7
“Nu?” Abe said as his surprisingly dexterous pudgy fingers examined Jack’s Glock 19 with practiced expertise. “A cleaning it needs, but otherwise looks all right to me.”
“It’s seen dead people.”
“Seen?”
“Okay. It made them dead.”
“All by itself?”
“It had help.”
“From you?”
Jack shrugged. “Yeah.”
“How many dead people has it seen?”
“Five.”
Abe rolled his eyes. “Oy. All at once? Such a thing would be in the papers. It’s not.”
“Two yesterday afternoon at Mount Sinai. Three more in Jackson Heights early this morning.”
Abe’s raised eyebrows caused furrows in his extended forehead. “Five in twelve hours?”
“Oh, and like you’ve never had a cranky day?”
“Cranky like you, I don’t get. No one gets.” He turned his free hand palm up and wiggled his fingers. “Spill. Details.”
Jack gave him a capsule version of Weezy’s troubles.
Abe shook his head. “With old friends like her, who needs enemies?”
“I hear that. But she’s good people.” He pointed to the Glock. “Anyway, that baby there can tie me to five corpses, so I need a replacement.”
“All right. Lock the—”
“Done.” He’d locked the front door on the way in. “Turned the OPEN sign too.”
“Then let’s go.”
He led Jack down to the basement.
“Hey,” Jack said, indicating the dead neon loops over the stairs. When lit they quoted a sign from The Weapon Shops of Isher. “What happened to the sign? It worked Monday.”
“Dead. And considering the times, I’d be meshugge to have it repaired.”
The Right to Buy Weapons Is the Right to Be Free . . . no, that would raise a host of warning flags in these political climes.
In the basement, Abe removed a box from a neatly stocked shelf and produced a new Glock 19. He swapped Jack’s old loaded magazine for the empty new one, and handed it over. Jack racked the slide to chamber a round.
“Nu, I thought you liked—”
“An empty chamber? Yeah, but with the way things are going these past few days, an extra millisecond could be the difference between . . . you know.”
“You want I should set up a test fire?”
“Nah. I’ll be fine. Hell, it’s a Glock.”
He’d owned at least a dozen over the years. Hadn’t failed him yet.