the junior officers and they know he really can do his job well. Now his unit is moving west by train, in that huge mess you described earlier. At some place? say, Little Rock?he jumps the train. He's from Arkansas, he has some family business to attend to before he goes to war. It takes him about a week, maybe less. He gets it done, heads back to Little Rock. Sooner or later another train bearing Marines comes through. He puts his uniform back on so he can mingle with them easily enough, and maybe he knows some of them and they know who he is. So he gets out to San Diego a week late. It's not that no one has noticed, it's just that they know this guy will be back, and when he quietly shows up one day, that's that. Nothing is said about it. I know it's against regulations, but this is a combat guy, the best, no one wants to give him any trouble, it's a sergeant kind of thing, something sergeants would let other sergeants get away with. Is that possible? Could that happen?'
'Theoretically, no. We do take attendance in the Marine Corps every morning at muster. But.. '
'Everyone knows that when they go up against the Japs, this is the guy they want around in a big way. He's got leader and hero written all over him in letters a foot tall. And he's probably going to die in the Pacific. Guys like him don't come back from wars, unless it's by some wild statistical improbability.'
'The truth is, what you describe, is it possible? Son, it's more than possible. It probably happened a lot. When we shipped out, we knew we weren't coming back. I did it myself.'
Chapter 39
He looked like a kid in a movie, one of those things with Dick Powell where everybody sang in a real trilly voice, and the women's hair was all marcelled and they wore diaphanous gowns. They didn't make movies like that anymore, but that's what the kid looked like.
'You're kind of young for this shit, aren't you, kid?' asked Owney.
Frenchy sat in an office inside the corrugated tin of the Maddox warehouse way out on the west side of town. He'd been cooling his heels with a mob of surly Grumleys who looked as if they'd just as soon eat him raw as oblige him by letting him live. They yakked at each other in Arkansas hill accents so dense and four-teenth-century, even accent-master Frenchy couldn't quite figure them out. They also spit a lot, the one thing about this godforsaken part of the country he could never get used to.
He wore gray flannels, a blue blazer with the Princeton crest, blue Brooks shirt, a yellow ascot and saddle shoes. And why not? What else would a man wear for such a ceremonial event? Overalls? He'd secredy swom never to wear overalls again. That store-bought suit he had worn every day as one of Earl Swagger's boy commandos? That thing should be burned.
'I'm twenty,' he said. 'I have very smooth skin, which makes me look younger. My mother says it makes me look like a girl. Do you think it makes me look like a girl?'
'Is this some kind of fucking joke? Are they tryin' to pull my leg?'
'My, nasty, aren't we? They said you liked to pretend to upper-class manners but were really pretty crude underneath. I guess they were right.'
'He's got you there, boyo,' said Owney's companion, an Irish movie star who looked too much like Dennis Morgan for anybody's good.
'Sir, I don't believe I've had the pleasure,' said Frenchy.
'You know who I am, kid.'
'I'm Walter Short, ofWilliamsport, Pennsylvania. You can call me Frenchy, all my friends did, that is, back when I had friends, and even that wasn't for very long. And you would be??'
'Ain't he but a charmer, Owney,' said the Irishman. 'Aye, he's a lad, I can tell. It ain't no joke to this one. He's got the look of a gendeman schemer to him, I can see it on him. It's a Brit thing. They love to look you in the eye and go all twinkly on you before they pull the bloody trigger.'
'Never you fucking mind who he is,' said Owney to Frenchy. 'You sing, buster, or you won't be a happy kid much longer. You convince me you got the goods.'
'Sure. Let's see: the leader of the outfit is a famous ex-FBI agent named D. A. Parker, one of the old-time gun-fighters of the '30s. Killed a lot of bandits, they say.'
'Parker!' said Owney. 'D. A. Parker! Who's the goddamned cowboy?'
'His name is Earl Swagger. He's more a Marine sergeant than a police officer. Lots of combat experience in the Pacific. Won some big medals. Unbelievably brave guy. Scary as hell. You don't want him mad at you. Oh, yes, you already know that. He is mad at you.'
He smiled.
'Earl and D. A. really are splendid men. You'd never stop them with those hillbillies you've got changing tires in the garage. If that's the best you've got, I'd suggest a career change.'
'Cut the crap, wise guy. Keep talking.'
'I'll tell you so much for free,' said Frenchy. 'You go check it out while I go out and get some dinner. Then, tonight, I'll tell you what I want from you. When I'm convinced you can give it to me, then I'll give you what you want.'
'Son, Mr. Owney here could have his boys squeeze it out of your high fanciness in a few minutes of dark, sweaty work, you know.'
'The funny thing is, he couldn't. He could beat me for a year and I'd never tell. I know what I'm doing and I know how the game is played. You don't scare me.'
'Look at the balls on that one, Owney,' said the Irishman, amused. 'Lord, if I don't think he's telling some kind of truth. He don't always tell the truth, but this time he is. And he'd take what you give him, Owney. He's a smart one, and he's willing to risk it all to win what he wants. Give the little pecker that.'
'Kid,' said Owney, who had a nose for such deceits, 'why? Why you doing this?'
This was the only time in the long night that Frenchy showed even a bit of emotion under his bravado. He swallowed, and if you looked carefully, you might see a brief, ashamed, furious well of tears in his bright eyes.
But then he blinked and it was gone.
'He should have done more for me. They all should have done more for me. I got a letter. A fucking letter.'
And then Frenchy told them everything he could about the raid team except where it could be found and where it would strike next.
Once the original breakthrough had been made, it didn't take long. Owney called F. Garry Hurst with the names Earl Swagger and D. A. Parker. Garry Hurst called associates in Little Rock and within three hours Owney had in his hands files, complete with photographs, that verified against Owney's own memory and the testimony of the two managers who'd seen them the identity of his two antagonists. The picture of D. A. came from a 1936 issue of Life magazine, called 'The Fastest Man Alive,' in which then FBI agent D. A. Parker drew against a time- lapse camera with a timer and was clocked at a move from leather to first shot in two tenths of a second. Among the pictures, one showed the then much younger man holding a tommy gun and looking proud at the final disposition of the Ma Barker gang in Florida. Another revealed that he'd been a member of the team that had brought down Charlie 'Pretty Boy' Floyd in Ohio. In a last picture, the man stood tall and lean and heroic as the great J. Edgar Hoover pinned the Bureau's highest award for valor on his chest. In a few years, fearing that he was growing too famous, Hoover would fire him, as he fired the great Melvin Purvis.
The Swagger picture appeared in the Arkansas Democrat Times: the Marine, ramrod-straight, in his dress uniform, as the president of the United States put a garland of ribbon and amulet around his neck, the Medal of Honor. Once it would have been the biggest news; by the time of the photo, July of 1946, that is, three months ago, just before all this began, it had only played on an inside page.
'Fuckin' Bugsy didn't know what he was up against,' said Owney. 'That guy's a war machine. Bugsy's lucky he didn't get himself killed. And I am unlucky he didn't kill Bugsy for me.'
'And Earl Swagger is unlucky,' said Johnny Spanish. 'If we don't kill the poor boyo, then sure as Jesus Bugsy will.'
Frenchy was back from dinner, looking extremely pleased with himself. The two men awaited him in the upstairs office, but all the Grumleys had been sent home. Only one lurked outside, with a pump shotgun, and he stepped aside for Frenchy.
