Run by Douglas E. Winter

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Run may be Douglas Winter's first novel, but it is not by any stretch an apprentice work. It is, on the contrary, a mature, fully realized creation and a culminating moment in Winter's varied career as critic (Stephen King: The Art of Darkness), editor (Prime Evil, Revelations), and author of some of the most original short fiction of recent years. It is, in brief, everything Winter's admirers have been hoping for, and a good bit more.

On one level, Run is a thriller set in the arcane world of illegal arms dealers, its plot turning on a high-stakes, guns-for-money deal that goes spectacularly wrong. On a deeper level, it is an unsparing examination of a world on the edge of apocalypse, a world obsessed to the point of lunacy with owning -- and using -- guns. This apocalyptic vision is articulated by Burdon Lane, gunrunner, good soldier, and longtime employee of UniArms, a Virginia-based weapons franchise that Burdon describes as "a factory outlet...for buyers on a budget: Guns R Us."

Burdon, as he himself tells us, is not one of the good guys. But he is a complex, fascinating character, a thoroughgoing professional who goes where he's told and does whatever his job requires without asking inconvenient questions. Still, unlike many of his associates, he has managed to retain some vital ties to the ordinary human world. He is deeply in love with his live-in girl friend, the mysterious, exotic Fiona. He is loyal to his friends, particularly his younger, less experienced partner, Renny (a.k.a. Renny Two Hand). He is haunted by memories of his dead mother and carries her copy of Crime and Punishment (an altogether appropriate account of murder and redemption) wherever he goes. He is haunted, also, by the memory of a colleague who was murdered for committing the one unforgivable crime in Burdon's world: breaking the code of silence.

Winter brings both Burdon and the novel to life with a flawlessly sustained narrative voice that is one of Run's most indelible achievements. That hypnotic voice, with its mixture of tough-guy locutions, rude humor, casual obscenity, and unexpected flashes of poetry, lights up the novel, placing the reader inside the skin of the unfolding narrative and providing Winter with the perfect vehicle for his violent, intricately designed story.

The story begins when Burdon is ordered to ride shotgun on an arms shipment traveling from Alexandria, Virginia, to Manhattan, where a New York City street gang called the 9 Bravos is waiting to take delivery. Against his wishes, Burdon and his partners are accompanied by the U Street Crew, a Washington, D.C., street gang that has entered into an alliance with UniArms, in the interest of what UniArms owner Jules Berenger calls "diversification." The weapons are delivered and the deal is nearly concluded when, in a moment of choreographed violence that turns the novel neatly on its head, an unexpected murder is committed, a murder that is followed by a bloodbath in which almost no one is left alive.

In the aftermath, Burdon makes his way back to Virginia, accompanied by an enigmatic U Street Crew member who goes by the name of Jinx. Their journey south is a violent and eventful one, littered with the corpses of Burdon's friends. The journey -- and the novel -- end together in a masterfully sustained set piece: a fierce, almost surreal pitched battle that takes place, with deliberate irony, in a Catholic church in Alexandria. By the time the smoke clears and the last bullet is fired, Burdon has learned the truth behind the "run" that ended so disastrously. At the same time, he comes to understand, with belated clarity, the nature of the world that he -- and others like him -- is helping to create.

Run is a novel about secrets, about the truths that lie buried beneath the visible surface of events. It is a novel in which almost everyone wears some sort of mask, in which hidden agendas and undisclosed purposes dominate the plot. Most of all, Run is an authentically nightmarish portrait of America as war zone, of America transformed -- through greed, expediency, and an overriding obsession with guns, guns, and more guns -- into a very literal adjunct of Hell. Somewhere along the line, Run crosses an invisible border and becomes not simply a thriller but a meditation on violence, corruption, and damnation and on the opposing, but very real, possibility of personal redemption.

Simply put, Run is an extraordinary debut, a visceral, endlessly fascinating look at a fractured, racially divided, rapidly unraveling society. With confidence, intelligence, and great narrative authority, Winter subverts the conventions of the traditional thriller, using the form to open up a window on the condition of the American soul. The result is a novel that is not to be missed, that is unlike anything you are likely to encounter -- inside the genre or out of it -- for a very long time to come.

--Bill Sheehan

From the Publisher

The buyers find us. Establish their bona fides.
Then, and only then, we run.

Burdon Lane is a businessman living out the American Dream in a shiny suburb of Washington, D.C. His business card lists him as Executive VP of UniArms, Inc., a legitimate arms dealer that's a front for a gunrunning empire. His girlfriend thinks he's a salesman. His best friend thinks he's a role model. His boss thinks he's a good soldier.

This weekend's run should be business as usual — guns for money, money for guns — moving the product north on the Iron Highway from Dirty City to Manhattan. But this weekend is going to teach Burdon something he doesn't yet know about who he is . . . and isn't. When the meet in Manhattan turns into a five-alarm fire and an all-out war on the tenth floor of a New York hotel, there is only one way out: an uneasy alliance with a hard case named Jinx and the street gang known as the U Street Crew. And once the heat is on, with a cadre of killers and every police officer and Federal agent on the eastern seaboard on their tail, Burdon gets the chilling sensation that, one way or another, this so-called milk run may be his last.

This is the story of the last run, the run where no one — criminal, cop, or civilian — is who or what they seem.

Douglas E. Winter's debut novel blasts into the dark heart of America's culture of guns and violence with breathtaking velocity. Run is a streamlined tour de force of full-throttle action and high-tech weaponry, a brilliantly controlled ride through America's most brutal terrain, with a surprising moral message — fantastically harrowing, relentlessly cinematic,impossible to look away from.

Blue Murder Maqazine

Douglas E. Winter's debut novel blasts into the dark heart of America's culture of guns and violence with breathtaking velocity. Run is a streamlined tour de force of full-throttle action and high tech weaponry, a brilliantly controlled ride through America's most brutal terrain, with a surprising moral message-fantastically harrowing, relentlessly cinematic, impossible to look away from.

Publishers Weekly

Relentlessly paced, this chase novel impressively captures the frantic energy and emotional panic experienced by an East Coast gunrunner forced to flee both his own gang and the law. Written in rough, gritty street vernacular, the story covers about 24 hours in the life of 40-something Burdon Lane, who is part of a large group of criminals transporting a shipment of guns from Washington, D.C., to New York City. Just as the deal is about to go down in a Manhattan tenement, bedlam erupts. As Lane takes cover, his own people start shooting each other, the gun merchants begin killing their own and men dressed in police uniforms but not acting like police mysteriously show up. Meanwhile, somebody assassinates a prominent civil rights leader marching in a parade nearby. When the shooting stops, Lane finds himself in possession of the $2 million intended for the purchase of the guns. He has no idea, however, what has just happened. All he knows is that he must run. Winter sets a torrid tempo for his electric narrative as the plot unfolds. Using cars, trains and his own feet, Lane escapes death time and time again as he makes his way back home to confront his boss about whether the gun deal was merely a diversion in a larger scheme, orchestrated by larger powers, to kill the black political leader. Winter, a noted horror critic and anthologist, has written a memorable debut novel. His otherwise fine outing bogs down only at the end, during a protracted, bloody battle that, for its impact, relies on violence rather than on cunning plot dexterity.

Library Journal

D.C. attorney Winter's first novel is a boring and exceedingly violent short story that seems to have been stretched out to novel length. Narrator Burden Lane, a gun-runner, goes with his best friend and several others on what is supposed to be a routine gun deal. In actuality, though, Lane has been set up in an assassination plot. He goes on the run, not knowing who to trust as he tries to stay alive. Winter's rambling writing style makes it difficult to get involved in the story right away, and his vague descriptions don't help. Even if Quentin Tarrentino and John Woo made a movie together the result wouldn't have come closer to the level of gratuitous violence in this novel. Run far away from Run. Not recommended.-Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.

Alfred A. Knopf

"With Run, Douglas E. Winter puts a battery up in the reader and ups the ante for thriller writers everywhere. Run has the hard, sharklike sheen of a Richard Stark novel and the bullet-riddled kineticism of early John Woo. Plan to stay up half the night." --George P. Pelecanos, author of Shame the Devil

Product Details

• Interviews & Essays
• Read an Excerpt

Interviews & Essays

Run is the stunning, highly audacious debut from Douglas E. Winter, an original, horrifying, masterfully three-dimensional look at the violent world of gunrunning. Filled with wicked surprises, poetic and provocative language, and a diverse cast of characters, Run delivers an intense shipment of thrills and a shocking, eye-opening glance at a sinister reality. In an interview conducted by Thriller editor Andrew LeCount, Winter discusses inner-city violence, the art of illegal gun-pushing, and the way in which a horrible tragedy lit his novel-writing fire. Enjoy acquainting yourself with this exciting new novelist.

B&N.com: Run is your debut novel. Did you experience much trepidation while tackling the massive task of novel-writing?

Douglas E. Winter: No, not at all. Run was a joy to write, because I'm passionate about its story, its characters, and its subject. Writing the novel was hard work, but well worth the effort; in fact, it was a kind of redemption.

I had been successful, for several years, in balancing a career as a lawyer with a minor career as a writer -- publishing nonfiction, two anthologies, and short stories -- but that all disappeared with the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255 at Detroit, Michigan. One hundred and sixty people were killed; Northwest and its insurer tried to deny responsibility; and I found myself enmeshed in a nightmarish lawsuit that lasted almost a decade, with a 19-month-long jury trial in federal court. My client was vindicated, and Northwest was found wholly at fault. It was the pinnacle of my legal career, but I was devastated, physically and emotionally. Burnout doesn't even begin to approximate the way I felt. And the only way out, I realized, was to write. I'd lost some of the prime years of my life, and it was now or never -- it really was time to write a novel.

The only trepidation came as I neared the end. Was it good enough? Would any publisher really be interested? Because, as you know, it's difficult enough to sell a first novel, but I had taken some definite risks in the story and style of Run.

B&N.com: While Run is your first novel, as you mentioned, it is not your first published work (Doug has edited two short-fiction anthologies and has written in the short form himself). But unlike your other fiction experience, which is more on the horror side of things, Run is flat-out thriller. Why the switch in genres? What crime and thriller writers possibly influenced this redirection?

DEW: There really wasn't a change of direction. Generic definitions may be useful in marketing books, but not in writing them. Because as soon as you think you're writing a "kind" of novel, you succumb to the expectations of the genre. And to my mind, horror is an emotion, not a genre -- which is why this fiction embraces novels as diverse as Dracula and Red Dragon, Clive Barker's Sacrament and José Saramago's Blindness. My own short stories are true to this perspective; indeed, most of them are insistently realistic.

My reading habits have never been defined by genre, and I love books that, like Run, blur the lines -- that can be read by fans of thrillers, crime novels, horror novels. But if you're looking for specific writers whom I've admired and whose books seem, to me, antecedents of Run...well, I like to think of Run as the bastard child of David Goodis or Jim Thompson, awakening from a long drunk to the sound of gangsta rap. Meaning that I wanted to wrench noir sensibilities out of the '40s and '50s and into the present -- and, at the same time, to ratchet up the prose, to make this book true to its title: to make something that moved with a speed that hopefully would leave the reader breathless.

B&N.com: Now that you've written in both horror and crime, what do you find scarier?

DEW: Reality remains far scarier than anything I've seen in fiction; and generally, fiction that mimes reality is more disturbing -- and appealing -- to me.

The best stories, whether they're thrillers or horror or crime, push beyond the "scary" into a deeper emotional realm, touching you in ways you can't shrug off or laugh away. They move you, and may even change the way you think about the world.

Now I love the scares, and Run has some, to be sure -- those carnival funhouse moments when something leaps unexpectedly at you -- but Run is truly, and insistently, a thriller. My goal was to thrill readers -- to excite them, energize them, compel them to keep turning the pages. And along the way, I hope there are moments when I really do touch you on that deeper level.

B&N.com: Where did these wonderful, and at the same time absolutely horrible, characters spring from? How on earth did you research such a thing as illegal gun running (is there such a thing as legal gunrunning?) without getting yourself killed?

DEW: For better or worse, the characters are all from the inside of my head. In fact, in writing about Burdon Lane, I wanted to remind readers that we all have the capacity to do great violence -- and to accomplish great good. Inevitably, some characters find echoes in reality, like Doctor D and the U Street Crew, who are my version of some of D. C.'s more infamous gangsters of the '90s.

Gunrunning, on the other hand, is by no means imaginary. And yes, there is "legal" gunrunning, in the sense that the United States has championed an international weapons trade for years. During the Reagan/Bush administration, we were exporting $100 billion in armaments every year -- to our allies, some of whom then became our enemies. Some of those sales involved weapons that were supplied surreptitiously to rebels and insurgents.

Domestic gunrunning, which is the focus of Run, is illegal and, of course, a very real problem for law enforcement and public safety. I spent a lot of time investigating the techniques and tradecraft of gunrunning, and I had many sources, inside and outside of the law. The Alexandria, Virginia, Police Department was very helpful, and I also spoke with former FBI and Secret Service agents, the ATF, folks in the gun business and in the pro- and anti-gun lobbies. But some of my best research came in using my imagination, gathering the facts and then filling in the cracks by putting myself into the mindset of my characters, trying to understand how these schemes really work on the street.

B&N.com: Before we get ahead of ourselves, what, exactly, is gunrunning?

DEW: It's a crime as exact as drugrunning -- meaning that it's difficult to define because it comes in so many shapes and sizes. Basically it's the movement of a weapon into a jurisdiction where that weapon is illegal. It takes place constantly in the United States, because gun laws differ from state to state, creating market opportunities for criminal entrepreneurs.

Run covers diverse kinds of gunrunning, from petty crime -- like moving a handgun across the Potomac River from Virginia into Washington, D. C. -- to more elaborate sales of assault rifles, machine pistols, exotic weapons.

The "run" at the center of the novel is the sale of some "top notch iron" to a New York street gang known as the 9 Bravos. Burdon Lane works for UniArms, Inc., a legitimate arms dealer that is the perfect facade for a gunrunning empire. But UniArms is white and suburban, and to make this deal work, Burdon's boss cuts a deal with a notorious D.C. gang -- the U Street Crew -- to provide protection during the delivery. The alliance is doomed, of course; and when it unravels in Manhattan, Burdon finds himself on a very different kind of run.

B&N.com: Did you worry at all about writing a novel in which so few of the characters are sympathetic? Or was it the challenge of getting readers to sympathize with an unsympathetic character that attracted you?

DEW: I wanted, more than anything else, to invert the usual style of the police procedural and the P. I. novel and the serial killer novel and so many other novels that position the reader with the authority figures who solve the crime. I thought readers would enjoy a story that was told from the inside out. So I take you into the criminal underworld, and we see everything from the perspective of a hardened criminal -- who, at first, does not seem likable. And that's a risk, because some people think you need to have a sympathetic character from page one.

Obviously, I disagree. I think you have to have an interesting character from page one; someone who engages the reader. And I loved the challenge of creating Burdon Lane. He tells you, from the get-go, that he's not the good guy, and yet he's charismatic enough -- and ultimately sympathetic enough -- that readers want to turn the page, to find out what happens next.

B&N.com: Run is written in a very unique and audacious style (for those who have yet to read it, it's like Burdon Lane -- our narrator -- is sitting in your living room relating the insanity; everything the reader learns is direct from Lane's lips to your ears). What provoked you to use this original -- and very interesting, I might add -- first person voice?

DEW: Two things: I wanted to write a book with a voice and attitude that were different. If I was going to spend years writing a novel on the speculation that one day someone might publish it, I wanted to write a novel that was mine, that wasn't just another lawyer novel, or just another mystery novel or horror novel -- so I really did strive for originality in the story and the style and the voice.

There was also something very liberating, and almost hypnotic, about the voice of Burdon Lane and about this way of telling a story. Because it's very direct and fast-moving -- but it's also very honest. Even when Burdon says or thinks things that are impolite -- and, indeed, repugnant -- the reader sees that this is his humanity. That he is world-weary, he is angry, he is violent, he is bigoted -- because we all have these feelings. So readers understand his humanity, and they see through his bravado and bluster and into his pained heart. Because we're all like Burdon Lane in so many ways -- and we all have that same choice between damnation and redemption.

B&N.com: In this game of gunrunning, the players don excellent nicknames: Renny Two Hand, Jinx, Doctor D, CK (stands for cop killer, not Calvin Klein)...the list goes on and on. Are these names products of your imagination? In a related question, how were you to so convincingly "get down" with the gunrunnin', street-talkin' lingo?

DEW: The names were mine, although some are drawn from the street and the world of hip-hop. (The 9 Bravos and the U Street Crew are imaginary, but the other gangs, like the 1-5 Mob and the Stanton Terrace Crew, are real.) And the language, too, echoes out of what I hear on the street, in bars, in courtrooms, in police stations and gun shops -- and in rap, which has some of that brash belligerence I wanted to put into Burdon's voice.

I love to listen. I love the way that conversation is free-form poetry, with very individual rhythms. So many novels present dialogue in an artificial and stilted way. Characters speak in similar, if not identical, voices; they speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences; they never interrupt each other; they always say what they really mean -- things none of us does in real life.

Writers like George V. Higgins and Elmore Leonard taught me that nothing -- and I mean nothing -- brings more life to a character than the way in which he or she speaks. But so many novelists spend their time describing the shape of someone's nose, the color of their hair, the cut of their clothing -- and when they're finished, we have a nice picture of the character; but that's all it is, a picture.

Characters come to life in their thoughts and words and deeds. It doesn't matter whether Hannibal Lecter's nose is pudgy or aquiline; it's his sense of smell, and the way he talks about it, that's compelling. Clarice Starling is alive whether she looks like Jodie Foster or Julianne Moore.

So when you read Run, you don't ever learn the shape of Burdon Lane's nose or the color of his eyes, but you know him. Oh, do you know him.

B&N.com: How readily are guns available in today's world? As your novel suggests, can anyone with a truckload of cash get his hands on pretty much any weapon he desires?

DEW: It doesn't take a truckload of cash -- more like $50 and a phone call, if you know the right person. One reason is that there is more than one handgun or shoulder weapon out there for every man, woman, and child in the United States. And it's easier to buy a gun than to buy a car: You don't need an operator's license or insurance, and in certain contexts you don't need a background check or registration -- you just need cash. And those are legal purchases.

Inevitably, our haphazard system of gun legislation, in which the states and localities have traditionally set the standards for gun ownership, has helped create a market for gunrunning. Thus, Washington, D.C., has some of the most rigorous gun laws in the country; but it's bordered by Maryland and Virginia, which have had far less rigorous laws. So it's nirvana for gunrunners.

B&N.com: While researching Run, did you uncover evidence that gang-related violence in our nation's big cities is on the decline? Or did your research suggest gloomier prospects? Lately it seems that most violence -- or at least the violence that is deemed newsworthy -- is sprouting from suburbia.

DEW: Unfortunately, violence in America is so mundane that many murders are no longer "newsworthy." Crimes that tweak the fear or xenophobia of television viewers and newspaper readers are the ones given prominent coverage. So if there's a gun crime in the inner city, it's a blink of the media eye; but if there's a carjacking at the fashionable suburban shopping mall, it's going to be stared at for a week.

According to the FBI, gang-related violence is declining as a direct result of the economic upswing -- after all, crime indicators are often (but not always) linked to economic indicators. It's also the result of more effective law enforcement and community action, in terms of understanding and confronting the economic and social roots of gang activity.

In Run, I wanted to show the collision of the urban and the suburban, and the way in which violence and crime are exported from one to the other. But all too often, the reality of crime is that we visit it on ourselves: For the most part, it's white-on-white, black-on-black, spouse-on-spouse, family member on family member.

B&N.com: Kirkus Reviews (for those unfamiliar, Kirkus is one of the publishing industry's major review forums) wrote in their piece on Run: "Winter will have a tough time topping himself." How do you respond to that? Do you have a second novel in the works?

DEW: It's a great compliment. And obviously, it's a challenge. But that's what writing books is all about, at least for me.

I'm working away on a second novel. It's impossible to replicate Run -- and that doesn't interest me, anyway. What interests me is telling stories in new ways, and in exciting readers, thrilling them. I told my publisher that my motto is to "unexpect the expected" -- and that's what Run, and the new novel, are all about ...about going places where, just when you think you know the answer, I change the question.

B&N.com: A million thanks for answering our questions, Doug. Congratulations on a wonderful, thought-provoking, and exciting piece of work.

DEW: Thanks for your kind words. It was a pleasure to visit with you and with all the readers on the site.

Read an Excerpt

I look down into the display case of pistols and I cannot believe the crap this Dickie Mullen guy is peddling. Just like I cannot believe that Jules Berenger and I are selling it to him.

You want to keep out of trouble, pal. You don't need this shit. If the state cops or the ATF come sniffing round here, then my friend with the gun comes sniffing round here, and sooner or later I have to come and pay you a visit. Not that I don't like a friendly chat now and then, but I'm about done with the talking. So you keep things in order, pal. You sell your stock over the counter and you send in those little forms to Treasury. You know why?

He hesitates, shakes his head: No.

I cannot believe this guy.

Because it's the law, dumb shit. It is the fucking law.

I pass him a handkerchief.

Now wipe your face off.

He looks at the hankie like it's an alien life form. Then he gets the idea and starts mopping down. First the split lip, then the forehead, then he starts on his pants. Guess he gets to keep this one.

You got a wife, right?

Yeah, he says, but when I give him the look he locks eyes with me and says it right: Yes.

You got kids?

Yes.

And a mortgage?

He looks at me funny but not for long. Then: Yes.

I point to the front door. So, I tell him. You don't open up today. You leave that closed sign hanging there, and you take the rest of the day off and you go home. You tell them all -- the wife, the kids, the mortgage -- that you love them. And then tomorrow -- well, tomorrow you come in here and you turn that sign over to open, and, hey, it's like they say: Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. You got me?

Yes, he says.

I fucking hope so, I tell him.

But worms like this one never learn. Never. Guy probably cheats on his tax returns, cheats on his wife, maybe even cheats on his poker buddies. Next time this happens, and sooner or later there's gonna be a next time, he's gonna skim a little bit less, he's gonna hide a little bit more, the guy's gonna think he's getting away with something, and you know what?

That's when I'm gonna have to kill him.

+++++++

one a.m.

Renny Two Hand's in the hot seat, drinking Bud Light out of a bottle and snaking a new cigarette from the battered pack on the bar. Some achy-voiced rock-and-roller, a dead guy, is droning on and on and he's not even in tune with these dentist-drill guitars. Five one-dollar bills are tented on top of the bar, and Two Hand is looking point-blank into the dancer's snatch like there's no tomorrow.

You ever pray? he says.

For what? I ask him, and he just looks right through me and says:

You ever pray?

Shawnee, that's this dancer's name, ha-ha, she lets down that witchy-woman hair, and she works her way over to me, and she wants me. I know she wants me because she smiles, a little sly smile, and then the little wink as she strides on past, high heels clicking in time to the beat. So she wants me. Yeah, right. She wants me to lay a little more green on the bar, and when I do, I get some good old hippy-hippy-shake, and then it's walk on down the line to the next guy, and then the next and the next, still smiling, still winking, still shaking, still wanting. Sweet kid, probably studies psych or sociology at George Mason University and dates a fraternity boy when she isn't giving blow jobs in the alleyway out back.

I'm leaning my head toward Renny Two Hand, trying to imagine what he's really saying to me through a night's worth of cigarette smoke, drugstore aftershave, gutter rock guitar, and the cheap talk of the Dauphine Steak House, and that is when I hear the cough. It's a nasty cough, the kind of cough that sort of stands right up and says: I'm a Glock.

Sitting on my cozy stool, nodding away to the music from the band with the dead guy, minding my own business and a lot of the naked lady who's strutting her stuff atop the bar, trying to think real hard about Bud Light instead of tomorrow, and with that cough in my ear, I realize there's no escaping a simple fact:

Guns are my life.

So I grind out Renny's Chesterfield and take a spin on the bar stool and there's this damn fool backpedaling away from one of the tables out on the dance floor. His chair's tipped over, and he's pushing a Spandex-bursting waitress out of the way with one hand and waving a Glock 19 with the other. Asshole.

Not that I don't like the Glock 19. It's my weapon of choice. Right about now I'm carrying two of them: one out in the glove compartment of my Mustang, the other one tight to the flat of my back, snug in a Bianchi holster.

Nice construction on the Glock. It's the original polymer pistol; some folks, the dumb ones, thought you could walk it through airport security. The G19 is compact, weighs thirty ounces loaded with a fifteen-round magazine, and the trigger pulls as smooth as taffy. Maybe it's just the cough that bothers me. Hearing it when it's not my own. That annoys me. Like shooting one of the Beretta 80s, those little .22s that sort of spit when you squeeze them. Or the MAC-10: On full auto, sounds like a cat pissing.

I used to like my weapons loud. Let's face it, when the shit goes down, so deep that it's time to shoot -- well then, you ought to make a statement. The old Springfield 1911A1, standard-issue Army .45, spoke up with a bull roar, scared the shit out of anybody, anything. Which was helpful, since it's a bitch for anyone but a pro to score hits with old Slab Sides from more than about twenty feet. But that four-five talks like it looks: big and mean. I keep mine in a footlocker, way up in the attic, with a pair of my old fatigues, a picture of my high school sweetheart -- that bitch -- and a map of the provinces. That's where it belongs: put to rest, another buried dream.

Don't even think about it, I tell myself, and then I say it aloud to Renny Two Hand, who's finally fallen out of the beer-and-babe fugue and noticed that something's going down. He looks from the asshole on the dance floor to me and then down to the cuff of his right pants leg, which no doubt hides a heavy something with a barrel and a trigger and, if I know Two Hand, a high-capacity magazine. I snag his jacket, ready to hustle our happy asses to the fire exit and out of this nonsense. Trouble is something you just never need.

So through the huddle comes this well-armed asshole from the outland, Manassas maybe, wearing torn jeans, standard-issue black Metallica T-shirt, a flannel overshirt, and about five too many beers. He shakes his sloppy blond head and slow-dances back into the jukebox. That band with the dead guy -- now I remember, it's called Nirvana -- starts singing in double time. Little wrestling around, then cue the scream. So the asshole's got a Glock. Full magazine, maybe, and he's shot one time. Could be lots of bodies rolled out of the place by Springfield EMS, but that one's beyond Vegas odds; no way he's serious. Drunks are rarely serious about anything but fighting or fucking, and like most drunks this asshole isn't much capable of either.

By now the piece is pointed at the linoleum. The first of the bouncers, a skull-shaven Marine probably moonlighting out of Quantico, makes his appearance, gives him the old okeydokey take-it-easy routine. Hands up, smile and a nod, smile and a nod, one step closer, one step more.

The jarhead gestures to the ceiling and when the asshole looks up -- told you he was an asshole -- the Marine whales him with what the boxing announcers like to call a solid right to the jaw. Down and out for the count. Stick a fork in him, this one's done.

I look over at the table where the commotion started and there's another spud there, another black T-shirt, another flannel shirt, another pair of jeans, and he's looking at his left thigh like it just sprouted an eye and winked at him. He's saying oh momma oh momma and wiping blood back and forth in his hands like it's grease.

I look at my watch, which reads nigh on one in the morning. Last call for blood and alcohol. A black-and-white ought to be wheeling around any minute now. So:

Th-th-that's all, folks.

Ren, I say, let's call it a night.

Yeah, he says. A night.

He pulls back the last of his Bud Light and shrugs himself up off the bar stool. It's hard to believe he can walk.

I drop a fiver on the bar for dearest Shawnee, she shakes her tits at me, and we're gone.

Sucking cold air on the blacktop parking lot, shaking out the smell of cigarettes, I'm taken with one of those Twilight Zone thoughts, and this time it's the idea that, while we were being entertained, the mighty suburb of Springfield, Virginia, slid into a deep black hole. Then I realize the power is out along Backlick Road and its rat maze of mini-malls. And how much I hate the dark.

I steer Renny toward the Mustang. A couple beers, that's all. The age-old promise, man-to-man. So we had a couple beers, did our business, traded the keys, and seven p.m. rolled into nine, and we had a couple beers again, and round about eleven the bottles and the dollar bills formed up ranks on the counter. A nice drunk, until the coughing fit.

I try to remind Renny about Thursday, about why we traded the keys, but he's giving me the Ren routine, hands waving out at nothing in particular, clearing the cobwebs, no doubt searching for the clever exit line. An unshaven and gimp-kneed Shakespearean. All the world's barrooms and parking lots are a stage.

Ah, the smell of blood after midnight, he finally tells me and the parking lot and the black, black sky and the red-and-blue lights of the police car whirlybirding down Franconia Road toward us. It's the smell of --

There isn't a pause; it's a gap. His face goes loose, and he takes a long look back at the Dauphine Steak House like he's left his best friend, which is me, inside. The silence doesn't stop. I stand there until it's just too much.

The smell of . . . what? I ask him.

His face comes back at me, a full moon that shines on with nothingness. Then:

You drive, he tells me. He hooks his fingers into his belt, hoists his jeans, and wobbles on to the car.

That's my partner, Reynolds James -- aka Renny, aka Two Hand, aka The Wrap -- for you: Always starting something but never getting it done.