by Thomas Perry
“Protection. You know, burglars and so on.”
She stared at him for a moment as though she were estimating his hat size. “Well, okay. You know, of course, that if somebody comes into your house, what he really doesn’t want to see is one of these.” She pointed to a short-barreled pump shotgun on the rack behind her.
“I suppose not,” he said. “But I’d rather have something small.”
She nodded. “And you’ve never fired a pistol. Are you mechanically inclined? Fix your own car?”
Keller shook his head. “Never.”
She opened the case thoughtfully with a key on her belt, selected four pistols, and set them side by side. “There’s this,” she said. “It’s a Beretta 92. A good, reliable nine-millimeter semi-automatic. A lot of police forces use it, and there’s a similar model that the army uses. This is the kind of gun that you have to take apart to clean and oil, and put back together right. I don’t recommend that for a novice.”
“What do you recommend?”
She showed him a revolver with a short barrel. “This is a Ruger SP 101. It’s a .38 Special and it’s small and lightweight. It doesn’t pop up and hit you in the face from the recoil when you fire it. It’s easy to care for, and won’t let you down.” She leaned close to him and spoke from the side of her mouth. “It’s the model we usually recommend for women who don’t know anything about guns.” She watched him for a reaction.
He smiled. “That sounds like just the thing. I’ll take two.”
“Really?”
“Is that a bad idea?”
“No,” she said. “I’d be delighted to sell two.” She pulled a set of forms from a tray behind the counter. “Fill these two out, and after the waiting period is up, you can come get your guns.” She put away the row of pistols, then stopped, holding the one he had picked out. “As you know, it would be illegal for you to carry a concealed weapon. This is a model you have to be very careful with in that regard. It would be possible to put one of these in your coat pocket and go out without noticing it. Your friends wouldn’t see the bulge. Of course, when you reached in and discovered your mistake, the compact size would be a great advantage because you could take it back home without embarrassment.” She winked and locked the gun in the case.
12
Linda Thompson sat at the edge of her chair in the dark and watched the front door of Pete Hatcher’s apartment building. She liked looking through the night-vision binoculars, liked the way everything showed up green and glowing. She even liked the fact that Earl had spent nearly nine hundred dollars on them. His aching need for the best toys and gadgets gave her a lever to keep him a little bit off balance. Any time he felt the urge to say something about what she spent, she had been able to point to a gizmo that cost twice as much. She was careful not to let Earl notice how much she liked looking through the binoculars. They made her feel as though she had the senses of some sleek, beautiful animal lying in wait in the jungle, its eyes bright and yellow, able to see its dim-sighted, clumsy, hoofed enemy stumbling through the underbrush toward her.
Tonight she could feel her heart beating in her chest, the blood carrying more oxygen to her fingers and toes than it had since they had arrived in Denver. The air was clear and thin here, and she had hated that until her body had adjusted to the altitude.
Linda was feeding on Pete Hatcher’s fear and indecision. Five nights ago she had seen him walk down the street at about nine, and come back at nine thirty carrying a single big grocery bag back to his apartment. He had done the same thing three nights ago. Tonight, she knew he was thinking it was time to go get some more food. She was sure he wanted to get into his car and drive somewhere—to a giant supermarket in some other part of town, or to a good restaurant. He had not done it because he was afraid. He was afraid to go where there were bright lights and a lot of people, even though his craving for them was almost physical. Those moments in crowded public places must be precious to him because they felt like safety, but he seemed to know they were not good for him. People would see his face. His car represented the same kind of problem. He had probably bought it because it kept him from feeling helpless and trapped, but he sensed that he needed to keep away from it.
She saw him at the window of his apartment. He stood to the side in the darkened room and looked out, first at the little park, then up and down the street. She raised the magnification and studied his face. He was getting ready, and he was anxious. She saw him move away from the window. “I think he’s coming down,” she said.
She listened to Earl’s voice behind her ear, but kept the binoculars trained on the front entrance of the apartment building. “Everything’s ready,” he said. “Don’t worry.” He was talking to her like one of his dogs, low and soft. She liked it. “Just keep him in sight. That’s all you need to do.”
She saw Hatcher stop inside the lighted entry and pretend to check his pants for his wallet and keys, just buying time while he studied the street outside for signs of danger. He would do one last thing, and she waited for it, holding her breath. He reached behind him and put his hand under his coat to tuck in his shirt. She had known he would tell her. He was carrying the gun, the cute Ruger SP 101 he had bought a week ago. He had bought it because he was afraid, and now that he had it, he was afraid of the gun. “He’s got the gun in his belt in the small of his back, under his coat.”
“Fine,” said Earl.
“He’s out. He’s walking straight down the street toward the store.”
“Time to go,” said Earl.
Linda handed him the binoculars. While he was putting them in their case, he checked his watch. “It’s nine twelve. Give him until nine twenty-two to get there and get busy shopping. Be there at nine twenty-seven.”
“Right,” she said, and went out the door without letting herself look at his eyes. Let him wonder.
As she drove along the dark street, she teased herself gently. It would have been much easier to sit comfortably in the darkness of the hotel room and watch through the night-vision binoculars while Earl popped him with the fancy British sniper rifle through the window. The silencer on that thing would have made the whole episode sound like a bird bumped against the glass and broke its neck. But Earl could never feel satisfied unless he made Linda get a taste of it too.
Earl couldn’t just crudely cut him down with a rifle. Linda had to fool him first, make him into an accessory to his own death. He wasn’t going to be a leaking corpse lying on a kitchen floor. He was going to be one of those guys who walked off toward the grocery store and simply never came back. If the police got called in a week or two, they wouldn’t know whether to look for a corpse or a rent jumper.
David Keller walked out of the small grocery store trying to evaluate the odds. If he continued to walk to Danny’s to buy his food, he could just go on buying a little bit at a time and paying cash. If he went to a big supermarket and bought everything he would need for a couple of weeks, he would decrease the frequency of his trips. That would decrease his vulnerability. But he would have to take the car, and he would be seen by more people, and flash more cash, and that would increase his vulnerability.
He hurried to cross the little blacktop parking lot in front of the store where he was lit up by neon beer logos in the window and the yellow sodium light over the tall Danny’s Market sign. He moved quickly onto the sidewalk, where he could stay out of the light. Jane had not had time to explain everything to him, but she had told him he would do well enough if he just maintained the right attitude. He reached behind him to feel whether the revolver was riding up under his coat.
As he touched the lump he felt a small twinge of anxiety. She had implied that a gun was not a good idea. She had said, “You’re out of Las Vegas, trying to live a new life in, say, Chicago. You see the same car outside your apartment for three nights in a row. On the fourth night, at midnight, you see the car pull up again. Two men get out. After a minute you hear a knock at your door. What do you do?”
&nb
sp; “Do I have a gun?”
“Yes.”
“I get it ready, hold it where they can’t see it, and open the door to see who they are.”
“Right hand or left?”
“Right.”
“They’re your new neighbors, young single guys who go out every night, a lot of fun. They noticed you watching them through the window, so they knew you were up and decided to ask you over for a drink. One of them holds out his right hand to shake. Or they’re cops. The good guys. They’re watching the neighborhood because somebody has been selling drugs. They came up to see who you are: maybe you’re a witness, but maybe the reason they haven’t caught the dealer is that there’s a lookout, and it’s you. At that hour they’re going to ask if they can come in to talk to you. Or maybe you were right, and they’re professional killers, come to get you. You have the gun in your right hand. You open the door with your left, so you’re ready. They know who you are, but you don’t know them. They won’t hesitate. You will.”
“What was the right answer?”
“What would you do if you didn’t have a gun?”
He had shrugged. “I guess I’d figure out who they were without answering the door. You said it was after midnight.”
“Good,” she said. “Now you know the main thing about guns.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“They make you act differently. And they’re no good unless you’re positive. You have to be so sure that you’re willing to kill the two men at the door right away—not look closer, or ask them anything, just pull the trigger.”
“If they come to my door, intending to kill me, shouldn’t I do that?”
“That’s up to you. What would you do after you killed them? There’s been a lot of noise, and now there are two bodies bleeding in your doorway. Five quarts of blood each.”
“Run, I suppose. Get away. I couldn’t very well hang around to talk to the police.”
“Good. What if you didn’t kill them, just ran instead? Do you get anything from killing them first?”
“More time?”
“It’s after midnight in an apartment building. You’ve fired at least two shots into a hallway. Your neighbors are up dialing 911. The response time on ‘shots fired’ calls in a big city averages around three minutes, and they usually redirect the helicopters at the same time.”
He had said, “I give up. Forget the gun.” Maybe he had known even as he said it that he had been lying. Now, while he walked down the dark, quiet street lined with big, dark houses that had been segmented into apartments, he felt a little better because of the gun.
He turned the corner and walked down the darker side street, carrying his grocery bag in his left arm. He saw the woman long before she saw him. She had the hood of her car open, and she was standing in front of it, leaning over and staring down into the engine with a little keychain flashlight.
Keller walked along the sidewalk until he was within twenty feet of the car. She reached out tentatively and touched something. It must have been hot, because she instantly drew back her hand, gave a little “Oooh!” and sucked her fingertips.
He could see her face in the dim glow of the little flashlight, and it looked so perfect that the air in front of him solidified and cut his speed by half. She had long, shiny blond hair that was pulled tight along the sides of her head and held back in an intricate braid, and skin that glowed. As she drew her fingers out of her mouth he saw long pointed nails that showed she had not spent much time staring into the engines of cars. She wore tight blue jeans and a jacket of some fabric that looked like canvas but couldn’t have been, and the engine she was staring into belonged to a pearl-cream Lexus LS 400 that cost about sixty thousand dollars. She walked around to the trunk and opened it as Keller came abreast of the car. When the light came on and he could see her eyes welling with tears, he stopped.
Whatever anyone thought of women like her, none of them were in the business of ratting on fugitives. As it happened, David Keller liked women like her very much. He missed them. Instead of approaching and spooking her, he called to her from the sidewalk.
“I see you’ve got trouble. Can I call the auto club for you or something?”
She swung her head around, startled. She didn’t seem to have remembered that she wasn’t marooned alone on the surface of the moon. She studied him for a second, seemed to be noting that he had clean pants and a respectable sport coat on. But the fact that he was carrying a grocery bag seemed to make the difference. Jane had been on the money once again. If people could see that you were out on your own business, it was better than a pile of testimonials.
She smiled, and he could see the lush, ripe lips part to show perfect white teeth. She shrugged and held her shoulders in an embarrassed cringe. “My membership lapsed. I called them, and they ran me on the computer, and then I noticed my card was expired.”
“I’m sorry,” said Keller. He stepped a little closer to her car—not to her, but to the open hood. He would let her do the approaching. “I used to have one of these. They’re usually pretty dependable …” The sentence died in his throat. He could not believe he had let that slip out. It wasn’t like looking at a ten-year-old car and saying, “I used to have one.” This one was new.
But he could see that the effect he had wanted to convey was the only one that she had caught. She was coming around the car to join him. She had snatched a clean red towel from the trunk, and she was wiping her hands with it. He said, “At this time of night, I’m afraid all the mechanics might be home teaching their sons to overcharge.” He stared at the engine, pretending he knew what he was looking for. “How is it acting? Does it turn over?” He set his bag in front of the bumper.
She was right beside him now. He could smell the scent of her hair. Things must be going much better than he had imagined. She was much closer to him than was normal. They were almost touching. She leaned over the engine and pointed to a box bolted to the firewall that had colored wires plugged into it. “When I opened it, I could smell something burning over here.”
He leaned in too, trying to see if the insulation on one of the wires was melted. He felt a light touch on the small of his back, and the hard, heavy weight of his pistol was gone.
Almost instantly, his head was pushed to the side. The pain was horrible, and it was coming from a heavy metal object pressed to his temple. He could feel the red cotton towel covering it, but he had no time to think.
She was speaking low, almost in a whisper. “Police officer. Come around to the back of the car.” He hesitated, but she tugged his coat hard, and he tried to straighten so fast that he banged his head on the hood. When he reached the back he noticed that the light in the trunk had gone out.
“Get in,” she ordered.
“Look,” he said. “I can explain the gun. I was just trying to help you.”
“You have the right to remain silent.” She lifted the rag off her hand and he could see the gun now. It was big and square and ugly, with a muzzle that looked cavernous. “Get in the trunk, please. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
Keller was dazed. His mouth was dry and he couldn’t swallow. He was getting arrested by a Denver cop, a woman decoy. On an illegal weapons charge. They would find out who he was. There had to be a way out of this.
“You have a right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, the court will appoint one for you. Have you heard and understood these rights?” Her thumb with the beautifully polished, tapered nail came up and cocked the hammer.
David Keller climbed into the trunk. Why did she have to put him in the trunk? Didn’t they have a second car with regular cops who hauled you away when they caught you? Of course. She wasn’t a decoy at all. She was off duty. She had just seen the gun at his back, plucked it away, and stuck hers in his face. The trunk slammed down on him and the world went black.
Linda stood behind the trunk of the car, squeezed her eyes closed,
and smiled, smelling the thin, delicious night air. She had found the mark, taken his gun away from him, and locked him up, all by herself.
Part of the pleasure of it was that she was not alone. She had done it from start to finish with Earl watching her. He had seen her pretending to burn herself and sucking her fingers and crying just a little bit, just enough to seem soft and feminine and vulnerable. And he had seen her stand on her tiptoes to bend over the engine in these tight jeans, just arching her back a tiny bit, enough to make the mark ashamed of himself for thinking that way, and enough to give Earl something to think about too. For Earl, part of the experience was that it made him want to hurt the guy, to break bones and teeth for Linda.
Linda didn’t really think much about the mark once she had him. He was necessary, but he wasn’t really a player in the event. She was just using him to act out for Earl’s eyes how desirable she was. The mark was a mirror for both of them. He let Linda see how beautiful she was through his eyes, because she never could quite look at herself the way men did, and so watching them look was the only way. And Earl could look at the way she affected this mark, and it made Earl feel more that way about her—as though he were seeing her for the first time too, and because he was feeling desire, he knew exactly what the other man was feeling, and that made him wild. The night was filled with invisible sparks of energy shooting back and forth around her. It was magic.
This was the part of their lives that she craved. She loved it when they were out in the night hunting together, thinking hard together about the mark and his habits and what he would do, and deciding what they would do to bag him like this. And now the hunt was right at its climax, with Earl out there in the dark concentrating all of his attention on her. In a minute he would emerge from the shadows to obliterate the mark and reclaim her. They would drive him up into the mountains and bury the body before dawn. She felt as though somebody had taken one of those electric-shock machines they had in hospitals and pressed the paddles to her chest to jump-start her heart.