T. Parker: Iron River

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.