A God in Ruins

by Leon Uris

  And, no law was broken to put it on exhibition!

  Duncan unsnapped a Coors and flung himself onto the big couch.

  A dying sun in the foothills and a rising night rubbed past each other, and one could nearly hear the cracking baseball bats from Coors Field.

  “Dad, I was hoping,” Duncan said, “we’d take in a ball game.”

  “Sorry. I gave our box away tonight. How about tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Mom and Rae coming?”

  “If we hold a gun to their heads. Speaking of guns, I hear you’re starting a terrorist cell at school.”

  “Oh, shit,” Duncan moaned, “who ratted?”

  “God save the whistle blowers,” Quinn said, “ski masks, lead pipes, a regular commando unit. You may be the answer to AMERIGUN’s prayers.”

  Duncan was out of his seat. “Dad, haven’t we taken enough shit?”

  “It comes with the territory. No one forced me to run for governor.”

  “I’m glad this is on the table,” Duncan said. “I’m pissed at hearing how you fornicate with animals, and I’m pissed at hearing that Rae is a junkie and my mother is a lesbian prostitute.”

  Bang, the fridge door slammed. Pfizz went another Coors top.

  “Before you drown in your righteous indignation, Duncan, let me present

  you with a little scene. Opening shot, all news *

  casts: tear gas flying over the capitol lawn as Colorado state National Guard troops fire rubber bullets into an innocent crowd protesting the governor’s son Duncan’s hooded mob. Close-up, the governor’s son. Wreckage and fire around him considerable. Pan to shot of a bleeding King Porter. We cut away to Washington, where enraged senators are screaming for O’Connell’s ass. Denver loses a hundred million dollars in convention bookings, and the state has the mark of Cain on it for a generation. Thanks a lot, Duncan, nifty.”

  “You knew who these people were! Why the hell did you have to run for governor?”

  “At this moment I’d be hard pressed to give you an answer.”

  Mal had been roused from his room by their yelling. He entered and snatched up the flyer on the Blizzard. “Because he wants to do something about their efforts to legalize this weapon. Maybe he did it because somebody has to stand up against evil.”

  “Pardon me all to hell,” Duncan said sarcastically.

  “All of us wonder,” Mal went on, “what are we doing here? This is your father, your family, and your state, Duncan. We don’t need your pouting. Either stand with us or go back to Fort Collins and play with your Rocky Mountain oysters. Your daddy is the poster boy for AMERIGUN, only he is outlined like a target. Ten points if you hit him between the eyes.”

  “It’s like judging the beauty contests, Duncan. Somebody has to do the dirty work,” Quinn said.

  Duncan laughed and cried at the same time, his cheeks reddening with shame. “I’m pretty naive, aren’t I?”

  “Yep,” his grandfather agreed.

  “Anything I can do, Dad?”

  “Yep. I need help. I need it badly.”

  “Governor’s office,” Marsha sang.

  “Hello, Marsha, this is Dawn Mock. Is the governor in for me?”

  “I’ll put you right through, Dr. Mock. Governor, it’s Dr. Mock.”

  “Quinn,” Quinn said.

  “I must talk to you right away,” she said.

  “Jesus, I’ve got a parole board meeting in ten minutes, and after that I’m loaded.”

  “It’s urgent, and it won’t take long. I’m on my way.” The line went dead.

  “Marsha.”

  “Yes, Governor.”

  “Push the parole board meeting back a half hour. Cancel dinner with Assemblyman Bonnar at the Ship’s Tavern. Send Dr. Mock right in and hold all calls.”

  Quinn wondered what the hell could be so urgent. In her ten months in office, it was the first time she had done this.

  He smiled. Dr. Dawn Mock had been his first appointment and had bucked a nasty confirmation hearing. She had performed brilliantly.

  The position of Colorado Bureau of Investigation was open. The glass ceiling was lowered for an African-American woman.

  Dawn Mock, a mother of three and grandmother of six, was married to a retired detective who now ran a regional claims office of insurance adjusters.

  Dawn’s reputation on the Chicago police force had been gained as a forensics wizard. Dr. Mock’s books, speeches, seminars, and appearances as a trial witness outshone the people above her. The powers to be took Dr. Mock for granted, even though she spent a fair part of every year on loan to other police forces.

  The Colorado Bureau of Investigation was a compact unit of about fifty persons, mainly a support system for investigations in those towns that could not afford forensics labs or a staff of detectives.

  State bureaus are rarely noted. Dawn Mock changed that. Quinn gave her a free hand and infused the bureau with new funds. Dr. Mock did the rest.

  “Hi, Dawn,” he greeted her.

  “Governor.”

  Dawn rated a big smile. At fifty-something she had remained extremely attractive, belying her years of police work. She gestured to Quinn that she wanted secrecy. To one side of his office was a private room with a couch, a kitchenette, and small conference table. He closed the door behind her.

  “You know Arne Skye?” she asked.

  “I’ve met him a few times. Roving special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.”

  “He’s been working out of the Chicago office,” she continued. “Arne flew in to see me today. He wants to talk to you in total one-on-one secret.”

  Quinn mulled this over. “What’s your experience with him, Dawn?”

  “I’ve had a lot of contact with him through the years. He’s a legend in the bureau, good people. Arne’s always been up front with me.”

  “You know I don’t like this back-alley crap,” Quinn said, annoyed.

  “What do you think is on his mind?”

  “Well, it’s either alcohol, tobacco, or firearms.”

  “Maybe the AMERIGUN convention?” Quinn murmur red hopefully.

  “I don’t want to speculate, Governor. I’ve been with you a year, and

  I’ve never seen you draw a card from the bottom of the deck. Sorry

  about putting you on the midnight rendezvous circuit, but—“

  “Breeds mistrust,” Quinn interrupted.

  “But,” she interrupted right back, “no public office in America can exist without its dirty little secrets.”

  “Thanks for sharing that with me, Dawn.”

  “Quinn, Arne Skye is one of the big hitters in police world. You’d have to be crazy not to meet with him.”

  “God forgive me, where and when?”

  “Have you got an unmarked car?”

  “No problem.”

  Dawn took a room key from her purse. STAR LITE MOTEL, the tag read, 11965 SANTE FE DRIVE, ROOM 106, and she slid it over the table.

  “Santa Fe Drive. I haven’t cruised that street since I was a freshman at Boulder. This Arne Skye got a sense of humor or what? When?”

  “Tonight, ten o’clock. He’ll be in the room waiting.”

  “No tricks, no bugging, no video,” Quinn said firmly.

  “You boys better start trusting each other.”

  At nine-fifteen Quinn left the condo garage in Maldonado’s Cherokee.

  Was this the break he had to have? It smelled of promise. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was a small agency, some fifteen hundred agents, but they could be potent.

  One of the nation’s oldest bureaus, it had been formed after the

  American Revolution. In those days of yore, there had been no such thing as personal income tax. The new nation had to finance itself largely on taxes from alcohol and tobacco collected by the bureau. Later, firearms and arson were added to the bureau’s mandate.

  Like the Marine Corps, the aTF. managed to fight off attempts to dissolve it. The bureau proved time a
nd again they were uniquely empowered. They returned to the government in collected revenues twenty to thirty times their operating budget.

  Quinn turned onto Santa Fe Drive, a diagonal truck route from the interstate to downtown Denver. He passed the train yards. The street had been once filled with truck stop cafes and hot-sheet motels. Swingers tacked their assets onto motel bulletin boards before partaking of the waterbeds and porno flicks.

  The street now had a “safe” area with a strip of cantinas, musty bars, and restaurants where undocumented wetbacks gathered. Immigration raids were rare because too much of the agricultural economy and tourist industry depended on stoop labor and busboys.

  As Governor, Quinn could do poor little about it. It was a federal problem. Quinn felt that corruption in Mexico and bleeding the underclass were beyond his powers to dent, much less change.

  The Starlite Motel had seen better days and better days before that. Quinn wiggled the Cherokee into the lot and waited. The Starlite was a one-story affair about a hundred feet removed from a corner cantina. There was an intermittent but steady line of men going to one of the rooms in the motel and returning to the cantina.

  Ten o’clock.

  Quinn’s shoes crunched over broken glass. His key fudged on him. He shoved the door and it broke open. The room was totally dark.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Quinn sang.

  After a beat a dim lamp clicked on. Quinn could not be certain who was behind the lamp. “Hello, Governor. Is anyone listening?”

  “Not unless he’s one of yours,” Quinn said.

  “Dr. Mock called me and vouched for your veracity. Nice to meet someone in office with veracity.” The voice came from behind his cover. Everything about Arne Skye was medium sized, except for his face. It was a roadmap of past raids, of one who had spent a life in purgatory. He studied Quinn, trying to search for clues beyond the governor’s unrevealing expression.

  Arne Skye produced a bottle of vodka and small-sized Dixie cups from the bathroom.

  “You going to do anything about AMERIGUN?” he said abruptly in a high voice of Norwegian influence.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Quinn replied.

  “Dr. Dawn says the state has hit a brick wall.”

  “These gun folks are artful dodgers,” Quinn said.

  “You’ve hit a brick wall because it’s not your business. It’s mine.

  What have you learned, Governor?”

  “That you’re a crusty character.”

  Skye’s roadmap changed as he broke into a smile. “Where are you with this?”

  “Well, let’s see. There are up to five thousand, give or take, gun and knife shows held country wide each year, almost anonymously. The exhibition tables are leased so AMERIGUN is clear of any illegal sales by the exhibitors,” Quinn recited. “AMERIGUN is renting out fifteen hundred exhibition tables in the convention center. Largest number ever.”

  A loud customer next door announced himself. The dying dove song cooed over to them. “What else?”

  “Many exhibitions carry illegal weapons. Contact is made at the show by a buyer, and the transaction is usually carried out at a trailer court. There other categories of dirty weapons exhibited hilariously as ‘antiques. “And to avoid dealer licenses, they can sell weapons for cash under the guise of selling from a ‘personal collection’! No record of sale required and no registration.

  “Twenty to thirty percent of guns in the hands of criminals and street gangs were purchased at these gun shows. If the state canvasses the exhibition floor, we might catch a few dozen street-level dealers. If they’re caught, it’s no skin off AMERIGUN’s ass,” Quinn recited.

  The customer next door was vocally aroused.

  “Shit,” Arne opined, “we can’t go on meeting like this, Governor. Now,

  who have you spoken to confidentially about

  AMERIGUN?”

  “Dr. Mock and my attorney general, Doc Blanchard.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, my wife and father-in-law.”

  “If there is any course of action, and I’m not saying there is, any operation has to be a dead-bolted secret,” Arne said.

  “What about your bureau, Skye?”

  Arne shook his head. “It must be a Colorado operation. Even the aTF. can be penetrated. It’s like this, safety locks on guns have just been voted down by the Congress for the fifth time. Any leaks to the gun people would be a disaster in this kind of hit. Now, let me ask you, Governor, what kind of people you have leading the Guard and state troopers?”

  “Reb Butterworth is adjutant general of the Guard. Colonel Yancey Hawke is chief of the troopers. I’d split a secret with them. In fact, both are seething to make a raid.”

  “I like your chances with those three people,” Skye appraised. He inched closer to Quinn.

  “Could you order a special two-week training course for seventy guardsman and thirty troopers?”

  “Training courses and seminars are ongoing. We’re always plucking some stupid climber off the top of a mountain, tracking forest fires, drug busts at the state lines, dusting for insects.”

  “Crowd control?” Arne asked.

  “We practice that drill regularly. Will the people in these courses have any idea of what we’re after?”

  “No,” Arne said. “Anything you don’t understand about it?”

  “No,” Quinn said.

  “If you want to bust AMERIGUN’s ass—“ Arne began.

  “I want to bust AMERIGUN’s ass,” Quinn replied.

  “We are bypassing the FBI, the United States government, and the Denver police. As far as the aTF. is concerned, we don’t know nothing.

  Capische^”

  “Capische,” Quinn repeated.

  “We may have the stars in perfect alignment,” Arne said. “Number one, it has to be a big haul, hundreds, maybe thousands of weapons. Second, it has to show up in Denver during the convention. Third, someone of rank in AMERIGUN has to be connected to the weapons. Finally, the action must be swift and bloodless.”

  A ruckus broke out in one of the nearby pleasure rooms. A half dozen men stormed out of the cantina and hauled off one of their buddies lest the police arrive and detain them all.

  Arne Skye got up. The low ceiling made him look taller than he was. “If you’ll have Butterworth and Colonel Yancey form up a hundred men for special training, I’ll contact you, through Dawn Mock.”

  “We’ve got no deal, Arne.”

  “You do need help, right?”

  “You’re hedging your bets. I want you to show me that card you’re hiding up your sleeve.”

  The governor had it figured out correctly. Arne would stay in as long as he wasn’t exposed. He would give the signal for a bust, maybe not. If the bust worked, there would probably be no investigation, for it would shut the mouths of Congress. If it went sour and was traced to him, so long career, and the governor might as well go back to Troublesome Mesa and stay.

  Thirty years at the bureau, Skye thought, coming down to a single moment, possibility of gunfire, maintaining secrecy, and going over the head of his director. Shit!

  Arne Skye had spent his life on the edge, sometimes completely ignoring

  his superiors, their mandate, and sometimes bypassing the odds, but a miss here would mean the guillotine.

  “You look like you’re in need of religious help,” Quinn said.

  “I know why I came to Denver,” he shot back defensively. “If I knew what I know and failed to try to prevent it, it would end up as my legacy. I’m an honest cop, Governor, but I don’t mind cutting a few corners.”

  “When I took office,” Quinn replied, “I thought I was going to come out Maytag sparkling. It doesn’t work like that, does it”?”

  “It’s hard for guys like you and me,” Arne said. “This is the most important potential bust of three decades in the bureau. What do you know about the VEC-44?”

  “It’s some kind of machine pisto
l,” Quinn aswered.

  “You betcha,” Skye said. He took an arms case from his suitcase, unzipped it, and laid the weapon on the table. It was tiny and lightweight, had a three and a half-inch barrel, and weighed under three pounds. Modified to become fully automatic, it used powerful 9mm hollow-center ammunition, and had oversized clips holding a thirty-five-round capacity.

  The weapon had been developed by Belgium as a NATO policing gun. Several thousand had been produced. NATO ultimately rejected the VEC-44 as inaccurate over forty yards and extremely dangerous when troops were dealing with civilians.

  “It is worthless for target shooting or as a hunting weapon. The barrel gets so hot it becomes squirrely fast, and so the military rejected it. VEC-44 converted into fully automatic operates as an in-close kill machine designed for mean streets.” The vodka bottle lowered by two cups.

  “When NATO dropped the weapon, Belgium sold the licenses and patents in Panama in the forbidden city of Colon. Colon is impossible to penetrate and is a world hub for drugs and arms smuggling.

  “The package was finally taken over by Roy Sedgewick’s Ark Royal Arms

  Ltd.” a Canadian manufacturer, always slightly ahead of the

  government. VEC--44’s were converted into a cash crop. Small case lots drifted into the gun shows and under the counters of gun stores.

  “Sedgewick siphoned off three thousand VEC-44’s and spirited them to his farm near Toronto. They were encased and hidden in a huge barn under bales of hay.

  “When the Canadian government caught up with Sedge wick and Ark Royal, he had made preparation for his old age.

  “In the paradoxical world of arms smuggling, Sedgewick hooked up with Hoop Hooper, the ‘commander’ of a two-hundred man militia, the Grand Army of Wisconsin.

  “If Sedgewick could get the guns over the border, Hooper would stash them somewhere on his ‘national military territory.”

  “With the wrath of the Canadian government close behind him, Sedgewick didn’t have many choices, despite his doubts about Hoop Hooper. He loaded his hidden arsenal onto a semitrailer and wheeled it down to Sault Ste. Marie, where it was reloaded onto a Great Lakes barge.