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Lanza looked into Canidy’s eyes and frowned slightly.

Bingo, Canidy thought. It was Lanza. Why am I not surprised?

Canidy glanced at Fulmar and added, “Make that two. We will each need one, with a full ammo box.”

Lanza considered the request for a long quiet moment, then said, “What else?”

“How many do you have?” Canidy asked.

Lanza did not respond, verbally or physically.

“You want to tell me where the hell you got them?” Canidy pursued.

Lanza didn’t answer.

“They were supposed to go to the Marines,” Canidy said pointedly. “I can bring a lot of goddamned heat down on you for grabbing them.”

Lanza’s eyes narrowed. He studied both Canidy and Fulmar, then, after a long moment, picked up the telephone receiver and dialed.

“Yeah, it’s Joe. Put two of those new sticks in a box and put them in the trunk of the car—

“Yeah, those sticks. Don’t ask questions. Just do it. Make sure they’re complete…. What? Yeah, complete. You know what I mean.”

He hung up the receiver and stared at Canidy.

“Bringing in ‘heat,’ as you say, would not be wise. The fact is—and you can check this out—it was the military that ordered those guns pulled off of a Liberty ship”—he outstretched his left arm and pointed with his index finger at the window covered with a bedsheet—“right over there across the river. So it was your guys that did that. And here we’re doing as you ask. So easy on the threats, huh?”

“Those pulled from the ship were ones for the Dutch?”

Lanza made a thin smile.

“There. You already know.”

“That doesn’t explain why you have them.”

Lanza shrugged.

“A small part of a total shipment got lost between the ship and the warehouse,” he said simply. “Some guys found it.”

“And didn’t turn it over?”

Lanza made the thin smile again, then said dryly, “That’s not the way it works.”

Canidy shook his head.

“What the fuck does it matter?” Lanza said casually. “So instead of, say, a hundred boxes locked down and collecting dust, now there’s only ninety-nine. Or ninety-eight. Whatever.”

He paused to make his point.

“And now you’re going to get yours. Ones you wouldn’t even know about—let alone get—if they’d been turned in to be locked up for who the hell knows how long.”

Jesus Christ, Canidy thought, he’s beginning to make sense.

Canidy looked to the desk, at the newspaper there, then at Fulmar—and he had a wild idea.

What the hell? What’s to lose? This whole damned dance with the devil is wild.

Canidy reached forward and took from the desk a copy of the New York World-Telegram.