inside, nestled in white tissue paper, was a nickel-plated .357 Magnum revolver, the S&W Model 27. This was the kind of gun developed for the police back in the thirties, when the mobsters first took to wearing body armor and driving around in cars with bulletproof glass, making the normal .38 almost useless. The .357 Magnum had so much more power it could go through a car from the rear and still have enough strength to kill the driver. One .357 slug could put out a car engine.
While Parker looked it over, Fox went away to his shelves and came back this time with a box claiming to contain a toilet floatball; inside was another S&W 27. “And holsters, one minute,” he said, and went away again.
When he came back, with two cartons of “icemaker tubing,” Parker held up the second of the revolvers and said, “The serial number’s off this one. Acid, looks like.”
Fox looked faintly surprised. “Isn’t that better?”
“It’s got to be shown like a lawman would show it, hand it over and take it back. Maybe they’re sharp-eyed, maybe they’re not.”
“Ah. A problem.” Fox brooded at his wall of boxes. “For the same reason,” he said, “you’d probably like them both the same.”
“That would be good.”
“I got an almost,” Fox decided. “The Colt Python. Looks the same, same size, same caliber. Could you use that?”
“Let me see it.”
Another bathroom sink set. The Python was as Fox had described, and looked a close relative of the 27. “I’ll take it,” Parker decided.
“You’ll want to check them?”
Parker knew how that worked with Fox. Under the drain plate in the middle of the room was loose dirt. To test-fire Fox’s merchandise, you stood above the drain and shot a bullet into the dirt. It made a hell of a racket here in this enclosed room, but Fox claimed the boxes absorbed all that noise and none of it was heard outside.
There were times when you expected to use a gun, and then you’d try it first, but this time, with what they planned on the ship, if they had to use one of these guns, the situation would already be a mess. The revolvers were both clean and well oiled, with crisp-feeling mechanisms; let it go at that. “No need,” Parker said. “I’ll take them as they are. Let me see the holsters.”
They were identical, stiff leather holsters without a strap across the chest. They fit the 27 and the Python, and they were comfortable to wear. “Fine,” Parker said.
“The whole thing is three hundred,” Fox said, “and when you’re done with them, if they haven’t been used, you know, you understand what I mean”
“Yes.”
“Well, we done business before,” Fox said. “So, if you just use them for show, afterwards I’ll be happy to buy them back at half price.”
Afterwards, no matter what happened, these guns would be at the bottom of the Hudson. “I’ll think about it,” Parker said.
9
CONTINENTAL PATRIOT PRINTING said the old-fashioned shield-shaped sign hanging over the entry door. The shop was one of several in a long one-story fake-Colonial commercial building in a faded suburb of Pittsburgh, built not long after the Second World War and long since overwhelmed by the more modern malls. A few of the shops were vacant and for rent, and several of the remainder continued the Colonial theme: Paul Revere Video Rental down at the corner, Valley Forge Pizza next to the print shop. The plate-glass display window of the print shop was crammed with multicolored posters describing the services available within: “Wedding Invitations Business Cards Yearbooks Letterheads Newsletters Announcements.” The one thing not mentioned was the service that had brought Parker here.
There was angled parking in front of the shops. Parker left the Subaru in front of Valley Forge Pizza and went into Continental Patriot Printing, where a bell rang when he opened the door, and rang again when he shut it.
The interior of this shop had been truncated, cut to a stub of a room by a hastily constructed cheap panel wall with an unpainted hollow-core door in it. The remaining space was divided by a chest-high counter facing the front door, again quickly made, and with cheap materials. The paneling across the front of the counter and the paneling of the partition itself were heavy with more posters promoting the services available here, with examples of the work that could be done. The general air was of a competent craftsman with too few customers.
The inner door opened, in response to that double bell, and an Asian man came out, in work shirt and jeans and black apron. He was around forty years of age, short and narrow-shouldered, with a heavy forward-thrusting head, and eyes that squinted with deep suspicion and skepticism through round glasses. His name; Parker knew, was Kim Toe Kwai, and he was Korean.
He and Parker met at the counter, where Kim said, “Yes? May I help you?” But beneath that professional courtesy was an undisguisable skepticism, the belief that this new person could not possibly help because nobody could.
“A fellow named Pete Rudd told me I should get in touch with you,” Parker said.
The suspicious eyes grew narrower, the mouth became a slit. “I do not know such a man,” he said.
“That’s okay,” Parker told him. “I’ll tell you what I need, and after I leave you can look in your address book or wherever and see do you know a Pete Rudd and call him and ask him if you should do business with Mr. Lynch. You see what I mean?”
Kim took an order form out from under the counter and picked up a pen held there with a piece of cord tied around it and thumbtacked to the counter. He wrote “Lynch” on the order form. He said, “You have brochures you want made?”
“That’s right,” Parker said, and while Kim wrote “brochures” on the order form Parker took a laminated card out of his pocket, plus two small headshot photos, one of himself and the other of Wycza. The laminated card was a
