‘Hey, what’cha know.’ He was enthusiastically greeted by Fig Winnick, the assistant manager.
By Virginia law, a citizen could buy one handgun every thirty days and no more. This had given rise to the tongue-in-cheek Gun-of-the-Month Club. It was a small but clever group of one hundred and eighty-nine men and sixty-two women who sent each other reminders when their thirty days, loosely interpreted as a month, were up. It was April 2.
‘If only I’d come in two days ago, I could have bought a gun then and another one today,’ Bubba misinterpreted, as usual.
‘Wishful thinking,’ Winnick told him again. ‘Doesn’t work that way, Bubba. And it sure as hell is too damn bad.’
‘So you’re saying it’s not once a month,’ Bubba challenged what he refused to believe.
‘Not literally. But sort of. If you start with the first day of each month.’
‘You know, someone stole all my guns.’ Bubba browsed.
‘The guys were talking about it,’ Winnick sympathized.
‘So all I got left’s the Anaconda and I need something I can pack easier,’ Bubba spoke the language.
‘I got just the thing.’
Winnick lovingly opened a showcase and gently pulled out a Browning 40 S&W Hi-Power Mark III pistol. He handed the beauty to Bubba.
‘Oh God,’ Bubba muttered as he fondled the silver chrome pistol. ‘Oh, oh, oh.’
‘Molded polyamide grips with thumb rest,’ Winnick said. ‘Weighs thirty-five ounces, four and three-quarters barrel. Feels great to the hand, huh?’
‘Boy. No kidding.’
Bubba pulled back the slide and snapped it forward. There was just no better sound than that.
‘Low profile front sight blade, drift-adjustable rear sight,’ Winnick went on. ‘Ambidextrous safety, ten-round magazine.’
‘Imported from Belgium.’ Bubba wasn’t going to be fooled. ‘The genuine thing.’
‘Nothing but.’
‘What about a matte blue finish?’ Bubba inquired. ‘It doesn’t show up as much.’
‘Sorry,’ Winnick apologized. ‘Damn. If only you had come in yesterday. We had about eleven left.’
‘Well, I guess this one will have to do,’ Bubba said.
Patty Passman also was thinking ahead. She hadn’t missed an Azalea Parade in twelve years and she didn’t intend to miss this one. Although Rhoad had unfairly charged her with many things, it was only assault on a police officer that had stuck. She wished bail bondsman
Willy ‘Lucky’ Loving would show up to get her the hell out of here.
Lockup was just a holding area and inmates wore their own clothes, giving up only their belts to make it trickier to commit suicide. Passman was sticky, her panty hose so torn up she’d had no choice but to take them off right in front of her cellmate, Tinky Meaney, a truck driver for Dixie Motorfreight, who had gotten picked up for getting into a scuffle in the parking lot of the Power Clean Grill on Hull Street. Passman didn’t know the details, but of one thing she was certain, Tinky Meaney wasn’t on the list of those Passman might have invited to a slumber party.
‘I sure wish he’d hurry up,’ Passman said from her narrow steel pull-down bed.
She said this often to make certain Meaney didn’t think that Passman enjoyed Meaney’s company and was in no hurry to leave it. Meaney was a big woman. She was the sort who always said they weren’t fat, just big-boned and solid. This was nonsense.
Meaney’s thighs were thicker than the biggest Smithfield hams Passman had ever seen, and every time Meaney stalked about the tiny cell, her jeans swished as her upper legs rubbed together. Her hands were thick with stubby fingers and big knuckles that were scraped and bruised from the fistfight that had landed her here. She had no neck. As she sat on the edge of her bed staring at Passman, Meaney’s breasts sagged over her empty belt loops. Unshaved pale legs showed between the hem of her jeans and the top of her hand-tooled black and red cowboy boots.
‘What the hell are you staring at?’ Meaney caught Passman looking.
‘Nothing,’ Passman lied.
Meaney stretched out on her side and propped up on an elbow, chin in hand. She stared without blinking, a look in her tiny dark eyes that Passman recognized instantly. At the same time Passman realized in amazement that Meaney’s breasts were even bigger than Passman had thought. One was hanging over the side of the bed, almost touching the floor, and brought to mind a sandbag. Passman realized Meaney wasn’t wearing a bra under her Motor Mile Towing & Flatbed Service sweatshirt.