by J. D. Allen
27
The door to Scruffies looked more like the entrance to a strip club than a firing range. Screaming red neon confirmed the establishment was, in fact, open. There were fliers and posters plastered over the entire surface of the glass door, blocking any view of the interior. He’d not been here before. Jim had not stepped into a range since college, when he was getting ready to join the cadets at Quantico.
He’d sucked. Not in the missing the center mass of the body-shaped target by a few inches kind of sucked. No. He missed the entire body-shaped target almost every time he pulled that trigger. Not long into training, he got frustrated. He’d stood in that booth and looked down the range with his ego in full control. No way he was going to be the worst shot in the class. Not him. He’d mastered so many other things in life with ease. The fact that weaponry hadn’t come naturally worked his nerves like a dull knife on a thick rope, slow and fraying.
Instead of reasoning out the bad aim, his move was to use a gorilla grip on the gun, the idea being he could manhandle the weapon into improved targeting. Sounded good at the time. The instructor had given Jim nothing but disapproving looks, which only fueled Jim’s overreaction to the situation. Arrogant and mean, the retired trooper was probably doing these classes to pay for alimony. For at least two ex-wives.
The last straw came on a Friday. He remembered it like a bad dream. Jim had fired. His tight grip pushed his aim so low, he shot the inside of the range booth.
The slug ricocheted backward at an angle, which took it dangerously close to the thigh of the asshat instructor. The man had to jump out of the way of a .40-caliber slug. It wasn’t really that close. Given the mouth breather’s goal was to make everyone around him feel small and stupid, he used the accident as expected.
He’d roughly extracted the weapon from Jim’s shocked, shaking grip, followed by a teardown fit for a teenager who’d taken his father’s car keys. Then to make the scene complete, the instructor had tossed the gun dramatically into a case and told Jim a five-year-old could outshoot him. Although true, the public slur pulled at his ego. Insult to injury. The rest of the class was looking on, most trying to stifle their amusement. Not to save Jim any embarrassment, but to keep the instructor’s attention away from their own shortcomings.
Mortified, Jim went straight to the karate studio and signed up for classes. He’d taken them as a kid and figured accidentally killing a man with your bare hands was a little less likely than with a gun. Intentionally … well, that was another story.
With a deep breath to suck down his memories and his ego, Jim stepped inside Scruffies. O stood at the counter. He’d signed them in. Jim gave over his license for their records. Muted gunfire echoed throughout the building. Through the thick glass behind the counter he saw a couple of guys and women were already on the range. He’d hoped for a more private lesson.
O turned and headed back for the door.
“You forget something?”
“Nope. We’re shooting on the outdoor range. It’s around the far side of the property.” O used his body to push the door open but didn’t wait for Jim to follow. He had to rush to catch up as O started up his Tahoe. Jim hopped in the passenger seat. “I thought we’d be less claustrophobic out here.”
O was right. The outside range was a picnic table under a carport shelter with a long, waist-high bench along one side to hold the weapons. Their shooting alley was far enough away from two other shooters that he didn’t need to worry about anyone but O seeing the fiasco to come.
O pulled out four twenty-five-round boxes.
“Don’t need too much ammo. If I haven’t sent you running for cover by the time we finish one box of that, I’m buying lunch.”
“You’re buying lunch anyway. What time do you want to head to the airport?” O shoved a magazine into the gun and pulled the slide to load the chamber.
“Three.”
The big man held the gun in his palm. “You get any real instruction?”
“Does an old trooper yelling at me for two days count?”
“Yeah. Here. Loaded five. Keep it pointed downrange, please.”
Jim took it. “So you have seen me shoot.” Cool metal was slippery in his sweating hand.
“It’s just good practice. Finger off the trigger too. Keep it that way till you have the legal right to shoot and the intention to do so. No walking around dark houses with your damned finger on the trigger. Cat might jump out at you and you shoot your partner in the ass.” O demonstrated, keeping his finger pointed up the barrel but very close to the trigger.
Jim mimicked the finger position. It was comfortable.
“Now shoot.”
Jim turned his attention to the targets. They weren’t the paper silhouettes that he’d used in the indoor range. Still body-shaped, these were metal and dangled from posts like hammered steel hangmen.
Jim took a deep breath. “This won’t be pretty.” He held the gun up with both hands in the grip he was taught. His finger slid to the trigger. He squeezed slow. He didn’t want to hear it. His jaw hurt from his clenched teeth. After what seemed like a day too long, the gun went off. No sound of metal. He looked at O.
“Try again.”
Jim repeated the same action. Still no sound of metal on metal. Hopeless.
“You shoot like a girl.”
“Fuck you.”
O moved close and shadowed Jim’s stance. “You were all leaned back with your hips forward. Looks like a pregnant woman, all belly out. And you anticipated the bang, making you lean even farther back.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. Could you even see the target when you pulled the trigger?”
Jim thought about it. No. Crap, that was embarrassing.
Never told the old trooper he’d lost sight of the target. But he now realized what he was doing. Same thing with the baseball as a boy. The pitcher would let go of that hard ball and Jim’s eyes snapped shut knowing it was flying uncontrolled at his head. Not to mention he was trying to force as much power to the bat as possible. No need to cover his inadequacies with O, the man had already seen many of them.
“I think I closed my eyes.”
“Hell yeah, you did. And to compensate for that you’re gonna automatically point that gun almost straight down.” O demonstrated, his hips pushed forward, his gun arm pointed down and his eyes closed.
“Fucking does look like a pregnant girl.”
“Don’t say that too loud. There’s plenty of girls around here who shoot better than the both of us. Now, try again. Lean those shoulders forward. Relax. Point the dangerous part forward and aim. Use that finger pointing forward as a guide. Forget the sights. Point at what you want to hit. Take a smooth breath and pull that trigger. Keep your eyes open and on the target.”
Jim changed his stance. It felt better. He pulled the trigger. Felt the sweet spot, concentrated on keeping his eyes on the center of the
human-shaped metal plate he was pointing at. The blast made his ears ring even through the earplugs, but he managed to keep his eyes open.
Clank. Metal. Hit.
He looked at O. “You look more surprised than me.”
O chuckled and fired off five quick rounds. Each hit. Center mass.
Jim lifted the gun, sighted, and fired the remaining two rounds in his magazine.
“Still low and to the left, but that’s just a problem with anticipating. You’ll get past that.” O handed him a box of fifty rounds. “Five at a time. Reassess. I’ll make comments.”
O leaned back on the picnic table and lit a huge cigar.
Jim slapped in the reloaded magazine. Checked his stance. Took a smooth breath and squeezed as he let the breath out. Very zen. Clank! Clank! Miss. Clank! Clank!
“Not bad for a guy who said he can’t shoot. All you needed was an instructor with half a brain.”
“Good th
ing I have one of those.” Jim looked up from reloading. “You’re lucky to have half a brain.”
“Shut up and shoot. Need to be at Ely’s in an hour. He says he’s got something on our whack job.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. And he’s got us some toys for the trip.”
28
Annie circled Jim’s legs as he sat at Ely’s table. The cat was desperate for his attention. So much so that she jumped up and perched contently in his lap. He ran his fingers though her long, silky fur. Not a luxury he experienced very often. The cat loved to be close, but touching was usually a deal breaker. She doled out that kind of intimacy in small sweet moments. Jim needed to spend some time at home.
When Ely tossed the blue folder in front of Jim, Annie fled the area and returned to watching them from her normal spot on the top level of the countertop.
“How’d you get a copy of this?” the techie asked.
Jim shrugged. “Contacts.”
“But this is actual FBI paperwork.”
“It’s a copy.”
“No, dude. This is original sin, right here.” Ely bit his lower lip.
Crap. “Evidently it got mixed up with the copy.”
Ely tapped the folder. His thin frame was made thinner by black fatigues and a black tank. When he turned around, the back arm openings let some of his scars show. Scars from months of being a POW. Remnants of horror stories that must come to him in the night.
His right forearm was tatted up with an odd pattern of old and new ink. Each little thing meant something to the wiry vet. Jim never presumed to ask about any of it, but sometimes when Ely was stoned, and they were alone, he told some stories. Jim always listened. Never asked for elaboration. He’d let the guy go into heavy details, even when they made Jim thank whatever lucky stars there were that his own misery and pain was not what Ely had lived through.
Jim feared he wouldn’t have made it through something like being beat with bamboo until blood ran down the backs of his legs, staining the dirt floor under numb knees. And Ely still cared about people. Jim rarely did. Didn’t trust. Even getting close to O and Ely had been hard.
“Hope your source can cover his or her ass, man.”
“He can.” Jim hoped. He’d call to give Miller a heads up. If they needed to make a trade, he’d make it happen before leaving for Dallas.
O lit up. With all the pot smoke in the house a little bit of cigar smoke wouldn’t hurt anything.
“That secondhand is going to shorten my life, you know?” Jim waved his hand to usher cigar smoke out of his face.
O puffed out. “You smoke sometimes. Anyhow, that’s not going to be your downfall, Bean.”
“No?”
“Nope. Your solitude.”
“I’m dying of solitude?” That was prime.
“Yep. You care about nothing. No one. You got nothing to lose. It makes you a good investigator, would have made you a great soldier, but it’s gonna get you killed. Last time we were in on something together, you jumped off the roof of a two-story building.”
“And?”
Ely nodded. Not like he had any more personal connections than Jim did.
“Moving so fast, you’re gonna breeze past that line in the sand one day. The one you shouldn’t cross. You’ll go too far. And you’ll do it without thinking twice. Why? Cuz you got no one to worry over you.” O sucked in a draw, closed his mouth, his cheeks puffed from holding it.
O was mostly right. But Jim figured even if he had someone these days, he’d still call all the shots the same. “I got you guys. And Annie.”
Ely nodded, his whole upper body moving with his head as if grooving to some beat Jim and O would never be able to hear.
“Just consider going on a date.”
“A date?” With flowers and good night kiss pressure? No thanks. He’d stick to the strippers and one-night stands.
Like in Texas with Sophie. That was how he would have to file that event in his head. Just a drunken misadventure. An image of her straddled over him made his stomach turn. “We got a case here or we gonna continue with this joke of a love life intervention?”
“Have to have a love life to intervene in it.” O took another puff and leaned his head back so the exhale billowed straight overhead.
The smoke danced around the weird Circus-Circus act sculptures hung above.
“What do you think, Ely?” Jim asked.
“Of the folder? Bitch don’t like anyone and has no conscience.”
O laughed. “No shit.” He leaned forward. “What’s her plan, though? It can’t be to kill Hodge. Too much drama for that. She’s clearing a path of bodies to get to him. There’s got to be a motive here we’re not seeing.”
“Agreed.” Jim stood and paced toward the front door. “She could have killed Dan back when she slashed his old girlfriend. And again when she got his buckle bunny.”
“They ever have a real relationship?”
Jim turned back to the guys. “Nah. He said she was too young. He was in high school, she was in middle. I’m guessing the attraction was probably all in her head, even back then.”
O shrugged. “So she loved him and he didn’t return the favor. Since she’s diced up pimps for money, I’d think unrequited love would be a killing offense.”
Ely opened the file. Pointed at the pics of dead men and women staring up at him. “If these are all hers, she’s changed her technique as time has passed.”
“If?”
“Yeah. I mean other than the girlfriends, the first two crimes were pimps. In those days not a lot of care was taken if a dirt bag, drug-dealing pimp with a two-foot rap sheet got offed. Clumsy evidence collection at best. Couldn’t pin those on her without a confession, is my guess. The next two or three aren’t much better. Wasn’t until she moved uptown that her vics got middle class enough to have the crime scenes well documented and collected.”
“We have to get moving.” O mashed his cigar into a tray. He looked remiss at leaving a good half of it behind. “Flight’s in a couple hours. Can you keep looking for something in that file, Ely, something we’re not seeing?”
“Yep. Have just the tool for opening the mind.”
O snorted. “I bet you do. Maybe you can give us a good place to start?”
“Of course. Get that file back to Miller,” Ely said.
“Why’d you ask where I got it if you knew?” Jim asked.
“Two ways that could have gone down—Miller or maybe you seduced it off Lady Fed.” Ely’s grin was lopsided. Suspicious.
No way. She was smart, successful, and beautiful. Everything he would love in a chick, but he’d never get past the fact she was an agent and Jim was a slob with a drinking habit. “Hardly.”
They both eyed him.
“How’d you two know about Lady Fed anyway?”
The pair shrugged, neither doing a particularly good job of faking their innocence. Fucking Miller. Maybe Jim should keep that blue folder and let Miller deal with the consequences.
“See, I knew there was a woman for you.” O winked. “Classy agent lady?”
Not a chance. No Feds for him.
Ely slid a yellow folder to Jim. “Made extra copies.” He met Jim’s eyes. No humor. Then glanced to the folder and back. It took all of two seconds to know what Ely was thinking about. Jim had forgotten to take his own rap sheet out of the file. Lady Fed had pulled his records. Records that should have been sealed.
His palms itched to hit someone. Not that he was hiding his past from Ely, but few knew he’d faced all those inflammatory charges and had changed his name. Seemed that number was growing. Miller, O, Lady Fed, and now Ely. If Ely gave him the pity face, Jim was gonna punch it.
“I think you need a woman who don’t keep the clock running, Bean,” Ely said. So it was the hookers and not Jim’s history he was a
ll bashful over. Surprising.
“The day you can keep a girl, call me. I’ll consider it. Until then … ”
“I have a girlfriend.” Ely gave them a smug look and headed to the back end of the building. He stopped to twist the tumbler of the combo lock on his closet.
Jim called it the Toy Room. He’d only seen it a couple times, but he knew there was shit in there from both world wars. Real stuff. Fun stuff. He had the latest state-of-the-art techno-warfare munitions as well. Things Jim was sure Lady Fed would love to know were residing with a stoned, batty ex-Marine. Jim loved looking at the old shit.
“New girlfriend? Do tell.” O followed him in.
Jim trailed. He sucked in a deep breath, loving the smell of gun oil and black powder. Now that he had figured out the basics of his shooting problems, maybe he should consider getting his own handgun.
He picked up a good-sized one, maybe a 9mm. Could have been a 40-cal. He had no real clue.
“She works at the Mellow Man pizza place downtown. Old hippy. Skinny. Pretty eyes.”
Sounded about right for Ely. Someone from his era was a good thing. Might understand the PTSD and all the scars. Jim checked the gun to feel its weight in his palm. Felt light.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Bean,” O warned. “You need a lot more practice before you start waving those things around. A few plinks at a target does not a marksman make.”
Jim turned the gun over. Inspected the other side. “Thinking about it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
O pushed the muzzle away from the open room. “Unless you let loose a panic round or something and put a hole in good old Ely here. Whatever would his girlfriend do?”
Ely snickered. “She’d likely move on to the next guy with a big … bag.”
“Is that the kind of relationship you want?” Jim wasn’t sure why he asked that. Ely was a grown man. And shit if he wasn’t experienced, but Jim still worried someone might take advantage of his generous nature. Last thing the vet needed was some chick cleaning him out.