Gun Work

Why did you come down here? Barney thought to himself as he jacked the car. It was a five-year old BMW M3 with a manual shift, thoroughly alarmed but nothing a Swiss Army knife could not neutralize. Tacking on plates boosted from a junker felt strangely nostalgic, a flashback of bandit thrill from high school, before Iraq, before Carl. No problem: Over a hundred cars were stolen in Mexico City every day. Even the jackers had quotas.

Why did you come down here, really?

It went beyond his talent for fixing problems, being the guy who knew the how of things. Scoping the worst possible scenario, then whupping it anyway. The gunfire had brought his adrenaline back, restored the beat to his heart. But what had he gained?

Doubts about Carl Ledbetter, for one thing. Slowly coalescing suspicions about the man presenting himself as a friend.

Like the suspicion that Carl knew the kidnappers, maybe.

Like the premonition that things were about to go rotten if Barney did not stay sharp.

And you know how that nag works, like a toothache, a cold sore, a hangnail that commands far more attention than it merits.

The BMW gave up all its secrets to Barney’s touch.

The phone call had been almost comical, like one guy asking another to borrow a DVD. Another mil? Sure thing, Carl old yeoman, anything for a buddy. Hope it all works out, dude. Later!

So before Carl embarked to a bank to collect wired funds, Barney had tagged him, not Jesús, with the GPS chip. He had amputated the receiver from what was left of the rental limousine and had it with him as he boosted the BMW, his “job” while Carl was presumably working high finance and Jesús was cooling his wheels and deliriously considering his severely limited options back at the Pantera Roja.

In fractured Spanglish Jesús had requested the bible from the bedside drawer. Barney left the book in his lap so he could thumb the tissue-thin pages with his wrists permanently duct-taped to the metal. Jesús said gracias señor to the man who had shot him, squirming uncomfortably on the bullet still lodged deep in his beefy ass. It had to feel like sitting on a flaming poker.

And now Carl was on the move. Not at the bank, not at the motel. In a cab, most likely, and his trajectory was eating up new ground, northeast, into the thick of the city.

Barney hated what he was doing, and did it anyway. That was his special talent, his social mutation, if you will. He recalled more words of the Old Assassin: “I have no one, I care for no one, and I am cared for by no one. So all I have is what I can do.” Barney disliked feeling beholden, and appreciated that throughout his existence he had taken pains and occasionally made grand, operatic gestures to ensure he never belonged to anyone. He never had.

Except his veneration of the Old Assassin’s counsel had obligated him to the memory of the Old Assassin. Great — he kept the guy alive in his head, like one of those shoulder-perching angel-or-devil advisors of conscience, and thus Barney was obligated, dammit to hell, connected to someone who had long since chewed that mouthful of grave dirt that awaits us all.

This is not to say Barney did not form liaisons or forge friendships, but there was always a clear demarcation, an unspoken line of hazard tape that could never be crossed, that kept his plus-minus columns internally ordered. He had acquaintances. He had connections. He had friends, but no intimates. He enjoyed the company of women, but no intimacy. He had sex; he had never made love. “Making love” denoted the manufacture of something that would need to be maintained. Barney’s golden rule was to always be ready to jump out of the chopper and start shooting at a millisecond’s notice. He had never cohabitated with anyone. The closest he ever came was stuff like sharing bedsprung motel rooms with guys like Carl.

Carl, who had now birthed a goblin of doubt in Barney’s calm.

There were other people Barney trusted in his limited fashion. Armand, for example, back in the States, feeding Barney’s goldfish, which did not have a name other than “the fish.” Armand was a champion target shooter fond of the customized assemblies known as “race guns” in the trade. Their relationship was one of mutual gunslinger respect, and they did not pry into each other’s biz. There were a few others: Karlov, an old-school gunsmith; Sirius, a jolly ex-cop who was fun to drink with. Most everybody else was take-or-leave as needed; sketches, not people. Background extras. To shut out the noise of their lives was to assist Barney’s lifelong quest for a kind of technical purity.