Orphan X

7 Who’s Who in the Zoo

“Wanna hear the testicle smasher of the year?” Tommy Stojack asked, ambling around his workbench and sucking the last bit of burn from a Camel Wide. “Pretty soon I’ll be able to just print your ass a gun. Type some shit into a program and it spits out a mold. Love to see the baby-kissers in D.C. regulate that.” He plucked the cigarette from beneath his biker mustache and ran the butt under a sink tap before depositing it among a dozen others floating in a red keg cup filled with water. One stray ember could turn the workshop into a meteor crater. “But hey, let’s not panic the sheeple, right?”

Evan followed him across the dim space, which, given the slumbering machines, sharp-edged blades, and weapon crates, felt more like a medieval lair. The Las Vegas sun had baked straight through the walls, and the air smelled of spent powder and gun grease. The heat made the knife cut on Evan’s forearm itch, the skin tingling as it healed, shedding dried bits of superglue.

Tommy customized weapons. He specialized in procurement and R&D for various government-sanctioned black-ops groups, though he’d never stated as much directly. From his slang and demeanor, Evan guessed he’d learned the trade in Naval Special Warfare. About seven years ago, they’d met through a labyrinthine tangle of connections, and he and the nine-fingered armorer had slowly built rapport. It was difficult to develop trust without any personal information being exchanged, and yet, after circling each other like wary sharks over the course of several covert meets, they had landed on a version of it. Somehow, through coded talk and pointed references, they’d gotten the bearings of each other’s moral compasses and found them aligned.

“There are drawbacks, of course,” Tommy continued. “To printed guns. Quality-control issues. But hey, what do you care? You’re a trigger-puller. As long as it goes boom, you’re happy, right?” He winked, gestured at the sticky coffeepot on the counter behind Evan. “What say you pour me a hot cup of shut-the-fuck-up and we get to what we’re getting to.”

Tommy built many of Evan’s weapons. Because he had access to virgin-stock pistol frames without serial numbers, he could provide him with sterilized guns, guns that did not technically exist.

But today, the morning after he’d killed a dirty cop, Evan required a different service.

He reached for his Kydex high-guard hip holster, molded in the shape of the gun. The Wilson 1911 came free with a click, and he rotated the pistol sideways and offered it to Tommy.

“I need you to puddle the barrel and firing pin,” Evan said.

“You been throwing lead.”

“I have.”

“It catch any bad guys?”

“One.”

“And the Lord said, ‘Keep justice, and do righteousness.’”

Tommy’s nine fingers moved at blackjack-dealer speed, disassembling the Wilson across his bench. He put on a set of welder’s goggles, fired up the cutting torch, and reduced the barrel, slide, firing pin, and extractor to slag. Then he popped a new slide assembly onto Evan’s pistol frame and handed the weapon back.

“Wa-la,” he said. “It’s a ghost again. Just like you.”

Evan clicked in a fresh mag, let the slide run forward, and started to holster the pistol, but Tommy said, “Whoa, cowboy.” He pointed to a test-firing tube in the shadows. The four-foot-long steel pipe, filled with sand, was slanted downward at a forty-five-degree angle. Donning protective eyes-and-ears gear, Evan aimed at the mouth of the tube. He ran through a full mag test-firing the gun, the deadened smacks of metal into sand reverberating around the lair.

He gave a nod and turned back to Tommy, who downed the last of his coffee and popped open a tin of Skoal, tucking a meaty wedge into his bottom lip. Evan had come across a lot of men with a lot of habits but had yet to see someone hop from stimulant to stimulant with Tommy’s ease and enthusiasm.

“I know you prefer burning powder, but in case you get stuck fighting at bad-breath distance…” Tommy grabbed a stout folding knife off his bench and flipped it at Evan. “Just got these in. Figure you could use an update.”

Evan thumbed up the black-oxide blade. Heat-treated, S30V steel, titanium and G10 handle, tanto tip to punch through body armor. A Naval Special Warfare model, Strider make. Evan was a passable eskrima knife fighter, though not superb; an adversary who had truly mastered the Filipino form would carve him to pieces. Because of this he always made a point of bringing a gun to a knife fight. “Thanks,” he said.

“I know you like you a Strider,” Tommy said.

“I had a dog once with that name,” Evan said.

“I don’t picture you having had a childhood.”

“White picket fence, apple pie, Wiffle ball.”

Smirking, Tommy fell back into a chair, letting it roll across the slick concrete and come to rest near what looked like an old infantry mortar. He hoisted up a round from a wooden crate, the drab green thin projectile thicker than his forearm. “What say we take a drive to the desert, play big-boy lawn darts?”

“Tempting,” Evan said. “But I gotta get back.”

“All right. Let’s get some bucks in my jeans, you can be on your way.”

Evan handed off a folded wad of hundred-dollar bills, and Tommy tossed it on the bench without counting it. Evan started for the sturdy metal door. As he neared, compulsion overtook him and he crouched to make sure the mounted security camera by the frame was in fact unplugged, as per their arrangement.

It was.

He shot an apologetic look back at Tommy.

Tommy glanced up, caught in the act of counting the bills.

Both men grinned sheepishly.

“It doesn’t hurt to be safe, now, does it, brother?” Tommy spit a stream of tobacco through the gap in his front teeth, tapping the wad of cash into his shirt pocket. “Never know who’s who in the zoo.”