W Is for Wasted

to you.”
    “How about you figure it out right now or I’ll come over there myself and tell him what’s going on.”
    Silence. “Just one moment.”
    She put him on hold. He suspected she was giving herself a little breathing room to get her temper under control. She clicked back in. “One o’clock.”
    He said, “Thank you,” but she’d hung up on him by then.
    •   •   •
    Tuesday morning, he cruised by his office, circling the block once. He spotted his landlady’s car parked in the adjacent lot and continued on his way. He drove down to the beach, following Cabana Boulevard as far as the bird refuge. He had ways to make good use of his time. Before he got out of the car, he adjusted his scarf to keep the chill off his neck. He opened his trunk and unlocked the briefcase where he kept his Glock, which he slid into the pocket of his sport coat. He extracted his gun-cleaning kit from behind the boxes of books and old files that he was gradually moving from his office to his garage at home. In the event his landlady served an eviction notice, he’d be able to clear the premises in short order.
    He carried the kit and yesterday’s newspaper to a picnic table, where he spread the first section across the crude wood surface. He set out a tin of CLP, his cleaning rags, Q-tips, a barrel brush, a cleaning rod, and an old toothbrush and then removed the Smith & Wesson Escort from his shoulder holster and Glock 17 from his coat pocket.
    He worked on the Escort first, pulling the slide back to assure himself the chamber was empty. He popped out the magazine, sighted down the barrel, aimed, and dry-fired at one of the ducks, which took no interest in him whatever. He fieldstripped the gun, removing the recoil spring and the barrel from the frame. He wiped down the parts, eliminating any excess lubrication, then took a dry brush and cleaned all the surfaces. He’d done it so many times, he probably could have done it by feel. His mind wandered first to Dr. Reed; then to Willard; and then to his own wife, Ruthie, the love of his life. For their fortieth anniversary, coming up the following year, he wanted to surprise her with a river cruise, which was why he’d picked up the brochure from the travel agent. This was something she’d always wanted to do. He liked the idea himself, gliding down a river in Germany. He imagined the quiet, the sumpy smell of inland waterways, excursions to nearby points of interest. He pictured villages, stretches of empty countryside, the occasional larger town where they might venture out to see the sights. His hope was to do it in style—maybe not first class, which they couldn’t afford, but not on the cheap by a long shot.
    He set the Escort aside and went to work on the Glock.
    With his office rent in arrears, he knew the money would be better spent catching up, but he was already so far behind he couldn’t see the point. He’d met Ruthie when she was a month shy of nursing school, an accelerated course she’d enrolled in after she got her AA degree. He’d finished his own education with no clear sense of what he wanted to do with his life. He’d tried a little bit of everything before he got a job doing repos for a small collection agency. Eventually, he apprenticed as a private investigator and for a while, he felt he was where he belonged. Things hadn’t quite panned out as he’d hoped. Lately, the work had dried up almost completely, leaving him scrambling to survive.
    He looked up. One of the on-ramp bums was standing on the path watching him. This was a big fellow he’d seen countless times; red baseball cap, red flannel shirt, jeans, and what looked like new boots tough enough to kick a man to death. He knew people who resented the homeless and wanted them chased off the grassy areas where they loitered from day to day. His policy was live and let live.
    Pete said, “Can I help you, son?”
    Fellow put his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t bad-looking, but he carried himself with the menacing posture of a thug. Pete gave him credit for persistence. He himself wouldn’t be able to tolerate a life of begging on off-ramps, or anywhere else for that matter.
    “My dad had a gun looked like that.”
    “Lot of semiautomatics look similar.”
    “What’s yours?”
    “Glock 17.”
    “Is it new?”
    “New to me. The 17 came out in 1982. I didn’t acquire this one until recently.”
    “How much does a gun like that cost?”
    It crossed Pete’s mind that