“Okay, I’ve got the file up on my computer terminal now. Your boy seems to think he should have won the Congressional Medal of Honor,” said Marbella.

“Hmm,” said Nick, a noise he made when he wanted to indicate he was on the phone still, but that he had no attitude or information to convey.

“Three weeks ago, he writes a letter to the president, explaining that the Marine Corps screwed him out of the Congressional Medal of Honor that was his by rights, just like his dad’s, and that he now wanted his medal, and would the president please send it on?”

“And that gets him on a Secret Service list?”

“Hey, after sixty-three, anything gets you on a Secret Service list, friend. We take no chances. We win no friends, but we take no chances.”

“Is there anything threatening in the letter?”

“Uh, well, our staff psychiatrist says so. It’s not an explicit threat so much as a tone. Listen to this. ‘Sir, I only request that the nation give me that which is my due, as I served my country well in the jungles. It’s quite important to me that I get this medal [exclamation point]. It is mine [exclamation point]. I earned it [exclamation point]. There’s no two ways about it, sir, that medal is mine [exclamation point].’ ”

Nick shook his head. Like so many others, the great Bob the Nailer, the warrior champion of Vietnam, the master sniper, had yielded to vanity too. It was no longer enough merely to have done the impossible on a routine basis and to know that you and you alone were of the elect. No, in his surrender, Bob, like so many others, wanted celebrity, attention, validation. More. More for me. I want more and I want it now. It’s my turn.

That’s what Nick ran into all the time on the streets. Somehow in America it had stopped being about us or we or the team or the family; it was this me-thing that turned people crazy. They expected so much. They thought they were so important. Everybody was an only child.

But it seemed so un-Bob-like somehow.

“It sounds pretty harmless to me,” Nick said.

“It’s the exclamation points. Four of ’em. Our reading is that exclamation points indicate a tendency toward violence. Not an inclination, but a tendency, a capacity to let go. That’s the theory at any rate, though the truth is, we’ve found that letter writers almost never go to guns. They just don’t. For most of them, writing the letter is the thing that satisfies them, they sit back and everything is nice. Still, this guy is supposedly a hell of a shot, or was at one time. He used four exclamation points. And we do have it on record that he did go to New Orleans – ”

“Yeah, I’ve confirmed that – ”

“And so we put him on the Charlie list. Check him out, see if he deserves an upgrade to Beta – ”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“I know the Charlie list is shit, Memphis. Nobody likes to do the Charlie list. Usually the guys just out of training end up doing Charlies. You sound, um, a little old for Charlies.”

“Look, I do what my boss says, that’s all.”

“We appreciate it. Glad to have the Bureau’s help.”

“How did you know he was in New Orleans?”

“Huh?”

“You said, ‘And he was in New Orleans.’ How did you know that?”

“Uh,” said Marbella, “it says so. Right here in his file.”

“But where did that information come from? I mean, a snitch, another agency, a cop shop, the Pentagon, the VA?”

“Hey, it doesn’t say. You know, this stuff comes in from all over, some of it pretty raw. 0What’s the big deal?”

“Is somebody watching Swagger?”

“Shit, man. I’m the last guy to know. And it doesn’t say a thing here. It’s just raw data, Memphis. Some of it’s accurate, some of it isn’t. It’s up to you to check it out, okay, bud?”

“Yeah, sure. Hey, thanks a lot,” Nick said. He hung up.

What should I do? I should do something.

He called Directory Information for the state of Arkansas, learned quickly that Bob Lee Swagger had no listed or unlisted phone number. He called the Arkansas State Police, and found that Bob Lee Swagger was not under investigation or indictment of any sort, but from that he learned Bob’s address, which was simply Rural Route 270, Blue Eye. Finally, he called Vernon Tell, who was the sheriff of Polk County, Arkansas, and after giving the FBI identification code, quickly got to the sheriff himself.

“Bob Lee? Bob Lee just lives up the mountain by himself. That’s all.”

“Any problems with him?”

“No, sir. Not the most sociable fellow in the world, no, sir. Bob Lee keeps to himself and don’t like people picking at him. But he’s a good man. He done his country proud in the war, and his daddy done his country proud and Earl’s daddy Lucas was actually the sheriff back in the twenties. They’re all old Polk County folks, and wouldn’t hurt nobody didn’t hurt them first.”

But it bothered Nick that Bob lived alone, away from society, with a lot of guns. The profile of the loner gunman had proved out too many times to be coincidental.

“Any drinking or substance abuse problems?”

“Mr. Memphis, believe me, it would be a lie if I didn’t tell you some years back, Bob Lee had a problem with the bottle and had some wild times. He’s always in pain, you know, because of the way he was hurt in the war. But I believe Bob Lee has found himself in some way. All he wants from life is freedom and to be left alone.”

“What about medals? Has he ever said anything about medals? Are medals important to him?”

“To Bob Lee? Let me tell you something, son – were you in the war or anything?”

“No sir, I wasn’t.”

“Well, son, the only people that are interested in medals are the ones that are fixing to run for office some day. I went from one side of Burma to the other with General Merrill’s Marauders in 1943 and 1944, and the only man I ever saw who wanted a medal or cared about a medal later became the only governor of Colorado to be impeached. No, son, Bob Lee Swagger don’t give two damns and a jar of cold piss about medals. I’ve been out to his place a time or so and you’d be hard pressed to find an indication anywhere that this man was one of the bravest heroes our country ever produced.”

Somehow, that pleased Nick.

And that night, when Herm dropped by, he said, “Nick, you got any Charlies to butt on up to Beta or Alpha classification?”

Nick answered, “Yes,” and he had three names, men who seemed dangerous but whom he had not been able to turn up.

Bob Lee Swagger was not on the list.

At last he was out of the office. Sitting in a swamp, as a matter of fact, but at least, indisputably, out of the office.

He sat in the back of a Secret Service van, with Herm Sloane and his partner Jeff Till as Till, the expert, fumbled and cursed at a control console. The van was all dressed up with electronic gear.

“Not a goddamn thing,” said Till.

“Are you sure it’s reading?” said Sloane.

“I’m not sure of a goddamn thing,” said Till, a little neurotically. “All the lights are red, we’re on the right directional beam, but believe me, I am getting absolutely nothing but hum and static. It’s making me crazy.”

Nick let the two chums take turns cursing the equipment that flickered wanly in front of them.

Outside, there was nothing but bayou and hanging cypress and the swish and rustle of swamp water and small, mean creatures squishing through the mud. Somewhere three hundred yards ahead – at least in theory – there was a farmhouse that doubled as the headquarters of the White Beacon of Racial Purity, a rabidly antiblack group said to be floating around the fringes of the New Orleans loonies culture. These were fat-bellied white guys with tattoos and Ruger Mini-14’s, their favorite piece, far to the right of the Klan, good old, mean old boys who’d dropped out of the Klan because it was too dang soft. That is, if they existed. Nick was privately of the opinion that it was a policeman’s fantasy, or rather an easy out; any inconvenient crime could be blamed on the White Beacon, and thereby consigned to the unsolved files without much in the way of an investment in time or energy. He had once spent a week trying to get a fix on them, concluding that there was nothing but vapors of hate and rumors feeding on rumors.