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had.
    “Yeah,” I said. “With one in the chamber.”
    “You know they’re going to write it up that the safety was off, right?”
    “For once, they wouldn’t be lying if they did. But I guarantee you there’s nothing on that gun. Brand-new. Never been fired.”
    “You’re
sure
of that?”
    “Bet my life,” I told him.

    That would have been a safe bet. Solly always supplied the hardware on his jobs. I remember one time when one of the crew Solly put together wanted to bring his regular carry piece. Said it was his lucky lady. “That’s no lucky lady,” Solly told him. “In fact, that’s no lady at all.”
    Before the guy could say anything, Solly snatched the piece out of his hand and held it up under the lightbulb hanging in the basement where we were meeting. “What’s this hold, about nineteen rounds? Where’re you even gonna carry it, fucking monster like that? You’re planning on a gunfight, swell. But
this
job, it goes right, nobody shoots at all.”
    “Sometimes—” the guy started to say.
    “Sometimes isn’t
this
time. That’s what I get paid for. On my jobs, every man carries the same. Show him, Sugar.”
    I took out the one Solly had given me. Short-barreled, kind of ugly.
    “Ruger in forty-five,” Solly said. “Whatever you hit with this, it’s not getting up. The only thing that ‘lady’ of yours would be good for is a firefight. You want one with a SWAT team?”
    “I still don’t see why we all have to carry the same—”
    “Because
one
guy also carries a little bag with him. That’s Sugar. Soon as you start work, Sugar puts the bag down, opens the zipper. There’s two hundred full magazines in there.
    “You all carry the same, so you all got your ammo supply right there. Every round checked before it went into a clip—you’re not gonna have to worry about jams. Even better, nobody has to worry about what the other guy’s carrying. That’s because none of
mine
got a past. Pure virgins, every single piece.
    “See, that’s no lady you’re carrying, my friend; that’s a whore. And you know whores: if she’ll sell her pussy, she’ll sell you. Get it
now
?”
    I wasn’t going to tell the lawyer about that. But there was something he’d need to know. I figured I might as well get it over with. “Only thing is, the serial numbers were—”
    “Not
good,” the lawyer said. “Even worse if they make a call to ATF.”
    “You on the panel for the Federal Court, too?”
    He gave me a look. I just looked back.
    “I
am
on the CJA Panel,” he finally said. “But that’s not the point. Whatever you know about that gun, they know, too, by now.No matter how you play it, being caught with it wasn’t a good thing for you. But it’s not good
enough
for them, either.”
    “How come?”
    “Carrying, that’s a felony hit all by itself, sure. But it’d be a
long
way to turn it into another violence beef. You didn’t
do
anything with that gun,” he said, making it a question.
    “I never even pulled it,” I said. “But it was ready to go.”
    “Maybe someone had been threatening you?”
    “That’s it, all right.”
    He was quiet for a minute, making a thing out of reading some papers he had with him. He looked up, said: “That gun, it was a regular carry piece?”
    “You mean, did I walk around with it, or just happen to have it that particular day?”
    “Okay,” he said. Meaning, he wanted to see if I could guess what the right answer should be. If I was going to tell a story, it’d have to be a good one.
    “Ever since I started getting those threats, I never left home without it,” I said. “I’ve been shot before; it’ll be on my records.”
    He flashed me just enough of his teeth for me to see he took real good care of them. Then he started looking through a bunch of papers he had with him, like he had all the time in the world.
    I guess he did. They pay these 18-B guys by the hour. And it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.
    Finally, he made a