This Gun from Norman Court

By Pablo D'Stair

Skint, on the skids, reduced to life in skid-row shelters, Trevor English, petty thief and habitual blackmailer, is apprehended shoplifting by store-detective-cum-freelance-investigator Leonard Bellow. Turning a blind eye to his theft, Bellow offers Trevor a job doing shutterbug reconnaissance work—an opportunity Trevor jumps at (if already with his own ends in mind).

But in the world he has cornered himself in nothing remains what it seems on the surface...except, he comes to realize, for Trevor English: deadbeat, desperate, easy mark, lamb to the slaughter.

this gun from Norman Court is the final installment in Pablo D’Stair’s five-novella Trevor English cycle.

Praise for Pablo D’Stair:

“D’Stair is clearly a master. Likely Jean Patrick Manchette reincarnated...” —Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and The Bad Kind of Lucky

“Somehow again and again you’re drawn in...you get used to the book’s rhythm and follow it because the work is obsessive. We find ourselves in a languid kind of suspense, bracing ourselves...” —Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho

“Pablo D’Stair doesn’t just write like a house afire, he writes like the whole city’s burning, and these words he’s putting on the page are the thing that can save us all.” —Stephen Graham Jones, Bram Stoker Award-winner

“Pablo D’Stair is defining the new writer [and the new film maker]. D’Stair’s late realism needs to be included in any examination of the condition of the novel.” —Tony Burgess, award-winning author/screenwriter

“Like Kerouac before him, I felt there was one roll of paper on which the story was typed. And there’s a rhythm behind it. Not the speedy bop of jazz this time, more an urban dubstep. Shadows and edges becoming audible.” —Nigel Bird, author of Smoke

• Language: English
• Publisher: All Due Respect Books
• Release date: Oct 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005539719

Pablo D'Stair

Pablo D'Stair is a novelist, filmmaker, essayist, interviewer, comic book artist, and independent publisher. His work has appeared in various mediums for the past 15 years, often pseudonymously.

Book preview

THIS GUN FROM NORMAN COURT

A Trevor English Novella

Pablo D’Stair

PRAISE FOR PABLO D’STAIR

D’Stair is clearly a master. Likely Jean Patrick Manchette reincarnated… —Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and The Bad Kind of Lucky

Somehow again and again you’re drawn in…you get used to the book’s rhythm and follow it because the work is obsessive. We find ourselves in a languid kind of suspense, bracing ourselves… —Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho

Pablo D’Stair doesn’t just write like a house afire, he writes like the whole city’s burning, and these words he’s putting on the page are the thing that can save us all. —Stephen Graham Jones, Bram Stoker Award-winner

Pablo D’Stair is defining the new writer [and the new film maker]. D’Stair’s late realism needs to be included in any examination of the condition of the novel. —Tony Burgess, award-winning author/screenwriter

Like Kerouac before him, I felt there was one roll of paper on which the story was typed. And there’s a rhythm behind it. Not the speedy bop of jazz this time, more an urban dubstep. Shadows and edges becoming audible. —Nigel Bird, author of Smoke

Copyright © 2020 by Pablo D’Stair

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

All Due Respect

an imprint of Down & Out Books

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Down & Out Books

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by JT Lindroos

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

this gun from Norman Court

About the Author

Books by the Author

Preview from Blood by Choice by Rob Pierce

Preview from Deep Red Cover by Joel W. Barrows

Preview from Deemer’s Inlet by Stephen Burdick

So I remember ev’ry face

Of ev’ry man who put me here

—Bob Dylan, I Shall Be Released

It was the microwave hamburgers were a step too far—impulse to take them I even noted was the kind should’ve been ignored, kind the rule was to ignore—but took two in basket, wandering the drugstore to the magazines, leafed through same entertainment tabloid I’d flipped through all week. Went to a knee, I figured discreetly, stuck the burgers in my backpack with the various other spoils, then walked around with the basket full of the dummy items I’d leave off at the counter, saying I’d forgot my wallet could they hold the things I’d be back ten minutes lived up the way—move I only used when nabbing an armful, otherwise it’d get old fast despite different clerk on duty every day.

Knew just from how he took one step a bit fast then suddenly lingered at a display of shampoo that I’d been spotted by this guy—shabby beard, cropped hair, gut but over abs seemed probably worked out regular enough, all the appearance of off-duty cop—so tightened up and gut did a rollover twice.

It’d been ages since I’d had to unpack a swipe, not since I’d been a kid, practically, knew I was screwed so figured just try for the door, casual. Did out my bit with the front clerk about leaving off the basket, just finishing up when sure thing the guy I’d marked stepped in, gave the clerk a smile, said That’s alright.

All I could think was to give the guy a Hello, word came out my mouth all consonants, his hand went to my shoulder while he asked could he trouble me to come to the back with him, just a minute.

‘What’s the thing?’ I said, going to my pocket for cigarettes.

‘Come on, sir, let’s just go.’

Clerk watched, eyes big but more than halfway disinterested, guy moved hand from shoulder, took my backpack with it, told me, again, just to come on.

There were some clerks, maybe one of them in the fancier uniform a shift managers, sitting at the break room table, one stood at the punch clock, all of them looking I was marched past—recognized one of them, one who made eyes at the guy walking me.

As soon as I was sat in a stubby office, door closed, asked was it alright I smoked a cigarette.

‘Sorry, can’t back here.’ Guy sighed, not sitting his desk, holding my backpack I tried not to eye too intently, not to betray the actual pitch of my dizziness at seeing it, everything I had, at a limp sway by his pant knee. He asked me ‘Do you have anything you want to tell me?’

So, I sighed too, went out with ‘You know the thing, alright? Look, man, just cut me loose, take the stuff back, I’ll be off, not back this way for forever, okay?’

He jiggled the backpack, getting the heft of it, told me sit there, he’d be back in a few minutes with some papers I’d need to sign and out he went, backpack now cradled his elbow like some sleepy infant.

Only decision I made was not to run, simple because I had nowhere to run and it wouldn’t help anything, best I could keep my head together, hope it went slap on the wrist—total amount of merchandise couldn’t be even north of twenty dollars, but what did I know from drugstore loss prevention, how this would go?

No sense how long had it been since first look I’d gave to the wall clock, but it went another almost ten minutes’d passed by the time guy came back in the room, set backpack on the table, took a seat.

‘You can have a cigarette,’ he said, which made my heart sink past sick, but still fished one out of my pocket, lit it, he smiled asked me had I paid for the smokes.

No point saying anything, but said ‘No, man, didn’t pay for the smokes, well done. But you’ll have to do the legwork on your own to figure where I got them from, they aren’t paying me enough do your job on top of mine.’

Guy smiled, asked me my name, did I have identification.

‘I don’t have ID. Jesus, man, just let me walk out the door this place—I promise I’ve got it bad enough, that’ll be the end.’

‘Bad enough, how?’

He was really asking, so I made double quick not to pause like I was sizing him up, played myself most pathetic, hoping to keep any whiff of grifter off of me. ‘I’m staying at the shelter on Pearle Bridge, alright? There or some of the other ones—Swan Street and one on, I don’t know, like the Youth Center, at night it sometimes has the basketball court set up halfway for overnighters.’

‘Bowler Street,’ he said, whole time he’d been nodding.

I took his chiming in to barrel forward my apologetic best. ‘Bowler, right. Okay? I won’t come here, again, I promise you about that, believe me. I just wanted to have some stuff on me, I don’t know, not feel like everything was a handout. I even work, shelter on Pearle, just it’s they pay you by they let you have some better clothes, not even five bucks cash my pocket for carrying shingles up the roof all day, okay?’

I looked around for an ashtray, he noticed and moved the squat little wastebasket out from next to the desk. I ashed and meantime he said ‘What’s your name?’

‘My name’s Stuart Bells.’

‘I like that name,’ he said, ‘but figure I’d like to know your real name.’

‘Stuart Bells is my real name’ blew smoke down my nose ‘but I can give you an alias if you like.’

He was chuckling, handed the backpack over to me, I hugged it in my lap. ‘I ask around at the shelters, they’ll tell me ‘Yeah, Stuart Bells, good guy, sometimes carries shingles up the roof and we give him secondhand sports coat for his trouble’?’

I didn’t answer. We held eyes—can’t exactly say, knew I was getting off the hook, but was trying to same time mark was it because this guy, he’d known someone wound up down on their luck or else was it he’d been a drinker, sometime the past, liked handing out second chances now he was put together.

He told me he’d left as much in the bag as he could, but I needed to understand two things, these being, one, he couldn’t leave it all as I’d been marked taking the shaving foam and, two, that I couldn’t come back to this shop, better make it the shopping center. Then, head tap, directed me the door, turned around to his desk.

I made the walk out through the overhead announcement being made that some cookies some caramel bars were on sale if one had a store discount card, was out in the open air and around a corner before I remembered still had cigarette my hand, gave it sucks to keep it going.

Took a seat on the concrete base of a streetlight bloomed up over me, heat of day making for patches of gnats everywhere, I could see the gatherings of them moving in closer like short breaths.

Guy had left the burgers, left the plain crackers, left the short bottle of vodka, even. But more important, I dug down into the clothes—my clothes—and at first tensed, then let out a long breath I could feel the solid fist of the pistol there, wrapped in the undershirts and balled socks.

Batted at a waft of gnats just outside of arms reach, tried to flick my cold cigarette stub at them but it went way off one side, so I settled for lighting another, blowing hard out first drag at the things, no idea they registered it or they didn’t.

Because I’d burnt through my stolen vodka, didn’t even bother with bumming for bus fare or hangdogging for some driver to get me back to the shelter on Pearle Bridge, instead got to the line outside Swan just as the doors were opening and got in third from they had to start turning away the people showed up in back of me,