Gun Machine

Tallow thought about that, himself at five or six years old, staring up at the ceiling where his father had glued plastic stars made from some glow-in-the-dark material in the rough shape of constellations. And he also thought about having known that, either despite the fear or because of it, he could have gotten out of the way of the van. He would go to sleep smiling in absolute certainty that he could have pushed himself up and clear of the van.

He had not been properly scared in a long time, John Tallow hadn’t. Now he was, as vividly and coldly as he’d been that childhood day.

Tallow found Scarly and Bat’s cave. Bat was in it, typing on a laptop.

“Where’s Scarly?”

“Working the cigarette paper,” Bat said, only half engaged. “She doesn’t like me helping with that. The whole process makes me cough, and one time…well, we’d just had some shitty pizza, and I had stuff stuck in my teeth? And we were smoking something for prints, and I was coughing, and she was yelling at me, and I coughed, and this chunk of anchovy flew right out of my mouth and kind of right into hers.”

“So she doesn’t let you help.”

“Not so much. I’m working on trying to pull some DNA off the trim.”

“The quick method?”

“Not that quick,” Bat said. “But I can manage it through the computer from here. With the best will in the world and all the luck there is, we’re looking at at least an hour. And I have no luck and I work in the NYPD, you know?”

“Yeah,” Tallow said. “So, listen, could I borrow you for an hour?”

“What do you need?”

“You. And some of your stuff.”

“You sound like a man with a scheme, John.”

“We’re way past schemes and well into desperate-last-ditch-effort territory. Or maybe lying-in-a-road-as-a-van-drives-toward-you territory.”

“Well, okay. Let me talk to Scarly first?”

“About what?” Scarly said, appearing behind Tallow. Her eyes were bright and her breathing was fast and shallow.

“What did you do?” said Bat, and then, to Tallow, “I know that look. She’s done something. I know it.”

“You’re fucking right,” Scarly said. “I got a print.”

“Holy shit,” said Bat.

“It’s not a great print,” Scarly said quickly, “but it’s a print. And I think it’s good enough that if our guy’s been a previous customer of the NYPD, we should get a match. We got a fucking print, John. How the fuck did you even think of that?”

“What I’m thinking about right now is getting a print examiner in to confirm the latent if we get a match,” said Bat.

“Don’t piss on my parade, Bat. I got a print off a cigarette butt shoved in a potato chip bag. You should be paying me fucking obeisance right now and ordering me hookers.”

“We don’t need an examiner to sign off on it yet,” said Tallow. “Get the print matched. We’ll know the guy when we see him. I’m damned sure of that. I want to borrow Bat for an hour. We’ll be back. We’re going to lose the case tomorrow, Scarly, so we’ve only got tonight to develop something that looks like a theory backed with evidence. Are you up for that?”

“John, I’ve got a wife. I can’t keep staying out all night.”

“Hey. Scarly. What happened to five seconds ago when you got a fucking print?” Bat commented.

Scarly sagged and glowered at John from under a comically lowered brow. “All right. I admit it. We’re in too deep to stop now. But we’re gonna need to eat, and I need to make sure I’m not going to get my head flushed down the crapper by the wife. Let me make a call.”

“Make your call,” Tallow said. “The print’s being run now?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, good. Bat, I need some of your junk there.”

In the car, Bat said, “You’re just utterly fucking nuts if you think that’s going to achieve anything.”

“I am getting pretty tired of being told I’m crazy.”

“Well, get used to it. I mean, I don’t want to stick my nose all the way into your business, but were you like this before your partner died?”

“I thought Scarly was the autistic one with no social skills.”

“No, no, I’m not unaware of what I’m asking. I realize that’s going to still sting, you know? But it’s a reasonable question. Do you feel like you’re behaving differently than you would if you were working with your partner? Is there maybe just a possibility that…I don’t wanna say you’re traumatized or some I-need-a-hug bullshit, but…”

Tallow sighed. “You’re asking if my seeing Jim get killed has made me a little nuts?”

“Basically,” said Bat. “Only, you know, put more nicely than that.”

A uniformed policeman walked into the road, signaling for the oncoming traffic to stop. Beyond him, a paramedic rig was parked on the sidewalk. There was a man burning on the street corner. Kneeling, engulfed in flame, quite dead, very slowly collapsing in on himself.

A guano-speckled bowler hat, with turkey feathers in the hatband, blew across the street behind the uniformed cop.

Tallow heard a voice in his recent memory say I just asked her for a light.

“You’re asking if I’m a little nuts,” Tallow muttered under his breath.

“Yes, I am,” said Bat. “This plan is a crazy man’s plan.”

“And yet here you are.”