Upgunned

by David J. Schow

  Electronic Press Kit shooters came in under the wing of the publicist—Spooky Sellers—usually on celebrity-heavy days, to shoot all the froth and nonsense important to shows like HBO First Look. They monopolized the talent, strictly grazing inside a two- or three-day window. They set up canvas chairs and a backdrop and lights and grab face time hosted by some ex-weather girl who pretended she had a deep personal bond with actors who did not like her. They were not part of the crew tribe and the crew disdained them as a necessary nuisance. Aware of their status, they tended to flaunt their privilege, tripping over C-stands and generally pissing off anyone below-the-line. Then they were gone before anybody could really sabotage them.

  Andrew Collier and his stars grinned and bore it the way one would an embarrassing relative. It was part of the promotional game. Arly hated them because they had better equipment and even they, too, could make him get out of the way. If Arly ever got one of his own projects going, he had the makings of a total martinet, a monster who would make everyone pay someday for all the wrongs done unto him. Then he would get his turn at a similar Candid Camera blowup, all in the name of his creativity and vision. People would grumble, “god, what a jerk” … and then ask to work with him. That was Arly’s dream.

  Andrew Collier never would have indulged his tantrum demon if the EPK crew had been hanging around. Set drama was supposed to stay in Vegas. That was before the new century whisked in the new surveillance, causing everybody to double-check their emotional reactions. It’s tough when you can’t even slam your steering wheel and call the tourist cretin ahead of you in traffic a dick, because somebody is capturing an image of you doing it—an image that could wind up on TV or in the hands of a prosecutor. To most civilians, TV was still reality, not the other way around. “Look, he did it, I saw him doing it, it’s right there on the screen, he took his hands off the wheel, he was probably texting, test him for alcohol, test him for anger, he’s probably got a gun in the glove box, check his jacket, because nobody is innocent.”

  Now Arly’s squalid subterfuge had breached the sanctity of film jail. If I thought I was safe here, I was nurturing a comforting lie.

  * * *

  Somewhere in the New Jersey marshland, in an automobile graveyard, a forsaken potter’s field of junked cars. Me, Cap Weatherwax, and Cap’s 4Runner full of ordnance. The 4Runner had a police chaser engine, a built-in roll cage, nondeflating tires and bulletproof glass—the whole Severe Service Package.

  Lined up for target practice: gallon jugs of colored water at twenty-five paces. Not glass, which might come back at you.

  Cap’s initial drills involved not gunfire, but handling. Pop the clip, lock the action, check the barrel. Reinsert the clip, release the action, thumb on the hammer, you’re hot. Do this several hundred times. Get to know the gun, the weight of it, observe how its parts work in concert, and “what the fuck are you doing touching the trigger, newbie?” A fucking gangbanger amateur no-no. Align the finger alongside the trigger guard and don’t even think about it, not even casually, unless you’re committed to the pull.

  Next, paradoxically, you get to touch the trigger. Dry-firing on an empty mag. Forty pulls in thirty seconds. Try it sometime; it’s harder than it looks. Now with the other hand. Now repeat. Hundreds more times.

  This is your ammo. Forty-cal hardball here. Nine-millimeter Parabellum there. Do not confuse the magazines. Load them with your thumb. Unload them with your thumb. Push each cartridge down hard against the spring. Learn the wiggle. Build a callus. Over and over. Do it until your hands stink of brass and full-metal-jacketed rounds; nothing else smells like that.

  It was a lot like good old-fashioned film grinding. Prep, load, lock, point-and-shoot. This is not digital. Know how many shots you have. You’ve cleaned your cameras, now clean this gun. Now clean it again. Break it down, put it back together, give it a shoeshine and a little attention and it will never fail you. That’s good, you got most of the crap off, now do it again. Again.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re pointing that cock? What are you, Wyatt fucking Earp?” This end goes bang and knocks people down. Always know where it is pointed. No such thing as a casual move with a firearm. Be aware.

  My hands were aching and sprung after the first session, yesterday, in the truck, late at night. Cap had lent me a SIG SAUER .40 with a blank adapter and neon-colored plastic dummy rounds. Every time you look at that gun, do it again, he said. Break it down, clean it, reassemble it, dry-fire. Shave your personal best for timing. Then shave it some more. Lock the action, check the barrel, do it again.

  Now do it blindfolded.

  It’s a simple configuration, basically four parts. Barrel assembly, spring, slide, frame. Know its weight, its feel, its balance, its attitude. Do it right and the whole deal works. Never be not sure.

  Now do it blindfolded while I pitch crap at you, make sudden loud noises, and force you to recite Marullus’s speech about blocks and stones. “Knew you not Pompey?” And don’t you dare get it wrong.

  That night when I cleaned and loaded my film cameras, my hands were shaking. Tactile discipline had been biased. New muscle memory was being shaped.

  Now, in the auto junkyard, Cap had a workstation built out a door across two sawhorses, tableclothed in vinyl. Boxes of cartridges, fifty each snugged in foam or plastic, lined up like building blocks.

  “Now,” he said. “Show me what you’ve learned.”

  I had still never fired a live round from a gun.

  I broke the SIG down and held the barrel in the air. Don’t blow in it—moisture is the enemy of every firearm. A soft cloth rubdown for powder residue; the cloth should come clean, the white-glove treatment. Reassemble with the action open. He handed me a magazine. “Load that, release to chamber, and decock,” he said.

  “Wait,” I said. “This is the wrong clip.”

  “Good,” he said, taking back the Beretta clip of nines and handing back the SIG clip.

  I seated the magazine. You always feel for the click of engagement. I hit the slide lever and eased the slide forward “into battery” with my free hand instead of letting it snap. The movement hoisted the first round into the chamber. You could look for brass by inching the slide backward just a degree, to verify a loaded chamber, which Cap called a “thumb check.” Index finger alongside frame. Do not engage trigger. Right thumb down on the decocking lever. One soft click as the hammer rests in the intercept notch. Now the firing pin is locked. No such thing as an accidental discharge possible. SIGS don’t feature safeties on the theory that no safety is foolproof. Instead they have the decocking lever, intended to put the gun in neutral and allow law enforcement, for whom the pistol was designed, to get off a fast first shot. You thumb the hammer full back—one click—and the whole package is hot.

  “You switched guns on me, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Cap almost smiled. “What makes you think that?”

  I didn’t look at the SIG at all. It was a copy, a substitute, not the weapon I had manhandled through primary gun school. I just knew. “This feels different,” I said. “I’d know it even in a dark room. I think you swapped out my stainless steel SIG with the blank adapter for an identical SIG without. I think you just handed me a mag of live rounds and I just loaded them into a hot gun.”

  “Well, if you’re so fucking smart,” said Cap, “why don’t you take a shot at one of those bottles over there?”

  Behind the row of bottles was a stack of junkers. This would prevent wild shots from flying off into the troposphere, or maybe landing on some poor civilian’s skull a town and a half away.

  Cap handed over shooting glasses and a set of bright red headphones. He donned a pair himself. We had used these on the set to adumbrate the noise of movie gunfire. We had worn them constantly on the Night of Thunder. I had doffed them a couple of times just to hear the palette of noise for real.

  Now Cap’s voice was muffled and distant although he was speaking louder to compensate. “We can lose this
later so you can get used to live fire.”

  The last time I had heard a live round go off—as Elias—was in my darkroom where it had converted me into a snail-ball on the floor.

  “Ready on the firing line,” Cap said. “Hot range.”

  I stepped up to the line Cap had etched in the dirt and lifted the gun in a two-handed grip.

  Before I could thumb back the hammer, Cap said, “No.”

  “What?”

  “That’s really adorable,” Cap said of the aggro way I held the piece. “That’s called a ‘cup and saucer.’ See how your left hand is underneath your shoot hand? Cup and saucer. What’s that for, to keep you from dropping it?”

  “I thought—”

  “No,” he overrode. “Are you in SWAT? Do you know the two-step? How not to cross your legs in front of each other? No. Shoot it one-handed. Full extension of your arm. The gun is a method of reaching out, long-distance.”

  I had practiced this during my dry-firing. Now the weight of the gun at the end of my arm was nothing at all. Muscle memory accommodated it.

  “That sight is zeroed,” Cap said. “Just line it up and drop it just a hair to compensate for the top of the sight because you’re looking at the dots. See? There’s a microscopic difference. Pull it to full cock. Then aim, the way I just told you.”

  “Trigger?”

  “Just kiss it with your fingertip. You know the pull already, about four pounds. Squeeze, don’t jerk. Whenever you’re ready.”

  I shut one eye and might have even stuck out my tongue tip, real Western.

  “Don’t do that,” said Cap. “You ain’t fucking one-eyed Pete or something. Try to keep both eyes open. You won’t be able to on the first shot, but you can learn how.”

  Binocular vision seemed to veto this, so I just turned my head a bit.

  “Fire when ready.”

  “Very apropos,” I said.

  Bang.

  The SIG nearly jumped out of my hand. My wrist felt slammed as though I was sparring with a boxer and had just caught a good punch.

  A sad little wisp of dust spiraled into the air behind the bottles, which the bullet had come nowhere near. I held the extension; the gun was ready to fire again, so I did not drop sights or wave it around as if it were spent. It was ready; I was still owlishly awaiting permission to fire again.

  “Correct your aim and fire again,” said Cap. “Don’t drop your arm until you’re out.” Out meant empty.

  The second shot was easier. Now I anticipated the recoil, even though it completely spoiled my aim. The third shot came faster and easier.

  “Don’t rush through it,” said Cap. “Aim. Otherwise you’re just pissing on a hot plate. Don’t crush the trigger. Don’t snap it.”

  The gun seemed to beg to be fired. That was its purpose. Each shot flowed more smoothly into the next. Bang, bang. The air seemed to evacuate from around my head with each discharge; that was something I wasn’t used to and did not expect. I regained control of my arm quicker, and compensated for the up-and-down bob. Bang.

  Bang. The action locked back. I knew it would, but it still seemed odd to see it do that all on its own. The gun was ready to be fed again.

  I hadn’t hit a single thing except the backstop of junkers.

  “Barrel down, finger off the trigger,” Cap said. I had forgotten to do that. “Now, in competition, speed-reloading is a big deal but we’re not gonna worry about that right now. Here.” He lifted the SIG from my grasp and dumped the empty magazine.

  I stared at the inviolate row of bottles. “Jesus,” I said. “I suck.”

  “Naah, you’re just getting started,” said Cap. “First time you shot a picture, was it a perfect picture?”

  “Anything but.”

  “Well, there you go.” He unsnapped his Para-Ord .45, pulled the hammer to full cock, and emptied his mag in about three seconds—nine shots. Each bottle sprouted a wide mouth and collapsed or began spewing water. Nine bottles, nine bullets, nine hits, no waiting.

  “Okay,” he said as the air spiced up with gunsmoke, “now it’s your turn again.”

  A little later—after I had hit two bottles out of nine in, I don’t know, thirty seconds—Cap lined up a set of different targets at the same distance. Smaller.

  “What are those?” I said. “DVDs?”

  Yeah, they were. Nine copies of Die Hard 2. I had to ask.

  “Worst offender of all,” Cap said. “You don’t just pull a clip of blanks out of a goddamned MP5 and substitute live ammo. That gun needs blank adapters to cycle blanks. First live round would make the fucking gun blow up in your hand.”

  “You mean there’s no such thing as a porcelain gun?” I said, paraphrasing Bruce Willis.

  “There no such thing as a ‘Glock 7’ at all,” he said with unveneered contempt. “They made that shit up. The guns in that movie are Glock 17s with lipstick on ’em, as I like to say. Tarted up. But they’re not porcelain, or plastic, or any goddamned thing because they’d blow up or melt if you shot them. Glocks have polymer parts, sure, but there’s plenty of steel or the gun would not work. And the ammo would show up on X-ray. And they’re not made in Germany; they’re made in Austria, for fuck’s sake.”

  Another mag for the Para-Ord and four seconds later, all nine copies of the special edition had burst apart into plastic shrapnel, disabled from spreading their untruths.

  “And don’t even get me started on how a round from a Beretta nine can’t punch through a mahogany table and still have enough velocity to kill a guy,” he said. “Maybe one round in twenty.”

  He handed me a Beretta 92F and a magazine. “You don’t believe me, see for yourself.”

  PART NINE

  A MAN CALLED JACK

  I watched Clavius speak to the detective from my secret hiding place. It took a fair bit of setting up, but I needed a read on Elias McCabe’s mentor before I decided whether he was worth killing.

  Prior to that trick ‘r treat I found out a bit more about the Clavius empire. The “C” Corporation was diversified into things ranging from paper products—like the watermarked photo paper—to a hand sanitizer called ElGel, marketed under the company division named Illium, after Marlowe’s poem about the siege of Troy. At a glance it did not appear that Clavius spent as much time on art anymore as he did on being Clavius; his last big show of note had been titled “9/11.5.” He had invested much more time in becoming his own artwork.

  I settled into my hide to observe as the artwork spoke to the cop.

  Detective First Grade Hanson Stoner Jr. was admitted—gradually—to Clavius’s offices on the power of his shield and ID, representing Manhattan South borough, Fourteenth Precinct, also known as Midtown Precinct South. His gold shield bore no number (lieutenants and above being identified by their tax registry numbers instead) and the laminate ID card’s photo featured Stoner against a red background, indicating he was commissioned to carry a firearm. The photo looked about two years old; Stoner had threads of gray in his now slightly longer blond hair and brush mustache. A lot of New York cops had cookie-dusters like his.

  Clavius was clad in a loose white cable-knit sweater and worsted wool slacks, and tended to keep the air conditioning on his floor about five degrees below comfortable. Right behind Stoner an attendant wheeled in a full service coffee tray and parked it at the edge of a vast Persian rug, a Herez Serapi with 180 knots per square inch, a steal at $40,000. There wasn’t a mote of dust in the room, which contained a twenty-foot curve of glass desk piled haphazardly with things needing Clavius’s attention, several mammoth modernist canvases (slightly disturbing in their implied chaos; I did not recognize the artist, but then, I had only recently acquired my first piece of what could be termed “art,” myself), and a museum-framed Picasso ink sketch hung in an obvious place of honor. Clavius was washing his hands in a small wet bar sink when Stoner was escorted in. As always, his complexion was rosy, as if he had just vigorously scrubbed his face. He had some green-toned aloe vera concoction he us
ed to cut the red whenever his image was to be captured by nontechnical photographers. White brows, white hair, cut medium short and combed straight back. It was completely unfair, yet impossible not to see him as the privileged scion of some woebegone ex-Gestapo guy. He ignored Stoner completely until he had finished drying his hands, then regarded him on silent standby, forcing Stoner to cross the rug, to come to him for the pro forma handshake, which was three dry pumps followed by a grab for the nearest bottle of ElGel. He had on Japanese paper slippers and requested that Stoner remove his shoes prior to crossing the expanse of rug.

  This guy Clavius was all about power games, and had obviously taken Sun Tzu far too seriously.

  “First Grade Detective Stoner,” said Clavius, glancing at the card on the glass tabletop but not touching it. “That’s an odd notion, isn’t it? A detective of first grade would be in charge of, what? Recess? Ah, please disregard my pathetic little jokes, Detective. Wordplay is one of the few things that stimulates me anymore.” That was obvious from his cutesy company name, designed so his single letter “C” would appear right after the copyright symbol, another “c.”

  His limpid, colorless eyes evaluated Stoner. “Are you a lieutenant or a sergeant, or—?”

  “No, sir, that’s a TV thing,” said Stoner, his eyes still taking in the huge office space. “I’m an investigator—about the same pay grade as a lieutenant. The investigative supervisors you see on TV, the guys in charge of all aspects of a job, are only a small percentage. I can’t even give orders to a uniformed officer, when it comes right down to it.”

  “Fascinating,” said Clavius, indicating that it was anything but. He stationed himself in a Humanscale Liberty chair on the boss side of the desk so Stoner would not try to touch him again. The Liberty chair was the fashionista answer to the Aeron, which had become so popular with the commonweal that it now appeared antimillennial and dated. Clavius was already offended that this man, Stoner, assumed he, Clavius, was the sort of person who sat around watching television. Stoner looked for another chair; or wherever he was supposed to sit. There was no other chair.