Craig Anderson snorted. “That about sums it up,” he agreed.
Anderson got a Pepsi out of the cooler behind the counter. Raised it in question.
“A Mountain Dew if you’ve got one.”
The big gun dealer pulled one out of the cooler and tossed it to Mac. He caught it. Popped the top, and took a long swallow.
“So? White-collar gun stockpilers?” Mac asked.
“Been, oh about eight months ago,” Craig Anderson said, settling against the counter comfortably. He was in no hurry. “Gotta call from a man I know who runs a range, teaches some classes, does gun safety. Good enough guy. He’d been approached by a bunch of men who wanted to learn to shoot. Well, sure he says, that’s what he does, teach people to shoot. But these guys didn’t want to learn to shoot one kind of gun, they wanted to learn to shoot them all.”
“Learn them all,” Mac said slowly. “What kind of bullshit is that?”
“Right?” He drank some of his Pepsi. “So, he says sure, let’s start with the basics. I think he started them with a .22 pistol for Christ’s sake. But they stayed with it. And they wanted to buy guns. So, he’s got to make a living, like we all do. These guys are willing to pay good money, and so he develops a checklist and certification and what have you.”
The two of them looked at each other and cracked up.
Craig Anderson took another swallow, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “And he calls me. Every Saturday for the last year, I go out to his range and show them my weapons. They have to get certified by my friend first, and we do it all by-the-book legal. And then they move up to the next level of weapon. That’s a picture of the group who have made it to the AR-15 level. They wanted a group photo.”
He laughed again, and shook his head. “Got me what they’re up to, but it’s been a nice piece of income for the store.”
“The guy this morning probably had 100 weapons,” Mac said slowly. “Everything from an AK-47 to a busted-up shotgun. That’s beyond what you’re talking about.”
“Sure is,” Craig agreed. “I wouldn’t sell an AK-47, and my friend isn’t teaching these wannabes to shoot one either. Might have a busted-up shotgun, though.”
Mac wasn’t sure he bought the bit about not selling an AK-47, bet he would — and could — if Mac plopped enough money on the counter. But he didn’t push him. “Everyone’s got a busted-up shotgun,” Mac said, sourly. “They just don’t usually have a hundred other guns to go with it.”
A bit more chat and Craig Anderson agreed to call his friend and see if he’d talk to Mac. While he made the call, Mac wandered the store looking at the inventory. Nothing spoke to him.
Craig handed over a piece of paper with a name, address, and phone number on it. “Said he’d be happy to talk to you,” he said. “Recognized your name.”
Mac looked at the name on the paper. “Yeah,” Mac said. “We know each other.”
He bought more ammo and wondered if he could write it off on his expense account. He wondered if he even had an expense account.
Mac freely admitted he’d been a punk kid. He’d run the streets of Seattle with his cousin Toby, the son of his Aunt Lindy and her Black ex-husband, and with Shorty, a Filipino-Mexican kid, who remained his best friend. They’d been doing car thefts and running them on consignment down to the Bay area. The night they got caught, Shorty hadn’t been with them. Toby had just turned 18, got tried as an adult, and did time. Mac had been almost 17, and a judge did him a favor — gave him probation if he’d sign up and ship out after graduation. Mac did four years as a Marine in Afghanistan, and it had occurred to him that time in JD lockup would have been a shorter sentence. And safer. Probably safer anyway.
But he came back clean and sober, went to college on VA benefits, and found he had a knack for telling a story. He got a job at the Examiner, moved into the top floor of his Aunt Lindy’s home on Queen Anne, and was doing good.
Not as good as Shorty, who was a data-miner making big bucks on the weekend and teaching math in Bellevue the rest of the time. He often joked he was the only teacher who could actually afford to live inside his district.
But still, Mac was doing good enough. It hurt that his cousin wasn’t. But that had more to do with drugs than a criminal record.
So, the cop who had busted him all those years ago — 11 years ago — had been a guy named Andy Malloy. Street cop. Spotted what he thought were two black teens in a Mercedes coupe heading south on I-5 from the U-district. Pulled them over on suspicion of Driving While Black. Toby had tried to make a run for it. And then took the fall when they were caught. Mac had always been bitter, because he was pretty sure that if they’d looked white they wouldn’t have been pulled over that night. He knew it was the thing that turned him around. But that bothered him too, because he wondered if he didn’t get the break because he was the white cousin and not the black one.
“So, Andy Malloy is running a gun range these days?” he said out loud, looking at the piece of paper. “Did he retire? He couldn’t be that old.”
He looked at his watch and then did a map search: 10-20 minutes, but further out. Damn it, he didn’t want to come all the way up here for a second trip.
But he wasn’t about to walk into a gun range owned by Andy Malloy without more information. He called Rodriguez.
“Yeah.”
“You remember a cop named Andy Malloy?”
“I remember him,” Rodriguez said sourly. “Why?”
“Because
