Gun Machine

Tallow got out and stood on the sidewalk, just looking at the place for a while. It took him that long to realize he had company, of a sort. An older man, leaning against a signpost. A heavy coat, suede or some other skin, roughly patched with mismatched leathers. A hide satchel over his shoulder. Soft shoes, like moccasins, just firm enough to be relatively new but already sooty from street wear. His hair and beard were all rust and snow. Tallow noticed that, for an obvious street guy, he didn’t smell terrible. Still, he thought, there’s all kinds of crazy.

Which brought back the image of screaming naked Bobby Tagg and his shotgun.

Tallow didn’t register his having taken out and lit a cigarette until the second drag. He glared at the thing, annoyed with himself. Wasn’t he supposed to have thrown the pack away?

“Tobacco?” said the street guy.

“Um. Yeah.”

“Spare one?”

“Sure,” said Tallow, locating the pack and pushing one cigarette out for the street guy. Tallow saw his fingers, callused and hatched with tiny scars. A man who had worked with his hands, a carpenter maybe, before whatever happened to him happened. Tallow had worked streets long enough to know that it didn’t always take a big thing to send someone to the point where it seemed to him that the best option was to live outdoors and eat out of garbage sacks.

The street guy pulled the filter off the cigarette with a hard, fast pinch. Tallow saw him pocket the filter as he gestured for a light. Tallow flicked his lighter and saw something between disappointment and contempt flick across the street guy’s face before he resigned himself to lighting his smoke off the flame.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The street guy drew smoke, held it in his lungs, and let it creep out of his mouth and nose. He wafted his hand through the smoke as it rose, cupping it, dancing his fingers through it.

The man licked his lips. “Not the way it used to be. Too many, what’s the word…additives.” The tip of his tongue seemed to be trying to gather residue from his lips. “Honey. Benzene. Ammonia. Can’t you taste them? Even copper.”

“I’m going to quit again soon,” Tallow commented.

“Good,” the street guy said. “Tobacco should be used only on special occasions. Smoking it all day just cheapens its value and reduces its effect.” Exhaling again, he pushed his fingers up into the smoke, as if helping the silver curls up into the sky.

Tallow’s immediate thought was to ask the man what today’s special occasion was. He held the thought. He didn’t have the strength for a conversation with a street crazy. Instead, he stamped out his own smoke, said “Good luck” to the street guy, and started across the road to the building.

“That’s what I’m praying for,” said the street guy to Tallow’s back. “Just a little good luck.”

Twelve

THE HUNTER drew on his tobacco and sent his prayers to heaven, watching the man in the black suit enter the building that contained his work. At first, the hunter had been furious with himself for not going in as soon as the thieves in the truck drove away with more of his tools. Now he was calmer, knowing that if he’d gone straight in, he likely would have been discovered and possibly even cornered by the man in the black suit, whose walk and jacket draping betrayed the presence of a firearm on his hip. Now the hunter had the upper hand. His prey was in sight and had no sense of being stalked.

The hunter did not, however, have a correct tool for the job. Nothing with resonance. He briefly fantasized about finding the right tool in his bag: an old snub-nosed police .38, perhaps, or some weapon that enjoyed infamy as a cop killer. But all he had was a hunting knife.

He considered that the shoes he’d made in the summer were sufficiently broken in to give him woodcraft stealth. If he was very careful, if he ensured that he would not be caught in the large open spaces of the building…

The hunter husbanded his smoke before casting it skyward, watching the foot traffic thin out and reading the seconds off his pulse. In his peripheral vision, ancient branches gathered.

Thirteen

IT TOOK a conscious effort for Tallow to keep his hand off his gun as he walked up the apartment building’s stairs. There was no threat here. He told himself that with every step. But every step held memory.

He got to the landing where Jim Rosato and Bobby Tagg had died, and it was there, standing in the space that for him still reverberated with blood and black powder, that Tallow realized his brain hadn’t been working properly all day.