Эд Макбейн - Guns

He wanted to get rid of the gun.

He wanted to get out of these borrowed clothes and hide the gun someplace; those police cars up the street were making him nervous. He stopped a white guy going by and asked him what the trouble was.

“Nigger cut somebody in the bar,” the guy said.

“The pizzeria, you mean?”

“Yeah,” the guy said, and walked off.

Colley looked up the block again, and then began walking in the opposite direction, around the corner and onto the avenue. This was Saturday night, he didn’t expect to find Benny home, but he went up the three flights to Benny’s apartment anyway, and knocked on the door and waited.

“Yeah?” a voice said.

“Benny? It’s me. Colley.”

“Colley? Hey, Colley!” Benny said through the door, and Colley heard him fumbling with the lock, good old Benny, and then he threw the door wide and looked out at Colley, beaming, his arms spread, his head tilted, his palms open; he looked like a jolly fat pope giving a blessing. “Paisan,” he said.

“Hey, paisan, ” Colley said warmly, and stood there nodding foolishly, and grinning, and opening his hands the way Benny had his hands open, but suspecting he didn’t look anywhere near as popelike as Benny did. “You gonna ask me in?” he said.

“No,” Benny said, “I’m gonna let you stand in the hall. You hear this?” he said to someone in the apartment. “He wants to know if I’m gonna let him in.”

“So let me in already,” Colley said. He was chuckling now, Benny always made him chuckle. He hadn’t seen Benny for maybe six or seven months, since just after he’d thrown in with Jocko. He had put on weight, Benny had. He’d been fat ever since Colley could remember, but now he was even fatter. He put his arm around Colley and led him into the apartment.

A girl was sitting at the kitchen table. There was an empty glass in front of her, ice cubes melting in it. The girl was maybe nineteen years old. She was wearing a long flowing white robe with embroidery around the yoked neck, tooled sandals, a red-and-white-striped kerchief on her head. She had black hair and brown eyes and a very dark complexion. She was even darker than Benny, whose grandparents had come from Palermo around the turn of the century. Everybody on the block used to kid Benny about him being half-nigger. This was when they had the club. Benny used to say, “ I’ll give you half-nigger,” and throw the arm salute. He really was very dark, but not as dark as the girl.

“This is Naomi Bernstein,” Benny said. “Naomi, meet my best friend in the entire world — Colley Donato.”

“How do you do, Colley?” she said, and extended her hand.

“Naomi’s from Mosholu Parkway,” Benny said. “I met her in Poe Park.”

“Is Colley short for something?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Nicholas.”

“I’ll bet a lot of people ask you that.”

“Only everybody I meet,” Colley said. “But it’s better than Nick. Nick sounds like every wop you meet in the street.”

“Don’t get offended,” Benny said.

“Who’s offended?” Naomi said.

“Colley’s Italian, it’s okay for him to say it. Naomi belongs to— What’s the name of it?”

“You know the name of it.”

“I forget,” Benny said, and shrugged. “It’s an organization protects niggers, spics, wops and kikes,” he said, and burst out laughing.

“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” Naomi said.

“You want a drink, Colley?” Benny said.

“You’d be surprised how much prejudice there is in this city,” Naomi said.

“You Jewish?” Colley asked.

“How’d you guess? With a name like Bernstein, what’d you think I was?”

“I thought you were maybe an Arab.”

“You mean this?” she said, indicating the robe. “My aunt sent it to me from Israel.”

“It looks like what the Arabs wear.”

“There are very close cultural ties between Jews and Arabs, believe it or not.”

“I believe it.”

“You want a drink, yes or no?” Benny said.

“You talking to me?” Colley said.

“No, I’m talking to the wall.”

“I’ll have another gin and tonic,” Naomi said.

“How about you, Colley?”

“No, nothing,” Colley said.

“That’s a nice sweater,” Naomi said. “Very chic, those holes in the elbow. You’re a very snappy dresser, Colley.”

“Lay off,” he said.

“Then don’t give me any crap about what I’m wearing, okay?” she said.

“Hey, watch your mouth,” Benny warned. “Maybe you didn’t understand this is a friend of mine.”

“I thought I was a friend of yours, too,” Naomi said.

“Not like Colley. You got that?”

She glared at him sullenly.

“You got that?” Benny said again.

“I got it,” she said.

“Then here’s your drink,” he said, and put the gin and tonic down in front of her.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Take it in the bedroom,” Benny said. “I want to talk to Colley.”

She looked at him.

“Do what I tell you,” Benny said.

“I think I’ll go home instead,” she said.

“You go down the street this time of night, you’ll get raped,” Benny said. “You want some boogie to jump out a doorway and rape you? Get in the bedroom there. You trying to embarrass me in front of my friend?”

“No, but...”

“Then get in there,” Benny said. “And take off that thing your aunt sent you. You look like a goddamn Arab, Colley’s right.”

The girl hesitated.

“Go on,” Benny said.

Her lip was trembling.

“Go on.”

She sighed heavily, and then left the room. Colley could hear her sandals slapping on the floor as she walked through the apartment. He heard a door open and then close.

“What’s the matter?” Benny said immediately.

“There’s cops in front of my mother’s building, some nigger stabbed a guy in the pizzeria. I don’t want to go up there just yet.”

“What else, Colley?”

Colley hesitated.

“Come on, this is me,” Benny said impatiently.

“I shot a man,” he said. “Benny, I killed a cop.”

Benny nodded.

“It was on television,” Colley said.

Benny nodded again. “I seen it. A liquor store?”

“Yeah.”

“I seen it,” Benny said again. “That was you, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“They looking for you yet?”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s too soon.”

“Who saw you? Did anybody see you?”

“The guy behind the counter.”

Benny nodded. “Maybe he won’t finger you. Sometimes they’re scared. Especially a cop dead, you know?”

“That’s what I figure.”

“He might think you’ll come back for him he opens his mouth.”

“That’s just what I figure.”

“You want to stay here tonight?”

“I don’t know what I want to do,” Colley said. “I think I’ll go over my mother’s. Once the cops leave, I think I’ll go over there. They can’t be too much longer, huh? It’s only some nigger stabbed a guy.”

“They’ll just throw him in the car, is all,” Benny said, and shrugged. “Look, you can stay here if you want. Don’t let her bother you,” he said, and gestured with his head toward the rear of the apartment. “She’s mad at herself cause I got her shooting dope. I picked her up in Poe Park, this was last Friday night, she’s coming on like a big hippie, you know, smoking pot like it’s going out of style. I get her down here, I tell her listen, baby, you want something’ll really blow the top of your skull, try some of this. She says what’s that? I tell her it’s scag. She says what’s scag? And then she tips it’s dope, it’s heroin. No, thank you, she says. Thanks a lot, but no, thanks. That was last Friday. Sunday, she shot up for the first time. I got home from church, I went to eleven o’clock mass, you know me, Colley, I like to sleep late...”