Chapter 16
September 25
Anxiety Pays
There is no crime in thinking about a crime.
— Jean-Claude Carrière, in an interview on The South Bank Show
THOUGHTS OF GUNS filled most of my morning. The day before, while Elaine had been at the Rush Service office (or, as I learned later, pretending to be at the Rush Service office), I had been at Sun and Surf, choosing guns. I had been surprised to find that they had very few guns on display there. My memory, from decades earlier, when the shop had been called Babbington Sporting Goods, was that there were cases and cases filled with guns. Now there was a single case with guns, and most of the rest of the store was filled with in-line skates and attendant gear designed to minimize the lasting effects of in-line-skating accidents. There was also a line of wet suits and dry suits that would allow the wearer to extend the jet-ski season well beyond the summer. These came in the same range of vibrant colors as the earmuffs that Elaine had given us.
In the gun case, the pickings were slim. I persuaded the clerk, who was much more interested in the other merchandise, to open the case, and I handled every gun they had there. The clerk knew next to nothing about any of them, and when I asked about silencers, he said that he thought silencers were illegal because he had seen that on TV or in a movie. None of the guns in the case was suitable for Rockwell Kingman, it seemed to me, unless he found himself in a really tough spot without any of his preferred weaponry and had to break into a sporting goods store in a little backwater town and make do with whatever he found there among the helmets, knee pads, and jet-ski booties.
I had much better luck at the magazine rack. There, mixed in with magazines for skaters, bikers, hikers, surfers, and jet-ski riders, were quite a few journals for people in the doing-in trade, or aspirants thereto: Mercenary Monthly, Modern Militiaman, International Assassin, Terrorist Times, Gun Fun, Worldwide Pricing Guide to Pre-Owned Armaments, and American Hit Man. It was the last of these that appealed to me most and would, I thought, appeal to Rockwell Kingman, not only for the pictures of naked women scattered among the pictures of weaponry, but because the emphasis was on the techniques and equipment most useful to the kind of hired killer Rockwell was: skilled, careful, clever, and damned proud of it. Many of the naked women seemed underage, barely women at all, which made me wonder whether Rockwell had tastes of which I was as yet unaware. I’d have to think about that. I bought a copy of American Hit Man, and, concealing the contempt that a professional feels for the ignorance of laypeople, I thanked the clerk and made my exit from the store.
I spent all morning going through the magazine, and by noon I had armed Rockwell, furnished his office, chosen his sex objects, and written an ad to run in the classified pages at the back of American Hit Man.
Rockwell Kingman
Murder While You Wait
killer@hitman.com
This would be the ad that the character “Peter Leroy” would answer.
[to be continued]
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
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You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
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