Эд Макбейн - Guns

GUNS the sign says.

It is a big white sign over the entire front of the shop.

GUNS.

There are two plate-glass windows flanking the entrance door of the shop, and there is nothing on either of these windows but the single word GUNS again, lettered in gold leaf on each window. There is nothing about this being Richard’s Gun Rack. Guns are what the man is selling and that’s what it says on the big white sign in black letters, and that’s what it says in gold leaf on each of the plate-glass windows: GUNS.

Colley has come to the right place.

He continues on past the place, though, because if the cops in this hick town stumble onto the hot Mercedes, he wants them to find it outside a paint store or a beauty parlor and not outside the place he is in. He parks the car in the 60 block, in front of a store selling radios and phonographs and television sets and stereo equipment. The television set is going in the front window. Owner probably left it on over the weekend because there are millions of people milling over the sidewalks here in this thriving little metropolis. A night baseball game is on. It is the Mets and some other team, Colley can’t make out the uniform. He watches for a minute, and then starts back toward the gun shop.

The sidewalks are deserted.

There are rifles in both windows of the shop, with cartridges spread all around them as if they were gold coins spilling from a pirate’s chest. Colley searches the plate glass for the metallic strips that will tell him the place is wired. He cannot find any, nor are there any burglar-alarm stickers on the windows. He wishes he knew more about burglar alarms. He knows guys can tell you exactly what kind of alarm is in a place just by taking one look at any exposed wire. Some systems, it doesn’t matter if there are exposed wires hanging all over the outside walls, because if you cut a wire the alarm goes off anyway. But he doesn’t see any strips on the windows here, and as he circles the building, going through the alley on the side of the store and around to the back, he can’t see any wires or bells or anything that would indicate the place has an alarm system. He can’t believe it, a gun shop that isn’t wired. There’s a door on the back of the shop, glass panels in the upper half of it, a deadbolt showing on the outside. That’s in case anybody smashes the glass, they can’t simply reach in and turn a bolt and open the door. This kind of lock, you need a key to open it even from the inside. No metallic strips on the glass here, either. Is it really possible?

He tries a flatfooted kick at the deadbolt, hoping to spring the lock, but the door doesn’t budge an inch. This is what he hates about this kind of shit. When you’re doing a robbery, you just walk in the front door and throw a gun on the man, and that’s it. Here you have to go fooling around with locks and trying to break into a goddamn place, anybody’d go into burglary has to be out of his mind. He doesn’t know what to do. If he breaks the glass panels, he won’t be able to unlock the door because of the deadbolt. And even if he breaks out all the glass and the wooden frame, the opening will still be too small for him to crawl through. There are guns inside this fuckin shop, he can taste them.

He comes through the alley again, looking for a window, and he finds a small one high up on the wall, probably a bathroom window. Loo, she called it. I’m looking for the loo. If he can open that window, he can get inside the shop. He goes around back again to where he saw a garbage can alongside the door, and he carries the can into the alley with him and stands on it, and tries to open the window. He can see the street at the end of the alley. A single lamppost illuminates the sidewalk, but the alley itself is in darkness. There is no traffic on the street. In the darkness, in the silence, he works on the window, trying to raise it. He wishes he had a screwdriver or a knife, but he has neither. There are probably tools in the trunk of the Mercedes, he should have thought of that, but he didn’t know he was going to have to open a window. He’s half thinking of forgetting the whole thing. But there are guns inside there.

He climbs down off the garbage can, and then takes the lid off, and turns the garbage can upside down, and climbs onto it again. There is garbage all over the alley floor now, but it’s not rotten food, it’s clean garbage — little cardboard boxes that cartridges come in, and newspapers and gun-company brochures, crap like that. Colley plans to smash the window with the lid of the garbage can. He will smash the upper pane of glass just above the inside latch, and then he will reach in and unlatch it. He is afraid that maybe the place is wired, after all, maybe with one of those new sonic alarms where they put microphones around and if a door or a window is opened or anything is smashed, whoever’s listening picks up the noise and calls the police. He is afraid that when he smashes the window a bell will go off. He is also afraid that when he smashes the window he will get glass splinters in his eyes.

But there are guns inside there.

He brings back the lid of the garbage can. He is holding it like a shield, and he smashes it flat against the glass and the glass shatters, making a racket he is sure they can hear all the way in the Bronx. There is no bell, only the sound of the glass shattering, but his heart begins to beat wildly anyway. He waits in the darkness. He is sure someone has heard the breaking glass. He is sure someone will yell Hey, what are you doing there? “There’s houses, too, on Rock Ledge,” the guy with the pinkie ring said back there in the bar. Colley waits. A shard of glass falls from the window frame and shatters on the alley floor. It sounds like a cannon going off in church. He waits and listens. Nothing. He reaches in and turns the latch. He opens the window, crawls in over the sill, and comes through the bathroom into the shop.

There are guns everywhere.

He has never seen so many guns in his life. There are rifles and shotguns in racks on three walls of the shop, and there are handguns in cases along two of the walls and also in a center case that has an aisle on either side of it. Light from the lamppost outside splashes through the two plate-glass windows, glinting on blued steel barrels and walnut stocks. On both plate-glass windows, Colley sees the word GUNS backward. He reads it as SNUG, and he smiles. Yes. Yes, he feels snug and cozy inside this shop, he could stay in this shop forever. The shotguns and rifles in the wall racks stand like soldiers at attention as Colley inspects the revolvers and automatic pistols in the cases. There are Remingtons on the wall, and Springfields, and rifles and shotguns he cannot immediately place. But he knows each and every handgun in the cases.

He can never remember the names of all the seven dwarfs, but he knows all these guns by name. Silently, he rolls the names on his tongue. The names echo sonorously inside his head. Lovingly, like a poet reading his own work, he recites the names in silent reverence — Colt and Llama; Bernadelli; Smith & Wesson, Crosman; Ruger and Savage; Steyr & Derringer; Hi-Standard; Iver Johnson. He knows the models, he loves those names, too — the Buntline Special and the Buntline Scout, the Commander and the Agent, the Chiefs Special and the Centennial Airweight, the S & W Terrier and the Sidewinder, the Trailsman and the Python. There is a Walther P-38 in one of the cases, identical to the one he used to kill the dog, and there is a .357 Magnum — Jesus, it is a monster gun. He would be afraid to hold that gun in his hand, afraid it might go off accidentally.

He takes his time deciding which gun or guns he will finally choose. He is like a child in a toy shop on Christmas Eve, and his father has said to him he can have any toy in the shop. He can hardly remember his father, he wonders why he thinks of his father at this moment. But he does feel childlike here in the midst of all these pistols of varying sizes. The cases are locked. With the stock of a rifle he smashes the glass on the case in the center, and then reaches into it and begins trying various pistols for grip and heft. He has carried many of these guns in the past, but some of them are new to him, and he examines each with care and discernment. Here is the pistol he shot the cop with last night, he does not want that hoodoo jinx of a gun again. And there’s the gun Jocko was using, and there’s the .32-caliber Smith & Wesson that Colley left in the glove compartment of the pickup truck. He passes a boxed pair of Number 4 Derringers, be a nice gun for Jeanine, she could tuck it in her G-string, fire off a shot with every bump and grind. He wonders where she is. Fuck her, he thinks.