Frenzy

up. One r'the other.'

'Fucking weird time a' d' year, you freeze to death if you run the air-conditioning and you goddamn melt from the heat if you don't or —'

'Yeah, okay, well, look, I got to drive way the fuck out in the county yet tonight. Let's get it done, can we?'

'Hey, no shit, I ain't got all fucking night either. Do it.' The man behind the wheel turns and with some effort lifts a heavy sack from the floorboard in back of him, lifting it over the seat.

'Whatcha got?'

'Eight and a half each I gotta get on these. Thirty-four cents.'

'Jesus. That's fuckin' LUGERS. I don't want fuckin' Lugers.'

'Hey. Dem's fucking P-Thirty-eights. Dey ain't fucking Lugers.'

'Whatever the fuck dey are I don't wannum. Dey look like fuckin' LUGERS. I want Thirty-eights. Fucking REVOLVERS, for Chrissakes.'

'These are not fuckin' LUGERS, goddammit. This is my business here. We're talking genuine fucking Walther Parabellum P-Thirty-eights.'

'I don't care if it's a paregoric model don't wave the motherfucker around f'crissakes.'

'Yeah. The fuckin' chipmunks might see it out here. Look: you fire this bitch in a Holiday Inn and the round goes through your lady's head and through the wall and the headboard of the next-door-neighbor's room, his ole lady's head, the round comes outta her skull and goes bop onto a tit, bounces off the tit and lands on the fucking bedspread. You can send room service over to get the lead for you. We're training penetration here. A Luger isn't jack shit.'

'I don't need no Holiday Inn gun, man. I wanna go through the wall of a Holiday Inn and clip somebody's ole lady I'll fucking drive through the sono-fabitch. I need a revolver.'

'You don't know guns, man. No offense. I coulda got you garbage here. The sears that crystallize and shit. When the hammer is down you turn the thumb safety it locks the sear. But you turn this with the bitch cocked, a little steel arm trips the sear and the hammer falls on the safety not on the fucking pin like some of that postwar shit. You can jack a round in and BA-BOOM it fires the fucker. Suicide guns. Thirty-four is stealing these fuckers. These are rare. You say no I can do another thing and have nine hundred fifty apiece by domani, you understand?'

'Hey, all fucking due respect to you an' that shit, ya know, but you don't know guns any better'n me. You just a fucking thief same as me, ya know? All dis shit about how you got to go to Sears an' get a hammer an' that shit. But that's awright. I'll take the paregoric Lugers or whatever and I'll give you twenty-five for the sack, and I'll take the merch an' live with it even if they ain't fucking revolvers. So what'll it be? We gotta deal or what?'

'Hey, tell ya what, paisan, you give me twenty-five hundred, I give you a great piece. I got a brand-new Colt Government Model in forty-five ACP, fucker's customized, gunsmith blueprinted, tight as ten-year-old snatch and clean as Mary Green. Got checkered grips, got the ejector port'n' feed ramp ground down, got the wide spur hammer on it, speed-shooter safety, Pachmayr mainspring housing, adjustable trigger, speed-load lever, adjustable rear and combat blade sights, and I throw in a couple mags with special springs and cutaway feed lips. Twenty-five bills and you got it.'

'I give you twenty-five for the four Luger deals here.'

'Pasadena.'

'Say what?'

'El Paso, baby. I need thirty-four beans. Cash American or I take my merch elsewhere. That's the deal.'

'I'll go twenty-seven-fifty absolute tops. An' you throw in a couple hundred rounds of ammo.'

Laughter.

'Listen, I really enjoyed it, hey. But I got to go do some things. Seriously. You want 'em at 3400 or no? Say the truth, now. I got to book.'

'What about the ammo? I don't gotta buy the fuckin' ammo too, do I?'

''Course you do, baby. I don't get that shit free either, dig?'

'Hey. Fuck it. I'll shop around, ya know.' The car door.

'Listen. Gimme thirty-four hundred, I'll toss in four boxes of parabellum.'

'Four what?'

'Four boxes of nine-mm. That's it. Thirty-four beans cash now.'

'Awright. Fuck it.' Pause.

'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten . . . . '

Spain had started to squeeze the trigger and the light popped on in the car as the door opened and his man got out. He had an M-31 loaded in the tube. He'd built it himself from a practice rifle grenade, one of the demilled jobs with the fuse and explosives out and with the copper cone where the shaped charge goes intact. Fins in real good shape. He squeezed as the man ducked back in the window and the man was leaning in and counting, 'Eight, nine, ten, two thousand, and one, two, three, four,' peeling off hundreds when the shaped charge exploded against the side of the car. He heard the coughing plop when the charge exploded out toward him, but by the time his mind had registered the sound and he'd paused long enough to look over toward the trees his head and upper torso had turned to red, disintegrating Alpo; the driver and the car and the sack of 'Lugers' and the rest of him were all blown to scarlet shit in a flaming orange ball of fiery, explosive death.

Spain turned and began moving back through the trees, climbing back up through the tall grass toward the highway. He glanced back once at the inferno burning down on the road, the billowing, black, oily smoke a strong chemical smell. The Mercedes was still intact but the flame should ignite the tank soon, and he spat once and turned back breathing deeply of the fumes and the mixture of gasoline aromas wafting from the wake of the passing traffic. He got in and started the engine, listening for the blast as he pulled out onto the highway.

Bud Leech and Eichord were on their way to knock on a couple of late doors when Leech rogered a call on the two-way.

'Eighty-one-eleven,' he told the dispatcher, which was the numerical designation for the Intel unit.

The radio voice gave him the word and they were on the way to the crime scene in a hail of static and incomprehensible copspeak. Eichord recognized 'forty-three-oh-four,' a number of the Homicide Bureau, and 'Castle Road,' and that was about it. They were northbound, moving fast in a marked scout unit, Eichord having to concentrate to follow the twists and turns and then giving up and relaxing as they sped through the nighttime traffic.

'I have no idea where we are.'

'Know which district you're in?'

'I'm not even sure what state I'm in.'

Leech smiled and said, 'Just remember the high numbers are the districts north of St. Louis, north of town that is, and —' The radio interrupted. He exchanged another brief bit of cryptic copspeak and told Eichord, 'It's a car bombing.' Another homicide or two in the growing file that was called 'Russo' after the hood whose murder had precipitated the gang war.

Bud Leech worked the field. He was technically an intelligence supervisor but he'd come from a smalltown background where you did it all; you secured a crime scene all by your lonesome, took the pictures, gathered the evidence, came back and wrote it up, investigated, you were a one-man team. Now he was a watcher. He watched the religious cultists, the dudes with the paramilitary club who got off on mere fantasies, all kinds of things beside what feel under the usual 'organized crime' provinces of gambling, pros, extortion, loan-sharking, porn, and of course, the biggie narcotics.

'What is your procedure as to who rolls on a homicide call,' Eichord asked as the scout car shot through the cars in the fast lane.

'How do you mean?'

'In terms of whether or not you hear about it?'

'Oh, I'm gonna hear about it all right. But you mean if the dispatcher calls us.'

'Yeah.'