A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [100]
Like the Marine Corps, the ATF managed to fight off attempts to dissolve it. The bureau proved time and 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 cafés 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 road map 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 smallsized 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 road map 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 countrywide 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,