“Yeah. Jack, were you in the Army?”
“I was. A thousand years ago. No guns then, we used spears. I was in the 235th Spearchucking Regiment.”
“Seriously, see where he’s written ‘1.751’ here, with an exclamation point and an arrow to the cluster of bullet holes. Any idea what that means? Is it a score or something?”
“No,” said Jack, “it’s not a score. Not with the decimal point.”
“Could it be a caliber? Is the gun a 1.751 caliber?”
“Hmm, when I was in in the sixties, we shot something that had millimeters. I don’t know what the inch measure would be. Wait, I know a photographer who’s a gun guy. For some reason photogs are gun nuts, more often than not. Maybe it’s the love of small, well-machined little gizmos. Anyway, let me Rolodex his cell and see if I can get an answer.”
Jack disappeared, not that David noticed, so absorbed was he in the drama of his examination, and it seemed that Jack came back in a second, when it was really twenty minutes.
“Okay,” he said, “the 1.751 is a group size. In other words, the guy fired five rounds at the target and the five made up a group. They’re trying to figure out the mechanical accuracy of the gun, not the shooter, and they get that from the group. So they use calipers to measure from center to center of the two farthest shots, and it comes out to be one and seven hundred fifty-one thousandths of an inch.”
“Is that good?”
“At three hundred yards, that’s magnificent. My guy says an inch per hundred yards is very good, so at three hundred it ought to be three inches. It’s one and three-quarters of an inch. That’s a wow.”
“Okay,” said David. “Thanks, Jack, big help. Now I get the exclamation point.”
Just at that moment the bureau chief came over.
“I see you guys acting like teenage girls at the mall. Did it come?”
“It sure did,” said Jack. “David’s Pulitzer, gift-wrapped. He’s taking the office to Morton’s for dinner tonight, right, David?”
“It did come,” said David, modestly.
“Okay, bring it in, we’ll see what we’ve got.”
David trekked into the chief’s office, and just about everybody important in the bureau followed. He laid the photo out on the glass table as they crowded around.
“That’s Memphis,” somebody said.
“It sure is. Does anybody know who those other two guys are? David, was there any information with it?”
“No, Mel. It was just the-”
“Sir,” came a voice; it had to be an intern. They were everywhere, ambitious little reptiles, incredibly smart and industrious, desperately wanting to eat the flesh of anyone who stood in their way. Little show-offy monsters.
This one’s name was Fong, but his ethnicity wasn’t Asian, it was ambition. David hated them, even though he realized he’d been one himself.
“I stopped at a gun store in Silver Spring. It’s called Atlantic Guns. Anyhow, they were giving away catalogs of all the gun makers and I thought we needed the FN catalog, so I picked one up.”
“Good, Fong.”
“Let’s fire David and give Fong his job,” said Jack Sims, and everybody laughed.
“David, we don’t need you anymore. Fong’s here, he’ll take care of things.”
“Fong, you’ve just been appointed bureau chief in place of Mel,” Janie Gold said. “Mel, can you be out of your office by five?”
When the laughter died down, they let Fong do his thing, and naturally he worked at a speed beyond the comprehension of everyone older.
“The guy on the left, see, that’s a fellow named Jeff Palmyrie, head of operations, FN of America, and on the right, that’s Pierre Bourre, President, FN International GMBh, Brussels. Here, look, make sure I’m right.”
He put the slick paper catalog, opened to the executive page, down right next to the photograph, and yes, it was clear indeed that those were the two others in the picture.
“Did you call FN today?” asked Mel.
“No, not yet,” said David. “But they’ll have no comment. They’ve had no comment for eight days; I can’t believe they’d change now.”
“Still, you should do it.”
“I will, Mel. Right after the meeting.”
“What’s the gun?” somebody asked.
“It’s what they call their PSR,” David said. “Police Special Rifle. I got that from the Web site. It’s in the catalog too. It’s a three-hundred-eight-caliber rifle. In the catalog you see the rack where they attach the telescope, yeah, but of course the one Nick is holding has a telescope. See, look, the stock, the handle, the trigger thing-it’s all there just like in the picture, dead center. That’s the one FN wants to get the sniper contract, and this proves they brought Nick in early, to get him on the team.”
“He’s not a very good shot,” someone said. “I thought he was a sniper.”
“No, he’s a very good shot,” David said. “See, he’s shooting what they call a ‘group,’ meaning he aimed at one place and tried to put all the bullets as close together as possible. See, all of them went into a group at three hundred yards.”
“Tell them what it is,” said new friend Jack, setting him up with a smile.
“The point is to show off the accuracy of the gun. This one kept five shots inside two inches, and the standard is what they call angled minute or something, which means one inch per hundred yards. So if it’s under three inches at three hundred yards, it’s really good.”
“Wow,” somebody said, with the same enthusiasm with which he might have said, “My wife is divorcing me, but that’s okay because I just totaled my car.”
“Have you set up the photo examination?” Mel asked.
“Yes, by special courier. I’m sending it to Rochester, New York, to the Donex Photo Interpretation Laboratory, part of the Eastman Kodak system there. They’re supposed to be the best commercial photo examiners in the country. We should know in a week.”
“I don’t want to know how much this is costing me,” said Mel.
“To save some money,” Jack said, “we could fire young Fong. Really, he’s going to fire us when he gets the chance.”
“I am not Young Fong,” said Fong. “ ‘Young’ is Korean. I’m Chinese.” He said it pure deadpan, and everyone laughed. The goddamned kid was funny too.
“Okay, so David, get busy on your calls. FN here, FN overseas, the Bureau, some governmental or law school ethics think tank. Hmm, Dershowitz ought to be good for a quote, maybe Schumer, anyone else?”
“GSA.”
“No, they’ll come in officially sometime later. Look for whistle-blowing pork barrel outfits. I’ve got some good numbers for you.”
“What about gun people? Someone in the NRA who-”
“No, no, they’ll just run your ears about the evil Times and how we use the Second Amendment for toilet paper,” said Mel.
“I’ll call Remington,” said David. “They’re the ones that stand to lose their cash cow. God, whoever realized there was so much money at stake? Anyhow, I’ve developed a relationship there and I think I can get to the president.”
“Good, David, and check with Fong Young if you have any other ideas and he’ll OK them,” Mel said, again to great laughter and Fong’s embarrassment. “Okay, meeting adjourned. Go, go, go, get away from me, I need to sneak a drink from the pint in my drawer.”
Everybody filed off, and David trotted away to package the photo and begin his calls. A few people clapped him on the back, there was a punch on the arm, a thumbs-up and a wink, but best of all someone genuinely, and without irony, congratulated him.
It was Fong.
32
She was right, of course.
He sat in his motel room in Indianapolis, depressed.
Starling, the young FBI agent, seemed to have dealt him a mortal blow. You have imposed a meaning on these events. You have not discovered a meaning. And your imposed meaning stems from your anger at Tom Constable, billionaire lefty, business genius, owner of lefty networks, famous playboy and sportsman, above it all, husband to movie stars, friend of Castro, hero to millions, shit to millions of others, such as me.