Payback (10 page)

I strode out into the sunlight and closed my eyes, letting the clean air wash over me, through me. Again the sun felt good on my face. The light felt comforting as seen through the darkness of my closed eyelids.

I opened my eyes and without looking back, headed for the car.

Hatred and rage and loneliness walked with me every step of the way.

Halfway there, a drop of blood slid from my fingertip and spattered the grass at my feet. The moment I saw it fall, I knew what I had to do.

Gun

T
HE
STOREFRONT
was comprised of stainless steel and glass. It looked high tech and sterile. When I pulled open the door to step inside, an electronic chime rang out, heralding my entrance. The inside was just as polished as the outside, with every inch of the place covered in chrome and gleaming glass and sparkling white floor tiles. It was blindingly lit, like an operating room.

The air was heavy with the scent of gun oil.

To my surprise the clerk behind the counter was a woman. Her hair had been bleached to within an inch of its life, and her skin was the color of almonds. She looked like she slept every night of her life in a tanning bed. The heavily applied pink lipstick she wore clashed with her skin tone and drew my eyes immediately to her mouth—which was gaily smiling.

If any of her inventory had ever killed anybody, she didn’t seem to much give a shit.

“How can I help you?” she asked. I caught a flash of leeriness in her gaze as she eyed me up and down, as if she knew she was simply going through the motions.
No sale here
, her posture seemed to say.

“I’m looking for a gun.”

Her smile widened, patently false, showing tobacco-stained teeth and a pink wad of gum. “I figured. What sort of gun’d you have in mind?”

“Handgun.”

She spread her arms wide to highlight the display case she stood behind. I looked down and saw the cabinet was filled with handguns. The display case stretched from one end of the store to the other. There must have been hundreds of guns in it.

I let my eyes range over the massive selection, hoping I looked like I knew what I was doing, but I’m pretty sure she knew I didn’t.

“So how complicated is it?” I asked.

She cocked her head to the side, watching me. “How complicated is what? Shooting, buying, or just looking?”

“Buying.”

Her smile faltered and her eyes glazed over as she started rattling off her well-rehearsed spiel. Her gum popped between sentences.

“Gotta be eighteen years old. Looks like you got that one covered. Gotta be an American citizen. Looks like you might have that one covered too. No felony convictions. No history of mental illness. Gotta have at least one hand and one finger to pull the trigger with. That’s about it.”

I felt a surge of hope. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. I waggled my fingers at her, jokingly showing her I had plenty of digits, at least. I ignored the stab of pain from the fingers that were still healing when I did it. “That’s it? That’s all I have to do to buy a gun?”

She grinned. “To buy a gun, yes. To assume ownership of the gun and walk out the door with it, there’s a few more steps to the process.”

“Like what?”

Her gum popped, and her eyes glazed over again. “You have to fill out the PFEC. And before you ask, that’s the Personal Firearms Eligibility Check, which outlines all the steps I told you about before. Costs twenty bucks. Requires a thumbprint and a notary’s stamp.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

Her eyes were at half-mast as she stared at me. She was obviously bored shitless. I wondered vaguely how many times a day she went through this with inexperienced gun buyers like myself. “Then you have to take a handgun safety test. If there’s anything you don’t know, for a nominal fee we can help you through that. The next step would be for you to pick out the gun you want, pay for it, and wait ten days for approval.”

“Ten days?”

“Yep. That’s the law. A lot of whack jobs out there trying to get their hands on a gun. The ten-day waiting period weeds a few of them out. It works under the assumption that if you want to blow your boss away, by the time you wait ten days to get a fucking gun, you won’t be pissed off anymore.” She gave a nasty chuckle. “Wouldn’t work for me. When I get mad, I’m mad forever. Ask my ex.”

“Why?” I asked. “Did you shoot him?”

“Not yet. Anyway, that’s the drill for buying a handgun if you want to do it right.”

I thought about the whole rigmarole she had just outlined. While I was stalling for time, thinking about it, I eyed the guns in the case, trying to act like I actually knew what I was looking at. I don’t think she was fooled.

With my pulse hammering inside my head, I asked, “And what if I want to do it wrong?”

Her eyes narrowed, and her pink smile went the way of the dodo, never to be seen again. “Then you’ll have to do it somewhere else.”

I studied her face for a long moment, finally nodded, spun on my heel, and walked out the door. The electronic chime rang as I left. I didn’t see her do it, but I imagined her shaking her head as she watched me go.

I hopped in the car and started driving. I had the yellow pages on the seat beside me, and I went down the list of gun shops that weren’t too far away.

The second one was in the Barrio. I figured they might be a little more lax with the rules in the Barrio, seeing as how everybody and his dog already owned a gun there anyway, at least if you went by the headlines in the morning paper.

As I drove I scanned the faces on the sidewalk, unconsciously watching for a fat guy with a mole on his cheek and a skinny dude with a crappy moustache. Or maybe
not
so unconsciously.

The second gun shop was called Espinoza’s Firearms and Ammo. It appeared considerably less imposing than the last. There were black bars over a dirty front window and a puddle of urine
smack in the middle of the doorway, which I had to hop over to get inside. No electronic chime heralded my entrance here. Just the clatter of a tin bell, which struck the top of the door when I opened it.

The interior was lit only by the sunlight coming through the front window. The fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling were off. Maybe the proprietor was trying to save on his electric bill.

Two men sat behind the counter, smoking. The whole joint reeked of tobacco. Tobacco and, once again, gun oil. They eyed me suspiciously as I approached. One man stubbed his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray sitting on the display cabinet in front of him. The other man, a younger Latino in a white T-shirt with his pack of smokes rolled into his shirt sleeve, ducked into the back room, as if it was time to get back to work.

The remaining man leaned his elbows on the display cabinet he stood behind. Like the other establishment, the cabinet was packed with handguns. Only these were a little dustier. On the wall behind the man, rifles and shotguns were on display, but I had eyes only for the guns in the cabinet.

“What can I do for you?” the man asked. He looked to be about fifty. There was a speck of tobacco on the corner of his mouth, and looking at the overflowing ashtray, I realized all the butts were unfiltered. As if he knew what I was thinking, he plucked a speck of tobacco from his tongue with his fingers and wiped it on his shirt. His eyebrows climbed high on his forehead as he waited for me to answer.

“Looking for a gun,” I said. “A handgun.”

The man was suddenly all joviality and good cheer. I wondered how long that would last. “Certainly, sir. What did you have in mind? Revolver? Pistol? Semi-automatic?” Then he chuckled. “Gatling gun? Rocket launcher? Maybe a fucking nuke?”

I laughed. “Nothing so grand, thanks. Just a small pistol. Something to keep around the house for protection.”

“Señor,” he said. “If it’s protection you want, you should buy a shotgun. Ratchet that thing on a dark night and anybody who’s snuck into your house to swipe your silverware will hear it and take off running like a rabbit. You won’t even have to worry about loading it. Just the sound of a shotgun cocking will scare the bad guys off.”

“I want a handgun.”

He shrugged. “Okay, then.” He watched me as I eyed the case before him. “See anything you like?”

“I—I’m not sure. I’d like something simple. Something easy to use.”

“Have you ever owned a gun before?”

I could feel sweat dribbling down my rib cage. I hoped I didn’t look as nervous as I felt.

“No,” I said. “This will be my first.”

The clerk turned and grabbed an official-looking form from a stack behind him. Then he plucked an ink pen from his shirt pocket and laid them both on the counter in front of me.

“Fill these out please. It’s the law, I’m afraid. Once we get the paperwork out of the way, we can decide on the best gun for you. How’s that?”

Damn. I stared at the form without touching it. Finally, I raised my eyes and said, “I’ll have to do this some other time, I guess.”

“Too much paperwork, huh?”

“No, no. It’s not that. I just realized how late it is, is all. I have to get back to work.”

“Certainly,” he said, all joviality now gone from his face. “Well, better run along then.”

He was already tugging a cigarette from his shirt pocket as I backed away, thanked him, and headed for the exit.

On the street, I closed my eyes against the pain in my aching hand, then headed for the car half a block away. Before I could get there, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Startled, I whirled around.

It was the other man from the gun shop. The younger one. Not only was his cigarette pack still rolled into his T-shirt sleeve, but he now had another cigarette tucked over his ear like a pencil. He took my arm and tugged me a little farther down the street, past my car.

“Follow me,” he said.

I tried to jerk away. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t pause but kept on tugging me along. “If you want a gun, follow me. I can arrange it. Do you have cash?”

“Yes. Or I can get it quick enough.”

“That’s good. Come with me, then.”

We walked to the end of the block and turned the corner. Half a block farther, I followed him into an alley. A few paces off the street, he led me down a flight of concrete stairs. He pulled a key from his trouser pocket, unlocked the door, and ushered me in ahead of him.

“Uh, you first,” I said, and he grinned but did as I suggested. Once inside he flipped a light switch and pulled the door closed behind us.

I looked around. We appeared to be in some sort of furnace room. There was no one else present. It was dimly lit by a filthy light bulb hanging on a cord from the middle of the ceiling.

The young man dragged a burlap sack from behind an old cast-iron furnace, which looked like it hadn’t been lit in a hundred years. He carried the bag to a corner and dumped it on a greasy table. Whatever was inside the bag clattered. It sounded heavy.

He folded back the sides of the sack to show me four pistols. The one he lifted from the bunch was smaller than the others. Short and stubby and black. He laid it in his hand as he rattled off its attributes.

“Smith and Wesson .38 Special Model 60. What we call a five-shot snubby. Got a two-inch barrel, which makes it easy to hide. Carries light at fourteen ounces. It’s simple to use. Thought you might appreciate that fact since you don’t seem to know what the hell you’re doing.” He smiled when he said it, and I smiled back.

“You’re right,” I said, feeling a blush rise to my cheeks. “I don’t.”

The kid was all business. Friendly and helpful. I wondered if he was still working for the man in the store or if he had taken off on
his own entrepreneurial path—the path requiring a shitload less paperwork. He shook bullets from a box, showed me how to load the weapon, indicated where the safety was, then offered it to me to hold.

I took it. My hand was sweaty. The gun felt wrong in my hand. I suspected it always would.

I aimed it at the furnace and looked down the barrel imagining a fat man with a mole on his face standing in front of me.

“Does it kick?” I asked.

“A little, Sen˜or. Just aim a foot and a half lower than where you want the bullet to go. That should take care of it.”

Firearms 101
, I thought, rolling my eyes. “Loud?” I asked.

He grinned. “Louder than a motherfucker. It doesn’t have much punch. Won’t stop an elephant. Oughta slow a burglar down pretty good, though. But that’s okay. If you don’t kill your man with the first shot, the bang will probably scare him to death anyway.” Then he chuckled. “Or you.”

I laid the pistol on the table, glad to get it out of my hand. “How much?” I asked.

The young man seemed to know he’d made a sale. He didn’t appear disappointed by the fact.

“Five hundred. Cash. I’ll even throw in some bullets. It ain’t much good for anything without bullets. ’Cept maybe pounding tortillas.” Comedian.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“Thought you would.” He wrapped the other guns back in the burlap sack and stashed the bag back behind the old furnace. The gun I had just purchased he unloaded, and he stuffed it and the box of bullets in a grimy backpack that hung on a hook on the wall. He zipped the backpack shut and slung the pack over his shoulder before turning to me.

“I’m assuming you don’t have five hundred dollars on your gringo ass.”

“No. Sorry.”

“Then I’ll ride with you in your car to the ATM. Any objections?”

“No,” I said.

“Then let’s go, Annie Oakley.”

I followed the young man back into the sunlit alley. Without wasting time on chitchat, he trailed me to my car.

The guy seemed to know what he was doing. I wondered if I did. I was so worried about that, I wasn’t even offended by the Annie Oakley remark. Priorities, I supposed.

A
N
HOUR
later I was back home and the proud owner of a—what the hell was it again? A five-shot snubby? Smith and Wesson .38 caliber something or other? My little Latino friend had even thrown in the grimy backpack, which I dumped on the dining-room table with the gun still inside. After I dumped it, I just stood there looking at it.