Gun Church (40 page)

The last card I had to play was the sheriff’s own deputy. He had been witness to much of this, especially to the events surrounding Stan Petrovic’s death. But when I laid the deputy card down on the table, the sheriff just kind of smiled at me and said,

“Glad you brought him up, son. I was wondering where he got to.”

Meg got me a lawyer—two hours too late, in his opinion. I had already talked too much. He was right, of course. And while I wasn’t arrested that day, my lawyer said it was going to happen and sooner rather than later.

“They’re probably just waiting for the other sheriff, the one from the jurisdiction where Mabry’s body was found, to fly up to New York. Everybody involved in this case will want a piece of the press conference.”

He suggested I get myself back to Brooklyn to find some clothes to make me look presentable in court and to scour my papers for anything that might aid in my defense. He didn’t sound particularly hopeful. That made two of us.

Just enough time had passed since the murders at the bungalow colony so that my apartment in Brooklyn was free of news vans and reporters. And, apparently, no one had yet leaked word to the media of my impending arrest. My landlord wasn’t thrilled to see me given that his car had been impounded by the state police. I think I apologized, but I wasn’t exactly in full possession of my faculties that day.

I wandered around my apartment like a zombie. I knew there wasn’t a single fucking thing in there that was going to exonerate me, so I settled on looking for a decent outfit to wear to court. I had a few suits that would work, but I couldn’t help but feel like a condemned man worrying about shitting himself at the end of a rope. What would it matter what I wore to court? Rolled up in a ball at the bottom of my closet were the clothes I’d worn the night I met Amy at the Peking Brasserie. That was the night it had all started going terribly wrong: Renee showing up outside the restaurant, leading me on a chase to Jim, slapping my face on the street. It was also the last time I’d held her. I remembered the fragrance of her hair, how it felt against my face. I could almost feel her arms around me, her hand sliding down into my back pocket.
My back pocket!

I refused to allow
Gun Church
to be published. It’s not like Franz Dudek didn’t want to publish it. I mean, in spite of Haskell Brown’s murder, you could never get free publicity like this in a million fucking years. Franz had even convinced himself—but not me—that the book needed to be published or Haskell’s death would have been in vain. He offered to raise the advance into the high six figures. In any case, the publicity would help sell the reprints of my old books. Maybe, if Brown had been the only victim, I might have consented to the publication of
Gun Church
. But there were more victims, many more—some dead, some still living—for whom the book’s publication would have been the ultimate symbol of disrespect. And then there was Jim. If ever there was a book written in blood,
Gun Church
was it. I couldn’t give Jim that victory. I tried to return the advance I’d received. Dudek refused it, so I sent it to Renee’s family. I didn’t fool myself that the book would never be published. Meg and Dudek had electronic copies of most of the pages and I would die eventually.

One thing I was sure of was that I no longer wanted to live in New York City. On the other hand, I didn’t want any part of Brixton either. I didn’t want to see the forest or the trees or to hear the sounds of rivers running or the din of quaint waterfalls. I never wanted to see the inside of another classroom or mark another paper or discuss Kant Huxley or Moses Gold. I did, however, like the notion of a mining town. Mining towns, as long as they don’t have a community college nearby, are about one thing: mining.

Miami, Arizona, is a copper mining town east of Phoenix in Gila County. I’m one of about two thousand residents, none of whom gives a shit about who I am or who I was. I like it that way. If anyone’s recognized me, I haven’t heard about it and, believe me, in a place as small as Miami, I would have heard. I spend my days in an office doing data entry for one of the few remaining active mines in the area. At night, I go back to my rented house and work on my new book. I’ve been able to shake almost everything else from my past, but not writing. From the moment I was sprayed with Frank Vuchovich’s blood, I knew the affliction—which is what writing is, an affliction—was back. My current work has nothing to do with guns or yuppies or New York City or disaffected members of the Irish Republican Army. It’s about a man’s journey to find something. He just doesn’t know what that something is. So it’s kind of a book about two journeys. I know something about that.

What Renee put in my back pocket that night was a life preserver. The life preserved was mine. The address in Queens was for one of those franchise package-delivery service stores.
You bring it … We pack it … They ship it
. The box, as the police confirmed afterwards, had been rented by Renee. When, in the presence of my lawyer and me, the NYPD opened the box, they found two yellow mailing envelopes not unlike the one Renee had used when she delivered the Pandora chapter to my apartment in Brooklyn.

About a week later, the police and the DA from Sullivan County—where the abandoned bungalow colony was located—asked my lawyer and me to come in to “chat.” All I knew for certain until that point was that I hadn’t been arrested and there had been no press conference.

“Mr. Weiler, would you like to tell us your version of—” The Sullivan County DA never got to finish his question.

“My client isn’t going to tell you anything unless you reveal to us the obviously exculpatory nature of the evidence you retrieved from that box. Even then, I may not advise my client to discuss matters with you.”

The Brixton County sheriff sat there silently, glum as could be. I guess he wasn’t in the mood to call me son anymore.

“Counselor, what if I were to tell you that your client is no longer a person of interest?” said the DA.

After a few seconds of stunned silence, my lawyer said we’d be very pleased.

I started to get out of my chair, but my lawyer clamped his hand down on my shoulder.

“That would be lovely, but there is the issue of the late Mr. Petrovic. I can’t very well let my client walk out of this room thinking he’s clear of this mess only to have you boys change your minds next week and prosecute him.”

The sheriff said, “We know for a fact your client didn’t kill Petrovic. Fact is, the only person your client did kill, deserved killin’ and that was Trimble himself. Seems it was Trimble that killed Petrovic and my deputy too. All we want is for your client to tell us his side of things so we can corroborate some details.”

I didn’t wait for permission and just started talking.

About a year ago, I heard from my lawyer. It seems that the evidence Renee left behind included hours of voice recordings she’d made of herself and Jim in which Jim, in the course of their conversations, confessed to just about everything but the Brink’s job and the sinking of the Lusitania. She’d also left behind a written statement detailing her role in things and explaining why she’d made the voice recordings—to protect me—and to fill in any gaps in the narrative.

“I can probably arrange for you to hear the tapes and get a copy of the statement,” he told me.

“No, thanks,” I said.

For a long time afterwards, I’d wanted to give Renee credit for being smarter than either Jim or me. That she was brilliant for seeing how badly things might turn out. Just lately, however, I’ve had a change of heart on the matter. One day it struck me that voice recordings and hidden evidence had Jim’s signature all over it, that he must have known he was being recorded, that these recordings were a testament to him, an insurance policy to make sure he got credit one way or the other, alive or dead.

But who knows anything, really? Did Jim know Renee was making those tapes? Was it Jim’s idea in the first place? These days the only looking behind me I do is in the rearview mirror. I try not to look too far ahead either.

The End

Special thanks to my friends Jim Born and Fred Rea. It was a comment passed between them at a weapons demonstration that planted the seed for
Gun Church
in my head
. Along the way, the following people helped grow that seed into a novel: Simon Wood, Sara J. Henry, Peter Spiegelman, Ellen W. Schare, Judy Bobalik, and Declan Burke.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to Steve Feldberg at
Audible.com
for finally seeing the potential in
Gun Church
and displaying a willingness to push me to reach it. Same for David Hale Smith, my agent, who always believed. Thanks, too, to Jim Fusilli for his generosity of spirit and guidance.

My biggest debt is to Rosanne, Kaitlin, and Dylan. For some reason they continue to believe. Without their love and support, none of this would be worth it.

Called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the noir poet laureate in the
Huffington Post
, Reed Farrel Coleman has published fifteen novels. Reed is a three-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best PI Novel of the Year and is a two-time Edgar Award nominee. He has also won the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards. He was the editor of the short story anthology
Hard Boiled Brooklyn
and co-editor of the poetry journals
Poetry Bone
and
The Lineup
. His short stories and essays have appeared in
Long Island Noir
,
These Guns for Hire
,
Mulhollandbooks.com
,
Wall Street Noir
, and several other publications. He is an adjunct professor of English at Hofstra University and lives with his family on Long Island.