Serve & Protect

by L. J. Breedlove

  “Learn them all,” Mac said slowly. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

  “Right?” He drank some of his Pepsi. “So, he says sure, let’s start with the basics. I think he started them with a .22 pistol for Christ’s sake. But they stayed with it. And they wanted to buy guns. So, he’s got to make a living, like we all do. These guys are willing to pay good money, and so he develops a checklist and certification and what have you.”

  The two of them looked at each other and cracked up.

  Craig Anderson took another swallow, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “And he calls me. Every Saturday for the last year, I go out to his range and show them my weapons. They have to get certified by my friend first, and we do it all by-the-book legal. And then they move up to the next level of weapon. That’s a picture of the group who have made it to the AR-15 level. They wanted a group photo.”

  He laughed again, and shook his head. “Got me what they’re up to, but it’s been a nice piece of income for the store.”

  “The guy this morning probably had 100 weapons,” Mac said slowly. “Everything from an AK-47 to a busted-up shotgun. That’s beyond what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure is,” Craig agreed. “I wouldn’t sell an AK-47, and my friend isn’t teaching these wannabes to shoot one either. Might have a busted-up shotgun, though.”

  Mac wasn’t sure he bought the bit about not selling an AK-47, bet he would — and could — if Mac plopped enough money on the counter. But he didn’t push him. “Everyone’s got a busted-up shotgun,” Mac said, sourly. “They just don’t usually have a hundred other guns to go with it.”

  A bit more chat and Craig Anderson agreed to call his friend and see if he’d talk to Mac. While he made the call, Mac wandered the store looking at the inventory. Nothing spoke to him.

  Craig handed over a piece of paper with a name, address, and phone number on it. “Said he’d be happy to talk to you,” he said. “Recognized your name.”

  Mac looked at the name on the paper. “Yeah,” Mac said. “We know each other.”

  He bought more ammo and wondered if he could write it off on his expense account. He wondered if he even had an expense account.

  Mac freely admitted he’d been a punk kid. He’d run the streets of Seattle with his cousin Toby, the son of his Aunt Lindy and her Black ex-husband, and with Shorty, a Filipino-Mexican kid, who remained his best friend. They’d been doing car thefts and running them on consignment down to the Bay area. The night they got caught, Shorty hadn’t been with them. Toby had just turned 18, got tried as an adult, and did time. Mac had been almost 17, and a judge did him a favor — gave him probation if he’d sign up and ship out after graduation. Mac did four years as a Marine in Afghanistan, and it had occurred to him that time in JD lockup would have been a shorter sentence. And safer. Probably safer anyway.

  But he came back clean and sober, went to college on VA benefits, and found he had a knack for telling a story. He got a job at the Examiner, moved into the top floor of his Aunt Lindy’s home on Queen Anne, and was doing good.

  Not as good as Shorty, who was a data-miner making big bucks on the weekend and teaching math in Bellevue the rest of the time. He often joked he was the only teacher who could actually afford to live inside his district.

  But still, Mac was doing good enough. It hurt that his cousin wasn’t. But that had more to do with drugs than a criminal record.

  So, the cop who had busted him all those years ago — 11 years ago — had been a guy named Andy Malloy. Street cop. Spotted what he thought were two black teens in a Mercedes coupe heading south on I-5 from the U-district. Pulled them over on suspicion of Driving While Black. Toby had tried to make a run for it. And then took the fall when they were caught. Mac had always been bitter, because he was pretty sure that if they’d looked white they wouldn’t have been pulled over that night. He knew it was the thing that turned him around. But that bothered him too, because he wondered if he didn’t get the break because he was the white cousin and not the black one.

  “So, Andy Malloy is running a gun range these days?” he said out loud, looking at the piece of paper. “Did he retire? He couldn’t be that old.”

  He looked at his watch and then did a map search: 10-20 minutes, but further out. Damn it, he didn’t want to come all the way up here for a second trip.

  But he wasn’t about to walk into a gun range owned by Andy Malloy without more information. He called Rodriguez.

  “Yeah.”

  “You remember a cop named Andy Malloy?”

  “I remember him,” Rodriguez said sourly. “Why?”

  “Because he’s the guy that’s running the gun range for desk-jockey gun nuts,” Mac said.

  Rodriguez was fluent in Spanish. At least the swear words. Fancy that. Mac waited until he got it out of his system.

  “He’s the cop that busted me and my cousin,” Mac said neutrally. It had been a righteous bust. The Mercedes had been stolen, after all. “Why did he leave the force?”

  “That I know,” Rodriguez said. “Couple years later he got booted off for excessive force. Grand jury failed to indict.”

  No surprise, Mac thought. Cops had limited immunity to prosecution. Which basically meant if you were a cop and wanted to shoot someone, wear your uniform.

  “When was this?” Mac asked.

  Rodriguez was silent. “About six years ago? So, you were in Afghanistan? College?”

  “Yeah. Or in transition,” Mac agreed. “Not that I would have cared. I wanted to be a sportswriter.”

  Rodriguez grunted.

  “What happened? Must have been serious if they actually booted him and made it stick.” Mac had a lot of respect for the police union. It protected their own. Rotten apples and all.

  “He killed a kid,” Rodriguez said bluntly. “The kid sassed him, and Malloy shot him. He should have gone down for it, but he didn’t. Malloy said he was coming at him; thought he was hopped up on something. Kid had had his growth spurt — 12 years old and probably stood 6-feet tall. We lost a great future basketball player that day.”

  Cop humor was dark.

  “Damn it, Rodriguez,” Mac said. “Any drugs in his system?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose I can take it for granted it was a Black kid,” Mac said sourly.

  Rodriguez was silent.

  “It must not have been the first accusation of excessive force,” Mac mused.

  Still silence.

  “Anything on public record I can use?” Mac asked, understanding what the silence meant. It meant all the crazy shit was buried in personnel files. Maybe he should stop being a bit bitter that Driving While Black sent his cousin to jail, and be glad it wasn’t Black and Dead.

  “Maybe,” Rodriguez said slowly. “Why ask me? Ask Janet. I think you all ran stories about it.” He paused. “You’re not in the office. Tell me you’re not in Arlington, Mac.”

  “Not yet,” Mac said. “But I’m 10 minutes away.”

  He filled Rodriguez in about Craig Anderson.

  “No priors,” Rodriguez said eventually.

  No surprise. Hard to sell guns in Washington state with a criminal record. Well, sell them legally, at any rate.

  “Mac,” Rodriguez began.

  Mac waited for him to finish the sentence. He didn’t.

  “I’ll be careful, mom,” Mac said, amused.

  “I knew Malloy,” Rodriguez said. “He’s a bit older than I am, but he’s a cop’s cop, you know? Ex-military, two ex-wives, and an alcohol problem.”

  Mac snorted.

  “And he had a hard-on about you and your cousin. Thought the judge had been too lenient on your cousin, and he was outraged that you weren’t tried as an adult and serving time instead of and I quote, ‘besmirching the uniform of a Marine,’.”

  Mac frowned, did the math. “You must have been a rookie, back then?”

  “When you were busted? Still on street patrol, but not a rookie anymore,” Rodriguez agr
eed. “But he was still grousing about it years later, Mac. He held court at the Oak Rail, you know, the cop bar? He’d drink and start talking about the ones that got away. He blamed liberal courts, restrictive laws on what cops could and couldn’t do, and that damn PC culture that meant he couldn’t call a sp-c a sp-c and a n—-ger a...,” he trailed off. “You get the picture.”

  “And I was the case in point? A fucked-up kid in a stolen car? Jesus, Rodriguez, that’s daily news,” Mac said, incredulous.

  “Yeah, but let’s not talk about the fact that you and your cousin weren’t joy riding on a lark,” the cop said dryly. “We managed to reduce our car theft numbers considerably when he busted you two.”

  Mac laughed. “No comment.”

  “No, what bothered him was that he thought you were both Black until he got a look at you, and then he decided you were Hispanic. So, he thought he’d bagged a two-fer, as he called it, and then the courts, and again this is a quote, ‘pussied out’.”

  “I can see how you two would have been tight,” Mac observed. He might be Latino, he might be Black. He didn’t know. Bugged him sometimes. Seemed like every time he turned around, someone was asking him to fill out a form and state his race. And he didn’t have an answer. How could he? His mother wasn’t sure. Old news. He set it aside.

  “I went out and bought a round at the Oak Rail to celebrate when they made his dismissal stick,” Rodriguez agreed. “Don’t get me wrong. You were just two examples in a whole litany of grievances he had. If he’d had his way, he would have been allowed to ride around on a horse and shoot anyone he thought deserved it.”

  “Sounds like he did,” Mac said. “Except for the horse part.”

  Twelve years old. Jesus H. Christ. And fuck his attempts to clean up his language.

  “All of this is to say you really shouldn’t be going to see Malloy alone,” Rodriguez said.

  “How sweet that you care,” Mac said.

  “Mac,” he began.

  “Look, Lieutenant,” Mac said. “Have you seen the newsroom staff? Who the hell am I to take as back up? Janet would be the best the newsroom has to offer, and I’m not even kidding. If I had someone else along, they’d just be someone I had to worry about protecting if things go bad.”

  “Take that sidekick of yours.”

  “Shorty? Shorty is a math teacher in Bellevue. He likes being a math teacher. He doesn’t want to have to carry a gun again ever.” They’d had a serious conversation about exactly that after Janet’s rescue. And Mac was determined to respect his views. He didn’t have that many friends to begin with. “Besides are you seriously suggesting I take a Filipino-Mexican as backup to talk to a racist ass of an ex-cop?”

  “I’d ask the Arlington cops to do a drive by just in case, but Madre de Dios they’re probably members of his gun range,” he muttered.

  Mac was silent. Rodriguez was truly worked up about this. “Nick,” he said, using the man’s first name, something he rarely did. “I’ll call the office so they know where I am. I’m carrying. I’ll call you back when I’m done. If I don’t call you back in two hours, then send in the cavalry — preferably someone who would be on my side not his. OK?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Rodriguez said. “Hell, if you can’t take care of yourself against Malloy? That would be embarrassing.”

  “It would,” Mac agreed. “Now let me get off the phone so I can have this same conversation with Janet. By the time I’m done, I’m going to face rush hour traffic all the way home.”

  “Be careful, Mac,” was all he said as he hung up.

  His prediction that Janet would have similar worries proved true.

  “Be careful, Mac,” she said finally, the worry still in her voice.

  “Yes, mom,” he said. She laughed.

  By the time he’d concluded that conversation, he was sitting in the parking lot of Malloy’s Gun Range, and a vaguely familiar man with a flat-top was standing in the entrance with his arms folded across his chest.

  Mac moved his Glock from the bottom of his backpack to his jacket pocket, and got out. He slung his backpack over his left shoulder.

  “Thought you might be having second thoughts about coming in,” the man said.

  “Nah, called into the office and couldn’t get them off the phone,” Mac said. “Must be nice being your own boss.”

  Mac stuck out his hand. “Mac Davis,” he said. “Reporter for the Seattle Examiner. Craig Anderson called you?”

  Andy Malloy looked at Mac’s hand. For a moment Mac thought he was going to refuse to take it, but he did. And then tried to turn it into a competition of who would wince first. Mac didn’t play. He just released his hand.

  “Yeah, he called me,” Malloy said. “You want a tour?”

  “I’d appreciate it.” He fell in step with the ex-cop.

  Malloy had the spiel down. And it was a sweet set-up for a range. If it were closer, he’d sign up himself. And he said so. Malloy gave a short nod.

  “So, Craig said you’re asking questions about my certification program?”

  “Yeah. Let me tell you about my morning.”

  “Not the gun’s fault,” Malloy said predictably.

  “Nope. He’d have gone for a butcher knife if he hadn’t the gun. They’d still be dead, and the only difference would be the amount of blood splatter,” Mac said. He believed that. Kind of. “So, he had these team photos on his wall but with AR-15s instead of a basketball, and I got curious. He’s some kind of desk jockey, after all. A friend recognized Craig, and I came down. He told me about your certification program.”

  Mac shrugged. “It sounds like a good idea, so I figured I’d come see you. Do a feature about what you’re doing.”

  “Why are you really here, Davis?”

  “I’m looking to find out why a bunch of desk jockeys have weapon stockpiles. They pulled 100 guns out of that guy’s house this morning,” Mac said. “It’s the third stockpile by a guy like that in the last month. But that’s the long-range question. Short term? My boss will want me to have a story for tomorrow’s paper. And a feature on a guy who’s teaching people to use guns safely? She’ll like it. So, tell me about it. And you can also tell me why all these guys want hundreds of guns.”

  Malloy snorted. “Not sure why. They say it’s for when SHTF. But where they got that notion? Beats me.”

  “So how does your program work?”

  Malloy walked him through it, and gradually warmed up to talking more about it. “Shit, it’s weird,” he admitted. “Team photos. I expect they’ll be selling each other T-shirts next. They already have one of mine. They think they’re tough because they stood in a photo with Craig Anderson. But I figure if they’re going to be obsessed with guns, they ought to get training on them. And if they bought those guns through Craig? He makes sure the paperwork is done on all the sales. Bunch of law-abiding fuckers stockpiling guns.”

  Mac jotted it all down. He took some photos.

  “You said SHTF?” Mac asked.

  “Shit Hits the Fan,” Malloy said. “It’s a big thing online. They’ve got lists of the best weapons to have — and the list is usually 10 or so weapons long and includes AK-47s.”

  “So not preppers, really, but kind of?” Mac said, making a note to check it out when he got back to the office.

  “Yeah, I don’t think they plan to live off their stores of freeze-dried batshit,” Malloy agreed. “With the weapons they want to have, they’re looking at rampaging and living like some kind of overlord.”

  Mac considered that and shook his head. “Somebody’ll take their weapon stash on day three,” he said. Hell, it might be him.

  Malloy laughed. “You got that right.”

  Mac started walking back toward the entrance. He looked around. It was a clean, well-managed range. He was impressed.

  “So, these guys have a Sensei of some sort? They ever mention a name?” Mac asked. He looked back, Malloy had fallen a few steps behind and was now pointing a Sig Sauer P228 at him. Nice
gun, too bad they don’t make them anymore, was his first thought.

  “Jesus, Malloy,” Mac said. “What the fuck?”

  “Get off my property,” he said. “Or I’ll shoot you for trespassing.”

  Mac started backing toward the exit. “I’m leaving, already. You going to tell me why you’re pissy after we’ve been talking for nearly an hour?”

  “You think I buy that you’re here to look at a gun range? You? Nah. You’re looking to pin those men’s stockpiles on me. What? Get some revenge points?”

  “Nothing wrong with them stockpiling,” Mac observed. He shrugged his backpack over his left shoulder. “I’m looking for a story, not revenge, man.”

  Malloy snorted. “Then why are you asking about Sensei? Huh?”

  Mac put both hands in his pockets, as he backed out the exit, his eyes not leaving the man in front of him. “I meant it in general terms of a mentor, or guide,” he said quietly. “Some in the Marines used it, especially those in martial arts, it seemed to fit here. I didn’t mean a particular person.”

  He paused. His hand was now on his weapon, and he felt better. And maybe that made him bolder, too bold, he thought later.

  “Is there a Sensei?” he asked. “A person who’s guiding these men to you?” he said, then

  ducked quickly to the side of the doorway. But it was still a close call. Too close. He hugged the wall just outside the exit and pulled his own weapon. He eyed his vehicle. He had no plans to shoot the old man.

  But he had no plans to get shot today either.

  He moved on a diagonal to his right to avoid stepping in front of the entrance or exit, and then, on another diagonal to his left to the 4-Runner. He got in, started the truck, his gun still loosely held at his side. It wasn’t until he was driving out of the parking lot that he safetied the gun and set it down. He looked back.

  Malloy was standing in front of the entrance watching him leave.

  “Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that about?” he said out loud. His hands shook.

  He found a roadside bar near the I-5 freeway and pulled into the parking lot. He went inside, ordered a Mountain Dew. These old working-man bars always had them, he’d found. He had never been brave enough to check the expired by date on the bottom of the can, but they had them. He drank it thirstily then ordered some fries.