“Yeah, you’ll have to make a left. That’s mostly stores on Rock Ledge,” the bartender says. “You’re not looking for a store, are you? Cause this is Sunday, you know.”
“No, it’s not a store,” Colley says.
“There’s houses, too, on Rock Ledge,” the guy with the pinkie rings says. “Tony from Newark used to live on Rock Ledge.”
“Who’s Tony from Newark?” the bartender says.
“Tony from Newark, what do you mean who’s Tony from Newark? Tony from Newark.”
“You mean Tony who lives on First Avenue?”
“Yeah, Tony who lives on First Avenue.”
“You telling me he used to live on Rock Ledge?”
“That’s right, he used to live on Rock Ledge.”
“It’s mostly stores on Rock Ledge,” the bartender says to Colley, and shrugs.
“Well, thanks a lot,” Colley says.
“He don’t know who’s Tony from Newark,” the guy with the pinkie ring says to the girl. The girl lights a cigarette and says nothing. On the juke box, there is a click, a pause, and then Sinatra comes on singing “My Way.” Colley thanks the bartender again and goes outside.
The car starts immediately, he is beginning to like this sweet little wagon. His mother always tells him he has expensive taste, and she is right. She is not right about too many things, his mother, but she is certainly right about his taste. There is nothing he would like better than to live in the kind of house he stole the clothes and the car from, swim in a pool with a blonde in a white string bikini, take her to the Copa afterwards, show her off. Drive up in this sweet little wagon, doorman’ll say, “Good evening, Mr. Donato,” give the guy a five-dollar tip, go inside and show off the blonde. Wear a big diamond on his pinkie, like the one the guy in the bar was wearing just now. Flash it around. Colley doesn’t care much about clothes, but jewlery, yeah, and good food, and expensive liquor, yeah, he could enjoy that kind of life, all right. Maybe when this is all over, when the heat cools about the cop, he will do a big one someplace. Maybe go West, knock over a bank in a hick town out there. Not Texas, those Texas Rangers are cocksuckers. But someplace out there. Some hick town. Maybe in Kansas someplace. Walk in, shove the piece in the teller’s face, you probably could knock over one of those hick banks with a cap pistol. Cops out there wouldn’t be like New York cops, fuckin bastards. Cops out there’d be sitting with their feet up on the desk, fanning themselves with a cardboard fan. The phone rings, somebody tells them the bank’s just been held up. “Yeah?” the cop says. He’s probably a sheriff. “Yeah?” he says, and swings his feet off the desk, and looks around for somebody he can make a deputy — was that the second stop light just then, or the third? Colley’s thinking about holding up a fuckin bank, and he’s losing track of the stop lights. He hopes it was only the second one. There’s another one up ahead, and if that’s where he’s supposed to turn, it’ll say Main Street.
He peers through the windshield, sees the street sign on the comer — it’s Main, all right. He makes the right turn, and starts counting stop lights again. At the second light he makes another right turn and that’s Pointer Street, just like the bartender said. Four more blocks to Rock Ledge, there it is, there’s a Full Stop sign on the comer. He brakes the automobile, he looks in both directions, he is being a perfect little driver in this sweet little wagon, and he is beginning to feel as cheerful as a whore on payday because he is about to find Richard’s Gun Rack, and he is about to break into it and steal himself a deadly weapon. A death machine. Maybe a P-38 like the one he emptied into the dog. Or maybe a .45 automatic, he likes that gun, too.
He discovers in a minute that he’s heading in the wrong direction. The number on the corner was 125 and the numbers are moving up instead of down, he has reached 137 before he discovers he’s made a mistake. Not his mistake, actually, he’s only following the bartender’s directions, it’s the bartender who made the mistake. He drives to the next corner, the streets are almost empty even though it’s only eight o’clock by the dashboard clock, eight o’clock on a Sunday night in a hick town in New Jersey, there probably won’t even be an alarm system at Richard’s Gun Rack. The light on the comer is red, he waits it out, he is doing everything by the book. He is just a law-abiding New Jersey resident out for a drive in his brown Mercedes-Benz, cruising Rock Ledge Road in search of an open pizzeria. He makes a right turn, circles the block, comes down to Rock Ledge again, and makes a left. The numbers are dwindling now, 118 and 116 and 114, he passes the comer, he is in the 90 block now and then the 80 block and finally he comes into the 70 block.
76 Rock Ledge Road is in the middle of the block.
GUNS the sign says.
It is a big white sign over the entire front of the shop.
GUNS.
There are two plate-glass windows flanking the entrance door of the shop, and there is nothing on either of these windows but the single word GUNS again, lettered in gold leaf on each window. There is nothing about this being Richard’s Gun Rack. Guns are what the man is selling and that’s what it says on the big white sign in black letters, and that’s what it says in gold leaf on each of the plate-glass windows: GUNS.
Colley has come to the right place.
He continues on past the place, though, because if the cops in this hick town stumble onto the hot Mercedes, he wants them to find it outside a paint store or a beauty parlor and not outside the place he is in. He parks the car in the 60 block, in front of a store selling radios and phonographs and television sets and stereo equipment. The television set is going in the front window. Owner probably left it on over the weekend because there are millions of people milling over the sidewalks here in this thriving little metropolis. A night baseball game is on. It is the Mets and some other team, Colley can’t make out the uniform. He watches for a minute, and then starts back toward the gun shop.
The sidewalks are deserted.
There are rifles in both windows of the shop, with cartridges spread all around them as if they were gold coins spilling from a pirate’s chest. Colley searches the plate glass for the metallic strips that will tell him the place is wired. He cannot find any, nor are there any burglar-alarm stickers on the windows. He wishes he knew more about burglar alarms. He knows guys can tell you exactly what kind of alarm is in a place just by taking one look at any exposed wire. Some systems, it doesn’t matter if there are exposed wires hanging all over the outside walls, because if you cut a wire the alarm goes off anyway. But he doesn’t see any strips on the windows here, and as he circles the building, going through the alley on the side of the store and around to the back, he can’t see any wires or bells or anything that would indicate the place has an alarm system. He can’t believe it, a gun shop that isn’t wired. There’s a door on the back of the shop, glass panels in the upper half of it, a deadbolt showing on the outside. That’s in case anybody smashes the glass, they can’t simply reach in and turn a bolt and open the door. This kind of lock, you need a key to open it even from the inside. No metallic strips on the glass here, either. Is it really possible?
He tries a flatfooted kick at the deadbolt, hoping to spring the lock, but the door doesn’t budge an inch. This is what he hates about this kind of shit. When you’re doing a robbery, you just walk in the front door and throw a gun on the man, and that’s it. Here you have to go fooling around with locks and trying to break into a goddamn place, anybody’d go into burglary has to be out of his mind. He doesn’t know what to do. If he breaks the glass panels, he won’t be able to unlock the door because of the deadbolt. And even if he breaks out all the glass and the wooden frame, the opening will still be too small for him to crawl through. There are guns inside this fuckin shop, he can taste them.