Lawrence Block - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, No. 6. Whole No. 790, June 2007

The boy leapt suddenly to his feet, even as he spun, and landed facing the militiamen’s position, one arm raised defiantly in the air. From his small fist popped a middle finger. “You suck!” he assured the fighters, and then, with a grin at Sean, began a mad dash for the marines’ bunker.

“Sonofabitch,” Sean muttered unbelievingly. Then they opened up.

Sean had never seen so many flashes from so many windows in all his time in The Root. The sheer volume was deafening, and the whining of passing rounds was like being in a jar of wasps. The only problem was that they were all aimed at him as he stood slack-jawed watching the kid’s race for safety. Colquitt snagged him by the belt and yanked him down into the hole. The firing ceased immediately, and moments later the kid vaulted the sand-bags and landed, laughing and panting, amongst them.

“I do not believe you!” Sean gasped. “Kid, you’ve got some big ones.”

“I guess,” Colquitt agreed.

“What’s your name?” he asked the panting youngster as he tossed him his canteen.

“Ibrahim,” the boy informed him proudly, his black eyes sparking with excitement.

That evening when Sean arrived at work, Mr. Corrado was there going over register tapes. As he would often appear at unexpected times, Sean thought little of his appearance. He nodded to Sean as he hung up his jacket in the storeroom in his usual distracted manner, then returned to poring myopically over the tapes through the thick, dirty lenses of his glasses. Sean gently shoved the gym bag he had brought with him beneath a work counter with his foot.

“How’s it goin’?” Sean asked pleasantly as he extracted his time-card from the holder on the wall.

“Good, Sean, good,” Mr. Corrado mumbled in reply.

Sean slid his card into the time clock, then returned it to the holder. “That’s good,” he said as he headed for the storefront to relieve Megan.

“Oh, Sean,” Corrado stopped him. “Just a minute... before you go out front.”

Sean turned to his employer, curious. It was unlike him to engage in any but the most rudimentary conversations. He was not known for his “people skills.”

“Listen, Sean, I’m sure you’re aware that there’s been a series of holdups in the area,” he ventured.

Sean nodded. “Heard somethin’, yeah.”

“Well,” Corrado glanced nervously towards the front counter and Megan. “I’m a little concerned, you see.”

Sean felt his face growing hard. “Yeah,” he offered unhelpfully.

Corrado ran a hand over the slick strands that failed to cover his gleaming pate, and Sean wondered, not for the first time, if there was some link between responsibility and baldness. It was something he had largely avoided since leaving the Corps twenty years before. “It seems they hit stores like ours,” the nervous manager continued. “After midnight... your shift, that is.” He glanced up at Sean as if for encouragement.

“And...?” Sean inquired flatly.

“The thing is—” Corrado returned his gaze to the register tapes — “I’m thinking it might be wise to close at midnight... for a while... till they’re caught.”

“Closing all the stores, then?” Sean asked.

Corrado glanced back up, a stricken look on his face. “This one’s a little different, Sean... you’re so far out here, on the edge of town. It’s exactly the kind of place they seem to hit. The others are closer in... a little less vulnerable,” he added defensively.

“And I’m gonna pay the rent how?” Sean asked.

Corrado began to gather the tapes, as if to leave, but found that Sean was standing over him. “Sean, this would be for your own safety. Did you know a clerk at the Putnam chain was murdered just last night? That’s less than five miles from here.” He had never seen Sean like this.

Sean took a step back, sensing he was going too far. “Mr. Corrado, I cannot afford not to work, that’s one thing. The other thing is that I don’t like gettin’ chased off my hill by a pack of maybes... maybe they’ll hit us, maybe they won’t. I stand to lose wages, and you stand to lose a lot of money in the bargain. If I’m willin’ to take the chance, you oughta be, too.” He took a breath and glanced out toward the front counter where Megan was staring at him impatiently and tapping her watch. “Mr. Corrado, you may not know this, but I was a marine once. I know how to take care of myself.”

Corrado had not known that, and he studied Sean keenly for a moment before dropping his eyes. “I see,” he said, slowly rising. “If that’s how you feel, then. You make a good point.”

Sean could see the relief flooding the other man’s face. The responsibility was no longer his. “Thanks,” Sean said, turning to relieve his coworker.

“But those lights out front, Sean,” Corrado spoke with authority. “You’ve got to take care of those. Understood?”

“Understood,” Sean agreed with a smile, and snapped a smart salute.

Corrado flinched, then hurried from the store as the witching hour struck.

From midnight until two A.M. customers came in the usual spates of hurried, exhausted-looking individuals in need of last-minute cigarettes, milk, coffee, chips, and beer. When at last Sean judged that he would have the store to himself, probably until the six A.M. coffee rush began, he hauled out the ladder from the storeroom and set to work on the lights. Maneuvering it carefully from one narrow aisle to the next, he loosened one fluorescent tube in each fixture, until the store was powered down to a drowsy twilight. After replacing the lights outside above the entry, he went out into the parking lot to judge the effect from the street, and was satisfied with the results. The store still gave the impression that it was open for business, but had acquired a tired, careless appearance. Just as importantly, it would not be as easy for a passerby, or the police, to see what was going on within — certain to be attractive to anyone who might be casing the place, he thought.

After loosening all of the light tubes in the fixture above the service counter and plunging his work area into a gloomy murk, he returned the ladder to the storeroom, only to return with a work lamp that he clamped onto a smokeless-tobacco display next to where he sat. He now had only to reach out and switch off the lamp to return his work area to near darkness. Without rising from his stool, he bent beneath the counter and retrieved the gym bag that he had brought out from the back room after Megan’s and Mr. Corrado’s departures.

There were two items within, the first being a very large and powerful hand-held spotlight of the type used by emergency personnel. He placed this, with a thump, upon the countertop and off to the side of his work space, but pointed directly at the entrance to the store. With a quick glance to ensure no customers were in the lot outside, he switched it on. The brilliant flash that reflected off the glass doors made him turn away with a curse, and he hastily switched it back off again. Anyone standing in front of him, he thought, would be similarly blinded.

The second item he removed from the bag he carefully placed on the shelf beneath the countertop, its cropped double barrels pointing directly forward. The stock of the gun had been cut down as well, and the pistol-like grip that remained was within easy reach of his hand.

The customer was just entering the store as Sean’s eyes came up to the level of the countertop. He was a tall, emaciated-looking man in his middle thirties, Sean guessed, with a dirty baseball cap pulled low over his long, greasy locks. His face sprouted a drooping moustache and several days’ growth of beard, and he started visibly when Sean popped up from behind the counter. “Wasn’t sure anyone was home,” he stuttered before changing direction and heading into the aisles. Sean noted that he kept one hand in the pocket of his frayed, oversized jacket.