“The pull is too heavy.”

“Four and a half pounds.”

“That’s easily four and three-quarters. Consistency is everything, Ron. Consistency is the physical manifestation of trust. Sloppy workmanship will doom us and I cannot allow it. It’s time for us to talk.”

“Okay.”

He sets the gun on the bench and looks down on me and Sharon. The lights shine off his bald dome of a head, and his cheeks are flushed pink. He lifts his nose very slightly, then lowers it, and I guess he’s picked up the smell of our sex. He smells of baby powder. He gives Sharon a small-toothed smile but says nothing.

In my office, Chet sits in my chair behind my desk. Sharon and I sit before him like a couple consulting a doctor. I can feel the anger coming off her.

“What is the renegotiated price for the first one thousand Love 32s?” asks Chet.

“I haven’t renegotiated,” I say. “I made a deal and I will honor it.”

He cocks his head and leans forward. “Again?”

I repeat myself.

“Certainly you’ve renegotiated the price of the sound suppressors.”

“No, sir. The whole deal stands. One thousand units, complete, at nine hundred dollars each.”

“Then you insist on giving our product away.”

“I’ve never seen nine hundred grand in one place in my whole life.”

Chester leans back, and my executive chair wheezes. The headrest doesn’t even come up to the tops of his shoulders. “And the incentive discount on a cash commitment for the next thousand from Favier and Winling? I remember us agreeing on a discount of three percent off the new per-unit price of twelve hundred fifty dollars.”

“It’s three percent off the current price of nine hundred per gun, Uncle Chet. You and I agreed to nothing. I haven’t heard back yet.”

Chester studies Sharon. “Have you had any success finding us some customers?”

“I have a list of possibilities. At nine hundred dollars per unit, the Love 32 is going to sell briskly at the very least.”

“CC me on the list, please. Sooner than later.”

Sharon says nothing.

“Ron, is the crew on a twice-monthly payroll cycle as before?”

I nod.

“So they’ve been paid for just three days’ work so far?”

“Yes. Their big payday will be the last day of production, if they can finish in eighteen. I’ll actually have to pay them a day early, because payday is on a Friday. They’ll be getting bonuses, too.”

“Bonuses? Oh my, Ronald. Not like the old days, is it?”

“They’ll earn them. Believe me.”

Chester eyes me with something like amusement. “Now, I’ve given some more thought to our endeavor,” he says. “One, on a go-forward, we will change the name of the gun because nobody wants to confuse love and death. Two, there is no Favier and Winling of Paris, France. I suspect these extravagant and dire events in Mexico may be linked to our order-this is merely an intuition. I expect you to tell me the true name of our customer by the end of the work shift tonight. Three, Ron, you can’t simply pocket seven hundred thousand dollars. The three of us will receive the monies, distributed per our old salaries and according to the old percentages, then share the balance, greatly increased by the reduced number of employees, according to the same established model. Of course. Ronald, as designer and production manager, you will draw a handsome salary for the time you have spent on the project. Sharon, you will continue to draw your current generous salary. I love all the new money-saving lightbulbs, by the way. I of course will be compensated as CEO and president. We will all be quite happy on payday. Now, lastly, and I think you’ll like this-on the morning of the big payday, you will call the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service and the United States Border Patrol and anonymously report the undocumented workers who will be arriving that afternoon on floor one. At that time we will be having appetizers before a king crab dinner at the Charthouse. My treat. The workers will be arrested and deported without pay and we will save the labor payroll. Don’t worry. I still have friends on the labor board. Our chances of prosecution are nil.”

It’s so quiet I can hear the tap-tap-tapping of the finish men two stories down. I look at Sharon, and her face is blank fury but somehow very specific about what it wants me to do. I sigh and stand and go to a window and look out. South Coast Plaza is sparsely lit and empty. The Christian compound is dark. Only the freeways buzz with life eternal. My heart is pounding and I feel a stiffness in my knees. My legs are weak as I return to my chair and sit down beside Sharon. I lean forward.

“Uncle Chester,” I say. My voice wavers and I clear my throat, then clear it again. “Sharon and I have put some considerable thought into this matter. When our business plan is finished, I’ll be able to be more specific. But for now…”

“Business plan?”

“Ron and I have talked about it,” snaps Sharon. “We think that after this first recovery deal puts some cash back in Ron’s pocket, we should reincorporate the old Pace Arms operation under a new name and with new investors and new directors. We’ll apply for all the necessary permits and pay the fees and taxes. We foresee a completely legitimate new firearms manufacturing company before the end of the year. You and Ron’s mother will receive ample proceeds if we make ample money. We’ve talked to our lawyers and they are drafting a buyout for the property and machinery and furnishings.”

Chester, always pale, has now lost even the pink flush of his cheeks. “We’re having a bit of a power struggle here.”

“Uncle Chester,” I say. “You brought this upon yourself. When I looked up from that desk a week ago and saw you standing here, I thought, terrific, Chester ’s back. He knows the business like nobody else. Maybe he can help. Maybe we can work together again. He is a Pace. He is my mother’s husband. Maybe, just maybe, with all of us working toward it, Pace Arms can sail the seas of commerce again, under a different flag. This is what went through my head, all when I first saw you. But instead of helping, you try to take over my work. You try to take everything I own. You try to cheat my men and rename my invention. You visit my mother a total of one time-she told me this, Chet. And you look at the woman I love as if she were a picture in a jack-off magazine. You even take my seat at my desk in my office. So, Chester, there’s no struggle here at all. This is ours now.”

To make the point more dramatic, I stand, which puts me more or less eye to eye with Chester across the desk. I think of the mastiff he crushed, which outweighed me by twenty pounds and had larger teeth. But surprisingly, or perhaps not, my knees feel fine and my balance is good and I feel a lightness and a readiness and a sense of physical and mental well-being. Chester is impossible to read now, just an immense, unmoving, pale, bald, infant Buddha with battalions of rage apes lurching around inside his head, no doubt.

“I’ll be in touch,” he says.

“I’ll be here.”

“There is no problem unsolvable by reasonable people,” says Chet.

“You have to find them,” says Sharon.