“If I miss.”
“Shit, Doc. Everybody misses a few. Problem is, with your Ruger there, a few’s all you got.”
“I’d rather have a few well-placed shots with mine. All that thing does is spray lead.”
“It’s a hell of a lot more firepower,” he said.
“I know. About a hundred foot-pounds more at fifty feet than I’ve got with mine if I’m using Silvertips Plus ammo.”
“Not to mention three times as many shots,” Marino added.
I had fired 9-millimeters before and didn’t like them. They weren’t as accurate as my .38 special.
They weren’t as safe, and they could jam. I had never been one to substitute quantity for quality, and there was no substitution for being informed and practiced.
“You need only one shot,” I said, placing a set of hearing protectors over my ears.
“Yeah. If it’s between the damn eyes.”
Steadying the revolver with my left hand, I repeatedly squeezed the trigger and shot the manikin in the head once, the chest three times, the fifth bullet grazing the left shoulder–all of it happening in a matter of seconds as head and torso flew off the box and clattered dully against the steel wall.
Wordlessly, Marino set the 9-millimeter on top of a table and slipped his .357 out of his shoulder holster. I could tell I had hurt his feelings. No doubt he had gone to a lot of trouble to find the automatic for me. He had thought I would be pleased.
“Thank you, Marino,” I said.
Clicking the cylinder back in place, he slowly raised his revolver.
I started to add that I appreciated his thoughtfulness, but I knew either he couldn’t hear me or he wasn’t listening.
I backed away as he unloaded six rounds, the manikin head jumping crazily on the floor. Slapping in a speed loader, he started in on the torso. When he was finished, gun smoke was acrid on the air and I knew I would never want him murderously angry with me.
“Nothing like shooting a man while he’s down,” I said.
“You’re right.” He removed his earplugs. “Nothing like it.”
We slid a wooden frame along an overhead track and attached to it a Score Keeper paper target.
When the box of cartridges was empty and I was satisfied that I could still hit the broad side of a barn, I fired a couple of Silvertips to clean out the bore before I took a patch cloth of Hoppe’s No. 9
to it. The solvent always reminded me of Quantico.
“You want my opinion?”
Marino said, cleaning his gun as well. “What you need at home’s a shotgun.”
I said nothing as I returned the Ruger to its carrying case.
“You know, something like an autoloading Remington, three-inch magnum double-aught buck. Be like hitting the fool with fifteen thirty-two-caliber bullets–three times that you hit him with all three rounds. We’re talking forty-five friggin’ pieces of lead. He ain’t gonna come back for more.”
“Marino,” I said quietly. “I’m fine, all right? I really don’t need an arsenal.”
He looked up to me, his eyes hard. “You got any idea what it’s like to shoot a guy and he keeps on coming?”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“Well, I do. Back in New York I emptied my gun on this animal who’s freaked out on PCP. Hit the bastard four times in the upper body and it didn’t even slow him
down. It was like something out of Stephen King, the guy coming at me like the friggin’ living dead.”
I found some tissues in the pockets of my lab coat and began wiping gun oil and solvent off my hands.
“The squirrel who was chasing Beryl through her house, Doc, he was like that, like that lunatic I’m telling you about. Whatever his gig is, he ain’t gonna slow down once he’s in gear.”
“The man in New York,” I ventured, “did he die?”
“Oh, yeah, hi the ER. We both rode to the hospital in the back of the same ambulance. That was a trip.”
“You were badly hurt?”
Marino’s face was unreadable as he replied, “Naw. Seventy-eight stitches. Flesh wounds. You’ve never seen me with my shirt off. The guy had a knife.”