Gun Work

She was leaning over him to check for blood when he grabbed her by the throat. She was so shocked she actually dropped the Bulldog revolver, which had one round left in its cylinder.

They were all here, Barney thought. Karlov, Armand, Sirius. He was wearing Karlov’s gloves and special neck strap. The ammo in his gun’s magazine had been manufactured by Armand. And Sirius had supplied the floppy green body armor he wore under his clothing, which had just spared his life.

He felt as though he had been kicked in the solar plexus by a Clydesdale, then run over by a semi, then dragged. His vision was aswim and he was unable to sit up yet. But he’d managed a lock on her beautiful neck, and he’d die before he’d let go.

She clawed his face open with lacquered nails, white foam actually accreting at the corners of her mouth. This was her real face, the face nobody ever saw, the visage beneath the human mask, her cunning mimic of human behavior.

She tried to roundhouse him in the balls, something the body armor was not specifically designed to prohibit. He lunged. They rolled. She went for an eye gouge and he feinted, feeling his ear tear halfway off. Then she spotted his .40 on the floor — much closer than where her Bulldog had fallen — and made a wide, swinging grab for it in spite of his chokehold. Barney’s face went right into the valley of her perfect breasts. Her porcelain skin was trying to push its scent right into his brain.

So he bit her.

It was a grotesque parody of sex: her bucking and gasping as though she was coming her brains out, skirt hiked up past her waist, knees straddling him; him red-faced and straining, thrusting against her, his face buried in her cleavage. Barney’s teeth clamped down on soft tissue and tore free a wet, crimson mouthful which he spat out. She did not scream. She was not a screamer. The sound that burst from her was closer to a growl.

Barney’s insides felt like broken fruit. Within his chest, gears ground — something was busted in there. The rounds from the Bulldog were no joke, capable of whisking away an arm or leg at close range, and Barney had been caught at less than ten feet. Worse, Erica had manipulated the gun as though she knew what she was doing, not losing her sight picture to the recoil of the first round and plugging all four on target.

She had collected her gun at the bar and concealed it masterfully, or had it planted in the chair cushions the whole time, and yet had pinballed Barney through her idea of an inquisitor’s confessional. He was reminded of the way cats toy with still-living prey before sundering it to bloody strings and tatters and a hot spill of exposed organs.

Apparently people paid as little attention to gunshots in a ritzy hotel as they did everywhere else. Erica had waxed Tannenhauser with three neat from the Cobra and dealt Barney four from the Bulldog, no silencers. Cops had never truly existed in Barney’s world, and they did not swing in to make everything academic now. Both he and Erica had run out of allies.

They were like an ungainly, multi-limbed alien, spreading one tentacle toward one gun on the floor, then another, flopping about as though in dicey gravity. She did not waste a hand clutching her chest wound and expended her effort on keeping Barney contained as he fought to marshal his own strength.

She swung wildly, trying to punch him in the neck, but he had a crucial few inches of reach on her and her fist fell short. Her tongue was out as she labored to breathe. Unexpectedly he yanked her closer by the throat so he could slam the flat of his other hand into her forehead, right between the eyes. That rocked her badly but she persisted, still full-up with fight. Her shoes had gone flying into a lover’s discard on the floor. One was close enough to snatch up and she tried to bury the five-inch, steel-tipped heel into his fore-brain. It came down like a hammer and skidded off his temple, excavating a fresh furrow and rebounding off his ear wound. Blistering, molten pain; the right side of his head felt afire.

Barney remembered the gear-up at the Pantera Roja, when the couple had been busily (and vocally) humping in the next room. If there were any neighbors up here on the suite floor, through the walls it probably sounded like more people making big sweaty whoopee. It’s what hotels were for: Anonymity behind numbered doors and privacy locks.

So people could kill each other in secret.

Past the green fury in her eyes was a darker taunt: Why don’t you just fuck me and get it over with?

Barney’s grip suddenly went on vacation, as though his battery for hand-strength had just petered out. Blood was leaking in rivulets down his arm, from under the glove. His traitorous hand released her and she sprawled back, gasping.

He rolled and grabbed the fallen Bulldog with his left hand just as she collected his SIG from the floor.

“Whoops.” She said it around a snarl. She pointed the gun at Barney’s head and cycled the trigger through a full double-action pull.

Click, nothing.

The ammo in Barney’s magazine had indeed come from Armand’s dies, but that magazine was in his pocket. Ever since the elevator he had been packing an empty gun. He had known what he was walking into, and had expected to be disarmed on arrival. For the first time, he had not relied upon his own weapon but counted on opportunities in the room as they would reveal themselves — something he had learned in Mexico. He had begun thinking like her, prepared to morph the plan in unexpected ways, since moving in expected ways was what had gotten Sirius and Armand killed.

Erica’s mouth popped into an O-shape — as in oh, you’ve got to be kidding — and she actually racked the slide to verify the worst. Empty chamber, vacant clip. It was just enough time, measured in tachycardia, for Barney to swivel on the floor, swing the Bulldog around. The gun was tough black passivate with pancake grips. He pulled the trigger once.

The shot caught her in the cheekbone and the hair on the back of her head flew apart. The slug, a semi-wadcutter, made a ballpoint-pen hole going in. Coming out, it was more like the size of a salad plate. The left side of her face collapsed around the crush cavity and her gun hand flew sidewise, drunkenly jettisoning the SIG.

The Bulldog spent, Barney nonetheless scrambled on top of her to pin her down. Hemorrhage was already darkening her brow and her eye on the gunshot side had orbited to a slit of white. Her other eye, still open, leering green, was fixed on him, but could no longer see him. No parting bon mot, no quip. Just dead.

Feeling pretty dead himself, Barney crawled toward the bathroom.

The first people to enter the room, later, were Elpidia Marcos and Esperanza Guitierrez, two Hispanic maids working for the hotel. They found bodies, blood, guns and a great deal of folding American currency strewn around on the bed and floor. Inside the single suitcase in the bedroom, they found even more money.

By the time they alerted their employers, stories had been jerry-rigged. Management staff entered the room to discover bodies, blood, guns and a far smaller amount of cash strewn around. No suitcase.

By the time the police were summoned, alibis had been solidified. By the time detectives visited the by-now thoroughly polluted crime scene, they found bodies, blood, guns and a couple hundred bucks on the floor.

The solution that allowed the quickest clean-up was that the two people in the top-floor suite had murdered each other with weapons found on-site. This story was not released to the news media, as the hotel had a reputation to uphold, as well as a fast shuffle in order to erase all evidence of misdoing and make the room rentable again as soon as feasible. If someone had suggested a bit of bribery was involved, even in the form of comps and favors to the police, nobody would have laughed.

Barney had left the hotel wearing a dead man’s clothing and lugging two suitcases that threatened to pull his tendons out with every step. After patching his ripped ear and realizing there was far too much blood on him to pass without comment, he rifled the closet and found some duds of Tannenhauser’s that would pass peripheral scrutiny. He smeared some of Erica’s base makeup into his more lurid, visible wounds, then saw that he could not just leave his own bloodsoaked clothing behind, oozing with his DNA. He popped one of the money cases and threw cash in handfuls onto the floor, to make room for the incriminata he had to smuggle out. Fair trade, all things considered.

Down the elevator and through the lobby, the whole trick was not to weave like a drunk, or puke, or black out, or start leaking fresh geysers of the red stuff. Maintain a brisk and businesslike pace. Avoid eye contact. Refuse tip-hungry assistance. Get out, get clear, get free and stay that way.

He made it back to his car, but there was no place for him to go.

Over a thousand people attended the funeral services for the gem-cutter and cowboy geologist known as Mano due to his loss of one hand years before through circumstances shaded in antiquity. Many estimated his age as over a hundred, though in fact he was 95 years old when he died easily, with dignity, surrounded by his many friends and family members in his modest home on the outskirts of the Xochimilco district of Mexico City. It was a neighborhood bordering on the rural, with wide swaths of open land separating grain fields and the occasional small cemetery, all of it yet unspoiled by urban metastasis. The cemetery in which Mano had requested burial had some markers that were nearly double his age, and trees that were four centuries old.

Among the mourners and speakers eulogizing Mano were a contingent of big, brusque men rumored to be luchadors, masked wrestling superstars incognito. Many of them wept openly, yet endured manfully. Tigre Loco, maker of masks, attended in his own distinctive headgear, for no one had ever seen his face, not even his customers.

One individual in particular stood out, mainly because he was taller than most of the mourners; an American who had come to live in Mexico as Mano’s apprentice and heir apparent (despite Mano’s large and diverse family). This man is referred to by some as el hombre de las armas, the gunman, a large, quiet enigma with slender, exotic hands. No one knows his real name, or if he even has a name. After his arrival, Mano’s gem and jewelry shop was never again targeted by even the most desperate or stupid robbers. Several of Mano’s blood relatives now staff the establishment, for when the big man arrived he quickly acquired several vehicles specially outfitted for long excursions deep into the mountains and countryside. He and Mano would often disappear for days on these elaborate expeditions, which grew to possess much of the quality of a vision quest. Nearly always they would bring back some mineral find of rare beauty or astonishing complexity from some dry riverbed or hidden cavern.

They also became a fixture at local cantinas and family-run eateries, always welcome, persistently popular, in no small measure because the mere presence of the stranger was deemed a good thing for the entire community. In the face of indifference by constabularies to petty crime, he seemed to be a guardian angel, like a samurai or paladin, a stoic protector of silent strength who inspired an overall sense of healing. He was the sort of man who has seen enough of pain and suffering and emerged scorched, but not burned, from that crucible. Ordinary people fabricated entire mythologies about his possible past.

Now, with Mano gone, the stranger continues his habit of long treks into the wild, still returning with something compelling every time. He is a frequent visitor and honored backstage guest at Arena Coliseo, where he avidly watches the age-old battle between good and evil enacted by high-flying men in colorful costumes and strange masks, in a ring where alliances are fluid and betrayal is the essence of drama. Good guys, bad guys... and even the most normal person can have a secret identity, an alternate life.

At his workbench in the rear of Mano’s shop the stranger labors with a monk’s patience among stone tumblers and wax castings, refining the lessons taught by the genteel little man. There is another, larger station for gun work; it takes up an entire wall and features many arcane tools. He has become expert at custom modifications and special adjustments. He manufactures many of his own parts and loads his own special pedigrees of ammunition. In jewelry and stones, he is committed to learning a craft; with guns, he is turning a craft into an artform.

The ghostly entreaties said to be heard at night during the full moon on the Arroyo de La Llorona have been dormant for some time now.

The stranger’s odd hands no longer bleed.

Among his many friends are a special group found in the back of his workshop; his closest and most intimate friends, gathered there on the table. You probably already know their names, too: Remington, Ruger, Browning, Beretta, Kimber, Colt, Smith, Wesson, SIG.