kiss.
Instead Mickey raised her paper napkin to his face. “Let me wipe your chin,” she said. “You’ve got more Familia on your face than a two-year-old.”
7
A MAN CARRYING A GUN is exponentially different from a man without one. A gun has the power to alter any reality into which it enters. But it’s also a beautiful fusion of form and function; a poetic, metallic extension of the hand; deadly jewelry. Shooting a gun has a hard elegance about it not entirely related to its deadlier duties, which is why you can always find cops in the bowels of a police station at two in the morning firing off a couple hundred rounds for the sheer brain-changing, soul-satisfying pleasure of it. At a certain level, firing a gun is just another explosive physical challenge, like hitting a golf ball well, a first serve, or a hanging curve.
Guns were not in Harvey’s blood. He had come to them late, in his thirties, when his new profession demanded it. His rapport with his gun was clouded by a healthy aversion to violence. While Mickey was in her study downloading files from her ESPN producer on the Yankees and Devil Rays, Harvey got down his nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38, removed its chamois swaddling, and laid it on the bed next to a box of hollow-points and the little clip-on buckskin cross-draw holster he used to carry it inside the left side of his belt. History could not be undone, gunpowder uninvented, and so he accepted his gun as an inevitable and morally justified advantage in situations that might otherwise end badly as far as society in general and himself in particular were concerned. But every time he pulled the trigger at a firing range, each shot seemed to leave on his soul a trace of dread, a memory of the damage he might have done. The idea that tools of such instant and remote-controlled violence were available to ordinary citizens—above all teenagers who either had not yet tasted mortality or had become impervious to it—still shocked him.
Harvey dressed in a dark blue short-sleeved sport shirt that draped comfortably over his linen pants. The shirt had been expensive, far more expensive than polyester ought to cost. He was feeling a little Rip Van Winkle-ish these days, rubbing his eyes at a changed world and its oxymorons: expensive polyester, beautiful Providence, The Jewel Box, gun-toting Blissberg. He wiped down his pistol with an oily cloth, then clipped the cross-draw holster inside his pants about eight inches to the left of his belt buckle and slid the gun into it. He practiced drawing it a few times, lifting the tail of his shirt up with his right thumb as he grabbed the checkered walnut grip and raised the pistol into firing position, his left hand gripping the bottom of his right for support.
He put everything—gun, bullets, holster, oily cloth, and cleaning kit—into a small leather bag. Then he packed a week’s worth of clothes and his toiletries in a nylon duffel and put it in the trunk of his Honda, along with his gun bag, his Toshiba laptop, two bottles of Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise 1997, and a pair of dark blue coveralls with the name “Stanley” stitched on the left breast in white thread.
When he came back in the house, Mickey was still at the PC. Harvey went back to his office and called Jerry Bellaggio, the former FBI special agent and Boston private detective under whom Harvey had once worked in the 1980s to earn his license. Bellaggio was retired and almost always at home now, thanks to his emphysema. Leaving the house required him to drag along a portable oxygen tank about which he was self-conscious.
“I need some basic research,” Harvey said.
“Hey, what happened to motivational speaking?” Bellaggio said.
“I was highly motivated to stop motivating people.”
“What’s up?”
“I’ve just been hired to bodyguard Moss Cooley.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised. Aaron had one, you know, chasing Ruth.”
“Some joker left him a headless lawn jockey with a
Instead Mickey raised her paper napkin to his face. “Let me wipe your chin,” she said. “You’ve got more Familia on your face than a two-year-old.”
7
A MAN CARRYING A GUN is exponentially different from a man without one. A gun has the power to alter any reality into which it enters. But it’s also a beautiful fusion of form and function; a poetic, metallic extension of the hand; deadly jewelry. Shooting a gun has a hard elegance about it not entirely related to its deadlier duties, which is why you can always find cops in the bowels of a police station at two in the morning firing off a couple hundred rounds for the sheer brain-changing, soul-satisfying pleasure of it. At a certain level, firing a gun is just another explosive physical challenge, like hitting a golf ball well, a first serve, or a hanging curve.
Guns were not in Harvey’s blood. He had come to them late, in his thirties, when his new profession demanded it. His rapport with his gun was clouded by a healthy aversion to violence. While Mickey was in her study downloading files from her ESPN producer on the Yankees and Devil Rays, Harvey got down his nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38, removed its chamois swaddling, and laid it on the bed next to a box of hollow-points and the little clip-on buckskin cross-draw holster he used to carry it inside the left side of his belt. History could not be undone, gunpowder uninvented, and so he accepted his gun as an inevitable and morally justified advantage in situations that might otherwise end badly as far as society in general and himself in particular were concerned. But every time he pulled the trigger at a firing range, each shot seemed to leave on his soul a trace of dread, a memory of the damage he might have done. The idea that tools of such instant and remote-controlled violence were available to ordinary citizens—above all teenagers who either had not yet tasted mortality or had become impervious to it—still shocked him.
Harvey dressed in a dark blue short-sleeved sport shirt that draped comfortably over his linen pants. The shirt had been expensive, far more expensive than polyester ought to cost. He was feeling a little Rip Van Winkle-ish these days, rubbing his eyes at a changed world and its oxymorons: expensive polyester, beautiful Providence, The Jewel Box, gun-toting Blissberg. He wiped down his pistol with an oily cloth, then clipped the cross-draw holster inside his pants about eight inches to the left of his belt buckle and slid the gun into it. He practiced drawing it a few times, lifting the tail of his shirt up with his right thumb as he grabbed the checkered walnut grip and raised the pistol into firing position, his left hand gripping the bottom of his right for support.
He put everything—gun, bullets, holster, oily cloth, and cleaning kit—into a small leather bag. Then he packed a week’s worth of clothes and his toiletries in a nylon duffel and put it in the trunk of his Honda, along with his gun bag, his Toshiba laptop, two bottles of Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise 1997, and a pair of dark blue coveralls with the name “Stanley” stitched on the left breast in white thread.
When he came back in the house, Mickey was still at the PC. Harvey went back to his office and called Jerry Bellaggio, the former FBI special agent and Boston private detective under whom Harvey had once worked in the 1980s to earn his license. Bellaggio was retired and almost always at home now, thanks to his emphysema. Leaving the house required him to drag along a portable oxygen tank about which he was self-conscious.
“I need some basic research,” Harvey said.
“Hey, what happened to motivational speaking?” Bellaggio said.
“I was highly motivated to stop motivating people.”
“What’s up?”
“I’ve just been hired to bodyguard Moss Cooley.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised. Aaron had one, you know, chasing Ruth.”
“Some joker left him a headless lawn jockey with a
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