Persuader

right next to you." I tossed the gun back into the crate. Villanueva slid the lid into position.
    "You should be worried, Harley," he said. "Your reputation won't be worth shit if you put junk like this on the street."
    "Not my problem," Harley said. "Not my reputation. I just work here." I hammered the nails back in, slowly, like I was tired. Then we started on the AKSU-74 crate. The old submachine guns. Then we did the AK-74s.
    "You could sell these to the movies," Villanueva said. "For historical dramas. That's about all they're good for." I hammered the nails into position and we stacked the crate with the others until we had all of Bizarre Bazaar's imports back into a neat separate pile, just like we had found them. Harley was still watching us. He still had his gun at Duffy's head. But his wrist was tired and his finger wasn't hard on the trigger anymore. He had let it slide upward to the underside of the frame, where it was helping take the weight. Villanueva shoved the Mossberg crate across the floor toward me. Found the lid. We had only opened one.
    "Nearly done," I said.
    Villanueva slid the lid into position.
    "Wait up," I said. "We left two of them on the table." I stepped across and picked up the first Persuader. Stared at it.
    "See this?" I said to Harley. I pointed at the safety catch. "They shipped it with the safety on. Shouldn't do that. It could damage the firing pin." I snicked the safety to fire and wrapped the gun in its waxed paper and burrowed it deep down into the foam peanuts. Stepped back for the second one.
    "This one's exactly the same," I said.
    "You guys are going out of business for sure," Villanueva said. "Your quality control is all over the place." I set the safety to fire and stepped back toward the crate. Pivoted off my right foot like a second baseman lining up a double play and pulled the trigger and shot Harley through the gut. The Brenneke round sounded like a bomb going off and the giant slug cut Harley in half, literally. He was there, and then suddenly he wasn't. He was in two large pieces on the floor and the warehouse was full of acrid smoke and the air was full of the hot stink of Harley's blood and his digestive system and Duffy was screaming because the man she had been standing next to had just exploded. My ears were ringing. Duffy kept on screaming and danced away from the spreading pool at her feet. Villanueva caught her and held on tight and I racked the Persuader's slide and watched the door in case there were any more surprises coming at us. But there weren't. The warehouse structure stopped resonating and my hearing came back and then there was nothing except silence and Duffy's fast loud breathing.
    "I was standing right next to him," she said.
    "You aren't standing right next to him now," I said. "That's the bottom line." Villanueva let go of her and stepped over and bent down and picked up our handguns from where Harley had kicked them. I took the second loaded Persuader out of the crate and unwrapped it again and clicked the safety on.
    "I really like these," I said.
    "They seem to work," Villanueva said.
    I held both shotguns in one hand and put my Beretta in my pocket.
    "Get the car, Terry," I said. "Somebody's probably calling the cops right now." He left by the front door and I looked at the sky through the window. There was plenty of cloud, but there was still plenty of daylight, too.
    "What now?" Duffy said.
    "Now we go somewhere and wait," I said.
    I waited more than an hour, sitting at my desk, looking at my telephone, expecting Kohl to call me. She had timed the drive out to MacLean at thirty-five minutes. Starting from the Georgetown University campus might have added five or ten, depending on traffic.
    Assessing the situation at Quinn's house could have added another ten. Taking him down should have taken less than one. Cuffing him and putting him in the car should have taken another three. Fifty-nine minutes, beginning to end. But a whole hour passed and she didn't call.
    I started to worry after seventy minutes. Started to worry badly after eighty. Dead on ninety minutes I scared up a pool car and hit the road myself.
    Terry Villanueva parked the Taurus on the patch of broken blacktop outside the office door and left the engine running.
    "Let's call Eliot," I said. "Find out where he went. We'll go wait with him."
    "What are we waiting for?" Duffy said.
    "Dark," I said.
    She went out to the idling car and got her bag. Brought it back. Dug out