A crooked dealer
is the answer to both, and Arnold Rivers was definitely crooked."
"You know that?" McKenna inquired. "For sure?"
Another flash lit the front of the shop. Rand nodded.
"For damn good and sure. I can show you half a dozen firearms in this
shop that have been altered to increase their value. I don't mean
legitimate restorations; I mean fraudulent alterations." He went on to
tell McKenna about Rivers's expulsion from membership in the National
Rifle Association. "And I know that he sold a pair of pistols to Lane
Fleming, about a week before Fleming was killed, that were outright
fakes. Fleming was going to sue the ears off Rivers about that; the fact
is, until this morning, I'd been wondering if that mightn't have been
why Fleming had that sour-looking accident. If he'd lived, he'd have run
Rivers out of business."
"Hell, I didn't know that!" McKenna seemed worried. "Fleming used to
target-shoot with our gang, and he knew too much about gats to pull a
Russ Columbo on himself. I didn't like that accident, at the time, but I
figured he'd pulled the Dutch, and the family were making out it was an
accident. We never were called in; the whole thing was handled through
the coroner's office.
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