A Single Shot

“You just come from there?”

“Where?”

“Pitt’s?”

“Who?”

“My fucking lawyer, crook!”

“Why would I?”

“Who give ya this, then?”

“I’m an officer of the court, Moon.”

“That who sent ya here?”

“Who the hell else?”

“I tried to talk my kid and some guy answered the phone.” Taking a step forward, John puts his mouth six inches from Dolan’s. “I don’t s’pose you or Pitt know ’bout that or ’bout the fuckin’ rock through my window!”

Backing against the car, Dolan puts a hand on his holster. John slaps the hand away. “What the hell are you talking about, Moon?”

“I don’t feel good.”

“What?”

“I see shit everywhere.”

“You’re jumpy as a bug, Moon.” Again he puts his hand on his holster. Again John slaps it away. “Just calm down.”

“I’m tryin’ to figure out why you’re here. You want me to hand the package o’er you! Is that it?”

Dolan gets his hand on his holster a third time and starts fumbling with the strap. John knocks his sunglasses off. Dolan gives up on the strap to grab the glasses. He shoves them into his pocket.

“Where’s my wife and kid, Ralph?”

Dolan tries to slide out around John. His lips are working, but nothing’s coming out.

“I’m holdin’ you ’countable.”

“Wha?”

“They ain’t better be a hair touched on their heads!” John uses his chest to pin Dolan to the side of the car.

“I’m just serving a court order, Moon.”

John backs up, turns around, and walks into the trailer.

The village is still heavily shrouded in haze when he arrives at the municipal parking lot. He wanders like a ghost in that soup down Main Street to Puffy’s, enters through the front door, nods at Puffer, who seems not to have moved in the preceding three days, sits down opposite the fat proprietor at the counter, and of Carla demands, “Coffee.”

“ ’Bout the other night,” she says, trying to hand him a menu, which John lets drop on the counter. “Moira weren’t aware…”

“Where’s she at?”

“She don’t work this morning.”

John raises his eyes at her.

“Said somethin’ ’bout going out of town.”

“Where to?”

Carla shrugs.

“How ’bout Nolan?”

“With them, I’d guess.”

“Them?”

“I don’t know nothin’ ’bout it.”

“I’m askin’.”

“Not the right person, you ain’t.”

“I guess you know your boyfriend’s a psycho.”

She pours coffee into a cup, puts it down in front of him, then heads into the dining room. Smoke hovers below the ceiling like fog oozing through the vents. Voices drone like static. John gulps down half his coffee. The whole world feels to him like a whisper, with him stone-deaf. Someone drops a plate in the kitchen. Puffy rolls his thick head at the sound. Carla walks back up the aisle from the dining room. Spinning round, John catches her by the arm. “You as dumb as you act?”

“Mitts off, John.”

“Where’s he at?”

“Why?”

“We got business.”

“Then I guess he knows where to find ya.”

John gives her arm a squeeze.

“Hey!”

“What’s goin’ on, John?” Puffy’s smoke-raggedy voice floats quietly across the counter. John glances at him, but doesn’t answer. The pharmacist, Leonard Pine, walks in and sits down two stools from John. John grimaces menacingly at him. Pine gets up and moves to a booth. Carla tries to pull her arm free. John pinches it harder. Puffy says, “How can I help?”

“It’s up to her,” says John.

Puffer casually blows smoke Carla’s way.

“I don’t even know what he wants.”

“I’d as soon break your arm,” whispers John.

“If he’s got a question, Carla,” Puffer says, crunching out his cigarette and slowly pulling another from the pack in his shirt pocket, “why not give him an answer?”

“I ain’t got the one he’s wantin’.”

“Try, though,” says Puffer.

“ ’Bliged to ya, fat man,” says Carla. “You’re a real prince.”

Puffer ignites the fresh cigarette, drags on it, then, folding his hands on the counter, lets it dangle from one corner of his mouth while exhaling twin lines of smoke through his nose. “Leonard Pine sets over there in a booth ’stead of at the counter where he has for ten years waitin’ for his coffee to drink and a menu to read.”

“Coffee black, eggs over easy, rye toast with grape jelly!” Carla barks into the kitchen. “ ’Kay, Puffy?”

“Had a pretty young thing in here the other day wants to waitress,” Puffy rasps barely above a whisper. “Had tits the size of cantaloupes. I told her leave her number.”

“Bet she’s just holding her breath, too,” hisses Carla. She frowns loathsomely at John. “Last I knew, he was staying over to the Oaks.”

“What room?”

“My memory ain’t what it was. Somethin’ in the two-twenties.”

John lets go her arm and stands up. Puffy says, “Best you don’t come back in for a while, John.”

“Big man,” snorts Carla.

John strides past her toward the exit.