by R. O. Barton
I don’t think even the dimmest of hit men would try anything here. He must be a customer of Spark’s, here to pick something up and Spark hasn’t had time with all the hullabaloo.
When I got to the doors that led to the basement containing the range, I would have to turn left, and that would put Mr. Mysterious behind me. That didn’t worry me, because he’d have to shoot through a covey of cops.
“Tucker, we’ll use the two lanes in the center,” Spain said from behind me, as we walked down the narrow stairway.
I pictured him on his toes with a knife between his teeth. Ambush was imminent.
There were signs on the walls of the stairway reminding everyone to wear eye and ear protection. I knew both would already be laid out for Spain and me.
There were ten shooting lanes. At the bottom of the stairs, was lane three, which meant the remaining seven were to the right. That’s the way I turned, putting the firing lanes to my left.
It was dungeon-like, but adequately lit, with more light down the 75-foot shooting distance to the inclined backdrop that absorbed and deflected the lead. Each lane had its own partitioned alcove, separating the view of the person shooting to either side. This was a safety precaution. It helped keep hot ejected brass from the person in the next lane, from going down your shirt or getting stuck in your collar. That was another reason I liked to wear a hat while shooting.
I worked on my own guns and could change the direction in which the brass was ejected with just a few minutes’ work on the ejector. It’s the other person’s gun that worries me. I’ve been burned more than once.
I went to lane six and stepped in to look down at the targets that had been set up.
Normally we would shoot at the regular bad guy silhouette target, but I could see this was not the case today.
I heard men jockeying for position. The targets were paper plate sized, black bulls eye targets. The type when the bullet struck, a very bright florescent chartreuse spot would appear, leaving no doubt as to your aim.
The targets had been attached to pieces of cardboard, supported on a hanging metal frame that could be moved backward or forward by pushing a button on the right-hand wall of the shooting bay. Attached to the same wall was an empty gallon coffee can, with the word BRASS stenciled across a strip of masking tape.
I felt Spain step into my alcove, which was just big enough for us to stand side by side without touching.
“I thought you’d like these targets, what with your age and all, your eyes must be going,” Spain said matter-of-factly.
I knew Spain had had trouble seeing at distances, so I said, “You must be worried to be pulling this sophomoric psych crap.”
My eyesight problems were the common trombone playing kind, that was easily remedied with reading glasses from Walgreen’s.
The vying for positions was coming to a standstill. It was time to get on with it.
“Okay, Spain,” I said. “What’s the surprise rule I don’t know about?”
“What do you mean, paleface?” he said angelically.
“Let’s just get it over with so you can buy me dinner.”
Spain sighs, then brightens up, like he just got a great idea. I saw a cartoon light bulb over his head.
He said, “I know, let’s make it interesting. What you say we put five in each gun and a spare mag, then do a speed load with the extra mag when we run out of the first. The first one through puts his gun back in his holster, then yells red (“red!” is what you yell to your partner when out of ammunition in a firefight). Any shots outside the black, we take a half second off the time.”
I looked behind us where there were two uniforms standing with stop watches. Not only was Spain out to ambush me, he was planning a massacre, and if he said that many words in a row again, I was going to fall asleep. I wondered if that was part of his strategy.
“Just got that idea this moment, did you?” I asked dryly, hoping for a short response.
“What do you mean? You don’t think I planned all this, do you? How dare you, for as long as you have known me, how could you think I’d do something that despicable? I can’t…”
“Spain,” I interrupted. “I don’t believe there were any Cherokees at the Little Big Horn.”
It took him a moment to get it, then he looked around. Yes, I was definitely outnumbered. He gave me his handsome bucktooth grin and said, “Yeah, well I can see you’re intimidated.”
“What’re you shooting?” I asked.
He pulled aside his suit coat, allowing me to view a Colt .45 almost identical to mine. It had definitely been Tucker-ized. I had accurasized so many 1911’s, there was no way to put a face to the gun.
“Whose is that?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t Spain’s.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he said, straight faced.
“I suppose you’ve been shooting it for a while, getting ready for this.”
“You’re getting ready to find that out,” he said, with a leer.
Spain is always psyching, but for the first time since the challenge earlier this afternoon, I saw myself buying dinner.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
Spain walked into his shooting station. I walked forward into mine and started loading my mags with the correct number of cartridges. I put five in the extra mag, pulled the mag out of the gun and ejected four into my hand, leaving four in the mag, one in the chamber. I always carry it chambered, cocked and locked; that way, all that had to be done after drawing the weapon, was to thumb down the safety and pull the trigger. The Colt has two safeties, one being a grip safety at the back of the grip that if wasn’t depressed, the gun wouldn’t fire. I remember the Major referring to it as, ‘the lemon-squeezer’.
As I looked down the shooting lane at Spark putting something on the floor, I heard Spain in the next booth, doing the same to his mags.
“Spark, what’s that?” I asked, as he fiddled with a contraption I couldn’t see, because he was in the way.
“It’s a new countdown light system I bought for just this type of activity,” he said, moving out of the way, showing me a set of four lights stacked up on top of each other, about six inches apart. The whole thing was about four feet high and six inches wide. The lights were from top to bottom, two reds, one amber, and the bottom one was green.
“Reminds me of drag racing down in Opelousas,” I said.
“Where?” about a half a dozen voices asked.
“Same principle,” Spark said, as he lumbered back toward the booths. Spark moved like Spain talked.
Spark said, “I’ve got this set at one-second intervals, it starts at the top and goes down red-red-amber-green. You shoot on green.”
“Duh,” said a comedian from somewhere in the dark. It did get some laughs, but not from Spark, who was looking hard for the performer.
It looked like we were ready to commence. The cop who was going to time me was behind to my left, so he wouldn’t be bombarded by my flying brass. I knew Spain’s timer would be in the same position next door.
Spain peeked around the corner, and was now wearing a pink tennis visor, ear protection that looked like muffs, and shooting glasses with yellow lenses. He’d gotten rid of his suit coat, and his bright, tie-died suspenders were blinding.
“I’m going to order the full rack of ribs and drink two imported beers, cause you’re buying,” he said, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“Spain, if you could see yourself right now, you wouldn’t be smiling.” I added, “Are you sure you like girls? What does Betsy do for sex?”
His grin was replaced by a baffled frown.
There was a lot of coughing going on in the dimmer parts of the cellar and a few small bursts of muffled laughter. As far as I knew, Spain was the highest ranking officer here. It definitely wasn’t kosher to laugh at him.
“Okay, you two get ready!” Spark yelled, as he fingered his glasses back up on his nose.
“I’ll count to three and turn on the lights
. You two with the stop watches hit the buttons when the green light comes on.”
“Duh,” again followed by laughter.
Spain disappeared around the partition. I stepped forward, slipped the ear protection over my hat and put on the shooting glasses. They were so smudged with what I was sure were Spain prints, I had to take them off.
“Put your pieces on the bench and step back one step!” Spark yelled, sounding like a drill sergeant.
I drew my gun, set it on the table and stepped back. It was cocked and locked.
Someone, quietly cleared their throat, caused me to look his way. It was Patrolman Richard Walker, and he was shifting his eyes over towards Spain’s booth.
I stepped back and looked into Spain’s booth to find him in a two-handed shooting stance with his gun pointed at the target.
Ever since Spain and I’ve been shooting against each other, spanning over a decade, we’d been playing this game. I took all his shenanigans as a compliment.
“Spain, why don’t you come over here and keep me honest,” I said quietly.
His shoulders hunched, like a small boy caught in the cookie jar.
As he turned to look at me, I ducked back into my booth. When he came around, I could tell he didn’t know if I had seen him or not.
“I trust you, Tucker,” he said, with big innocent eyes.
“I’m sure you do, but I think we’d both have better scores if we could see each other. You know, make it a more interesting competition.”
I looked around and said, “What about you guys? Wouldn’t ya’ll like to see us go at it, side by side?”
Almost everyone had crammed into the booths in order to see the targets, so they hadn’t been privy to Spain’s point shaving tactic.
There were nods and murmurings of agreement. There wasn’t much Spain could do, but come over with me.
I scooted over, which put him to my left. I wasn’t worried about his ejected brass hitting me. On all the guns I worked on, I made sure the brass went almost directly over the shooters right shoulder. That kept them out of the way of their partners in a firefight, and I had definitely worked on the gun Spain was going to shoot.
“Let’s do this!” Spark yelled irritably. “I want to go home!”
I said, “Hold on, Spark, I’ve got to clean these glasses. There’s something all over them.”
I reached over, take hold of Spain’s cream-colored silk tie and started cleaning the glasses.
“Thanks, buddy,” I said. “This won’t scratch the lenses.”
He didn’t say a word, just looked straight ahead like a guilty defendant receiving his sentence.
Spain set his extra magazine on the bench with the .45 next to it, and I did the same.
“You ready?” I asked.
“Yep.”
I looked over at Spark and nodded, then looked at Patrolman Walker and caught his eye, took off my leather jacket and handed it to him. He gave me a sheepish smile and blushed. Walker was just a kid, couldn’t be more than 22 or 23.
“One . . . two . . . three!” Spark yelled, and hit the button.
The lights started, red . . . red . . . . amber . . . . green.
By then I had tunnel vision, my heart rate had slowed, and The Calm had settled over me.
When the green light glowed, I stepped, picked up my gun, with slightly bent knees and a two-handed grip, both eyes open, I looked at the target and shot five times. BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG.
After each shot, as soon as the muzzle dropped back into the target, I fired again. The way I have my gun tuned, this happens about every three-tenths of a second.
After the fifth and last round, the slide locked back. With my thumb, I pressed the magazine release button and the empty mag fell on the bench. I shoved the extra magazine, that I don’t remember picking up, into the gun, thumbed down the extended slide release as I aimed, pulled the trigger, starting the next five-round sequence, BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG.
The shots were so close together, it was hard to distinguish one from the other, it almost a continuous roar. Again, as the last round was spent, the slide locked back.
I yelled, “Red!”
I released the slide, thumbed up the safety, slipped the gun in my holster and stepped back.
“God damn, motherfucker, son-of-a-bitch,” were just some of the less colorful expletives bouncing around the room. Cops have such broad vocabularies. I heard one say, “Fuck-me-running! Even a… “Shit the bed!”
I knew I’d shot faster than Spain; that was obvious. He was still shooting when I holstered my gun, and he didn’t bother to say ‘red’. But, had I outshot him? I don’t see where my bullets strike when I’m shooting. I just shoot.
“Six point three seconds!” yelled the patrolman timing Spain.
I looked behind me, and the cop standing there looked like he was going to faint.
“I forgot to stop it,” he said, looking at the stopwatch. He was in his late twenties with bright red hair and now, a face to match.
“Don’t worry about it,” Spain said with disgust, gesturing with his gun to the targets.
The black parts of the targets were about five inches in diameter. His had florescent chartreuse spots all over it and one black hole in the brown border.
My target just had one large bright area in the center about three inches in diameter, and in the center of that was a hole you could see through, indicating multiple hits in the same area.
Everyone but Spain and I started talking.
“Sumbitch, Tucker must have shot his in five seconds or less . . . naw, more like four seconds . . . no way six seconds . . . shit.”
Spain looked at me, smiled with a shrug and said, “Looks like I buy again.”
“I beat you with that comment about Betsy, didn’t I?”
“No, you just beat me, again. I’ve been practicing with this thing (he looks at the gun in his hand) and this setup for a month. I bet I’ve got 20 hours, what with all the driving back and forth, and a thousand rounds invested in this shit.”
“When I was a kid, I used to shoot a thousand rounds a weekend.”
He looked at me like I had just grown a unicorn horn.
“You never told me that before,” he said quietly, looking down to the targets.
“Thousand rounds a weekend,” he mumbled.
Men were starting to mill around, and I felt someone pat me on the back. I’m not much on being touched from behind; I’m not much on being touched period. I spun around to find Richard Walker. He was stepping back, holding out my jacket with an alarmed look on his face.
“Ah . . . your jacket, Mr. Tucker.”
I’d forgotten about my jacket.
“Thanks Richard, and drop the mister,” I said.
From his face, you’d think I just told him he didn’t have cancer. He did put himself out there by alerting me to Spain’s game. He seemed like a good kid, not much older than my son.
“Why don’t you come to dinner with us?” I asked.
“Why don’t you not come to dinner with us,” Spain said, looking firmly at Walker.
Maybe Spain did know it was Walker who alerted me.
“Mr. Tucker and I have some business to discuss, remember?” he said, raising his eyebrows at me.
“Maybe some other time, Walker,” I said.
“Sure, Tucker . . . I mean Mr. Tucker,” he said after getting another ‘I’ll scalp your ass’ look from Spain.
After Walker left, I said to Spain, “A little tough on the kid, weren’t you, or do you just want me to feel old?”
“Yeah, well, he may be a little too nice. It could get him killed someday. If he lives for the next couple of years, he’ll make a good cop. He’s a pretty good shot and getting better. He’s been playing that game ‘knuckles’ you showed those recruits at the range last year. He’s very fast. I think he’s working up to challenge you. Then we’ll see how old you really are.”
I yawned. “Let’s go eat. I’m driving out to the ho
use after.”
“You go on over. I’ve got a little business to attend to. It shouldn’t take me more than five or ten minutes. We’ll eat and talk about the interview and that other thing,” he said, putting on his suit coat.
I nodded and turned to see the basement was almost empty, just a few men hanging around, probably the business Spain was referring to.
When I got back upstairs, Spark was behind the counter, waiting for the stragglers to leave. He also had my target. He held it up in front of his face and looked at me through the hole and said, “Well, I don’t know, Tucker.”
As I walked up to him he pushed the box of Winchester .45’s I’d loaded my mags from and my pile of hollow points at me.
“Hand me a rag, will you?” I asked.
He reached behind him and pulled one off the shelves.
My gun was hard-chromed, making it the color of dull steel. This stopped it from rusting easily, but after shooting, you could see a powder blast smudge an inch or so behind the muzzle. I took the rag, wiped the gun clean, then started reloading my mags with the hollow points. I’d clean it properly when I got home. I handed the rag back.
“Spark, how did you get that name?” I asked, as I replaced a mag with eight hollow points, chambered a round, then dropped the magazine into the palm of my left hand, to top it off with a round before ramming it home, and holstering my gun.
“I played hockey in high school,” he said. “The coach called me the ‘Spark Plug’ of the team because I had so much spirit and hustle, and it just stuck.”
Spark just grew a unicorn horn.
Chapter 10
Upon entering the restaurant, I was reminded why Spain and I liked it, other than the good food. There were booths along the back wall, allowing us both to sit next to the wall with a view of the front door.
There were seven four top tables with red and white checkered plastic tablecloths, or would that be tableplastics? It wasn’t crowded this Wednesday night, a few couples and a couple of singles having dinner, plus a guy who needed to go on Weight Watchers, hanging around the takeout counter.