The Kill Riff by David J. Schow Page B

through the room to switch tapes from the Temptations to Jean-Pierre Rampal. Beneath the workbench was the exhumed footlocker, broken lid and all. Above it, thumb-tacked to the split log wall, was the garish poster of Gabriel Stannard that Lucas had purchased at On the Brink . He had found a paring knife that had gone to rust in the kitchenette and used it to nail Stannard's liver to the wall. The blade looked like it belonged there. Next to the workbench he had managed to crowd in a card table to provide an additional work surface, which left a minuscule square of space for a creaky folding chair. Balanced across one corner of the card table was a fully assembled M-16 infantry rifle with a Nitefinder scope and flash suppressor.
        The lead sap with the braided handle that he'd used on Gunther Lubin was the first thing Lucas had removed from the sealed plastic package inside the footlocker. The monster combat knife was second. Third had come the M-16, broken down into components, greased in cosmoline, coated with silicon, and wrapped in more plastic. It was absolutely cherry. Still unassembled was a special Russian sniper's rifle, a 7.62-millimeter Dra-gunov semiauto.
        Jean-Pierre was blowing flute sonatas. Handel.
        Then had come the flat boxes, packed against one side of the footlocker, each about the size of a brick, with designations like CAUTION and EXPLOSIVE and ANTIPERSONNEL stamped all over them.
        In a box under the card table was new ammunition and a squeaky-new leather shoulder holster with nylon web straps. Gun-cleaning tools; jeweler's textured cloths; solvents and lubes. Empty clips awaiting their loads. All innocuous items easily purchased without bothersome signatures and ID.
        Lucas picked up the forty-five auto pistol and shoved in a full clip. The gun was a large-frame Llama ACP with a blue finish; the slugs were steel-jacketed hollow points. He snapped the action, and his eye sought the loaded chamber indicator out of habit. Then he popped out the clip, inserted one replacement round, reloaded, and thumbed the slide lever safety. The shoulder holster had snap pockets for two extra clips.
        The guns had come into his hands without signatures as well.
        Every man in every war meets good old boys heavily into ordnance. In Vietnam Lucas had met the sons of such men. A standout was Big John Lawson's second son, Billy, a hotshot ranger with an Olympian finalist physique and a cocky, lopsided grin. In 1978 Billy Lawson, beer in hand, had led Lucas down to a paneled basement room lined with some of the most awesome and frightening firepower conceived by the paranoid mind of humankind. And Billy Lawson had said, "Pick one"-such was his admiration for the man who had saved his father from being sawed in half by sixty-caliber fire a decade earlier.
        Lucas had chosen the Dragunov, and Billy had smiled. It was a classic.
        The rest of the hardware he had accumulated with time, like barnacle building. The flash suppressor and accouterments for the M-16 he had picked up from a gun dealer who was more than happy to sell the stuff i under the counter for no other reason than Lucas's status as an adult Caucasian and a veteran. It was ridiculously easy to acquire a federal firearms license, and Lucas was eventually surrounded by men who were surrounded by guns. If they didn't have a specific item, they could tell him in seconds where one could be had… and at a discount, in exchange for the underground referral.
        That was the how, Lucas thought as he snaked into the holster rig to size it up. But what about the why?
        Why had he kept the weaponry all this time? In a way, collecting such instruments of harm was done with the same fascination people experienced when they thought of swerving into oncoming traffic. You knew you wouldn't. But. You knew you contemplated the way a knife in a kitchen drawer might be put to malevolent purpose, but you