He comes through the alley again, looking for a window, and he finds a small one high up on the wall, probably a bathroom window. Loo, she called it. I’m looking for the loo. If he can open that window, he can get inside the shop. He goes around back again to where he saw a garbage can alongside the door, and he carries the can into the alley with him and stands on it, and tries to open the window. He can see the street at the end of the alley. A single lamppost illuminates the sidewalk, but the alley itself is in darkness. There is no traffic on the street. In the darkness, in the silence, he works on the window, trying to raise it. He wishes he had a screwdriver or a knife, but he has neither. There are probably tools in the trunk of the Mercedes, he should have thought of that, but he didn’t know he was going to have to open a window. He’s half thinking of forgetting the whole thing. But there are guns inside there.
He climbs down off the garbage can, and then takes the lid off, and turns the garbage can upside down, and climbs onto it again. There is garbage all over the alley floor now, but it’s not rotten food, it’s clean garbage — little cardboard boxes that cartridges come in, and newspapers and gun-company brochures, crap like that. Colley plans to smash the window with the lid of the garbage can. He will smash the upper pane of glass just above the inside latch, and then he will reach in and unlatch it. He is afraid that maybe the place is wired, after all, maybe with one of those new sonic alarms where they put microphones around and if a door or a window is opened or anything is smashed, whoever’s listening picks up the noise and calls the police. He is afraid that when he smashes the window a bell will go off. He is also afraid that when he smashes the window he will get glass splinters in his eyes.
But there are guns inside there.
He brings back the lid of the garbage can. He is holding it like a shield, and he smashes it flat against the glass and the glass shatters, making a racket he is sure they can hear all the way in the Bronx. There is no bell, only the sound of the glass shattering, but his heart begins to beat wildly anyway. He waits in the darkness. He is sure someone has heard the breaking glass. He is sure someone will yell Hey, what are you doing there? “There’s houses, too, on Rock Ledge,” the guy with the pinkie ring said back there in the bar. Colley waits. A shard of glass falls from the window frame and shatters on the alley floor. It sounds like a cannon going off in church. He waits and listens. Nothing. He reaches in and turns the latch. He opens the window, crawls in over the sill, and comes through the bathroom into the shop.
There are guns everywhere.
He has never seen so many guns in his life. There are rifles and shotguns in racks on three walls of the shop, and there are handguns in cases along two of the walls and also in a center case that has an aisle on either side of it. Light from the lamppost outside splashes through the two plate-glass windows, glinting on blued steel barrels and walnut stocks. On both plate-glass windows, Colley sees the word GUNS backward. He reads it as SNUG, and he smiles. Yes. Yes, he feels snug and cozy inside this shop, he could stay in this shop forever. The shotguns and rifles in the wall racks stand like soldiers at attention as Colley inspects the revolvers and automatic pistols in the cases. There are Remingtons on the wall, and Springfields, and rifles and shotguns he cannot immediately place. But he knows each and every handgun in the cases.
He can never remember the names of all the seven dwarfs, but he knows all these guns by name. Silently, he rolls the names on his tongue. The names echo sonorously inside his head. Lovingly, like a poet reading his own work, he recites the names in silent reverence — Colt and Llama; Bernadelli; Smith & Wesson, Crosman; Ruger and Savage; Steyr & Derringer; Hi-Standard; Iver Johnson. He knows the models, he loves those names, too — the Buntline Special and the Buntline Scout, the Commander and the Agent, the Chiefs Special and the Centennial Airweight, the S & W Terrier and the Sidewinder, the Trailsman and the Python. There is a Walther P-38 in one of the cases, identical to the one he used to kill the dog, and there is a .357 Magnum — Jesus, it is a monster gun. He would be afraid to hold that gun in his hand, afraid it might go off accidentally.
He takes his time deciding which gun or guns he will finally choose. He is like a child in a toy shop on Christmas Eve, and his father has said to him he can have any toy in the shop. He can hardly remember his father, he wonders why he thinks of his father at this moment. But he does feel childlike here in the midst of all these pistols of varying sizes. The cases are locked. With the stock of a rifle he smashes the glass on the case in the center, and then reaches into it and begins trying various pistols for grip and heft. He has carried many of these guns in the past, but some of them are new to him, and he examines each with care and discernment. Here is the pistol he shot the cop with last night, he does not want that hoodoo jinx of a gun again. And there’s the gun Jocko was using, and there’s the .32-caliber Smith & Wesson that Colley left in the glove compartment of the pickup truck. He passes a boxed pair of Number 4 Derringers, be a nice gun for Jeanine, she could tuck it in her G-string, fire off a shot with every bump and grind. He wonders where she is. Fuck her, he thinks.
He keeps coming back to the Magnum.
It is some gun, bigger than any of the others in the case — well, bigger than any of the real guns. Some of the target pistols and early Western reproductions have longer barrels, but the Magnum, a Ruger Blackhawk, has got to be what — ten or eleven inches overall length? Has to be at least a six-inch barrel on that weapon, has to be.
He is afraid of picking up the gun. He guesses it isn’t loaded, but he has never held such a huge weapon in his hand, and he’s fearful of it. He moves down the case to the Walther, and he picks it up, the heft is familiar, he knows this gun, it saved his life this afternoon when that fuckin hound was chewing on his arm. The arm feels pretty good now, he is beginning to think that maybe he won’t die of rabies, after all, even though the doctor told him it would take forty days for the first symptoms to appear. He has already forgotten what the first symptoms will be. Doc, Dopey, Sleepy, Happy, Droopy, Dumpy and Doc, he thinks and bursts out laughing. He is beginning to feel very giddy and silly here inside the gun shop with the light shining through from the lamppost outside. He doesn’t think he wants another Walther, maybe he’ll take the Government Model Colt. But he keeps drifting back to the Magnum.
That is some big gun.
He picks it up. Blackhawk is some name for a gun. It sounds like an Indian. His hand is trembling as he picks it up. It’s a heavy gun, it weighs a little more than two pounds. It’s got a walnut grip with an emblem on it just behind the trigger, looks like a bird in flight, must be the Ruger trademark. He hefts the gun. He rolls out the cylinder to make sure it is not loaded. Then he rolls the cylinder into the gun again, and pulls back the hammer with his thumb, and squeezes the trigger.
Click.
It is as if he turns on a red light. He squeezes the trigger, and he hears the click and the red light goes on. It takes him a second to realize he has not caused the sudden red illumination, it is not his squeezing the trigger that makes the light go on. The light is coming through the plate-glass windows of the shop. The light is red, the light is flashing, the light is the dome light on top of a state trooper’s car.