10

Bayou Ridge

She is beautifully slender. Her skin is perfect. Flawless. Only under magnification will one see the microscopic imperfections. A tiny curlicue against the skin, a single wispy tendril. She is so lovely. Run your hand down her length and feel the pleasure of her shape. Smooth, sleek, and shapely. She is a work of art. He labors over her, moving back and forth, grunting with effort, and a drop of his sweat falls onto her skin.

Her skin glows with a thin sheen of oil. She is his ... and soon he will take her and hold her as he screws her, and she will hardly make a sound.

The tiny silver curlicue is gone now as he removes her from the metal lathe. She is delicate and he caresses her silvery skin, removing invisible metallic hairs. He will look at her again now, closely, in the strongest light, searching for anything that might interfere with her perfection.

Her insides are already mounted on the receiver of the piece in one of his heavy-duty workbench vises, turned carefully, meticulously, her inner core true to the thousandth of an inch, and soon her strange innards will be covered by this beautifully shiny tube of skin.

She is baffled, double-walled, packed, stacked, mounted, milled, fastidiously turned, scrupulously calibrated, and now it is his pleasure to slide her outer body over this intimacy of washers, one-eighth-inch space expanders, and coiled steel wool.

Slowly he eases her skin into place and screws her tight. She is a perfect fit with her insides. Both of her parts have been cut from the same block of aluminum. Her metal curls litter the floor like the shorn hair of a silver-tressed woman, and at last she is in place. Silver and slick and streamlined—a perfect creation that looks like a glistening extension of the barrel. Her tiny, dangerous mouth is open and ready. The exquisitely shaped lips form a hard permanent O.

His income tax returns do not read “Raymond Meara, gunsmith.” Meara is a farmer by occupation. But there are four perfectly turned suppressors to belie this, and under his hand-hewn cedar barn, packed in their original Cosmoline sheaths, wrapped and sealed in four-mil plastic, then sealed again in a watertight, airtight coffin, are ten assault rifles.

Tonight he will sell some of these pieces—these collector's items. It is not something Meara looks forward to with any degree of pleasure. The man who buys is extremely dangerous, and of a disposition that at best might be called tricky. Meara has promised to deliver a half dozen of these illegal weapons, for which he will receive nine thousand dollars in cash. Raymond Meara is what the jargon terms a runner. He runs guns.

He has paid seven thousand dollars for the ten pieces. Why, you might well ask, would he put himself at risk for two thousand dollars? There are two reasons, three really. He needs money. The farm from which he derives his main livelihood is located in a floodway that may some day be dynamited. Meara owes money, and must have more money still to operate.

But he does not make this move for the two-thousand-dollar immediate profit, but for the four pieces he will keep. For these four pieces, with their custom-made sound suppressors, he will net another eight to ten thousand dollars. He will probably move three. Take a quick six thousand dollars. Keep one for hard times.

In theory the math supports Raymond Meara's venture. The problem, the unknown element, is always the point of exchange. Meara gambles.

Raymond has some degree of trust for the man he buys from. But for his supplier perhaps he is a potentially dangerous, necessary risk the seller must take. Similarly, the man tonight is a calculated risk.

Meara will concentrate on the eight-thousand-plus that will be his profit on an investment of seven thousand dollars and a bit of his time, skill, and expertise.

He will concentrate on wiping out his debts with this money that he has not yet earned. This is what Raymond Meara, farmer, will think about until it is time to exchange the iron for the butter.

He will not think about the possibilities of being ripped off or arrested and jailed or hurt or killed, and certainly he will not think about Jesus SanDiego.

Meara will save all of this for tonight, when he will think of nothing else beyond staying alive.

For now he turns off all the equipment and the lights, and returns to the house. He picks up the paper to kill some time and there is his horoscope, the first thing he reads. It says: “SCORPIO (Oct. 24—Nov. 22) If you deal with the wrong kinds of people you are going to be left at a disadvantage."