“I don’t deal in firearms,” the black man said. “Vintage watches, knives by name makers, die-cast military..
Rydell thought he’d had enough to do with knives already. “I just don’t like sitting here, waiting.”
“Nobody does,” Chevette said beside him. She was pressing a wet cloth against her eye.
Actually what bothered Rydell most about sitting was that he wasn’t sure how easy it would be to get back up. His side, with the duct tape on it now, didn’t hurt too badly, but he knew he’d stiffen up. He was about to ask Fontaine about the knives when Fontaine said: “Well. “Well what?” Rydell asked.
“Well,” Fontaine said, “it isn’t actually part of my stock, you know?” “What isn’t?” “I’ve got this lawyer, he’s African Union, you know? Forced out by politics.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Fontaine said, “but you know how it is, people come out of a situation like that, all that ethnic cleansing and shit. . “Yeah?” 233 “Well, they like to feel they got protection, something happens.”
Rydell was definitely interested.
“Trouble is,” Fontaine said, “they got this overkill mentality, over there. And my lawyer, Martial, he’s like that. Actually he’s trying not to be, understand? Got him a therapist and everything, trying to learn to walk around without a gun and not feel he’s liable to get his ass blown away by tribal enemies, right? Like this is America, here, you know?”
“I think you’re still liable to get your ass blown away by tribal enemies, in America, Mr. Fontaine.”
“That’s true,” Fontaine said, shifting his buttocks, “but Martial’s got that post-traumatic thing, right?”
“You help him with these problems? You help him by holding a weapon for him, Mr. Fontaine? Something he wouldn’t want to keep on his own premises?”
Fontaine looked at Rydell. Pursed his lips. Nodded.
“Where is it?”
“It’s in the wall, behind us.”
Rydell looked at the wall between them. “This is plywood?”
“Most of it,” Fontaine said, swinging around, “See here? This part’s a patch, gypsum wall filler. We built a box in here, put it in, plastered it over, painted.”
“Guess someone could find it with a metal detector,” Rydell said, remembering being trained how to search for stashes like this.
“I don’t think it has a lot of metal in it,” Fontaine said, “anyway not in the delivery system.”
“Can we .see it?”
“Well,” said Fontaine, “once we get it out, I’m stuck with it.”
“No,” Rydell said, “I am.”
Fontaine produced a little bone-handled pocketknife. Opened it, started digging gingerly at the wall.
“We could get a bigger knife,” Rydell suggested.
“Hush,” Fontaine said. As Rydell watched, the point of the knife exposed a dark ring, the size you’d wear on your finger. Fontaine pried it up and out of the hardened plaster, but it seemed to be fastened to something. “You pull this, okay?” 234 Rydell slid his middle finger through the ring, tugged it a little. Felt solid.
“Go on,” Fontaine said. “Hard.”
Plaster cracked, tore loose, as the fine steel wire attached to the ring pulled out around the patch, cutting through it like dry cheese. A rough, inch-thick rectangle coming away in Rydell’s hand. Fontaine was pulling something out of the rectangular recess that had been exposed. Something wrapped in what looked like an old green shirt.
Rydell watched as Fontaine gingerly unwrapped the green cloth, exposing a squat heavy object that looked like a cross between the square waxed-paper milk cartons of Rydell’s childhood and an industrial power drill. It was a uniform, dusty olive-green in color, and if it was in fact a firearm, it was the clumsiest-looking firearm Rydell had yet seen. Fontaine held it with what would’ve been the top of the milk carton pointed up at an angle, toward the ceiling. There was an awkward-looking pistol grip at the opposite end, and a sort of grooved, broom-handle affair about six inches in front of that.
“What is it?” Rydell asked.
“Chain gun,” Fontaine said. “Disposable. Can’t reload it. Caseless:
this long square thing’s the cartridges and the barrel in one. No-moving parts to it: ignition’s electrical. Two buttons here, where the trigger would be, you just point it, press ’em both the same time. It’ll do that four times. Four charges.”