Эд Макбейн - Guns

He opens the directory to the yellow pages at the back of the book. There are two pages with the heading GUNS at the top. One of them reads GRAVEL-GUNS and the other one reads GUNS-HAIR. The listings start near the bottom of the first page, under the heading GUNS & GUNSMITHS. There are four listings on that page, and six on the following page. Colley rips both pages out of the phone book. Then he puts a dime in the slot and dials the operator. When she comes on he tells her he is on the highway someplace, and doesn’t know exactly where he is, and could she please give him the location of this phone booth, what town it’s in. She tells him where he is, and he thanks her and hangs up, and then goes to sit in the car with the interior light on, to study the ten listings for GUNS & GUNSMITHS.

There is only one listing for this town. A place called Richard’s Gun Rack, Inc. The address is 76 Rock Ledge Road. He snaps off the overhead light, puts the car in gear, and begins driving north again. Probably going in the wrong direction, Rock Ledge is probably someplace behind him. He passes two closed gas stations, an Exxon and a Mobil. He passes a closed diner, looks just like the one he held up this afternoon, except it doesn’t have those big aluminum poles out front with the open 24 hours sign. Finally, he comes to a shopping center with everything closed in it but a tavern.

The juke box is playing a country-western song when Colley walks in. He takes a stool at the bar and waits for the bartender to discover him. At the other end of the bar, there is a man wearing a pinkie ring that sparkles even in a place as dim as this. A girl wearing a black dress is sitting on the stool next to him. She almost fades into the background except for her frizzy blond hair. The bartender nods at something the girl says, and then comes over to Colley.

“I’m looking for Rock Ledge Road,” Colley says.

The bartender nods. “Keep going north till you come to the third stop light,” he says. “That’s Main, goes straight through the middle of town. You make a right, you’ll go two more stop lights, and then you’ll make another right, that’s...”

“What are you telling him, Lou?” the guy with the pinkie ring says.

“He wants Rock Ledge. I’m sending him down Main.”

“He’s better off taking Lakeview.”

“Too complicated.”

“Shorter, though.”

“You go the way I’m telling you,” the bartender says to Colley. “Third stop light, you make a right, then you go two more lights and make another right. That’s Pointer Street. You go four blocks on Pointer, that’s Rock Ledge. What number did you want?”

Colley hesitates, and then lies. “One-oh-four,” he says.

“You’ll have to make a left, I think. Where’s one-oh-four Rock Ledge, Andy?”

“Down around Osborne, I think,” the guy with the pinkie ring says.

“Yeah, you’ll have to make a left. That’s mostly stores on Rock Ledge,” the bartender says. “You’re not looking for a store, are you? Cause this is Sunday, you know.”

“No, it’s not a store,” Colley says.

“There’s houses, too, on Rock Ledge,” the guy with the pinkie rings says. “Tony from Newark used to live on Rock Ledge.”

“Who’s Tony from Newark?” the bartender says.

“Tony from Newark, what do you mean who’s Tony from Newark? Tony from Newark.”

“You mean Tony who lives on First Avenue?”

“Yeah, Tony who lives on First Avenue.”

“You telling me he used to live on Rock Ledge?”

“That’s right, he used to live on Rock Ledge.”

“It’s mostly stores on Rock Ledge,” the bartender says to Colley, and shrugs.

“Well, thanks a lot,” Colley says.

“He don’t know who’s Tony from Newark,” the guy with the pinkie ring says to the girl. The girl lights a cigarette and says nothing. On the juke box, there is a click, a pause, and then Sinatra comes on singing “My Way.” Colley thanks the bartender again and goes outside.

The car starts immediately, he is beginning to like this sweet little wagon. His mother always tells him he has expensive taste, and she is right. She is not right about too many things, his mother, but she is certainly right about his taste. There is nothing he would like better than to live in the kind of house he stole the clothes and the car from, swim in a pool with a blonde in a white string bikini, take her to the Copa afterwards, show her off. Drive up in this sweet little wagon, doorman’ll say, “Good evening, Mr. Donato,” give the guy a five-dollar tip, go inside and show off the blonde. Wear a big diamond on his pinkie, like the one the guy in the bar was wearing just now. Flash it around. Colley doesn’t care much about clothes, but jewlery, yeah, and good food, and expensive liquor, yeah, he could enjoy that kind of life, all right. Maybe when this is all over, when the heat cools about the cop, he will do a big one someplace. Maybe go West, knock over a bank in a hick town out there. Not Texas, those Texas Rangers are cocksuckers. But someplace out there. Some hick town. Maybe in Kansas someplace. Walk in, shove the piece in the teller’s face, you probably could knock over one of those hick banks with a cap pistol. Cops out there wouldn’t be like New York cops, fuckin bastards. Cops out there’d be sitting with their feet up on the desk, fanning themselves with a cardboard fan. The phone rings, somebody tells them the bank’s just been held up. “Yeah?” the cop says. He’s probably a sheriff. “Yeah?” he says, and swings his feet off the desk, and looks around for somebody he can make a deputy — was that the second stop light just then, or the third? Colley’s thinking about holding up a fuckin bank, and he’s losing track of the stop lights. He hopes it was only the second one. There’s another one up ahead, and if that’s where he’s supposed to turn, it’ll say Main Street.

He peers through the windshield, sees the street sign on the comer — it’s Main, all right. He makes the right turn, and starts counting stop lights again. At the second light he makes another right turn and that’s Pointer Street, just like the bartender said. Four more blocks to Rock Ledge, there it is, there’s a Full Stop sign on the comer. He brakes the automobile, he looks in both directions, he is being a perfect little driver in this sweet little wagon, and he is beginning to feel as cheerful as a whore on payday because he is about to find Richard’s Gun Rack, and he is about to break into it and steal himself a deadly weapon. A death machine. Maybe a P-38 like the one he emptied into the dog. Or maybe a .45 automatic, he likes that gun, too.

He discovers in a minute that he’s heading in the wrong direction. The number on the corner was 125 and the numbers are moving up instead of down, he has reached 137 before he discovers he’s made a mistake. Not his mistake, actually, he’s only following the bartender’s directions, it’s the bartender who made the mistake. He drives to the next corner, the streets are almost empty even though it’s only eight o’clock by the dashboard clock, eight o’clock on a Sunday night in a hick town in New Jersey, there probably won’t even be an alarm system at Richard’s Gun Rack. The light on the comer is red, he waits it out, he is doing everything by the book. He is just a law-abiding New Jersey resident out for a drive in his brown Mercedes-Benz, cruising Rock Ledge Road in search of an open pizzeria. He makes a right turn, circles the block, comes down to Rock Ledge again, and makes a left. The numbers are dwindling now, 118 and 116 and 114, he passes the comer, he is in the 90 block now and then the 80 block and finally he comes into the 70 block.

76 Rock Ledge Road is in the middle of the block.