way, and neither of us said anything until the song had ended.
Then I said, 'I need a gun.'
'What sort of gun?'
'A handgun. An automatic or a revolver, it doesn't matter.
Something small enough to conceal and carry around but heavy enough to have some stopping power.'
His glass was still a third full, but he drew the cork stopper from the JJ&S bottle and topped it up, then picked up the glass and looked into it. I wondered what he was seeing.
He drank off some of the whiskey and put the glass down. 'Come on,' he said.
He stood up, pushed his chair back. I followed him to the back of the room. There was a door to the left of the dart board. Press-on letters announced that it was private, and a lock guaranteed privacy.
Mick opened it with a key and ushered me into his office.
It was a surprise. There was a big desk, its top completely clear. A Mosler safe as tall as I was stood off to one side, flanked by a pair of green metal filing cabinets. A brass coatrack held a raincoat and a couple of jackets. There were two groups of hand-colored engravings on the walls, some of Ireland, the others of France. He'd told me once that his mother's people came from County Sligo, his father from a fishing village near Marseilles. Behind the desk there was a much larger picture, a black-and-white photograph with a white mat and a narrow black frame. It showed a white frame farmhouse shaded by tall trees, with hills in the distance and clouds in the sky.
'That's the farm,' he said. 'You've never been.'
'No.'
'We'll go one day. It's up near Ellenville. We should have snow soon. That's when I like it the most, when all those hills have snow on them.'
'It must be beautiful.'
'It is.' He went to the safe, worked the combination lock, opened the door. I went over and examined one of the French engravings. It showed sailing boats in a small and well-protected harbor. I couldn't read the caption.
I went on looking at it until I heard the door of the safe swing shut.
I turned. He had a revolver in one hand and half a dozen shells in the palm of the other. I went over and he handed me the gun.
'It's a Smith,' he said. 'Thirty-eight caliber, and the shells are hollow-point, so you won't lack for stopping power. As for accuracy, that's another matter. Someone's cut the barrel down to an inch, and of course that did for the front sight. The rear sight's been filed down, and so's the hammer, so you can't cock it, you have to fire it double-action.
It'll go in your pocket and come free without snagging on the lining, but you won't win a turkey shoot with it. You can't really aim it, I don't think. You can only point it.'
'That's all right.'
'Will it do you, then?'
'It'll do fine,' I said. I turned the gun over in my hands, getting the feel of it, smelling the gun oil. There was no powder smell, so it had most likely been cleaned since its last firing.
'It's not loaded,' he said. 'I've only the six shells. I can make a phone call and get more.'
I shook my head. 'If I miss him six times,' I said, 'I can forget the whole thing. He's not going to give me time to reload.' I swung the cylinder out and began filling the chambers. You can make a case for leaving one chamber empty so you won't have a live shell under the hammer, but I figured I'd rather have one more bullet in the gun.
Besides, with the hammer filed down the possibility of an accidental discharge was slight.
I asked Mick what I owed him.
He shook his head. 'I'm not in the business of selling guns,' he said.
'Even so.'
'I've no money in it,' he said. 'And no need to see money out of it.
Bring it back if you don't use it.
Failing that, forget about it.'
'It's unregistered?'
'As far as I know. Someone picked it up in a burglary. I couldn't tell you who owned it, but I doubt he registered it. The serial number's gone. A man who licenses his gun rarely files down the number. You're sure it'll do you?'
'I'm sure.'
We went back to the other room and he locked the office door. The same Liam Clancy record was playing as we returned to our table. The television set behind the bar was tuned to a western movie, and the sound was too low to carry past the three men watching it. I drank some Coke and Mick drank some Irish.
He said, 'What I said before, that I'm not in the gun business. I've been in and out of that business in my day. Did you ever happen to hear the story of the three cases of Kalashnikovs?'
'No.'
'Now this was some years ago. It might be long enough that I could tell it in court. It's seven years, isn't it?
