Page 122 of Roberto

“A revolver or semi-automatic is fine. What do you have?”

The man divided the credit cards on his desk with his forearms like Moses parting a miniature plastic Red Sea.

Once he’d cleared off a spot, he opened a drawer and began placing pistols one by one on the desk.

The first was one I’d never seen before: a pistol with a five-point star stamped into the grip.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Black Star pistol. Chinese military. Good gun.”

He pulled out a Glock 17, a Sig P226, a Colt 1911, and a Colt Python revolver. All excellent guns, all in fairly good shape despite a few nicks and scratches.

“How much?”

“Fifty,” he said, pointing to the Black Star. Then he pointed at the others in the order he’d laid them out. “Sixty, sixty, sixty, seventy.”

“That’s Hong Kong dollars?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Sixty thousand Hong Kong was about $7500 US.

A Glock 17 sold for around $300 in the United States. I could have gotten it on the black market in Italy for 2000 euros – roughly $2100 US.

But he wanted me to pay three-and-a-half times that.

“Sixty thousand is expensive,” I said.

“Expensive?!” the gun merchant snapped. He pointed at the guns one by one. “Fourteen years. Fourteen, fourteen, fourteen, fourteen.Thatexpensive.”

He meant fourteen years in jail if he was caught with them.

“Point taken,” I said.

I reached for the Glock, but Mei-ling grabbed my hand.

“Gloves,” she said testily to the merchant.

The man smirked, reached into his desk, and pulled out two latex gloves – the type a nurse would use in a hospital.

“If you don’t buy it,” Mei-ling told me, “you don’t want your prints on a gun he ends up selling to a street thug.”

Smart.

I put on the gloves, picked up the Glock, and ran through the tests that Lars had taught me when I was training with our family’s foot soldiers.

I pulled out the magazine and racked the slide, ejecting the round in the chamber.

“It’s dangerous to store it like that,” I said.

The gun merchant shrugged. “Life dangerous.”

I peered into the chamber for any sign of rust; there was none.

I checked the firing pin, which seemed fine.

I pulled the trigger several times to check the gun’s action. Everything seemed to be functioning properly.

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