Iron River

3

So I’m sitting at my desk on the third floor of Pace Arms and studying the guy across from me. He says his name is Bradley Smith. He’s even younger than me, which pleases me because I think the young should grab what’s left of this world before the old piss away every last bit of it.

“Your company is French?” I ask.

“The management is French. I already told your secretary that.”

“With how many armed employees?”

“Two thousand.”

“That’s a lot of armed guards.”

“We’re international. I told your secretary that, too.”

“ Sharon relayed everything to me with perfect accuracy, Mr. Smith.”

“She has nice paint, as the Mexicans like to say.”

I smile at this. “No kidding. And she composes letters, figures out my calendar, and keeps the assholes out of here.”

“Quite a woman.”

“She’s engaged,” I say, wishing it were to me.

“I am, too.”

“Really? I wouldn’t mind that someday.”

“What kind of thing is that to say? You get what you take, my man.”

I nod and silently cede the point. I look out the window to the mild Orange County morning. The blinds and the glass are dirty because we quit paying the custodial contract ten months ago, not long after Pace Arms was sued into bankruptcy. But to the east I can still see the swirl of concrete where the 405 meets the 55, and the malls stretching into the distance, the mirrored corporate buildings, the Performing Arts Center and the evangelical Christian broadcasting compound. Uncle Chester showed me pictures of that land when it was still bean fields, and gave me a stern warning that laziness never turned a bean field into a shopping mall. I was six. And Chester said if I wanted my piece of the American dream someday, it was going to take energy, vision, balls. It would take Pace. He usually smiled after saying that, not a pleasant thing. He’s huge but his teeth are small and even, like infant teeth. Back then, Pace Arms was making 145,000 handguns a year, right here in Orange County, right here in this building. Hardly anybody knew what we did. The guns were semiautomatic, semidependable, and dirt cheap. The workingman’s equalizer was what Chet called them. Most everybody else called them Saturday Night Specials. Uncle Chester is a lecher and a bore, but he knew how to make a buck on cheap guns.

“Okay, Bradley Smith,” I say. “Director of North American operations for Favier and Winling Security of Paris, France. You made this appointment. You were late. You tell me my secretary is stupid but hot. You tell me I’ll get what I take, my man. Maybe you should tell me something that might be worth my time, like, for instance, what do you want?”

“Time? You’ve got time. You’re bankrupt. But maybe I can help you with something else.”

“Help away.”

Bradley gets up and goes to the dirty window and looks out. He’s wearing the five-hundred-dollar Jimmy Choo boots I tried on a few months ago but had to get less expensive ones. And pricey jeans and a white shirt that’s cleaned and pressed, and a leather vest. He’s got long dark hair and a goatee and something about him besides his attitude bothers me but I don’t know what.

“You ought to get these windows cleaned.”

“We fired the custodians.”

“They fired you, actually, because you failed to pay them. Look, Ron, I did my due diligence on Pace Arms. I always liked your products. The twenty-five Hawk was decent, and the twenty-two LR was better. The nines weren’t bad, either. If you’d have gotten the design on the forty caliber right, your gun wouldn’t have killed the little boy, and Pace Arms would still be cranking out guns, money, and happiness. But… well, no need to rehash all that.”

“No.”

“So. In the course of my research, I reviewed the court transcripts and the financial declarations and the terms of the corporate dissolution. And I got out my trusty calculator and pushed a few keys, and guess what I saw.”

“Numbers?”

“Inventory still unsold.”

I figured this was where Bradley Smith was going. “And you’re going to help me by taking it off my hands.”

“Maybe I should know what it is.”

“Maybe I should know what you want it to be.”

“We’ve got two thousand men on the business end of things, all over the world. Some are in the most vile places on earth, some are in the most beautiful. Some in cities, some in mud. They go where they are needed. And what they all need is short-range stopping power, concealability, and one-hundred-percent reliability.”

“That would be the Hawk nine. We have a few. Thirty or so.”

“I need a thousand.”

My heart does a quick little somersault. “That’s quite an order for a bankrupt company, Mr. Smith.”

“And if the Hawk nines do what they’re supposed to do, we’d like to have all our people carrying them by the end of next year. So, a thousand more.”

Now, I attended church this last Sunday. I’ll admit it was to meet available women in the singles ministry, but it was church nonetheless. Thank you, God in heaven is all I can think.

I nod and push back in my rolling chair and glide across the carpet protector. “Come with me.”

I raise my eyebrows at Sharon on the way to the elevator. She smiles at Bradley Smith in a way that she has never smiled at me. But I knew she would smile at Smith that way because Smith has the thing that most women can’t resist. The thing. I’ve been trying to develop it for my entire adult life but I can’t even define it, so there’s no place to start. I once reverse-engineered an Egyptian submachine gun, and it was easy compared to developing the thing. You can’t reverse-engineer what you can’t define. Maybe it’s his goatee. I don’t know.

The elevator takes us down to the basement. The door opens and it’s dark. The basement is almost wholly below ground level, so the only natural light slips in through the long narrow windowpanes up top. I step out and key on the lights. I light only the lobby and part of the third floor these days. No use wasting money. My secretary, Sharon of my heart-Sharon Rose Novak is her full name-is my last pretense at solvency. Last week she actually braced me for a raise to help her pay for her wedding, which is set for next month. I haven’t met the groom, though I dislike the way he talks to her on the phone. She’s normally talkative but during their calls there are long silences on her part, then short, quiet replies. He takes something out of her. They registered at Bloomingdale’s and I bought them all twelve of the requested service settings, a Wedgwood design that was not cheap. Maybe they’ll have me over for dinner someday. She’s a blue-eyed blonde and has the prettiest face I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, I’ve spent almost all of what little money I had on keeping the doors open here at Pace Arms. Eighteen months ago when we correctly foresaw the courtroom mud bath, Chester got some building department friends to fast-track a city permit for a small penthouse up on the third floor, making the building a residence, which is outside the terms of the settlement. So I sold my home and bought the penthouse from Chet and I live here now. Chet holds the deed on the office footage. He left the country before the judgment and there have been only three postcards from him since- Thailand, Berlin, and Tahiti. They were addressed to “All” at Pace Arms. He took the last of the company cash with him, thirty grand. I pay his property taxes. Before leaving, he told me that any dreams of saving Pace would be foolish pride, but I still think there’s a way to salvage the business.

And I think the way to salvage it is now standing right next to me.

We pause in the basement vestibule for a moment. It used to be a waiting area for customers about to test-fire one product or another. Gone are the genuine 1878 walnut bar from a saloon in Bodie, the King Ranch furniture and the Remington bronzes and the framed Catlin lithos and the big-screen hi-def and the bear and bison mounts. Uncle Chet also made off with the proceeds from the sale of these beauties, approximately eighteen paltry grand. Now all we have here in the vestibule are cobwebs and daddy longlegs. The air is stale and warm.

“The first floor was manufacturing,” I say. “Second was R and D. Third was management, sales, and marketing. Uncle Chester had the big corner suite on the third even though I was running the shop at age seventeen. I was the one bringing the runs in under budget and making rain. Down here in the basement, we did all the testing. The square footage of this building is much more than you’d think from the outside, which is one reason Chester bought it back in 1980. I wasn’t even born then.”

“Looks a little neglected.”

“I think of it as a bear in hibernation.”

“I think I smell him.”

“But check out the range.”

I lead Bradley through a set of swinging insulated doors that close behind us silently. The range acoustics eat sound. It takes a few seconds for the banks of fluorescent tubes to flicker to life, then the firing range spreads before us. It has carpeted floors stained by decades of gun smoke and gun oil and foot traffic and spilled cups of coffee. It has a low ceiling and the same foam-lined walls you would find in a recording studio. Back when business was good, ten of us could test-fire arms side by side at the firing line, with plenty of room between their benches. The targets were set out and retrieved by motor-driven pulleys. You could put the targets anywhere from five feet away to two hundred. I still remember the first time Dad and Mom brought me here. I remember how each time a gun went off, you could feel it right in the middle of your chest, like someone had tapped you there. I look at station two and think of my father, Tony. He died when I was ten.

I look at the dusty benches and the cobwebs drooping from the light fixtures. There are still old silhouette targets, corners curling, hanging in some of the firing lanes. Everywhere are stacks of unused silhouettes. A year ago, when we ceased manufacture after the judgment, the former night crew had a last-night party here and of course they got drunk and brought out their favorite weapons and blasted one of the silhouettes so the figure was pretty much gone, then they brought the target in on the pulley and signed their names out in the white paper, around the bullet holes. They just left it where it was.

Bradley Smith nods and looks around. He looks at the autographed target. He has a thoughtful face for a wiseass. “Looks like somewhere the Addams Family would play.”

“I liked Morticia when I was a kid.”

“I still smell gunpowder,” he says.

“The smell of money, the guys used to say.”

“So, do you have a thousand nines or not?”

“Before I answer that, I’d like to show you something.”

I sit at station four, and Bradley takes station three. I unlock the station four gun case and remove a heavily lacquered wooden box with the stainless steel Pace Arms insignia on the lid. The box was a gift from Mom, tenth birthday. Beautiful, really. I set the box on the bench and use the key I still carry on my chain to unlock it, and then I pull out the gun. It’s a handgun, not large, not light. It is well balanced and feels good in my hand.

“This is the Love 32,” I say. “It’s engraved on the right side of the slide.”

“Love 32? What kind of a name is that for a gun?”

“Thirty-two is the caliber. The Love is for the California lawman Harry Love. He shot down the bandit Joaquin Murrieta and cut off his head and brought it back in a jar of alcohol. It toured the state back in the early 1850s. Cost a dollar to see it. Joaquin was California ’s first rock star. Harry Love was his promoter. It’s myth and legend and a little history. I like history. It was the only class in high school I stayed awake through. I dropped out junior year.”

The look on Bradley Smith’s face isn’t something I can readily ID. He looks like he’s been kicked in the balls but trying not to show it. For just a second he looks like he’s going to come up off the bench, but in order to do what, I couldn’t tell you.

“Most of what people believe about Murrieta is pure bullshit,” he says.

“The part about Harry Love isn’t.”

“You don’t know anything.”

More of that look of his. He could be deranged. “Okay.”

“So who do you like, Ron,” he says. “The outlaws or the lawmen?”

“Both. The Joaquin 32 didn’t sound right.”

“What about the Murrieta 32?”

“Too wordy. It’s my gun. I designed it, so I get to name it. I built this thing by hand.”

He nods and looks over at the autographed target, takes a deep breath and lets it out. He stands and pulls one of the spotter’s stools over and sits down next to me. “How many rounds in the magazine of the Love 32?”

“There are two ways to answer that. As you see it now, the magazine holds eight thirty-two-caliber ACP rounds, and one in the chamber if you want. It weighs twenty-nine ounces, it’s seven and three-sixteenths inches long, blowback operated, with an alloy frame, sixteen grooves of right-hand rifling, and a trigger pull of four and a half pounds.”

I drop the magazine to the bench top, rack the Love to make sure the chamber is empty, then close the slide and lower the hammer and hand the gun to Smith.

“It’s heavy.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

Smith hefts the gun, then aims it one-handed at the station four target fifty feet away. “But the balance is good.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t love the thirty-two ACP load,” says Bradley. “It’s slow and it doesn’t hit hard.”

“There’s a reason for that, too,” I say. “The load, I mean. Why I chose the thirty-two ACP.”

“Sounds like you’ve got all sorts of reasons, Mr. Pace.”

“Just Ron is fine.”

“Ron. The Ron of Reason.”

“Just a few reasons, actually. Want to fire it?”

“I don’t want my people carrying thirty-twos, I can tell you that right now. I don’t care how good a deal you’ll make me.”

“Fine. Just fire it. Glasses on the bench there.”

I get some ammo from the gun safe and thumb the shells into the magazine. Bradley slaps the magazine home, stands and plants eight bullets in the black at fifty feet.

What a sound. Just like the old days. Even fancy acoustics can’t keep a handgun from sounding like a handgun. I inhale the wonderful smell of exploded gunpowder and watch the brass bounce and roll around the carpet.

“Dope trigger,” he says. “Those four and a half pounds are smooth as butter.”

“Here.” I reload the gun and hand it back to him. I listen to the sound of music as eight more circles of light appear in the black body of the enemy.

He pops the magazine, checks the chamber, safes the gun, and tosses it to me. “I still can’t arm my men and women with it, Ron. Try stopping a drunk, three-hundred-pound Tutsi warlord with this thing. Or some cranked-up Detroit carjacker.”

I nod and look at the target, then back at Bradley. “Appearances are deceiving.”

“Stopping-power isn’t.”

“Watch this.” I give him a wry look and glance at my fake Rolex. Then I set the gun on the bench and use a punch from my pocketknife to push the frame pins through. Then I pry the frame apart, exposing the inner firing and reloading and eject mechanisms.

“You can use an eight-penny nail for that matter,” I say. “Toss me those needle-nose from off the box there, will you?”

I catch the pliers midair and swoop them down into the body of the Love 32. I invert the trigger bar pin, remove the catch spring, reposition the detente notch of the extractor, and reverse the block plate and line up the witness marks. It takes twenty seconds, and another fifteen to position the frame and drive the pins back in with the punch.

“Less than a minute,” says Bradley.

“It was exactly fifty seconds. My personal best is thirty-six, but that was after two beers. After three beers, my time went up fast.”

“Really? Will it really fire full auto?”

“Behold.” I remove the extra-capacity magazine from the lacquered box and push in fifty rounds. This takes a little time, but we say nothing. I slam it home and now the Love 32 has eight inches of gracefully curving clip extending below the grip.

Then, holding the gun in my right hand, I cup my left hand over the back of the frame near the magazine release, and I simultaneously depress two inset buttons. This releases the telescoping graphite butt. It’s like the retractable handle on a piece of rolling luggage, but of narrower gauge and shorter. Fully extended at fifteen inches, the rubber-backed butt can then be braced against the crook of the shooter’s elbow, rib cage, or even hip. It collapses in one-inch increments to fit smaller people.

I snug the butt against the inside of my elbow and look at Bradley Smith.

“Stallone should play you,” he says.

“It’ll burn through those fifty rounds in five seconds. Or you can use short bursts. Do you notice anything else different about this little genius?”

“The raised comb along the barrel top. It’s like on a trap gun, but wider. It has nothing to do with the sights.”

“Correct.” I turn and aim the machine gun downrange, with telescoping butt still braced against my elbow. Then I place my free left hand over the comb and push down.

“For the muzzle rise,” says Bradley.

I nod. Machine guns are notorious for rising as they burn through the rounds. The barrel wants to shoot the sky. Many an inexperienced submachine gunner has pulled the trigger, let the barrel jump up, and pretty much invited the bullets into his head. So long. But not if you brace down on the barrel with your free hand. The brace comb on the Love 32 is raised for cooling because the barrel itself gets hot.

“Allow me,” I say. I set the Love 32 on the bench and bring in the old target, put on a fresh one, and send it back fifty feet. Then I take up the Love and stand just in front of the bench, feet spread, retractable butt snug in my elbow, left palm firm on the comb. I look downrange at the target, glance once at the barrel of the gun, then I let it rip. There’s a five-second Armageddon of noise and smoke, then silence, and the black silhouette has a ragged hole in the middle about the size of a grapefruit.

“Wicked cool,” says Bradley.

“Your turn.”

I reload and Bradley puts up a fresh target. He’s practically beaming as he steps up and gets ready. He’s slow and meticulous about it, savoring the prep and the moment, not a trigger-ditzy moron like half the people I’ve sold weapons to. I hear the safety click off.

Five seconds later he’s standing in a cloud of fragrant gun smoke, and the bottom half of the target is almost detached.

“Unreal.”

“It’s real,” I say. “And there’s more.”

I take the noise suppressor from the lacquered box and screw it on. The barrel threads are recessed into the frame, such that a casual observer won’t see that the gun is fitted for a silencer.

“That’s your reason for the thirty-two ACP,” says Bradley.

“Right. Nine hundred and five feet per second. Subsonic, no boom, easily quieted.”

“I’m starting to like you, Ron.”

“You’re going to love this. Put up some fresh paper, please.”

I reload and step up and fire. You can hear the muffled tap of the rounds going off and the cartridges chattering through and the ejector spitting out the brass, and you can hear the empties pinging on the carpet and you can even hear the ringing in your ears from the prior shooting, but what you mainly hear is the paper silhouette being torn to shreds and the bullets spitting into the sandbags at the distant far end of the range.

“I’ll remain briefly speechless,” says Bradley.

“There’s more,” I say. “These guns are untraceable to me. Untraceable to Favier and Winling. No serial numbers. Nothing that says Pace. Just Love 32, etched with subtle beauty on the forward slide. I can see legions of law enforcement officers worldwide mystified by these guns. Where did these come from? Did they simply spring from the earth, like the skeleton men in Jason and the Argonauts? Or drop from the sky, like manna? Something tells me that you would like to bedazzle law enforcement, Bradley. I think you like the outlaws more than the lawmen.”

“How much per gun?”

“There’s just one small catch. They don’t exist. This is the prototype. Do you like martinis?”