Эд Макбейн - Guns

He keeps coming back to the Magnum.

It is some gun, bigger than any of the others in the case — well, bigger than any of the real guns. Some of the target pistols and early Western reproductions have longer barrels, but the Magnum, a Ruger Blackhawk, has got to be what — ten or eleven inches overall length? Has to be at least a six-inch barrel on that weapon, has to be.

He is afraid of picking up the gun. He guesses it isn’t loaded, but he has never held such a huge weapon in his hand, and he’s fearful of it. He moves down the case to the Walther, and he picks it up, the heft is familiar, he knows this gun, it saved his life this afternoon when that fuckin hound was chewing on his arm. The arm feels pretty good now, he is beginning to think that maybe he won’t die of rabies, after all, even though the doctor told him it would take forty days for the first symptoms to appear. He has already forgotten what the first symptoms will be. Doc, Dopey, Sleepy, Happy, Droopy, Dumpy and Doc, he thinks and bursts out laughing. He is beginning to feel very giddy and silly here inside the gun shop with the light shining through from the lamppost outside. He doesn’t think he wants another Walther, maybe he’ll take the Government Model Colt. But he keeps drifting back to the Magnum.

That is some big gun.

He picks it up. Blackhawk is some name for a gun. It sounds like an Indian. His hand is trembling as he picks it up. It’s a heavy gun, it weighs a little more than two pounds. It’s got a walnut grip with an emblem on it just behind the trigger, looks like a bird in flight, must be the Ruger trademark. He hefts the gun. He rolls out the cylinder to make sure it is not loaded. Then he rolls the cylinder into the gun again, and pulls back the hammer with his thumb, and squeezes the trigger.

Click.

It is as if he turns on a red light. He squeezes the trigger, and he hears the click and the red light goes on. It takes him a second to realize he has not caused the sudden red illumination, it is not his squeezing the trigger that makes the light go on. The light is coming through the plate-glass windows of the shop. The light is red, the light is flashing, the light is the dome light on top of a state trooper’s car.

The first thing Colley thinks is Yes, the place is wired, it is one of those sonic jobs, and then he thinks No, it is probably a neighbor who heard the glass smashing, and then he realizes it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, they have got him cold inside here, he is standing here with a huge pistol in his hand, but the pistol is empty, he is standing here naked. The trooper who gets out of the car is a big black bastard. He is wearing the trooper hat and the trooper boots, and he is coming toward the front door of the shop. He has his gun in his right hand and a long torchlight in the other hand. As he approaches the door, a second car pulls into the curb, and then a third one. Two of the cars are state police, the other one belongs to the local fuzz, this is a three-alarm fire here. Colley can see through the two plate-glass windows, and it looks like a movie taking place on two big screens that have the word SNUG written on each of them.

“Watch it, there he is!” one of the local cops yells, and the trooper who got out of the second car throws his light through the window into the shop. The second trooper is white. Colley sees this the instant before the light comes on. He also sees that the black trooper is taking aim along the length of his arm. It is just like the liquor store last night: the bastards are going to start shooting at him, and he is going to have to kill one of them in self-defense. But the gun is empty. The gun in his hand, the big fuckin gun that can tear off a man’s head, has no cartridges in it.

The movie screens up there are splintered with light now, everybody is throwing light onto the glass and it is splashing all over the shop, there are guns everywhere. There are guns inside the shop, on the walls and in the cases, and there are guns outside there on Rock Ledge Road where two state troopers and two local cops are waiting to shoot him dead, he wonders if they know he killed a cop last night. Light is bouncing all over the shop, he can see only guns and light, the plate-glass windows splintering first with light and then splintering with the impact of the bullets that come leaping out of the darkness. The glass shatters, he has never heard such noise in his life, the sound of the guns going off outside and the sound of the glass shattering and then the sound of something angry buzzing past his ear, he must do something, they are trying to kill him.

Instinctively, he fires back with the empty pistol. He hears a dick and another click, and he keeps squeezing the trigger, and he sees the big fuckin gorilla nigger cop taking steady aim again, and he thinks No, you don’t! and fires the empty gun at the trooper, and then sees a flash of light from the muzzle of the trooper’s gun, and hears the explosion, and wonders if the trooper is firing a Magnum same as he’s firing, click, click, and the trooper’s shot takes him in the face.

In the last instant of his life he wonders what they will tell his mother, Jesus what will they.