“Don't that beat all. Bud? That Lamar, he's a goddamned genius. We got the bridges covered and helicopters with infrared, and he still beats us. Bud, he's smarter than that even. The shell that was ejected from the shotgun that killed that lady probation officer? There was a print on it.
Lamar's! He loaded his buddy's gun, because he knew we already had his prints!”
“He's a goddamned smart boy, all right,” said Bud, wondering where he fit into the operation.
“Well, maybe Lamar done slipped up just a bit,” said the colonel.
“On our side of the river, we found tracks of the car they had stashed to take them out of there. Old C. D. Henderson threw a goddamned red-ass tantrum and got them to make a cast. We faxed the tread to the FBI and we got a make just like that: It's the pattern for a Goodyear 5400-B, a low-end non reinforced radial made entirely for Japanese cars with sixty-inch wheelbases and six-inch tire wells. Goddamn if that old drunken coot didn't hit a jackpot.
Only three varieties of car can wear it—your Hyundai Excel, your Toyota Tercel, and your Nissan Sentra, from the years 1991 on.
Moreover, two of the companies changed their design last year. So it can only be three model years of the Hyundais and the Toyotas and four model years of the Sentras. The last getaway job's got to be one of those, you follow?”
“Got you,” said Bud.
“We shook out about forty-two hundred cars registered in South Oklahoma that can wear that set of tires. Bud.
About two hundred of them are registered to people with felony convictions. We're fixin' to raid on them, just to be sure, because C.D. is dang sure they'll run to kind.”
“I could—”
“No, Bud. Your raid days are over. We're going door-to door on the other four thousand. It's going to take a heap of man hours Bud. It ain't the glory route, that's for sure. I got five other ex-detectives and retired patrolmen working the job. You get the address, you find the car, you lookiesee the tires and if you get the right set of tires on the right car, you call in the license number and we see what we shake out.
Maybe we stake out, maybe we raid, depending. Bud, you can imagine, there's a lot of goddamned public pressure on this one. That's why we're working so damned hard.”
“Yes sir.”
The colonel told him the Joint States Task Force was headquartered at the old City Hall Annex near the police station in downtown Lawton, where he'd show up to get his list, and Bud said he'd leave right away.
The colonel said he appreciated it, but he knew he could count on Bud.
“Oh, and Bud?”
“Yes sir?”
“That other matter?”
Bud didn't say a thing.
“Bud, you still there?”
“Yes sir.”
“That other matter. That's in hand, ain't it. Bud? Ain't going to be no big scandal, a heroic patrol officer caught in a love nest with his partner's widow, nothing like that?”
“No sir,” Bud said.
“Good. Knowed I could count on you, Bud.”
Bud went back outside. He tossed the empty oil bottles and the used filter into the trash can, and poured the used oil into a couple of Zerex containers. Then he picked up the two Craftsman wrenches he'd used and tossed them onto the clutter of his workbench. He felt a flash of shame: he could find time to sneak away and fuck Holly a couple of times a week, but he couldn't take time to clean up after himself at home.
He went back inside and showered and changed into a good pair of Levi his best Tony Lamas, and a white shirt.
He went down to the gun safe, took out the Colt Commander and pinched the slide back to make sure it was loaded, then snapped on the safety and slipped it into an inside-the-pants holster, which he then inserted into the waist of the jeans and hooked on his belt. He had two extra magazines in a belt mount next to the Colt. Last, he put the Beretta .380 with the thirteen-shot double-stack clip inside his shirt behind his belt buckle. It would hurt like hell after a while, but let it.
Better to have too many guns than not enough.
“Bud?”
“Yeah?”
“You come here a second now.”
Now what the hell did she want?
“Jen, I don't have time. I have to—”
“You come here.”
That was Jen's no-nonsense voice. Shit! She sounded loaded for big game. Was he going to have one of those bitter explosions, where her sense of isolation from him and his lack of passion for her lashed out at him? It seemed to happen all the time.
“Jen, this is no goddamn time—” he started to bellow as he walked into the kitchen, but what stopped him short was finding her and Jeff looking like they'd just swallowed a whole flock of canaries.
“Bud, what have they got you doing?” asked Jen.
“They got me knocking on doors as part of some combined state task force, that's all. It won't be nothing, that I guarantee you. Now what's going on?” he said.
“Remember, Dad. I was asking you about the 9-millimeters?”
“Yes, I do.” Bud remembered his lies to Jeff in the car on Sunday.
“Well, sir,” said Jen, "maybe this'll help with Lamar, just in case. I called my mother and asked for a loan.”
“Jen!”
“Six hundred dollars against my share of the farm profits this year.
And so Jeff and I went down to Southwest Pawn and Gun this morning.
This here's to get you out of that low mood. And so you don't have to use those speed loaders anymore.”
She held out a blue plastic box, and Bud knew in a second his wife and son had just given him a big Beretta 9mm automatic. A sense of shame hit him. He swallowed, felt himself blushing.
“Jen, that's so… nice.”
“Dad, I got you this. It's a shoulder holster for the Beretta,” said Jeff, holding out a plastic package with the name Bianchi on it.
“Now you go anywhere, you go in style.”
“Jeez,” said Bud.
“I sure as hell don't know what I did to deserve y'all.”
Eagerly, they helped Bud mount up. With a box of 115grain silver-tips that Miss. Edna at Southwest had thrown in to aid the cause of law and order. Bud soon had the new Beretta stoked with seventeen rounds and had another magazine of sixteen on the counter. It was a black brute of a pistol, a kind of inflated version of the .380 inside his shirt.
It fit his hand like a handshake from a brother, and when he brought it up to a Weaver grip, he found its sight picture clear and vivid.
Next issue was getting into the X design of the rig, not the easiest thing, but eventually, with everyone helping, they got it done. The spare magazine went in a pouch that hung under the other arm, as a kind of counterbalance to the heavy automatic. When he slipped on his sports coat, it would be hard to see he had become a three-gun man. But the thing felt like a brassiere, or how he imagined a brassiere would feel. The gun hung underneath, tight in its holster but loose enough to slap him if he turned quickly; a quick grab presented it neatly enough, but it was a move he'd have to work on, until it was smooth as silk.
Goddamn, he figured, counting it up, no wonder I'm walking slow these days. Got fifty-eight rounds of ammo stowed on me. That ought to be enough for anybody.
Bud went back to the safe and took out an old ."3030 carbine he'd hunted deer with as a young man. It always helped to have a long gun along; you never could tell. With a box of twenty .30-30 soft points he walked to the truck and put the long gun in its case behind the seat. Jen brought out his sports coat, a light tan cotton thing, and his hat, a white Stetson. He pulled on his Ray-Bans.