m all yours.”
“I want to know why I shouldn’t arrest you on seven counts of aiding and abetting a felony crime, namely murder, the first-degree kind.”
Bill’s lower jaw not merely hit the table top but fell clean through the floor to the wine cellar beneath. When he got his breath back and his jaw reinserted in its hinges, he spoke with a weak, phlegm-choked voice.
“I-I-”
It was not much of an argument.
“We recovered a 1971 bank camera film of a robbery in Nyackett, Massachusetts. It clearly shows the young Thomas T. Constable shooting and killing two security guards from behind.”
“I-Uh-Are you joking?”
“Not at all. Then we recovered very solid information linking him to four Irish contractors-professional snipers-who murdered Joan Flanders, Jack Strong, Mitzi Reilly, Mitch Greene, and Carl Hitchcock, and I’m betting we can pin the murder of a Chicago cop named Dennis Washington on him too. Tomorrow when we serve warrants, we’ll have a lot more evidence. Now, Bill, here’s where we are. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem. My bet is that you’ll want to get ahead of this thing, because you know if you don’t, it’ll crush you. You’ll do very hard time in a very bad joint.”
“Nick, I knew nothing-”
“Save that for your own lawyer. I don’t have time. Mr. Fedders, either you come with me tonight and start making like a tweety-bird, or you are looking at a grim end to a very pleasant life. Somehow I don’t think Ms. Delph is going to make the long trip to Marion every Sunday to hear your sad stories of gang rape. And maybe Mrs. Fedders won’t either.”
Bill threw down his martini, signaled Vito for another one.
Then he turned to Nick and gave him a solemn, sincere look, rather fatherly, one of his most persuasive tools, and in his rich mahogany voice, he said, “Nick, you’re asking me to turn on a man who’s supported me my whole life. Because of Tom Constable’s belief in me, I wear fine shoes-Aldens, not Allen Edmonds-and suits, am married to a beautiful, understanding woman, have four extraordinary children, well educated and prospering in their careers, and as you can see, I do still get out on the town once in a while, old dog that I am. All because of Tom. I make over five million dollars a year, have a fine estate in Potomac, a beautiful house in Naples, and another on the Eastern Shore, right near Dick Cheney’s. I have horses, Perazzi shotguns; I have a two handicap and am noted as one of the best poker and bridge players in town. Everyone returns my calls. All that because of the generosity, the support, the belief, even the love of Tom Constable, whom you now accuse of horrific crimes. And you say to me, will you betray this man? Will you turn on this man? Will you do harm to this great American?”
“That’s the sixty-four-year-in-prison question.”
“Well, Nick, I can answer you very quickly, in words of one syllable: of course I will. In a second. In half a second. And have I got stuff to give you. Now let’s get out of here. I hope you’ve got stenographers and typists ready, because it’s going to be a very long night.”
53
Two hours later they sat in a diner across from Indian Rapids’s only motel, an Econo Lodge, showered and changed into clothes they’d bought in the town’s only store, a beat-up old joint featuring everything from guns to butter. The two men were eating nothing great but a lot of it.
“Didn’t know I was so hungry,” said Bob.
“I can tell you’re gassed. Best get some sleep now. I think you’ve got an advanced case of what I’d call combat stress syndrome.”
“Umph,” said Bob. “Maybe so. Felt better. Called my wife, told her I’d be home in a few days. She wasn’t real sure who I was, and when I finally got her to remember me, she told me my daughters are all grown up and married and have kids.”
“You need to chill for a long, calm year.”
“I wish. Maybe later. I have to go to DC one last time on Tuesday to get this thing straightened out. Then I want to stop in Chicago. I have a gun that belongs to a police officer that I’d like to give to his widow.”
“No rest for the weary,” said Chuck. Then he said, “Look, Bob, nobody’s going to say this, so you’re stuck with me and I’m not any kind of speech maker. Too bad for you. But you wouldn’t let ’em do that to Carl Hitchcock, and by extension to us, the snipers, the mankillers, the bastards way out there with a rifle that never make it into the history books even if they make it back to their own lines. So sniper to sniper, the only thing I can say is-hell, I don’t know-Gee, Roy Rogers, you made all the little buckeroos happy.”
Swagger smiled. That was good enough for him. Then he suddenly felt a wave of fatigue. Time to go.
“Brother Chuck, I’ve got to crash.”
“Got it.”
“You’ll wake me in the morning and we’ll figure out where to go and what to do next.”
“Good.”
“See you then.”
“Gunny, one last thing. I won’t sleep. How in hell did you make that shot? You were what, six hundred yards out, with a mil-dot, and he had that supercomputer-driven thing. But you beat him and put him down before he even got a shot off. How? For God’s sake, that was the greatest shot I ever heard of.”
“Oh, that,” said Bob, as if that were something like picking up a sock. “He thought he was hunting me, but I was hunting him. I knew if it came to Lone Tree, the shooting would be fast and far and it’d be a one-round war. I spent a night in Lone Tree before you came in and even before I went in. I walked it, I studied it on the maps, I tried to learn it good. I figured out where he’d start in if he came on a beeline from the first valley, ’cause he knew where the games would be played. That was the whole point. From there, I tried to figure where he’d shoot from. I discovered that there was a spot he’d move through, either on foot or low crawl, where there wasn’t no wind. That’s because you can’t hardly see it, but about two hundred yards to the right, there’s a knoll, about twenty foot tall, a natural windbreak. So if Anto’s coming down that slope, when he gets to that dead spot, that’s where he’ll shoot. Any sniper would. Why fight the wind at the muzzle if you don’t have to? I lased the range from the spot back to the tree. It was five hundred thirty-seven yards. When I got your rifle, I zeroed it to point of aim, dead bang center, no holdover, right at five thirty-seven. Then I just watched, and when he felt the wind stop, he halted, just for an instant, to process it; then he went to shoot. But I was maybe a half second ahead of him, and I put it on the money, though a little to the right. I was five inches off my center chest hold. Blew his arm out at the root. Wasn’t pretty, but then little in this game is.