The basement locker contained two Colt .45 Gold Cups, both further customized by a Texas gunsmith for combat target competition, and three .22’s, including a Ruger Mark II with a five-and-a-half-inch bull barrel, a Browning International Medalist, and the only nonautomatic, a bolt-action Anschutz Exemplar.
In the bottom of the locker, carefully oiled, wrapped, and packaged, were four pistols he’d picked up on the job. Street guns, untraceable to anyone in particular. The last weapon, also kept in the locker, was a Browning Citori over-and-under twenty-gauge shotgun, the upland version. He used it for hunting.
Of the rest of the house, the two smaller bedrooms actually had beds in them.
The master bedroom became his workroom, with a drawing table, drafting instruments, and the IBM. There were two walls of books on weapons and armies—on Alexander and Napoleon and Lee and Hitler and Mao, details of Bronze Age spears and Russian tanks and science-fiction fantasies that discussed seeker-killer shells, rail guns, plasma rifles, and nova bombs. Ideas that he would weave into the net of a game. The slicers flitted through Lucas’ mind like splinters as he worked over the drawing table, hammering out the numbers.
When the phone rang, he jumped. It seldom rang; few people had the number. Thirty-odd more this evening, he thought, laying his pencil on the table. He glanced at the clock: twelve-twenty-two. He stepped across the room, turned down the CD player, started the tape recorder he’d attached to the receiver, and picked up the extension.
“Yes?”
“Davenport?” A man’s voice. Middle-aged, or a little past it.
“Yeah.”
“You taping this?” Vaguely familiar. He knew this man.
“No.”
“How do I know that?”
“You don’t. What can I tell you?”
There was a pause; then the voice said, “I took the Smith, but I want to talk to you about it face-to-face.”
“Let’s do it now,” said Lucas. “This is a very heavy situation.”
“The deal is like you said this afternoon?”
“That’s right,” Lucas said. “It won’t go any further. No comebacks.”
There was a pause; then, “You know that taco joint across I-94 from Martin Luther College?”
“Yeah?”
“Twenty minutes. And, goddammit, you come alone, you hear?”
Lucas made it in eighteen. The restaurant parking lot was empty. Inside, a lone diner stared out a window as he nursed a cup of coffee over the cardboard remains of his meal. An employee was mopping the floor and turned to watch Lucas come in. The countergirl, probably a student from the university, smiled warily.
“Give me a Diet Coke,” Lucas said.
“Anything else?” Still wary. Lucas realized that in his leather bomber jacket, jeans, and boots, with a day-old beard, he might look threatening.
“Yeah. Relax. I’m a cop.” He grinned, took the badge case out of his shirt pocket, and showed it to her, and she smiled back.
“We’ve had some problems here,” she said.
“Holdup?”
“Last month and the month before. Four months ago it was twice. There are some bikers around.”
When the cop came in, Lucas recognized him instantly. Gray-haired, wearing a lightweight beige jacket and brown slacks. Roe, he thought. Harold Roe. Longtime cop. Must be near retirement.
Roe looked around, stopped at the counter, got a coffee, and walked over.
“You it?” Lucas asked.
“You wearing a wire?”
“No.”
“If you are, you’re entrapping me.”
“I admit it. If I am, I’m entrapping you. But I’m not.”
“Read me my rights.”
“Nope.”
“Hmph. You know, this is all horseshit,” Roe said, taking a sip of his coffee. “If they put you on the witness stand, you might tell a whole ’nother story.”
“Won’t be any witness stand, Harry. I could walk out of here right now, go to Daniel, say ‘Harry Roe is the man,’ and the IAD would put together a case in three days. You know how it goes, once they got a starting point.”
“Yeah.” Roe looked around wearily and shook his head. “Jesus, I hate this.”
“So tell me.”
“Not much to tell. I figured that piece was cold. Never show up in a million years. There was this guy down the block, Larry Rice was his name, I grew up with him. He was a maintenance man for the city. I used to see him around City Hall all the time. You probably seen him yourself. Heavyset guy with a limp, always wore one of those striped train-engineer hats.”
“Yeah, I remember him.”
“Anyway, he was dying of some kind of cancer, little bit by little bit. It was working its way up his body. First he couldn’t walk, then he couldn’t control his bowels, like that. His wife was working and he was at home. One day these neighborhood punks came in and took the TV and stereo right out from in front of him. He had this wheelchair, but he couldn’t fight them. He couldn’t identify them, either, because they were wearing paper sacks on their heads . . . . Assholes is who they were.”
“So you got him the gun?”
“Well, his wife came over after this happened, and asked my wife if I had an extra gun. I didn’t. I’m no gun freak—sorry, I know you’re into guns, but I’m not.”
“That’s okay.”
“So I went up there to the property room and I knew about the gun because I worked on the case. I figured there was no way in hell it would ever be needed for anything.”
“And you took it.”
Roe took a sip of his coffee. “Yep.”
“So this Rice guy . . .”
“He’s dead. Two months ago.”
“Shit. How about his wife?”
“She’s still out there. After the meeting this afternoon, I went over and asked her about the gun. She said she didn’t know where it was. She looked, but it was gone. She said the last couple of weeks before he died, Larry sold a whole bunch of personal stuff to get money for her. He was afraid he wouldn’t leave anything. She said when he died, he left about a thousand bucks behind.”
“She doesn’t know who got the gun?”
“No. I asked her how he sold the stuff and she said he just sold it to people he knew, friends and so on. He had a little sign in the window, she said, but he didn’t advertise it or nothing. People might see the sign walking by on the sidewalk, but that was all.” Roe passed a slip of paper across the table. “I told her you’d want to see her. Here’s her address.”
“Thanks.” Lucas drained the last of his Coke.
“Now what?” asked Roe.
“Now nothing. If you’ve been telling the truth.”
“It’s the truth,” Roe said levelly. “I feel like a piece of shit.”
“Yeah, it’s a bummer. It won’t go any further than this table, though I suppose if we ever need Mrs. Rice to testify, somebody could figure it out. But it won’t come to anything.”
“Thanks, man. I owe you.”
Roe left first, relieved to get away. Lucas watched his car pull out of the parking lot, then got up and strolled past the counter.
“You mind if I make a comment?” he asked the countergirl.
“No, go ahead.” She smiled politely.
“You’re too pretty to be working in this place. I’m not hustling you, I’m just telling you. You’re an attraction. If you stay here, sooner or later you’re going to catch some bad news.”
“I need the money,” she said, her face tense and serious.
“You don’t need it that bad,” he said.
“I have two more years at the university, one year for my bachelor’s and nine more months for my master’s.”
Lucas shook his head. “If I knew your parents, I’d call them. But I don’t. So I’m just telling you. Get out of here. Or get on the day shift.”
He turned and started away.
“Thanks,” she called after him. But he knew she wouldn’t do anything about it. He stepped outside, considered the problem for a minute, and went back in.
“How many tacos could you rip off without anyone knowing about it? I mean, every night. A couple of dozen?”