Tilden Sheckly's black truck still in front of the agency. Sheckly himself was across the street, reclining in the passenger seat of my VW bug.
The afternoon was so humid the metal on the cars steamed. With the convertible top up, my VW would be about as comfortable as a pressure cooker. The fact that Sheck had probably been waiting there for a while cheered me up.
I walked around to the driver's side but didn't get in. Sheck was reading a book that I'd left on the floorboard. He'd taken off his Stetson and his denim jacket and set an S & W
revolver on the dash.
"I know the cars look alike," I sympathized. "But yours is the one with the pin stripes."
Sheck smiled up at me from his book, my book.
I knew a kid in third grade who liked to set living things on fire with no warning. One minute you'd be sitting there laughing with him about the latest episode of H. R.
Puffinstuff and the next he'd be holding a match to the shredded newspaper in the class guinea pig cage. His face never changed - small bright eyes like pilot lights, a wide friendly smile that was totally disconnected from his brain. He looked so sweet the teachers tolerated him right up to the day he poured gasoline in a sandbox full of kindergartners and tried to set it ablaze.
Sheck's smile reminded me a lot of that kid.
He hefted my book of medieval drama. "You really understand this muck?"
He turned a page, then tried to read aloud a few lines from the Wakefield Cain and Abel.
"Not bad," I commented. "They'd pronounce the T Eee. Like Eee am wondering what this guy is doing in my car."
Sheck patted the driver's seat. "Come on in."
"I make it a policy not to sit next to people with guns."
He seemed to notice the revolver for the first time. "Oh, hell, son. Give this old man a handle - see why I carry him around."
He picked up the gun by the cylinder and offered me the stock.
"You're supposed to empty the chambers first, aren't you?"
Sheck laughed. "What perfect world do you live in, son? Just take the damn gun."
"Thanks, no."
He shrugged, then put the .41 back on the dashboard. "I'll be sorry when the revolver is history. Everybody nowadays is hot for semi auto, got to have a twelve round magazine. Truth is this old man never got a chance - finest damn revolver ever made.
You know what it is?"
"Smith & Wesson M58," I said. "M & P style."
Sheck nodded approval. "You're a gun lover."
"I know guns," I corrected. "I don't love them much."
That statement apparently made as much sense to Sheck as the Middle English. He tried to interpret it, failed, then decided to keep talking.
".41 calibre round was perfect evolution, you understand - all the punch of a .44 with the velocity of a .357. This is the kind of gun your dad carried on the force back in the seventies. You know why they canned it?"
I said I didn't.
"Police were firing hot loads with it, full Magnum capability. The muzzle blasts were scaring all the lady cops." He laughed. "Then public relations started thinking the citizens would get mad - cops with Magnums blowing away all those helpless victims of society down in the barrio. A damn shame."
"What do you want, Mr. Sheckly?"
Sheck put his finger in the book and closed it, like he'd be coming back to it in a minute.
Maybe he wanted to see how things worked out with Cain and God.
"I's just curious what kind of stories your compadre's been telling you. I figured you'd be walking out of there with a big retainer and a bigger load of horseshit."
"Why exactly did you figure that?"
Sheck glanced to his right and smiled, like there was somebody there he wanted to share the joke with. "Come on, son. Old Milo'd love to think I'm the boogey man causing his every little problem."
"Every little problem. You mean like Miranda Daniels' producer getting shot at, her demo tape stolen, Julie Kearnes murdered - those kinds of little problems?"
Sheckly kept smiling. "Hell, son, I ain't the one who decided Miranda needed a national deal. You understand Century Records only wants her, don't you? The rest of the band - those boys don't stand to get nothing from this except a handshake. You want to know who's angry enough with Milo Chavez to cause some problems, you just think about that goddamn Century deal."