“This guy,” I said, almost as a question. “He hasn’t left, Chess. What’s he want from us?”

Chester smiled at me, staring at the monitor that covered the parking lot. “You always were the smart one in the group, Paul. He’s got a warrant. Going eighty in a fifty-five.”

“And he didn’t show up in court?” Remy asked.

Chester shook his head.

“Tell him if he helps us out, we’ll clear it,” I said. “Get him in here.”

Chester walked outside then. A minute later, he was followed in by a skinny white guy in his late twenties. “This is Lowell M. Forster,” he said. “You’ll need that name to clear the warrant. But everyone I know calls him Wolf.”

Wolf’s eyes were sunken, and his skin was sallow. A meth addict was my first thought. But he looked sober. He took off his jacket, and underneath he wore a gray tank top with an image of Chewbacca on it.

“Take us through what we’re we looking at, Wolf.” Remy pointed to the gun parts.

The skinny guy looked to Chester and back to us. He carried all a hundred and thirty pounds like a gangster, dipping his shoulders as he moved.

“Well, first thing y’all should know,” Wolf said, “is that this shit ain’t manufactured. That’s straight-up number one.”

Up close, Wolf wasn’t bad looking. His oblong face was unshaven and he had green eyes and hair that he’d purposely shaved short. Definitely not high. Just unusually thin.

He took a kit the size of a shaving bag from his jacket and removed a series of instruments. Miniature screwdrivers and something that looked like forceps, but were smaller.

“Okay,” I said. “Meaning what?”

“It’s handmade, yo. It’s a one-off. Custom.”

My face must’ve given a “so the fuck what” look, because Wolf glanced from Chester to me.

“Take your time,” Remy said, calming the skinny kid.

“People like me print these,” Wolf said, picking up the trigger guard. “Piece by piece. Once you dry ’em and sand the edges, you paint ’em with a polyurethane. The black parts—a gunmetal acrylic stain. I mean, no one wants a plastic-looking gun, amirite?”

“Sure,” I said flatly. “It doesn’t look cool.”

“’Xactly,” Wolf said. He grabbed the box and carefully placed the white ball bearing and flange back into place. The plastic clip. Then he popped the pieces back into the box, using the two plastic dowels to hold them.

“In a real gun”—he held up the small box—“you’d call these pieces inside the stop release and the detent ball—”

“They’re all part of the trigger assembly,” Chester finished his sentence.

“’Xactly,” Wolf said. “So guys like me—we’ve made 3D handguns. And it’s expensive, yo. Cheaper to get a black market gun if you really wanna shoot. Plus, my boy Snake—you’ve met him, Chester—he shot a 3D Beretta last year, and it exploded in his damn hand on the first shot. Homeboy’s got permanent burns.”

I looked to Chester. Were we learning anything here?