'Let's buy some guns first.'
The only problem with flying commercial these days-well, other than crying kids, complaining passengers, lost luggage, late planes, and being strip-searched in the security line-was packing your weapons. There were forms to fill out and questions to be answered, and the silencer always raised the Feds' eyebrows when the luggage went through the X-ray machine. So while Harmon had flown to Texas, his weapons had stayed home in Jersey. Fortunately, a man could buy an arsenal in Texas considerably easier than a woman could get an abortion.
Harmon had first checked the Austin paper for a gun show; he could buy every imaginable firearm, silencer, ammo, assault weapon, and even a machine gun at a gun show for cash and with no questions asked or forms filled out or ID presented. Harmon had read that Mexican drug cartels were now buying their weapons at Texas gun shows and smuggling them across the border because Mexico's gun laws were stricter. But the nearest gun show that weekend was in Waco, ninety miles north of Austin. So he had checked the phone book at the airport and found the address of the nearest Cabela's. It was fifteen miles south of Austin in a town called Buda.
Cabela's is housed in a log structure roughly the size of an airplane hangar. Outside stands a life-size bronze of a cowboy on horseback. Inside stands a two-story faux-mountain stuffed animal display featuring deer, elk, moose, caribou, musk ox, Arctic wolves, and bear (grizzly, black, brown, and Polar). Stuffed animal heads line the walls. Stuffed birds hang from the ceiling. And Cabela's sells the guns to shoot all those creatures dead. The gun department offered weapons manufactured by Browning, Smith amp; Wesson, Winchester, Ruger, Glock, Savage Arms, Bushmaster, Remington, Colt, Sig Sauer, and Beretta. Middle-aged white men crowded the gun counter.
Americans were sure as hell exercising their Second Amendment rights that day in Buda, Texas.
Harmon was standing at the counter and hefting a short-frame Glock 21 semiautomatic handgun with a thirteen-round magazine, on sale for $549.99. Cecil stood next to him making quick side-to-side movements with a. 44 Magnum as if sighting in a target and growling through clenched teeth, 'Get off my lawn!'
Harmon sighed.
'Put the gun down, Cecil. You're making me nervous. You're a driver, not a shooter.'
Harmon Payne was a shooter. And, notwithstanding his twenty years with the New Jersey mob and over two hundred shooting jobs, he had never been questioned, arrested, or convicted. Not once. He was that good. So the criminal background check called NICS-the Feds' National Instant Criminal Background Check System, enacted into law after that little wacko Hinckley tried to assassinate President Reagan-went through like a charm. Thirty seconds after feeding Harmon's name, address, place of birth, date of birth, social security number, height, weight, sex, race, and state of residence into the computerized Internet-based NICS E-Check System, the response came back: PROCEED WITH TRANSACTION. The clerk smiled at Harmon and said he had been cleared to purchase any weapon or weapons he desired.
He desired the Glock.
In Texas, there was no waiting period to purchase a firearm, no requirement for a license to own a firearm, and no required permit to carry a firearm in your vehicle. So fifteen minutes after entering the store and another fifteen spent searching for Cecil-he found his driver in the ocean of camouflage that was the clothing department wearing a hunter's cap with the ear muffs down and holding up a tiny camo bikini 'Harmon, you think Harriet would like this?'
'Your wife in a camo bikini? I don't think so, Cecil.'
— Harmon Payne and Cecil Durant walked out the front door with two brand new Glocks (no silencer, but he'd have to make do), two thirteen-round magazines, and enough ammo to outgun the Texas national guard.
It was that easy.
Of course, it wasn't as if Harmon Payne was a whacked-out college kid pissed off at his professor for giving him a B on his term paper and heading directly back to the campus to go on a shooting spree and kill fifty or sixty students. Harmon Payne was a professional. He was only going to kill one person.
'Let's go find Andy Prescott.'
Cecil turned the Crown Vic north on I-35.
'That's it,' Harmon said. 'Fifteen fourteen and a half South Congress. Says 'traffic tickets' on the door. Park down the street.'
Cecil continued north on Congress until they were in front of the Texas School for the Deaf, then he made a U-turn and parked in front of a shop called Blackmail. He chuckled.
'We're in the same line of business. Sort of.'
They got out. One quick look around told Harmon they were overdressed in their sharkskin suits; they always dressed as middle-management executives on business trips. So they removed the ties and unbuttoned the top buttons of their shirts. Harmon kept his coat on to conceal the Glock tucked into his back waistband. Even so, they still looked like middle-aged accountants.
They had parked in the 1200 block; they would walk the three blocks back to Andy Prescott's office. They proceeded past stores called Pink Hair Salon amp; Gallery, Creatures Boutique, and Cocoon Massage amp; Bodyworks.
'We could catch a massage later,' Cecil said. 'Might make your ribs feel better.'
'If things go right, we could catch a plane home later.'
'If we stay the night, let's get some hookers.'
'What, you're the governor of New York now?'
They walked past a little motel, a coffee shop called Jo's, a bum playing a guitar, a Mexican food place called Guero's, and the weirdest looking people Harmon had seen outside a circus.
'Now we know what happened to all the hippies and Beatniks from the sixties.' He gestured at a young tattooed female loitering outside a store called Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds. 'That broad, she looks like a side- show freak, the tattooed lady.' Harmon shook his head in utter disgust at America's young people. 'Jesus.'
Cecil nodded. 'And the Beatles.'
'What?'
Cecil pointed up at the facade of painted faces. 'Jesus, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe… you think she really slept with Kennedy?'
'I don't think either one of them slept.'
They arrived at 1514?. Harmon tried the door, but it was locked. A bum was sitting on the steps of the tattoo parlor next door and writing in a notebook like Harmon's youngest daughter used.
'You know Andy Prescott?'
The bum didn't look up.
'Nope.'
They stepped away from the bum to get a breath of fresh air.
'He must not work on Saturday,' Harmon said.
'The bum?'
'Prescott.'
'Oh.' Cecil stretched and said, 'I'm hungry. Let's go back to that Mexican joint, get something to eat.'
'Yeah, okay. Then we'll find a hotel.'
'And hookers?'
'No hookers, Cecil.'
They walked back down the block to the place called Guero's. College kids crowded the porch fronting Congress Avenue. Harmon and Cecil could barely squeeze past the sidewalk tables. Three guys at one table were drinking Coronas-one wore a T-shirt that read 'Keep Honking — I'm Reloading'; Harmon liked that-and making fools of themselves with passing females.
'Dave, put your tongue back in your mouth, dude!'
Another guy carrying four beers joined them.
'McConaughey's inside. Ronda's trying to get his autograph, so I bought the beers at the bar. This round's on me.'
'You the man, Tres!'
They punched fists across the table like the Yankees players do after someone hits a home run. A scrawny little guy with black glasses and hair that looked like it had been cut with a weed-whacker said, 'What does McConaughey have on us?'
'Looks, money, fame…'
