No Telling When They'll Come Again
I hadn't come looking for the Gunsmith simply for firearm modifications.
A silencer and a scope.
If someone had deduced that those two pieces of gear were used in the Newtown Creek warehouse murders, they'd start by tearing through the black-market dealers who trafficked in such equipment.
Of course, men like the Gunsmith weren't unique to Manhattan. You could find them in East Harlem, the Lower East Side, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, the Tenderloin, and plenty of other places.
But the Gunsmith had been hit?
That could only mean a leak.
The most suspicious was Tanner S....
"Ugh..."
"Damn bastard... broke my arm."
When I stopped at the mouth of the alley, I found one, two... five of them crawling across the ground.
I swallowed a dry, incredulous laugh, pulled my scarf up over my face, and stepped into the alley.
The fallen ones looked up at me and flinched. They hurriedly turned their heads and averted their eyes.
These were the same bastards who'd tried to pick a fight with me before.
"Clear the way. Before I step on you."
Like the Red Sea parting, they wriggled their bodies and pressed themselves flat against both walls.
At the far end of the alley I went down the steps that dropped below street level and knocked on the iron door. A moment later—
Clank.
A palm-sized hatch opened in the center of the door.
A pair of deeply wrinkled eyes studied me.
When I let out a short snort of laughter, the Gunsmith's dry voice came through.
"You should've gotten here a minute earlier."
"As it happens, I ran into them."
"Did they recognize you?"
"Hard to say. If the old man doesn't talk, how would anyone know?"
"I'd need to know something before I could talk. I don't. I know nothing."
Clank.
The door swung open. The Gunsmith slid out, climbed the steps, and peered down the alley.
"Wouldn't know chicken-heads if they weren't crawling around like sick hens."
He clicked his tongue, shoved me inside, and shut the iron door.
"Who was here?"
"Rilo Delucci, gunman for the Navy Street Gang. The assassin they call Big Slip."
"Was he looking for me?"
"Looking for whoever bought a silencer and a scope. I told him I didn't know a thing, of course."
"Thank you."
"Thanks nothing. Sell a customer's information and you might as well close up shop that same day. And I'm not about to hand one of our own over to a bunch of Italians."
He said it as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, then pointed to a small tea table.
"Sit."
Just as I was about to lower myself onto the hard wooden chair, I caught a pair of eyes watching me through a crack in a half-open door. In the dim underground light only the eyes glittered.
The old man noticed too and followed my gaze.
"What's she doing that for? For the record, that kid's the one who wanted to see you."
"Grandpa?!"
A sharp voice, and the door slammed shut.
"No need to be shy. No telling when this fellow might die. While he's here, ask everything you're curious about, Hazel. Don't regret it later."
"..."
The girl named Hazel must have had the same thought. The door opened again as if today were the last chance, and this time she stuck her whole face out.
Just like the first time I'd seen her, her neck and entire face were wrapped tightly in cloth.
"So you sniped twelve men at the Newtown Creek warehouse?"
"Thanks to the silencer and the scope."
"Having them doesn't mean just anyone can do it. I heard you used only one Springfield. That right?"
"I forgot to buy two silencers and two scopes."
"I figured as much. That's what makes it even more impressive."
Hazel started asking about the exact round count; her questions weren't ordinary.
"You fired twelve shots total, so you had to reload with stripper clips at least twice. And in all that time you never missed a single target. How did you pick your targets?"
"Sentries, the ones who stood up, the ones who tried to scatter in panic, the ones crawling, the ones hiding behind the table?"
"...You caught all that and put every round exactly where it needed to go in that short a time? That's impossible."
"Believe it or don't. I'm not here to convince you."
I pulled a sheet of paper folded several times from my coat and held it out to the Gunsmith. He unfolded it and his eyes lit up.
"Silencer blueprints. But the chamber is double-layered? And the inside is... spiral?"
"It stages the expansion of the escaping gas, and the spiral channels the flow. Quieter than what we have now. In theory, anyway."
At that moment Hazel burst out of the room and thrust a silencer she was holding into view.
The difference from the old ones...
"...It's spiral."
"I made it a little while ago. Who the hell are you? How come you thought of the same thing I did?"
"Am I not allowed to?"
Caught without a good answer, Hazel stared hard at the drawings.
"Can I just make these and sell them however I want?"
"Are you joking? Get caught selling them on the side and the whole deal's over. I plan on making a lot more than this."
Truth was, it wouldn't have mattered much if she sold them secretly.
The silencer was only a modest improvement; the limits of the materials meant no revolutionary leap was possible.
The silencer and the blueprints were bait of a sort.
A way to test the Gunsmith's skill and to let them know what kind of man I was.
Hazel took the bait immediately.
"Do you have more drawings like these?"
"Of course. Not just silencers—I've got firearm designs in my head that would make John Browning cry."
Hazel let out a short laugh.
Who would believe it, after all?
John Browning, the genius gun designer behind the Winchester, the M1866, the Colt M1911—the man who perfected modern firearm technology—and his mechanisms sitting inside my skull.
"Fine. Custom silencer work is twenty dollars."
"No problem. Make the adapters for the M1911 and the Springfield 1903."
"It'll take at least a week."
"Just make them right."
The old man, who had been watching the two of us in silence, was tapping the table with his finger.
He seemed lost in thought.
"Something you want to say?"
"I already know you're not some IRA secret agent. No outfit that's been around less than a year could produce a man like you."
Then he went on:
"Don't seem like one of Tanner's boys either. You move for money, is that it?"
"Is that a problem?"
"Why would it be? Only, the way I see it, you're after something bigger than that. But you won't get far doing it this way."
There were limits to what one man could do alone. Gangs bulked up for a reason; you needed to build a crew—that was the Gunsmith's advice.
"If you don't want to end as just a skilled killer, you'll have to raise your own force. Otherwise..."
Bang, bang, bang!
Someone hammered roughly on the iron door.
The old man frowned and jerked his chin toward the room. Hazel grabbed my arm with her gloved hand and dragged me into the open workshop.
Click.
The moment the door shut she pulled an M1911 from a drawer, slapped a magazine into it from the desk, racked the slide, and held the grip out toward me.
I took it. Then she opened a cabinet that took up an entire wall, warned me with a hand not to touch anything, and closed the door again.
I never should have come today. Bad timing.
Light leaked into the supposedly pitch-black cabinet. Age had left small holes here and there. Through those gaps I watched Hazel.
Her fingers fretted over the sawed-off shotgun and pistol hidden under the workbench.
She must have done the same the first time I visited.
While I observed her, the iron door opened.
"Beraldo Costa. What brings you here?"
"Felt like seeing the old man. Must be close to three years."
Clank.
The iron door shut and the man called Beraldo stepped inside. From the footsteps there was one more with him.
They traded a few idle jokes with the Gunsmith, then the talk turned to weapons.
"You got silencers and scopes?"
"...What kind you want?"
".30-06 rifle. Springfield M1903 or Enfield M1917?"
"Only Springfields."
"Show me."
Click.
The door opened and the Gunsmith came in with the two men.
Hazel kept her head down, pretending to work, tapping something with a hammer.
Through the holes the two men looked Italian; their accents had a rhythmic lilt.
"Lots of customers looking for silencers these days?"
"Had one about half an hour ago."
"Who?"
"Rilo Delucci."
The two men glanced at each other and made faces of pure disbelief.
"Shoot all they want, then those garbage Naples bastards..."
From the conversation they were Sicilians.
Just as Gavin had said, both sides were hunting me.
They worked themselves up cursing Naples for a while, then suddenly turned on the Gunsmith.
"You heard, right, old man? That Newtown Creek rat."
"I heard."
"Word is he bought his guns here. The only place that had both a silencer and a scope was you."
Beraldo fixed the Gunsmith with a hard stare, pressing him.
The air changed. The girl stopped hammering and lowered both hands beneath the worktable.
Left hand on the shotgun mounted under the table edge, right hand on the pistol, muzzles pointed at the men. Beraldo noticed and glared at her.
"Hey. Try any cute tricks and you'll regret it."
"You twitch a finger and you'll both be in the next world, so what exactly am I supposed to regret?"
Christ.
"Crazy bitch."
"Old man. Of all the things you could pick up, you picked that. She touches a gun and goes completely off her rocker already? Little girl without a scrap of fear."
The Gunsmith let out a quiet sigh and casually opened his coat. The muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun pointed straight at them.
"Hell's Kitchen alone has more than three places that deal in silencers and scopes. Search all of Manhattan and there are plenty more. Don't go making half-assed guesses. Get out of here."
"You talk like that, what do you think we're gonna do?"
"Look who's talking. You forget I'm Irish?"
In other words, if they were ready to make an enemy of every Irish gang, they could try him.
Whether the gangs would actually rise for the Gunsmith was another question, but the warning landed with the Sicilians.
"Old man, if we find even a trace that rat was here, you'd better run like your tail's on fire. Same goes for her."
Beraldo ground his teeth, glared at Hazel, then turned his back. He never so much as glanced at the silencers and scopes.
Clank.
They left. The iron door closed again.
I was about to open the cabinet and step out when Hazel stretched hard, trying to shake off the tension.
Without looking at me she said,
"You probably shouldn't come around here for a while."
"Yeah, that was the plan. And this gun..."
"Gun!"
She shot to her feet and spun around to stare at the pistol in my hand.
"If you leave now you might still get made. Want to shoot downstairs first? I got this a few days ago—how about a new flavor?"
Hazel coaxed, holding out another pistol.
The first military semi-automatic handgun the Italian firm Beretta ever put on the market.
"Blowback Beretta M1915?"
"Amazing. What are you, a walking firearms encyclopedia? You almost never see these in America—how do you know it?"
It had been built when the Great War exploded the demand for pistols.
A simple blowback design where barrel and slide moved together, chambered for a small-caliber round.
There was no reason to choose a Beretta in America when the more complex and far superior short-recoil Colt M1911 was available.
"I'm more surprised you managed to get one."
"Anyway, let's go shoot."
Excited, Hazel started to lead me toward the range, but the Gunsmith stopped her.
"Skip it today. Shoot next time. The mood's bad. No telling when they'll come again."
Hazel's shoulders slumped. She turned away with a short goodbye and disappeared into the workshop.
Once the door closed the Gunsmith exhaled heavily.
"Whew. Saved a fortune in ammo. Almost shook the foundation."
"...?"
"The kid's got a serious wasteful streak."
Once she got down to the underground range she burned through rounds like a madwoman, he said.
He opened the iron door, checked outside, then motioned me out.
"Go on."
"I owe you for today."
"Owe me nothing. The Italians won't give up easy, though. Hope we meet again."
Clank.
The crawlers from earlier were gone. I lowered my scarf and walked out of the alley.
The men hunting the Gunsmith still hadn't pinned me down; they were just thrashing around at random.
A thoroughly annoying problem.
To make them stop, I needed to pull the Italians' eyes somewhere else.
Best way was to bury it under another incident.
What, though?
By the time the streetcar dropped me at the tenement house it was late afternoon.
At the entrance Leo and Marcus were deep in serious conversation.
They didn't even notice me until I was right on top of them.
"Why aren't you working? Did a gang roll up or something?"
"Yeah."
"...Yeah?"
"Yeah."
I scrubbed a dry palm over my face.
This shouldn't have been possible without a tip-off. The one I suspected was Tanner S...
"They're shaking us down for protection money."
"Hm?"
"Those bastards are hitting every business on Hester Street for protection."
At least it wasn't the ones tracking me.
Not that it was good news either.
Word of the department-store contract must have reached them; a gang had targeted our company for protection—ten dollars a week.
"Which gang?"