The Second Chair (33 page)

The right half of the huge, hangarlike structure boasted well over three hundred booths, with ordnance of nearly every conceivable type, as well as all the ancillary clothing, equipment, ammunition and literature. From the smallest imaginable single-shot pistols to shotguns to assault and sniper rifles, to every type of hand-held six-shooter and semiautomatic gun, the sense Glitsky had of the place was that if it fired bullets, you could buy it here. And, of course, the weapons displays weren’t limited to firearms—dealers were showcasing a spectacularly wide assortment of personal-use and paramilitary gear, including crossbows, slingshots, hunting and/or combat knives, leather accessories.

The NRA had a booth at each end of every aisle. Business seemed to be brisk. Glitsky couldn’t help but make the observation that in spite of an apparently continuous assault from the antigun lobby, the Second Amendment seemed to be holding its own, even in the liberal mecca that was San Francisco.

He was glad to see it.

As a cop, although concerned with the idea of loaded guns getting into the hands of children and/or burglars, he was comfortable enough with the idea of home protection and private weapon ownership; somewhat less thrilled with the assault rifle booths, the really vicious-looking knives, the weapons whose only function was essentially military, their only potential targets human beings.

But no suppressors.

Silencers were illegal in California, but then again, so was marijuana. Glitsky didn’t believe that the former were nearly as commonly available as the latter, but the street snitch he’d called on his cellphone, a two-time loser named Walter Phleger, had set him straight. At the Cow Palace, you had to ask for Mort. You had to have a hundred-dollar bill, then about another grand in cash.

In the first hour, he wandered, stopped, handled many weapons up and down the aisles. He stopped and chatted with salespeople at five booths, smaller manufacturers. Getting comfortable. He hadn’t done any street work in a very long time.

After the shoot-out last year, Moses McGuire had disposed of all the guns they had used in the firefight, including both of Glitsky’s Colt .357 revolvers. In the interim, he hadn’t really missed them—he wore his Glock .40 automatic with his uniform every day—but now he had a hunch and on impulse he stopped in front of the Colt booth. There were two other customers, but the man behind the counter stepped to Glitsky as soon as he approached.

“How are you doin’, sir?” Jerry, by his name tag, was in his mid-thirties. He was buffed under his shirt and tie, and wore a clipped red mustache and jarhead haircut. “Are you interested in buying a gun today?”

Glitsky slowly looked to one side, all the way around to the other. Guns for sale everywhere he looked. He came back to Jerry and nodded. “It appears so, doesn’t it?”

“Are you familiar with Colts?”

“Moderately. I used to own a couple. Somebody took them.” Technically, this was not a lie. “I thought I’d see if one of these spoke to me.” He pointed down under the counter. “This Python looks like the brother to the ones I lost. Three fifty seven.”

“Yes, sir.” The man was lifting it out, placing it on the counter.

“May I?” Glitsky asked, reaching for it.

He hefted it in one hand, passed it to the other, flipped open the cylinder, removed it entirely, then held the gun up to his eye and squinted down the barrel.

“What line of work are you in?”

Glitsky checked the sight, replaced the cylinder, handed the weapon back to Jerry. “Security.” His smile did not reach his eyes, and lowering his voice, he cut to the chase. “I’ve always loved that gun, but I’m looking for something that can accommodate a suppressor, and I’m afraid that leaves revolvers out of it.”

“Yes, it does.” Jerry turned, rummaged in a drawer at the desk behind him, and a few seconds later placed a professionally designed, full-color brochure on the counter. “If you’re going to go with a suppressor, Colt recommends its M1911 handgun, which takes your forty-five-caliber ACP cartridge. The M1911, of course, is semiautomatic and takes the S0S-45 suppressor once its been threaded for—”

Glitsky interrupted. “The guns that got taken from me, they were these three fifty seven revolvers, and I had suppressors to go with them. They also got taken.”

“Well, yes, sir. But—”

“It sounded like you were telling me if I didn’t shoot a semi, you couldn’t help me.”

“No. Not at all. Although we can’t authorize any sales of suppressors out of the show today. We can’t even carry them, as I’m sure you realize. But if you’re interested . . .”

“Maybe you haven’t been listening to me, Jerry. I’m interested in this gun, right here, right now, and I happen to have the thousand dollars to buy it. I don’t like to use a semiautomatic. They jam, you notice that? Now, are you telling me you can’t help me locate a silencer in this brochure of yours here for this exact weapon that I’m interested in putting down some money for? ’Cause if that’s the case, I think maybe I can find another dealer nearby who might be willing to.”

He put the revolver down on the top of the glass counter. “On the other hand, you put me in line with a top-quality suppressor for
this gun,
I give you my credit card, come back later on after the ridiculous ten-day cooling off period has expired, and you’ve got at least one sale, maybe a few more after I talk to some of my friends. Are you hearing me?” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Someone told me if I had any trouble I should ask for Mort.”

It was, indeed, the magic word. Jerry glanced at his other customers—nobody paying any real attention. “Give me a couple of minutes,” he said.

It was more like twenty, during which Glitsky wandered some more, checking back at the Colt booth at five-minute intervals. The fourth time, Jerry was talking to a heavy, short, bald man and motioned Glitsky over. “This is, uh . . .”

“Abe.” Glitsky extended the hand that held the C-note.

“Mort.” The man’s grip was weak and sweaty, but he palmed the bill like a master, glanced down at it quickly, apparently was satisfied. “Let’s go,” he said.

They walked out back toward the main entrance, Mort a couple of steps ahead of Glitsky, never looking back. Glitsky got stamped for readmission. Outside, they turned right and walked in the bright sun through the parking lot. Hard up against the chain-link fence, a white van with a dash full of dolls in the window squatted in the meager shade of a lone eucalyptus. Mort knocked once, then twice, on the back door, then turned and, without a word or a nod at Glitsky, headed back across the lot.

When the door finally opened in a fog of cigarette smoke, Glitsky stepped forward. If he’d thought that Mort was overweight, the man who sat on the swivel seat in the rear of the van put things into perspective. He must have gone close to three hundred, although the untucked Hawaiian shirt may have added twenty pounds or so. He was still smoking, and every breath wheezed out of him like a bellows. He squinted through the smoke and out into the sun and said, “It’s nine hundred dollars. Cash.”

Glitsky fanned away some of the smoke. There was no ventilation in the van itself. “That’s what I heard. I’m looking at a Colt three five seven revolver.” He took out his wallet and started counting out the bills, laying them out on the filthy shag rug.

The huge man wheezed again, put out his cigarette, then swiveled and grabbed one of the thick black leather briefcases that lined a shelf behind the front seats. Pulling it onto his lap, he opened it, studied a moment, then took out one of the long, heavy metallic objects. “This isn’t just a flash suppressor,” he said, handing it over. “This will eliminate noise in excess of seventy-five dB. I can thread it and mount it here whenever you pick up your weapon, a hundred dollars, or you can take it with you and mount it up yourself. I recommend you let me do it here. I’ve got all the equipment as you can see. You fuck it up, it might kill you.”

The left side of the back of the van was a low metal work counter, with a vise and array of tools neatly mounted against the side wall. He grabbed a metal box off the counter, wiped his brow and, wheezing with the effort, reached down to pick up Glitsky’s bills. After counting them again, he placed them in the metal box. When the box was back on the counter, he pulled a small spiral notebook from his pants pocket. “You got a number? Cell’s best. I change the setup, I like to keep my customers in the loop.”

Glitsky’s hands had gone damp with nerves. So far, everything that his snitch had told him about this operation had turned out as advertised, but if this fat man had a partner sitting in any one of the hundreds of nearby cars, covering him, this is where it would get ugly. He put the suppressor down on the rug and reached behind as though for his wallet or a belt-worn cellphone. Instead, he pulled his Glock from where he’d tucked in at the small of his back.

At first, the fat man’s face registered a mild surprise, as though Glitsky had brought along the weapon for which he wanted the silencer. Then, realizing how and where the gun was pointed, he lowered his hands into his lap, then raised them slightly. “You can take your money back,” he said. “And whatever else is in there. I’m absolutely cool with this. You can take the truck, too. I don’t care.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them and crawl on out here.”

He backed up as the man slowly got himself off the mounted swivel chair and pathetically, on all fours, made his way across the gross shag. His dark hair hung in greasy shanks down around his face.

“All the way out,” Glitsky said. “Then over to the fence, hands on it over your head. Okay, now slowly lift your shirt—I want to see your belt—and turn around. All the way. Pants. Up at the ankles.”

“I’m not armed.”

“That’s what they all say. I’m happier making sure.”

Glitsky had him step back from the fence and, still facing it, lean against his hands, his legs spread wide. After patting him down, Glitsky told him he could straighten up and turn around. “What do you want?” the man asked.

The gun never left the man’s midsection. “Let me see some ID please.”

The man’s driver’s license identified him as James Martin Ewing, of Redwood Shores, about fifteen miles south of where they were. Glitsky stuck the wallet into his back pocket. “What do you want?” he said again.

“I’ve been trying to make up my mind about that,” Glitsky said. “I decided it’s pretty much your lucky day. I’m San Francisco police.”

This brought an outraged rise. “Bullshit! All by yourself?”

Glitsky was calm. “All I want from you right now is that little book of your clients’ phone numbers. That and my money back, of course. You think we can handle that peaceably?”

Ewing’s eyes were slits as he tried to figure out the angle. “What else?”

“How many silencers have you sold here in the past few months, would you guess?”

“I don’t know.”

“James.” Glitsky steadied the gun on the man’s kneecap, his voice calm and thrumming with menace. “Don’t push this. You make most of these suppressors yourself, I take it?”

“Yeah. I got a metal shop at home.”

“There. See? You’re cooperating already. So I ask you again while you’re still in the mood. How many of these have you sold in, say, the last month?”

“Say ten.”

“Ten a month. Is that about your average?”

“Close. Look, man, if you really are a cop, you’re screwing up big time.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Glitsky said. “Now let me see the notebook. Just toss it on the ground near my feet.” Glitsky picked it up, opened it. It was a small book, two by three inches, with about ten lines on a page. It was about a third filled with phone numbers. Ewing had been in business awhile. Glitsky put the book in his shirt pocket. “Okay, James, here’s what I want you to do. Let me have the keys to your van. Okay, now I want you to start walking across this lot here toward that exit way over there, the farthest one down. Go ahead now; the exercise will do you good.”

“You’re going to shoot me in the back.”

“I doubt it, but either way, you start walking and don’t look back. Go.”

“You’ve still got my wallet.”

“That’s right, I do. I’ll leave it in the car.”

Ewing scanned the lot, possibly looking for some help, but it was a slow and peaceful Friday afternoon, not much going on. Finally he started to walk. When he’d gone maybe a hundred yards, Glitsky closed the back doors, climbed into the driver’s seat, opened the windows and started the motor. Checking the rearview mirrow—Ewing was still walking away—he turned and lifted the metal box from the counter, extracting his money. He picked up the bills that remained, estimated the amount as close to two thousand more, closed the box with the money still inside, and put it back where it had been.

Putting the van in gear, he drove to where two empty Brisbane police cars were pulled up by the entrance. He stopped in front of them, blocking them intentionally, and got out, leaving the motor running and Ewing’s wallet on the front seat. Then he walked out the exit gate and hopped into the backseat of his waiting ride—Paganucci’s timing was perfect—and told him to step on it, lights and sirens if he had to. He had a date with his wife and didn’t want to be late.

“. . . most fun I’ve ever had as a cop.”

Treya put a soft hand to his face. “It’s good to hear you talking about fun again.”

“You think talking about it is good? Try
having
it. I was beginning to think it had all left the planet.”

“Says the man who just recently stole his best friend’s darts for fun.”

“That was revenge, not fun. My sacred honor was at stake.”

“Ah.”

They had eaten borscht and sandwiches in a booth at a no-name deli on Clement, and now were pushing Rachel along in her stroller, taking advantage of the soft dusk light and the unseasonable warmth. “What I really love is that I’ll have reverse listings on everybody in Mr. Ewing’s book by Monday at the latest. These are real people we can work on, every single one of them in violation of the suppressor law, and I’ll have the troops to go after them.”

“And you really think one of them may have shot Allan?”