A Perfect Life by Mike Stewart Page B

three paces, he stopped and waited.
    Canon was breathing hard and rubbing his wrist. “I'm too old to run. So”—he pulled in a deep breath—“do what you're gonna do.”
    Scott looked down at the gun. “How do you take the bullets out of this thing?”
    “Huh?”
    “How do you . . .”
    “Little button there on the left side. Push it up, and the cylinder swings out.”
    Holding the grip in his palm, Scott discovered that his thumb came to rest naturally on an indented lever. He pushed and the cylinder moved slightly to the left. Walker said, “Flop it to the left,” and he did. The cylinder swung full out. Scott pointed the muzzle at the ceiling and four bullets hit the floor. Canon was ready to be helpful now. “See that steel rod sticking up on the front end? Push down on it. It'll pop out the other two bullets.”
    The last two cartridges hit the floor. One of them was spent. He looked up into Walker's eyes. “You're a crazy old bastard. You know that?” His eyes dropped. “Did I hurt your wrist?”
    “Shit, yeah, you hurt it. What'd you think?”
    Scott grinned. “I thought a crazy old man was getting ready to kill me. Here”—he held out the gun—“take this before I hurt myself.”
    Canon glanced at the pistol but didn't reach for it. He said, “You move pretty good for somebody with a messed-up, no-sleep frontal lobe.” The old bluesman massaged his wrist. “Where'd you learn to do that? What was that, some kind of special forces move or somethin'?”
    Scott grinned more broadly. “I don't think a special forces move would've had bullets bouncing around the room. I just grabbed your wrist with one hand and twisted the gun loose with the other.”
    “Fastest thing I've ever seen.”
    Scott walked over and dropped into the easy chair vacated by Canon. “I was a wrestler in college.”
    Canon still didn't move. “That wasn't no wrastlin' move I ever saw.”
    Scott could see the old man was scared. He tried to explain. “Everybody . . . almost everybody has some kind of gift.” He looked around the room and sighed. “Look, I'm not quick
because
I was a wrestler. I started wrestling because I could just naturally move a little faster than most people. The coach . . . the wrestling coach at my prep school . . . saw a bunch of us boxing on the green one Sunday afternoon. He talked me into trying out for the wrestling team, and I was a state champion the first year.” Scott stopped and screwed his eyes shut. “I'm kind of rambling here. Bottom line is, I never did anything like that before in my life. I'm just quick, that's all. Always have been. Nothing sinister, okay? The hell with it. You going to sit down or what?”
    Next to the easy chair, someone had placed a sofa that looked like something you'd find next to a dumpster in a trailer park. Scott tossed the empty pistol onto the sofa. Canon sat down and picked up the gun. “I don't like being in this sick place.” He dropped the pistol into the side pocket of his overcoat.
    Scott looked around the room. “How do you think I feel?”
    “That's the problem, ain't it? I don't know how you feel about it. Don't know if it turns your stomach. Don't know if you think this sick-ass room is the happiest place on earth.”
    “So.” Scott leaned back against stained polyester cushions. “Now what?”
     
    Darryl Simmons had been online now for seventeen hours. The apartment lights were off. Outside, the ice storm had stopped and the sounds of city traffic grew steadily as more cars ventured back out onto frozen streets.
    Here, alone in his small apartment, Simmons wore black-rimmed glasses as he peered into the glow of a huge flat-panel computer screen. He had been hacking credit card numbers. It was his bread and butter.
    A phone rang. Simmons muted the classical music blasting from his computer speakers and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”
    “Is this Click?”
    “Never can tell. Who wants to know?”
    A few seconds passed, then the