“You’re checking out the house,” I said once we were on the walk.
“Can’t beat this weather, Mapstone.” It was seventy degrees, cloudless, dry, and he was lying to me.
I pulled on his suit coat and he stopped, turning to face me.
“How did you know about this?”
His eyes widened with too much innocence. “You know the watch commander briefs me every morning on what went down the night before all over the county, especially the one-eighty-sevens.” The homicides. “The address sounded familiar.”
“I bet.”
He strode to the car and I followed him. We both scanned the streetscape. He was just able to do it more casually, mostly moving his eyes. He slid a key into the trunk and it popped open.
“Here.”
“I don’t need that. It looks too small anyway.”
“It’s for Robin.”
I hesitated, then took the Kevlar vest in one hand. “So I’m supposed to tell her about this El Verdugo? Let her know she’s in a lot worse danger than the trauma of opening that FedEx carton? That her boyfriend wasn’t a professor who studied at Harvard but was a killer for the Sinaloa cartel? Hell, no. You do it. And tell her she has to wear this damned thing. She might actually do what you say. She likes you.”
“She likes you, too. It makes you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, bullshit! You know something. You know more than you’re telling me.”
He ignored me. A large black bag was hefted halfway out of the trunk and I heard a heavy zipper. He held out a semi-automatic pistol.
“Is that for her, too?”
“This is for you.”
Now my dread was complete. He was arming me up. I mumbled a quiet protest about the Colt Python. I was not a semi-auto man. That wasn’t really where my brain was: We were on our own. Kate Vare and PPD were not going out of their way to help Robin. And all I had in the house was my.357 magnum.
I took the new pistol as if in a trance.
It was unfamiliar: a black semi-automatic, sleek grip, futuristic frame that tapered into the barrel, no visible hammer, gray polymer controls including the safety on the side. It had a small cylinder attached to the accessory rail: a laser sight. This was the business, nasty looking. And that was before I saw the ammunition. The rounds looked like small rifle cartridges, with blue on their missile-sharp tips.
“This is an FN Five-Seven, from Belgium. This can inspire you to study Belgium history.”
“You don’t strike me as a Walloonophile.”
“Fuck you, too.” He had no idea what I was talking about.
The pistol was amazingly light, half the weight of the.357. I popped the magazine and racked the slide mechanism to make sure it was empty. I studied the small bullets.
