Tommy half tilted, half fell into his rolling chair. Though he never talked about where or how he’d served, he had enough hearing loss, blown-out joints, and surgical scars for Evan to know he’d been a tip-of-the-spear operator. He was banged up in all the right ways. Now he worked as a contract armorer for various government-sanctioned black groups, specializing in procurement and R&D. Or at least that’s what Evan had gleaned. Their conversations had always been light on proper nouns.
Tommy’s shop, a desert-baked building rearing up from the sand in off-the-Strip Vegas, looked like an auto shop from the outside. Few people knew its location, and fewer yet had earned the right to visit. Tommy kept a surveillance camera at the door, which he‘d unplugged when Evan called on him.
Tommy took a swig of black coffee across a lower lip packed with Skoal Wintergreen. “I got no interest in working out no more. Makes no sense at this point. Spend what? Two hours a day? They say exercising can add seven years onto the end of your life. But I figure those seven years are about what you get if you add up all the hours you’d spend sweating your sorry ass on a treadmill. So I figure, why not skip all that misery, live out the good days, and hit the dirt when it’s time?”
He rolled the chair away from the ammo and over to his smoking station, an ashtray made from a ship’s battered porthole. A Camel Wide lipped out from the edge. He pulled on the cigarette, then dropped it into a red keg cup filled with water.
A kick of his combat boots set him shooting back across the floor toward Evan. Even as he glided, he popped a new slide assembly onto the aluminum frame. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wanna slow down. You know me — Animal from the Muppets is my spirit animal.” He leaned over the pistol at his bench, adding the extras. “But man, I’ll tell ya, more and more I feel like I been shot at and missed and shit at and hit.” He paused to flex his remaining nine fingers, working out a cramp.
Evan thought of Assim with his hand tremors and unsteady gait, the physical toll of a lifetime of rough play. Was this what was in store for them all? A hard end to a hard life?
I wanted you to get out. I wanted you to have a chance.
It was nearly impossible for Evan to recalibrate to the fact that Jack was still alive, that when he heard Jack’s voice in his head, it was not from beyond the grave.
Tommy had said something.
Evan snapped to. “What?”
“You lose your holster, too?”
“Yeah. I need a Kydex high-guard.”
“I know what you use.” Tommy scooped the wad of long-cut tobacco from his lip, thumbed it into an empty Red Bull can, washed out his mouth with more java sludge. “How’d you misplace your gear? Got held up by a troop of Girl Scouts?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Ain’t they all.”
Tommy handed over the new 1911. Eight in the mag, one in the spout. High-profile straight-eight sights. Low ambidextrous thumb safety, since Evan preferred to shoot southpaw. Aggressive front-frame checkering. Extended barrel, threaded for a suppressor. Beavertail grip safety so it wouldn’t fire if not in hand. Matte black to disappear in shadow.
It wasn’t merely sterilized — it had never had a serial number.
A ghost weapon that, like Evan, did not exist.
Evan hefted the ARES. “It’s lighter.”
“Bet yer ass it’s lighter,” Tommy said. “Thing practically floats. But everything else is as lined out as the steel Wilsons I used to make you.” His biker mustache shifted above his grin. “It’s just homemade.”
Evan handed him another wad of hundreds and stood.
“Hold up, hoss.” Tommy slipped the cash into his shirt pocket. “When have I ever let you leave without test-driving a new gun?” He chinned at the sand-filled steel pipe slanted downward next to the cutting torch. “Eyes-and-ears are in the bin.”
Evan donned protective gear and then fired a full mag down the mouth of the pipe. The gun, tuned with throat-ramp work, fed smoothly.
When Evan turned around, Tommy had tugged out his earplugs, one cheek gathering to the side in a fan of wrinkles.
“You okay?” Evan asked.
“Tinnitus. From all the…” Tommy waved a hand by his head. “I live with it nonstop, pretty much. I think of it as a reminder of all the shit I’ve done. Jiminy Cricket in there, making sure I don’t forget a red second of it.” His smile was bittersweet. “Every year I feel like I’m hangin’ on to a little less. And for a little less. You know?”
Evan clicked the ARES into his Kydex holster. “I know,” he said.
67
What Was Missing
CraftFirst Poster Restoration would have been a sweatshop if everyone weren’t so well paid. Rows and rows of foreign workers toiling over screw presses and wet tables, spraying surfactants and dabbing at one-sheets with needle-thin paintbrushes. The operation, located at the back of an industrial park in Northridge, made money in a variety of ways. The woman at the helm specialized in bringing rare posters and documents back to their original form. She also happened to be the finest forger Evan had encountered.
He had spent the past week poring over the investigation documents and pounding the databases, looking for any buried thread that might lead to René Cassaroy. Chasing down leads in the IRS documents, he’d uncovered a host of addresses on various continents. Many forwarded on to additional addresses in Croatia, Togo, the Republic of Maldives, and other nations lacking extradition treaties with the U.S. Evan had plenty such addresses himself, some no more than an office front set up to throw trackers off course. To get beyond the long arm of the FBI, René had probably retreated to one of these countries, but which one was anyone’s guess. Evan could spend a lifetime trekking around the globe, knocking on doors, staking out P.O. boxes, and talking to shady middlemen — unless he produced a concrete lead.
Which was why he was here.
Way across the floor, Melinda Truong balanced atop a ladder, reaching for a box at the top of a rise of industrial shelving. A sea of male workers milled nervously at the base of the ladder, calling up to her with gentle admonitions and offers of help. As she grabbed the box, one hip swung wide in a balance-beam correction, her waist-long black hair flinging wide like a flicked horse tail.
A collective gasp went up. The building itself seemed to hold its breath. Melinda righted herself and hopped down the ladder, her neon Nikes striking every other rung. At the bottom she presented the open box of X-Acto blades to an assistant and then scolded her workers in Vietnamese for doubting her.
“Now, get to work. I don’t pay you to worry.”
Nodding respectfully, they hurried back to their workstations. They were all half terrified of her and half in love with her.
For good reason.
Dusting her hands, she noticed Evan threading his way through the tables toward her and grinned.
“And here I thought you’d forgotten all about me,” she said, reaching up to take his face in her hands.
“Impossible.”
On tiptoes, she kissed both of his cheeks, cheating to catch the edge of his lips. “What do you need, darling? Another driver’s license? Death certificate? Fresh passport for that getaway you’re gonna take me on to Turks and Caicos?”
“I need your brain,” he said.
She crossed her arms. An Olympos double-action airbrush dangled from her hip. She’d padded the futuristic grip with pink tape to ensure that no one borrowed it. As the only woman in the building, she color-coded all her tools.
“My brain? I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.”