“I’ll give you three thousand, cash,” Lake said.
The museum curator vanished and Jonas the wheeler dealer was back. “You got it. Tomorrow soon enough?”
“Yeah.” Lake tapped the fat man on the arm. “And make sure I have a good Mark 3 with two new inserts.”
Jonas smiled. “You do know your guns.” He signaled and the bartender came over with two more beers. “I heard you were with that Starry fellow.”
Lake took a deep slug. “Yeah. Him and Preston.”
“Nobody’s seen them for a few days. I heard someone was looking for them,” Jonas said.
“Who’s looking?” In the dim light of the bar, Lake was studying the poster behind Jonas’s head. It showed Hitler, his arm raised in the Nazi salute. Below it was written in large letters: everyone in favor of gun control raise YOUR RIGHT HAND.
Jonas didn’t answer his question. “You know where they’re at?”
“I know where they were at,” Lake said. “We split in Novato a few days ago. They said they had a job to do. I got them the guns they needed and I guess they didn’t want me in on the action. They paid so I don’t care where they went.” “Can you get in contact with them?”
“I don’t have any plans to get in contact with them, so, no, I couldn’t get in contact with them,” Lake said. “But if they get in contact with me, I’ll let them know you’re concerned.”
“Heard the aTF. grabbed some of their buddies up in Portland,” Jonas said, changing the drift of the conversation.
Lake shrugged. “Hell, the goons raided Starry twice. The first one was why they came to me; they lost all their automatic rifles. On the second raid they grabbed some of Starry’s people on charges drummed up from what they seized on the first raid.”
The second aTF. raid had been set up by Feliks to give Lake a way into Starry’s group after supplying them with weapons. The first raid had been a setup months ago to get Lake into position to sell the weapons. It was all complicated and took a long time to work and the aTF. didn’t have a clue that they were being used by the Ranch. They thought the raids had been legitimate, which meant the Patriots also thought that. Which meant Lake was legitimate as far as the criminal element was concerned. In a strange way, Lake normally stayed on the wrong side of the law, only going on the right side when the stakes were raised high. That’s what made him so good.
Lake knew Jonas was fishing. Starry, Preston, and the third man simply disappearing off the face of the earth had to have jerked someone’s chain. Now he was hearing the rattle. Of course, Jonas hadn’t mentioned the third man.
“You haven’t heard from Starry?”
That was too blunt. Lake put down the beer. “Maybe Starry don’t want to be heard from. I just told you I don’t know how to get a hold of them. Last I saw of them, it looked to me like they were on a mission and they might not like me saying anything about their movements. I’ve learned to mind my own business.”
“Hey, chill, man. I know that. But information’s my business. I wouldn’t betray the cause. Just some people asking.”
“What people?” Lake asked.
“People,” Jonas repeated vaguely.
“Those people need any guns?” Lake asked. “That I can help you with. Starry, I can’t. And I don’t answer questions for people when I don’t know who they are. These people talking to you might be feds.”
“No, these people aren’t feds and they don’t need guns,” Jonas said. “At least not right now. They’re cool, man. Just some of Starry’s and Preston’s buds in the movement.” He finished his draft with one long gulp, then patted down his long flowing gray beard. “Hey, but there are some people asking around for some firepower.”
“People?” Lake repeated. “Not with the cause?”
Jonas laughed. “No, these people aren’t with the cause.”
“What kind of people?” Lake asked.
“Foreigners. Slopes. Asking around.”
“What kind of slopes?” Lake thought of the Japanese information planted in the van. Maybe it wasn’t a plant. Maybe Starry had gotten the glass jar from someone foreign that morning. Maybe even from the man in the boat.
“I don’t know. They all look alike to me. Japs, I guess. Maybe Chinese. Who the fuck can tell?”
I can, thought Lake. As can anyone who gave a shit. “What are they asking about?”
“Looking for automatic weapons with some special adaptations. Silencers.”
“Here?” Lake asked, surprised. This bar was the last place he’d expect a Japanese person to be searching for weapons. Besides hating the government, the Patriots hated foreigners, particularly Japanese. And Jews. And Blacks. And Hispanics. And just about everyone who wasn’t them.
“No, not here. On the street. But word gets back. The city’s not that big.”
“They can get all the firepower they need over in Jap town,” Lake said. “The local U.S. branch of the Yakuza has the market there.”
“Maybe they ain’t Japs, then,” Jonas said. “Or maybe the Yakuza don’t like them. That old man who runs the Yakuza is real particular about people horning in on his turf. He’s a badass dude and I wouldn’t want to cross him.”
“The Yakuza would still know,” Lake mused out loud. “But maybe they aren’t Japs. Might be Chinese, but if they’re chink then they can go to the Triads,” Lake added, feeling uncomfortable using the racial term.
“Hey,” Jonas said, misinterpreting his discomfort. “I don’t know who the hell they are. I just heard a whisper here, a whisper there. What the fuck you getting so riled about?”
“I don’t like slopes,” Lake said, idly rubbing his neck.
“Hey, I don’t like ‘em either,” Jonas said. “I lost a lot of good buddies back in the “Nam.”
“Can you set up a meet?” Lake asked.
“What?” Jonas said. “With who?”
“The slopes,” Lake said, clenching his jaw. “I’ve got guns.”
“I thought you said you didn’t like slopes?”
“I don’t. But I do like money.”
Getting a person into the United States required the proper documentation and the Black Ocean Society had handled that for Nishin with no problem. But getting weapons in was a different story, and instead of the hardware, Nakanga had given Nishin a place and a name to be memorized to take care of that logistical problem.
As he got closer to the designated place, Nishin felt more and more as if he were back in Japan. Very strange, considering he was less than two miles from the corner of Haight-Asbury, a place that had symbolized all the decadence of America during Nishin’s teenage years.
Japantown is an approximately twenty-block section of San Francisco that has a concentration of Japanese Americans living there along with all the trappings for tourists to get a taste of the Asian homeland. The area is bordered on the south by the Japan Center, a five-acre shopping center designed as a small Ginza. The two-level area encloses various shops, restaurants, galleries, and Japanese gardens. This time on a Friday night it was packed with people and well-lit. Not exactly what Nishin had expected or desired in a covert meeting place.
He checked the directory for the center and found his destination. The Yotoku Miyagi bookstore contained the city’s largest collection of books in Japanese. Therefore it was not strange at all when Nishin walked up to the register and made his request in his native tongue, naming a specific book he was looking for.