Old and Cold

by Jim Nisbet

  EIGHT

  I’LL BET THAT’S THE GUY, YOU OVERHEARD THE ELDER COP SAY TO the younger one over the roof of their unmarked cruiser, which was parked at the foot of the berm that sloped up to the bridge abutment. The younger one paused. How can you tell. He’s listening to us. Oh? The younger one turned for a look in my direction. And, though they were barely discernible over the roar of traffic overhead, you were listening to them. And you’re still listening to them. Huh, said the younger one, as he slid behind the wheel. So what are going to—and he slammed the door. The older one, very casual, gave the appearance of not caring one way or another. He tapped his phone on the roof of the car as if he had his own, very faraway thoughts, then himself slipped into the passenger seat. The engine started, though I couldn’t hear it. Your ass is fixin’ to be in a sling, the smart money said, as the car moved into traffic, rounded the corner, beyond the onramp, and disappeared. My ass? What about your ass? They got nothing on me, the smart money said. They don’t even know I exist. I suppose we should get rid of the weapon. You should get rid of the weapon, and I know just the guy. Who’s that? Riparian Sam, the smart money said. I had to think about that one. But then—you mean the guy who approached us about purchasing a weapon, awhile back? The very same. But where is he? And how can I just hand off our piece to the guy? Our piece. We hand off your piece. Yeah yeah. But how? You sell it to him, dummy. He’s the one offering to buy. Tell him you happened to come across the merchandise, make a deal, go your separate ways, dime him to the cops—you got the card—. It’s true, I’m fingering the calling card among the filth in my pocket, I’ve got the card.—and get drunk on the proceeds, the smart money concluded, confident that the red herring has been dragged across the bloodhound’s trail. And so it went. Riparian Sam liked to spend his days sitting at a picnic bench under a stunted Monterey pine hard by a public fishing pier, a bit of green along on Terry A. Francois Boulevard called, imaginatively enough, Agua Vista Park. And that’s what he did there, he stared at the water. One day six or seven years ago, a guy had sat down opposite him, interrupting Sam’s view of the water, and wouldn’t get up again. They got into a fight, Riparian Sam got the worst of it, and ever since then he’d been talking about getting hold of a gun and killing the guy. Six or seven years. He sat at that bench all day and, just as long as you didn’t install yourself between him and his view of the water, he’d talk to you about getting a gun and killing the last guy who had done so. As you might imagine, as a rule, day in and day out, Riparian Sam had Agua Vista pretty much to himself. So the smart money and I put the gun into the middle of a bunch of trash in a shopping cart and pushed it down all the way down Fifth Street to Bluxome, east two blocks to Fourth Street, right on Fourth and past the train station and over the Mission Creek drawbridge and across Third Street onto Mission Rock St., thence it’s but a hundred yards to the north end of Terry Francois Boulevard, and past the Bay View Boat Club and its boat ramp and along the western bank of the San Francisco Bay to Agua Vista Park where, no surprise whatsoever, Riparian Sam sat with his back to the afternoon sun and his face, brown as the girth strap on a forest service jackass, turned east toward the bay and Oakland. Sam, the smart money opens up, how the fug are ya. I’m lookin to kill me an interloper, Sam starts right in. Just need to find me a pistol so I can git on with it. Well I got just the feller her for ya. The smart money gives me a nudge. Ah, yes, ahem, I blunder in, and just what caliber of weapon might you seek? Big bore, Riparian says without hesitation. Though he does not make eye contact with you, you can practically see the cranes of the container port, six miles across the bay, reflected in his eyes. Don’t fuckin sit there, he adds severely. It’s like a pitbull tied to a fence on a short chain, the smart money observes, you want to get only so close. Would a twenty-five do? you ask him as if timidly. Goddamn woman’s gun, Sam says without hesitation. Oh? Well, you reply, I’ve found it to be ideally suited. How’s that? Sam asks unexpectedly. Unexpectedly, because you’d expect a guy like Riparian Sam, a man of many fixed opinions, to not countenance a contradiction to one of them. Well, you say, warming to the subject, it doesn’t make much noise, it shoots straight, rounds aren’t all that hard to come by, once you leave the city, although I can help you out with that if you’re short on transportation, they’re centerfire, just in case you’re a handloader, and you look the type to me, a perfectionist, interested in all things, and—. I’ll just be using the one round, Sam declares flatly. Just the one round, you repeat. Just the one, he repeats. One round, one bastard. He moved his chin. Sat right there, he did. Did he, you parrot. Wouldn’t move the whole day, Sam continued, his back to me and not so much as a please and thankyou. Rude, you allow. Needs taught some manners, Sam agreed. Seen him lately? the smart money thinks to ask. Sam’s brow furrows. Can’t recall, he says after a while. Probably not, the smart money concludes. Oh, he’s around, Sam predicted. And I’ll find him. Does that mean you’re going to leave your spot? I asked. Riparian Sam thought about this. All I’d really have to do, he said, assuming a cagey look, would be to sit here and wait for him. When he shows, I don’t even give him a tumble, see. He sits right there. He raised his finger and pointed. Right in front of me, right between me and the Oakland International Container Terminal. I thought that’s what he was looking at, the smart money says, with a glance across the blue water. Let him get settled in, Riparian Sam says. And now his thumb stands up, at right angles to his forefinger. Let him get comfortable. The thumb extends back, away from the forefinger, as far as it can be made to go. Pow, Sam said. The finger recoiled. More like snap, you think to correct him, but you let it go. Drill ‘em right dang dab in the occiput. Say, Sam blinks, do ya think a thirty-two would blows his two or three brains as far as that pier? The pistol is a .25, the pier is twenty yards away. The smart money looks at it and makes a calculation. Only if you hold the piece at arm’s length, the smart money says. But don’t touch the muzzle to the back of his head, it might give you away. Oh. Riparian Sam lowers the shooting finger and its hand to the plastic 2x8 that makes up his edge of the picnic table. How much, he asks after a while. How much you got, you ask him. Check came last week, Sam muses. Weather’s nice, the smart money says. Been sleeping out? Not in, Sam says. Out, then, you conclude. Give me fifty bucks. A shadow passes over Riparian Sam’s face, like that of a cloud over a freshly manured field in the heart of the Imperial Valley. That‘s funny, Sam says. How that? you ask. It just so happens I got fifty bucks, he says. Got change for a twenty? Absolutely not, the smart money says. I’ll give you sixty, then, Sam says. He speaks in a monotone. Revenge is worth whatever it costs to pay for it, you adduce. You sound like Orestes, the smart money says. I could use a little rest, Sam says. But duty calls. In consideration of the ten bucks we—I—will thrown in an extra clip with rounds, you say. Only need the one slug, Sam says. Come on, Sam, you say, a deal’s a deal. Keep your goddamn extra clip and rounds, Sam snarls. You going to follow through on this deal or not? Are you going to go back on your word? He turns his head, and his gaze could not have remained more level if it had been the ruby beam of a laser theodolite. Am I gonna have to add you to the list? he asks. Huh? If so, let me have two rounds. Or, he leans forward and stares directly into your eyes, is this job gonna require three rounds? His breath reeks of fortified grape distillate. Like yours, the smart money says. No wonder his lip is quivering, you conclude. No, the smart money says. No, you repeat, you needn’t. But please accept what rounds remain in the existing clip, and please don’t discharge it until you can no longer hear the practically-disintegrated bearings in the rapidly departing wheels of this shopping cart. Done, Riparian agrees, resuming his regal stare out over the bay. There’s nobody around, a matter of privacy and personal space that Sam’s been seeing to for years—ever since the city built this park, it’s said. So you hand him the pistol, neatly disguised as a dozen eggs. It’s an automatic, you begin to explain. But Riparian Sam already has the piece out of the egg carton and is turning it this way and
that and quite expertly, you notice. Another fucking Gulf War vet, the smart money grumbles. That’s the safety, you begin to explain anyway. But then Sam clicks off the safety with disconcerting familiarity, as if he’s owned this particular pistol all his life, and been shooting it too, which only reinforces the impression to be gained when he sticks the business end of it right in your face. Let’s see, Sam says. And rotates the extended arm ninety degrees and snaps off a round. A two-inch splinter twirls off the farthest piling of the fishing pier, perhaps forty yards downrange, and, though no louder than the crack of a bullwhip, the discharge slaps across the water. Jeeze, you tell him, involuntarily looking around, discharging a firearm within city limits is a big-time felony. Nice piece, Riparian Sam says, holding the pistol up for inspection. Shoots straight. He snaps on the safety. How many rounds? Ahm, says the smart money, counting on your fingers. Let’s see, you say aloud, the clip holds seven rounds plus one in the chamber if you’re so inclined, so ahm, let’s see, there should now be three in the clip and one round in the chamber. Sam abruptly ejects the clip downward into the upturned palm of his left hand and jacks the chambered round onto the picnic table, which circles like a dreidel and we watch it, fascinated, until it stops. Sam studies the clip. Three little cartridge cases are visible through the various inspection holes in the side of the clip. Four, Sam repeats as if to himself. Your hand descends into the heart of the trash and cans and bottles in the basket of the shopping cart. You sure you don’t want the spare magazine? That’s a three-hundred-dollar pistol, Sam says, as if suddenly lucid. What are you, you say, the shopping channel? Good price, Sam says as if to himself. Which was sixty dollars, you remind him. Where’d a schizophrenic shithead get a pistol such as this? Sam says, as if paranoid, as if to himself. The shopping channel? you suggest feebly. Oh, Sam says dully. You sure you don’t want the spare, you say, having fished it up out of the trash. Sam shakes his head slowly. I haven’t owned a gun since… Since… You don’t own it yet, you state the obvious. Say, the smart money says, what’s a progressive writer do all day? Same thing as a conservative one, Sam says, his tone duller than the finish on the monument commemorating your last war but one. Really? the smart money says, all day, stating the obvious? Or the impossible, Sam points out. Depends on your point of view. Say, Sam? you venture, about that sixty bucks… And put that thing away somewhere. Somebody might notice that you’re sitting on municipal property in possession of a loaded firearm. I thought that was the idea, Sam observed dully. Sixty bucks sixty bucks sixty bucks, the smart money goaded. Riparian Sam placed the pistol in front of him on the picnic table. Stay over there where I can keep an eye on you. He reached into his rags in the vicinity of his breast and brought forth a handsome leather wallet, from which in due course emerged three crisp twenties. A good deal, he said, slipping the notes past one another again and again, to ensure there were but three of them. Here. And he hands them over. Oh, man, you say aloud, sixty less twenty percent is forty-eight dollars, divided by five is nine with three dollars left over. I’ll bet Quincy down there to the Uncertain Bollard would be all too willing to build me a tenth martini for three dollars if I’d already scored the other nine from him. We got it made, we got it made, we got it made, another three days we got it made, another three days, way out into the future, as uncertainly goes, that we know more or less exactly what’s going to happen, and therefore we know a great deal about what’s not going to happen, although not everything that’s not going to happen. I couldn’t agree more, Riparian Sam said, calmly replacing the handsome billfold within the layers of his exoskeletal filth. Now, since I guess all I got to do is wait, I can say pretty much the same thing. You can say exactly the same thing, you say, assuming the draft-animal position at the handle of the shopping cart, exactly the same thing, I guarantee it. Yes, Sam says thoughtfully, as if to himself, as he fingers the expelled round into the clip. One can say with certainty what’s probably going to happen, and what’s probably not going to happen, but not with absolutely certainty, even if they both go the way you think they’re going to go. Never, you agree. Not in a million years, Sam says. He fits the clip into the grip of the little automatic, whose barrel is shorter than its handle, chambers a round and sets the safety. Once its proximate chore is accomplished, Sam says as if to himself, this little pill will serve as the be-all and end-all of managed care. You push the cart a couple of feet, until now you are in the shade of the stunted Monterey pine, and between Sam and its trunk. Somebody has managed to not retrieve an empty beer can from the bed of weeds surrounding the tree’s base. You do retrieve it. And you stomp it flat, as if thoughtfully, then place it atop the detritus in the basket of the shopping cart. You push the cart another foot. You stop and turn. Say Sam, you say, as if thoughtfully, where are you from, anyway? Sam, who has placed the pistol somewhere among the layers of his personal filth now gazes as if thoughtfully out over his watery domain. A moment passes. I can’t remember, he finally answers truthfully. Just like where you’re going, you tell him. And Riparian Sam is in all probably about to agree, though not really paying attention, when you drill him from behind. The shot snaps across the water, no louder than the crack of a bullwhip. Sam’s head slumps forward quite gently, and you don’t even have to help him, it eases down onto the inside of the elbow of his right arm like he’s had two bottles of fortified wine on a warm day, like it’s messed with his medication, which admixture is contraindicated anyway, it says so right on the five pages of instructions they hand out with it at the VA, and he looks just like he’s slipped into a drowsy afternoon reverie. I don’t know if your reputation is going to survive this, the smart money observes. But you’re not having any of that. You bury the other .25 in the trash in the shopping basket and begin to wrangle the cart north along Terry A. Francois Boulevard. The rays of a late afternoon sun slant along the asphalt in front of you, left to right, west to east. A mile south, the shift whistle sounds at the Bethlehem shipyard.