David Levien - Where the dead lay

“Sure, Catcher,” Behr said, already feeling like a fool, “I’ll give it a try.”

“All right,” Gustus said loudly when everything had been organized and the shooters had been divided into brackets. “Fire as fast as you want, as much as you want. Just drop the red plate last and beat the guy next to you or you’re eliminated. Fifty-buck kicker to the winner.” There were a few yelps of anticipation at the money prize.

Behr stood at the line, set to go. Standing a few positions down the line was his opponent, a large pale kid whose name tag read “Weltz.”

“Load and make ready,” Gustus called out, and Behr felt an instantaneous surge of adrenaline race through him. Weltz racked the slide on his service auto and kept the muzzle pointed down-range. Behr made his preparations as well. In the ensuing pause he felt his heart pound and moisture leap to his palms. But this was just a taste of what happened to the heart and the senses if a weapon needed to be used in a tactical situation. The physical and psychological changes were many. Hearing can shut down. Time slows. The urge to spray and pray sets in, and fine motor skills disappear as ancient fight-or-flight reflexes rush to the surface. Near and peripheral vision can deteriorate, and worse, the eyes tend to fix on the target. This is a problem because the human eye can only focus on one plane at a time, and that meant that if the target was sharp, the front sight would be blurry, leaving the shooter little chance of hitting said target. The only consolation is that the other guy is probably going through it all too, Behr thought, and you hope he hasn’t trained as much or as well as you have.

“Come on, Weltz, you got him,” Behr heard from over his shoulder. “Watch out if you win, this guy’s sensitive.” It was Dominic, making him feel nice and welcome.

“Commence fire,” shouted Gustus.

Behr raised the Bulldog and pulled the trigger. The first plate went down. When shooting for speed, rhythm was the key. Behr strived for tempo over rapidity, and the second plate went down. He heard staccato fire next to him as Weltz banged away. If all the shots were hits it would be over, so Behr assumed there were some misses thrown in. Behr broke his pattern as he skipped the middle red plate, but tried to regain the timing and took the next two in succession. He made a loop with his gun that felt exaggerated, but was actually very small, as he moved for the center red plate and fired, emptying his gun and dropping it. Silence fell as both of them were done. Behr looked over and saw all of Weltz’s plates were down.

“Behr!” he heard Gustus yell from behind them. A groan went up among the cops. Behr dumped his brass and stepped back off the line.

“Fucking thing’s firing low,” Weltz muttered of his weapon. “Put two into the rail.”

Gustus pulled two cords attached to the target racks and the steel plates popped back up. The next pair of shooters took their places.

It continued that way for half an hour, everyone getting his turn, shooters moving on, others getting eliminated. No one talked to Behr as he kept winning. The second guy he flat-out beat. The third had a misfire and had to work his slide to chamber a new round, and by then it was over. Dominic was winning, too. The kid was good. His tempo sounded like a Japanese drummer’s. He hunched forward over his sights, using his weight to keep the muzzle stable, and his aim was sure. Behr had a feeling where it was going, and that’s where it went. He and Dominic lined up against each other for the final.

“You want to borrow a real gun?” Dominic asked, sliding shells into the magazine of his Wilson Combat. 45. The gun probably cost three grand, almost ten times what Behr’s did.

“It’s the Indian, not the arrow,” Behr said, arousing some catcalls of mockery, all the while trying not to think about how good he’d feel if he beat him.

Gustus called out the commands, and they made ready and began. By now his adrenaline had leveled and he was in a pocket of solid concentration. It was Behr’s best round of the day. He was pretty sure he was ahead when he swung back for the red plate that would end it. Maybe he wanted to win too badly and was pushing too much, but he pulled the trigger while the gun was still on the way up, and the round hit the base of the last plate, perhaps two inches too low to knock it over. His five-shot was empty. He was dumping brass when he heard Dominic finish and looked over to see the cop with his left fist raised in the air.

“Good run, Behr,” Dominic said. “Hey, Catcher, when do the seniors shoot? He might feel more comfortable… Maybe he and Pomeroy can come down and do teams.”

The other cops laughed. Behr swallowed it, packed his gear, shook Gustus’s hand, and left.

“See you again,” Gustus said. “Don’t forget to get the lead out.”

Behr stood in the restroom, washing the gunpowder residue from his hands and looking at himself in the mirror. He considered whether the loser’s eyes he stared into were the result of the shooting match, or a whole lot more. Then he wondered why Dominic had gone and mentioned Pomeroy.

Time to open for business. This is not a drill.” That’s what Dad had said. Their latest pieces of work had done what they were supposed to, and houses were shuttered or shutting down all over town. Now it was time for them to start earning as their test case had proved they could. Dean was to meet Knute near one of the first Latin houses they’d taken, where they were going to oversee a Spanish kid starting up and working a new shake. But Dean was running late. In fact, he was doing something stupid and pathetic. The stupid part was that he was sitting in his car drinking, the pathetic part where he was, which was in front of her building. Her old building, anyway, the last place he’d seen her. She was gone now. Gone somewhere, into the wind. He didn’t know if he just wanted to see her old door or was hoping she would swing by for something she forgot… Shit, he didn’t know what he was doing. He just knew he missed her and needed to talk to her. He needed that bad. She just understood. He tasted the whiskey again. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to finish the pint that afternoon, after lunch, when he’d opened this, his second of the day, but now he knew he was going to. He had fifteen, twenty more minutes to wait there before Knute would be good and pissed and everyone started calling him on his cell. He settled in and drank. Maybe he’d get lucky

…

He was out there, that son of a gun. Setting out in his car. Just setting out there-not in the parking lot like he used to do-but across the street where he could still see real good. He was out there like some kind of stalker. Ezra Blanchard let his curtains fall shut and walked back and forth around his living room. It wasn’t a trip that took long, cramped as it was, between the sofa, his car magazines, and the hubcaps he’d been collecting for the last little while. He wasn’t sure if he’d sell them or keep them. If he shined them up, maybe rechromed them, they’d look pretty sharp hanging up in three rows of six. He didn’t bother picking up junk. He had wheels for an old Stingray Corvette, a Duster, and an Olds 442 in the collection. But here he was, like a prisoner in his own place, because he had no interest in talking to that boy out across the way. He oughta call the cops, is what Ezra thought. No, he thought, not the cops. He oughta call his nephew Andre to come over and open a big, tall can of whup-ass on that white boy. But Andre was over in Iraq. No, he had another idea: Where’d he put that card…?

Behr was sitting at his kitchen table running a barrel mop soaked in Hoppe’s No. 9 up and down the spout and through each of the cylinders of his gun. The smell of the solvent was both caustic and sweet, and it put him in mind of responsibility. Every time he shot, he cleaned his gun immediately. It was a habit, like breathing. A dirty gun was one you couldn’t count on, one that could fail you. After he’d removed the fouling, he started running a patch puller through the barrel, until the patches came out bright and white. When he finished, he wiped down the frame and handle and, done with the target ammo, filled the gun with the Silvertip hollow points. Then his phone rang.