Rabin
Sergeant Rabin walked up to the dispatcher's desk. The woman was grinning and shaking her head while she talked. "Yeah, some of those meters. It's a crime. Hasta luego." She took off her headset and tossed it on the desk. "Those tow-truck guys make more than the mayor."
"You know it. Got a gun for me?"
"Down here." She opened a drawer and lifted out a white box labeled evidence. "What's the story?"
He opened the box and took out the pistol. "Murder weapon, probably. Tossed in Lake Alice." Bright chrome revolver, maybe fifty years old. "Some kids in a biology class saw it in the shallows and fished it out."
He pointed at the short barrel, a duller metal, slightly rusted. "This is cute. Forensics says it's a homemade barrel, smooth bore, a little bigger than the .44 Magnum bullet."
"So you couldn't trace it?"
"Maybe, but it doesn't make sense. We find a .44 bullet in somebody that doesn't show any trace of rifling, we know it came from this gun."
"Have a body?"
"Not yet. But this thing wasn't in the water more than a day or two. So we're looking."
" Buena suerte."
"Yeah. Meanwhile, I get to take this around to the local dealers and pawnshops, see if anyone says, "Oh, sure, I sold that to John Smith last week.' "
"Sounds like a fun job."
"I think 'shit job' is the technical term. But maybe I can do some Christmas shopping in the pawnshop. Buy the kids a couple of matching pistols."
"Start 'em out right." Rabin had four-year-old twin daughters. The phone rang and he waved good-bye.
There were two pawnshops just a few blocks down Sixth, so he decided to leave the squad car and walk. Get lunch down there, too.
It wasn't the best part of town, but they didn't put pawnshops in the high-rent district. Or police stations. It amused him to walk along in uniform and watch people's expressions. Trying to look innocent was a real strain on some of them.
There were two large shops next door to one another. He went to the farther one first; the owner was a likable enough guy.
He stepped into the cold air. They probably kept the airco cranked up to minimize the attic smell, mildew and dust. Gun oil and furniture polish. Rabin was fascinated by the places, but not the weapons counter. All the biographies scattered around. Life stories, death stories. Complete tool sets, well-used musical instruments, fancy camera and cube sets. You got so little on the dollar for them, their owners had to be dead or desperate. Or thieves.
The bell when the door closed brought the owner out of a back room. "Qabil. What can I sell you? Can I buy your gun?"
"Yeah, and my thumb, too." His weapon was keyed to his thumb-print. "Check this out?" He put the box on the glass case full of handguns.
"Evidence, eh? What happened?"
"Some guy's going around killing pawnshop owners. What you think?"
He picked it out of the box gingerly and rubbed his thumb along the base of the butt, where the serial number had been ground off. "Cute barrel. Not exactly a sniper weapon."
He clicked the cylinder around, peering through. "Ruger stopped making these in the teens. I see 'em now and then."
"Bet you do. That was before they started isotope IDs."
"Tell me about it. I don't think this one came through the shop, I mean with the original barrel and number. Don't see many chrome-plated ones, in any caliber."
"You think the chrome plating was factory?"
He took out a pair of magnifying glasses and slipped them on, and peered along the weapon's edges and surfaces. "Yeah. Guarantee it." He took off the glasses and set the gun back in the box.
"What else?"
"You fished it out of the water, but it hadn't been in there long. Allow for that, and the gun's practically new. Probably stolen from some collector. Must have been. That's where I'd start."
"What's it worth?"
"Actually, nothing. Without the barrel, I wouldn't touch it. Obvious hit weapon. If it had the original barrel, four or five grand. Before its little bath."
"On the street?"
"Maybe a grand, maybe five hundred. You oughta ask the guy next door about that."
"Think I will." Rabin closed the box and tucked it under his arm. "Thanks, Oz. You've been a help."
"Sorry I couldn't ID it. Buena suerte."
" Buenas." When he opened the door the sun was so bright it made his eyes water. He crunched through the gravel parking lot and walked up the unpainted wooden stairs to the next place.
The door opened with a surprise like a slap. Norman Bell!
Norman
His heart stopped and restarted. "Qabil. I ... I don't know what to ... buenos dias."
"Uh ... buenos. How've you been?"
"Fine ... just fine." Could he be in on it? No, he'd never. "I saw your girls a couple of weeks ago. They're growing fast."
"They do that." There was an awkward silence and he held out a box. "Got to see a man about a gun."
"Oh. Sure." He held the door open. Rabin stepped through and then stopped.
"What are you doing here? Slumming?"
"I come by every now and then, looking for old guitars and such. Nothing today."
He nodded. "I see your wife on the cube all the time. She looks good."
"Oh yeah. She's fine." The one time they'd met had been strained. In the kitchen, she with wide eyes and he with mouth full.
"Take care," he whispered with tenderness, and turned toward the gun rack and counter.
Norman finally shook off his paralysis and walked down the stairs. If Qabil had come in a couple of minutes earlier, he would have interrupted an illegal transaction.
The pawnbroker wouldn't say anything. He was guiltier than Norman. Selling a pistol without waiting period or ID check.
It had to be a coincidence. Rabin wouldn't be in on a thing that would cost him his job and family and put him in prison for ten or twenty years. As if a cop would last even one year in prison.
Norman stood at his bicycle and considered waiting for Qabil to come back out. Tell him about the threat and enlist his aid. He couldn't do anything legally without throwing his life away. But maybe he would do something illegal.
Maybe later. First he'd talk to the lawyer and his gun-toting pal. Maybe they'd have a shoot-out there in front of the lunch crowd, and simplify things for everyone.
He clipped the bag onto his handlebars. It was awkwardly heavy, with the snub-nosed revolver and box of bullets. Had to find someplace private to load it.
He went a couple of blocks uptown and locked his bike outside a pool-hall bar where he'd never been. Just as soon not be recognized. He undipped the bag and walked into a darkness redolent of marijuana and spilled beer.
There were no other customers yet. He walked past the rows of shabby billiard tables to the small bar at the end.
There were three crude VR games along one wall, at least twenty years old, and a century-old pinball machine, dusty and dark, glass cracked. A sign on the wall said no fucking profanity/no use palabras VERDES, CARAJO! under a shiny holo cube of the president, all brilliant smile, a helmet of perfect hair guarding both of her brain cells.
The bartender was out of sight, rattling bottles around in a back room. He called out "¡ Momentito!" and it actually was just a moment.