Read Online Lone Wolf #10: Harlem Showdown by Mike Barry - Free Book Online Page A

penny more. And for that I want it to be good, dependable stuff. You’ll probably never see it again but I’m taking that into account and paying you at least fifteen hundred dollars more than it’s worth.”
    Father Justice shook his head. “You do not understand,” he said, “the risks of prayer, the risks of dedication to the unearthly spirit, to the spreading and the gathering and the annealing and the dispensation of the word—”
    “Twenty-six hundred dollars,” Wulff said. “No more. That’s all.”
    “I see,” Father Justice said. “I see.” He bent, looked at the floor as if seeking some kind of meditative answer, some equation that would wrench him past a moment of crisis, and then he said very gently, “It will be necessary for us to seek the answer to this prayer in the back room. We will have to retire into the holy of holies for further meditation and consideration and hope that therein we will find the answer.”
    He turned, walked back toward the wall, touched it with a delicate gesture and suddenly there was a panel that splayed open, another panel buckling with it, and there was a man-sized entrance into a huge, dark cavity behind. Quickly, gracefully, the reverend walked through it, Wulff following, and Wulff found himself in an odorous, enormous room, rich smells of wood and metal around him. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Wulff saw that he was in the largest arms cache he had ever seen in his life. From shelves piled to the ceiling fifty yards from him downrange in any direction, were the glinting aspects of ordnance: ordnance of all forms, of all apparent stages of modern history: here were hand grenades from the world wars piled neatly atop one another: here were M-l rifles, the old dependables from World War II and Korea; shading off in the rear were the modern, repeating M-15s; there were incendiaries of the most sophisticated type used in Vietnam; a little bit closer were clumsier bayonets of the type that had inhabited every barracks since the First World War.
    Remarkable. It was absolutely remarkable. Williams had not been kidding, all right; Father Justice had a cache here like nothing he had ever before seen. Conceivably army supply center1s in the ordnance depots were stocked like this, but in civilian life, of which Father Justice could be considered to be a part, you would have to go long and hard to see a stockpile like this.
    It would have made a religious man of the most avid skeptic, just to see what prayer and devotion had accomplished for Father Justice in this warehouse.
    “Twenty-six hundred dollars is insufficient,” Father Justice said, coldly. His manner once he had entered the room had changed entirely. The mask of the divine had fallen from the good reverend’s face and had been replaced with seamless lines of perception and purpose. “You must think that we are fools here to sell to a white man in the first place,” Justice said, “and in the second, that is ridiculous compensation for the risk involved. How do I know who you are? How can I know for what purposes you’re going to use this stuff? Five thousand.”
    “Forget it,” Wulff said. “I can’t come near that.”
    “Where are you going to better the price? Can you go down the block, find another supplier?”
    “Five thousand is ridiculous. Four thousand would be. I just made you top offer. Twenty-six hundred.”
    “No.”
    “Then why invite me back here at all?” Wulff said. “You wouldn’t have asked me to step into this room unless you saw something in my offer, some territory to be explored.” He paused, put down an urge to light a cigarette, looked instead at the glinting, terrible contents of the room and said, “Three thousand. But that’s the last. I won’t go any higher than that.”
    “Three thousand is a small contribution to the temple of the holy spirit.”
    “Three thousand is the top,” Wulff said, “that’s the limit for what I’m asking. I’m not asking for an