"He is one strong dude, this guy. Just been shot in the right side of his tummy, it looks like, and he can still do something like that. Pick up a hundred-and-fifty, hundred-and-sixty-pound woman and pitch her about nine-ten feet through a pair ah swingin' doors. Of course the reason that he could was that he was strong and he was not disabled. It was a popgun twenny-two, not a grown-up gun like a forty-five or a nine millimeter, lot of stopping power. One them hits you, I don't care how strong you are, you would not feel like picking anybody up and flinging them through the air. You'd be feeling like somebody threw a bowling ball into your guts at couple hundred miles an hour."
"And then also there was the fact that the slug didn't actually hit his stomach. What it hit was his call-book, and that took the impact, or a lot of it at least. Cops told me later when emergency room people got his shirt entirely off him, they confirmed what the EMTs'd told them to expect: the bullet never penetrated. Never broke the skin. Just an enormous bruise, I guess, so he's a lucky bastard, too, addition to being a strong one."
The waiter reappeared soundlessly with a bottle of red wine, already opened, and two more glasses. He set the glasses down and poured the wine. Hilliard said "Thank you." The waiter nodded. Then he drifted away.
"I don't like it when they bring the bottle already open," Merrion said. "I always suspect it isn't a fresh bottle; that they're refilling old Cotes du Rhone bottles over and over out in the kitchen from a vat of cheap jug-wine from Outer Mongolia, someplace like that.
Wine made from yak fat; there's a tank of the stuff in the basement."
"I doubt it," Hilliard said. "I think in this case the explanation is the waiter's too feeble to get the cork out at the table, so he has some muscular pot-walloper out back use the corkscrew for him." '1 think I saw the guy in a movie once," Merrion said, 'a small supporting part. I forget the name of it. Boris Karloff was the star."
"Now this would be your victim," Hilliard said, 'or is it our waiter we're still talking about?"
"Could be either one, I suppose," Merrion said. "Except I don't think Karloff was also in the movie where I might've seen the victim. In that one I think the star was Peter Boyle.
"Anyway, today he was being an appliance repairman: refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, and when he came into the courthouse he forgot to leave his call-book in his truck. Good thing for him. It's one of those thick black leather ledger-things they make out of punched forms, two hard covers and a couple of || steel bolts. He carries it hooked over his belt, back cover inside his pants.
"His adoring wife, Sheila, thinks when he keeps those appointments he meets lots of horny young housewives that he's bangin' all the time.
For all I know, he is. So she gave him the idea first chance she gets she's gonna stick a blade in him. He got sick of it and told her he was comin' in today to file a complaint against her, for saying that, and ask for a restraining order, and so she decided it'd be fun if she also came in today and plugged him. Dovetailed very nicely.
"If he hadn't had that book in his pants he would've had a hole in a bad place, lower abdomen. You gotta take a bullet, you do not want it there. The bullet mushroomed in the book instead of in his bowels.
EMTs told me later alia time he's inna hospital, they're making sure there's no traumatic internal damage, his beeper's goin' off like there's a prison break in progress. His office is goin' nuts, all these housewives callin': "Where the hell is Ellsworth? He's supposed to be here now. I can't get my washing done, he fixes my machine."
"The gun was a Jennings J-22, chrome-plated pistol. I never heard that particular make, and by now I thought I'd had, most of them. Dave Fisher, State Police lieutenant, first responded when the call went out for someone to take charge at the scene, he says it's a six-shot, throwaway, fifty-buck cheapie. I am fascinated.
"Sunny said to me one night after we finished going at it, I got up to get a beer or something, must've turned the ballgame on, my way back to bed, and she got annoyed. There we were, wed just made love, and now I went to get a beer and turned the ballgame on. She said: "Men do not know what to do with women, really. That's where all the problems start. You like us for the sex part, like that fine. But after you've gotten laid, immediately, you start getting bored.
"I think it's because we don't have any moving parts, like machinery does. Planes and cars and boats and guns. No pieces that you can take apart and look at carefully, clean and oil, and then put back together, or maybe modify. See if they wont run a little better now, faster, smoother, quieter. Guys like things you can adjust. "Now, we fit 'er back together, snick-snick, click-click, snap, like that, right. Okay now, starter up. See how much better she runs now? Told you that'd do it."
"And she slapped her hands together, like she was dusting them off.
"You can't do that with us. Women aren't adjustable. Well, okay, you understand that; you're resigned to it. There's nothing you can do to improve performance. It's okay; this's something you can live with.
The standard way we work is pretty good. It just doesn't take a lot of attention, so you don't see any need to give us any more than absolutely necessary. Like: "dinner and drinks oughta do it." Low maintenance. Once you've used us there's nothing that needs doing for a while. "Might's well have a beer and catch a little of the ballgame." That's why you irritate us so much. You start out interested, sure, very interested, but then when it's all over, boom, on to something else."
"Maybe she was right," Merrion said. "Cars: she's got me here, I guess. Golf: keep my clubs clean, of course. Not much else I can do to make them work better; the punk results I get're my fault. I dunno dogshit about guns. Never paid any attention to them. I don't hunt. I don't shoot at targets. I was never inna service and I'm not a cop.
I've never any reason to become interested in guns. But now I'm fascinated by what Fisher's telling me about this fuckin' pistol and how people use their guns.
'"Saturday-night speciaclass="underline" for non-professionals. We're not talkin' robbers here, drug enforcers, nut bags here; guys who shoot up grade schools, fast-food joints, disgruntled postal workers. They want something heavier, more capacity. This item's made for your impulsive casual shooter, doesn't expect to use it very often; perfect for important family occasions. Although it is kind of unusual to hold the celebration at the courthouse, in the morning.
'"Non-profit shootings're generally night-work. Daytimes most people work, haven't got time to shoot people. Nights and weekends're when the amateurs take care of that stuff that's when they've got the time.
Passion-shootings, spousal matter like this, most people prefer the privacy of the home, they can relax and be themselves. Those who want an audience, though, maybe the third party to a three' Cornered romance, like bars and the parking lots outside them much more popular'n government buildings.
'"But hey, there're no flies on this little lady I'm not sayin' that.
Wherever you happen to be when your fuse finally burns all the way down, this cheap handgun is a perfectly proper utensil. Most women use knives; shooters're generally men. But that's okay; nothing in the rules says women can't shoot people too.
"And contrary to what you may've heard, shooting isn't difficult, doesn't require great physical strength. Women can easily do it.
You're a woman with a point to make, all you got to do is point one of these things at the person you're mad at, in this case your husband but could be your boyfriend, or your husband's girlfriend or boyfriend any number of possible combinations. And you make the choice, you cute little dickens, because you are the one with the sidearm. Simple to use. Load it and point it and pull the trigger; that's all there is to it. If it's your lucky day, or night, and it isn't his, or hers, the gun goes off like it's supposed to and then there's this loud noise, like in the movies, and the bullet comes out the front of the barrel.