Joel Goldman - Shakedown

“Why aren’t you telling Troy?”

“Because Troy might get the wrong impression and think I was freelancing. If he did, I’d probably never get back to work and I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything else that Grisnik might share with me the next time we run into each other. I was hoping that you’d follow up on the lead and leave me out of it.”

Ammara waited before responding, doing her own calculus. I knew the numbers she was crunching, trying to decide if an FBI agent who might be unstable, who was on medical leave for an unexplained disorder that made him shake like a ride at Six Flags and who had been booted out of the inner circle, qualified as a confidential source whose information she could rely on and whose identity she could protect. Plus, she had to factor in Marty Grisnik.

“What’s Grisnik’s stake in this?” she asked.

“Two things, I said. He wants anything that will help him with the shooting of Tony Phillips and the disappearance of Oleta Phillips. And he wants to know if we’ve got proof that any of his people were taking money from Marcellus.”

“He and Troy, they both got the same bug up their ass. I don’t like thinking that someone on our squad is bent. It changes the way I see all of us. Sometimes I don’t even trust myself.”

“We don’t get to choose what happens,” I told her. “Only what we do about it. Maybe Grisnik could get a look at the surveillance videotapes. I doubt that any cops would have shown up in uniform, but he might recognize someone who shouldn’t have been there.”

“I don’t know if Troy would go for that.”

“It’s going to take a long time to ID everyone on those tapes. Tell him that Grisnik can help. Just don’t tell Troy it was my idea.”

“Makes sense. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

“And Jack,” she said. “You get anything else, let me know. I’ll keep it between the two of us.”

With nothing else to do until I met Wendy and Colby for dinner, I went to the Bullet Hole, a private shooting range located in a low-slung building that is bigger than it looks from the street. The owners spent their money to make certain it was safe, not gorgeous. The walls and?oor are the same off-white, the showcases are all nicked wood and scratched glass filled with polished handguns. Wall-to-wall gun racks brim with ri?es and shotguns. The staff is devoted to the members, their guns, and the Second Amendment.

My personal weapon is a Glock 23.40 caliber semiautomatic. It’s as close to perfectly balanced as any gun I’ve carried, fits neatly on my hip, and feels like part of me when I hold it in my hand. It’s slightly smaller than the original model, so some people call it the mini-Glock, but there’s nothing mini about it. I use it because it has the knockdown power that can make the difference in a life-or-death situation.

I’ve pulled my gun many times, fired it enough to know how I and it perform under real conditions, and hit enough people to know that I’d rather not. Real conditions had changed for me. I had to find out whether I could shoot and shake at the same time.

I bought a box of PowRball bullets. Each round has an expanding jacketed bullet with a polymer ball in the bullet cavity. The soft-point cap promotes controlled expansion of the bullet, resulting in a classic mushroom shape that dumps all the available energy into the target. I knew all that because I’d read it on their website and I’d seen what happens when one of their bullets hits a?esh-and-blood target instead of one made of paper.

The range is half a?ight down from the main?oor and consists of a series of shooting stations separated by partitions. I set my gun and ammo on the ledge in front of my shooting station. I was the only one on the range, which suited me just fine. If I was going to fall apart again, I didn’t want another audience.

Guns are unforgiving weapons. They carry out the errors committed by the person firing them without apology or regret. They will jam or misfire if you don’t treat them with the care and respect they require. Their accuracy depends on a number of factors-range, wind, and angle to name a few. The steadiness of the shooter, more than any other factor, determines whether he hits his target. A firm grip and a controlled trigger pull are essential.

I went through my routine, making certain the gun was unloaded, checking the sight, loading the magazine, planting my feet, squaring my body, and gripping the gun with both hands. I measured my breaths, staying calm and focused. Still and steady, I fired, emptying the thirteen-shot magazine. I reloaded it and repeated the process a second time, then a third, locking my concentration on the gun, the trigger, and the target.

The pistol jumped slightly in my hand as I fired each round, the very manageable recoil another user-friendly feature of the Glock. After each round, I came back to my starting position and fired again. The blue smoke and smell of cordite were as reassuring as the bunched holes ripped in the center of the silhouetted target.

I started shaking when I tried to reload the magazine a fourth time. I clasped a bullet between my thumb and forefinger, repeatedly smacking it against the magazine like I was tapping out incomprehensible Morse code. The round slipped from my hand, landing on the rubber mat at my feet, followed by three more rounds before I laid the gun on the ledge next to a ballpoint pen someone had left there.

I picked up the pen, pulled the cap off, and tried to replace it, unable to make that happen, either. The harder I tried, the worse I shook, the tremors rebounding into my midsection until the muscles in my abdomen contracted like a snapped slingshot, yanking my head to my knees and leaving me grunting and gasping.

I raised my head. There were no witnesses except for the target hanging from a wire thirty feet away. I scooped the bullets off the?oor and left.

Back in my car, I felt the butt of the gun cut into my waist, the barrel pressing hard against my hip. A gun was just one of the things I put on each day. All of a sudden, it didn’t fit. It was like a pebble rolling around inside my shoe. I couldn’t imagine not carrying it. The only thing worse was what might happen if I had to use it. There were too many things that could go wrong, none of which the gun would forgive.

There was no doubt that Wendy was her mother’s daughter. They shared the same silky, honey-colored hair, strong chin, intoxicating green eyes, and full-face smile.

A psychologist at the drug treatment facility said that Wendy felt guilty for having stayed after school the day Kevin was taken, believing she could have saved him had she been there. The shrink said that she compounded her guilt by blaming herself for the disintegration of our marriage, punishing herself further by making choices she knew would turn out poorly. It was the only explanation that could make us feel worse and it did.

Through it all, she still loved us. That counted for a lot, even when she accused me of not doing enough to help her mother, even after we tried counseling, rehab, and AA. Some things, I once told her, can’t be fixed, and her mother had decided that she was one of them. “Not good enough,” Wendy had said. “You love her, you fix her, like you fixed me.” I did but I couldn’t, telling Wendy she fixed herself. Then I didn’t love Joy anymore and I stopped trying. Two more things I regretted but couldn’t change.

Wendy met Colby Hudson last December at a holiday party for agents, staff, and their families, telling me later that she thought he was cute and edgy.

“Don’t date an agent,” I told her. “Especially that one.”

“Why not and why not him?”

“Because you might fall in love with him, decide to get married, and end up spending the rest of your life unpacking your suitcase and hoping he comes home vertical and sober. That’s a tough way to live, especially for someone with your history. A lot of agents and their spouses can’t hack it. But Colby is the kind of guy who ups the ante. If he’s edgy, it’s because he lives on the edge. You don’t want to be holding on when he falls off, and I’ve seen enough guys like him to know that sooner or later that’s where he’s headed.”