T. Parker - Iron River

“Ivan Dragovitch,” he said. “You are the new Blowdown agent.”

“Yes, Charlie Hood.”

“This is my wife, Sheila.”

She offered her hand from behind the counter, and Hood shook it over the pistols.

“I respect ATFE,” said Dragovitch. “I admire agents Ozburn and Bly and Holdstock. Come, sit. I have some new faces for you.”

The Blowdown crew had told him of Dragovitch’s selective contempt and adoration for his customers. He’d shot a biker-robber dead the week his store had opened, then chased the man’s accomplice outside and shot him dead, too. He was openly disdainful of anyone who looked off-center to him. If you were clean-cut and had decent manners, Dragovitch could be courtly and deferential. If he offered coffee, he liked you. He adored law enforcement and made no secret of it. He had had Ozburn, Bly, and Holdstock for drinks once at his home in the hills outside Quartz, and Ozburn said he was gracious. Ozburn also said he was borderline paranoid, but so what.

Dragovitch led Hood to the counter and found him a stool. He was thick-necked and blue-eyed and he styled his silver hair in the jutting prow of a TV evangelist or NFL head coach. Hood sat and smiled at Sheila, who remained standing near the register. She was heavily made up and pretty.

“Coffee, Deputy Hood?” Dragovitch asked.

“Sure. Black is fine.”

Dragovitch went through a door in the back and shut it.

“Do you like the ATFE?” asked Sheila.

“They’re good people. I’m a sheriff’s deputy on assignment.”

“The gun sellers get a bad rap. Ivan tries his best to comply and be helpful.”

“If all the dealers were as helpful, we’d have a much easier job.”

“There were rumors about Agent Holdstock.”

“Oh? I didn’t hear them.”

“That he was taken to Mexico and tortured, but the Baja police rescued him.”

“That’s quite a tale. I saw Jimmy just yesterday and he didn’t say a thing about it.”

She smiled and shook back her hair. Her fingernails were red and carefully kept. “You wouldn’t tell me anyway.”

“Naw. I wouldn’t.”

Hood looked down through the glass countertop at the handguns, price tag strings looped through the trigger guards. Dragovitch’s prices were on the high side, but his wares were polished and tastefully arranged and the countertop glass was etched with use but without a smudge. Hood looked up and around for the surveillance cameras but saw none.

“There are four of them, all hidden,” said Sheila. “It makes the customers more relaxed. I do the faces.”

Dragovitch came back with a mug of coffee and two black three-ringed binders. Sheila produced a Dragon Arms coaster from behind the counter, and he set the coffee on it. He handed Hood one of the black binders. Hood saw that the contents were sectioned off by month. He turned to June, the last month that Blowdown had been here for a routine field interview. As Hood patiently flipped through the pictures, Dragovitch flipped correspondingly through his binder, which was thick with FTRs. Hood was impressed by the quality of the images. Although taken from the digital video cameras, the stills were clear and focused. Sheila had spent some time on this.

Dragovitch narrated. “There, the first, a man who bought two very nice Ruger twenty-twos. It just took a while for the background to come through. I don’t know. They say the computers are slow, but maybe there’s a problem with this man, eh?”

From the FTR, Dragovitch rattled off the buyer’s name and age and address.

Hood, sharing none of Dragovitch’s suspicion, nodded politely and turned to the next page.

“Then, this man came in three days later and he bought two more of the same Ruger twenty-twos. This is strange. This seems like more than coincidence to me. When he purchases, I realize his home city is the same as the man who bought the two twenty-twos three days before- Oceanside. Why Oceanside? Why so many Rugers?”

Hood nodded politely again and turned to the next page.

“Now that next man was a human scum. He was rude. He smelled badly. I refused service to him according to the sign above my cash register. He cussed me vividly and made a gesture to Sheila and walked out. I have no FTR, so I don’t know anything about him. But I suspect one thing-he will not be back.”

Hood continued. Most of the pictures were of shoppers who did not buy. They were simply people whom Dragovitch suspected of being suspicious. Hood did see a pattern here: younger buyers with facial hair, biker or hippie types, Hispanics of all description, blacks. Dragovitch made his judgments on an odd array of detail: One buyer had an eye patch, one wore a Che Guevara T-shirt, one claimed to be of Croatian descent but didn’t know Zagreb, one used an inhaler, one had a broad forehead and thick black eyebrows and a swatch of bleached hair combed back.

“Meet Silenced Automatics,” said Dragovitch, looking down at the picture. “Silenced automatics are all he talks about.”

“But you won’t sell him silenced automatics,” said Hood.

“A man who looks like that?”

Hood flipped the last picture over and closed the binder.

“Thank you, Mr. Dragovitch.”

“Deputy Hood, I do have something for you today. Something solid. I’ve been eager for you to see the picture and hear the story.”

Ivan looked at Sheila. Hood saw her nod and color. She reached behind the counter and offered still another picture to Hood.

“Here,” she said.

Hood took the sheet. It was a rather nice portrait of Bradley Jones. He was wearing a leather cowboy hat and sunglasses, but it was unmistakably Bradley, from the leather vest to the goatee to the lanky posture.

“His name is Kyle Johnson,” said Dragovitch. “He has been in here several times the last year. He has not purchased anything, yet. Yet. He implies some connection to law enforcement. He said he was looking for something small and automatic. I said you mean semiautomatic and he said no, I mean fully automatic. I told him there was no such gun that I can legally sell. These are military weapons. He would say it was all a joke, that he wasn’t serious. But he would return a few weeks later and we would have the same conversation. He would attempt to be charming, but he is only arrogant. He would look at me and Sheila and smile with some wickedness and he would suggest that we could produce such an automatic firearm if we wanted to. I said the world is awash in AK- 47s and M16s and all manner of MACs, so why not find an unscrupulous dealer to sell full automatic? Why keep coming here? And this young man, he would ask questions and examine everything in the store and then he would leave. We were uncertain whether to make his picture. He never bought, true. But he is young and proud of himself and dresses with subversion and he stands against everything I believe in. He brought Sheila a flower in a vase. He brought me a quality bottle of vodka. Still, I do not like him and he does not represent America. But now that he has agreed to purchase, we believe you should be aware of him. We have run his background check and he has passed it, of course. His driver’s license is valid. He is a legal customer.”

“What does he want?”

“Ammunition only. No firearms.”

“What round?”

“The thirty-two ACP.”

“How many?”

Dragovitch raised his eyebrows. “Well. This will be of some interest. He wishes to buy, ah, fifty thousand rounds.”

“Fifty thousand rounds.”

“New shells, U.S. made. I know a wholesale supplier in San Diego. Kyle has agreed to a cash price of eighteen thousand dollars.”

Hood looked at the picture. “When?”

“This depends on the source of the supplier. The quantity is large. Perhaps one more week.”