He handed all us men boxes. Sweetness got the biggest. He asked, “Should we take turns, or all open them at the same time?”
Milo didn’t hesitate. “We have to take turns. I’ll go first.” He had bought himself a serious collector’s item, a.45 Colt 1911, manufactured in 1918, with black walnut grips and engraving patterns on the frame and slide.
“How much did that cost?” I asked.
“Five thousand U.S. dollars.”
We had a lot of money, but still. “Isn’t that a little extravagant?”
He took umbrage. “When you asked me to join this team, I told you I wanted certain weapons and you agreed. Additionally, you appointed me armorer, and I did the job as I best saw fit.”
Maybe it was a lapse from brain surgery. “Sorry, but I don’t recall naming you armorer.”
“Before you went to the hospital, you told me to get the stuff we needed. Same difference.”
I couldn’t bring myself to destroy his day in the sun. “You’re right. So I did. But one question. If you actually have to shoot someone with it in a situation that doesn’t conform to law enforcement conditions to justify it, you have to get rid of it. It would be a shame to throw that down a sewer drain.”
He beamed, triumphant. “I bought extra barrels and firing pins by the box. I just replace them and keep the pistol. In fact, I’ve already swapped them out, just in case. Barrels in bulk are sixty bucks apiece. And I got five thousand rounds of two-hundred-and-thirty-grain ammo.”
Again, I conceded.
“Open yours,” he said.
Guns don’t interest me, and I’m a lousy shot. I opened the box. I admitted though, it was a pretty pistol.
Milo said, “It’s a.45 Colt 1911 Gold Cup National Match. A competition-grade target pistol. I hoped it might encourage you to practice.”
It won’t. “Thank you,” I said.
Sweetness opened his without asking. An unblemished walnut presentation case was inside the wrapping. He opened it. It was a two-gun U.S. 82nd Airborne commemorative set, adorned with 82nd Airborne symbols. The slides had never even been pulled. They were something truly special.
“You’re ambidextrous,” Milo said. “So I got you a pair. I’ll teach you to shoot, and you can blaze away with both hands simultaneously.”
Tears shone in the corners of Sweetness’s eyes.
Arvid sat in my armchair with his box in his lap. Milo motioned for him to open it. Inside was the pistol Arvid had used to murder Ivan Filippov, that he had executed so many men with in the Second World War, that his father had carried before him in the Civil War almost a hundred years ago, and the only possession Arvid had that belonged to his father before him. He looked at it with disbelief, dumbstruck.
“I stole it from the evidence room,” Milo said.
Arvid just looked at him, expressionless, for a good two minutes without speaking. Milo began to squirm, afraid he had done something wrong.
“You have my sincere gratitude,” Arvid said.
“Sir,” Milo said, “you are most welcome.”
I saw then that Milo’s motive for all this, the extravagance, the silliness of it, his obsession with our black-ops unit, was one that I doubted he himself was aware of. This wasn’t about fighting crime for him. He wanted to be part of a family. My family. For all of us in this room to be one big happy family. He wanted our love. It was unfortunate. It was something none of us were capable of giving him.
Unbelievably, there was still a big pile of boxes, but Kate couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’m dying for a piece of cake,” she said.
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