Gun Church

Forty-Seven

I jackknifed up in bed, eyelids snapping open like cartoon window shades, my clothes soaked through with cold sweat. The last time I woke up in a cold sweat, I was in detox. Christ, it was so fucking clear to me in my sleep that I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it before. I had the proof or, hopefully, the disproof of Jim’s version of events right there in the apartment with me.

The clock read 3:02 A.M. when I stepped onto the bare wooden floors and stood, stretching the knots out of my muscles. The room was utterly dark and still, but not quiet. The traffic noise from Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway was like the buzzing of a sleepy hive and with the Avenue H subway station only two blocks away, the cha-chum cha-chum, cha-chum cha-chum of passing subway wheels was the rhythm of the night. Transfixed by the sounds, I let the darkness wash over me.

The trance was quickly broken and I found the metal file box where I stored my monthly bills. The beat-up old file box was the only thing of my father’s I’d kept. I could not help but think of Jim, the scars on his back, the Colonel’s handgun collection, and again feel pity for what had become of him. I felt a little sorry for myself too. Sorry that I had been broken for so long, that I had denied to myself that finding my father dead by his own hand had helped ruin me.

I sat at my desk looking through all my recent bills. If what Jim had said was true about driving my Porsche to New York and back, my CompuPass toll bill, which was automatically charged to my AmEx card, would be much higher than usual. In fact, for nearly a year before this last September, I had no toll charges at all. Until the day Frank Vuchovich held my class hostage, where did I have to go, really? But my AmEx statements for the two months prior to my departure from Brixton were nowhere to be found. I had my most recent one, but not the two previous ones. There was nothing particularly surprising in that. I just moved and I was never the neatest of record keepers.

I booted up my laptop. While I may not have been able to check my toll bills, I could look back at the media reports that followed in the wake of Haskell Brown’s murder. When I Googled “Haskell Brown homicide,” I got a boxcar full of hits. But the only thing any of the reports said about the bullet that caused his fatal wound was that it was from a handgun. Another dead end. Then I had an idea, one that even my sloppy record keeping couldn’t thwart. I got my phone and scrolled down to the newest number on my contact list.

“McDonald here.”

“This is Weiler. Everything all right there?” I asked.

“Fine. Quiet. She went out to dinner at nine to Otto’s over on Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street. I can tell you what she ate, if you’re interested.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“She was home at ten fifty-one. Her lights went off at eleven forty-seven and no one’s been in or out of the building since one-thirteen. My relief should be here in about an hour.”

“Very thorough. Thanks.”

“You’re up kinda early, no?”

“Nerves, I guess, and I’m a writer. We work at odd hours sometimes.”

“A writer, huh? Whatchu workin’ on?”

“That’s sort of why I called. I was wondering if you still have any contacts inside the department? I’m doing preliminary research for a book about the murder of a famous book editor. He was beaten, then shot to death. Happened a few months ago in Chelsea. Might’ve been a hate crime.”

“Whatchu need?”

“I’ve read every report on the homicide, but there’s nothing about the caliber of the handgun the killer used.”

“What’s the vic’s name?”

“Haskell Brown.”

“Gimme an hour. I’ll make some calls.”

While I was on the phone with McDonald, part of me must have been trying to figure out where the missing credit card statements had got to. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember paying those last few bills or ever having seen them. Yet, I hadn’t received any late notices or phone calls inquiring about overdue funds, and there was no old balance showing at the top of my new bill. I got a sick feeling in my gut as I thought about playing house in Brixton with Renee. “Mail’s on the table,” was her daily refrain. Renee would always smile when she said it, and her smile made me smile, but I wasn’t smiling as I reached for my checkbook.

I used to pre-sign checks for her to use at the local grocery store or the campus bookstore or to buy some clothes. I never really paid much attention to what she spent money on or used the checks for. It felt good to be good to her, to want to be good to her. When my life consisted of boning every adjunct in a skirt, I had such disdain for myself that it subverted any pleasure I might find in the bedroom. My sex life was a version of Groucho Marx’s famous line about not wanting to be a member of any club that would have him as a member. I didn’t want anyone who wanted me, and when Janice Nadir and I were involved it was worse than that. I used her own love and desperation against her. So, yeah, when Renee came into my life, I was happy to do things for her. And she balanced my checkbook: a process as mysterious to me as quantum physics.

When I looked at the checking account register, I was heartsick. Renee had written checks for those two AmEx bills. The amounts weren’t outrageous given that I’d done some splurging since getting the book deals. I was no forensic accountant and without the actual list of charges to work with, I wasn’t going to be able to back my way into the toll bill amount. But there was no getting around the fact that Renee, in spite of having four months of unfettered access to my checkbook, had paid only these two bills. Was she covering Jim’s tracks or was it a coincidence that the accompanying statements were missing? Coincidence. I could hear Jim laughing. I hadn’t wanted to believe she could have been complicit in Jim’s crazy schemes-real or imagined, whether she was being forced to or not-but it was getting harder to convince myself of that.

I guess I was pretty old-fashioned in some ways. Mostly, I used my computer like a fancy word processor. I never banked online or did any of the other sorts of things online the rest of the world did. But this was different and I was frustrated; so armed with my most recent bill, I typed in americanexpress.com and followed all the prompts until I accessed my missing statements. I was scrolling through the individual charges when my heart stopped, then raced. There it was: a CompuPass charge for over a hundred bucks, about twice what it had cost me in tolls to drive up here when I moved. Before I could breathe again, the phone rang.

“How long before this book a yours comes out?” It was Tom McDonald.

“Years, if ever,” I said. “Right now I’m just looking to see if there’s a book here at all. Why?”

“Because the caliber of the weapon used is part of the holdback and you can’t share this information with anybody, at least not yet.”

“The holdback. What’s the holdback?”

“It’s standard operating procedure for detectives to withhold certain details from any serious case. It’s so they can make sure a suspect isn’t bullshittin’ them or wastin’ their time. It’s a way to eliminate false leads or confessions.”

“I get it. A guy turns himself in and says ‘I used a.38’ when it was actually a.25. Something like that, right?”

There was a few uncomfortable seconds of silence on McDonald’s end of the phone. Then, “Why did you say that?”

“What? Hold on.”

I didn’t really hear what he said. No, I heard it, but it didn’t quite register because as I stretched my neck, my eye caught sight of something that didn’t belong. “Wait a minute,” I told him. I walked over to my door, the cell phone nestled between my right shoulder and ear. I popped on the floor lamp and froze. An envelope, not unlike the one the missing chapter had come in, had been pushed through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door.

“Weiler, what’s going on?” McDonald shouted in my ear.

“Just a second.”

I forced myself to kneel down and scoop it up. This envelope was thinner, lighter, with nothing written on it. The flap was taped shut. I tried to pull it open, but that didn’t work. I retreated to my desk to find scissors or a letter opener.

“Hey, Weiler.”

“Sorry, McDonald.”

“About the gun,” he said.

“What about it?”

“Why did you mention a.25?”

“I don’t know,” I lied, finding an old X-ACTO knife. “It was random. Why?”

“Lead detective says your vic was killed by one shot to the back of the head. The bullet was pretty smashed up, but they’re pretty certain it was a.25, probably from a Ruger or a Beretta.”

My head was pounding, sweat once again rushing through my pores, my world wobbling severely on its axis. None of this, the toll bill or the caliber of the bullet, proved anything for certain. I told myself-even if I didn’t quite believe it-that Jim could simply have stolen my toll pass and run up my bill. That the police holdback wasn’t top secret. Hadn’t I just found out what caliber bullet had killed Haskell Brown without much trouble? Jim was a resourceful kid, more resourceful than me. I’m sure he could have found out the holdback information.

“Weiler!”

“Give me a second,” I barked, emptying the contents of the envelope onto my desk. And when I saw the item the envelope held, my world stopped wobbling and spun off into the void. It was the front page of the Brixton Banner and the headline read:

MABRY LURED TO DEATH BY DARK-HAIRED BEAUTY

“Weiler! You okay?” I could not find it in me to answer. “Weiler, are you all right?”

“Far from it. Get Amy out of her apartment. Get her the fuck out of there right now and take her someplace safe.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”