Persuader

really listening," I said. "I was tired. And it was all mixed in with stuff about sneakers and cars and coats and watches."
    "Duke went to Treasury," she said. "After he was a cop." I nodded. "Beck probably met him on the job. Probably bought him off."
    "Where does Quinn fit in?"
    "I figure he was running a rival operation," I said. "He probably always was, ever since he got out of the hospital in California. He had six months to make his plans. And guns are a much better fit with a guy like Quinn than narcotics. I figure at some point he identified Beck's operation as a takeover target. Maybe he liked the way Beck was mining the dope dealer market. Or maybe he just liked the rug side of the business. It's great cover. So he moved in. He kidnapped Richard five years ago, to get Beck's signature on the dotted line."
    "Beck told you the Hartford guys were his customers," Eliot said.
    "They were," I said. "But for their guns, not for their dope. That's why he was puzzled about the Uzis. He'd probably just gotten through selling them a whole bunch of H and Ks, and now they're using Uzis? He couldn't understand it. He must have thought they had switched suppliers."
    "We were pretty dumb," Villanueva said.
    "I was dumber than you," I said. "I was amazingly dumb. There was evidence all over the place. Beck isn't rich enough to be a dope dealer. He makes good money, for sure, but he doesn't make millions a week. He noticed the marks I scratched on the Colt cylinders. He knew the price and the weight of a laser sight to use on the Beretta he gave me. He put a couple of mint H&Ks in a bag when he needed to take care of some business down in Connecticut. Probably pulled them right out of stock. He's got a private collection of Thompson grease guns."
    "What's the mechanic for?"
    "He gets the guns ready for sale," I said. "That's my guess. He tweaks them, adjusts them, checks them out. Some of Beck's customers wouldn't react well to substandard merchandise."
    "Not the ones we know," Duffy said.
    "Beck talked about the M16 at dinner," I said. "He was conversing about an assault rifle, for God's sake. And he wanted to hear my opinion about Uzis versus H&Ks, like he was really fascinated. I thought he was just a gun nerd, you know, but it was actually professional interest. He has computer access to the Glock factory in Deutsch-Wagram in Austria." Nobody spoke. I closed my eyes, then I opened them again.
    "There was a smell in a basement room," I said. "I should have recognized it. It was the smell of gun oil on cardboard. It's what you get when you stack boxes of new weapons and leave them there for a week or so." Nobody spoke.
    "And the prices in the Bizarre Bazaar books," I said. "Low, medium, high. Low for ammunition, medium for handguns, high for long guns and exotics." Duffy was looking at the wall. She was thinking hard.
    "OK," Villanueva said. "I guess we were all a little dumb." Duffy looked at him. Then she stared at me. The tactical problem was finally dawning on her.
    "We have no jurisdiction," she said.
    Nobody spoke.
    "This is ATF business," she said. "Not DEA."
    "It was an honest mistake," Eliot said.
    She shook her head. "I don't mean then. I mean now. We can't be in there. We have to butt out, right now, immediately."
    "I'm not butting out," I said.
    "You have to. Because we have to. We have to fold our tents and leave. And you can't be in there on your own and unsupported." A whole new definition of alone and undercover.
    "I'm staying," I said.
    I searched my soul for a whole year after it happened and concluded I wouldn't have answered any differently even if she hadn't been fragrant and naked under a thin T-shirt and sitting next to me in a bar when she asked the fateful question. Will you let me make the arrest? I would have said yes, whatever the circumstances. For sure. Even if she had been a big ugly guy from Texas or Minnesota standing at attention in my office, I would have said yes. She had done the work. She deserved the credit. I was vaguely interested in getting ahead back then, maybe a little less so than most people, but any structure that has a ranking system tempts you to try to climb it. So I was vaguely interested. But I wasn't a guy who hijacked subordinates' achievements in order to make myself look good. I never did that. If somebody performed well, did a good job, I was always happy to stand back and let them reap the rewards. It was a principle I adhered to throughout my career. I could