Reed Coleman - Gun Church

“You better start treating me with the respect I deserve,” Jim said, getting right up in my face, his breath stinking of vomit and beer. “And you better not think about going to the police.”

I walked over to the beachside railing to help keep me upright. He followed close behind.

“Go to the police! With what, some cockamamie story you dreamed up? They would think I was the crazy one.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Jim, I don’t know what you’re getting out of this or what you want. Is it money, do you want some money?”

He was horrified, hurt. “Money? You think I want your money?”

“Then what?”

“I told you.”

“What, my love and respect? You think stalking me, lying to me, hitting me, and threatening me is the way to go about earning it? You got some funny ideas about love and respect.”

“Don’t say that! Don’t say that!”

“Or what, you’re going stomp your feet some more? Grow up, kid, and stay the hell away from me.” My head spinning, I pushed off the rail and made for the staircase to the street.

“Don’t call me kid.”

“Then stop acting like one.”

“I wasn’t lying,” he called after me. “Don’t make me prove it to you.”

“Grow up, kid,” I repeated, not looking back.

“I’ll prove it to you.”

Now I turned and shouted at him across what was almost the entire width of the boardwalk. “Whatever game you’re playing at, you leave Amy and Renee out of it. This is about you and me.”

“My game,” he said. “My rules.”

“They’ve always been just your rules, haven’t they, Jim? All that stuff about how things were supposed to go in the chapel, that was a load of crap. I know a narcissist when I see one and I’m looking at one right now. This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

“I didn’t wound Ralph for me, Kip.”

“Ralph? Who’s Ralph?”

“The guy from the grounds crew at school. I clipped him in the arm to get a rise out of you. I wanted to see how you would react to blood, to see what you’d do with McGuinn in Gun Church after that. Ralph was pretty mad at me for that. I had to kill him too, you know, before he could talk to you.”

“Stop it, Jim. Just stop this, whatever this is, now.”

“Too late for that. Too much blood spilled already to stop. Watch for signs, Kip, and you’ll see clear enough what this is. Then we’ll talk.”

And with that, he turned his back on me. He walked down the boardwalk toward Coney Island until his figure was swallowed by the fog. I stood there, frozen. My hands were shaking, but not from the cold.

Three days later and nothing. No headlines, no obits, no proof that Jim Trimble’s twisted boardwalk tale was anything more than a fantasy narrative born of desperation. Poor Jim, I thought, so damaged by the Colonel, so in need of affection and approval he was willing to have me as a surrogate father. Yet, as bad as I felt for Jim, I no longer wanted any part of him. Even if every word he had said was utter crap, there was stuff he’d done, words spoken that could not be taken back. I wondered if he was in a motel room somewhere trying to figure out how he might unscramble the eggs. Maybe he was in his old pickup, driving back home to Brixton. I hoped Renee had found her way clear of him. There had been no sign of her either. Whether his story was real or imagined, the fact that he could take very profound tragedy and pain and weave it into such a warped chain of events scared the shit out of me. He needed help, a lot of help, but he wasn’t going to get it from me.

To Amy’s credit, she’d been pretty understanding about my disappearing act at the Peking Brasserie, but there was no getting around telling her about Renee. I didn’t go into too much detail over the phone and I was careful to avoid the big picture. There was no need to worry her unnecessarily. It was bad enough that Jim had me looking over my shoulder. I didn’t see the point in infecting Amy with my paranoia and nagging fears. Still, I was pretty sure Jim had broken into her loft and I wasn’t prepared to roll the dice with her life. The morning after I walked down the boardwalk steps, I asked Meg to find me someone to keep an eye on Amy.

“What is this, Kip, stalking by proxy?”

“I wish I had the time to explain the irony of what you just said, but I don’t. It’s not about that. Please, just do it.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Someone with a carry permit who can handle himself, but someone who won’t stick out in a crowd. He’s meant to be insurance, not a deterrent. I don’t want Amy or anyone else to know he’s there.”

There was a pensive silence coming from Meg’s end of the line. Then she gave voice to her worries, “Are these those gun nuts from-”

“Yeah.”

“What’s going on? Is Amy really in danger?”

“I’m not taking any chances.”

“Why not call the NYPD?”

“No cops, Meg! No cops.”

“All right. Don’t bite my head off. You realize this kind of thing can get very expensive.”

“Do it, Donovan. Just do it, please?”

“Okay.”

I didn’t give her time to ask more questions I wasn’t going to answer anyway, so I clicked off. Within two hours of my call to Meg, I received a call from Tom McDonald, a retired NYPD detective who ran a private security firm. He explained that when they were on the NYPD, he and his team had helped safeguard everyone from the mayor of New York to the president of the United States and that they were expert at blending into the background if that was what the client required. That was exactly what I required. I gave him accurate descriptions of Jim and Renee, and Jim’s truck. I gave him all I thought I knew about them. He said he already had all the information on Amy he needed to begin and promised that he and his relief, another retired detective, would give me regular phone updates.

He asked one last question. “You wanna tell me anything that maybe you didn’t mention before?”

“They’re both experts with guns.”

“Hitting paper targets don’t make you an expert.”

“I’m not talking about paper targets, Mr. McDonald.”

“Ex-military, huh?” he asked, his voice suddenly more serious.

“Something like that,” I said.

“Good thing you told me, but don’t worry about it. My partner, Tony Dee and me, we got her back. Nothing’s gonna happen to your ex-wife on our watch.”

“She can’t know you’re there.”

“We know. Believe me, we’ll fade so far into the background, no one’ll know we’re there unless they have to.”

In spite of McDonald’s reassurances and regular updates, I didn’t sleep much that night or the following night. It was far more unnerving not knowing how much, if any, of what Jim had said was reality based. Not knowing made it really difficult to determine what else I could do to protect Amy; but even if I could have been one hundred percent sure of Amy’s safety, I had plenty to keep my nights sleepless. There was no avoiding the truth of Jim’s narrative even if he had nothing to do with most of it. Frank Vuchovich and Haskell Brown’s deaths were facts. My rebirth as a writer and as a man had come at the price of blood, a lot of blood, and, so far, none of it mine.

It was all pretty exhausting and I got to the point where not sleeping was no longer an option. I could feel my body shutting down, but stubbornly hanging on to wakefulness. I just needed something to dull the edge of my own mania. There was nothing in my apartment to drink. I considered going downstairs and paying a visit to Isaac’s daughter. For me, nothing took the edge off quite like fucking, but the Kipster was still dead and using a woman that way was his MO, not mine. Then I remembered the painkillers the ER doctor had prescribed for my broken ribs. I snapped one of the two remaining pills in half and swallowed it dry. I don’t know when the sun was supposed to set on the rest of the world, but it set on me pretty damned quickly.