“May I come in?” the man asked, still holding the box at his gut level. “I’m Jim Cirillo, by the way.”

“Jason Whitlock. Please have a seat here at the table.” He would have shaken the man’s hand, but both hands were occupied holding the box. “Wait a minute, Jim Cirillo of New York City’s legendary stakeout squad?”

“Well, I don’t know about legendary, but yeah, that’s me.” The stout man, who wore a plaid shirt, set the box onto the table and shook Jason’s hand.

“Wow, it’s an honor.” Following his guest, Jason took a seat and could smell the scent of cedar wafting up from the box.

The cop who taught him the sap yesterday introduced Jason to the famed cop, a key member of the NYPD’s stakeout squad. Jim Cirillo was a policeman who lurked inside liquor stores in a back room, and when the place got robbed, sprang out in the midst of an armed robbery, guns blazing. It was incredibly dangerous, not just to Jim and his fellow officers, but to the store owners and clerks, and anybody else who happened to be in the store at the time and ran the risk of being caught in a crossfire. What Jim Cirillo had going for him was the fact that he was unfailingly accurate, and could place headshots with deadly accuracy. The was no one on the planet with more experience in real-life shootouts than Jim Cirillo. Admittedly, the stakeout squad was active in New York City in the seventies, not the twenties, but as the monkey in the red fez would say, this was a video game, not a documentary.

Officer Cirillo handed Jason a tiny key, which he used to open the locked cedar box. Lying in green velvet, in a depression that fit the pistol like a glove, rested a .45 automatic, and Jason could smell the bluing on it as well.

“Oh my gosh,” Jason gasped upon seeing the quality of the gun.

“I got it free from the manufacturer. They wanted me to do an endorsement,” Officer Cirillo explained, “but I’m still partial to the .38 special, even though one of my partners in the stakeout squad always carried a 1911 like this one, all tricked out. I thought maybe you could use it.”

“Hell yeah!” Jason cried out in his excitement. He looked at a slip inside the box, and remembered his grandfather telling him that no one else on the game would be able to read it. “Tool: Wilson Combat Model 1911 .45 ACP.”

“Let’s take it somewhere so you can shoot it.” Jim got up from the table and closed up the box, then tucked it under his arm.

The two of them took a cab to the industrial part of town, where an abandoned factory had one wall lined with sandbags, coupled with shredded plywood cutout targets standing on wood feet. If the area was a little dicey, God help anybody who tried to make trouble for them, because Jason was with Jim Cirillo, a master marksman and survivor of multiple shootouts.

“You need to practice your instinctive shooting to the point that you can make accurate headshots,” Jim explained as he placed several rapid shots in the heads of three plywood silhouettes. “Most of those shots are going to be at surprisingly close range, within ten feet. I found out the hard way that the bad guys are going to duck behind cover, so often that’s the only shot you’ve got—the top or some bit of the perp’s head.”

Jim handed Jason the gun, which was a Colt in .45 ACP, and Jason began to load it.

“Your target,” Officer Cirillo told him, “is a band that runs from the bottom of the nose up to the center of the forehead in a 360 degree circle. Some perps are going to absorb rounds like a sponge, and keep going, but if you put a bullet in that band, he’ll go down, and the fight is over.”

Jason fired at the plywood silhouette, and found himself missing the head more often than not, but he discovered that the gun was surprisingly easy to shoot, and he recovered quickly from each shot. “I thought that the .45 was supposed to kick like a mule.”

Jason carefully handed the gun back to Officer Cirillo, who ejected the magazine and reloaded, then flicked on the safety before tucking the gun into a holster behind his hip.

“This is a relatively heavy, solid steel gun, which means the weight will soak up a lot of the recoil, as does the slide action.” Jim drew the gun from his back hip and quickly placed three shots in a row through the head of each of three plywood targets. The brass from the first spent cartridge was still in the air when Jim placed the third shot through the head of a plywood silhouette. “Under stress, your natural reaction is to get tunnel vision. Always be on the lookout for multiple opponents. Be aware of the shooter who has someone else lurking in the background, waiting to spring into action.”

“Got it,” Jason acknowledged, and began reloading the pistol after Jim handed it to him.

“Oh, and you want to make certain you’re not using ball ammo, or round nose,” Jim added. “Guys use ball ammo because it feeds easily, but this pistol has been throated so it will shoot anything. Once on stakeout, my partner and I must have put ten rounds into an armed robber’s skull, but he wouldn’t go down. Turns out, we were firing round nose bullets, and the slugs were going under his scalp, following the contour of the perp’s skull, and exiting through the skin on the other side, leaving him practically unharmed! So use hollowpoints with a jagged edge that’s going to bite into the guy’s skull and penetrate.”

Jim removed a cloth and carefully polished the gun, removing any fingerprints on it, before returning it to the velvet-lined box. “A lot of people think a gun makes them God, that no harm can come to them as long as they own a gun, even if it’s in the back of the closet at home when they’re out on the street. You know that’s bullshit. You’ve got to practice and practice some more. Get to where you can draw and hit that band around the head on three men in less than a second. It’s only your training and practice that makes the gun a powerful tool. Otherwise, it’s just a paperweight.”

After Jim Cirillo gave Jason his final instructions, including a promise to shoot every day, Jason took his cedar box onto the bus, headed for the Department of Health. Now that Jason had a sap and a handgun, he needed the money for ammunition to practice shooting every day. And he needed to buy a holster and a thick, strong belt. The funny thing about becoming a superhero is that nobody ever mentions that there are startup costs.

Jason’s ears were still ringing from the shooting session when he got off at the Department of Health and went in through the double doors to the semi-circular reception desk. “I’m Jason Whitlock, and I’d like to speak to someone about getting medical care for a group of men at the rescue mission.”

The receptionist didn’t know what to say, and seemed confused by Jason’s request.

The woman had brown hair that curled inward just at the collar, and a shade of red lipstick that was bright enough to draw attention. “If you want to get treatment for specific individuals, you’ll need to have them come in and file individual claims.”

“I’m talking about acting as a liaison for a group of individuals,” Jason explained. “You have a manger here?”

“Let me buzz Clarence,” the woman said. After a moment on the phone, she motioned up the curving staircase to Jason. “Room 207.”

“Thanks,” Jason said with a nod and a tip of his Fedora. He climbed the stairs, and noted that he wasn’t winded at all, which he attributed to the fact that he’d been working out with the jump rope, and had gone from struggling to jump three minutes non-stop, to where he could now do fifteen minutes without a problem, and it paid off in the game. When Jason reached 307 he knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a voice replied.

Jason stepped in and studied the man behind the desk, a clean-looking guy who Jason could tell exceeded at politics and sounding smooth, whose double-breasted suit was neatly pressed and his black hair slicked back. “I’m Jason Whitlock, from the Healing Hands Rescue Mission.”

“Clarence Huntsman, Director in Charge of community health.” He extended his hand, and the two men shook. “Please have a seat.”

Jason sat down with his gun box in his lap, and noted the service awards that Clarence had earned, as well as the framed picture on the desk of a plump woman and three kids.

“So what exactly do you have in mind?” Clarence asked.

“I know a group of homeless men, and arranged for them to get medical checkups,” Jason explained, “and for most of those men, they hadn’t had checkups in years. We actually took a Department of Health bus, so I’ve worked with your agency before. I’d like to see about getting these men regular, ongoing medication. Many of the men need it, but have lapsed.”

“Well, Mr. Whitlock, get them into the office here, and we’ll schedule them appointments.” Clarence interlocked his fingers and felt quite satisfied.

“I know these men, and it doesn’t work like that,” Jason told him. “There’s a reason why they don’t get checkups or take their meds. I know them, and they know me, and so I’m able to work with them.”

“So what exactly are you asking for?” Clarence looked at Jason suspiciously.

“I’d like to make arrangements for these men to get care, and I’d like to get a finder’s fee for helping them.” Jason looked Clarence in the eye.

“You want us to give you money?”

“Yes,” Jason replied. “You get money to help people get health care, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t. The bottom line is that you get funded based on the number of people you serve. Here’s a chance for you to increase the number of people you serve, people you wouldn’t otherwise reach. You look compassionate, and you now have a basis to request an increase in funding for all of the new constituents that you’re helping.”

“Sorry, Mr. Whitlock, but we don’t just pay people who come in off the street.” Clarence had a dismissive look on his face, and Jason could sense that the bureaucrat was about to usher him out of the office.

“Well, Mr. Huntsman, there’s another way this could go,” Jason began, and a hardness crept into his voice. “I get together a group of men who aren’t getting medical care, and there are hundreds of them all over the city. We go to the press, and I explain very articulately how the Department of Health doesn’t give a shit about bums. We could couple that with indigent men hanging around the lobby of your office here, throwing up on the sidewalk, urinating in the alleyway, panhandling whenever a car comes into the back parking lot. The sight of homeless men begging the Department of Health for medical care is the kind of thing that makes for front page pictures, don’t you think?”

Clarence leaned back in his seat and took it all in, templing his fingers in thought. “Are you threatening me, Mr. Whitlock?”

“No, I’m just giving you options.” Jason smiled. “In one of those options, I get money to pay my bills, needy men get the medical care that they need, and you look like a hero while getting extra funding for your agency.”

“You’re pretty brazen, Mr. Whitlock, but I like the way you think. I think we can work out a deal.”

When Jason got back to the rescue mission, he was feeling pretty good, having struck a deal that would get him a finder’s fee, or a service fee—however one might like to think of it—for helping the men of the rescue mission get medical care, including maintenance medications. Plus he had a new gun.

When he got to his room at the rescue mission, Jason became aware that there was someone in his room, due to a subtle noise. Remembering the RAPE thug he killed, Jason wondered if they’d manage to link him to the murder, and had caught up with him. He knelt and unlocked the cedar box before removing the automatic. Leaving the box on the hallway floor, Jason flicked off the safety, before opening the knob as quietly as possible. He held his automatic up, careful to keep his finger out of the trigger guard as he slipped inside the dark room.