16

Hood walked into Gun Barn and felt the cooled air hit his hot, damp shirt. There were customers at the counter and in the aisles. Hanging fluorescent tubes cast a nervous light on the men and the racks of long guns. He noted three security cameras without even really looking for them. He smelled gun oil and steel.

“Help ya?”

The man before him wore a Glock on his hip and a black leather vest and star-shaped badge that read DALLAS.

“Charlie Hood for John Crockett.”

“Appointment?”

“Eleven.”

“Good, because he’s the owner and you have to have an appointment.”

Hood badged Dallas. A man behind the counter, black-vested and star-badged also, looked over at Hood, then went back to his customer.

“Mr. Crockett will be right with you.”

Hood browsed the racks of long guns, mostly used, mostly old American military guns. The prices were good. Some had the bayonets still on. The semiautomatic rifles and carbines were lashed together with locking cables through the trigger guards. He browsed the counter, looking down at the handguns, everything from two-shot ivory-handled derringers to a Casull.50 caliber. He saw some nice Colt 1911s similar to the one his grandfather had given him and that he occasionally carried on duty. There was an archery section that had bows very similar to Luna’s. The crossbow section was large. Hood saw blowguns and throwing stars and throwing knives and high-powered slingshots similar to the ones he had owned as a boy. The knives ranged in size from huge bowie knives to tiny dirks. There were battle swords and Japanese fighting swords and decorative swords and lances and scimitars and dueling foils and medieval execution axes and scythes for the Grim Reaper. Farther back in the store, he found open crates of surplus antipersonnel bombs and neutered hand grenades and brass. There were government-issue flashlights and wristwatches and helmets and flak jackets and combat boots and K rations and parachutes. The clothing section featured everything from underwear to sports coats in a variety of camouflage patterns. The security cameras watched him.

The man from behind the counter appeared beside Hood. “Sorry. We’re busy. I’m Crockett.”

“Can we talk in your office?”

“I can talk anywhere I want.”

Crockett led them around the pistol counter and checkout stands, down a short hallway, and through swinging saloon doors with a KEEP OUT sign with a picture of a gun barrel pointing out at you. Crockett let the doors swing shut, but Hood had his hand up in plenty of time. Crockett was short and big-eared and wore his hair in a crisp flattop so that, viewed from behind, his head looked like a wing nut.

The office was spacious and carpeted and lit with the same jittery fluorescents as the showroom. One wall was a bank of video monitors, ten in all, each fed by a separate camera in the showroom and one at the rear exit. There was a big steel desk behind which Crockett sat and began to trim a dark-leafed pyramid cigar. He snipped a hole in the small end, then lit it with a lighter shaped like a hand grenade. Hood waited as he puffed and rotated the cigar and the smoke wavered out and up.

“Shoot,” he said.

“You know the deal. You see us here every other month. Suspicious sales, suspected straw men, bad guys. It’s your responsibility to report all of that to us, but since you almost never do, we have the pleasure of coming out to where you are.”

“I love you feds. You make doing your jobs sound like the twelve labors of Hercules.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Crockett. You’re just a small man. Maybe you can offer me something meaningful today.”

“You’re new.”

“To Blowdown.”

“Something meaningful? Sure. Maybe you can tell me what this means. A couple of years back, I sold guns to a couple of guys I didn’t like the looks of. They cleared the FBI check. They had valid ID. They did the wait period, and their check cleared, the whole deal. But I had second thoughts, so I called the feebs. The FBI. The ATF. I left messages and I e-mailed them, too, just to make sure there was some kind of paper trail. Well, guess what. I never got so much as a call back. No e-mail, no nothing. And that, Mr. Hood, is why I don’t relish you coming in here and hassling my ass while there’s paying customers waiting for my help.”

“So in the last two months you haven’t sold a gun to anyone who raised your suspicions?”

“That’s right. We get our share of dumbass crazies who can’t even pass the background. But if I called you guys every time one of them walked in here, you’d have to set up an office in the parking lot. I mean, look at that guy on camera six. You count from upper left across, then down, to arrive at six. Good. See that guy? He’s come in every week for five years trying to buy a Desert Eagle. Look at his clothes. Look at his hair. He lives under that bridge on Fire-house Road. Eats out of Dumpsters. He’s crazy as a shithouse rat and I won’t sell him anything in my store. So don’t tell me I don’t do my job.”

“I had more sophisticated buyers in mind. There’s a war going on down in Mexico right now, Mr. Crockett. It’s left six thousand people dead. Five hundred of them have been cops and judges. Some are women and children. They’re getting those guns from us. Every time the Mexican government asks us for a weapon trace, it comes back to a U.S. dealer.”

Crockett turned his cigar and puffed and blew a plume out at Hood. “Whatever you say. You’re talking about six thousand pistoleros, not everyday people. Bad guys kill other bad guys. From where I sit, it’s Mexico ’s fault. They hardly check cars coming into their own country. You ever think of that? I sell a legal product for self-defense. I sell to people who pass the background and have legal ID. I can’t control what happens later. In case it’s never occurred to you, my taxes pay your salary. Those animals down there are the killing machines, not the guns. Not me.”

Hood watched the video monitors for a moment. He watched the blue smoke drift across the screens.

“No suspicious sales?” he asked.

“Not one.”

“Look at these pictures, please. Tell me if you recognize any of the men.”

Crockett looked at his watch and sighed. “Okay.”

Hood pulled the folded sheets of images from his shirt pocket. There were four pictures per page. Most were made from digital surveillance videos, some from old VHS tape. Some were clear and some were not. All were unidentified. But ATFE had gotten tips that put these men under suspicion, and all had been seen along this stretch of the Iron River.

Crockett flipped through them, shaking his head. He set one aside. Then another. He held them up and pointed. “Here. I’ve seen this guy and this guy in my store.”

Hood collected the hot list. “When?”

“Impossible to say. Last six months, probably. Or I’d have forgotten them by now.”

“Did they purchase?”

“I’ve got a brain up here, not a computer. I can’t remember every buyer. Impossible. I’ve got all the Firearm Transaction Records, just like you require. You can go through them anytime you want. See? I cooperate. I care.”

“I’d like to see the FTRs for the last sixty days.”

“I’ll get Dallas to help you. I’ve got better things to do than sit here and watch you sound out the big words.”

“You’re funny.”

Crockett smiled around his cigar at Hood and called up front for Dallas.

Hood read through the records and wrote down information on buyers who didn’t look quite right. He had little more to go on than their names and addresses and their handwriting. They had cleared the backgrounds and shown good ID and paid good money for their guns and ammo. He tried to think in patterns, as his ATFE instructors had drilled into him. He saw no patterns, just men buying guns. Dallas tried to help, giving his opinion on some of the buyers, prying ATFE hiring information out of Hood. Dallas was fixin’ to join up someday.