Continuing to investigate the case through a partnership with local private eye "Pinky" Farrell (David Huddleston), McQ learns that Santiago has assembled a heist team to steal the confiscated heroin and cocaine from the police department's evidence vault. The drugs are normally held by the department until turned over to the State Attorney General's Office for disposal. Santiago's men steal the drugs just as they are about to be burned in a hospital incinerator. McQ pursues Santiago's men, but they escape. The increasingly exasperated Kosterman puts McQ's application for a private investigator's license on hold and revokes McQ’s gun permit, so McQ has to leave his Colt revolver. McQ afterward goes to a local gun store and acquires for himself a Browning Hi-Power pistol and a MAC-10 submachine gun.