by Barry, Mike
Shit. It was all shit; in certain ways he had become as corrupt and despicable as the men he was fighting. Still, you became your enemy in Christian crusade; that was Western religion for you, and your only salvation was the mission itself as purifying. So he would not worry about that anymore, and if Harris carried back word to Nolk about what he had done, so much the better: scare the shit out of Nolk. That was all. Harris had told him plenty about that man on the way; Wulff thought that he understood the situation pretty well. Nolk was a key. He was not the key, the ultimate enemy, in the sense that the old man Calabrese had been, but he was good enough; scoring off him would be scoring something. He was on top of the new rank that was coming like scum to the surface in the removal of the old.
Wulff needed some weaponry, though. He got it by knocking down a sporting-goods store in suburban Mobile no more than two hours before he made his attack on Nolk. The sporting-goods store was in a huge shopping center, and it was easy for Wulff to pull his car right up in front of it, leave the doors open, the engine running, set his pistol, and walk right into the empty store, where he saw the old owner bent over the counter showing a single customer the open stock of a rifle. “Big son-of-a-bitch,” the owner was saying. “It’ll knock the ass off an elephant at a hundred yards, I’ll tell you that.” He adjusted his glasses, which were slipping down on his fat shining face, then looked up at Wulff as if he could not believe the presence of the pistol. “Yes sir,” he said.
“I want about five rifles,” Wulff said, “and I could use a steel trap big enough to hold a bear, although it’s not a bear I’m looking for, and a couple of hand grenades.” He gestured with the pistol. “Fast,” he said.
The customer, a man in his twenties wearing a stocking cap in eighty-degree weather and apparently none the worse for it, made a gulping sound and fell to his knees in front of the counter. “Oh, my God,” he said, “you’re not going to shoot me, are you? I just can’t stand it, you can’t come in and do this to me.” Hunched against himself in what seemed to be a sudden wind, he wrapped his arms around his neck. “It isn’t fair,” he said, “it just isn’t fucking fair.”
The proprietor, however, seemed to have a striking calm, or then again, it may only have been the sheen of sweat which made a brief mask on his face, which gave him a solemn but controlled acceptance. “Hey, now,” the proprietor said, “this here mall is patrolled by twenty-four-hour security guards, you can’t just come in and do something like this. They got the cable tv, they got a coaxial connection right into the police chief’s office.”
“Don’t fuck with him, Maury,” the customer said on the floor. “He’s a killer, can’t you see it marked up all over his face? He’s as ready to shoot us dead as to ask nicely, Maury. Give him what the hell he wants, Maury.”
“Now, you look here, Fred,” the proprietor said, leaning down, fixing Fred with a steely eye, “this is my store, you just let me handle it the way I find necessary. You see, you can’t get away with it,” he said to Wulff gently, “not with this here fucking security patrol and with all the protective mirrors and devices we have here. Now, if you have any sense, young man, you’ll just leave quietly.”
“No,” Wulff said, and gestured with the pistol, then shrugged and put a shot into the ceiling, the sound of fracture in the plastic of the overhang making the three of them jump, “I don’t have time to listen to your reactions,” he said, “I just need what I asked for. The five rifles and the steel trap. I guess you wouldn’t have the grenades, though,” he said almost wistfully.
“Oh, my God, Maury,” the customer said, and seemed, if possible, to grip himself even more tightly, “he’s a criminal maniac. He’s going to kill us all.”
“The security system,” the owner said. His calm was really amazing under the circumstances, but then again, he might merely have been stupid. That was the more logical explanation—that the full significance of the situation had not permeated and never would. “A shot like that is going to set off security in the mall. There ought to be ten people in here in just a few minutes. That’s all right, though,” he said, as Wulff lifted the pistol again, “I’ll get you your stuff. I mean, it doesn’t matter to me, everything’s insured. If you think that you can get it and get away before they come in, that suits me.”
“Maury, you know that security doesn’t mean a shit here,” Fred said from the floor. “Don’t tell him about security; you’re liable to get him mad. I don’t want to die; all I came in here for was a little instruction. Let him clean out the whole store, Maury; what’s a store to a life? Don’t be a stubborn fool.”
But Maury had already turned, was heading toward the storeroom. Wulff covered him carefully with the pistol. “That’s all right,” Maury said at the small door that opened into the back, “I won’t do anything. I’m just going to come back with your stuff.”
“No good,” Wulff said. “I’ll have to go in there with you.”
“What about me?” Fred said hopefully. “Does that mean that I can leave now? I won’t say a word. I’ll just go right to my car and drive out of here. I swear to God I don’t care what you do. I wish you luck holding up the place. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“He can’t let you out, Fred,” Maury said, “he’s going to have to tie you up or something. I think that’s the only way this is going to work.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Wulff said. It was certainly one of the clumsiest robberies that had ever been pulled off, he thought; there was no grace to it at all. Also, despite what Fred had said about security, there was the chance that they would be efficient and show up, although Wulff’s limited experience with shopping-mall private cops had been that they were even less efficient than the old night watchmen at government installations, who were otherwise the bottom of the barrel. “Just go in there and get me some rifles and grenades. Forget the trap. I’ll stay with him. You try anything,” he said to the owner, “and I’ll have to shoot him, that’s all.”
“Now, listen here,” Fred said, “I don’t want to get involved. I just came in here to—”
“It’s all right,” the owner said. “It’s up to you. It’s your business; I’m not going to try anything at all,” and then he went through the door and into the rear of the store. Wulff looked down at Fred, who stared at him sullenly, massaging his shin. He seemed, in Maury’s absence, now to be utterly embarrassed. “Security really is shit in this place,” he said. “No one’s going to bother you.”
“All right.”
“They had a rape in a bakery here last week. Some fifty-three-year-old woman. That’ll show you what kind of shit-kickers we got around here. The guy must have been with her fifteen, twenty minutes, with the buzzers going and everything. No one came. They won’t bother you.”
“Hope not.”
“Far as I’m concerned, if you can get away with anything, it suits me. Everything comes out of the insurance anyway. The mall will have to carry it.”
“That’s their problem.”
“You need the rifles and flak for anything in particular, or you just kind of like them?” Fred said.
“I’m fond of them. I’m very fond of rifles and grenades. I’m trying to build up a collection.”
“Well,” Fred said, “well, that’s a good thing. I guess. Building up a collection, I mean.” He rubbed his shin again meditatively, and a silence passed between them. There seemed little more to say. Looking through the bleak surfaces of the glass, Wulff could see no bodies, only cars moving, drifting around like confused insects in the open lanes of the parking lot. No one seemed to be on foot, no one was in the vicinity of the sporting-goods store, which, Wulff noticed for the first time, was named Maury’s, the name in fine running script fore and aft. He stood there with the pistol balanced in his hand, feeling awkward and wondering if he had made the right decision in allowing Maury to go into the back room by himself. He could, of course, have another telephone in there and be using it to summon the police at just this moment. The thre
at to kill Fred, Wulff suspected, did not hold much water with Maury. He was not exactly holding the owner’s wife and children. But then again, it was the best that he could do. He was doing the best that he could under the circumstances; it was all that could be asked of a man. Considering the circumstances under which he had to work, he did not think that he was open to criticism Not really, anyway. What the hell.
Maury came back, rifles strewn over his body, one dangling on a strap from his neck, two jammed under his arms, another in the fold of his waist as he sidled out, bent over. In his hand he had a large, dirty gray box in which something jiggled. “I could find only four in good order,” he said, staggering to the corner and letting the rifles drop, putting the box between them. “And they’re hunting rifles. They’re really only good for that, but they’re the best that I can do under the circumstances. I got the grenades, though,” he said, shaking the box. “They’re pretty old Army-issue stuff, but I think they work. You know, we’re probably the only sporting-goods store in the whole state of Alabama that would even carry them.”
“Maury, don’t fuck with him,” Fred said. “Don’t tell him about the fucking state of Alabama, just give him the stuff and let him go. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” He staggered to his feet, apparently cramped from his position of retreat, slapped dust from his pants. “I mean, you don’t want him to exhibit the fucking rifles, do you? He doesn’t have to prove that the grenades work one by one. You’re pulling a robbery here. You just want to take the stuff and go, right?”
“Fred …” Maury said.
“I mean, I’m just out of patience, Maury. There’s a guy in here with a gun trying to pull a robbery here, threatening us with a firearm, willing to kill, and all you can do is talk about how you’re the only fucking sporting-goods store in the state of Alabama that might be able to give him some grenades. Now, that just don’t make no sense, Maury. You ought to give him the stuff and let him go. I don’t think he wants conversation anyway; I think that he just wants to pull the robbery and get out of here. Ain’t I right, mister?”
“You have a point, Fred.”
“Maury, why don’t you and I just give this man here a helping hand with these goods. We can put them in his car for him and just send him on his way. It’s the Ford right out there, isn’t it?” Fred said, and pointed.
“That’s the one.”
“Well, come on,” Fred said. “What are we waiting for? It’s all arranged, isn’t it? We’re going to give him a hand and get these goods into his car, and he’ll take off. Don’t worry about us looking at the license plate or anything like that. I mean, we don’t give a damn, friend, it’s all covered by insurance anyway, isn’t that right, Maury?”
“Damned straight,” Maury said, “except for those grenades. Nobody knows I’ve got grenades here. That would come as some little surprise to a lot of people if they realized what I had stored up in that back room. Those little beauties are uninsurable.”
“See what I mean?” Fred said, gesturing at Wulff. His eyes were heaving and twitching within his face, as if manipulated by inner strings, but his voice and manner were firm, firmer at any rate than Wulff had seen them so far. He was probably a pretty good man on his own terms, Wulff thought; the fact that he was a little bit of a coward was something that would show up under only unusual circumstances, and ninety-five percent of the men like Fred in this world could get through without even realizing themselves what they were, because the world would never put them in a situation like this. “Here’s a man really putting out for you.”
“All right,” Wulff said. He supposed that the situation had its aspects of humor; at least, if you looked at it in a certain way you could see that it might be amusing. There was an absurdity to this which he might have investigated if he had the time, but right now, only putting together some ordnance and making the attack on Nolk mattered. “Sure, you can help me get it out to the car.”
“You see, Maury?” Fred said, as if he had won a bet, “you see what I mean, you see what I’m saying now?” and went to the counter, gathered up all four rifles in a staggering lift and tottered toward the door. The older man took the box of grenades, giving the counter a few swipes, as if to clean the part where the dust from the box had settled, and followed him, and Wulff brought up the rear, holding the pistol on them. He had the suspicion, however, that he would not need it at all.
And he did not. At the Fairlane, Fred and Maury waited politely, almost deferentially, while he put in the keys and popped the trunk, then inserted the rifles and grenades quickly, with the deftness of stevedores, and stood quietly while Wulff wrestled down the lid and then looked quickly over the flat parking lot, at the line of shops like thin lights on a panel behind him. There was a little car movement in the distance, but otherwise there was no one else around at ten in the morning. “I don’t think that this place has much of a future,” Wulff said.
“I’ll agree with you there,” Maury said. “It’s dropping dead.”
“But it’s a nice place,” Fred said. “They got a lot of nice shops, don’t they, Maury? Nice people working here. They just don’t do no good promotion.”
“Nice people? Not nice people, they’re just a bunch of thieves,” Maury said. “They’ve been milking us blind, going for every cent that they could in rent and improvements; otherwise we don’t give a damn. We’re trying to get some kind of an association together,” he said, “but everybody’s afraid, really. That’s the trouble, you know, everybody’s scared. They don’t want to band together to help themselves, so you can’t get anywhere.”
“Well,” Wulff said, “why don’t you get back in the shop, then? I’m afraid I’m going to have to tie you up or something; I don’t want you calling the police before I have a chance to get out of here.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t do no such thing,” Fred said, “believe me, we wouldn’t think of it, would we, Maury?”
“Sure not.”
“We’ll just go back there and sit and chat for maybe twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes, until you have a good head start. Matter of fact,” Fred said a little wildly, “we’ll go in there and talk for an hour if you want. I mean, everything’s insured, right, Maury? What do we give a fuck about it anyway. Let the damned companies worry about it, let the mall itself—”
“Except the grenades,” Maury said. “You can’t ignore the grenades. I couldn’t get insurance on those, because no one’s supposed to know that I had them, and possession is probably illegal. But what the hell, there was a good market for those grenades. I could have gotten a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty apiece for them if I had a chance to sell them. Not that I’m mad about this,” he said hastily, looking up at Wulff, spreading his palms. “I mean, it’s all in the line of business, right? Win some, lose some. I shouldn’t complain.”
“Yeah,” Wulff said, “you shouldn’t complain,” and made a gesture with the pistol, and willingly they shuffled back ahead of him into the store and then under the fluorescence turned toward him expectantly, their eyes questioning. “All right,” he said, looking at them, “all right, then. The hell with it. I’m going to go.”
“That’s damned nice of you,” Fred said, “and you’re not making a mistake, let me get that clear to you, because—”
“Don’t call anyone,” Wulff said, and backed out of the store. “Give me half an hour. If you break your word, you know that I’m going to find you somehow. You know you’ll pay for this. If I don’t get you, friends of mine will.”
“Sure,” Maury said, “sure, I understand.”
“Yeah,” Wulff said, and went back into the car and drove away from there straight into the area of Mobile where Nolk lived. Harris had given him some specific instructions, and he had little trouble in finding the house, which, like the houses of almost all the men with whom he had dealt, was expensive and nicely insulated. One thing you could say about these men was that they lived well.
He wasn’t too worried, somehow, about Maury or
Fred putting in a call to the police. Perhaps he was looking at matters in too wry or optimistic a way, but there was a feeling of collaboration with the two, almost as if they secretly admired and felt themselves to be on the side of a man who would so willingly take on the system and its assumptions. No man who sold weapons for a living and had a secret cache of grenades could identify with the police. Then too, the insurance would cover the theft, and Wulff had the feeling that whatever happened, Maury would make out considerably better from the insurance than he would have by painfully, piece by piece, trying to sell off his inventory.
