by Bill Beverly
They’ll sell to anyone.
Improvising now. What choice did they have?
He turned around. “Ty. You see what we’re doing?”
“Do I see?” Ty said. “Am I stupid?”
Ever did anything like this again, he was getting his brother a secretary.
“Seems pretty straight,” Ty said. Surprising East.
“Two go in, one stays out?”
“Right.”
“So you got one gun,” Walter said. “What do we need?”
“Walt. You know anything about guns?”
“A little.”
“A better gun, then,” said Ty. “I got this little popgun I can hide behind my dick. We get something real. Two guns. One of you can hold this. East can. Plus points.”
Walter asked, “How much is that gonna cost?”
“Depends what the man charge,” said Ty. “Begging your pardon, but we got a seller’s market out here. Take all the money you got, try to bring some back.”
“So who’s going in?” Walter said.
East rubbed his eyes. Exhausted, he wanted no part of it. Fin had people who would work this, go in cool, shake hands like businessmen. Or there was Circo, who would go in with a gun in each hand and all the burners hot. He himself was a watchman. He could run a crew, keep them working all night. But walking in where people were ready to kill you was not his thing.
The feeling in his fingers had come back, and he rubbed them together, letting the skin heat.
“Well, Walt, my man,” said Ty drolly. “Who you want on the outside, if you have a problem, coming to save your ass? Me or him?”
“It’s you and me, man,” Walter said across the front seats.
East nodded and closed his eyes. Plan was broke, gang was broke, Ty trying him at every chance. Might as well go.
Ty kept on. “Glock or a Tec. Glock or a Tec be nice. If they got real guns. If it ain’t all duck-hunting shit. You got five hundred and some dollars. If you can’t get two guns that work, fuck it, we driving back to LA.” He laughed. “Now pull this up and park close. Right across the street. We doing business.”
—
The cold air braced East. He decided not to waste words. The yellow house’s door opened on a thick chain.
“We’re here to buy some guns.”
In the crack was a white face, beard, wire-rimmed glasses. “Show me money,” it said.
Walter made a motion at his hip. Same handful of twenties he’d offered the black man on the bike.
“You packing?” said the bearded man. “Because if you are, hand me what you have now. Change and keys too. And Phillip will come around and wand you.”
“We’re clean,” said East. “All right. But it’s cold out here.”
Around the corner of the house appeared a shamefaced man as skinny as a dog. He had a metal-detector paddle semiconcealed beneath his arm. It squelched as he jostled it. The man nodded uncomfortably before he climbed the stairs.
“You ready?” he said.
“That a metal detector?” said Walter.
“Yep.”
“I know you ain’t gonna scan us standing out here on your porch,” said Walter.
“Yep.”
They submitted to the nosing and grazing of the paddle. East wasn’t sure the skinny man was using it right. Skinny enough that his shoulder joints bulged at the seams of his shirt; his knuckles stood out like knots. Hard to say how old he was.
“All right,” the man Phillip said. “Now you may go in. But let me give you some advice. Okay? Don’t be arguing. The nice man wants to sell you what you need. But everyone else in the house wants you dead.”
Again the country manners, East thought. As if they’d come from a planet a million miles away.
“We just doing business,” Walter soothed him.
Phillip stared with the same red-bitten face. “Remember what I told you.” He nodded at the door, and they heard the chain come off. It opened, and Phillip led them in. Out of his collar curled the beginning of a tattoo, some ancient declaration.
They entered a parlor set with antique, dark furniture that was upholstered in pale peach. “Sit together there,” Phillip said, indicating a sofa, and he slipped through a doorway at the back of the room. The bearded man with glasses split off and crept up the stairway running up behind the front door. To its railing was lashed a thick, transparent slab two inches thick—just roped on haphazardly with yellow nylon cord.
“Bulletproof glass, that is,” Walter murmured.
East nodded.
Walter sat obediently, and East moved that way, but something over the sofa caught his eye. On the wall hung portraits, rectangular and oval, of tall, gaunt men with beards and white women with their hair in curls, or grandmothers with their last wisps. White faces, stolid expressions, their postures rigid in these antique frames. To East they were mesmerizing—the oldest pictures he’d ever seen. These strangers stood in poses that didn’t fit them, that family lined up unhappily in front of a house. Pioneer faces, dead now, but their eyes still blazing, vigilant, even in sepia. He felt drawn, felt them watching.
Reluctantly he sat when Walter tugged at his arm.
Across a low, formal table sat the sofa’s love-seat cousin, also peach. Not far away on the floorboards sat a bassinet in dull gray plastic. A large orange stuffed crab waited there—clutched in the hand, East saw now, of a damp, sleeping baby.
“Make yourself comfortable.” Phillip’s voice floated from the back.
Through the door frame East saw the antique dining room—long table and chairs, a tablecloth of lace, littered with plastic plates and mail. Cheerios had spilled across the floor.
Another creaking, and presently the doorway filled with a man in gray sweats. East almost whistled. The man was gigantic: Walter was 4XL fat, but this man made him seem a youngster. He was bald and he moved tenderly, shifting from foot to foot, sizing them up. His blond lashes made his blue eyes seem peculiar and dark.
“Hi,” he said softly. “I’m Matt.” He perched on the second sofa. “Pleased to meet you two. Maybe today is the day that the floor caves in.”
Walter said, “You okay if I get right to it?”
“Be my guest,” said Matt.
“We came to buy two pistols. One should be semiauto. Second one, anything that’s straight. And bullets for both.”
“Bullets for both,” the man repeated dreamily. Almost a sigh. “How you boys this early morning? Come far?”
“A long way,” reported Walter.
“You staying here? Or just passing through?”
“Passing through,” Walter said concisely.
Walter was straight. It pleased East, reassured him—the straightest line between now and getting out. Made sense. He looked up at the other man, Matt, whose politeness felt effortlessly derogatory. Eyeing the two boys, Matt worked his mouth on something.
“Passing through. You sure? Ain’t much here to steal.”
“Leaving as soon,” Walter said, “as we get what we need.”
“Welp.” Matt leaned slightly forward, a pivot somewhere in the base of his neck. “You seem like you’re serious business. Let’s see what I can show you. Phillip. Phillip. Bring out that bunch you’ll find above the refrigerator.”
The skinny man’s footsteps scraped onto linoleum. East eyed the third man, the bearded one with wire glasses, lying in wait behind his barrier on the stairs. Was he armed? Figure he was. Figure Phillip too was just listening with the safety off. Small-town manners.
Phillip returned with a metal tray, tarnished, like it once was precious. The man named Matt accepted the tray with soft fingers. His blue eyes grew round, and he peered at the guns like a pawnbroker doubting jewelry. Then he placed the tray down before the boys.
Three guns. Two magazines.
“These are nice guns,” sighed Matt as if the boys had given him heartburn.
East stared. Guns were not his thing. He’d carried a few, even fired a few to le
arn. But these guns were not for boasting or learning.
“This is yours to choose, man,” he murmured to Walter.
Walter wiped his hands together and picked up the first gun. Checked the chamber first, then the action. Sighted it against a ceiling corner. Click. Quietly replaced it on the tray and tried the next.
“We good?” Matt said agreeably.
Walter said, “Not these.”
“Oh?” Comically the fat man cleared his throat. His eyes went round again. “Not these? You want what, exactly?” Over his shoulder he said, “Phillip. He says not these.”
“These guns are fine,” said Walter, “but not these.”
“These ain’t the low-end Saturday-night specials city niggers use,” said the man, licking his lips. “No offense.”
There it was. East saw it fly out and watched it sink. Just a stone in the water.
Walter made a plain, thin line with his lips and let it go. “Why don’t you show us what else you got.”
“Tell me what road you came in on,” said the fat man Matt.
“From the south,” said Walter. “From the interstate.”
“Didn’t you go visit somewhere else first? Before you came here?”
Now Walter elbowed East. “This motherfucker,” he scoffed. But East saw the cubes of windowpane light curving in Walter’s eyes, the cock of his eyebrow: Where we going with this? Improvising was wearing thin.
They’d done some things right. But nobody would tell you how many things were left.
East intervened. “We went somewhere else. Come on. Ask us what you got to ask. Then let’s see some more guns.” His voice came harder than he meant it to. Maybe that was all right.
Matt chewed on something, encouraged. “Did you go to a barn? A big-ass barn in a field?”
“Maybe.”
“Why didn’t they sell you?”
“Who knows?” said East. “I guess they didn’t like us.”
“Did they not like you because a lot of little African Americans steal? Or because a lot of little African Americans actually turn out to be cops?”
“A lot of little African Americans trying to be polite here,” East said. “Whyn’t you bring another bunch of guns if you got any? Or we can just go buy them in the next town.”
“Oh?” said Matt. “What town?”
Walter cut in: “Dubuque.”
“Well, I don’t know nobody who sells guns in Dubuque.”
“We’ll find someone,” said Walter. “But we here doing business with you, or trying.”
At this statement the baby stirred. It stretched one hand out, then emitted a loud complaint. Inside East, the black string sang murder. He hated the baby; he hated the men for using the baby, leaving the baby in the main room for show. Like the antique photographs, the upholstered furniture. As if it all meant respectability, as if you couldn’t be touched.
Somewhere its mother was probably still asleep.
Matt moaned and shifted himself on the love seat. “Phillip,” he crooned, “why don’t you see what you can find in that drawer?”
“Which drawer, Matt?”
“Second one,” said Matt. “Below the toaster.”
“Second one below the toaster,” Phillip repeated, retreating to the kitchen once again.
The big man Matt smiled, and in his sickly whine he said, “How about you, string bean? You know where you’re headed next?”
East squinted. He’d been called String Bean sometimes as a kid. That Matt had put his finger right on it annoyed him, like someone had screamed his name inside a house. But he couldn’t mean anything by it. He meant that East was long and skinny. That was all.
As much as East hated these men, he wanted to make the deal. He wanted it to be over. And he wanted to have done it.
“I’m going with him,” he affirmed.
“Mmm,” mused Matt. “That’s good. Okay, here he comes.”
The second tray: two guns, one extra clip. “Be my guest,” Matt said again.
Walter picked up the first, a gray semi, jimmied the magazine out, checked it over. “Seventeen,” he murmured tunefully.
“Good gun,” said Matt. “Not Glock’s best.”
“Why ain’t you bring this out first time?”
Matt smiled and said nothing.
“Do I get to fire it? You got room in the basement?”
“In the basement is my wife,” Matt said. “Asleep, we both should hope. No, you don’t get to fire it. If we go out in the fields, you can shoot it. But you’re in my house, first thing in the morning. You’re lucky we’re even awake.”
“You have a wife?” said Walter.
Again Matt smiled. “Big boys get it done, junior. You’re on your way yourself.”
“Not that big,” Walter said. He pointed out the second gun. “Not much of a toss-in. Can’t you sell me a better one?”
“That little Ruger in the last round,” said Matt. “But it costs. Or you can have that Taurus.”
“How much, these two?”
“Five-twenty-five.”
“Four hundred.”
“Oh, I’ll say four-fifty,” Matt said. “But I will also say: I came down. I come down one time only. Take it or leave it.”
“Four-eighty,” said Walter, “and you take back this cracker box and give me that Taurus.”
“Five hundred and you can have all three.”
“I don’t want three,” said Walter. “I don’t want this leaky thing anywhere near me.”
“A man who thinks he can spot shit,” said Matt, “will still end up wondering why his shoes stink.”
Walter said straight, “Four-fifty for the Glock and Taurus.”
“Mostly now what I want, actually, is you to get out, actually,” said Matt. “I care less and less if I get your money or not.”
“Well,” Walter said, “right now you get to decide.”
East’s stomach rolled. He watched Walter with a low, grudging admiration. Trading was all it was, maybe. But not everybody could trade.
“All right,” said Matt with resignation. “Four-fifty for the Glock and Taurus.”
East could not stop the little leap his hands made in his lap.
“Deal,” said Walter. “And we stop outside town and see do they shoot. If they don’t, we come back.”
“You can look at them and see they shoot. A child can see they shoot. The question is, can you aim?” Matt made to stand up but winced instead. “Phillip, get that little Taurus gun off the top of the fridge.”
Walter counted out twenty-three twenties. “Got change?”
“Not if you want bullets. I got about a box and a half fits those both.”
“Oh, shit,” said Walter. “Yeah. Here’s another twenty. Gimme it all.”
Phillip opened a door in the dining room sideboard, near enough that East could watch. Red and black boxes were stacked beside vases. Phillip placed two in a bag that said Dollar General and walked them to the front door.
Walter said, “Where’s he going?”
“Putting it outside for you,” said Matt. “You think we invite boys into my house and hand them loaded guns?” He counted the twenties. “Four hundred eighty dollars. My handshake is my receipt.”
They stood, but none of them shook hands.
—
Outside, behind the steering wheel, Ty waited, quiet-eyed. He slid back in the van as they approached. East peered down into the plastic bag. New bullets, a sealed box and a half one—nice.
“Those guys had guns in every drawer in the house,” East said.
Walter snorted. “I know. A thousand guns. We could have been there all day.”
“What you get?” said Ty the moment they opened the doors.
“Now we’ll get schooled,” said Walter. He unpocketed his gun and passed it back. East fished the Taurus out too. Walter set the van moving as Ty examined them.
“This Glock, nice,” said Ty. “Other one, a piece of shit. You could smack somebody with it, I g
uess.”
Walter smiled. “See?”
“What you pay?”
“Four-eighty for all of it and bullets.”
Ty gaped. “Four-eighty? These guns? Four hundred eighty?”
Walter turned a corner. “That a good price?”
“I get Glocks like this in The Boxes, two hundred,” Ty said. “How many dudes were there?”
“Three,” said Walter. “And a little baby.”
Ty said, “Stop the truck.”
“No!” said East. But Ty didn’t wait. He threw back the side door and took the street at a leap. East popped his door too, but the seat belt caught, and then the van bounced as Walter pulled it over, and he cursed and fumbled with stinging fingers. Ty darted between houses and was gone.
Back on the seat he’d left two guns. He had the Glock. There was no chasing him.
East slammed his door. “Are you stupid? Never do what Ty says.”
“What’s he doing?”
“We’ll find out,” East said grimly. “Take us back. Go.”
Lights were waking now in the kitchens, behind the porches with their hollow Christmas lights. Walter downed the windows: no dogs barking. Nothing. No sign of Ty. Silently they rolled toward the gun house.
“You want me to stop here?”
“Not right in front,” East said. “Don’t want them noticing us and wondering.” He scanned the block, eyes burning.
“Do we go look for him?”
“No. Not yet.”
Walter said, “What’s he gonna do? Walk in and ask for a refund?”
“Walt,” East steamed. “Nobody knows what Ty’s gonna do. He don’t plan things. It’s always pow with him.”
“Ty saved our ass,” Walter reasoned. “Got us out of Vegas all right—and when Michael was latched on to you? Ty improvises.”
“Listen to you, man. Last night you were saying he was trouble. He’s an animal.”
“Maybe he’s lucky,” said Walter. He pulled a three-point turn at a cross street. Jubilant accordion music spilled from a parked car there, all four doors open. A short Latin man was shining his dashboard in the cold.
They made one more flyby. East’s stomach burned cold. He wished he’d marked the time. Walter pulled the truck up fifty yards from the house, and they quieted and watched.