“It won’t do much for my modeling career. I’m planning on a rampage of bloody vengeance, though, if this whole ‘private detective’ thing doesn’t work out.”
“How Chuck Norris of you. How’s that going?”
“I’m still working out the details. I may dwell on the part about burning the whole town down. I’d also like to emphasize my desire to talk to Dave. Five minutes. It won’t take longer than that.”
A smile flickered in the corners of Brock’s mouth. “That the same thing you tell your girlfriend?”
I laughed. Brock shook his head and opened the newspaper up again.
22
The storefronts for Graham & Oates Guns and Pawn were scattered across the state map like VD after a Rolling Stones tour, most popular in the places where dollars were most scarce and you were more likely to hock the family silverware to buy groceries. Or meth. The faces on the billboards were all excessively toothy and welcoming, the faces of someone who wouldn’t judge you, and who paid in cash.
Bicycles rested outside next to a herd of lawnmowers fenced off and linked together by a solid length of logging chain. Inside, everything was crammed within millimeters of everything else, and if you squinted, you could imagine it as one of those collage photos where they take a million tiny pictures and make a map of the United States, only here it was constructed from flat-screen TVs and gaming systems, guitars, chainsaws, signed sports memorabilia, and vacuum cleaners. It was like a department store display of other people’s lives.
The clerks behind the counter wore red polo shirts with a G&O logo embroidered on the chest. The woman was somewhere in her fifties, blonde via aisle 11 of CVS, and tanned to the color of cinnamon toast. I would have bet she had cancer cells rattling around inside her like coins in a piggy bank. She was chatting with a kid in his twenties, his own blond hair natural, cut short, and disappearing faster than the rain forest. His jangly arms poked through his polo shirt sleeves like tree limbs, the bones at his elbows jutting out. He had made a half-hearted attempt to grow a beard, but it was faint and patchy and a worse idea than whoever you leave the bar with after last call.
The woman eyed me with something close to justified suspicion as I walked in, and the young guy said something to her and then walked in my direction. I turned on the biggest smile I had and headed straight toward the guns.
A disgruntled Fox News viewer would have popped a hard-on to hang a hat from at the sight of these things. The rifles stood racked and secured behind a steel bar, a string of firearms covering the entire length of the wall. Shotguns, hunting rifles, semi-automatics, you name it. If there was a way you wanted to kill something—or someone—there it was for the right price.
The pistols were in the glass counter. Same thing there as the rifles, in a more convenient size. From .22s that looked like toys to 9 mms gleaming under the phosphorescent lighting, smelling of fresh gun oil and a recent cleaning. It was like shopping for a wedding ring, only, you know, nothing like that whatsoever.
The kid smiled at me. “We got some nice ones there.”
I padded my fingers across the display case glass. “You got a lot, that’s for sure.”
“Whatever need you’ve got, we can cover it. Hunting, home protection, conceal and carry, you name it. Widest selection for a hundred miles.” He leaned his forearms against the glass case. “You looking for anything in particular?”
“Not sure yet. I guess right now I’m just checking what’s available.”
“No rush. You take your time and you got any questions, you let me know.” He looked closer at me, his eyebrows shifting around. His smile weakened. “You don’t mind me saying, maybe you should have come in here a few days ago.”
I feigned a smile. “Day late and a dollar short, I guess.” I shrugged. “I pissed off the wrong people.”
“No one ever says they pissed off the right ones, do they? Getting the idea you may be looking for a protection piece, right? Because if you are”—he tapped his finger on top of the glass, toward a cluster of pistols—“these are all solid self-defense pieces.”
They were long-barreled pistols, a few revolvers I recognized from shooting with Woody. They were personal protection pieces if you were protecting yourself from rampaging elephants or needed to shoot down aircraft.
“Those look great, but what I had in mind was something smaller,” I said. “More discreet, if you get my meaning.”
The kid did indeed get my meaning. His reassuring nod and the way he pursed his lips out a little said, “Oh yeah, I’m feeling you,” all in the most douchebag way possible. He strolled down the counter toward a set of automatics. “These more along the lines you need?”
What the kid showed off here wasn’t Saturday night specials, cheap-ass pistols as likely to backfire and kill you as whoever you aimed it at. No, these were well-made weapons, something to hide in a jacket pocket or to tuck into a waistband. These were what you bought when you weren’t looking for something that seemed like an extension for your dick but wanted something you could hide and still know you’d take out whoever you shot. They were guns for women with exes who couldn’t take a hint, or someone who knew a convenience store with too much money hanging loose.
I peered closer into the case. “Yeah, we’re talking now.” I looked up at him. “About the paperwork—”
Now here’s where it gets interesting. See, West Virginia’s gun laws are more lax than a divorced father’s parenting style. Want to buy a gun from your neighbor? That will be a cash-and-carry transaction, and there’s no paperwork needed. For buying a gun from a shop, it is only marginally more complicated, because then you fill out a form that asks if you have a criminal background, if you’ve been booted from the military, if you’re a drug addict, if you have mental issues and got thrown into an institution against your will, or if you have a restraining order against you. There’s a quick check with the FBI database up in Clarksburg, and if that comes back clean, you’re walking out of the store with your brand-new firearm of choice.
Caught up? Good.
The kid said, “There going to be a problem?”
I shook my head. “No. And by no, I mean maybe. The thing is, me and Uncle Sam, we didn’t see eye to eye on things after I joined up with the navy, and they opted to let me go early.”
He nodded. “Shit happens. Wanted to go marines myself, but I didn’t make the cut.”
“It’s tough. You want to do right by your country, and it doesn’t work out. Anyway, I suspect I might not clear that check.” I leaned in closer and dropped my voice down to a conspiratorial whisper. “Been told you guys could still help a guy in a situation, though.”
“Who told you that?” His voice cracked like late-winter ice.
“People who tell other people things. What’s it matter? All I’m asking is if you can help a brother out.” I spun my head around the room as if on the lookout for someone. “You thinking I’m a cop, go wash that shit out of your head. It’s just, I didn’t get this pretty by accident, and the folks who did it are probably going to want to finish what they started, and I wouldn’t mind walking out of here with a little piece of mind.”
The kid shifted his body around, and I noticed a tattoo on his forearm. A flaming skull, and the letters “LTR” underneath. It looked fresh, and it gleamed underneath the buzzing lights.
“Nice ink,” I said.
He touched it and smiled. “Thanks. Just got it a few weeks back.” He sighed. “Let’s go in back.”
The back room of the pawnshop looked like somewhere they would have stored the Ark of the Covenant. Industrial shelving held decades’ worth of technology, ranging from iPods to ancient VDTs. A row of collector Barbie dolls ran from one wall to the other. Boxes of high-end basketball shoes were stacked eight feet high.
Otherwise, guns lay strewn across every available surface. On tables. On the floor. On top of filing cabinets. Across the hood of a Buick Century on blocks.
I let out a low whistle. “Godd
amn, boy. You people planning on a revolution?”
The kid walked over to a row of handguns on a work table. “Nothing wrong with being ready. This gun you’re needing, you want something small, easy to hide. Right?”
“That would be the dream, yes.”
He picked up an automatic barely larger than the size of the palm of his hand. “This one’s only a .25. That might not sound like much, but it’s a twelve-shot magazine with an easy trigger pull, so you can keep pumping out shots. The beauty of a gun like this is the shots bounce around inside whoever you hit, so it fucks up their internal organs like you wouldn’t believe.”
I took the gun from his hand and looked at it closer. It had been polished and oiled and the serial numbers scraped off.
“You’d be shocked by what I might believe,” I said. I pointed to where the serial numbers should have been. “What do I tell the cops if they catch me with this thing, ask me questions?”
The kid shrugged. “Mister, you tell them where you got this gun, the cops are the least of your concerns.”
“Harsh.”
“Truth. You want this thing or not?”
I handed the gun back to him. “What are we talking, dollar-wise?”
He was ready to say something when the door opened behind us and a man’s voice said, “Fucking hell, Stanley, what the hell are you doing?”
We turned around and there in the doorway stood Teddy Oklahoma, the blond biker with the pale beard.
I turned and looked at Stanley and his patchwork facial hair. Was there a family resemblance?
“Fuck me running,” I said.
Stanley set the pistol down. “We’re just doing business, Teddy. That’s all.”
Teddy came over to Stanley and smacked him upside the head. Stanley howled from the blow and drew backward. He didn’t move to strike back. He took the hit and leaned against the wall. Teddy stared at him with blood-boiling disappointment.
“Jesus Christ but it’s good Erma called me when this fuck-nugget came sniffing around.” Teddy turned his glare toward me. “Can’t believe you’re stupid enough to show your face in here.”
“I’m stupid enough for all sorts of shit,” I said. “Got a cigarette I can bum?”
Teddy punched me in the face. If anyone’s curious about it, let me assure you that getting punched in the face never gets better. There never comes a point where, as someone’s fist meets the bridge of your nose and you hear cartilage crackle like popcorn on the stove, you think to yourself, “That one wasn’t as bad.” It’s always terrible, and it always hurts, because it’s your goddamn face. You hear teeth grind against one another, and you wait for hot blood to pour down your cheeks from where the fist tore open the soft flesh underneath your eyes. I know these things because I seem to get punched in the face frequently, and these sensations are more common than me making good decisions.
And then, because you’re blinded by shock, and the world is spinning like a drunken toddler attacking a piñata, you usually get hit again. Because make hay while the sun shines, am I right?
Which Teddy did. He had more time to think about this one, and he put more weight behind it, completed the carry-through as he nailed me, and the world blanked to nothing but white, and I half expected to hear dead relatives.
But I didn’t. Instead, I spun on my heels and dropped to my knees and then fell down for the count. I seemed to spend more time facedown on the floor than I did upright these days.
I kept my eyes closed, playing possum so they would think I was unconscious. I wasn’t in a mood or a position to put up much of a fight, and I counted on them not wanting to kick a man while he was literally down. Yes, I was rooting for the charitable nature of bikers. Not that these were the kind who raised money for cancer hospitals, but still, the milk of human kindness had to be somewhere in these lowlife motherfuckers.
Stanley pushed at my ribs with the toe of his tennis shoes. “I think he might be dead.”
Teddy said, “He ain’t dead, though he’ll wish he was.”
Really, Teddy? He’ll wish he was? Might as well twirl your mustache and tie me to railroad tracks if you’re gonna talk that shit.
“I swear, Teddy, I didn’t know,” Stanley said. His voice stammered and shook. The apologetic little brother, begging for his big brother’s respect. “He wanted a piece, and we’ve got that load going—”
“With Christ as my fucking witness, Stanley, if you don’t shut your yammering goddamn cock-holster, I will throw you into whatever hole we end up putting this asshole in.”
This, to his brother. What did his Christmas letters sound like?
Though I was less concerned with familial respect and more with me in “whatever hole” Teddy had in mind. Me in a hole was not the way I wanted the day to end. That day or any day, take your pick.
Unarmed, I couldn’t take both Stanley and Teddy, plus if Teddy had biker brothers waiting in the wings. If I could get to one of the guns lying around, what were the odds I’d grab one that was loaded?
I lay there, eyes shut, waiting for a couple of rednecks to decide my fate. This seemed to be the course of my existence, forever caught in the middle of morons with too much weaponry and too little brain power.
Someone kicked me in the gut. I groaned and coughed, and a clump of bile pushed up my esophagus like a baseball through a garden hose. I choked it back down.
Stanley said, “We can’t kill him, Teddy. He’s on the videotape coming into the store. People’ll figure it out. It’s a small goddamn town.”
Teddy didn’t say anything. A firm hand took hold of my left foot. Teddy said, “Get your ass over here and grab his other leg.” Stanley, the obedient sibling, did as Big Brother told him to do.
They dragged me across the pawnshop floor. They seemed to make sure I bounced my head across a few items, hard enough it rattled what little I had in there around. A door popped open, and I felt sunshine bear down on me.
Stanley and Teddy let my legs drop. I batted my eyes open like Sleeping Beauty after a long slumber and cupped my hand over my face for shade. The blurry images of Stanley and Teddy loomed over me like harbingers of bad days coming. I caught whiffs of garbage baking in the sun and figured out they had pulled me out into the alley.
“Gentlemen—” I said.
Teddy swung his boot into my face. The silver tip of his boot caught the right side of my face, whipping my head to the side. I heard something crack in my neck I was sure wasn’t meant to crack, and my body flew sideways. I bounced off the pavement and landed on my face.
I planted the flats of my hands onto the ground and pushed myself up. Teddy drove his boot into my back, and my hands slid out underneath me, dropping me back onto the ground. He hacked and coughed and spat and a large wet phlegm landed on the back of my head.
“Stay. The fuck. Out.” He wedged his boot underneath my shoulder and pushed me over onto my back. “Got it?”
I winked and pointed a finger at him. “Sure thing, Sky King. Whatever you say.”
Teddy whacked Stanley in the chest and headed back to the pawnshop. Stanley stared down at me, awash somewhere between sympathy and pity. From the alleyway door, Teddy said, “Get the hell back in here.”
Stanley nodded and disappeared back inside.
I lay there in the alley, luxuriating in the fetid stench of garbage. There was a restaurant on the same block as the pawnshop; I bet there was a smorgasbord of food scraps out there. Uneaten tuna salad. Leftover potato salad. Soured milk for good measure. Yeah, it’s a good life.
I steadied myself with my elbows and worked my way into an upright and seated position. The stewardess did not come by to remind me to put my tray up. My ears did buzz with the sounds of takeoff. I gave my head a few shakes, trying to clear out the ruckus, but it didn’t help.
Behind me, a horn honked. My body blocked traffic for a pickup truck trying to take a shortcut. I crawled to the other side of the alley until I rested against the pawnshop wall. The truck slowed as it
drove by me, the passenger’s side window going down and the driver yelling, “Ya fucking drunk!” before pulling out into traffic. I didn’t flip him off. The spirit was more than willing, but the flesh was mighty motherfucking weak.
I sat there for longer than I know. The smell faded into the background, and I closed my eyes and rested in a comforting darkness. I let the buzzing in my ears drown out other sounds, and the black became warm and soothing, and I imagined this was what it was like when people went into those sensory deprivation tanks.
I was tired. I was tired of getting punched, slapped, smacked, beat, kicked, pummeled, socked, slugged, whacked, walloped, whipped, belted, bruised, brained, battered, and general issue assaulted. I missed that time when it was just my fuckered-up knee that hurt, instead of me as a whole being that hurt.
I took a deep breath, and that was a horrible life decision, because the smell of the garbage caught itself in my nostrils, and my body shook and I retched and gagged, and that chunk of bile worked its way through me and I puked it out onto the pavement.
I wiped the strings of vomit off my lips and chin then used the crevices in the brick wall to work my way back to my feet. I rested my head against the wall, made sure I wouldn’t collapse, and walked back to my Aztek.
The piece of shit was still parked in front of the pawnshop. I unlocked the rear latch, and reached underneath some blankets for a baseball bat. From the glove compartment, I got the 9 mm Glock that Woody had given me.
I leaned my head onto the vehicle, breathing through my mouth, feeling the warmth of the sun-soaked steel against my skin. The baseball bat and the pistol rested next to one another in the passenger seat.
So tired of all this shit.
I shoved the gun into the waist of my jeans, sorted my shirt over it to cover the weapon, grabbed the bat, and walked into the pawnshop.
23
The EMT wheeled Teddy Oklahoma out of the pawnshop on a stretcher. I watched from a vantage point on the curb where I smoked a cigarette and waited for the cops to arrive. I had dusted off a clean spot on the pavement, kicking off the largest shards of glass from the shattered pawnshop window.
Friend of the Devil Page 12
