I don’t wait for his answer. Something hits me. Milo is unpredictable in the extreme. “Give me your pistol.”
It’s in a quick-release holster in the small of his back. He grins, hands his Glock 19 over to me. I look around to make sure no one sees, pop the clip and rack the slide. A round flies out. He’s ready for anything, carries it with one in the chamber, cocked and locked. I pick the ejected bullet up off the floor. It’s crosshatched, as is the one at the top of the clip. He’s loaded up with dum-dum rounds. Teaching him how to make them was a serious mistake. I turn the pistol over in my hands. It has a selector switch at the rear left of the slide that my Glock lacks.
I want to scream at him but keep my voice down. “You maladroit imp. You mental fucking pygmy. You installed a three-round-burst selector.”
His smile is smug. “No I didn’t. It’s a full-auto switch. Making the three-round-burst selector was harder than I thought. I got the schematics to the Glock 18, which has full auto-fire capability. The models aren’t too different. I had to do some hand tooling on the slide and barrel, but made it work.”
“I told you not to fuck with your service pistol. What did you do that for?”
He sticks his chin out, defiant. “Maybe because you’re not my fucking boss.”
“Take it out.”
“No.”
“I’d like to turn you in for breaking into Linda’s apartment and jeopardizing this case, but that would botch everything, and she and Filippov would walk.”
Milo says nothing, just stares at me.
“I’ve had just about fucking enough of you,” I say. “I’ve treated you as a professional, and in return you’ve been arrogant, conceited and childish. I outrank you, and whether you like it or not, I’m going to be the boss of you. We can change the nature of our relationship. I can call you detective sergeant, and you can call me inspector. I have twenty years more than you as a cop, and you’re going to treat me with the respect I’ve earned.”
He sneers, grits his teeth. We stare at each other. He clears his throat and holds out his hand. “My pistol.”
I give it back. He does some minor disassembly, removes the switch and puts a little screw in its place to cover the hole it left. He puts the loose round back in the clip, racks the slide to rechamber it, flicks on the safety and re-holsters the pistol.
I hold out my hand. “Give me the switch.”
He hesitates, frowns, does it. I hear a series of distant popping sounds. The door to the bar opens. A woman yells, “Someone’s shooting on Helsinginkatu!”
Milo and I grab our coats, get up and put them on as we run.
26
We follow the sounds of sporadic gunfire. Big booms that I’m pretty sure are from a high-caliber, short-barreled pistol. The noise takes us to Ebeneser School. A small crowd on the sidewalk peeks into the schoolyard from behind the ivy-covered fence that I smashed a man’s face off of two days ago. Helsinki residents aren’t used to Arctic cold. They shiver and stamp their feet in the snow. We show our police cards. A woman tells me the shooting is coming from inside the school. I call it in, request backup.