Persuader

boxes. I carried the big machine gun. The metal detector on the front door squealed at it, loud and urgent. I carried it upstairs. Hung it on the chain and fed the end of the first belt into it. Swung the muzzle to the wall and opened the lower sash of the window. Swung the muzzle back and traversed it side to side and ranged it up and down. It covered the whole width of the distant wall and the whole length of the driveway down to the carriage circle. Richard stood and watched me.
    "Keep stacking the boxes," I said.
    Then I stepped over to the nightstand and picked up the outside phone. Called Duffy at the motel.
    "You still want to help?" I asked her.
    "Yes," she said.
    "Then I need all three of you at the house," I said. "Quick as you can." After that there was nothing more to be done until they arrived. I waited by the window and pressed my teeth into my gums with my thumb and watched the road. Watched Richard and Elizabeth struggling with the heavy boxes. Watched the sky. It was noon, but it was darkening. The weather was getting even worse. The wind was freshening. The North Atlantic coast, in late April. Unpredictable. Elizabeth Beck came in and stacked a box. Breathed hard. Stood still.
    "What's going to happen?" she asked.
    "No way of telling," I said.
    "What's this gun for?"
    "It's a precaution."
    "Against what?"
    "Quinn's people," I said. "We've got our backs to the sea. We might need to stop them on the driveway."
    "You're going to shoot at them?"
    "If necessary."
    "What about my husband?" she asked.
    "Do you care?" She nodded. "Yes, I do."
    "I'm going to shoot at him, too." She said nothing.
    "He's a criminal," I said. "He can take his chances."
    "The laws that make him a criminal are unconstitutional."
    "You think?" She nodded again. "The Second Amendment is clear."
    "Take it to the Supreme Court," I said. "Don't bother me with it."
    "People have the right to bear arms."
    "Drug dealers don't," I said. "I never saw an amendment that says it's OK to fire automatic weapons in the middle of a crowded neighborhood. Using bullets that go through brick walls, one after the other. And through innocent bystanders, one after the other. Babies and children." She said nothing.
    "You ever seen a bullet hit a baby?" I said. "It doesn't slide right in, like a hypodermic needle. It crushes its way through, like a bludgeon. Crushing and tearing." She said nothing.
    "Never tell a soldier that guns are fun," I said.
    "The law is clear," she said.
    "So join the NRA," I said. "I'm happy right here in the real world."
    "He's my husband."
    "You said he deserved to go to prison."
    "Yes," she said. "But he doesn't deserve to die."
    "You think?"
    "He's my husband," she said again.
    "How does he make the sales?" I asked.
    "He uses I-95," she said. "He cuts the centers out of the cheap rugs and rolls the guns in them. Like tubes, or cylinders. Drives them to Boston or New Haven. People meet him there." I nodded. Remembered the stray carpet fibers I had seen around.
    "He's my husband," Elizabeth said.
    I nodded again. "If he's got the sense not to stand right next to Quinn he might be OK."
    "Promise me he'll be OK. Then I'll leave. With Richard."
    "I can't promise," I said.
    "Then we're staying." I said nothing.
    "It was never a voluntary association, you know," she said. "With Xavier, I mean. You really need to understand that." She moved to the window and gazed down at Richard. He was heaving the last ammunition case out of the Cadillac.
    "There was coercion," she said.
    "Yes, I figured that out," I said.
    "He kidnapped my son."
    "I know," I said.
    Then she moved again and looked straight at me.
    "What did he do to you?" she asked.
    I saw Kohl twice more that day as she prepared her end of the mission. She was doing everything right. She was like a chess player. She never did anything without looking two moves ahead. She knew the judge advocate she asked to monitor the transaction would have to recuse himself from the subsequent court-martial, so she picked one she knew the prosecutors hated. It would be one less obstacle later. She had a photographer standing by to make a visual record. She had timed the drive out to Quinn's Virginia house. The file I had given her at the start now filled two cardboard boxes. The second time I saw her she was carrying them. They were stacked one on top of the other and her biceps were straining against their weight.
    "How is Gorowski holding up?" I asked her.
    "Not good," she said. "But he'll be