Эд Макбейн: Guns

But no, this is number thirteen, this hoodoo jinx of a movie was shot a long, long time ago — probably when his grandmother was a teenager walking the streets of Naples and refusing to meet a neighbor’s glance for fear either of them would be suspected of casting the Evil Eye — and what Colley sees are two police officers, sure enough, both as big as life and twice as wide. They are neither of them wearing the blue, they are not uniformed cops, but then, who would expect uniformed cops to be sitting a liquor store? They look exactly like any detective Colley has ever seen in his life, and they are both holding guns in their fists, and Colley notices something else that is wrong, notices it at once, and has the feeling now that this goddamn movie he is in has suddenly turned into a negative print because the detectives are holding their guns wrong.

He realizes all at once that both of them are left-handed, they are both holding their pieces in their left hands as they come down a narrow aisle formed by two standing racks. The racks are made of metal, they are green, they are maybe eight or ten feet high, and they are neatly stacked with whiskey bottles. The detectives are each at least six feet tall, they come charging down the narrow aisle like bulls coming into an arena. At the far end of the aisle, Colley sees an open door. There’s a room back there, he can see cartons piled on the floor. That’s where the cops were staked out, in the room back there, waiting for somebody to hold up the joint. Probably a lot of liquor-store holdups in the neighborhood, cops decided to stake out one or two places, see if they’d get lucky. Either that, or some stoolie heard him and Jocko were going to hit the joint, in which case the cops weren’t here waiting for just anybody, they were here specifically waiting for him and Jocko to come in and make their move. Colley wonders which it is. He will spend the rest of his life wondering about it. In the meantime, the cops are here. Whyever or however, they are here.

Cops have always scared him, and they scare him now. The one in the front position is ludicrously holding a shield in his right hand. The shield is a regular detective’s shield, gold with blue enamel, maybe three inches long, two inches wide, pinned to a leather case. The flap of the case is hanging down toward his wrist, and he’s got the shield cupped in the palm of his right hand. In his left hand he’s got the piece. He holds the piece close to his hip, almost resting on the hipbone there; it’s the same gun Colley is holding in his hand, a Colt Detective Special. The other cop keeps weaving from side to side as he comes down the aisle, as if he’s trying to get a look around his partner at the bad guys who are holding up the store. When they reach the end of the aisle, they fan out in two directions, one of them coming toward Colley, the other going toward Jocko at the counter.

The one coming toward Colley is the man holding the shield. He holds it like a warrior’s shield, never mind just a little badge. He holds it like one of King Arthur’s knights. With that shield out in front of him, nothing’s going to happen to him. He’s Lancelot, with his fuckin shield there. For the first time in his life Colley wants to use the gun. Not because he’s that scared (though he is very scared) and not because he’s angry the job is going wrong (though he’s angry, too) but only because he wants to show the cop how fuckin dumb he’s being with that shield. What does he think it is, a magic shield or something? Hold it out in front of you, it protects you from the bad guys? Hell it does, Colley thinks, and pulls the trigger.

The cop is about to say “Police officers!” again. He gets only part of the word out. He says “Po” and then the bullet takes him right in the mouth. It’s as if the bullet rams the rest of the word back into his throat and breaks it up into a thousand red and yellow and white globules that come flying out the back of his head and splatter all over a Seagram’s poster behind him. He does an almost comic skid, the force of the bullet knocking him backward, his feet still moving forward and flying out from under him. He goes into the air backward, hangs there for an instant in an upside-down swan dive, his arms thrown wide, the shield in one hand, the gun in the other, his back arched, his head thrown back and spurting blood. Then he crashes suddenly to the white vinyl tile floor, knocking over a wine rack. There is the sound of bottles crashing. Burgundy, Chianti and Bordeaux are suddenly spilling deeper reds into and around the bright screaming red that is still pouring from the back of the cop’s head. Colley watches all this in fascination. He does not yet realize he’s shot a man. He certainly does not realize the man is already dead.

Jocko is now facing the aisle the cops came out of. The second cop, the one who’d been weaving down the aisle like a broken-field runner, stops cold in his tracks when he hears the gun exploding and the bottles crashing. He doesn’t turn toward the noise. Instead he immediately levels his gun at Jocko, as if Jocko is the one who fired the shot. Colley stands just inside the door, looking at the man on the floor. In the background, near the register, he sees Jocko and the second cop squaring off, but he keeps his eyes on the man he just shot. It is beginning to dawn on him that he shot a man. The man lies there like a bundle of old clothes. Move, Colley thinks. Get up! There are two shots in rapid succession now, crack, and then crack, it never goes BANG like in the comic strips. Two sharp cracks, differently pitched. Colley registers the fact that the shots come from two different guns, but he keeps watching the man on the floor, he does not take his eyes off the man on the floor. There is another crack, the air is hanging blue with smoke now, the store stinks of cordite, the air conditioner is causing the smoke to swirl in patterns that make the room go in and out of focus. For a moment Colley thinks he is going to faint.

There are two men on the floor now.

Jocko is coming toward him.

Colley’s eyes go one, two, three: the man he shot, the other man lying on the floor some six feet from the cash register, and Jocko staggering toward him. He does not realize at first, he is very slow to grasp things in this fuckin movie, he does not realize that Jocko has been hit. Then he sees that Jocko has his left hand hooked like a claw, and he sees that blood is pouring from under the sleeve of the windbreaker and into Jocko’s cupped hand, and spilling from the hand onto the floor as he comes toward Colley. Jocko’s eyes are out of focus, it looks as if he is going to pass out. He has the gun in his right hand, and to steady himself he reaches out with the hand that’s running blood and clamps the hand onto Colley’s sleeve. The summer-weight fabric soaks up the blood, the blood spreads along the sleeve, Colley can feel it wetting his skin. He loops his arm around Jocko’s waist. Jocko’s gun clatters to the floor, and all at once he goes limp. Colley starts dragging him toward the door.

At the door, he stops and looks back at the man he shot.

The man is not moving.

There are suddenly too many things to think about. Where’s the car? — that’s the first thing; he can’t remember where Teddy parked the car. He has one arm wrapped around Jocko, his left hand clutched in Jocko’s belt, supporting him that way, Jocko’s left arm dripping blood onto Colley’s hand, he can feel the blood sticky and hot. In his right hand he’s still got the gun, but he can’t turn the doorknob without putting the gun away, and this suddenly becomes another problem that seems impossible to solve. He stands there supporting Jocko, and feeling the steady flow of Jocko’s blood, and behind him the counterman is yelling obscenities at him, yelling them in a steady monotonous senseless stream, and he cannot for the life of him figure out how to put away the gun and turn the doorknob.