Gun Church

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  It was a place to start, but I wouldn’t be satisfied to simply use what little I had seen at Hardentine Air Force Base, nor did I want to confine my characters in a concrete bunker. No, the fictionalized McGuinn needed to operate against the backdrop of the real world, even if it was a withered and tiny speck of the world. He was too large a character to stick in a box somewhere and duel like a gentleman. Red crosses on dirty T-shirts might have been dramatic enough for the boys and girls from Brixton, but they would not suffice for a killer like McGuinn. In my novel, there would be blood, lots of blood, and very little of it spilled for a good cause. First things first. I had to get McGuinn involved with the wrong people. No better way to do that, I thought, than with the noir conceit of a beautiful woman.

  He thought he’d go feckin’ mad, did Terry McGuinn. He could put a rifle round through a man’s ear hole at several hundred meters or build an IED out of household chemicals and a plastic bottle, but he was banjaxed by his loneliness. It was his curse to have been born a social sort. The Prods would say it was a curse he was born at all. When he’d been forced to lay low in the States in the past, there was always someone to share a pint of the black stuff. As an honored soldier of the Republic, he was seen to. Now he was a scurrying rat, hiding from the shadows in his bedsit above a novelty shop. And just lately the walls of the bedsit had been closing in on him.

  Och ocon-“woe is me” were the words that had recently seeped into his thoughts, and he despised himself for letting them in. McGuinn was not a man to rue the trail of blood that followed him across the Atlantic, nor to pray the rosary before a shrine to his victims. Soldiers and innocents, it was all the same shite. In the end, we all got off the train at the same station. But even assassins fall prey to the blues and he had ’em fierce. “Jaysus,” he thought. What he wouldn’t give for a pint and a chat without having to look over his shoulder.

  Some of the wee Mexicans at the slaughterhouse were friendly sorts, though nary a one spoke twenty words of English. McGuinn could manage a bit of Basque, but his Spanish was crap. No matter. He couldn’t envision himself and a bunch of Pedros sitting around passing the poteen. Besides, those lads were as busy keeping their heads down as was he.

  He was so wrecked, he’d gone out of pocket for a bit of flange. Never before had he paid for a woman. A point of pride, that. No longer. McGuinn had killed in coldest blood without giving a toss, but could not forgive himself for the sin of paying for a piece of skirt.

  “Escort service, me arse,” he snarled, shredding the postcard advert into confetti. “In the photos they all look like Christie Brinkley. Bollix! When they showed up at your door they look like buckets of snot.” But desperation improved their looks and never did he turn them away.

  Christ on his cross, now he was talking to himself. Worse, he was showing his age. Though still a fine-looking flah, Christie Brinkley was older than his own self. He had to get out of there, now. Taking a bullet could be no worse than this lonely hell. He tucked the Sig in the small of his back and walked out into the night.

  The first two pubs he tried were woeful disappointments-as if that was news in this town, the disappointment mecca of America-but McGuinn thought he spotted some promise in the twitchy neon sign above Ralph and Jim’s Bar and Grill. Dark lit and moody with a single ceiling fan that turned with the urgency of a sloth, the establishment was not without its charms. The bar surface was so pitted it was positively lunar and the red vinyl snugs were held together by duct tape and prayers.

  McGuinn waved a twenty to get the bartender’s attention. “A scotch neat and a burger with chips.”

  “I can do the scotch,” the barman said, “but the kitchen’s been closed since Jim took sick.”

  “And when was that?”

  “The second Eisenhower administration. Ralph and Jim were dead before I was born.”

  McGuinn paid for his scotch and moved over to the jukebox, which was a bit of a revelation itself. That it was an authentic juke with real vinyl to play was shock enough, but that it contained Thin Lizzy tunes was brilliant. He stuffed in quarters.

  “Tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak,” he sang along, pumping his fist in the air.

  “Who is this?” A siren’s voice interrupted his reverie.

  The voice belonged to a diabolical blond with untamable tresses and eyes that fairly glowed blue in the dim-lit bar. She was thirty years his junior with curves in abundance where the Almighty had planned them to go. Her skirt was short; her legs long and tanned. And her smile was white and inviting, but it was her eyes that held McGuinn’s attention.

  “Have ya never heard of Thin Lizzy?”

  “Tin Lizzy?”

  McGuinn laughed his first honest laugh since he’d arrived in this beshitten town and there was more than a bit of nervousness to it.

  “That’s Thin Lizzy-T-h-i-n-Thin. Great Irish band.”

  “Like U2?”

  “Not likely. Phil Lynott was a Dubliner, not a poser like Bono. Citizen of the world, me arse. He’s a singer in a feckin’ rock band, not Ghandi.” He finished his drink in a gulp. “I’m empty. Can I get ya a drink?”

  “A Bud.”

  “What’s yer name, darlin’?”

  “Zoe.”

  “Lovely name for a stunning woman,” McGuinn said, feeling almost human again. “Guard the juke with yer life. Any bollocks tries to play U2, come fetch me.”

  As he stepped back to the bar and beyond the power of Zoe’s eyes, his radar popped on. Something was amiss. Of all the lads in the bar, why, he wondered, had the looker approached him, the one fella near old enough to be her aul da? Somehow he didn’t think it was his thinning hair, potbelly, or Phil Lynott’s singing that had called to her.

  Waiting patiently to be served, McGuinn used the mirror behind the bar to study what was going on at his back. The fair Zoe kept a poker face, and a beautiful one it was. Her focus seemed fully on the juke, but he knew that if he watched her long enough, she would give herself away. One way or another, he supposed, women were always giving themselves away. Ah, just there, a subtle swivel of her head to the left and a shift in her gaze. As slight as her movements were, Zoe might just as well have painted a bull’s-eye on the poor fooker’s chest …

  So entranced by what I’d written, I nearly jumped out of my skin when the phone rang. The phone hadn’t done much ringing since the day Janice Nadir moved upstate.

  I picked up after catching my breath. “Yeah.”

  “You’re such an asshole, Weiler. Don’t you ever return phone calls?”

  Technically, I guess Meg Donovan was still my agent, a position her colleagues no doubt coveted as much as receiving placebos in a late-stage cancer study. Although I hadn’t seen her in years, Meg was still more friend than agent, really. She was my only remaining link to the Kipster.

  “It was you who called?” I asked, pretending I’d noticed the red message light flashing. I hadn’t.

  “You haven’t listened to the message yet?”

  “Come on, Donovan. You know how it is with me and the phone. The last time someone called with good news, the Mets won the World Series.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve spent the better part of my life lending credence to that assertion.”

  “Shut up and listen. Your second fifteen minutes of fame might pay off.”

  “A reality show? Survival of the Fittest Has-beens? I’ll kick Webster’s little black ass.”

  “Very cute, but no. Besides, my money would be on the dwarf.”

  “Isn’t it your job to be on my side, Meg?”

  “It’s a lonely place, being on your side. My job’s to tell you the truth.”

  “Agents and the truth, now there’s unexplored territory.”

  “If you haven’t managed to alienate me after all these years, you’re not going to do it now.”

  “Okay, Meg, what are we talking about?”

  “A book deal.”

  Bookdeal: those t
wo words made me weak. If I’d been born with a vagina, it would have been wet.

  “What kind of book deal?” I asked.

  “Haskell Brown at Travers Legacy has had a big Eighties retrospective series in the works for a year or so and-”

  “A year, huh? And this is the first I’m hearing about it?”

  “Don’t be a dunce cap, Weiler.”

  “So I wasn’t part of the original retrospective.”

  “Very good. You should take the Jeopardy home challenge. Now can we talk money?”

  “Who was in the original deal?”

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Kip.”

  “If I don’t, who will? Names, ranks, and serial numbers, please.”

  “The usual suspects: Bart, Nutly, Kate Silva, Marty Castronieves … ”

  I couldn’t believe how much hearing those names hurt me. Surely the omission of my name should have come as no shock. I think maybe it was that I knew the Kipster had once been able to write circles around them all, even his Highness, Marty Castronieves.

  “Earth to Planet Weiler, are you reading me? Over.”

  “Sorry, Meg. I was lost there for a minute. Do the others know I wasn’t part of the original package?”

  She hesitated. “Come on, Kip, of course they know. Publishing makes OedipusRex look like a play about distant cousins. Now can we stop talking about what was and get to what is? This could be a nice paycheck for us both.”

  “Sure.”

  Meg wasn’t exaggerating. Travers Legacy was willing to pay me big bucks for my backlist, which-not having published a novel in about fifteen years-was all the wares I had to sell.

  “They’re going to do big print runs on your first three novels and might send you guys out on tour. Lots of press, lots of stores, even late night TV. Think of it: you, Bart, and Nutly back on the road together, and you could get away from that dreadful Garden State Brickface Community College.”

  “Yeah, it could be just like one of those British Invasion tours with Freddie and the Dreamers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Swinging Blue Jeans.”

  “Weiler, this is your chance to get out of Dodge.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to get out of Dodge.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a rights deal, not a book deal,” I said.

  “It’s a money deal.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s not to know? No one’s pounding down the door for you, honey. I’m the one who parlayed your saving those kids into this deal and, trust me, it wasn’t easy. You may have really straightened yourself out, but it’s the Kipster people remember in this town. Around here, you’re still that boorish, coked-up horn dog who turned his silk purse talent into a sow’s asshole.”

  “And,” I said, “if the sales numbers were good on ClownCarBounce, The Devil’s Understudy, and CurleyTakesFive, they’d still be lining up to suck my dick.”

  “If my bowling ball had square corners, it wouldn’t roll. If, if, if … ”

  “Look, Meg, I’m not ungrateful and I know it’s a miracle you still talk to me after all the bullshit and heartache I put you through, but can you stall them a little while? Tell them I want to be sure I can handle the road again.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell them whatever I have to, but other than pissing away a lot of my hard work and a fat payday, why exactly am I doing it?”

  “So you can think of a way to have the deal include a clause for a new book.”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the phone. At least I didn’t hear her collapse to the floor or beg me to call 911.

  “A new book?” she said at last. “You’re writing again?”

  “Yes, sort of.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So you’re willing to blow the biggest money offer we’ve had since MTV actually played videos because you’re sort of writing again?”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “This ain’t old times, Kip. I’ve got lots of other clients who pay my various mortgages, but you’re all you’ve got.”

  “I know.”

  “There won’t be any more offers like this.”

  “I know that too.”

  “Okay, I’ll ask, but they might think you’re being difficult like the Kipster they all know and hate. This might queer the whole deal. You understand that? Are you sure this is what you want me to do?”

  “Strangely enough, Meg, it is.”

  When she clicked off at the other end, my hands were shaking. It had been many years since I’d burned a bridge, and I remembered it being much easier as the Kipster.

  Nine

  Lipitor

  About an hour after I got off the phone with Meg, the St. Pauli Girl showed up on my doorstep with three bags of groceries. Did I have mixed feelings? Fuck no, especially when I saw her smile. It was like a love letter in the Times Book Review. Those smiles, the lighting up when you came into view, the brush of fingers against cheek, the first desperate hug, that first kiss are more powerful than a locomotive. But the flip side is always more insipid, because you don’t notice the individual aspects of attraction when they’re going, only when they’re gone. You can feel yourself falling in love, not out of it. By the time you’ve noticed the fading, all the color’s been bleached out.

  Love? Who was I kidding? I’d be bored with Renee soon enough. I always got bored. It was in my nature. My fame, even the frayed and threadbare variety with which I was now afflicted, guaranteed me a steady stream of eager young women like Renee or bored women like Janice Nadir. I may well have been a self-absorbed prick, but I wasn’t so shut off that I didn’t recognize the underlying current of anger in my boredom. Every first kiss, every orgasm-genuine or suspect-was a reminder of persistence and loss: the persistence of my inconsequential fame and the loss of my talent.

  Still, I smiled back at the St. Pauli Girl. She had already occupied my attention longer than anyone in my sorry tenure at Brixton, with the exception of Janice Nadir. And why not? Renee was easy to look at, fucked like a demon, and was as yet untouched by the bitterness of age. No pillow talk of limp penises for the St. Pauli Girl. My inevitable boredom didn’t prevent me from enjoying the onset of romance, no matter how brief or ill-fated. I was an asshole, not anhedonic. And when I smiled back at Renee, I was smiling as much at the three bags of groceries as at her.

  Other women had tried this sort of mothering, you-look-like-you-could-use-a-good-home-cooked-meal approach on me before with little or no success. Sometimes I enjoyed the meal, sometimes the sex. Seldom both. On those most rare occasions when I did, my partner didn’t. Janice Nadir tried this routine early on, but abandoned it almost immediately. She was a bright woman. I hoped the St. Pauli Girl would catch on quickly too.

  When I opened the door for her, she put the groceries down on the table, felt my smile with her fingertips, and kissed me hard on the mouth. I returned the favor.

  “What’s on the menu?”

  “Me,” she said without a hint of guile. “I thought we could work up an appetite.”

  Smart girl.

  The fucking was spectacular, if not quite as ferocious as it had been the last few nights. As soon as we hit the sheets, I realized I had been too quick to dismiss the meaning of the grocery bags. Even as we were otherwise engaged, I detected subtle, barely perceptible signs that tenderness was already seeping into the relationship. There was warmth in her sighs, less urgency in my thrusting, gentle caresses. And when the St. Pauli Girl nuzzled her cheek against my chest and fairly pulled my arm over her back for a post-coital cuddle, I was sure of it. I managed not to run screaming. It was actually kind of nice. Maybe it was too early and there was still too much ground to cover for me to get bored.

  She made us grilled chorizo, avocado, queso fresco omelets with chipotle salsa and garnished with chopped cilantro. This wasn’t your typical Brixton fare, not by a long shot. Brixton was your basic ham, eggs, grits, scrapple, bacon, American ch
eese, and ketchup kind of place. Around here, if you didn’t need to chase it down with Lipitor and baby aspirin, it wasn’t food. And when she pulled the bottle of fine French Chardonnay from my fridge, I knew the St. Pauli Girl meant business. She might’ve been able to scrape together the omelet ingredients from stores in surrounding towns, but she definitely had to go to Stateline to get the wine. During dinner, I had actually reached my hand across the table and placed it atop hers.

  “I heard you had some trouble at the diner today,” she said, while doing the dishes.

  “You talk to Jim?”

  “Come on, Ken, the whole town knew five minutes after you left Stan’s place. Are you okay?”

  “You would know.”

  She walked away from the sink, threaded herself into my arms and sat in my lap. “Much better than okay,” she whispered, her lips touching my ear. Then she kissed me gently. When our lips separated, she just sort of stared at me.

  “Stan Petrovic isn’t the kind of man you should be messing with.”

  “He messed with me.”

  “I heard, but you punched him.”

  An involuntary smile appeared on my face. “I guess I did.”

  Renee frowned. “If Jim wasn’t there, would you have … you know, would you have done that?”

  I jerked my head back. “What are you getting at?”

  Her body stiffened. “Nothing.” She stood up and went back to the sink to finish the dishes. “I’m not getting at anything. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  I walked up behind her and put my arms around her. “Too late for that.”

  “I guess.”

  I told her about the call from Meg Donovan and the Travers Legacy deal. That seemed to excite her.