The Guest Room(56)

“The paperwork?” Richard had asked.

“You either need proof of a prior hunting license or proof you’ve taken a hunter education course. I can’t get you the license. That would be illegal. Besides, you get those in White Plains. But I have a friend who teaches hunter education. I can smooth out the education course paperwork—if you pay up front and promise to take the course.”

“Wouldn’t that be illegal, too?”

The dealer yawned. “Less so. Kind of a gray area. And there are some things I can get around and some things I can’t.”

“Like background checks.”

“Yes. Playing fast and loose with an education course for a hunting rifle—especially for a guy like you? That’s one thing. But an illegal permit? Whole other kettle of fish.”

Richard sighed, frustrated. He had imagined bringing a pistol with him when he went to tell Spencer to go f*ck himself. Just let his jacket fall open so that spineless weasel could see it. Or, in his mind, he’d imagined himself taking a pot shot at the satellite dish atop one of the news vans idling at the end of his driveway. He didn’t believe he would ever actually do such a thing, but the fantasy alone fired him up. But mainly he’d had his heart set on a pistol so that he could keep it inside the top drawer of his nightstand, just in case the Russians were as crazy as the newspapers (and, yes, that detective) suggested they were.

And so he had left the store in a huff.

He glanced now at the garage and body shop across the street. This was not one of Yonkers’s tonier neighborhoods. In addition to the gun store, there was a tattoo parlor and a pawnshop. A bar with a couple of Harleys outside. He’d been a little nervous when he had parked his Audi out here. But it was fine. Untouched. No one seemed to care.

For a long moment he watched the wide glass window beside the garage bay. Inside, he saw a couple of guys chatting around the desk, and one was wearing a ball cap. Red, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure from this distance. On the wall behind the desk was a deer head. A buck with a pretty sizable rack of antlers.

He took a deep breath and gathered himself. Maybe he didn’t need a handgun. Maybe he just needed a gun. The dealer was probably right; a rifle would do just fine—at least right now. A hunting rifle. Maybe he could get a handgun…later. People knew people, right?

Besides, if a rifle could bring down a buck the size of the one whose head was in that auto body shop office across the street, it sure as hell would stop some lunatic Russian behemoth in his tracks. He recalled how much easier the dealer had said the process was. It was briefer. Less invasive.

And so Richard almost went back inside. Almost. But he paused at the entrance and then turned around and climbed into his car. He thought of the corpse he had seen in his front hall. Shot once in the chest and once in the head. He thought of the splotches and streams of blood he had seen that awful night. He thought of all the blood still left on the wallpaper, the couch, and the painting in the back of this very car. No, he wasn’t a gun guy. He wasn’t a gun guy at all.

…

Kerri-Ann Jennings had not actually f*cked the quarterback of the Bronxville High School football team four years ago. The few times she had even embraced him had been the sort of social squeezes that usually accompany an air kiss by the cheek and had occurred in close proximity to one or both of his parents. After football games. At his house for dinner with his whole family. When his uncle was diagnosed with brain cancer. But she liked the boy a lot, and the two had been friends. Good friends. The boy was smart and was applying early decision to Brown. Still, the rumor persisted at the school that the two were f*ck buddies. It was the sort of urban legend that made the single, statuesque French teacher wildly popular. The truth was that Kerri-Ann was also friends with the quarterback’s mother and father. She was looking forward to teaching the quarterback’s younger sister next year. She knew about the rumors and happily kept them alive by saying things to her class in French that were unquestionably inappropriate, but not so ribald that she was ever likely to get disciplined. Every year or two, it seemed, there were stories about her just like this. But most of the students loved her. The boys fantasized about her in the shower. The girls vacillated between jealousy and awe. The teacher used her tortoiseshell sunglasses and headband as props when she spoke—some days her wild mane of red hair, too—and with dominatrix-like confidence wielded absolute control over her classroom. She relished who she was. She was probably Kristin’s closest friend at the school.

“I mean, it’s not like Richard had an affair,” Kerri-Ann was saying to Kristin now. They were sitting in the back corner of the coffee shop just off Pondfield Road after school, speaking softly so no one could hear them. Kristin hoped Melissa was having a good time at the ice-cream parlor before dance. In a perfect world, the combination of her friends and Jesse and ice cream and ballet would take her mind off the nightmare at home. “It’s not like he confessed he had a lover he was meeting lunchtimes at his brother’s hotel.”

“I used to like that hotel. I sort of hate it now. It’s creepy.”

“I’ve met Philip. I think he’s creepy.”

“He is, I know. Sometimes Richard and I try to delude ourselves into believing that he’s just immature.”

“You’re being kind. He might be in his early thirties—”

“Actually, he’s thirty-five.”