The G-Man was woebegone, sympathetic, tearful, and unpromising. He had a son in Hawaii. In the Navy. There had been no news. His wife's sleeplessness had worn upon his own physical reserves and a nerve in his neck, a chronic ailment, was particularly troubling him. He kept cocking his head back and forth and twitching his shoulders.
"The Japanese are horrible people, Bubel. The Director has issued a Specific Directive to that effect. Squinty-eyed. Treacherous. The Director feels personally and professionally let down and frankly his ass is on the grill. The Rooseveltians were ready for this like they had it planned. They've presented legislation for a new consolidated internal investigations department and they're trying to cut Jay right out of it. He's fighting for his life and the life of the Agency." The G-Man sighed wetly.
Bubel and the G-Man went way back, since even before Bubel became momentarilly famous as the "Man Who Escaped The St. Valentine's Day Massacre". Bubel and the G-Man had worked togther on numerous stories. Bubel had been a Press Agent for Moran before he got traded to Capone in exchange for the Sixteenth Street Numbers Franchise which was a money maker even if Al was experiencing bureaucratic difficulties (the Rononi Twins). Bubel was prime racketeering meat in those days. A top fixer.
"This is my boy," the G-Man handed Bubel a photograph of a freckled, cowlicked youth presenting gappy teeth in an unnatural, staged smile. "I was afraid he was getting to be a sissy so I threw him out of the house and he goes and joins the Navy and isn't his mother making my life hell now. Hell, it was her that made me think he was getting to be a sissy. She keeps discovering him in strange places pulling on his meat. "Pull your meat in the goddamned bathroom," I tell him. She catches him jacking off in the coat closet during one of her Famous Books parties. "Out," I tell him. And he goes and joins the Navy just to prove he's a fucking sissy, pardon my French. Fatherhood is a curse. You're lucky you're a queer Bubel."
The boy reminded Bubel of a trick he'd had in Havana once. One of them blue eyed, aw shucks, corn field gunners the Guidos felt safe around because American boys had some kind of notion of loyalty to an employer unlike the Guidos who were always knifing each other blaming it on their sister's honor or something that happened a million years ago. Bubel had been like that. A guileless stammering blue eyed hick with a knack for hitting what he aimed at with a revolver which always impressed the Guidos and the Micks who could none of them shoot worth a damn. If Bubel had cared to consider the problems of the World as they manifested themselves on that Tuesday Afternoon December the Ninth 1942 he would have confidently predicted an American Victory for in Bubel's experience Americans only were capable of using a gun.
"The Director's really sorry about it, Bubel, but he's going to have to put you in jail."
"You know that I understand the Director's predicament. I have an alternative arrangement. One that shall tie up some lose ends. Silence some cacophonous noises in all this irregular dissonance."
2:01:19 PM 
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