Gun Church

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  He asked one last question. “You wanna tell me anything that maybe you didn’t mention before?”

  “They’re both experts with guns.”

  “Hitting paper targets don’t make you an expert.”

  “I’m not talking about paper targets, Mr. McDonald.”

  “Ex-military, huh?” he asked, his voice suddenly more serious.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Good thing you told me, but don’t worry about it. My partner, Tony Dee and me, we got her back. Nothing’s gonna happen to your ex-wife on our watch.”

  “She can’t know you’re there.”

  “We know. Believe me, we’ll fade so far into the background, no one’ll know we’re there unless they have to.”

  In spite of McDonald’s reassurances and regular updates, I didn’t sleep much that night or the following night. It was far more unnerving not knowing how much, if any, of what Jim had said was reality based. Not knowing made it really difficult to determine what else I could do to protect Amy; but even if I could have been one hundred percent sure of Amy’s safety, I had plenty to keep my nights sleepless. There was no avoiding the truth of Jim’s narrative even if he had nothing to do with most of it. Frank Vuchovich and Haskell Brown’s deaths were facts. My rebirth as a writer and as a man had come at the price of blood, a lot of blood, and, so far, none of it mine.

  It was all pretty exhausting and I got to the point where not sleeping was no longer an option. I could feel my body shutting down, but stubbornly hanging on to wakefulness. I just needed something to dull the edge of my own mania. There was nothing in my apartment to drink. I considered going downstairs and paying a visit to Isaac’s daughter. For me, nothing took the edge off quite like fucking, but the Kipster was still dead and using a woman that way was his MO, not mine. Then I remembered the painkillers the ER doctor had prescribed for my broken ribs. I snapped one of the two remaining pills in half and swallowed it dry. I don’t know when the sun was supposed to set on the rest of the world, but it set on me pretty damned quickly.

  Forty-Seven

  The Holdback

  I jackknifed up in bed, eyelids snapping open like cartoon window shades, my clothes soaked through with cold sweat. The last time I woke up in a cold sweat, I was in detox. Christ, it was so fucking clear to me in my sleep that I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it before. I had the proof or, hopefully, the disproof of Jim’s version of events right there in the apartment with me.

  The clock read 3:02 A.M. when I stepped onto the bare wooden floors and stood, stretching the knots out of my muscles. The room was utterly dark and still, but not quiet. The traffic noise from Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway was like the buzzing of a sleepy hive and with the Avenue H subway station only two blocks away, the cha-chum cha-chum, cha-chum cha-chum of passing subway wheels was the rhythm of the night. Transfixed by the sounds, I let the darkness wash over me.

  The trance was quickly broken and I found the metal file box where I stored my monthly bills. The beat-up old file box was the only thing of my father’s I’d kept. I could not help but think of Jim, the scars on his back, the Colonel’s handgun collection, and again feel pity for what had become of him. I felt a little sorry for myself too. Sorry that I had been broken for so long, that I had denied to myself that finding my father dead by his own hand had helped ruin me.

  I sat at my desk looking through all my recent bills. If what Jim had said was true about driving my Porsche to New York and back, my CompuPass toll bill, which was automatically charged to my AmEx card, would be much higher than usual. In fact, for nearly a year before this last September, I had no toll charges at all. Until the day Frank Vuchovich held my class hostage, where did I have to go, really? But my AmEx statements for the two months prior to my departure from Brixton were nowhere to be found. I had my most recent one, but not the two previous ones. There was nothing particularly surprising in that. I just moved and I was never the neatest of record keepers.

  I booted up my laptop. While I may not have been able to check my toll bills, I could look back at the media reports that followed in the wake of Haskell Brown’s murder. When I Googled “Haskell Brown homicide,” I got a boxcar full of hits. But the only thing any of the reports said about the bullet that caused his fatal wound was that it was from a handgun. Another dead end. Then I had an idea, one that even my sloppy record keeping couldn’t thwart. I got my phone and scrolled down to the newest number on my contact list.

  “McDonald here.”

  “This is Weiler. Everything all right there?” I asked.

  “Fine. Quiet. She went out to dinner at nine to Otto’s over on Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street. I can tell you what she ate, if you’re interested.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “She was home at ten fifty-one. Her lights went off at eleven forty-seven and no one’s been in or out of the building since one-thirteen. My relief should be here in about an hour.”

  “Very thorough. Thanks.”

  “You’re up kinda early, no?”

  “Nerves, I guess, and I’m a writer. We work at odd hours sometimes.”

  “A writer, huh? Whatchu workin’ on?”

  “That’s sort of why I called. I was wondering if you still have any contacts inside the department? I’m doing preliminary research for a book about the murder of a famous book editor. He was beaten, then shot to death. Happened a few months ago in Chelsea. Might’ve been a hate crime.”

  “Whatchu need?”

  “I’ve read every report on the homicide, but there’s nothing about the caliber of the handgun the killer used.”

  “What’s the vic’s name?”

  “Haskell Brown.”

  “Gimme an hour. I’ll make some calls.”

  While I was on the phone with McDonald, part of me must have been trying to figure out where the missing credit card statements had got to. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember paying those last few bills or ever having seen them. Yet, I hadn’t received any late notices or phone calls inquiring about overdue funds, and there was no old balance showing at the top of my new bill. I got a sick feeling in my gut as I thought about playing house in Brixton with Renee. “Mail’s on the table,” was her daily refrain. Renee would always smile when she said it, and her smile made me smile, but I wasn’t smiling as I reached for my checkbook.

  I used to pre-sign checks for her to use at the local grocery store or the campus bookstore or to buy some clothes. I never really paid much attention to what she spent money on or used the checks for. It felt good to be good to her, to want to be good to her. When my life consisted of boning every adjunct in a skirt, I had such disdain for myself that it subverted any pleasure I might find in the bedroom. My sex life was a version of Groucho Marx’s famous line about not wanting to be a member of any club that would have him as a member. I didn’t want anyone who wanted me, and when Janice Nadir and I were involved it was worse than that. I used her own love and desperation against her. So, yeah, when Renee came into my life, I was happy to do things for her. And she balanced my checkbook: a process as mysterious to me as quantum physics.

  When I looked at the checking account register, I was heartsick. Renee had written checks for those two AmEx bills. The amounts weren’t outrageous given that I’d done some splurging since getting the book deals. I was no forensic accountant and without the actual list of charges to work with, I wasn’t going to be able to back my way into the toll bill amount. But there was no getting around the fact that Renee, in spite of having four months of unfettered access to my checkbook, had paid only these two bills. Was she covering Jim’s tracks or was it a coincidence that the accompanying statements were missing? Coincidence. I could hear Jim laughing. I hadn’t wanted to believe she could have been complicit in Jim’s crazy schemes-real or imagined, whether she was being forced to or not-but it was getting harder to convince myself of that.

  I guess I was pretty old-fashioned in some ways.
Mostly, I used my computer like a fancy word processor. I never banked online or did any of the other sorts of things online the rest of the world did. But this was different and I was frustrated; so armed with my most recent bill, I typed in americanexpress.com and followed all the prompts until I accessed my missing statements. I was scrolling through the individual charges when my heart stopped, then raced. There it was: a CompuPass charge for over a hundred bucks, about twice what it had cost me in tolls to drive up here when I moved. Before I could breathe again, the phone rang.

  “How long before this book a yours comes out?” It was Tom McDonald.

  “Years, if ever,” I said. “Right now I’m just looking to see if there’s a book here at all. Why?”

  “Because the caliber of the weapon used is part of the holdback and you can’t share this information with anybody, at least not yet.”

  “The holdback. What’s the holdback?”

  “It’s standard operating procedure for detectives to withhold certain details from any serious case. It’s so they can make sure a suspect isn’t bullshittin’ them or wastin’ their time. It’s a way to eliminate false leads or confessions.”

  “I get it. A guy turns himself in and says ‘I used a.38’ when it was actually a.25. Something like that, right?”

  There was a few uncomfortable seconds of silence on McDonald’s end of the phone. Then, “Why did you say that?”

  “What? Hold on.”

  I didn’t really hear what he said. No, I heard it, but it didn’t quite register because as I stretched my neck, my eye caught sight of something that didn’t belong. “Wait a minute,” I told him. I walked over to my door, the cell phone nestled between my right shoulder and ear. I popped on the floor lamp and froze. An envelope, not unlike the one the missing chapter had come in, had been pushed through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door.

  “Weiler, what’s going on?” McDonald shouted in my ear.

  “Just a second.”

  I forced myself to kneel down and scoop it up. This envelope was thinner, lighter, with nothing written on it. The flap was taped shut. I tried to pull it open, but that didn’t work. I retreated to my desk to find scissors or a letter opener.

  “Hey, Weiler.”

  “Sorry, McDonald.”

  “About the gun,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “Why did you mention a.25?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied, finding an old X-ACTO knife. “It was random. Why?”

  “Lead detective says your vic was killed by one shot to the back of the head. The bullet was pretty smashed up, but they’re pretty certain it was a.25, probably from a Ruger or a Beretta.”

  My head was pounding, sweat once again rushing through my pores, my world wobbling severely on its axis. None of this, the toll bill or the caliber of the bullet, proved anything for certain. I told myself-even if I didn’t quite believe it-that Jim could simply have stolen my toll pass and run up my bill. That the police holdback wasn’t top secret. Hadn’t I just found out what caliber bullet had killed Haskell Brown without much trouble? Jim was a resourceful kid, more resourceful than me. I’m sure he could have found out the holdback information.

  “Weiler!”

  “Give me a second,” I barked, emptying the contents of the envelope onto my desk. And when I saw the item the envelope held, my world stopped wobbling and spun off into the void. It was the front page of the Brixton Banner and the headline read:

  MABRY LURED TO DEATH BY DARK-HAIRED BEAUTY

  “Weiler! You okay?” I could not find it in me to answer. “Weiler, are you all right?”

  “Far from it. Get Amy out of her apartment. Get her the fuck out of there right now and take her someplace safe.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  Forty-Eight

  The Oracle of Brixton

  McDonald told me to sit tight, that he’d get back to me with their location after they’d gotten Amy safely away from the loft. I asked if he wanted me to call her to warn her he was coming.

  “No, for chrissakes!” he screamed. “You’d only scare the shit out of her and make my job ten times harder. I’ll handle it. Go take a cold shower or knit a fuckin’ sweater and wait for my call. Should be a few hours.”

  In spite of wanting to crawl out of my own skin, I heeded some of his advice and took a shower. Afterwards, I sat in the living room of my lightless apartment, waiting for whispers of dawn to shine through my windows-whispers that came as dark clouds and the pinging of rain drops. I barely moved. My mind raced. I’d been so diligent at rationalizing away the obvious that I never let myself fully entertain the possibility that what Jim had said on the boardwalk might actually be a factual accounting of what had happened. Addicts are superb at denial, but there was no denying it, not any of it, not anymore. The bloody symmetry of it came crashing down on my head.

  If it was true-and it was-that I had been remade as a person and as a writer, it had been largely at Jim’s hand. There was no escaping it. I may have started the change to win back Amy’s respect of my own accord, but the rest of it was more easily traceable. All the red lines led back to that September day when Frank Vuchovich came to my desk to retrieve his first assignment and stuck a Colt Python in my face. Or did they? Did they lead back to the day Jim found the Pandora chapter or did they lead back to me, to my writing it? Were my ideas the blueprint for the nightmare that ensued? Was Jim simply the Oracle of Brixton, deciphering the signs, making my wishes come true? Did it matter? The net result was the same. Did the body count stop at two or three or four? Jim’s question about killing Mabry rang in my ears: “Did you plant that idea in my head or did I plant it in yours?” The incidents leading up to Stan Petrovic’s death no longer seemed random or unconnected. I could see Jim’s hand in everything.

  I was going mad, waiting, raking myself over the coals for my blindness about Jim, worrying about the bodies left in my wake that could be tied to me. I’d had it up to my eyeballs and retreated to the safest place I knew: Gun Church.

  McGuinn had had his fill of blood: blood in the name of a cause, blood in the name of boredom. None of it seemed to matter to anyone. He took ice cold comfort in that he could nigh count the bodies he left behind him at home, but he could well count the bodies he and those of the church had snuffed out like the lit ends of still-burning fags over these few short months. There was Old Jack, of course, the two black footballers, the cop … He’d once read a book where the writer wondered what was the cost of another body or two in a world awash in blood. Amen, brother. Amen. So it was that McGuinn threw his gun in the river and tightened the tourniquet around the jumpy bollix’s leg wound.

  “Listen, to me, boyo,” McGuinn said, putting his face up close to the wounded man’s. “Yer friends are dead and it stops here. Do you catch my meaning?”

  He nodded yes.

  “You let Zoe be or I’ll come back here and kill ya so slowly you’ll beg me to murder yer whole fookin’ family just so’s I’ll kill you. Ya getting’ me?”

  He nodded again.

  “I’m takin’ that van and I’ll call fer help as soon as I can. Any questions, boyo?”

  He shook his head.

  “Good. Now, ya just lay there quiet and still fer help to come.”

  McGuinn stood, turned, and walked back to the van. He was tempted to fetch Zoe, whom he’d left unconscious on the other side of the river, but decided against it. No good would come of that, he thought, the mating of two spiders with nary a human soul between them. He certainly had nothing of his remaining and he’d no notion of where Zoe’s soul had got to. She wasn’t one for talking about such things and McGuinn wasn’t sure he would have believed what she told him in any case. A lot had passed between them in these last months, even something akin to love, but very little truth.

  As he drove out of the woods, away from the church, McGuinn looked in the rearview mirror. He feared all he’d see there were the f
aces of the dead he’d left in his wake. What he saw instead was the inky blackness of an unlit road. If blackness was all that lay behind him, he supposed he could make do with that.

  Bleary-eyed and nearly spent, I closed my computer on Gun Church and Terry McGuinn for the last time. Then, at about 6:15 A.M., the phone rang.

  “She’s safe, but she’s pretty pissed and not a little freaked.” It was a voice I didn’t recognize.

  “Who is this?”

  “Tony Dee, Mr. Weiler. I work with Tommy Mac.”

  “She’s upset?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I guess. Where are you guys?”

  “Check your email.”

  “What?”

  “Just do what I tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “And, Mr. Weiler … ”

  “Yeah.”

  “However you get to where you’re going, keep alert that you don’t have company. You notice anything or anyone suspicious, you turn in the wrong direction and call this number. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  The line was already dead before I could think to say anything else. When I checked, there was an email waiting. They were keeping Amy in the Whitestone section of Queens. I didn’t know that part of the city very well and hoped Jim didn’t know it at all.

  God knows why, but my landlord, Isaac, let me borrow his car. I think maybe he knew I’d once been a famous writer. Even if I were still famous, I thought, who would care? In a country that values the ballroom dancing talents of washed-up actors, writers were less than afterthoughts. At least Amy was safe. That was the most important thing, but I couldn’t quite see my way to making sense of all this for her and I didn’t have much more time to figure it out.