The Killing Hour

by Paul Cleave

  I approach him, but he doesn’t look up from his paper until I reach the counter. He looks around forty years old, a tall man with a joined eyebrow that makes the bridge of his thick glasses look like they’re growing a beard. His smile disappears when he sees the working over I’ve been given. There’s a moment where I can see him taking it all in, and he knows why I’m here.

  “Morning, sir. What can I do for you today?” He manages to sound both polite and unhelpful. His finger is holding the place where he’d been reading. He obviously wants to get straight back to it. He doesn’t want to deal with the likes of me.

  I ask for the name the thousand dollars bought me.

  He nods slowly and stands up straight, losing his place in the paper. “I’m Arthur,” he tells me, but he doesn’t sound excited about it, and looking at his eyebrow I don’t blame him. “You’re the guy Floyd was telling me about, aren’t you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the guy who’s hunting deer.”

  “That’s me.”

  He takes a few seconds to adjust his glasses. “I don’t think I can help you,” he says.

  “Please.”

  “What is it you want, mister?”

  I point to a picture of a pistol on the wall. In the picture it is stripped down. The parts are labeled. I can make out a few of the words. Firing pin. Slide. Breech block. Safety mechanism. If he gave me that exact pistol in that condition I’d be screwed.

  The salesman turns and looks at the picture.

  I tell him that’s what I want.

  “That might be what you want, but you can’t have one,” he says.

  “If it’s a matter of money. .”

  He shakes his head. “It’s a matter of many things,” he says. “That up there, that’s a Colt Combat Elite,” he says, not quoting from the poster. “Fine pistol. Not available here. Never available to anyone without a license.”

  “Then what do you have that is available?”

  He gives me a funny look. Scrolls his eyes over me. Up and down, slowly, taking in the beatings I’ve had this week. “What kind of trouble are you in, mister?”

  I shrug. “No trouble. I just want a pistol for home. For self-defense.”

  “They’re illegal to use anywhere but a firing range.”

  Again I shrug. “I’m prepared to pay for quality.”

  I leave it at that. Let him make up his own mind. He’s either going to sell me the gun or he isn’t.

  “I can get into a lot of trouble selling you a gun.”

  “And five thousand dollars should compensate you for that.”

  He shakes his head. “Five thousand, no. Ten thousand. . now that’s a different story.”

  I pull some money out and slowly flick through the notes like a card dealer showing off. His eyes never leave it. I put the entire amount on the counter. Arthur looks from left to right. His eyes hold on the door for a few seconds as if he’s mentally trying to lock it, then he looks out the windows with the iron bars running down them. Nobody around.

  “Are you a cop?” he asks.

  “Do I look like a cop?”

  “I’m not asking if you look like a cop,” he says. “I’m asking if you are a cop.”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I promise you, I’m not a cop.”

  “If you are,” he says, “this is entrapment.”

  I don’t know if it’s entrapment or not. I only have a vague Hollywood understanding of what that even means. “Exactly,” I tell him. “I’m not a cop and I’m not working with any cops. I’m just a guy who wants a gun for target shooting at a range. Nothing more.”

  He takes another long, hard look at me. I say nothing as he fights with his temptation. Greed wins out. It always will with a guy like this. Without breaking eye contact, he makes the money disappear much in the same way Floyd did yesterday. He’s decided I’m no cop. Cops don’t have this sort of money to play with.

  From beneath the counter he pulls out a sign that says Back in 15 mins and hangs it on the door, checking that it’s locked. He comes back to the counter, makes his way around it, and disappears though a doorway. Ten grand is a lot of money for a gun. But it guarantees the fact I’m going to get one. If I showed up with forty dollars and a free hamburger voucher I wouldn’t get the same quality of service.

  I spin around the newspaper he was reading and study the headline. It’s dedicated to Frank McClory. He was found early this morning by an unnamed woman. It doesn’t mention how he died or whether it’s related to his dead wife, but he must have been found early enough for it to make the paper, but not early enough for there to be any detail. The article is small, proof the reporter had little information and even less time to come up with something dramatic. There’s little speculation-that’ll come later with news bulletins and tomorrow’s paper.

  “Shame about that lawyer,” the salesman says, stepping back through the door. He puts a wooden box on the counter. He’s wearing a pair of thin gloves. That means he doesn’t want the gun traced back to him.

  “It’s not often they get put to such good use,” I say.

  Arthur starts laughing, then stops when he sees I’m being serious. I can see him considering if I’m the type of person who should have a gun. He pats his pocket. Reminds himself of why he’s doing this.

  “You’re not going to be shooting somebody, are you, mister?”

  “It’s for self-defense. Home invasions have been in the papers all week.”

  “I thought you said it was for shooting deer.”

  “It’s home defense, mainly.”

  “Then you said it was shooting at the range.”

  “It’s that too.”

  He nods. He gives me another hard look. “Got a driver’s license?” he asks.

  “What? Why?”

  “For ID,” he says.

  “Why do you need ID?”

  “Do you want the gun or not?”

  I reach into my pocket. I get out my wallet and pause. This doesn’t feel right. He reaches out and I hand him my license and the feeling doesn’t get any better.

  “Charlie Feldman,” he says.

  I don’t answer him.

  “You married, Charlie?”

  “Why? You interested?”

  He doesn’t laugh. “People don’t tend to wear wedding rings unless they’re married.”

  I look down at my hand. It reminds me of the conversation with Kathy.

  “Okay, Charlie. Before this goes any further, you need to understand a few things, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say, and I’ve been in the Real World long enough now to know what’s coming up. He’s going to threaten me. He’s going to tell me that if anybody ever finds out the gun came from him, he’s going to be pissed off. He’s going to send people after me. After my wife. People that may or may not consist of Floyd.

  “I’m a struggling businessman,” he says. “This economy-it’s a killer. You walk through town this time next year and you’ll see a quarter of the businesses that are here now won’t be then, just like this year compared to last year. People keep saying things are going to get better, but they don’t. This shop-well, I’m hanging on. This time next year, hell, I’m doing what I can to not be one of those businesses you drive past and wonder what happened. You think I want to sell guns to people who shouldn’t have them? Of course not. But I have a wife. I have kids. And kids cost a lot of money. I’ve been in this business for over twenty years, and times have never been so tough. Taking money from guys like you is the only way I can survive. You see what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, I get it. This is where you tell me that no matter what happens, nobody can ever know the gun came from you.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “Before you think I’m some kind of bastard, let me tell you this-I’m selling you the gun because you look like the kind of guy who needs one. You don’t look like the kind of guy who’s going to rob a bank. So I’m sele
ctive. I’m not trying to supply guns to the assholes of the world. You don’t look like an asshole. But if the police ever find out this is where this gun came from, then I’m going to be the asshole. I’m going to send somebody to your house, and they’re going to fuck you up. You and your wife. And if you’re in jail at the time, then I’ll have you fucked up in jail. Like I say, I’ve been doing this twenty years, and I know people. People who make Floyd look like an angel. Now, tell me again that you get it.”

  “I get it,” I tell him.

  He looks back at my license. Then he hands it over.

  “Come on back through here. It’s more private.”

  I follow him through the doorway. There are posters of guns and girls, sometimes of both. A calendar from four years back with a naked smiling woman stops me from looking around at the shelves full of stock and the cluttered workbench. Part of me just wants to walk away, knows that getting involved with a guy like Arthur is only going to end in a lot of trouble. Only that’s long-term trouble-and that’s only a possibility. Short-term trouble is certain. I need that gun.

  “This is a Glock Eighteen C,” he says, putting the package down on the workbench. “It takes a nine-millimeter Parabellum bullet. Nine millimeter is the most famous and frequently used handgun cartridge in the world. It’s used in semiautomatic pistols and in submachine guns. This Glock here,” he hands it to me by the handle, “has a magazine capacity of seventeen rounds. Of course it’s currently unloaded.”

  “Of course.”

  “Naturally it isn’t designed for target shooting. It’s purely a defense weapon. Used in the service industry overseas.”

  “What, like restaurants?”

  “Yeah, good one,” he says, his face tightening as he frowns at me. “Police. Military. Armed security.”

  “Right.” I’m holding the gun by the handle, bouncing my arm slowly up and down like gun guys do, getting a feel for the weight. Shame there aren’t any tires to kick.

  “It’s a little over six hundred grams,” Arthur says. “A hundred and eighty-six millimeters long, small enough to slip in your pocket. It has an internal safety. .”

  “Meaning?”

  He carries on for a few more minutes telling me about the gun. I’m already sold, was from the moment I saw it had a trigger and a handle and a barrel and didn’t need any kind of assembly.

  “The Glock Eighteen C is fully automatic,” he continues, and it seems he could talk forever about the pistol. “There’s a switch here,” he touches it with his gloved finger, “that selects between semi- or fully automatic. Highly illegal if owned by a civilian in any country.”

  “Fully automatic?”

  “It’s crazy,” he says. “But you can fire off a whole magazine in under a second.”

  I imagine doing that. It would be like turning the front of somebody into a zipper.

  “So if it can only be sold to the service industry,” I say, “how come you have this one?”

  “Are you seriously going to start asking me these kinds of questions?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Let’s get this done,” he says. He shows me how to use the gun, how to load the magazine, how to slip the magazine into the handle, and tells me a few more facts. Then he takes it off me and puts it into the box. Puts the box into a bag. He hands it over to me and we step back into the shop.

  “I need some ammunition.”

  He slowly nods. I don’t know if the ammunition is illegal, but he has to go out the back to get some. He includes it in the price. I figure he’s a generous guy. Ten thousand dollars. The world’s most expensive handgun. I reach out and grab the box of ammo, but he doesn’t let it go.

  “Remember what I told you,” he says. “You don’t know me. You’ve never seen me.”

  I look at the thin gloves that weren’t on his hands when I arrived but were when he first came back out with the box in his hand. “I know.”

  “And I want your word you’re not using it to go on a rampage.”

  I promise him. Just like any homicidal maniac would.

  “I know where you live,” Feldman. “Remember no matter where you go, if you screw me on this, I’ll find you.”

  “Nobody will ever know I was here.” I tuck the package under my arm, turn to leave, then turn back. “For ten grand I want this too.” I grab the newspaper. He says nothing. Doesn’t think about his fingerprints all over it. I tuck it under my arm and walk back out into the Christchurch heat.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Lying in bed, in bed, and it’s comfortable and warm, but his stomach hurts and his head hurts, and it’s light outside, but he doesn’t want to go into the light because it’ll hurt too. He stays in bed because he’s tired, because he’s been up all night, and his wife has fallen asleep in front of the TV in her bedroom and it’s been a long time since they shared a bed together.

  When he got home last night, he broke into the morphine stash that he has for his wife, the stash he always promised himself he would never touch, only to find he’d already been at it. Sometimes she’s in so much pain that he has to give her some. She can’t describe the pain to him, but he knows it’s bad, she screams and cries and the muscles in her neck become so tight he’s always afraid they’ll snap. She hasn’t had one of those attacks in over two years now, but he keeps the morphine for her just the same.

  Just the same.

  Only now it’s his.

  The duct tape around his stomach is only going to help him for so long. He wishes he could put more tape around his head to keep his thoughts together too. The drugs are getting to him. Last night he was clearheaded. It’s as though the crazy, fucked-up personality he was using on Sunday night got stabbed into him, and drugs are making it stay. He hates thinking this way. He hates the pain more. He can’t get the balance right.

  When this is done, he’s sure his brother-in-law can help him out. He must know a doctor who can stitch stuff together. Soon he’ll be as good as new. And richer. So far the money angle hasn’t worked out. That lawyer bastard screwed him.

  That gets him thinking about the revenge, and how sweet it tasted, and how killing Charlie Feldman will taste even sweeter. He’s sure of it. It’s a horrible world when you can’t trust anybody, a horrible world when people don’t pay you for the job you have done. He can’t for the life of him figure out why McClory would have done that to him. What was he thinking? And then to deny it when he got there to confront him? What the hell was up with that? Did McClory think he was an idiot? Tearing McClory out of the world might have tasted sweet, but he’d rather have had the money. There are still medical bills that he’s struggling to cover, and he’s hoping to save up enough money to take Macy away-there are other treatments in other countries more advanced than New Zealand, and he’d pay or do anything to give those treatments a shot.

  He shakes his head, not just out of his disbelief over last night’s affairs, but also to check to see how light-headed the morphine has made him. He can hear the cartoons playing from his wife’s bedroom. If she were awake, she would be laughing at them. Sometimes he watches them with her. Sometimes he thinks he’s only one thirty-minute episode away from blowing out his brains.

  He closes his eyes. He can feel the morphine rushing through his system. He thinks of the hundred-dollar note he stuffed into Frank’s mouth and he can’t remember if McClory was alive at that point. He has no idea what Frank was thinking when he wrote that note, no idea where a guy like McClory got the balls to try and end their relationship with a threat, then realizes he was having these same thoughts only a minute ago. How many times has he gone over this? He didn’t bother searching the house for the money because there never had been any money. He had just let himself in, done what he went there to do, and then let himself back out. The problem was all that exertion last night opened up the wound in his stomach.

  He drifts in and out of sleep and the green numbers on the clock radio tick over quicker than they should. He’s sweating, and th
e room spins, and he wonders if this is the most relaxed he will ever feel. His wife laughs a little, and he thinks she calls out to him, but he can’t be sure. He drifts a little more. His wife doesn’t laugh anymore. The cartoons are still playing, the DVD player looping one into the other and the other. He needs to do something about his wound before it becomes infected, though of course it probably already is. He can feel the badness from the cut slowly seeping through him. Infecting him. Changing the way he acts and feels and thinks.

  He throws back the sheets. They’re damp and he contemplates whether he should write a note to remind himself to wash them, but he forgets about the note even as he forgets about the sheets. He gets to his feet, but he’s still drifting. He thinks he took something earlier. He seems to think it was morphine, but it couldn’t have been, because the only morphine here is for his wife and he wouldn’t use that. Maybe he got some more of the good shit from his brother-in-law. He should give him a call when this is over. Maybe he can help with the stomach wound.

  He heads into the bathroom and draws himself a bath. He doesn’t know if lying in hot water is going to be a good thing because it would soon become hot water full of the dirt and bacteria from his body, so he pulls out the plug and decides to have a shower instead. He stands beneath it for twenty minutes, letting the water soak into the tape. He gently teases the edges as it does so. It’s a battle, but one he’s determined to win. Sometimes he laughs. Sometimes he cries. Sometimes he feels like putting his fist through the wall. In the end the tape comes away, and blood, about a quarter of a glass of dark blood, falls onto the floor in one large splash, hitting the tub like a wet bloody-nose blow. The bleeding slows to a trickle, but doesn’t stop. He uses a flannel to wipe away the flakes of dirt and a few tiny leaves along with the gunk left by the tape.