“I want guns, Archie,”I announced.“Same stuff you got me in Venice.”
Ginny slapped the table. “Just a minute!”
“What?” I asked, surprised.
“I’ll bet that’s pretty much the same way you asked Archie last time.”
She was right. His silence confirmed it.
“Take two, Reb,” Ginny said. “This time with a little respect. Maybe even open with telling us if you reached Mona.”
“I reached Mona,” I answered.
“Would you like to embellish that?”
“What I’d like is guns and to get going. We’ve got some driving to do.”
I turned to Archie. “I apologize for being abrupt. I’d very much appreciate if you’d please loan me some handguns. Preferably of the same variety as the ones you planted in Venice.”
Archie stood up. “The Sigs I can do. But that mini, that was a special-thing I got as a favor. A prototype. It’s a bitch you lost it to that Buckett guy.”
“Beckett,” I corrected. “And I’ll get it back.”
“I bet you will,” he said, walking into the storage room. He returned a minute later with the weapons.
As I was strapping on the Sigs, Archie said to me, “This time I’m coming along.”
“I don’t want you involved.”
“Don’t want me involved? You’re wearing weapons licensed to me, for chrissake. I’d say that’s involved.”
“Arch, I know you went way out on a limb for me, and you’re still out there. That means . . . much more than I can convey to you right now. Much more. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here today.”
“What are you talking about? Your house got burned down. There are some bad-ass motherfuckers out there.”
“Yeah?” I said, my anger fanned. “Well the baddest-ass motherfucker that ever drew a breath is standing right in front of you. Now I’m telling you, lay out.”
Archie’s face flushed. “Step in here any time, Ginny,” he urged. “He seems to listen to you.”
“That was manners,” she said. “This is . . . personal. I don’t think I can influence him about this.”
“I need to do this alone,” I told Archie.
“Then what the hell are you doing with her? Answer that.”
“I . . . I don’t know how to answer that.”
Ginny looked disappointed.
“I can’t answer any more questions today,” I said.“Not one.”
He didn’t reply, just stood in the doorway and watched us walk over to the Jag.
We slowly pulled out of his lot. When we hit the interstate I leaned on the gas.
After fifteen minutes of eighty-mile-an-hour silence, Ginny said, “So . . . aren’t we festive.”
She’d grabbed my small hand in the theater while we watched. “Dad and I went there in ’65,” she’d whispered. “The Hollister House. Stayed in that very cabin. We ate smoked oysters and thought big thoughts, and, Reb, it was the ultimate place to rejuvenate.”
With one hand gripping the wheel and both eyes on the road, I rang the inn. A pleasant woman answered the phone. I asked her for two separate cottages. She reserved White Pine and Beechnut, just across from each other, under “Arthur Holmes.” Giving my real name didn’t seem prudent.
I checked Ginny for a response. “You know what I think, Art?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“I think you’re the most enigmatic man I’ve ever encountered.”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“We’ll bookmark that for later. Do you want to know what else I think?”
“Does it have to do with the Medici Dagger?”
“I think your friend Archie may be our guardian angel—not just for the guns but in Milan as well.”
I tromped on the gas till the speedometer read 92. Interstate 5 didn’t care. The Jaguar didn’t care. None of the L.A. motorists seemed to either.
