Smooth Call

by Ken Kelly

He took her HP Mini back to the bed, googled pawn shops in Las Vegas and found the town supported quite a number. He hadn’t been in many pawn shops in his day but he had seen a few episodes of “Pawn Stars” and knew that these days pawn shops were one of the glamour industries of reality TV. There were online ads for jewelry, musical instruments, cameras, and power tools as well as 3 DVD sets with 16 episodes of “Pawn Stars,” and for $74.99 a set of four bobble head Pawn Stars.

  Rick noticed that there were a few shops close to the Four Queens so he picked up his key off the night stand and made his way out to the street. He walked around without really knowing where he was going until he found a pawn shop less than 100 yards from his hotel. The shop was long and narrow and didn’t have any firearms.

  After three more pawn shops with no guns Rick went back to the Four Queens and looked up gun shops. The one on Tropicana seemed to be the closest, but since he wasn’t that familiar with the streets of Las Vegas it was just a guess. He went down to parking, got the truck, drove up to the 15 freeway and took it south to the Tropicana exit. Once on Tropicana it wasn’t too far to the gun shop which, Rick noticed when he read the sign, was also a shooting range.

  Rick parked the truck and went in. The place was busy, mostly with people getting ready to use the shooting range. Rick noticed that everyone who worked there, from the oldest to the youngest, male and female, had a gun on their hip. The place had never been held up would be his guess.

  A woman who looked to be about 21 asked Rick if she could help him.

  “I’d like to buy a pistol.”

  “Any particular make?”

  “Maybe you could recommend something. I’d like a gun that could stop an adversary if it needed to. Probably at least a .38 or higher.”

  “I’m sure we could find you something. Could I see some identification?”

  Rick took out his wallet and showed her his driver’s license.

  “I see you’re from California.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Unfortunately it’s a little complicated for us to sell to anyone that lives out of Nevada. In your case we’d have to contact a shop in California and they’d have to do a check on you and we’d have to ship the gun to them. We can do it but it will be more expensive and time consuming.”

  “Okay, thanks anyway.”

  “Are you interested in doing some shooting on the firing range?

  “No, maybe another time.”

  Bummer, Rick thought as he walked to the truck and drove out onto Tropicana. He’d just have to wait until he was back in California. After driving a block he saw a sign advertising a barber shop, along with a Chinese restaurant, a dollar store, a beauty salon, a bar and half a dozen other businesses.

  Rick, for reasons he couldn’t explain to himself, would always wait a week or ten days from the time he realized he needed a haircut until he actually got one. It had only been three days but he figured he was out and about with not much to do since he couldn’t buy a gun so he pulled into the parking lot and walked into the barber shop.

  There were two barbers and no customers. Rick could see one of the barbers watching TV in a small room at the end of the shop. The other was resting on one of the barber chairs. He got up and brushed off the chair. Rick looked at him and wondered if he’d made a mistake. The barber was as old as dirt! Rick decided to stay positive; the guy must have years of experience cutting hair.

  “Take a seat,” said the barber, gesturing to the chair.

  Rick sat down and the barber put the paper band around his neck and draped the sheet like cover over him.

  “How do you want it?”

  “Take 50% off, leave 50% on.”

  “How do you want the back, tapered or blocked?”

  “Blocked.”

  “Alright,” said the Old Timer, “50/50 blocked. You got it.”

  He doesn’t sound as old as he looks, thought Rick.

  The old man was a talker but Rick didn’t mind. He missed how he led into it but the old guy started talking about World War II and the landing at Normandy.

  “We had to jump into the water from those landing crafts, holding our rifles over our heads. Some of the crafts didn’t get in close enough so the solders jumped into water that was too deep, over their heads.”

  “Were they able to swim out of it?”

  “No, they had two much heavy gear, they drowned.”

  They were both silent for awhile then the old man said, “There was a lot of fire, a lot of solders lost coming in.”

  “Was it like they portrayed it in ‘Saving Private Ryan’?”

  “I remember thinking it was when I saw the movie but I don’t remember the movie now. I still remember Normandy though.”

  When he was done the barber took off the cover and held a mirror so Rick could see the back of his neck. “Good,” he said.

  When he was out of the chair Rick handed the barber $40 and told him to keep the change.

  The barber lit up. “Thanks very much,” he said on the way back to the TV room to tell the other barber that he’d just gotten a $26 tip.

  Rick walked out happy that he given the guy a good tip. He was enjoying being a big tipper on his $5000 entertainment fund. On the way out to the truck he noticed a pickup with its hood up parked right next to him. When he got close a tall fit looking man in jeans, cowboy boots, and a plaid shirt came out from under the hood.

  Rick’s first thought was that the man probably wanted a tow and he’d have to explain why he couldn’t. The guy looked like the kind who might argue the point, say something like he didn’t need to go far and it was unlikely they’d get pulled over. But it wasn’t about a tow.

  “Are you looking to buy a pistol?” said the man, getting right to the point.

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “I saw you at the gun store.”

  “Were you inside? I didn’t see you.”

  “I was parked outside in my truck. I saw you go in, noticed you had California plates and noticed you weren’t in there long. So you didn’t use the shooting range, and if you weren’t there to buy a hat or a T-shirt, or to talk to the sweet gun toting honey’s, you were there to buy a gun and you weren’t able to.” The man spoke fast but not too fast, like a salesman comfortable with his spiel.

  “If you’re looking for a rifle I can’t help but I have a pistol you might be interested in.”

  “Are you a policeman or connected with the police in any way?”

  “Absolutely not but I’m glad you asked. No one asks that question unless they’re interested.”

  “Alright, show me what you have.”

  The man walked a few steps to the front of the truck, looking for police cruisers as he went. He reached in to where a pistol lay on top of the air filter, picked it up and handed it to Rick. “That’s a Beretta 92 FS, a state of the art gun. It fires 9mm cartridges, I’ll throw in two boxes if you buy the gun. It also comes with an extra magazine.”

  “When was the last time it was fired?”

  “Two weeks ago, at the range. I fired 30 rounds and got mostly bulls eyes. It’s a good gun, the official hand gun of the US Army since 1985.”

  “Is that right? I would have thought the Army would use an American gun.”

  “They did, a Colt .45, but in ’85 they had a competition and Beretta beat Colt and a number of other companies.”

  “Interesting. You know a bit about guns, huh?”

  “I’ve been selling them for a long time, and not always in parking lots.”

  Probably an interesting story behind that but now wasn’t the time to hear it. Rick looked at the gun, “What do you want for it?”

  “$1000,” said the man, without hesitation.

  “I couldn’t afford that.”

  “What’s your offer?”

  “$500,” said Rick, looking the man in the eye, trying to create the illusion that he believed he was offering a fair price.

 
The man shook his head. “No way I could let it go for that.”

  After a little more haggling they settled on $750. Rick pulled a wad of cash from his front pocket and counted off seven hundreds, two twenties, and a ten. He handed it to the man who counted it once more, folded the bills and put them in his front pocket. The man reached into the cab of the truck and came out with an opaque plastic bag. “Here are the slugs and clip, take a look at them and make sure everything is kosher.”

  Rick looked in the bag and then put the Beretta into it. “Nice doing business with you.”

  “Thanks, you too.”

  Rick used a key to open a storage box on the bed of the truck. He put the bag in the box and locked it. In the last few years Rick had made a number of trips to Ensenada. Because of the drug problems in Mexico, or maybe because Mexico is very serious about who can own a firearm, there was often a military check point on the way out of town.

  It was set up so that the cars crawled past a soldier who glanced at the driver and in through the windows to see what the car was carrying. Then he’d either wave the car through or motion it to the side where another soldier would give it a closer look. Twice Rick got pulled over and both times the soldier politely asked if he could look in the car. He then had Rick get out of the car before he searched under the seat. When he found nothing the soldier sent him on his way.

  The odds of getting pulled over in Las Vegas and having a police officer search under the seat were slim to none. But Rick felt better knowing that if one did, his newly acquired unregistered Beretta wouldn’t be there.

  On the way back to the Four Queens Rick tried to remember a movie that had a gun buying scene similar to what he’d just experienced. He knew it was somewhere in his memory banks but he couldn’t pull it up until he was a block from the hotel. Then he saw her, Jodie Foster, “The Brave One,” in a New York City pawn shop unable to buy a gun unless she waited a number of days for the police to run a check.

  She feels she needs a gun immediately as she’s just seen her fiancée shot dead in Central Park. While she’s talking with the pawn broker a tall Oriental man leaves the shop. When Jodie Foster steps out onto the street the man calls to her from the mouth of an alley, and when she walks over, he sells her a hand gun and ammunition.

  Jodie Foster’s character then becomes a vigilante. She shoots a number of people who, if you don’t mind doing an end run around the criminal justice system, deserved it. In the end, with the help of a police detective, played by Terence Howard, she gets the guys who killed her fiancé.

  One thing Rick remembered from the movie was the way Jodie Foster walked. After she started using the gun she developed what was essentially a tough girl walk, but mixed with caution, an understated confidence, a little fear and sadness. Jodie Foster was an excellent actor, Rick thought, but he wasn’t a big fan of “The Brave One,” even though he might be involved with it in a life imitates art situation. He didn’t like that almost the whole movie was shot at night, which made it dark and depressing and, in Rick’s opinion, not a very good movie despite Jodie Foster’s excellent acting.

  Rick had to laugh at himself as he jostled down Las Vegas Boulevard. He enjoyed the movies and had seen his fair share of them but sometimes, if he wasn’t careful, he fell into the film critic’s zone where he’d shoot out opinions like Ebert and Roeper. No worries this time, he thought. No one here to hear me.

  When Rick got back Gloria wasn’t there, still playing poker he presumed. He used the remote to turn on the TV. There was short called “One Minute Black Jack Lesson” on the in house channel. It showed a player with two queens and the announcer/teacher asks should he split them. He answers his own question – no, don’t do it. You already have 20, you’ll probably win with that.

  Seemed like good advice to Rick although he didn’t play blackjack or any other table games except on the rare occasions when he was out with non-poker players who wanted to gamble. He’d even play the slots on those occasions and pretend he was enjoying it.

  Rick got Gloria’s computer and after searching for a minute or two found a site that sold guns and accessories. When he found an ankle holster he liked he paid for it and arranged for it to be mailed to his place.

  It was another two hours before Gloria returned. She flopped onto the bed next to Rick, put her hands over her head, and stretched. “It’s nice to be off that chair and back here. You got a haircut, it looks nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you hungry? Should we order from room service?”

  “Sure.”

  They ordered club sandwiches and French fries and ate them from their laps.

  “I had my first loss today, $140.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “Not if you consider I came back from $600 down. I had a couple of bad beats early on and it was a tough table, a lot of good players.”

  “I thought you tried to avoid tough games.”

  “I should have but there aren’t that many games in the morning. Anyway it was a good lesson. From now on I’m an afternoon and evening player only.”

  “So how did you make your comeback?”

  “I was on the right end of someone else’s bad beat. I had two 9’s wired and caught one more on the flop. There was some raising before the flop and on the flop he bet $50, I raised $50, and he called. The turn was the jack of spades, putting three spades on the board. He went all in for $375. He was representing a flush, of course, but I wasn’t sure if I believed him or not, and I didn’t want to let go of my trips. I figured if he didn’t have it I’d win and if he did I’d still have a chance to catch a full house or the last 9.

  “So I called. He turned over the Ace, King of spades, giving him the nut flush. The dealer turned over the river card, another jack giving me a full house and the pot.”

  “Good for you. It sounds like you got your mojo back at the end of the game.”

  “It seemed like. So what did you do this morning besides get a haircut?”

  “I bought a gun.”

  Gloria raised her eyebrows and held them up when she said, “Really?”

  “Really,” said Rick and told her what happened starting with the barber and the landing at Normandy.

  When he was finished Gloria said, “The gun, do you think you’ll need it?”

  “I hope not, but better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

  “I agree. It’s probably good you got it”

  At 1 pm, after saying goodbye to Gloria and Rick, Fran and Bobby took off for San Diego. They stopped only once, for gas in San Bernardino, and pulled up to Fran’s place five hours and ten minutes after they left Las Vegas. Bobby helped Fran get her bag from the trunk.

  “Thanks,” said Fran, “I can take it from here.”

  “Okay.”

  “What are you going to do with the rest of the evening?”

  “Go home, eat something, take a shower.”

  “You want to come over after that?” said Fran, smiling.

  “Sure, if you want.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be fun.”

  Fran started toward the front door and Bobby got back in his car. Fran turned around and motioned Bobby to roll down the passenger side window. When he did she called out, “Don’t forget to bring your PJ’s.”

  Bobby gave her the thumb’s up and drove away, thinking, she wants me to bring my pajamas? That has to be a positive.

  Rick and Gloria stayed two more days in Las Vegas. They played poker at different casinos and both did well. They saw a show and watched a movie in their room and ate at some nice restaurants. The trip had been fun for both of them but they were ready to get home.

  The next morning they pulled out of the Four Queens at 7 am and got on the 15 south. At 9 am Rick called Jett’s Automotive from the road.

  “Jett’s Automotive.”

  “Hey Jett, this is Rick Mills.”

  “Your car is done man.
Where you been?”

  “I had to tow a car to Las Vegas for my cousin.” Rick was glad for a chance to subtly bring up his cousin because Jett did a lot of work on Ed’s tow trucks.

  “That’s cool. Listen it looks like your car is due for an oil change. It needs an air filter and a cabin filter as well, you want me to do it?”

  “Will you give me the preferred customer rate?”

  “Don’t I always?”

  “Always? That’s a pretty strong word, don’t you think?”

  “Alright then, don’t I usually?”

  “Okay, let’s go with ‘usually’ although ‘sometimes’ might be more accurate.”

  “You want the work done or not?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “It’ll be done in an hour. Drop by whenever you’re ready.”

  “Thanks, Jett. You’re the man!”

  “Glad you think so. In fact that motivates me to extend the preferred customer rates to the $35 a day storage charge that you’ve been racking up. Bye.”

  “Jett, wait!”… but he was gone.

  * * *

  Chapter 15