"So you're in the market?"
"What's your guess?" he said. "You thought I was an accountant?"
"I thought you were a rug importer."
"I am," he said. "I import a lot of rugs."
"OK."
"But that's fundamentally a cover," he said. Then he laughed. "You think you don't have to take precautions these days, selling athletic shoes to people like that?"
He kept on laughing. There was a lot of nervous tension in there. I drove on. He calmed down. Looked through the side window, looked through the windshield. Started talking again, like it served his own purpose as much as it served mine.
"Do you ever wear sneakers?" he asked.
"No," I said.
"Because I'm looking for somebody to explain it to me. There's no rational difference between a Reebok and a Nike, is there?"
"I wouldn't know."
"I mean, they're probably made in the same factory. Out in Vietnam somewhere. They're probably the same shoe until they put the logo on."
"Maybe," I said. "I really wouldn't know. I was never an athlete. Never wore that type of footwear."
"Is there a difference between a Toyota and a Honda?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Why not?"
"Because I never had a POV."
"What's a POV?"
"A privately owned vehicle," I said. "What the army would call a Toyota or a Honda. Or a Nissan or a Lexus."
"So what do you know?"
"I know the difference between a Swatch and a Rolex."
"OK, what's the difference?"
"There isn't one," I said. "They both tell the time."
"That's no answer."
"I know the difference between an Uzi and a Heckler and Koch."
He turned on his seat. "Good. Great. Explain it to me. Why would these guys junk their Heckler and Kochs in favor of Uzis?"
The Cadillac hummed onward. I shrugged at the wheel. Fought a yawn. It was a nonsense question, of course. The Hartford guys hadn't junked their MP5Ks in favor of Uzis. Not in reality. Eliot and Duffy hadn't been aware of Hartford's weapon du jour and they hadn't been aware that Beck knew anything about Hartford, that's all, so they had given their guys Uzis, probably because they were lying around closest to hand.
But theoretically it was a very good question. An Uzi is a fine, fine weapon. A little heavy, maybe. Not the world's fastest cyclic rate, which might matter to some people. Not much rifling inside the barrel, which compromises accuracy a little bit. On the other hand, it's very reliable, very simple, totally proven, and you can get a forty-round magazine for it. A fine weapon. But any Heckler amp; Koch MP5 derivative is a better weapon. They fire the same ammunition faster and harder. They're very, very accurate. As accurate as a good rifle, in some hands. Very reliable. Flat-out better. A great 1970s design up against a great 1950s design. Doesn't hold true in all fields, but with military ordnance, modern is better, every time.
"There's no reason," I said. "Makes no sense to me."
"Exactly," Beck said. "It's about fashion. It's an arbitrary whim. It's a compulsion. Keeps everybody in business, but drives everybody nuts, too."
His cell phone rang. He juggled it up out of his pocket and answered it by saying his name, short and sharp. And a little nervously. Beck. It sounded like a cough. He listened for a long time. Made his caller repeat an address and directions and then clicked off and put the phone back in his pocket.
"That was Duke," he said. "He made some calls. Our boys aren't anywhere in Hartford. But they're supposed to have some country place a little ways south and east. Duke figures that's where they're holed up. So that's where we're going."
"What are we going to do when we get there?"
"Nothing spectacular," Beck said. "We don't need to make a big deal out of it. Nothing neat, nothing fancy. Situation like this, I favor just mowing them down. An impression of inevitability, you know? But casual. Like you mess with me, then punishment is definitely swift and certain, but not like I'm in a sweat about it."
"You lose customers that way."
"I can replace them. I've got people lining up around the block. That's the truly great thing about this business. Supply and demand is tilted way in favor of demand."
"You going to do this yourself?"
He shook his head. "That's what you and Duke are for."
"Me? I thought I was just driving."
"You already wasted two of them. Couple more shouldn't bother you."
I turned the heater down a click and worked on keeping my eyes open. Bloody wars, I said to myself.
We looped halfway around Boston and then he told me to strike out south and west on the Mass Pike and then I-84. We did sixty more miles, which took about an hour. He didn't want me to drive too fast. He didn't want to be conspicuous. Phony plates, a bag full of automatic weapons on the back seat, he didn't want the Highway Patrol to get involved. I could see the sense in that. I drove like an automaton. I hadn't slept in forty hours. But I wasn't regretting passing up the chance of a nap in Duffy's motel. I was very happy with the way I had spent my time there, even if she wasn't.
"Next exit," he said.
Right then I-84 was spearing straight through the city of Hartford. There was low cloud and the city lights made it orange. The exit led to a wide road that narrowed after a mile and headed south and east into open country. There was blackness ahead. There were a few closed country stores, bait and tackle, beer on ice, motorcycle parts, and then nothing at all except the dark shape of trees.
"Make the next right," he said, eight minutes later.
I turned onto a smaller road. The surface was bad and there were random curves. Darkness everywhere. I had to concentrate. I wasn't looking forward to driving back.
"Keep going," he said.
We did eight or nine more miles. I had no idea where we were.
"OK," he said. "Pretty soon we should see Duke waiting up ahead."
A mile and a half later my headlight beams picked out Duke's rear plate. He was parked on the shoulder. His car was canted over where the grade fell away into a ditch.
"Stop behind him."
I pulled up nose-to-tail with the Lincoln and jammed the selector into Park. I wanted to go to sleep. Five minutes would have made a lot of difference to me. But Duke swung out of his seat as soon as he identified us and hurried around to Beck's window. Beck buzzed the glass down and Duke squatted and leaned his face inside.
"Their place is about two miles ahead," he said. "Long curved driveway on the left. Not much more than a dirt path. We can make it about halfway up in the cars, if we do it quiet and slow, no lights. We'll have to walk the rest of the way."
Beck said nothing. Just buzzed his window up again. Duke went back to his car. It bounced off the shoulder and straightened up. I followed him through the two miles. We killed our lights a hundred yards short of the driveway and made the turn. Took it slow. There was some moonlight. The Lincoln ahead of me lurched and rolled as it crawled over ruts. The Cadillac did the same thing, out of phase, up where the Lincoln was down, corkscrewing right where the Lincoln was twisting left. We slowed to a crawl. Used idle speed to inch us closer. Then Duke's brake lights flared bright and he stopped dead. I stopped behind him. Beck twisted around in his seat and hauled the sports bag through the gap between us and unzipped it on his knee. Handed me one of the MP5Ks from it, with two spare thirty-round magazines.