Shot Girl

by J. A. Konrath

  “Ablative—?”

  “There are lubes, foams, gels. Squirt a little in the suppressor every few rounds. But good old water works fine.”

  He handed me the suppressor, and I was surprised by the weight.

  I was even more surprised by the price.

  “Six hundred.”

  Day-am. That was more than the gun cost.

  I squinted @ the tube of metal, finding the logo mark.

  GOB.

  Go fig.

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “It’s a lot of tech,” said the mustache guy. “It’s not easy to suppress a gunshot. Do you know anything about suppressors?”

  I shook my head.

  “There are three noises made when you fire a weapon. The mechanical sound of the firearm. Can’t really do much to muffle that. The sound of a gunshot is actually muzzle blast, the hot propellant explosion hitting the cool air, which is what the suppressor is for. It cools the hot gasses with baffling, perforations, and wipes. It can also slow down supersonic rounds, so they don’t crack when breaking the sound barrier. Follow me so far?”

  I nodded.

  “Subsonic 9mm rounds are about 150 decibels. Fire one next to your head without ear protection, you’ll burst an eardrum. This suppressor, wet, takes it down to 110dB. About the noise of a rock concert.”

  “That’s still loud.”

  “Guns make noise. But it’s all about how far away you are. No suppressor, the decibel level at a hundred meters away drops to 110dB. With the suppressor, from a hundred meters the weapon is about as loud as tapping on some piano keys. You can hear a rock concert from five hundred meters. You can’t hear a piano. Big difference.”

  Still sounded shifty to me.

  “My dude here just bought an XCQ-TER9,” XCQ said, patting my shoulder. “Can we offer the special client discount?”

  The mustache guy rolled his eyes. “Everyone you bring over is a special client, Barney.”

  XCQ looked pissed. Maybe bcuz this mustache guy wouldn’t haggle. Or maybe bcuz he called him by his name.

  “I can take the kid somewhere else,” XCQ/Barney said.

  “Five-fifty. Been a shitty show. Haven’t even covered the booth fee yet.”

  “Five-fifty is a great deal,” Barney told me.

  I forked over the $550.

  “You’ve got yourself a great set-up, my dude. Great set-up. Now all you need is some ammo.”

  “I can find my own,” I said.

  I was certain Barney would take me someplace that only sold GOB ammo, and I was done with this clown and his squad of clown kickback griefers.

  “Great set-up, my dude!” Barney called after me as I walked away. “Great set-up! You are buffed AF!”

  I wanted out of the gun show, so after one final buy (to follow my ninth rule) I got the hell out of there, locking my purchases in the trunk with the XCQ-TER9, and then heading for the supermarket.

  They had ammo. And I had a feeling I’d get a better deal there than I’d gotten @ the gun show.

  Fo sho.

  “An armed society is a polite society.”

  ROBERT HEINLEIN

  “How many have to die before we will give up these dangerous toys?”

  STEPHEN KING

  JACK

  I called Mom. No answer. So I wheeled over to her building, the rain so bad that it soaked me, the wind so bad that it made the rain feel like ice. Getting to Mom’s room, I found her in bed, sleeping, blessedly alone.

  I didn’t wake her, but I did make use of several of her towels and one of her old blouses. Dry enough to think again, I considered Dr. Agmont’s suggestion.

  I’d had a lot of low points in my life. This might have been the lowest.

  Maybe getting in touch with my squad wasn’t the worst idea ever, even if it came from a smarmy metrosexual with a handful of degrees.

  I fished out my cell phone.

  My mother calls my father an energy vampire. He’s a nice guy, loving, but talking with him sort of saps the strength out of you. The kind of person where you could put the phone down, come back in five minutes, and they’d still be talking, not even knowing you were gone.

  I called him anyway.

  “Jack! So wonderful to hear from you! We need to catch up!”

  He caught me up on his new boyfriend, his recent bunion surgery, his Roth IRA, his ongoing feud with a neighbor whose dog kept crapping on his lawn, his Netflix queue, his centrist political views (and he actually had an argument with himself about the two party system), his opinions about intermittent fasting supplemented with bone broth, and the problems he encountered while trying to assemble a Tyssedal from Ikea, the whole time using enough details to fill a book.

  It was an hour I’d never get back.

  But it did feel nice to hear his voice.

  Dad did inquire about my life, too. Mostly questions about Sam and asking to send more pictures, concerns about Hurricane Harry, questions about Mom, and concerns about how my rehab was going.

  Whereas Dad was specific, I kept things vague. Probably not what Dr. Agmont wanted when he suggested I reconnect with my fam, but it was enough for me to check my father off the must call list, at least until next week.

  Or maybe next month.

  I followed that call with one to Herb Benedict, my best friend and ex-partner. Calling Herb was always weird, because the basis of our friendship revolved around solving cases. While I’d spent more time with Herb than I had with my husband, much of it had been small talk and work talk and comfortable silences while on stakeouts.

  We didn’t get personal too often. Especially on the phone.

  At least, I thought we didn’t.

  “I’m back up to a hundred and eighty,” he said.

  Herb had recently lost a lot of weight because of a horrible ordeal that I played a big part in. Weight was also a subject he usually didn’t want to talk about.

  “Bernice’s cooking finally catching up with you?”

  “No. I do all the cooking. Lots of protein, healthful fats, keeping my carbs under twenty grams a day. My gain is muscle.”

  That was something new. And strange.

  “Seriously? You’re weight training?”

  “Circuit training, mostly. Did you see my new Facebook pic?”

  “I have not.” I wasn’t on Facebook, for the same reasons I was living in Florida under an assumed name. Putting a pic of myself online carried some serious risks.

  My cell buzzed, and I pulled it away from my ear to view the picture Herb texted me.

  Whoa. He wore a shirt so tight you could count his six pack, and his biceps were popping.

  “Holy shit, Herb. You’re ripped.”

  “I know, right? Who would have guessed there were muscles under all that fat.”

  “And that beard is… an interesting choice.”

  “Like Hugh Jackman, in those superhero movies.”

  Actually, he did sort of look like Hugh Jackman. Which was a real mindjob, because during the decades I’d known Herb, the celebrity he most resembled was Dom DeLuise.

  “You look fantastic.”

  “Thanks. Rough year, so I’m trying to make lemonade out of lemons. Didn’t kill me, so it made me stronger. You know?”

  In theory, I knew. In practice, I wasn’t doing so hot. “Every tragedy is a lesson.”

  Even if the lesson is to give up.

  “How’s things going down south? You batten down the hatches for the hurricane?”

  “Phin has.” At least, he was supposed to.

  “Hurricane Harry. Of course it’s named Harry. You talk to that jackass lately?”

  Herb and Harry McGlade had a love/hate relationship. They loved to hate each other.

  “No. I’ve been focused on the rehab.”

  “Last I heard, McGlade was in LA. Something high profile. He actually asked if I wanted to work with him on a case. Did he call you?”

  “He left me a few messages.”

  Twe
nty-nine messages in the last two weeks.

  McGlade was a private detective, and we’d been working together for most of our lives. It hasn’t always been pleasant, but we shared a bond forged by decades of fighting side-by-side, even though he irritated me.

  Harry thought himself to be funny, and every once and a while he was. Thanks to a recent bit of Internet fame his already large ego had gotten even larger.

  “He offered me an insane amount of money, but I promised Bernice I was retired. Some sort of plastic surgery case, people getting disfigured. You should think about it. Getting back on the horse.”

  Screw the horse. I answered, “Huh.” The standard non-committal response.

  “How’s rehab? Walking yet?”

  “Getting better every day,” I lied.

  “How’s things with Phin?”

  “Better than ever,” I lied.

  “Sam?”

  “She’s good.” That wasn’t a lie.

  At least I hoped it wasn’t a lie.

  Thunder shook the windows and I startled, flinching in my chair hard enough to make my back spasm. I stretched, getting the pain under control, as Herb battered me with questions about Sam, along with a promise to send pictures.

  We small talked for a bit about our families, and that segued into how some of our old cop acquaintances were doing.

  “You get Tom’s Christmas card?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tom Mankowski used to work under me in Homicide. After surviving a particularly nasty attack, he moved to California with his significant other, Joan, and his old partner, Roy. The Xmas card was a picture of Tom and Roy on a boat they’d bought to use for a fishing charter business.

  Tom had also called me a few times this past month. He was on my squad list to call back.

  The conversation meandered to Herb’s new eating habits and workout routine, and my mind wandered, wondering what Phin was doing.

  Or, more precisely, who Phin was doing.

  I interrupted Herb sharing a recipe for lamb chops and asked if he’d heard from Tequila, another old mutual acquaintance of ours.

  “Sure. We train together at the gym on Thursdays. We’re running a 5k in September.”

  “He doing okay?”

  “He’s back to his old self. You know; quiet, intense, sociopathic. I think he’s dating someone.”

  “Really? He told you that?” Tequila was notoriously tight-lipped, but he’d gone through the same ordeal as Herb, and maybe it had changed him.

  “No. He barely talks. You know that. But a few weeks ago, I saw him smile. He denied it, but I know I saw it. I’m thinking it’s a lady.”

  Well, good for Tequila.

  “Jack, I don’t want to sound weird, but it’s time for my protein shake. If I don’t eat every three hours, my metabolism slows down. Can I call you back in ten?”

  Yeah, that didn’t sound weird at all. “How about we get in touch next week? I’m on my way to my rehab session.”

  “Sounds great. Kick some ass. And great catching up with you, partner. My love to Phin and Sam.”

  “My love to Bernice. And tell Tequila I said hey.”

  We hung up.

  I tried to tune into my feelings.

  Did reconnecting with Dad and Herb make me feel better?

  Worse?

  Anything?

  Maybe I felt a little better. A little more connected.

  Which made me dislike Dr. Agmont even more.

  I wheeled into the bedroom. Mom still slept.

  I considered waking her, to talk. Then I remembered she’d been up all night with Mr. Feinstein and his ED pills, and figured I should leave her be.

  I paged through my text messages, and decided I’d had enough of reconnecting with my squad. Still had two hours before my rehab session.

  Eat?

  Mom’s fridge didn’t contain any ready-to-eat food, and I didn’t feel up to cooking. So I grabbed a fresh towel, stuck it in a garbage bag, and risked braving the storm and heading on over to Building A. The cafeteria pizza was edible. Not deep dish Chicago style, but greasy enough to fill my need.

  The rain had calmed a tad, but the wind was insane. Ridiculous, considering Hurricane Harry still wouldn’t make landfall for another day. I’d seen big storms on TV and the Internet, usually with some reporter standing in the middle of gale force gusts, yelling above the noise while debris blew through the background. But I couldn’t imagine how the wind could get worse than this. It took every bit of my energy to get to the cafeteria, and I knew I’d need Phin’s help to get to the van when he picked me up later.

  I resented asking him for help.

  Lately, I resented everything.

  I toweled off in the lobby, trying not to draw too much attention to myself as I tried to get my labored breathing under control.

  Naturally, the café had no pizza. I built my own comfort meal with a baked potato, pulled pork, and chili mac and cheese, and found my table from breakfast, next to the tree.

  My lizard buddy wasn’t around. Maybe he’d actually heeded my warning and got the hell out of Florida before the hurricane came.

  I ate in joyless silence for a few minutes, indulging in my uplifting habit of scanning the crowd for threats, and saw Mrs. Shadid come in.

  We made eye contact and exchanged the universal I see you nod, and she got in the food line.

  I hoped she’d had enough of our earlier conversation and didn’t want to sit next to me, because I’d had my fill of talking for the day.

  Hell, I’d done enough talking for a whole week.

  Naturally, Mrs. Shadid came up to me. And, naturally, she had a slice of pizza on her tray.

  “May I sit with you?”

  Shit.

  I nodded. “Pizza, huh? I didn’t see any.”

  “Just came out of the oven.”

  Of course it did.

  We ate in semi-comfortable silence, my chili mac keeping a lid on its pizza envy, and eventually Mrs. Shadid spoke.

  “Why should we have guns at all?”

  Great. Here we go again.

  “Make no mistake about it. Gun control is not about crook control. It’s about America control.”

  DERRICK GRAYSON

  “We don’t have a gun problem; we have a math problem: ZERO GUNS = ZERO GUN-RELATED DEATHS.”

  QUENTIN R. BUFOGLE

  GAFF

  The supermarket had a whole aisle of ammo to choose from, but without a cell phone I couldn’t go online and compare different brands. I settled on one that had 147 GRAIN 9MM JACKETED HOLLOW POINT SUBSONIC written on the box. On sale.

  From what I remembered about researching hollow point ammunition, it had greater stopping power, but less penetration. That would suit my purpose. And subsonic meant it wouldn’t break the sound barrier, so I didn’t have to rely on my overpriced suppressor to reduce velocity.

  SBD. Silent but deadly.

  Buying on sale also made me look less like I was planning a mass shooting, and more like a thrifty shopper stocking up on a good deal.

  I bought a whole case of 1000 rounds, for just $179.99 plus tax.

  #GodBlessAmerica.

  The cashier didn’t even ask me for ID.

  Eager as I was to load up my new XCQ-TER9 and start shooting, I had prior plans for the afternoon.

  Exciting plans.

  The third reason I moved to South Carolina plans.

  I jetted back to my crib without getting lost, took all my shit inside, and laid my purchases out on my foam mattress.

  Sick.

  #Sick.

  I jonesed to start assembling everything, but instead stuck it all in my suitcase, zipping it up. Then I powered on my laptop and checked for the email I needed.

  #bq-noind To: Guthrie Slessinger

  From: Fardkork Correctional Center

  Guthrie Slessinger,

  Your Adult Visitor Application and Background Investigation Authorization Form has been reviewed and accepted, and you are pre-ap
proved and listed in the VACORIS Visiting Module as an approved visitor for Tully Huffland, Offender ID 381341C. Please review attached Form 851-1 General Rules for Visiting Room Operation. For questions and comments, you may contact the Department of Corrections Offender Management Unit.

  Tight.

  Time to go to prison, yo.

  I don’t get scared. When I was a shawty, Moms freaked out a lot bcuz I did stuff other kids didn’t do. When I was six I slipped through a loose bar to get a closer look @ a tiger @ the zoo. First time I saw a swimming pool I jumped right in and sunk to the bottom. Opened a window and crawled out on the ledge of the twentieth floor of this child shrink she took me to. Went under the kitchen sink and found all these bottles of cleaner, and the caps were child proof so I punched holes in them with a knife so I could taste them all.

  Fear didn’t affect me. Horror movies were lame. Extreme stuff on the dark net, like RealGoreDeaths or Usher House 2.0, with vids of people being tortured and killed, gave me a little twinge in my gut, sort of like that feeling when you balance on two legs of a chair and almost fall over, but I never got scared by them.

  Driving up to the Fardkork Correctional Center gave me one of the biggest twinges of my life. If I was into sex I would have called it sexual.

  The guard towers. The razor wire on the fences. The stark, gray, concrete building with bars in the windows…

  On brand.

  I pulled up to a booth b4 the big gate. Some guard, a wannabe cop in a dorksuit, checked my ID against names on a list and told me where to park. I went to the prison website @ least fifty times, so I knew what I could wear, and what I could bring inside. They had lockers you could rent for a quarter, but I left all the prohibited items in my car. All I had on me were my driver’s license, car key, and ten dollars in quarters. Prisoners wore white and black striped jumpsuits, so I wore blue jeans and a green t-shirt bcuz you couldn’t wear anything striped. (You also couldn’t wear miniskirts or halter-tops, but I was chill there, bruh.)

  After parking, I went into the Visitor’s door and checked in with a receptionist. I had to go through a metal detector, putting my change and key in a bin that got X-rayed. After walking through, I got a pat down. A guard dog also sniffed me, looking for drugs.