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.
“You look like a Texas Ranger,” she said.
''You'd best hope not. They're the meanest boys that ever walked the planet. Oh, wait, forgot something.”
But she had it. His briefcase. Full of Richard's lions.
“Your damn lions.”
“While I'm looking for this tire, I'll do some thinking about the lions. Maybe I can figure what he's got going.”
There was an awkward moment and then he embraced Jen.
“Thank you,” he said.
“It was damned sweet of you.”
But she pushed him away, brusquely, as if the gift was what any woman would give her husband.
“You run a hundred rounds or so through that. Bud. You know they jam more in the first fifty rounds than they do in all the others.”
“I will, hon.”
“That gun ain't supposed to jam ever,” Jeff said.
“I read all about it in Guns & Ammo.”
He gave her another hug.
“Go on, get out of here. Earn us some money so we can feed these damn boys,” she said, turning.
Bud drove away, into Lawton, but not yet toward downtown, instead veering east into the first strip mall that boasted a pay phone.
Quickly he dialed Holly's number.
The phone rang and rang and rang.
Where was she? Probably met someone. Good for her.
He was about to hang up when, at least fifteen or so rings into it, the phone came off the hook and he heard her tired voice.
“Hello?”
“Are you all right? Were you sleeping? I was worried.”
No answer, only her heavy breaming.
Then finally she said, 'You were going to call two nights ago. I was up all night waiting.”
“Holly, I went to Wichita Falls, the robbery? You hear?”
She had not. He told her.
“So you couldn't call? In all that, you couldn't call just once?”
“Holly, I'm sorry. There was no time down there and by the time I got back, it was really late. I just—I didn't think.”
“And you didn't call yesterday.”
He was contrite.
“No. I had a bad night. I'm sorry, I didn't do nothing yesterday.”
“Bud, look what you're doing to me.”
“Holly, this business has come up again. They want me to do some work for them.”
He explained briefly what would happen, how he was going back on duty, searching for cars with a certain set of tires over the southern half of the state.
The Beretta was so heavy under his arm.
“Bud, you make all these promises, then you sort of fade. You like the sex great, but when it comes to making plans, then you fade. You're not there. You're off somewhere.”
“I'm sorry. Holly. Is there anything I can do?”
