Эд Макбейн - Guns

He soaped his crotch and the hair on his chest and under his arms and remembered that when he was in prison, first thing anybody soaped when they got in the shower was their crotch. Not that he looked. Guy in prison saw you looking, he figured you were ready to be turned out as his punk, next thing you knew he was making a heavy play for you. This was nice soap, it smelled, nice, he guessed it was Jeanine’s. Big guy like Jocko wouldn’t use sweet-smelling soap like this, pecker sure came as a surprise, though. He wondered if Jeanine had seen him looking at Jocko’s pecker. He didn’t want her to think he was, you know, looking at it. Nothing wrong with a little curiosity, though. Guy’s sitting there, nothing wrong with checking him out, see how you shape up in the world. Nothing wrong with using Jeanine’s soap, either. Besides, it was the only soap here in the bathroom, so what the hell. So he’d smell like a bed of roses, so what?

There was a guy in prison, his name was Kruger, he was as big as Jocko. They all called him the Kraut, he had a scar on his cheek, they said he’d been in the German army during World War II, before coming to New York, where he got busted. What he got busted for, he took a thirteen-year-old girl up to a hotel room, burned her with cigarettes, raped her, broke both arms and legs, dislocated her jaw, blackened her eyes, knocked out seven of her teeth. He left her for dead, she sure as hell looked dead. But the girl was still alive, and she identified him by name, the stupid bastard had given her his real name when he’d picked her up in Central Park. Why she’d gone up to that hotel with him was anybody’s guess, guy old enough to be her father, take one look at him you had to know he was a mean bastard. First time Colley saw him in prison...

Listen, how’d we get on this? he thought. Listen, let’s get off this, okay? You start thinking about that fuckin Kruger, you’ll take the nice fine edge off this fuckin high, who the hell wants to think about that bastard? Standing in the yard there, smoking his cigarette. Standing there. Cool gray eyes, that scar on his face. He turned his eyes to Colley, and he grinned, and a chill went up Colley’s spine. He came over then, and stuck out his hand, and Colley shrank away from him, terrified, and he grabbed Colley’s hand in his own and squeezed it, squeezed it so hard it felt like he was going to break all the bones in it, and he kept grinning all the time, grinning.

In the shower now, Colley shivered. The water was hot, the water was pouring down on him in a steady sobering hot stream, but he shivered thinking of Kruger. He hadn’t known what Kruger wanted from him then, and he still didn’t know. It wasn’t sex, Kruger had his steady punk, a slender blond kid who’d been busted for pushing dope and who Kruger had turned out two days after the kid drove up. So it wasn’t sex, he didn’t want sex from Colley, Colley didn’t know what the hell he wanted. Followed him around all over the joint. Colley’d get in the shower, he’d check six ways from tomorrow to make sure the Kraut wasn’t anywhere around. Then, minute he turned on the water and started soaping himself, the Kraut would suddenly appear, grinning, and he’d step behind Colley and grab his ass in both hands, and squeeze the cheeks so hard Colley thought he would faint from the pain. Rotten son of a bitch bastard! Three and a half years in prison, and the Kraut dogging him day and night, hurting him. Just hurting him for the sheer fuckin pleasure of it. Like Jocko, he supposed. Like Jocko putting those black-and-blue marks all over Jeanine, what the hell was wrong with a man like that? He thought of Jeanine. He thought of Jeanine lifting the T-shirt up over her breasts. He thought of her stripping for a roomful of men. He soaped himself and thought of her.

There was a knock on the bathroom door, he almost didn’t hear it over the sound of the water. His hand stopped.

“Yeah?” he said.

“You okay in there?” Jeanine said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“All right to come in? I’ve got some clothes for you.”

“What?”

“You can’t leave here in your own clothes, all that blood on them.”

“Oh, sure. Come on in.”

The door opened. The shower curtain billowed in toward him, the plastic sticking to his legs. The water was drumming against his groin, his prick was standing up stiff with the water drilling it and the soap running off him in long white streams.

“I’ll put them here on the counter,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“I hope the pants fit you.”

“Yeah,” he said. He heard the door opening and closing again. The room was full of steam now, he was beginning to tremble from the steady pressure of the water. Abruptly, he turned off the shower, and then pushed the curtain back on the rod, and stepped out of the tub.

He looked down at himself. He looked around the room. He found a clean towel and dried himself, and then found the clothes she’d brought him, Jocko’s brother’s clothes, he guessed. There was no underwear or socks, only a pair of pants and what looked like an old sweater. Just the thing he needed on a hot August night, a ratty old sweater. He put on the pants without any underwear, and debated putting on the bloodstained shirt again, but decided in favor of the sweater, no matter how damn hot it was. He still had to go down in the street, and all he needed was some cop stopping to ask about the blood on his shirt. There was only a little blood on one of his socks, so he put on the socks and shoes, and then he combed his hair with a comb he found on the countertop, lots of long blond hair tangled in it, probably Jeanine’s. He lifted the gun from the toilet tank and put it in his pocket. He pulled back his shoulders and opened the bathroom door.

Jeanine was standing in the doorway to the bedroom.

“He’s still out,” she said.

“Yeah,” Colley said. “Listen, I’m gonna split now. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

She walked him to the front door. He could hear the clock ticking. “Be careful,” she said, and unlocked the door for him.

“Goodnight,” he said.

He stepped into the hallway. The door closed behind him. He heard her fastening all the locks again. He looked at his watch as he went down the hallway to the elevator. It was close to midnight, another day. He rang for the elevator and stood watching the indicator bar as the elevator crept up the shaft, these goddamn projects never put in quality merchandise.

When he reached the street he began walking toward the train station on Westchester Avenue. He thought about the job as he walked, thought about how wrong the job had gone, couldn’t have gone wronger — he’d killed one cop, Jocko had shot another one. Shit, he thought. Times he wanted to quit this fuckin racket, get himself a nice girl, his mother was always telling him to get himself a nice Italian girl, settle down someplace. Times like tonight he was tempted to do it. Who the hell needed this kind of life?

He felt the gun in the pocket of the pants.

Its bulk felt good against his leg.

There was trouble in the street.

He got back to the old neighborhood at a little past midnight, but he was afraid to go into his mother’s block because there were two police cruisers parked just outside the pizzeria. The heat hadn’t let up a bit, the night was still sticky and moist. Men were milling around in their undershirts; women in flowered housedresses were standing with their hands on their hips, looking up the street toward the police cars. Most of them were black.

The neighborhood had been strictly Italian when Colley was growing up, and then it had turned Puerto Rican, and now it was black. His mother still lived here, you couldn’t dynamite her out of that apartment. She’d been living upstairs from the pizzeria for twenty years, from when Colley was nine years old. Had black friends who came in for coffee every morning. Nice black ladies who’d moved uptown to the Bronx, same as Colley’s mother had twenty years ago. Nice black ladies whose sons Colley had probably met when he was doing three-to-seven upstate for armed robbery.