Richard made all the arrangements. Bob met him at Dallas/Fort Worth International a week later, and the two flew direct to Boston, then caught an American Eagle puddle jumper to Hartford, where Richard had booked two rooms in the airport Marriott. Dinner in a local steak house.
At eight the next morning, Richard picked Bob up in a blue rental Ford Focus, and they set out for the two-hour drive west through the rolling Connecticut countryside for the arrival at Marty’s estate in Litchfield County, west of Warren.
“Beautiful country,” said Richard. “Reminds me of the Cotswolds, in England.”
“Never been there,” said Bob. “But beautiful it is. And you don’t see any shacks or rusted-out cars on cement blocks or run-down places like you do in the South. The American South or any south.”
The trees, the houses, the farms, the towns: all mature. Mostly white, wooden clapboard, impeccably serviced, shutters boldly painted a primary color, all well scrubbed by people for whom maintenance was an obsession. They took care of stuff, these people. Flowers beautiful, hedges trimmed, all towns, big or small, boasting a civic hall, a hotel, a park, a church. It felt like some kind of ancient land as imagined by Disney. Every other building seemed to have been built in some far-off place called the eighteenth century, and laws of Enlightenment rationality were still in control.
Swagger ate it up. It was in his genes, it lit his imagination, it was the way things should be, a military duty ethos fused seamlessly with daily life. He was also scanning for air cover-a shadowing chopper or some other sign that Nick had violated the agreement and laid in backup too close; he’d wondered if the next little Revolutionary War burg would conceal gunmen with body armor and RPGs.
“You seem tense, Jack.”
“I can’t stop looking over my shoulder. I told you, I’ve had a price on my head, and once you’ve been hunted, you never fully relax.”
“Jack, it’s a beautiful day in a beautiful part of America, and you are part of one of the most exciting historical-intellectual developments of our time, which, I should add, will probably have a tremendous financial upside. You should just enjoy the ride in.”
“You are so right, Richard. Man, I wish I had it in me to click the off switch and go to take-it-easy. I just want to look at this rifle case, get the business deal set, and get to work.”
Onward they went, passing through Warren, passing more rich Yankee farmland and forest, finding the hills on the rise, and feeling the gentle slope as the car climbed several hundred feet into the hills.
“There it is,” said Richard. A rusty green sign at a rusty gate sunk in faded concrete abutments with pretensions of grace announced “Adams Glen,” and Richard slowed and took the turn.
The road ran through thick trees on hillside, with slope above and below the dirt of the track. Dust flew in two tire contrails behind them, smearing the pristine beauty of the azure, windless, cloudless day, but on either side, the world seemed green, dense, and hushed. Bending over, looking through the windshield, Swagger could see the hill rising, buried in forest the whole way, to a rounded peak another four hundred or so feet up. Cubed limestone boulders, like fallen ceremonial heads, showed here and there among the trees, which were heavier or lighter in density depending on nature’s whimsy.
They rounded a last gentle turn and the hillside opened up to permit a spacious house against its flank, on the same theme as all those before: a huge clapboard mansion, built with an eye toward symmetry and precision in an age when those things were beauty. This one was beyond mature and had eased almost into senility. The landscaping had grown ragged, with lawn unkempt, weeds annoyingly clotting the beds, hedges out of square and in some places out of hedge, just jumbles of bush.
Richard eased the car to a halt and Bob got out, noting how badly the house could use some saving paint, having faded from white to something near pewter, with more than a few of the slats corrupted by rot, the shutters flaky and mottled. It was a million-dollar house a million dollars away from restoration.
“Hello, hello,” said the chubby Marty, beaming, stepping from a lesser door. He wore baggy blue jeans and a blue button-down shirt and a shawl-collar cardigan, as sloppy as the decaying house from which he had emerged. “Right on time. You engineer everything just right, don’t you, Jack?”
Swagger smiled, taking the soft, plump hand and shaking it. “Nice place,” he said.
“This old monster? Been in the family three generations. Damn, I’d love to get the money together to get it all brand-spanking-new again. Then it would be something. Sorry it’s so ratty, but the taxes alone eat me alive, and I can barely keep my nostrils out of the brine. Come on in.”
Marty led them into darkness and more of the same. The house had a mildewy quality, many of its rooms filled with ghost furniture under white sheeting, the smell of dust hanging in the air, and where slants of sunlight fell through shuttered windows, they revealed an ecosystem lively with debris.
Marty took them into what was his workroom and presumably had been a pater and a grandpater’s study. It alone was populated by dead animals, all with intense glass eyes caught up in the taxidermist’s high drama, shot by one generation or other of Adamses. The room was paneled and shelved with every book ever written on firearms, some of them by Marty. Behind the cluttered desk stood the glory wall, the young Marty in black-and-white slimness with this or that prosperous-looking older man of the gun world. Swagger saw a few he recognized, a few he knew.
“Say, isn’t that Elmer Keith, the gun writer?”
“I knew Elmer. He was very old by then. You like the old gun writers? God, what men. Look, there’s Jack O’Connor, and over there, Charlie Atkins, Border Patrol gunman and dangerous gent. This one is Bill Jordan. He was also Border Patrol. He had hands like hams, and I swear, I never saw a man so fast. Bill could put an aspirin on the back of his right hand, draw his Smith 19, and blast the falling pill before it hit the floor. He did it once on Ed Sullivan.”
Swagger had some memory of most of these fellows. They’d been his heroes growing up, not ballplayers or fighter aces or disease-defeating doctors but gunmen, like his father. He could say nothing because those memories didn’t belong in the head of Jack Brophy, retired mining engineer.
“When I was trying to learn more about all this,” he said, “I think I read a batch of them. They all seemed to have good times.”
“They sure did,” said Marty. “Now look at this-” and he was off. The next half hour was spent observing his treasures strewn about on random shelves, and he did have many. He had the first serial number in the last six models of.22 target pistol his father had manufactured, pristine, in perfect, untattered cardboard boxes. He had Colt’s experimental 9 mm double-action automatic, offered to the army in the early sixties for consideration in replacing the government model. He had the.300 H amp;H Winchester Bull gun that Art Haymon set twenty-seven national records with in the late thirties, before being nudged aside by the great Lon Scott. He had Henry rifle no. 15, the brass-framed gun that could be “loaded on Sunday and fired all week,” which ultimately morphed into the 1873 Winchester, which won the West, though as frequently for red people as white. He had Colts, Smiths, Marlins, all exquisite, all virtually pristine, all glorious.
“Sell the guns, Marty,” said Richard. “They’d buy your house a new paint job.”
“Oh, no,” said Marty. “You don’t sell history. At least not this history. I hope-again, maybe it’s more a dream than a hope-to display the collection coherently in its own museum. Maybe this place, all spruced up. That would be an Adams legacy.”
“Marty, don’t tell me you’ve lost that gun case?” asked Swagger, meaning it to be perceived as a joke. “And you’re just softening the blow?”
“No, no, it’s here,” he said. “I can see I’ve kept you waiting long enough. You boys sit over there. Coffee?”
“Not now,” said Bob. “Suppose I spill it on the thing.”
More laughter.
“Okay,” Marty said. He went to what seemed to be a wall and pulled on some lever or something, and the shelving, laden with books, floated outward on hinges, state-of-the-art 1932, to reveal a vault door, dead black, dead steel, dead heavy. He leaned and grabbed a knob beneath the rotary of the combination dial, pulled down, and a heavy steel clank reverberated through the room, loud enough to awaken the dead animals on the walls, stir dust from the books, and maybe make a buried Adams or two turn over.
The vault door swung out, and Marty dipped in.
He emerged in white gloves. He held in his hand a stoutly constructed pigskin-and-canvas case, maybe two feet wide, three long, one deep, of extremely elegant manufacture. He set it down on the bare coffee table before his two guests-before Swagger, really, as Richard’s contributions at this time were negligible. Swagger leaned forward, hungry to apprehend its meanings.
It wore its age well, with scuffs and stains and obscure marks everywhere, but integrity vouchsafed and complete. The leather seemed richer in patina, as if the process of aging had turned it from the utilitarian to the exquisite. Bob didn’t touch it. He put his nose two inches from it and scanned every detail. The locks were tarnished, but he’d noticed that there was no play between lid and case, so he presumed it was tight and nothing had loosened or worn within.
“You have no key?” he asked.
“No. Maybe if you went to the Arkansas state police and got Mr. Albright’s possessions from his death in ’93, it’d be on a key chain. But at this end, nothing.”
“I’d hate to damage it when we open it,” said Richard.
“We’ll have a bonded locksmith open it,” said Bob. “He can get it open without damaging it; he can attest to the age of the lock; he can date the lock and notarize it for us.”
“See, those are the things I’d never think of,” said Marty.
“Marty, do you have a magnifying glass? I’d like to look at the shipping tags.”
“Of course,” said Marty. He went to his desk, got the glass, and returned to give it to Bob. “I’d prefer to handle the tags with the gloves.”
“You got it,” said Bob.
Richard crowded next to him, and Marty hovered close on the other side, leaning to lift the tags for Bob’s inspection.
In the circle of the glass, the red one floated in and out of focus until Bob found the right distance between eye, lens, and object for clarity. He examined every square inch. In black crayon clerk’s scrawl against the stiff red paper under the company rubric BRANIFF AIRWAYS, INTO THE BRIGHT TOMORROW, he saw:
Date: 11-24-63
Flt: 344 DAL/RICH
Psnger: Scott, L.D.
The tag was looped over the double handles of the case, sealing them together. Since the handles were on different halves of the case, that meant it had not been opened since 11-24-63. The heavy paper appeared unrotted and, at least under Marty’s gentle handling, didn’t show any give-and-take when manipulated, suggesting that whatever adhesive unified the two ends of the loop, it held solid, itself without decay or much in the way of loosening. But it looked brittle, as if to bend it would send flakes of dead glue to the floor.
“Looks goddamn genuine to me,” said Bob. “I guess we’d have to find an expert of some sort to verify that as the proper Braniff tag, in the proper time frame, and do some chemistry on the glue to make sure it’s the same kind Braniff used.”
“Where would we find such a guy?” said Marty. “That’s pretty arcane knowledge.”
“The FBI forensics people are good at document interp. And this is a piece of evidence in a crime, don’t forget. I’m thinking we’re going to have to bring in law enforcement.”
“I’m not wild about that,” said Marty. “Those guys might want to hog the spotlight. They’ll sniff the gold. I hate to be mercenary, but I have a house to paint. This thing is pure gold.”
“If it’s got what we think it has. Let me look at the other tag.”
Marty let the shipping tag fall and scooped up the other. It was less frail, a luggage ID locked in place by a leather case, its face spared the elements by a sheet of plastic.
LON DUNN SCOTT, it said in blue fountain pen, presumably in Lon’s own handwriting. And below that, SCOTT’S RUN, RR 224, CLINTONSBURG, VA.
Bob said, “It’s possible Lon’s fingerprints are under the plastic. I’m assuming they’re all over the locks and the stuff inside. The more, the better. Marty, could I see that X-ray again?”
“Sure,” said Marty, disappearing to his desk, reappearing in seconds. He laid the heavy dark celluloid sheet over the case. Bob could see that it was a one-on-one ratio.
“Got any backlighting?” he asked.
“Yeah, I have a light table over there. I use it to go over contact sheets for the picture books.”
Marty led them to the light table, a large metal frame supporting a square sheet of white-frosted glass. He turned a switch, and the fluorescent bulb inside blinked to life. Marty laid the X-ray out, and it displayed the case’s contents in perfect outline, everything recognizable.
The incomparably graceful Monte Carlo stock, the ovoid trigger guard still on, bolt, action, containing receiver, bolt slot, barrel, with the scope-a long tubular construction belled at the muzzle end, maybe fourteen inches-held parallel above the action by the ancient Redfield mounts and rings of the time, and above them all, a long tube with a flange at one end that had to be the Maxim suppressor. In the corner were a collection of screws, what looked to be a folded gun cloth, and a small bottle, presumably cleaning fluid. In the other corner, the silhouettes of three cartridges.
Bob took something out of his pocket and laid it next to the three. It was a.264 Win Mag cartridge with a 140-grain spitzer hunting bullet. “Look at it,” he said. “The shells are the same size. Two-sixty-four Win Mag. See how Lon’s have a blunt tip compared to the point on the hunting bullet? That’s because he’s loaded a Carcano bullet into the.264 shell.” He went on with a brief description of his newly revised theory on the ballistics deceit that lay at the heart of the issue. Possibly Marty understood, or at least took it on faith; Richard gave no sign of being awake.
“I think we’ve figured it out,” said Marty.
“No,” said Swagger. “There’s the big issue of speed. We won’t have anything till we have that. If the route wasn’t chosen until late on November 19, they only had two and a half days to set it up. Impossible in that time. They couldn’t have done it. But they did it.”
“You’ll figure it out,” said Marty. “It’ll be something stupid and obvious that everybody’s missed.”
“If it’s stupid and I haven’t figured it out,” said Bob, “then I guess that makes me stupid.”
“I think we’re already there,” said Richard. “You’ve got stuff nobody has gotten before. Believe me, I know this crap up and down, I-”
“What did you say?” said Bob.
“I said we’re already there. You’ve got it. The rest is just details.”
Already there.
“Already there,” he said. “Goddamn, already there.” The insight hit him blindside.
“What on God’s earth are you talking about?” said Marty.
“It’s the final piece of the puzzle,” Swagger said, as much Swagger as Brophy in the flash of revelation. “I couldn’t figure out how they could put it together so fast. They were already there on some other job. They had Oswald under discipline, they had the ballistics, they had Scott in town, ready to shoot. Then fate brought them Jack Kennedy, and they couldn’t resist taking him down. It would have been so easy!”
“Does this call for champagne?” asked Marty. “Shall we toast? I don’t need much of an excuse to pop a bottle.”
“Nah. It’s just something I’ve been working on.”
“This is exciting,” said Marty.
“Marty, please put the case away and lock it up tight,” Bob said, pointing at the case.
“I will.”
Marty did as requested, and the three returned to the couches around the coffee table. Under the raging glass eyes of animals dead nearly a century, they talked a little bit more business, mainly schedules. Swagger’s job was to refine his theory and put it in writing, striving for clarity and simplicity. Marty thought photos would help, because both he and Bob knew that many Americans had no idea what “reloading” was and how plastic it made the medium of the cartridge. They’d have to be talked slowly through Bob’s theory. Richard’s job was to find the various experts that the project would require. Meanwhile, Marty would put together a proposal, forward it to the others for comment, and then, with their permission, send it to his agent. He thought Bob ought to be ready to come to New York to meet the agent, and then meet the publisher, the editor, and the team who would handle the book. Once that process was in shape, Marty would draw up an outline and they’d begin to deal with ancillary rights.
When no one could think of anything more, they ambled outside, and Bob took a deep breath of the pine-and-oak-scented air, enjoyed the pure blue of the sky, and felt the pleasant, persistent pressure of the breeze. It felt good to be out of that mausoleum.
“I think we’ve got something here,” said Marty. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am. In fact, now that you teetotalers are gone, I believe I will open a bottle of bubblelicious and drink that toast to Jack, to Richard, to our good fortune in coming together, and to our bright and shining future.”
“I still can’t believe this is happening,” said Bob.
“It is. Pinch yourself, it hurts. You’re awake.”
“I guess I am.”
The three walked to the car. Handshakes all around. Then Bob said, “Richard, do you mind if I drive?”
“Sure, no problem,” said Richard.
“Great.” He got in and slammed the door behind him as Richard eased into his seat.
Swagger pulled out, and Marty watched them go.
And so at last the mighty day had arrived.
My killers had infiltrated two days before and lay without moving over that long stretch of time in case any rogue surveillance had been put in place, as unlikely as that might seem. Besides movement discipline, they maintained radio silence throughout and simply lay in place, vectored on the kill zone while passing the time in isometric hell.
Meanwhile, at no time were the approaching Swagger and Richard monitored. Part of the plan was to place no human eye upon them. Besides Swagger’s sensitivities, there were practical reasons: the super-cautious Swagger might have hired or gotten from his pal Memphis at the Dallas FBI his own team of countersurveillors to stay with him from a discreet distance and look for signs of followers. We couldn’t run that risk. But we did have Richard under control, though he had no idea for what purpose, and his constant e-mail updates by iPhone informed us that he and Swagger had flown the day before from Dallas to Hartford, secured a blue rental Ford Focus, license number given, spent the night at a Marriott in Hartford, and would leave early the next morning for the assignation. They were slated to arrive at the rural Adams estate at 9 a.m.
I was pleased, therefore, when I received, at approximately the appropriate time, the notification from Richard: “Everything cool. Leaving now.”
In the car they would have privacy. No need to plant a bug that Swagger might pick up on. Also, I had decided not to electronically penetrate Marty’s place. Swagger might have some kind of miniature scanner that would alert him to the possibility of electronic ears, which could give up the game; and there was the possibility that somehow, some way, whoever went in would leave a sign of his presence, and Marty might pick it up and divulge it to Swagger in casual conversation, alerting the man. Worse, he might decide not to divulge it, which would cause him to sustain a fiction over the meet, and Swagger would detect that easily enough and take compensatory measures, which could ruin everything. It was important that monitoring of Swagger, by whatever means, be kept to an absolute minimum. I didn’t have him shadowed by air, though I had the helicopter on standby; he might notice an orbiting bird, catch a glimpse of reflected sunlight off the windscreen, hear the pitch of the rotor blades changing as the craft began to descend. All these tells could ruin us.
I settled into jittery anticipation. Two hours of travel time, then perhaps two hours of meet time. In four hours it would be finished. I watched Double Indemnity for about the six hundredth time; superb movie, with the great Fred MacMurray and that scheming little vixen Barbara Stanwyck. It ate up the time admirably, but I still had over an hour to kill. I summoned Shizuka. Finally, there was nothing left to do, or at least nothing I could do, except wait. Tick-tock, tick-tock. It was about time for Swagger to arrive at the estate.
I lay on my veranda dressed in expensive apres-M’Bongo wardrobe-I was hunting, after all-of cargo pants, boots, and a heavy dark green cotton hunting shirt with epaulets and bellows pockets. I suppose I looked ridiculous: Francis Macomber’s wardrobe lavished on a spry pink eighty-three-year-old who couldn’t weigh 135 dripping wet. At least I didn’t have one of those absurd hats with a leopard-skin band, as Preston had worn in the movie. My prescription Ray-Bans lessened the glare of the sun, but at this time of year, the day wouldn’t turn hot.
I used my Bic and energetically updated this memoir, bringing it at last to the present, in which I now write in real time, and felt sadness. In truth, I’ve enjoyed the writing over the past few weeks. Recalling my life has been an invigorating experience, confronting my follies and misjudgments, recalling the men and women I loved, seeing them again in the middle distance of my memory. God, I’ve had a great life. Who has lived as hard and well as I, who has known such giants as I? Grand old Lon, the immensely gifted Jimmy with his nerves of steel and his bright laugh. Peggy. I miss you, old girl. You were the best. I’ll see you all soon, my friends. Not quite yet, and you’ll forgive me for not rushing, but soon enough, Hugh Meachum will join his wonderful colleagues, all of whom he was so lucky to serve with-
The buds in my ear were linked to the commo center, where a fleet of experts bounced signals between dishes and orbiting orbs so that I could eavesdrop on the drama as it played out. Now the buds crackled to life, and I picked up the initial confirm as my commandos registered the arrival of the Swagger vehicle at the compound with a brief break of radio silence.
“Blue Team, this is Three, I have a visual on road dust. They’re on the property.”
“Easy, Blue Team,” said Blue Leader, “I will confirm on passage. I want all your eyes down, don’t try to see anything, don’t make visual contact.”
“Roger, Leader.”
There was a pause.
Then, “This is Blue Leader, I have a confirm on vehicle, two occupants, blue Ford Focus, Connecticut license plate checks as Romeo Victor Foxtrot 6-5-1, as per intel. Target confirmed on-site. Stand down for now, I will call a weapons check within the hour.”
“Roger, out,” came three crackly voices in simo, trying to out-abrupt one another.
They were there. So far, so good. I lay back and enjoyed all that I saw before me. The surrounding forest was lush, and the meadow that was open a mile to the river for some reason at this late-summer date blazed green. I’d never seen such a vibrant shade. It seemed almost to shimmer as the sun rolled across it, matted only by a few clouds, all of it given animation by the persistence of a low, friendly breeze.
There was nothing left to do, nothing left to write. I lie here, feeling the slow and easy slip of the seconds, and it seems to go by not in real time but in super-real time, and I don’t dare check my watch, for that would somehow break the spell and I’d be back to the slow tick-tock, tick-tock, instead of being privileged to experience the heated rush of seconds.
“Blue Team, weapons check.”
“Blue Leader, this is One, cocked and locked, sighted in.”
“Roger, One.”
“Blue Leader, this is Two, all samey-same.”
“Blue Leader, Three, ditto on that.”
“This is Blue Leader, all good.”
More silence. It became time to add the last team member.
“This is Blue Leader to Blue Five, let’s get airborne and to your hold.”
“Blue Leader, this is Blue Five, I am lighting up and going airborne and will be monitoring the police channels and holding at point one for quick evac.”
“Roger, Blue Five, notify when on point, good and out.”
More time dragged by.
“Blue Leader, this is Airborne Blue Five, am on point, holding at about two angels, police channel open. The Smokies are all out at some accident on the interstate, and all local roads in or out are low-volume. You are cleared to operate.”
“Roger, Blue Five, I have you so noted, and out.”
Silence. Tick-tock, tick-tock. If a bird cried, I did not hear. If a cloud masked the sun’s radiance, I did not notice. If the wind rose or fell, the temp rose or dropped, the shadows deepened or softened, I did not care.
“Blue Leader, I heard a car door slam.”
“Good work, Two. Go to guns, fire on my fire. Stay ready, Blue Five.”
Four simultaneous “Rogers” crackled out.
“Blue Team, I have road dust rising.”
I could see him, Blue Team Leader, all cammied up like a beast from the bog with a ludicrous green-brown face and a full canteen, leaning in to the machine gun. I could see it all: the car suddenly visible in the trees, then it’s there, in the bright sun of the kill zone on the straightaway, coming right at Blue Team Leader.
“Blue Team, on my fire,” Blue Team Leader said, and the radio picked up the ripping sound of the one and then the three other light machine guns joining as they emptied their one-hundred-round belts into the automobile.