The Gunsmith of Hell's Kitchen
Hell's Kitchen, on the west side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City.
A district as notorious for crime as the Lower East Side.
Perhaps that was why the atmosphere on the streets felt so much like the place I lived. Tenement houses packed with poor immigrants lined the blocks, and the stench and gloom hung so thick it felt as if a crime could erupt at any second.
Until a few years ago the Irish Gopher gang had ruled Hell's Kitchen with an iron hand. After their collapse the Marginals, the Pearl Buttons, the Hudson Dusters, and a swarm of lesser outfits now scrambled for pieces of the territory.
"Planning a war or something?"
"If I don't want a knife in the back, this much is necessary. Can you get the goods?"
A good portion of what I had asked Tanner for involved weapons. To settle the list in one stroke he had pointed me toward a gunsmith of exceptional skill.
Near the intersection of Tenth Avenue and West Forty-first. An alley between shops so dark that daylight never reached them.
The moment I stepped inside I came face-to-face with the inevitable: three gloomy men leaning against the wall or squatting, smoking. Their eyes raked from the scarf covering half my face all the way down to my boots.
Would I really walk out of this alley without trouble?
I kept moving.
I passed the first man, then the second. That was when the third, still crouched, rose and barred the path with a length of steel pipe.
"Stop. Show your face."
He jabbed the pipe at my scarf with cocky insolence. I snatched the pipe out of his grip and drove my boot into his face.
Thud!
He slammed into the wall while still sitting and crumpled. When the other two charged in panic I met them with the pipe now in my hand.
Thud, thud!
I kicked the downed men in the gut for good measure, tossed the pipe aside, finished the quiet beating, and walked on.
At the far end of the alley an iron door set below street level came into view—the workshop of the gunsmith Tanner had named.
Clang, clang.
I went down the single step, knocked, and kept one eye on the men still twitching on the ground. A moment later—
Creak.
A palm-sized viewing slot scraped open. A pair of deeply wrinkled eyes studied me, then the brows knitted and the slot started to slam shut again.
"I came on Tanner Smith's introduction."
Crea—
The half-closed gap opened once more.
"Name?"
"Knox."
Clank, clank.
Only after several heavy locks were thrown did the iron door swing wide. The old man inside wore a scarf as well.
He waved me aside, climbed the step, and peered up the alley. The men I had dropped were just struggling to their feet.
"You do that?"
"…… Are they your grandsons, by any chance?"
"Hell no. They're useful for weeding out the riffraff customers, though."
"Should I go apologize?"
He glanced at me and snorted.
"You don't mean a word of that."
It was a sweltering summer day, yet the old man wore gloves. Once I was inside he shut the iron door and locked it with three steel bars.
The interior was a dizzying clutter of junk—parts and tools whose purposes I could only guess. Three doorways that looked like rooms stood along one wall; from one of them came the steady ring of metal being hammered. Someone else was here besides the old man.
"I heard you need rifles, ammunition, silencers, and scopes."
Tanner had clearly called ahead. Without that I would never have gotten through the door.
"Let's start with the rifles."
"Got a particular model in mind?"
"I'll decide after I see them."
"Ever fired one?"
"…… A long time ago."
"Voice sounds young. How long is 'a long time'?"
In my previous life I had handled nearly every firearm worth knowing. The Royal Tank Museum of Jordan and the Israel Defense Forces museums let you study guns by era; the private range run by the Outfit after I retired let me put rounds through far more of them. The one who stuck in memory was old Hickok, the gun-obsessed grandfather who showed up almost every day. Thanks to him I had fired everything from frontier-era Colt Dragoons onward and listened to the full lecture on each.
How many YouTube subscribers do you have now?
Right—he hasn't even been born yet.
The old man unlocked a room. One wall was covered by a heavy curtain, completely out of place in a lightless half-basement. Sure enough—
Swish.
He swept the curtain aside. An arsenal hung on the wall: revolvers, semi-automatic pistols, shotguns, rifles. He reached for a light-brown rifle among them.
"I don't want that one."
He turned, eyeing me oddly, one corner of his mouth twitching.
"What's wrong with it?"
"Arisaka Type 30. Six-point-five millimeter is hard to come by, penetration's poor. Not even a Type 38, so you'll get gas leaks. And I don't care for Japanese iron."
"Not many people know that model…"
He had been planning to palm an unpopular piece off on some clueless mark and overcharge him. Not a chance.
The old man's already wide eyes trembled. He quietly withdrew his hand and moved to another rifle.
"I'll save the lever-action Winchester 1895 for hunting when I'm old."
"I converted this one to thirty-ought-six. It's decent."
"Still not precise enough. Unsuitable for sniping. I want bolt-action, so that one over there is better."
I chose the Springfield Model 1903—designed on the Mauser 98 action, outstanding durability and accuracy.
"Recoil's a bitch. Heavy, and not exactly portable."
"Six of one, half a dozen of the other. And I don't have time to wait for a custom silencer. You have silencers that fit the Springfield, right?"
Every rifle model had different dimensions and mounting systems for suppressors and scopes. If ready-made hardware existed, it would almost certainly be cut for the most common platform still in wide use—the 1903 Springfield. Same logic for the optics.
As expected, the old man gave a reluctant nod, regret plain on his face. A different model would have let him charge for custom work on both silencer and scope.
"If Tanner hadn't sent you, I'd have told you I didn't have any."
"We may do larger business later—if trust builds."
He handed me the rifle without further comment.
"I'll need more than one. Also thirty rounds of rifle ammunition and fifty of .45 ACP."
"You run a Colt M1911?"
"I had one at home."
The scarf covering his face fluttered. The ammunition lived in a cabinet in the corner; when he opened it, boxes were stacked neat and deep.
"You'll test-fire downstairs?"
"Of course."
Tanner had mentioned, to my surprise, that the second basement held an actual range.
"Then I'll throw in an extra ten rounds of each."
He gathered two rifles and the cartridges. We left the room, he locked it, and he opened the neighboring door from which the hammering had never stopped. No extra lock this time.
Bang, bang…
The noise ceased.
At a lantern-lit table the person who had been working with a hammer turned, drawing a scarf across their face. The lines of the body made it clear: a woman.
Oddly enough, all three of us in the same room were wearing scarves.
"No need to follow me in."
The old man stepped inside. Through the gap I saw the woman twirl a small hammer on one finger and look me up and down. That was all. Interest already gone, she returned her attention to the workbench.
He emerged a moment later with a silencer and a scope sized for the Springfield 1903. The door shut and the hammering resumed.
We descended the rust-and-mold-caked stairs into the still gloomier second basement. Musty air, dampness clinging to everything. He flipped a switch; the bulb flickered several times before throwing light across the room.
A long table stood waist-high. Roughly fifteen meters beyond it three targets waited—straw stuffed into clothes like scarecrows, paper pasted over the chests.
He laid rubber earplugs, the silencer, the scope, and the ammunition on the table, then leaned against the wall behind me. A shotgun I hadn't seen him pick up now rested in one hand. With the other he fitted a plug into his own ear and warned me.
"Best not try anything funny."
I plugged my ears as well—signal enough that I had no interest in conversation—and lifted the Springfield.
I worked the bolt open and thumbed a round into the chamber.
"No stripper clips?"
"Of course there are. Dollar apiece."
"Then set aside five of them."
Rapid reloads required stripper clips that seated five rounds at once rather than single loading. For the test I simply charged five rounds by hand and closed the bolt.
I settled into position and lined up the sights. The basement was so dim it felt like night fire.
Finger on the trigger. Squeeze.
Bang!
The target lurched; dust flew.
Click.
Bolt back, bolt forward, chamber a fresh round.
Bang!
Click.
Bang!
After three shots I laid the rifle down and walked to the targets. The group sat a little off my intended point of aim—easily corrected with a zero. The encouraging part was—
"What the fuck… what is this?!"
The old man had pulled the paper free and was staring in open shock. One hole. I could have put two into the ceiling, but the size of the perforation told the truth: all three rounds had struck the same point.
"Recoil must have been vicious… and the first three still stacked?"
"I used to fight for first and second place, in my own way."
"Where?"
Republic of Korea Special Forces.
No—these days I supposed it would be the Korean Boy Soldier School.
"I'll zero it properly and try again."
I replaced the paper, adjusted the sights, reloaded.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Three more rounds. The new hole was even tighter.
"Not a fluke!"
He clutched the second target, still astonished.
I returned to the table and threaded the silencer onto the second rifle.
"A Maxim silencer."
"You know every damn thing, don't you."
Early suppressors had been little more than a simple tube that vented propellant gas. The man who turned that idea into a true modern silencer was Hiram Percy Maxim—son of the Maxim who refined the Gatling into the first practical portable fully automatic machine gun. His 1909 patent established the principle: expand the gas inside a series of chambers so that both the muzzle blast and the shock wave are reduced when the bullet exits.
I mounted the scope, settled on the target, and fired.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The report was quieter, yet still a far cry from the suppressors I had used in my previous life. Early Maxim cans were fragile, degraded accuracy, never fully silenced the shot, and did nothing to hide muzzle flash. Looking ahead to titanium, advanced polymers, and ceramics, the real limitation was materials science.
But I could not wait for materials that did not yet exist. A practical redesign, then.
"This silencer needs structural changes."
"What kind?"
"We'll discuss it properly later."
I was not speaking idly. Multiple expansion chambers instead of a single volume would stage the gas release and drop the noise further. Spiral baffles to force the flow into a longer path would bleed off energy as well.
"How much for the lot?"
"Tanner sent you, so I'll cut you a deal."
He named two hundred dollars—roughly twice what a licensed dealer would charge. The fatal catch with a licensed dealer, of course, was the paperwork; even so, the price was steep.
"Looks like today will be the first and last visit."
Tanner had advanced me three hundred. If the man he recommended gouged me, I could simply bill Tanner the difference with a clear conscience. I handed over the two hundred without fuss.
Instead of snatching it, the old man stared at the bills, lost in thought.
"You know more than just silencers?"
"Scope redesigns, entirely new firearms, secondary weapons—there's no end to the things I want to build."
Why had I been showing off and talking shop all this time? Because I needed a gunsmith like him. This was not only my gain. Anyone who treated a firearm as a lifelong companion would understand the same quiet obsession…
"I'll take a hundred."
"Then we'll be seeing each other often."
He plucked a single bill from the stack.
"Anything else you need?"
Bombs, actually. But there were none here.
That fellow botched a powder charge and burned himself over most of his body. You'll see him wrapped head to toe—don't be startled.
I smiled at the eyes visible above the scarf and shook my head.
"I've gotten everything I came for."
"Then I'll pack it. Wait here."
He opened the door to the woman's workroom. A short time later he returned with a wooden crate nearly as large as I was. The side was stenciled in bold letters: FOODSTUFFS.
"I threw in some potatoes."
"Mother will be pleased."
"Ireland forever. For independence."
"Peace."
For a moment I wondered whether the old man believed I was actually IRA operative Knox. I let the question rest for the day.
Clank.
We shook hands. I dragged the crate outside.
Evening had fallen. Had the men I beat brought their friends?
The alley now held far more of them than it had in daylight.