Motion to Kill

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Mason found Blues loading three shotguns and enough ammunition for a small army into the backseat of his Trans-Am.

“Where in the hell did that come from?”

“Store across the street,” he said pointing to Smith’s Hunting and Fishing Shop.

“Did you get a hunting license?” Mason asked, ever the careful lawyer.

“We’re not going hunting,” he said as he slid in behind the wheel. “Get in.”

Mason closed the door and looked again at the armory in the back. “Well, I guess it’s a nice day for target practice, huh?”

“You ever shoot a gun, Lou?”

“No. Is that important?”

Blues smiled. “All depends on how you feel about getting your ass shot off.”

“I’m feeling very attached to my ass, actually.”

“I’m not going to sit up in those woods waiting for Camaya to come looking for us and not have anything to offer him except coffee.”

“Camaya doesn’t know where we are.”

“You killed one of his boys. It would have been better to kill him. He’s getting paid to kill you, so he’s got to find you. He’ll find Kelly and figure you won’t be far.”

“Thanks a lot. You’re the one who brought us here. If you knew Camaya would figure it out, why didn’t we go somewhere else?”

“Because that won’t solve your problem. He’d still find you.”

“So I’m supposed to become a gunslinger overnight and call Jimmie out for a showdown?”

“You’ll be lucky if you don’t shoot your dick off. Shotgun’s your best bet. Know why?”

“No, but I have a feeling you’re about to educate me.”

“A shotgun fires a pattern of shot that spreads out the farther it gets from the gun. It makes up for a lot of weak stomachs and shaky hands.”

“So why does Camaya use an automatic?”

“Ain’t nothin’ weak or shaky about him. He’s got a lot more experience killing folks. But I’ll take a shotgun every time for close work. The New York City Police Department did a study of shootings involving their officers. The average distance between the shooters was seven feet. At that distance, the cops only managed hits thirty-six percent of the time.”

“Lousy shots.”

“Nope. Just human. A man can stand on the firing range all day and put ten out of ten slugs in the center of the target. Trouble is, the target is standing still and isn’t shooting back. When it’s real, anyone with a weak bladder can be a lousy shot. All I want you to learn is how to load, point, and shoot. The shotgun will do the rest.”

They dragged a half dozen hay bales that had been lined against the back of the cabin over to the edge of the woods and stacked them two across and three high to create a makeshift shooting range. Blues positioned each layer so that there was a narrow ledge in front of the second and third bales. They scavenged through the cabin until they found an array of tin cans and other junk that didn’t object to being shot to pieces. Blues arranged their targets on the ledges, picked up a shotgun, and started class.

“This is a semiautomatic shotgun. Once it’s loaded and the safety is off, you pump it and pull the trigger. Keep pulling the trigger, and it keeps firing until the magazine is empty. Anybody who gets in the way will have a very bad day.”

“That’s it? Just point and shoot?” Mason asked, reaching for the gun. “This is starting to sound fun.”

“Not exactly, Wyatt Earp. Don’t point it at anybody or anything that you don’t intend to shoot.”

“Sounds reasonable. Let me have it.” Mason hefted the shotgun, raising it to his shoulder and then lowering it to his waist, aiming at the hay bales from his hip.

“What about the safety?”

“If you’re hunting quail, keep it on until you’re ready to shoot. If a man’s hunting you, keep it off. You forget to release it and you’re dead. You take too long to release it and you’re dead. It hangs up and you’re dead.”

Blues made him practice loading and unloading the gun, sighting, and firing without ammunition for an hour before letting Mason fire a live round. He paced off firing lines at ten-foot intervals from the hay bales, telling Mason to begin at the closest mark, fire three rounds, and back up to the next station.

The shot patterns on the bales vividly demonstrated the spread from each shell. As he backed up, the spread grew into an ever-widening killing field. A blue-gray cloud of acrid smoke hung in the air. Mason had learned how to load, pump, point, and shoot. He just hoped the bad guys were as cooperative as the hay bales.

Afterward they sat on the front steps of the cabin sipping cold beer they’d bought on the drive back. The sun was on the backside of the cabin, leaving the front in comfortable shade. The quiet of the woods had returned and it was hard to believe that they’d just finished their war games.

“So-what are you going to do?” Blues asked.

“Circle the wagons, make ‘em pay for every inch of ground-what am I supposed to say?”

“No, man. When this is over, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll treat the question as a vote of confidence. To tell you the truth, I haven’t really thought about it. I guess I’ll have to find a job or take up piano again.”

“You’d be better off joining the foreign legion. Why do you want to keep practicing law anyway?”

“I’m not certain. I had the right motives when I went to law school. Fight the good fight. Protect the individual. But I lost the fire somewhere along the way.”

“But you turned out to be pretty good at it.”

“Sometimes. I lost my last case. It was one of those I couldn’t afford to lose. Maybe I lost my nerve.”

“Fall off the horse, you’re supposed to get right back on. Maybe you should go back to the kind of practice you started with.”

“And maybe I should start doing what I should have done in the first place.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Listen to my aunt Claire. How about you? Are you going to spend the rest of your life as an itinerant Piano Man?”

“Nah. I’ve been making my changes all along.”

“Somehow musician and scuffling PI doesn’t sound like a grand strategy for fulfillment.”

Blues laughed and agreed. “You’re right about that, brother. I’m tired of bouncing from gig to gig. I’m buying my own place.”

“Get out! What kind of place?”

“Used to be a restaurant on Broadway. I’m gonna call it ‘Blues on Broadway.’ It’ll be a first-rate piano joint. I’ll play when I feel like it, and if I don’t feel like it, I’ll get somebody to sit in.” He said it with the satisfaction of a man who’d figured it all out.

“Have you closed the deal yet?”

“Supposed to close in three weeks. That’s why I wanted to have dinner with you last night. My place is across the street from the restaurant and I was going to ask you to look over the paperwork for me.”

“How big is it?”

“The club is a couple of thousand square feet. But I’m buying the whole building. There’s an office upstairs that I need to rent out. Make a nice place for some mouthpiece to hang his shingle. I’ll make you a good deal.”

Mason looked at Blues as he smiled and pulled on a long stem of grass he’d been chewing. Before Mason could answer, Blues said he was going for a walk. Mason watched him disappear into the woods, carrying a shotgun. He looked around for his, checked its load, and climbed back into the love seat on the porch to consider Blues’s offer.

Practicing law was the only way Mason knew how to make a living. He’d chosen the profession because he believed in the law-in its central role in society-in its capacity to heal and make whole. At first, representing injured people gave shape to those values. But the practice of law introduced a different human dimension to living those values. Partners he couldn’t trust; clients whose cases he couldn’t win and who had nowhere else to turn. He had abandoned those values just to keep practicing when he joined Sullivan amp; Christenson. Some safe harbor. A desk above Blues’s bar might be the right place to start over.