of times in eighteen years. But never in a situation where I knew I'd have to use it. Then the one time it happened, I didn't do it. I didn't even try. It wouldn't be so bad if I knew why. If I had something to fight. But I have no answer. I have no idea how I'd act if the situation ever came up again.”

     The silence again. His corduroys made riffling noises as he crossed and uncrossed his legs.

     I said, “That's why I don't want to be a cop anymore.”

     I spent a day and a half doing a background check on a new executive hire. When I closed the folio, I still had a couple of hours left in the afternoon. I called the gun shop in Reno. I was wondering what Lito Sanchez had bought with the credit card.

     The store manager said he was too busy for me, so I phoned the bank that had issued the card, told them I was tracking one of their skips, and gave them a few minutes to nudge the shop. I was about to try the manager again when he called me. Whatever you need, he said.

     He put me through to a clerk, who explained that the store used a computerized point-of-sale register system for inventory and accounting; the charge slip number would be keyed to a sales record that was stored somewhere on a data cartridge. It took the clerk some minutes to find the cart, maybe twenty seconds more to query the data base. I heard a keyboard clicking.

     “All right,” he said. “We're looking at two Detonics Combat Master Mark Fours, new in box, list price seven hundred fifty-five, we gave him a ten percent discount. That's a honey of a pistol, you know it? Beveled magazine well, polished feed ramp, and the Mark Four has the adjustable rear sights. It's a real sweetheart.”

     “A .45 auto?”

     “You got it. I'm also showing a thousand rounds of .45 ammunition and six spare clips.”