Joe Haldeman - The Coming

“Evidence, eh? What happened?”

“Some guy’s going around killing pawnshop owners. What you think?”

He picked it out of the box gingerly and rubbed his thumb along the base of the butt, where the serial number had been ground off. “Cute barrel. Not exactly a sniper weapon.”

He clicked the cylinder around, peering through. “Ruger stopped making these in the teens. I see ’em now and then.”

“Bet you do. That was before they started isotope IDs.”

“Tell me about it. I don’t think this one came through the shop, I mean with the original barrel and number. Don’t see many chrome-plated ones, in any caliber.”

“You think the chrome plating was factory?”

He took out a pair of magnifying glasses and slipped them on, and peered along the weapon’s edges and surfaces. “Yeah. Guarantee it.” He took off the glasses and set the gun back in the box.

“What else?”

“You fished it out of the water, but it hadn’t been in there long. Allow for that, and the gun’s practically new. Probably stolen from some collector. Must have been. That’s where I’d start.”

“What’s it worth?”

“Actually, nothing. Without the barrel, I wouldn’t touch it. Obvious hit weapon. If it had the original barrel, four or five grand. Before its little bath.”

“On the street?”

“Maybe a grand, maybe five hundred. You oughta ask the guy next door about that.”

“Think I will.” Rabin closed the box and tucked it under his arm. “Thanks, Oz. You’ve been a help.”

“Sorry I couldn’t ID it. Buena suerte.”

“Buenas.” When he opened the door the sun was so bright it made his eyes water. He crunched through the gravel parking lot and walked up the unpainted wooden stairs to the next place.

The door opened with a surprise like a slap. Norman Bell!

His heart stopped and restarted. “Qabil. I… I don’t know what to… buenos días.”

“Uh… buenos. How’ve you been?”

“Fine… just fine.” Could he be in on it? No, he’d never. “I saw your girls a couple of weeks ago. They’re growing fast.”

“They do that.” There was an awkward silence and he held out a box. “Got to see a man about a gun.”

“Oh. Sure.” He held the door open. Rabin stepped through and then stopped.

“What are you doing here? Slumming?”

“I come by every now and then, looking for old guitars and such. Nothing today.”

He nodded. “I see your wife on the cube all the time. She looks good.”

“Oh yeah. She’s fine.” The one time they’d met had been strained. In the kitchen, she with wide eyes and he with mouth full.

“Take care,” he whispered with tenderness, and turned toward the gun rack and counter.

Norman finally shook off his paralysis and walked down the stairs. If Qabil had come in a couple of minutes earlier, he would have interrupted an illegal transaction.

The pawnbroker wouldn’t say anything. He was guiltier than Norman. Selling a pistol without waiting period or ID check.

It had to be a coincidence. Rabin wouldn’t be in on a thing that would cost him his job and family and put him in prison for ten or twenty years. As if a cop would last even one year in prison.

Norman stood at his bicycle and considered waiting for Qabil to come back out. Tell him about the threat and enlist his aid. He couldn’t do anything legally without throwing his life away. But maybe he would do something illegal.

Maybe later. First he’d talk to the lawyer and his gun-toting pal. Maybe they’d have a shoot-out there in front of the lunch crowd, and simplify things for everyone.

He clipped the bag onto his handlebars. It was awkwardly heavy, with the snub-nosed revolver and box of bullets. Had to find someplace private to load it.

He went a couple of blocks uptown and locked his bike outside a pool-hall bar where he’d never been. Just as soon not be recognized. He unclipped the bag and walked into a darkness redolent of marijuana and spilled beer.

There were no other customers yet. He walked past the rows of shabby billiard tables to the small bar at the end.

There were three crude VR games along one wall, at least twenty years old, and a century-old pinball machine, dusty and dark, glass cracked. A sign on the wall said NO FUCKING PROFANITY/¡NO USE PALABRAS VERDES, CARAJO! under a shiny holo cube of the president, all brilliant smile, a helmet of perfect hair guarding both of her brain cells.

The bartender was out of sight, rattling bottles around in a back room. He called out “¡Momentito!” and it actually was just a moment.

He was a big black man with startling blue eyes, obviously Cuban. Bright metal teeth. “What’ll you have?”

“Draft Molly. Use your bathroom?”

“Sure. Ain’t cleaned it yet.”

Norman was prepared for an odoriferous hell, but it wasn’t bad in that respect. The urinal was a metal trough that evidently dispensed a powerful antiseptic. There was blood on the floor, though, and a smeared handprint of dried blood on the stall door.

He opened the door and didn’t find a body, so the previous night’s activity had probably been conflict resolution rather than murder. He locked the stall and sat down and opened the bag.

He’d bought an old-fashioned revolver for reliability. It had been so long since he’d fired a gun; more than thirty years. In 2020 he’d killed a couple of dozen men for the crime, he always said, of wearing the other side’s uniform. Something he’d had in common with Qabil, though their wars were a generation apart, and he was technically the enemy.

In Norman’s mind, there were no enemies in war. Just victims. Victims of historical process.

Heavy blued steel. He riddled with a mechanism on the side and the cylinder swung away. He slid six fat cartridges into their homes and snapped it shut.

He could just put the muzzle in his mouth and, again, simplify everything. Sure. Then Rory would have to identify the rest of his body, and Willy Joe and his pals would just shift their focus to her.

Besides, simplifying was against his nature. He resealed the cartridge box and considered what to do with the nineteen remaining rounds. If it were combat, you’d want them as handy as possible. But he couldn’t imagine a situation where he’d have the opportunity, or necessity, to reload. He knew that Willy Joe carried a weapon; that was part of his swagger. Maybe his lawyer was armed, too, or there would be bodyguards.

He’d survived two bullet wounds, lung and leg, in the war. He might survive another. But the real lesson from the experience was to aim for the head.

They were experimenting with brain transplants. In Willy Joe’s case, anything would be an improvement.

He considered throwing away the nineteen cartridges here, where another patron could make use of them. But with his luck the police would find them instead, and they’d trace them back to him. Assuming he survived lunch.

The rational part of him knew there was little danger; he was useless to them dead. But part of him would always be in the desert, fighting men with guns, and he wasn’t going to face one unarmed.

Besides, Willy Joe didn’t strike him as particularly rational. He put the bullets back in the bag and took out the light plastic holster. He set the revolver on a shelf and read the instructions, then opened his shirt and twisted the holster back and forth rapidly. It warmed in his hands. He carefully positioned it under his left arm and pressed it into place. It stuck like glue, but would supposedly peel away painlessly. He slipped the gun into it, the weight strange but reassuring, then flushed the toilet (a flagrant violation of the law) and returned to the bar.