Truett went down the counter and found a box. There was a small flat pistol inside. Paul had seen something like it on a desk once and it had turned out to be a cigarette lighter.
“I recommend these for cash-register drawers. It’s only a twenty-five caliber auto, but hollow-point loads are your answer and you’ve got to figure you’d only use it at point-blank range anyway. You’d still have to hit a vital spot to kill a man but a hollow-point would chew him up pretty badly wherever it hit him.” Truett talked dispassionately and it was possible his expertise about anatomical damage came from articles in gun periodicals: he didn’t look as if he had ever shot a human being. But then I don’t suppose I do either.
“They say a real hard case would rather get drilled by a three fifty-seven magnum than by one of these with hollow-points. A big gun’s likely to shoot straight through you and leave a clean hole. One of these doesn’t pack enough power to go all the way through cartilage. You get one of these little bullets stuck in the middle of you and you’re liable to die from the sepsis unless you get it removed and cleaned out by a good surgeon. A man who knows his guns will respect one of these when he finds it aimed at him.”
Truett set the .25 toy beside the revolver and found boxes of ammunition. “Soft-nose hollow-points. They used to call them dum-dums — know why? They were originally made in a town in India called Dum-Dum. These bullets literally explode inside the body.”
“I’ll want a few more boxes. For practice. My brother and I ought to go out and get the feel of these guns, I think. If we ever have to use them we’d better be familiar with them.”
“That’s always a good idea. Whereabouts is your shop?”
He had to think quickly. He didn’t know Chicago yet; he’d only just arrived. He remembered the place where he’d bought the secondhand car: the row of car dealers and store-fronts. “Along Western Avenue,” he said. “Just south of the Evanston line.”
“I get a lot of customers like you. Haven’t been in Illinois long enough to qualify for a firearm owner’s identification card, so they come across the line here into Wisconsin. Silly damned law — anybody at all can get the permit but it’s got that idiotic residency requirement. But I can’t complain — it’s been good for my business up here. Anyhow there’s half a million licensed handguns in Chicago. Who do they think they’re kidding?” Truett rummaged in the drawer and lifted out several boxes of cartridges. “If you know anybody in business on the North Side you might inquire about getting a guest membership at the Lincoln Park Gun Club. That’s on Lake Shore Drive not far from your shop.”
“Thanks. I’ll ask around.”
The .38 Centennial was a perfect pocket gun, he thought; it was small and it was clean with no jagged protuberances to catch on cloth. The tiny flat automatic could be hidden nearly anywhere — ideal for emergency reinforcement. It was a refinement that had occured to him recently: what if the gun failed? He had to have a second gun.
“Anything else I can help you with?”
“No thanks. Wrap them up.”
2
He had to fill out forms: Federal registration of the two guns. He’d anticipated it and the driver’s license he showed Truett wasn’t his own. It was a New Jersey license that had been among his late brother-in-law’s effects and the three-year license still had two months to go before its expiration. Anyone who traced either of the guns to Robert Neuser of Piermont Road in Tenafly would find a dead end.
He carried the parcel out to his three-year-old Pontiac and placed it on the seat beside the gun-cleaning kit he’d brought with him from New York. He turned the key and backed out of the parking space; it was starting to rain.
It was one of the small towns that had been by-passed by the new Interstate expressways, abandoned by travelers and left to wither: the motels needed paint and announced their vacancies hopelessly; a roadside diner had been boarded up.
It was a warm day for winter but the leafless trees were bleak against grey skies. Christmas buntings sagged across the street. He drove through the center of town and followed the patched road east. It two-laned across prairie farms and brought him at four o’clock to a ramp that merged into the southbound Interstate. He was across the line into Illinois in fifteen minutes’ time and the rush-hour headlights swarmed in the opposite lanes by the time he crossed the suburb boundary between Lincolnwood and Chicago, wipers batting away the drizzle. He was trying to forget the things that had made him shriek.
He left the rain behind at the end of the expressway and drove aimlessly, not quite sure where he was until he passed the Water Tower and the John Hancock skyscraper and the Continental Plaza where he’d stayed his first two nights in Chicago; he made a turn and went along some one-way street to Lake Shore Drive and rolled south with the high-rises on his right. But when he reached the turn-off for his apartment building he went on by; he didn’t want to go home yet. He drove past the lights of the Loop. It was time to have his first look at the South Side.
He drove slowly and impatient cars flashed past him in the outside lanes. There were flat patches of darkness between him and the city. Swamps? Railroad yards? Parks? In the night he couldn’t tell. He stopped at a traffic light and when it changed he made a right turn on Balbo and found himself in the Loop: he’d left the Drive too soon. He jigged left and found himself in a tangle of dead ends butting against the railway switching yards.
On impulse he parked in a side street. It was a district of daytime commerce: everything was shut down and there were few lights. No one walked the curbs.
He unwrapped the parcel and loaded the guns. The Centennial went into his topcoat pocket; the flat .25 automatic into his hip pocket, no bigger nor heavier than a wallet. He put the cleaning kit and the boxes of ammunition under the front seat and locked the car when he got out.
The old rage simmered in him. At street corners he stopped and studied the signs, trying to memorize the intersections: he wanted to learn the city. Holden, Plymouth, Federal, LaSalle. Near the intersection of Michigan and Roosevelt he saw a long covered pedestrian bridge across the rail yards, high in the air and walled with glass. Tall covered stairs at either end gave access to it: a good place for a trap, he thought. He watched for ten minutes. If an innocent entered the trap would a predator follow? The interior of the bridge was visible from the street but the lighting was dim and there were deep shadows between overhead lamps where two or three of them had burned out: the dark places where they liked to accost a mark. At the end of the ten minutes a man in working clothes entered the western staircase and Paul watched him appear at the top and make his long pilgrimage across the bridge but nothing interrupted the solitary journey and afterward Paul moved on, the damp wind biting his ears.
Esther... Carol...
By eight he was back in the car driving south and the quality of the city changed with each block until he was in the ghetto. Funeral Home. Pool Hall. Social Club. Liquors. Cut-Rate Discount. Jesus Saves. He turned off the boulevard and rolled along a residential street parallel to it: three-story tenements, wooden fire-escape stairs hanging from their walls. Young dark people lounged under the street lamps and stared at his car as he crept past. Come on. Come at me. But they only watched, their insolence muted by motionlessness, and he had to drive on.