Sudden Prey

have to get moving.”
    “All right.” LaChaise started toward the bathroom; halfway down the hall, he stopped and looked at Harp’s record collection and said, “Jesus Christ, what happened to the records?”
    “You got pissed off and broke them up.”
    “Christ, I must’ve been fucked.” LaChaise bent and picked up half a record. Sketches of Spain , by Miles Davis. “Some kind of spic music,” he said. He yawned again and flipped the broken record into the room, on top of all the other fragments, and went on down to the bathroom.
    SANDY WAS DRESSED, wrapped in the parka, when LaChaise came to the door.
    “Let’s go,” he said, rapping once.
    “Where?”
    “You gotta do something for us.”
     
     
     
    LACHAISE DROVE , WHILE Martin gave directions from memory, out this street and down that highway, turn at the lumber store with the red sign. They were somewhere west of the city, around a lake. Dozens of ice-fishing shacks were scattered over the frozen surface of the lake, and pickups and snowmobiles were parked beside some of the shacks.
    “The thing is,” Martin said, “is that half his business is illegal, ’cause he don’t believe in gun controls . . . but I do believe he’d shoot us down like dogs if he had a chance. If he seen us coming.” He looked at Sandy. “So you walk up to his front door and ring the bell. I’ll be right there, next to the stoop.”
    “That’s . . . I couldn’t pull it off,” Sandy said.
    “Sure you can,” Martin said. She remembered the night before, his eyes over the sights of the pistol.
     
     
     
    THE HOUSE WAS a brown-shingled rambler on a quiet, curving street. Lights showed from a front window and the back of the house; the car clock said 7:30. Still dark enough.
    “Door latches on the right,” Martin said. They continued past the house, did a U-turn, dropped Martin and waited as he walked away in the dark. After a minute or so, they started back toward the house. “Quick beep, all the lights, then just run up to the house with the bag in your hand,” LaChaise said.
    They’d picked up a newspaper at a coin-op box, and wrapped it in a plastic grocery bag they found in the backseat. “Don’t fuck it up.”
    Sandy held on: just this thing, they said.
    “Now,” said LaChaise.
    They pulled up to the house, stopped in the middle of the driveway. Sandy gave the horn a light beep, then hopped out of the car, carrying in the paper. At the same moment, Martin duck-walked down the front of the house, until he was directly beneath the stoop, on the right side of the door under the latch, but pressed to the side of the house.
    Sandy saw a white-haired man come to what must be a kitchen window as she hurried up the driveway, shivering from the cold. The man was holding a mug of coffee, his forehead wrinkling at the sight of her. She hurried up the stoop and rang the doorbell. Martin’s face was just beside her right pant leg, a .45 in his hand. The door opened, and the white-haired man pushed the storm door open a crack and said, “Yes?”
    Sandy pulled the door open another foot, and Martin stood up and pushed his pistol at the man inside. “Don’t move, Frank. Don’t even think about moving.”
    “Oh, boy,” the man said. He had a surprisingly soft, cultured voice, Sandy thought, for a gun dealer. He backed up, his hands in front of him. LaChaise was out of the car, and Martin pushed Frank into the house, Sandy following, and LaChaise coming up behind.
    Inside, Martin said, “He’ll have a three-fifty-seven under his sweater, back on his hip, Dick, if you want to get that . . .”
    LaChaise patted the man, found the gun.
    Martin went on, “And he might have an ankle piece . . .” LaChaise dropped to his knees, and the man said, “Left ankle,” and LaChaise found a hammerless revolver.
    “You dress like this to have coffee, I’d hate to see you getting ready for trouble,” LaChaise said, grinning at the man.
    The man looked at him for a moment, then turned back to Martin. “What do you want?”
    “Couple of special AKs, out of that safe in the basement. A couple of vests.”
    “You boys are dead, you know that?”
    Martin nodded. “Yeah. Which is why maybe you shouldn’t fight us. There’s no percentage in it, ’cause we just don’t give a fuck anymore.”
    The man nodded and said, “Down this way.”
    FRANK HAD THREE gun safes in the basement, aligned along a wall with a workbench and a separate reloading bench. He reached for