So I called the other dealer back, and this time the first guy answered, and I apologized for bothering him and asked if he could sell me some marijuana (though, to make sure he didn’t suspect I was a fourteen-year-old with no marijuana experience, I called it “Mary Jane”) and also recommend a prostitute. He said to call him back in half an hour about the Mary Jane (I didn’t) but gave me the number of an affordable hooker. I called Candi-with-an-I and asked if she knew anybody who could sell me a gun, and she passed me on to Barbarella, who gave me the number of this guy in the van whose name I didn’t know.
It’s worth noting that I was so committed to acquiring this firearm that I barely thought about the fact that I’d spoken to two prostitutes, and my own sexual experience maxed out at one astoundingly inept makeout session in a dark closet at a birthday party.
The man didn’t try to stop me from leaving his van without purchasing an illegal weapon.
“I know who abducted the kids,” I said.
“What kids?”
“You haven’t heard about the missing kids?”
“Should I have?”
“It’s on the news.”
“I don’t watch the news. And I don’t like kids. For example, you’re a kid, and I don’t like you.”
I hated to blab my plan to a stranger, but it didn’t seem like he was going to budge otherwise. “I know who’s doing it, but I can’t prove it. I’m going to make him confess.”
“At gunpoint? That won’t hold up. People will confess to anything at gunpoint. You point a gun at me and I’ll tell you anything you want to hear. I’ll tell you I’m a Kenny Rogers fan.”
“You don’t like Kenny Rogers?”
“Nope. I’ll whack off to Dolly Parton, but I hate that country music shit.”
“I’m not going to make him confess at gunpoint,” I said. “I’m just going to make him confess. But if he tries to kill me, I’m going to kill him first. If I have to shoot him before I have proof, I don’t want anybody to trace it back to me. That’s why I can’t use one of my dad’s guns.”
The man nodded. “That makes sense. But it would be irresponsible for me to sell you a gun, knowing that you might kill an innocent man.”
“He’s not innocent.”
“You said you don’t have proof.”
“I have my own eyes. Being able to prove it isn’t the same as being positive.”
“You know what? Screw it. I’ll sell you a gun. There’s gonna be a surcharge, though.”
“What kind of surcharge?”
“The ‘chubby fourteen-year-old’ surcharge. It’s a new thing.”
“No. You said you’d sell me an untraceable pistol for three hundred.”
“And now it’s four hundred. That’s how the free market works. You’ll learn that someday when you get out of elementary school.”
“I brought the amount we agreed to over the phone.”
“Yeah, well, over the phone you messed with your voice to make yourself sound older.”
He had me there. I’d put a cloth over the mouthpiece.
“I only have three hundred dollars.”
“Then run on home and crack open your piggy bank, or ask your mommy for an advance on your allowance. Tell her the ice cream man raised his prices.”
“You’re an asshole,” I told him.
“Well, yeah, I could’ve told you that. Now are you going to make me wash out your mouth with soap?”
“I guess we’re done, then. You’re lucky I can’t contact the Better Business Bureau.”
“You know what? Three-fifty.”
“I literally only brought three hundred dollars. You know why? Because on the phone you told me the price was three hundred dollars. I assumed that old people like you kept their word.”
“Where’d you get that much money, anyway?”
“I mowed a lot of lawns,” I told him. I was lying. I’d taken the money from my dad’s safe. Yes, I was the kind of kid who snooped through his father’s desk and found the safe combination. There was quite a bit of money in there, because Dad didn’t trust banks very much and wanted to have cash on hand in case of an emergency. I doubted he ever pulled the stacks of bills out of there to count them, so my plan was to gradually replace what I’d taken before he noticed it was missing.
“You got anything else valuable on you?” he asked. “What about that watch?”
“It’s a cheap scratched-up watch.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s a piece of crap. Nobody would buy that. What about your shoes?”
“Then I’d have to make up a story to my parents about how I lost my shoes. I’m too old to just lose a pair of shoes.”
“Fine. Three hundred dollars. The only reason I’m doing this is so I didn’t drive all the way out here for nothing. But do you see the way I’m looking at you right now? What I’m doing is memorizing your face. So if I find out that an innocent person got shot, I’ll be able to describe you to the sketch artist.”
I was confident that he wouldn’t go to the police and tell them he’d sold an illegal firearm to a fourteen-year-old boy, but I didn’t call him out on that because I wanted to move this transaction along. “That’s fair,” I said.
He reached under one of the pillows and took out a pistol. Then he reached under another pillow and took out a small box of ammunition.
“This gun looks kind of shitty,” I said.
“It is shitty. You should have specified that you wanted a non-shitty gun when we spoke on the phone. It won’t blow up in your hand and it’ll fire a bullet at whatever you point it at.”
“What kind of gun is it?” I asked.
“How the hell should I know? It’s a gun with the serial number filed off. You want a scholarly dissertation, go to a licensed dealer. Now, you do know that the gun itself is untraceable, but that they can trace a bullet back to the gun, right? So if they dig the bullet out of the person you used it in self-defense against, and they find the gun under your bed, they can do some tests to say that the bullet was fired from that specific gun. What I’m saying is, get rid of it when you’re done.”
“I will. Thanks.” I took the wad of bills out of my pocket and handed it to him.
He quickly flipped through the bills, counting them. “Okay, we’re good. I honestly thought you were going to hand me a jar of pennies.”
I unzipped my backpack and put the gun and ammunition inside. Then I slid the door all the way open.
“Hey, kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful. I mean that. You’re a little jerk but I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’ll be as careful as I possibly can,” I said, getting out of the van.
As I walked away from The Old House, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. This was one great big step closer to being real now. I might indeed have to kill the man who’d abducted my best friend.
2
Todd and I had been friends ever since he took a checkmark on my behalf.
The deal in Mrs. Starkling’s fourth grade class was that if you got in trouble for something, she wrote your name on the upper right corner of the chalkboard. That was your first warning. Everything was still cool, but you’d been put on notice. If there was a second infraction (it didn’t matter if it was a repeat of the first or a whole new variety of misbehavior) you got a checkmark next to your name. Now shit was getting real. There were no specific consequences to the first checkmark except the shame. But you were only one inappropriate giggle from the second checkmark. You needed to start thinking very seriously about your attitude and how you could improve it.