“What the hell does that mean?” Jane said.
“It means that if everyone’s dishonest you aren’t going to do better elsewhere. And the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. I got one character witness. Where you going to find a gun dealer that has that many?”
Rose said, “We are not fools. You assume women can’t manage this sort of thing? That gunrunning is a masculine profession?”
“I don’t assume anything. What I know is that amateurs can’t handle this sort of thing. You will get ripped off if you’re lucky and ripped off and busted if you’re not.” Ah, Spenser, master of the revolutionary argot. Word maven of the counterculture.
“And why should we believe you won’t rip us off?” Jane said.
“You got my word, and the assurance of one of your own people. Have I lied to you yet? Have I turned Pam in to her husband, or the fuzz? You held up a bank and killed an old man. He used to be a cop and the New Bedford cops are not going to forget that. They are going to be looking for you until Harvard wins the Rose Bowl. You are fugitives from justice as the saying goes. And you are in no position to be advertising for a gun dealer. If the word gets out that a group of women are looking to make a gun buy, who do you think the first dealer will be? The easy one, the one that shows up one day and says he’s got what you want?”
“So far,” Rose said, “it seems to be you.”
“Yeah, and you know who I am. The next one will be somebody undercover. An FBI informant, a special serices cop, an agent from the Treasury Department, maybe a woman, a nice black woman with all the proper hatreds who wants to help a sister. And you show up with the cash and she shows up with thirteen cops and the paddy wagon.”
“He’s right, you know,” Pam Shepard said. “He knows about this kind of thing, and we don’t. Who would get us guns that we could trust better?”
“Perhaps,” Rose said, “we can merely sit on the money for a while.”
I shook my head. “No, you can’t. Then you’re just a felon, a robber and murderer. Now you’re a revolutionary who killed because she had to. If you don’t do what you set out to do then you have no justification for murdering that old man and the guilt will get you.”
“I killed the guard,” Jane said. “Rose didn’t. He tried to stop us and I shot him.” She seemed proud.
“Same, same,” I said. “She’s an accessory and as responsible as you are. Doesn’t matter who squeezed off the round.”
“We can do without the amateur psychoanalyzing, Spenser,” Rose said. “How do we prevent you from taking our money and running?”
“I’ll just be the broker. You and the gun dealer meet face to face. You see the guns, he sees the money.”
“And if they’re defective?”
“Examine them before you buy.”
They were silent.
“If you’re not familiar with the particular type of weapon, I’ll examine it too. Have you thought of what kinds of guns you want?”
“Any kind,” Jane said. “Just so they fire.”
“No, Jane. Let’s be honest. We don’t know much about guns. You know that anyway. We want guns appropriate for guerrilla fighting. Including handguns that we can conceal easily, and, I should think, some kind of machine guns.”
“You mean hand-held automatic weapons, you don’t mean something you’d mount on a tripod.”
“That’s right. Whatever the proper terminology. Does that seem sensible to you?”
“Yeah. Let me check with my dealer. Any other preferences?”
“Just so they shoot,” Jane said.
“Are we in business?” I said.
“Let us talk a bit, Mr. Spenser,” Rose said. And the three women walked to the other end of the balcony and huddled.
On the walls of the observatory, mostly in spray paint, were graffiti. Mostly names, but also a pitch for gay liberation, a suggestion that blacks be bused to Africa and some remarks about the sister of somebody named Mangan. The conference broke up and Rose came back and said, “All right, we’re agreed. When can you get the guns?”
“I’ll have to be in touch with you,” I said. “Couple days, probably.”
“We’re not giving you an address or phone number.”
“No need to.” I gave her my card. “You have my number. I’ll leave a message with my answering service. Call every day at noon and check in. Collect is okay.”
“We’ll pay our way, Mr. Spenser.”
“Of course you will, I was just being pleasant.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t bother, Mr. Spenser. It seems very hard for you.”
Chapter 22
