Lawrence Block - The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes

He was working away on the computer when the phone rang. “The little automatic,” he said. “With the green grips.”

“Malachite.”

“Whatever. Is it still in the nightstand?”

“It was the last time I looked. Why?”

“I need it.”

“Jesus, are you planning on starting a war? How many guns do you need?”

“Just that one.”

“I’m kind of tied up today,” she said. “When do you need it?”

“As soon as possible, and you don’t have to drive clear to Chiefland to give it to me. You’ll be working at the restaurant tonight? Bring it with you, park in your usual spot. Tuck the gun on the floor under the driver’s seat, and leave the car unlocked. Can you remember that?”

“I’ll write it on the palm of my hand,” she said, “just in case it slips my mind. Yes, of course I can remember. But what if it’s not in the drawer? I’m not home now, I can’t go check.”

“Call me when you know one way or the other.”

“All right.”

“And just leave a message. ‘It’s there’ or ‘It’s not there.’ ”

“One if by land and two if by sea.”

“If it’s there,” he said, “take it with you when you leave the house.”

“And park in my regular space, and put the gun under the seat.”

“And don’t lock the car.”

“You know, that’ll be the hardest part, because locking it is so automatic. But don’t worry, I’ll remember.”

He hadn’t told her about Roberta Ellison.

He thought about the omission, and thought about the incident at the Ellison home, while little Eli had his nap. Thought about it and shook his head, pushing the memory aside.

Time to tell her later. She’d call to tell him about the pistol, whether or not she’d found it in the drawer, and that would be time enough to tell her.

He was at the computer when the phone rang, the Lisa phone. He picked it up and held it in his hand and it rang again, and rang a third time.

And went to voicemail.

Where he picked up the message a few minutes later: “It was there, and now it’s in my purse.”

He played it through again, then erased it.

He timed his drive to the Cattle Baron so that it was just past sunset when he pulled into the lot. He parked, and waited in his car while a party of four made their way to the restaurant entrance. Two men walking together, talking, with the two women a pace or so behind them. Two husbands and their wives, ready to sit down and eat beef.

The Lexus was where he’d expected to find it, and she’d remembered not to lock the door. He reached beneath the left front seat and his hand found the little gun right away. It was a pretty thing, a Baby Browning, and the swirly green grips made it the perfect lady’s weapon.

But he could admire it later.

He returned to his Monte Carlo and drove out of the restaurant lot, then found his way to Stapleton Terrace.

There were two cars at the curb, Ashley’s Hyundai and the neighbor’s minivan. And, in the driveway, a Lincoln Town Car with vanity plates that read GOGO.

He’d seen the car before, parked in a reserved space in front of a three-story red-brick building on Court House Square. George’s car, tagged with George’s doubled initials.

The lights were on in the bedroom window upstairs. He sat in the Chevy, looked at the car, the house, the upstairs window. He took the little gun out of his pocket and held it in both hands, rubbing the ball of one thumb against the cool green stone.

He put the gun away, drove home.

At the computer, he typed:

OMG, the SD gave me a gun!!! Pretty, too, w/ green stone on the handle. Said it’s mallokite (sp?). In case the prowler comes back, but would I even dare to use it? I don’t think so!!! If I had two of them they could be earrings but maybe too heavy???

He read it over, highlighted the last sentence and hit Delete.

In its place he typed:

All it needs is a pin and I cd wear it as a brooch. Thought about it, changed brooch to broach, changed it back to brooch, and deleted the sentence altogether.

Rewrote the whole thing:

OMG, gift from SD — a gun!!! Pretty swirly green handle. Mallokite (sp?) So I won’t worry about prowler, but would I dare use it? I don’t think so!!!

Two spaces down he wrote:

Miss you!

And on the next line:

— A~

He got up, used the bathroom, returned to the computer and read it through again. You could overthink this shit, he thought, and what was the point?

Print it out?

No, might as well do it right. He’d done everything right thus far, and this was no time to stop.

He got a sheet from a legal pad, fastened it to his clipboard. Took a ballpoint pen, and was it the same one he’d used to print out his and Lisa’s lines? It might be, one Bic was rather like another. Whether it was the same pen or another like it, it would do.

He copied the email draft. Once again he used block caps, but was less concerned about making it readable. He was the only one who’d have to read it.

He took the Browning out onto the deck, along with the pint of Georgi.

He’d bought the bottle on the way home from the Ellison house, the purchase triggered by the slug of Absolut he’d added to his iced tea. They had all sorts of vodka, Ketel One and Stoli and Grey Goose on the same shelf with the Absolut, but he’d always taken it as a given that vodka was vodka, and any premium you paid was for the label. He’d gone with Georgi, and put it away unopened.

He twisted the cap off now, and took a pull straight from the bottle. He made a face at the taste, but he’d have done the same whatever vodka he was drinking. It tasted, he decided, about the way it was supposed to.

He had another pull, and this time the taste didn’t bother him. He capped the bottle, set it down on the deck, and picked up the Browning. He was familiar with the model, had taken one away from a man who’d planned on using it to kill himself. “You saved my life,” the poor bastard told him, but he’d done no such thing. The guy had saved his own life when he’d decided not to pull the trigger.

That particular Baby Browning had sported checkered metal grips, and the same thumb-slide safety as the one he was holding now.

He sniffed the muzzle and smelled nothing but a faint trace of gun oil, suggesting it hadn’t been fired since its last cleaning. For all he knew it had never been fired, and the last cleaning had taken place when it left the factory.

He removed the six-shot clip, which now held five .25-caliber cartridges. Had Otterbein chambered a round? If so, there was a live cartridge under the hammer, and a trigger pull would discharge it even with the clip removed from the gun.

He’d heard of no end of cases in which someone had been killed with a presumably unloaded weapon, but his instructor at the academy had spoken of two incidents, both in Brooklyn, in which the fatal bullets had been fired by automatic pistols from which the magazines had been removed.

“How can you shoot yourself with an unloaded gun? Answer, it’s still loaded. You can take that clip out and throw it in the Gowanus Canal, but if there’s a round in the chamber, it’s loaded and deadly, and there’s a man who shot himself and another who shot his wife, and they both thought for sure they were just clowning around.”

Lisa had pressed the Browning’s muzzle against her husband’s forehead, had described the little O it left impressed into his skin. He looked at the muzzle of the gun, pressed it forcefully against the palm of his left hand, withdrew it and examined the mark it left.

Tried the same thing on his forehead. Right between the eyes, he thought. Right where the little girl in the nursery rhyme had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.