“A Bonneville. Imagine that,” Grandma Mazur said.
My father kept his head bent over his chicken. He rooted for the Mets, he wore Fruit of the Loom underwear, and he drove a Buick. His loyalties were carved in stone, and he wasn't about to be impressed by some upstart of a toaster salesman who drove a Bonneville.
Bernie turned to me. “So what are you doing now?”
I fiddled with my fork. My day hadn't exactly been a success, and announcing to the world that I was a fugitive apprehension agent seemed presumptuous. “I sort of work for an insurance company,” I told him.
“You mean like a claims adjuster?”
“More like collections.”
“She's a bounty hunter!” Grandma Mazur announced. “She tracks down dirty rotten fugitives just like on television. She's got a gun and everything.” She reached behind her to the sideboard, where I'd left my shoulder bag. “She's got a whole pocketbook full of paraphernalia,” Grandma Mazur said, setting my bag on her lap. She pulled out the cuffs, the beeper, and a travel pack of tampons and set them on the table. “And here's her gun,” she said proudly. “Isn't it a beauty?”
I have to admit it was a pretty cool gun. It had a stainless steel frame and carved wood grips. It was a Smith and Wesson 5-shot revolver, model 60. A .38 Special. Easy to use, easy to carry, Ranger had said. And it had been much more reasonable than a semiautomatic, if you can call $400 reasonable.
“My God,” my mother shouted, “put it away! Someone take the gun from her before she kills herself!”
The cylinder was open and clearly empty of rounds. I didn't know much about guns, but I knew this one couldn't go bang without bullets. “It's empty,” I said. “There are no bullets in it.”
Grandma Mazur had both hands wrapped around the gun with her finger on the trigger. She scrinched an eye closed and sighted on the china closet. “Ka-pow,” she said. “Ka-pow, kapow, ka-pow.”
My father was busy with the sausage dressing, studiously ignoring all of us.
“I don't like guns at the table,” my mother said. “And the dinner's getting cold. I'll have to reheat the gravy.”
“This gun won't do you no good if you don't have bullets in it,” Grandma Mazur said to me. “How're you gonna catch those killers without bullets in your gun?”
Bernie had been sitting open-mouthed through all of this. “Killers?”
“She's after Joe Morelli,” Grandma Mazur told him. “He's a bona fide killer and a bail dodger. He plugged Ziggy Kulesza right in the head.”
“I knew Ziggy Kulesza,” Bernie said. “I sold him a bigscreen TV about a year ago. We don't sell many big screens. Too expensive.”
“He buy anything else from you?” I asked. “Anything recent?”
“Nope. But I'd see him sometimes across the street at Sal's Butcher Shop. Ziggy seemed okay. Just a regular sort of person, you know?”
No one had been paying attention to Grandma Mazur. She was still playing with the gun, aiming and sighting, getting used to the heft of it. I realized there was a box of ammo beside the tampons. A scary thought skittered into my mind. “Grandma, you didn't load the gun, did you?”
“Well of course I loaded the gun,” she said. “And I left the one hole empty like I saw on television. That way you can't shoot nothing by mistake.” She cocked the gun to demonstrate the safety of her action. There was a loud bang, a flash erupted from the gun barrel, and the chicken carcass jumped on its plate.
“Holy mother of God!” my mother shrieked, leaping to her feet, knocking her chair over.
“Dang,” Grandma said, “guess I left the wrong hole empty.” She leaned forward to examine her handiwork. “Not bad for my first time with a gun. I shot that sucker right in the gumpy”
My father had a white-knuckle grip on his fork, and his face was cranberry red.
I scurried around the table and carefully took the gun from Grandma Mazur. I shook out the bullets and shoveled all my stuff back into my shoulder bag.
“Look at that broken plate,” my mother said. “It was part of the set. How will I ever replace it?” She moved the plate, and we all stared in silence at the neat round hole in the tablecloth and the bullet embedded in the mahogany table.
Grandma Mazur was the first to speak. “That shooting gave me an appetite,” she said. “Somebody pass me the potatoes.”
* * * * *
ALL IN ALL, Bernie Kuntz had handled the evening pretty well. He hadn't wet his pants when Grandma Mazur shot off the chicken privates. He'd suffered through two helpings of my mother's dreaded brussels sprouts casserole. And he'd been tolerably nice to me, even though it was obvious we weren't destined to hit the sheets together and my family was nuts. His motives for geniality were clear. I was a woman lacking appliances. Romance is good for frittering away a few evening hours, but commissions will get you a vacation in Hawaii. Ours was a match made in heaven. He wanted to sell, and I wanted to buy, and I wasn't unhappy to accept his offer of a 10 percent discount. And, as a bonus for sitting through the evening, I'd learned something about Ziggy Kulesza. He bought his meat from Sal Bocha, a man better known for making book than slicing fillet.
I tucked this information away for future reference. It didn't seem significant now, but who knows what would turn out to be helpful.