Эд Макбейн - Guns

“Look, Mr. Hollip,” he says to Will, “that dog really did try to...” and he stops talking and puts his hand to his forehead, and then sways slightly, and then says “Uh, uh, uh,” like that, and leans in against Will and collapses against him. Will doesn’t know whether to grab him or what, he doesn’t want to get blood on his nice Hawaiian shirt. He keeps backing away and flapping his hands until it’s obvious he either has to catch Colley or let him fall flat on his face to the floor. He decides that’s what he wants to do, let Colley fall flat on his face, so he opens his arms wide and takes a very quick step backward, and Colley tumbles forward as realistically as he can without getting splinters in his face. Sam still has the shotgun. Twenty-gauge. Put a nice hole in a man if it’s fired up close.

“He’s out like a light,” Sam says.

“What you want to do with him?” Will asks.

“Give me a hand, we’ll drag him over in the corner again.”

Colley listens. He is listening for the sound of the shotgun being placed against the wall, the wooden stock hitting the wooden floor, or else being put on the table, the sound of metal scraping against wood or enamel. He is listening but he does not hear anything he hopes to hear. He wonders if he has made the wrong move, and then he begins to think Sam has simply handed the shotgun to his sister or his wife or whoever she is, the way he did earlier when he went out to bury the dog and fetch old brother Will. They are dragging Colley into the corner of the room. They are hurting him the way they are holding him, but he cannot scream or even wince, he is supposed to be unconscious. He has pulled this big fainting routine because he wants to get his hands — his hand actually, his one good hand, his left hand — on that shotgun, and now he doesn’t know where it is or who has it and he hears Sam telling Will they’ll need some rope, they’ll have to tie this sumbitch up.

It is getting worse, it is only getting worse. He did not make his move when he was supposed to make it, whenever that might have been, and now it is about to get worse, they are going to tie him up and leave him to bleed to death in the corner. Their voices retreat just a little way from him, they are going to look for rope to tie up the city slicker. He opens his eyes. He can see Myra’s hairy legs across the room level with his line of vision, laceless white sneakers, and he can see just a little past them to where Sam is standing, can see the blue overall bottoms rolled up over the high tops of his brown workshoes, but he cannot see Will Hollip nor can he see the shotgun.

“Let me get a stool for you,” Myra says, and suddenly the stock of the shotgun appears magically beside one sneakered foot. She is resting the shotgun on the floor, leaning it against something, a cupboard or a table or a chair, he doesn’t care what — it is there on the floor some fifteen feet from where he is lying in the corner. Myra leaves his frame of vision. He sees only Sam’s big shoes pointed in his direction now. Sam is waiting for Myra to get a stool. Rope has to be on a shelf someplace Sam can’t reach, loving wife or sister is making it easy for him. Sneakered feet again coming back into the frame, Myra puts down the stool. Sam climbs up on the stool, Colley sees only the backs of his high-topped shoes now. That means Sam’s back is to him, Will is Christ only knows where, and the shotgun is still leaning against something, its stock on the floor.

Colley makes his move all at once. No slow and steady crawling across the floor, no sneaky tactics, he gets to his feet in a crouch, like a track star about to break from the starting line, and he’s off in the same instant, sprinting across the wooden floor toward the shotgun. The gun is leaning against a square table, he can see the table now, and he can see the gun, and he only hopes the thing has been cocked, because otherwise he is dead. Myra has turned from watching Sam, who is fishing in a cabinet high up on the wall. She sees Colley crossing the room, and she knows just what he’s heading for, and she grabs the shotgun by the barrel just below the sight, and is bringing it up with her left hand, her right hand reaching for the stock when Colley gets to her. He doesn’t bother making a grab for the gun. Instead he punches her in the stomach, as hard as he can with his left hand, and she lets out a grunt and drops the gun, and staggers back against the counter. Sam has turned at the sound of the running and the scuffling, and he’s about to step down off the stool when he sees that Colley has picked up the shotgun and is holding it in just one hand, forward of the stock, his left index finger inside the trigger guard and on the trigger.

“Hold it,” Colley says.

Fat Will is at the sink on Colley’s left. He has been watching all this with some interest and much trepidation. He has probably never liked his brother’s vicious dog, nor his brother’s hairy wife or sister as the case may be, and he likes even less the notion of having a big shotgun hole put in him by a man who is bleeding and probably desperate. He just stays there at the sink, watching. His eyes tell Colley he hardly knows these two people, even though he is certainly related by blood to one of them and probably to both. On the stool, Sam says, “Easy now, boy.”

“Easy, shit,” Colley says.

“Easy now.”

“Get over here, Will!” Colley says.

“I didn’t do nothin,” Will says.

Sam has a coil of clothesline in his hands. He stands on the stool like a man who’s supposed to be making a speech in Union Square, probably a speech about how inhuman it is to hang people. There he is with the rope, ready to demonstrate his propostion, but all he’s got by way of a crowd is a skinny hairy lady, a fat man in a flowered sports shirt, both relatives, and a stranger who has already killed his dog and who is looking at him now as if he’s ready to kill him, too. Colley would like to kill the son of a bitch. It is Sam Hollip who allowed a vicious animal to roam free in the woods, it is Sam Hollip who smacked him in the face with a shotgun stock. Colley would like to kill him and Myra both; he has not forgotten that Myra stamped up and down on his arm a few times, nice lady.

“Give me that rope,” he says to Sam. “Get down off that stool. Will, you come here.”

“I didn’t do nothin,” Will says again.

“Get over here, Myra. With your brother here.”

“He’s my husband,” Myra says.

“Congratulations,” Colley says, and hands the clothesline to Will. “Will, I don’t have to tell you I want them tied so they can’t get loose,” he says.

“That’s right,” Will says, and nods.

“You understand me, don’t you, Will? If they can free their hands...”

“No, no,” Will says, “I’ll tie them real tight.”

“Good, you do that,” Colley says. “I want them back to back.”

“Myra, would you step over here, please?” Will says. He sounds very tired.

Colley would prefer doing the tying-up himself, but the fingers on his right hand feel numb, and his arm is bleeding again from Myra’s fancy footwork. He thinks maybe the numbness is psychological, but the blood certainly isn’t. He does not even want to look at the arm. He will have to do something about the arm, but first things first. He watches as Will ties Sam’s hands and then Myra’s hands, and then wraps brother and sister-in-law with clothesline as though he is wrapping a pair of back-to-back mummies for burial. “Good and tight,” Colley says.

He remembers the times he’s been busted, that first time he shot Luis Josafat Albareda in the throat, and then the time he was running away after the tailor-shop holdup and the cops surprised him. Both times they clamped the cuffs on his wrists like they wanted to go clear through to the bone. The way a pair of handcuffs is made, there’s a sawtooth edge that slides into the other side of the cuff. You squeeze the cuff onto a person’s wrist, the sawtooth edge is engaged and can’t be reversed unless you unlock the cuff. Makes it quick and easy for a cop to slam the cuffs on a man, zing, zing. They throw a cuff on one wrist, they whip your arms behind your back, they squeeze the cuff on the other wrist, you think your arms are going to break behind your back there, and you think your circulation is going to stop, you are going to die of your blood stopping there at your wrists.