Michelle sat.
“Something to drink? Water? Sweet tea?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
He shrugged. “Be right back.”
As he headed down a truncated hall, the dog skittered over, sniffing at her ankles with bared teeth and quivering with barely suppressed canine rage.
“Roscoe! Go sit!” the man yelled over his shoulder.
The dog retreated with one last outraged trill, and hopped up onto the recliner.
She heard metal catch on metaclass="underline" a key, sliding into a lock. A door opening. Her mouth was dry. I should’ve taken that water, she thought. She stared at the Remington print framed in battered walnut, a cowboy on a bucking bronco, hung on the opposite wall.
All this place needs is a wagon-wheel lamp, she thought.
The man hobbled back into the living room, a canvas duffle bag on each shoulder, laboring under the weight. He lowered them down onto the shag carpet, the longer bag on his right shoulder landing with a solid thud. Muffled metal.
“Everything’s there,” he said. He leaned over, stiffly, and unzipped the larger bag. “Check it if you want.”
She didn’t want. Not at all. But maybe she was expected to.
She stood. Looked into the bag.
Bubble-wrapped objects. About three feet long. Rifles.
“Four Colt AR-15s, two Bushmasters, six Sig Sauer 226s. Good condition.” He shrugged. Or maybe he was just working out a kink in his shoulder. “I threw in a couple of Colt full auto kits.”
“Oh,” she said. “Great.”
“You need a hand out to the car?”
“I…”
She thought about it. There was something she needed, all right.
“Do you have any revolvers?” she asked. “Any.38 specials?” She smiled. “For me. I’m new in town.”
His name was Terry. He tried to talk her out of a.38. “Wouldn’t you rather have a nice semi-auto? I have a sweet nine-millimeter Beretta you might like. Fits great in a purse.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’d rather have a.38.”
Something small, reliable and that she already knew how to shoot. She’d spent a lot of hours on a gun range with her.38, back in Arcata.
“Well, I do have a Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special. Really nice piece. And clean. I can let you have it for four hundred. That’s a discount.”
She paid him cash for the pistol. He threw in a cheap nylon concealment holster (“So you aren’t carrying it naked”). He never said anything about payment for the rest of the guns. Already taken care of, she had to assume.
Terry insisted on helping her out to the car, wobbling under the weight of the duffle bags, the little dog dancing around his heels.
He slammed the hatchback shut. Took a moment to smooth out his plaid short-sleeved shirt. Like she’d done when she’d stood at his door.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” he said. “You’re a nice change from the usual suspects.”
Fucking Gary.
Her hands gripped the wheel, so tightly that her wrists were aching. His directions had led her somewhere northeast. She had no idea where, what kind of place it was. Just street names that didn’t mean anything. Anonymous broad avenues with beat-up convenience stores, an occasional gas station, a stucco hospital complex. Skinny condos where the faded paint was peeling off the wood siding. A lot of chain-link fencing, graffiti sprayed on beige-coated brick.
It had to be a bad neighborhood, she thought. Because, fucking Gary. She’d bet anything he was sitting back with a scotch-well, maybe not, given his health kick-but she’d bet he was laughing his ass off right now, thinking about the situation he’d put her in. He got off on it.
Why do dogs lick themselves, right? she heard Danny say.
Given that she was using the GPS on her iPhone, Gary probably knew exactly where she was.
“Fuck you, Gary,” she muttered, in case he was listening.
“In four hundred feet, turn left,” her phone said.
She’d turned into a housing tract. Late 1950s, she guessed-smaller ranch-style homes, single story. Run-down, most of them, from what she could see in the dark and the few sputtering streetlights. Dead lawns. for sale signs here and there, bank owned slapped on some of them.
Boarded-up windows. Junked cars.
Abandoned.
“Your destination is on the right.”
A brown stucco house with a darker brown paint trim, a withered oak tree in the front yard and a bug zapper by the door doubling as a porch light.
She pulled over to the curb. Sat there for a moment with the engine running, breathing hard.
Deep, calming breaths, she told herself. Think about what you’re going to say.
Like what, she thought? What could she possibly say? “Hi, I’m here with your guns”?
If she’d been sweaty before, she was drenched now, shivering in the chill of the air conditioner, stomach clenched and roiling.
She turned off the engine, killed the power. In the silence that followed, she could hear faint strains of ranchera music coming from the house, the scrape and chirp of crickets.
It’s a long game, she told herself, Gary’s playing a long game. He doesn’t want to see me dead, not yet. Not so soon.
That wouldn’t be fun for him at all.
She took one last deep breath. Got out of the car. Locked it, put the keys in her purse. Put her hand on the butt of her new revolver, tucked in the concealed holster in her purse, next to her wallet, comb and lipstick. Stupid, she told herself. What good would that gun really do her if she was walking into a house full of the type of people who would buy illegal weapons?
Still, she kept her fingers wrapped around the rubber Pachmayr grip. It felt like muscle and bone, hard beneath a slight yield. You know how to shoot this if you have to, she told herself.
You’re not going to die.
The doorbell didn’t work. She knocked. Rapped three times, the first one tentative. The second two, harder.
The music quieted. She waited.
She didn’t hear footsteps, just the sudden scrape of the deadbolt as it retracted into the door, then the rattle of the chain lock, pulling taut.
“Yes?”
She could see a slice of his face: smooth brown skin, short black hair, a dark eye.
“I have your delivery,” she said.
It was the best she could come up with.
“Delivery?” he asked, in accented English.
“You’re expecting something, right?”
A pause. “Excuse me. One moment.”
The door closed.
She stood there, heart pounding, hand clutching the.38 in her purse, mouth so dry the sides of her throat stuck together as she swallowed.
The chain lock rattled again. This time, the door opened wide.
“Sorry,” he said. “We did not expect you.”
He wasn’t that young. In his thirties, at least. Short, barrel chest, close-cropped hair, round, full cheeks. Not quite baby faced, but close. He wore a green-striped polo shirt and jeans. She could see the blurred blue ink of a tattoo on his neck, disappearing into his shirt collar. The letter L, and a number that she couldn’t make out.
“It’s in the car,” she said.
The man in the green-striped polo shirt and another younger Latino wearing a white undershirt and baggy shorts followed her to the curb.
She popped the hatch. Gestured at the duffle bags. “There,” she said.
The man in the green striped polo shirt stepped up to the bumper while the younger man in the white undershirt waited behind her. Watching her. She could feel it. She relaxed her hand that rested on the edge of her purse, poised above the pistol. Don’t make him nervous, she thought.
The man in the green striped shirt leaned over and unzipped the larger duffle. Took a quick glance. Zipped it up and nodded.
The younger man trotted forward and hoisted the two duffels onto his shoulders, then turned and jogged slowly across the dead lawn to the front door.
She and the man in the green striped shirt stood across from each other. Close enough now that she thought she could make out the number tattooed on his neck, in an elaborate font that reminded her of medieval manuscripts.