Эд Макбейн - Guns

It was just like all the newsreel movies Colley had ever seen on television, with bad lighting, most of the scene dark except for the area right near the lights, camera jogging and bouncing, reporter explaining what had happened earlier and hoping the audience would be able to reconstruct the action. This time Colley had no trouble at all reconstructing the action; Colley had been part of the action. The reporter finished by saying the second cop had been taken to Fordham Hospital. Then he smiled and said, “What’s the weather for tomorrow, Frank?”

Colley got up and turned off the set just as the weatherman appeared in front of his map. He went back to the sofa then, picked up his drink, drained the glass, and set it down on the coffee table.

“Now what?” Jeanine said.

“I don’t know what.”

“He’s dead, you killed a cop.”

“I ain’t so sure I’m the one who killed him,” Colley said.

“You just heard...”

“It could’ve been Jocko. It could’ve been the one he shot.”

“What difference does it make?” Jeanine said. “You were in there together, you’re accomplices...”

“All right.”

“...you killed a man!”

“All right, I said!”

“Great,” Jeanine said.

“I want another drink,” he said, and went out into the kitchen. As he mixed the drink he thought what a lousy break it was, the cop dying. He was beginning to convince himself the cop had really fired first, that if only the cop had played it cool, if only everybody had kept their heads inside the store there, the cop would still be alive. As he took ice cubes from where they were melting in the tray, he became aware of how hot the apartment was. He’d been so busy carrying Jocko in, and then watching the news, he hadn’t had time to concentrate on anything else. But now he felt the heat, and felt the bloodstained clothing sticking to his flesh, and called from the kitchen, “What’s the matter with the air conditioner?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Whyn’t you turn it on?” he said.

“What for?”

“Cause it’s hot as hell in here.”

“I don’t feel hot,” she said, and he remembered Jocko telling him how much she liked the heat, how she’d been born in Florida someplace — where had he said? He went back into the living room and said, “Where you from in Florida?”

“Fort Myers.”

“Yeah, Fort Myers, that’s what Jocko said. You like it when it’s suffocating like this, huh?”

“Right, let’s talk about the weather,” she said. “We just heard the cop is dead...”

“Yeah, that’s a lousy break,” Colley said.

“But let’s talk about the weather, okay? You think it’s going to rain tomorrow? Maybe if it rains the cops won’t come looking for you.”

“They probably won’t come looking for us anyway,” Colley said. “I doubt the old man will finger us.” He drank from his glass, nodded thoughtfully, and then said, “He was scared, you know. When Jocko threw down on him. He might figure if he fingers us, we’ll go back and hurt him.”

“He might also figure you won’t be able to go back and hurt him,” Jeanine said.

“What do you mean?”

“He might figure you’ll be in jail a long, long time.”

“Well, you always get out of jail, you know.”

“They bust Jocko for this one, it’s his third offense. They’ll throw away the key.”

“Yeah. But, you see, the old man don’t know that. The old man in the liquor store. He don’t know us from a hole in the wall. So he’ll be afraid to finger us, you see.”

“You hope,” Jeanine said.

“Well, sure, I hope. I mean, who the hell can say for sure what anybody’ll do nowadays? Who can figure that cop starting to shoot there in the liquor store? Comes running at me holding out his badge and shooting before he hardly has the words out of his mouth.”

“What words?”

“He yells ‘Police officers!’ and starts shooting.”

They were silent for several moments, drinking. Outside, another train roared past. The windows were wide open, but not a breeze came through into the apartment. Colley debated asking her again to turn on the air conditioner. Instead he finished his drink, sucked on one of the ice cubes for a moment, and then said, “You mind if I fix myself another one of these?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“You want another one?”

“Just freshen this a little,” she said, and handed him her glass.

He carried both glasses out into the kitchen. The Scotch bottle was almost empty. He poured some of what was left into Jeanine’s glass and the remainder in his, and then he added a little water to both glasses and carried them back into the living room.

“What it is,” he said, handing Jeanine her glass, “you get lots of cops, they’re trigger-happy. They’ll shoot little kids carrying water pistols, you know that? Not that we were carrying water pistols,” he said, and laughed, and then took a long swallow of the drink. The booze was beginning to reach him. This was his third, and he’d poured all of them with a heavy hand, just the way he’d have poured them if the job had gone off okay. Always drank after a job, man had to celebrate, didn’t he? This one hadn’t come off, but it was the first one that hadn’t since they’d been working together, so what the hell, have a little drink anyway. He was beginning to feel a little hazy, and very comfortable and cozy here in the living room. Safe. He was beginning to feel safe.

“Thing I’m worried about...” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Is I hope we won’t need a doctor for him.”

“I don’t think we’ll need a doctor.”

“You know anybody?”

“No.”

“Who’d come, I mean. If we needed him.”

“I don’t know anybody.”

“So what do we do if he starts bleeding again?”

“I don’t know. I think he’ll be okay, though. He’s a strong guy”

“Oh, yeah, he’s strong, all right,” she said. “Take more’n bullet to kill old Jocko. Take a stake in his heart, you want to know,” she said, and laughed, and then sobered immediately and glanced past Colley toward the hallway, as though afraid the laughter might have disturbed Jocko.

“How long you been married?” Colley asked.

“Three years.”

“You were a stripper when you met him, huh?”

“No, who told you that?”

“Jocko said you used to be a stripper.”

“Yeah, but that was before I met him. I haven’t been stripping for seven, eight years now. This is August, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, August.”

“I quit stripping eight years ago November.”

“I didn’t realize that.”

“Yeah, I’ve been out of it a long time.”

“How come you quit?”

“Getting old, sonny,” she said, and smiled.

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

“How old do you think I am?”

“Thirty-two, thirty-three.”

“Come on,” she said.

“Okay, thirty-seven, okay?”

“I’m forty-four,” she said. “I was thirty-six when I quit. Girl gets to be thirty-six, even if she takes good care of herself, she starts looking it, you know what I mean? Starts getting a little flabby.”

“You don’t look flabby to me,” Colley said.

“Thanks. Guys coming to strip joints, they don’t want to look at somebody who’s over the hill, they want to see firm young bodies.”

“You got a great body,” Colley said.

“Thanks.”

“I mean it.”

“I said thanks. Also, I was getting static from my husband. Not Jocko, this was my first husband. He said it was wrong what I was doing, shaking my ass and getting guys all hot and bothered. He turned out to be a junkie with a habit long as Southern California, but he was always bugging me about being a stripper, can you imagine? Those were the days, all right,” she said, and rolled her eyes and sighed.