"Sounds like a fun job."

"I think 'shit job' is the technical term. But maybe I can do some Christmas shopping in the pawnshop. Buy the kids a couple of matching pistols."

"Start 'em out right." Rabin had four-year-old twin daughters. The phone rang and he waved good-bye.

There were two pawnshops just a few blocks down Sixth, so he decided to leave the squad car and walk. Get lunch down there, too.

It wasn't the best part of town, but they didn't put pawnshops in the high-rent district. Or police stations. It amused him to walk along in uniform and watch people's expressions. Trying to look innocent was a real strain on some of them.

There were two large shops next door to one another. He went to the farther one first; the owner was a likable enough guy.

He stepped into the cold air. They probably kept the airco cranked up to minimize the attic smell, mildew and dust. Gun oil and furniture polish. Rabin was fascinated by the places, but not the weapons counter. All the biographies scattered around. Life stories, death stories. Complete tool sets, well-used musical instruments, fancy camera and cube sets. You got so little on the dollar for them, their owners had to be dead or desperate. Or thieves.

The bell when the door closed brought the owner out of a back room. "Qabil. What can I sell you? Can I buy your gun?"

"Yeah, and my thumb, too." His weapon was keyed to his thumb-print. "Check this out?" He put the box on the glass case full of handguns.

"Evidence, eh? What happened?"

"Some guy's going around killing pawnshop owners. What you think?"

He picked it out of the box gingerly and rubbed his thumb along the base of the butt, where the serial number had been ground off. "Cute barrel. Not exactly a sniper weapon."

He clicked the cylinder around, peering through. "Ruger stopped making these in the teens. I see 'em now and then."

"Bet you do. That was before they started isotope IDs."

"Tell me about it. I don't think this one came through the shop, I mean with the original barrel and number. Don't see many chrome-plated ones, in any caliber."

"You think the chrome plating was factory?"

He took out a pair of magnifying glasses and slipped them on, and peered along the weapon's edges and surfaces. "Yeah. Guarantee it." He took off the glasses and set the gun back in the box.

"What else?"

"You fished it out of the water, but it hadn't been in there long. Allow for that, and the gun's practically new. Probably stolen from some collector. Must have been. That's where I'd start."

"What's it worth?"

"Actually, nothing. Without the barrel, I wouldn't touch it. Obvious hit weapon. If it had the original barrel, four or five grand. Before its little bath."

"On the street?"

"Maybe a grand, maybe five hundred. You oughta ask the guy next door about that."

"Think I will." Rabin closed the box and tucked it under his arm. "Thanks, Oz. You've been a help."

"Sorry I couldn't ID it. Buena suerte."

" Buenas." When he opened the door the sun was so bright it made his eyes water. He crunched through the gravel parking lot and walked up the unpainted wooden stairs to the next place.

The door opened with a surprise like a slap. Norman Bell!

Norman

His heart stopped and restarted. "Qabil. I ... I don't know what to ... buenos dias."

"Uh ... buenos. How've you been?"

"Fine ... just fine." Could he be in on it? No, he'd never. "I saw your girls a couple of weeks ago. They're growing fast."

"They do that." There was an awkward silence and he held out a box. "Got to see a man about a gun."

"Oh. Sure." He held the door open. Rabin stepped through and then stopped.

"What are you doing here? Slumming?"

"I come by every now and then, looking for old guitars and such. Nothing today."

He nodded. "I see your wife on the cube all the time. She looks good."

"Oh yeah. She's fine." The one time they'd met had been strained. In the kitchen, she with wide eyes and he with mouth full.

"Take care," he whispered with tenderness, and turned toward the gun rack and counter.

Norman finally shook off his paralysis and walked down the stairs. If Qabil had come in a couple of minutes earlier, he would have interrupted an illegal transaction.

The pawnbroker wouldn't say anything. He was guiltier than Norman. Selling a pistol without waiting period or ID check.

It had to be a coincidence. Rabin wouldn't be in on a thing that would cost him his job and family and put him in prison for ten or twenty years. As if a cop would last even one year in prison.

Norman stood at his bicycle and considered waiting for Qabil to come back out. Tell him about the threat and enlist his aid. He couldn't do anything legally without throwing his life away. But maybe he would do something illegal.

Maybe later. First he'd talk to the lawyer and his gun-toting pal. Maybe they'd have a shoot-out there in front of the lunch crowd, and simplify things for everyone.

He clipped the bag onto his handlebars. It was awkwardly heavy, with the snub-nosed revolver and box of bullets. Had to find someplace private to load it.

He went a couple of blocks uptown and locked his bike outside a pool-hall bar where he'd never been. Just as soon not be recognized. He undipped the bag and walked into a darkness redolent of marijuana and spilled beer.

There were no other customers yet. He walked past the rows of shabby billiard tables to the small bar at the end.

There were three crude VR games along one wall, at least twenty years old, and a century-old pinball machine, dusty and dark, glass cracked. A sign on the wall said no fucking profanity/no use palabras VERDES, CARAJO! under a shiny holo cube of the president, all brilliant smile, a helmet of perfect hair guarding both of her brain cells.

The bartender was out of sight, rattling bottles around in a back room. He called out "¡ Momentito!" and it actually was just a moment.

He was a big black man with startling blue eyes, obviously Cuban. Bright metal teeth. "What'll you have?"

"Draft Molly. Use your bathroom?"

"Sure. Ain't cleaned it yet."

Norman was prepared for an odoriferous hell, but it wasn't bad in that respect. The urinal was a metal trough that evidently dispensed a powerful antiseptic. There was blood on the floor, though, and a smeared handprint of dried blood on the stall door.

He opened the door and didn't find a body, so the previous night's activity had probably been conflict resolution rather than murder. He locked the stall and sat down and opened the bag.

He'd bought an old-fashioned revolver for reliability. It had been so long since he'd fired a gun; more than thirty years. In 2020 he'd killed a couple of dozen men for the crime, he always said, of wearing the other side's uniform. Something he'd had in common with Qabil, though their wars were a generation apart, and he was technically the enemy.

In Norman's mind, there were no enemies in war. Just victims. Victims of historical process.

Heavy blued steel. He riddled with a mechanism on the side and the cylinder swung away. He slid six fat cartridges into their homes and snapped it shut.

He could just put the muzzle in his mouth and, again, simplify everything. Sure. Then Rory would have to identify the rest of his body, and Willy Joe and his pals would just shift their focus to her.