Lightning

Now, after she gave Fat Jack her new shopping list, after he quoted a price and counted her money, he led her and Chris through the hidden door in the back of his office closet, down a narrow stairwell—he seemed in danger of becoming wedged tight—to the basement where he kept his illegal stock. Though his restaurant was a madhouse, his arsenal was stored with fetishistic neatness: cartons upon cartons of handguns and automatic weapons were stacked on metal shelves, arranged according to caliber and also according to price; he kept at least a thousand guns in the basement of the Pizza Party Palace.

He was able to provide her with two modified Uzis—”An immensely popular gun since the attempt to kill Reagan,” he said—and another .38 Chief’s Special. Stefan had hoped to obtain a Colt Commander 9mm Parabellum with a nine-round magazine and the barrel machined for a silencer. “Don’t have it,” Fat Jack said, “but I can let you have a Colt Commander Mark IV in .38 Super, which has a nine-round magazine, and I’ve got two of those machined for silencers. Got the silencers, too, plenty of ’em.” She already knew that he wasn’t able to provide her with ammunition, but as he finished his Mars bar, he explained anyway: “Don’t stock ammunition or explosives. Look, I don’t believe in authority, but I’m not totally irresponsible. I got a restaurant full of shrieking, snot-faced kids upstairs, and I can’t risk blowing them to bits, even if that’d bring more peace to the world. Besides, I’d destroy all my pretty neon too.”

“All right,” Laura said, putting one arm around Chris to keep him at her side, “what about the gas on my list?”

“You sure you don’t mean tear gas?”

“No. Vexxon. That’s the stuff I want.” Stefan had given her the name of the gas. He said it was one of the chemical weapons that was on the list of items the institute hoped to bring back to 1944 and introduce into the German military arsenal. Now perhaps it could be used against the Nazis. “We need something that will kill fast.”

Fat Jack leaned his backside against the metal worktable in the middle of the room, where he had laid out the Uzis, revolvers, pistol, and silencers. The table creaked ominously. “Well, what we’re talking about here is army ordnance, tightly controlled stuff.”

“You can’t get it?”

“Oh, sure, I can get you some Vexxon,” Fat Jack said. He moved away from the table, which creaked in relief as his weight was lifted from it, and went to a set of metal shelves where he withdrew a couple of Hershey bars from between boxes of guns, a secret stash. He did not offer one to Chris, but put the second bar in the side pocket of his sweatpants and began to eat the other. “I don’t have that sort of crap here; just as dangerous as explosives. But I can have it for you late tomorrow, if that’s not inconvenient.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“It’ll cost you.”

“I know.”

Fat Jack grinned. Bits of chocolate were stuck between his teeth. “Don’t get much call for this kind of thing, not from someone like yourself, a small buyer. Tickles me to try to figure what you’d be up to with it. Not that I expect you to tell me. But usually it’s big buyers from South America or the Middle East who want these neuroactive and respiractive gases. Iraq and Iran used plenty the last few years.”

“Neuroactive, respiractive? What’s the difference?”

“Respiractive—they have to breathe it in; it kills them seconds after it hits the lungs and spreads through the bloodstream. When you release it, you’ve got to be wearing a gas mask. Your neuroactive, on the other hand, kills even quicker, just on touching the skin, and with certain types of it—like Vexxon—you won’t need a gas mask or protective clothing, ’cause you can take a couple of pills before you use it, and they’re like an advance antidote.”

“Yes, I was supposed to ask for the pills, too,” Laura said.

“Vexxon. Easiest-to-use gas on the market. You’re a real smart shopper,” Fat Jack said.

Already he had finished the candy bar, and he appeared to have grown noticeably since Laura and Chris had entered his office half an hour ago. She realized that Fat Jack’s commitment to political anarchy was reflected not only in the atmosphere of his pizza parlor but in the condition of his body, for his flesh swelled unrestrained by social or medical considerations. He seemed to revel in his size, as well, frequently patting his gut or grabbing the rolls of fat on his sides and kneading them almost affectionately, and he walked with belligerent arrogance, pushing the world away from him with his belly. She had a vision of Fat Jack growing ever more huge, soaring past four hundred pounds, past five hundred, even as the wildly pyramiding neon structures on the roof grew ever more elaborate, until one day the roof collapsed and Fat Jack exploded simultane­ously.

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