Free The Shoulders of Giants by Jim Cliff

rumors.”
    “What rumors?”
    “Well, everyone knew he was a powerful man – you didn’t want to get on his bad side or you’d be shipped off to some godforsaken corner of the city on traffic duty. But it was more than that. People said he made problems go away. That some cops in Internal Affairs had tried to build a case against him but their witnesses suddenly clammed up and then the case was dropped. They said one of the I.A. guys retired soon after, bought a boat.”
    “You think he paid them off?”
    “I don’t know. It’d take some balls to offer I.A. cops a bribe. But if you knew Hennessy… Well, I could believe it.” He paused. “There was another rumor, too. That Hennessy had a mobster for a C.I.”
    “I’m sorry, what’s a C.I.?”
    “Confidential Informant.”
    “Isn’t registering C.I.’s allowed?”
    “Sure. It’s encouraged. We let some low level street thug stay on the streets and he uses his criminal contacts to get intel that helps us take down rapists, murderers and drug lords. It’s a great system. But it’s not a guarantee of immunity. Word is, Hennessy turned a blind eye to extortion, murders and worse. Word is, Hennessy’s C.I. was Michael Coughlin.”
     
     

Chapter 11
     
    I had some thinking to do. I needed to clear my head, and I knew the best way to do it. On the way to the practice range, I swung by my office to pick up my S&W and some ammo.
    I started with the Glock 17. It hurt a little to keep my left eye closed, even though the day before I hadn’t been able to open it. To begin with, I fired five rounds on the fifty foot range. The Glock’s polymer frame absorbs a lot of energy, and although it’s lighter than most other nine millimeters, it doesn’t recoil nearly as much. With my first five, I managed a one and a half inch grouping. It wasn’t bad, but I could do better, and my mind was still full. I pushed the button to my right to send a fresh target down the range.
    I tried to clear my mind. The ear defenders cut out a lot of the background noise, although I could still hear the pop, pop, pop of the shooters on the adjacent lanes. I focused on the target at the end of the range. I tried to picture Tommy Byrne, the mobster formerly known as Muscles, but I couldn’t keep the image in front of me for long. I stared at the center of the black silhouette, took a breath, and let it out as I brought the sights of my gun down into view. I fired five shots into his chest. I put the gun down, took off my goggles, and then pressed the button which made the target fly towards me. A three quarter inch group. And my mind was clear.
    I drew a circle around the group, and sent the target back down the range. I fired the remaining seven rounds in the Glock at the target’s head, and then took out my Sundance A25. It felt small in my hand, compared to the Glock, and again I wondered if a small revolver would have been a better choice for a back-up gun. I switched targets one more time, and went for the bullseye with all seven shots, waiting to breathe until after the gun was empty. I knew my groupings with the Sundance would be nothing compared to the Glock. The gun wasn’t made for distance work. If you expect to stop anyone with a .25 caliber pistol, you’ll have to be close to them, or extremely accurate.
    Finally, I took out my Smith and Wesson Model 500. It weighed more than four times as much as the Sundance and it only carried five rounds, but it was big. Big enough that the first thing anyone said when they saw it was ‘Wow. That’s a big gun’. I figured if there was ever a situation where I was in my office, in trouble, and didn’t have access to my usual two guns, I might as well have something impressive to threaten someone with. If I could lift it. Although it lacks the theatricality of jacking the slide back on an auto, there is something altogether imposing about a large caliber revolver.
    No matter how many times I fired the 500, it still surprised me on