Jason Pinter - The Guilty

"Ripples, Henry. Not just the dead are affected by death."

"Guess not."

"That quote," Jack said. "Billy the Kid. You got something, but it's not nearly concrete enough for Wallace to let you print it."

"I'll find more," I said. "But I need time, resources."

Jack looked at me, seemed to be weighing something.

Then he took a pen and pad from the briefcase. He opened the pad, scribbled something on it, then ripped off a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a check for two thousand dollars.

"Jack, I can't possibly…"

"Take it," he said. "This will buy you some resources. And if it leads to anything, I expect to be reimbursed."

"And if it doesn't lead to anything?"

Jack smiled. "Then I expect one hell of a birthday present."

I had nothing to say, but, "Thank you."

"Don't mention it again," Jack said. He finished his drink, set it down. The waitress came over and he nodded for one more.

He saw my eyes following his. "Trust me, kid, once you get to my age you can't underestimate the importance of a good drink."

"I'll remember that, but I have a few years."

"Yeah, you do, but they go by quick. Wasn't long ago I was meeting my boss for drinks. Now," Jack said. "That girl you're with. Amanda's her name, right?"

"That's right." In the year and a half since I'd known

Jack, we'd never discussed Amanda other than platitudes and pleasantries.

"And you two met during the Fredrickson fiasco."

"They say the best relationships are born out of extreme circumstances."

Jack's eyes had a flicker of recognition. "I think I heard that in a movie once."

"Probably."

"How are things going between you two?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Good, I guess. We're living together. Soon, I know, after everything that happened, but it feels good."

"That's nice," Jack said wistfully. "Another thing you can never underestimate is companionship." Jack, I knew, had been married, and divorced, three times. "So I guess you'd say it's serious."

I laughed. "Yeah, I think so. Besides, if Amanda ever knew I said no to that question I'd wake up the next morning with no teeth."

"Feisty, is she?"

"She'd kick feisty's ass down the block."

"That's good," Jack said, smiling. "You know I look at you across this table, you look at me the same way I used to look at Petey Vincent."

"The name rings a bell," I said.

"Petey Vincent was my idol growing up. Those days, newsmen were the toast of the city. You reported the hot stories, had more groupies than ballplayers, spent the evenings at your Park Avenue homes and ate caviar. Nowadays the only way a reporter eats caviar is if an I-banker sends it to them at Christmas. It's a thankless job, so you gotta really love it."

"I do," I said.

"What I'm saying is," Jack continued, "if you want to be a great reporter, you need to keep Amanda this far from you."

He held out his arm, as though holding up a wall.

"Why would I want to do that?"

"I'm not going to ask if you love her," Jack said. "Love is easier to find than you think. But nobody remembers great love. People remember great men and women for who they are, not who they love. At some point in every relationship, you have to make a choice as to what your priorities are. At some point this job will demand more of your time than your loved ones are willing to give up. And when that happens, you can either be prepared for it or you get overwhelmed. You'll end up a half-assed reporter and a half-assed husband. And then you'll have nothing."

The waitress came back with a refill of Jack's drink. She noticed that neither of us were speaking. "Getcha another?" she said, nodding at my half-finished beer.

"No, thanks." She clicked her gum and walked away.

"I don't think I could ever give her up," I said. Jack sighed, looked down.

"Then you'll make a fine beat journalist. Live with exposed brick and take the subway because you can't afford taxis."

"That's not why I do this job."

"Of course it's not," Jack said. "But in any industry, the money level rises as the talent itself does. The better you are, the more you're needed. And when the money comes, so does love. It might not be the forever kind of love people with shitty mortgages have, it might not last until you die, but it's good enough to make you smile every once in a while. And that's what life is about, in the end. When you stare into the abyss, you want a smile to come back at you. Even if it's just sometimes."

"I have that," I said. I felt a pressure on my chest. I took a sip of beer and swallowed it down.

"You try to make everyone happy, you wind up making nobody happy. Anyway," Jack said, raising his glass, "here's to the story. Let's find out more about this asshole, and hopefully put an end to it. Keep digging, Henry. Just don't stand too close to the hole."

I needed to find out who might have gotten hold of an authentic 1873 Winchester, and how. Thankfully Jack had managed to pull together a file of many major gun collectors and museums. It was a haystack, to be sure, but one of these haystacks either sold their needle, or had it stolen. Jack had given me another thread, and now I needed to pull.

I went to the office, turned on my computer and ran a search for "Winchester 1873" and "stolen."

Only 149 hits came back. I searched through every entry, looking for anything that could be a piece of thread. Most of the articles were police and newspaper reports of replica Winchesters stolen from gun shows. No help there. I wasn't looking for a replica. Whoever was using that gun was using the real deal. None of the 149 hits went anywhere that looked promising.

I ran a new search, this time for "Winchester 1873" and

"museum." Over four hundred responses came back. I refined my search by adding the words "authentic" and "working."

Now we were down to thirty-two hits.

I sifted through each entry, arriving at the estimation of fifteen museums in the United States that listed authentic

Winchester 1873 rifles among their collections, along with some sort of reference to the gun being in working condition.

My first call was to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and

Museum, located in Waco. I got an automated system, pressed zero for the operator. A nice woman with a wonderful Southern drawl picked up the phone.

"Ranger Museum, how may I help ya?"

"Hi, do you still have an exhibit featuring the Winchester

1873 rifle?"

"Gun that won the West, we surely do. It's open from nine ayem to six pee-yem. Day passes are a dollar fifty, yearround pass is twelve dollars. That's the better deal, y'ask me."

"How long have you had that rifle?"

"Oh, heck, I've been here three years and it's been here long as I have, I'd have to ask for sure though."

"And you've had no other rifles come and go since then?"

"Why no…may I ask your interest?"

"That's okay, I appreciate the help." I hung up.

I called ten more museums. Each one could currently account for their Winchesters, and had seen none go missing in recent memory.

Then I dialed the twelfth number on my contact sheet, the

Museum of Outlaws and Lawmen in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

"MOL Museum, this is Rex speaking."

"Hi, Rex, I'm calling because I read somewhere that you have an authentic, working Winchester 1873 rifle in stock. Is that true?"

"It ain't in stock," Rex said, "this is a museum, not a sidewalk sale, son."

"Sorry, but you do have one."

"Why yes, sir, we do."

"Just one?"

There was a split second of silence before Rex answered, and I picked up on it.

"Why, yes, one's just about all we need."

"Have any rifles come in or left the museum for any reason over the last year?"