W.E.B Griffin - The Witness

"Shut your face, motherfucker!" Hussein El Baruca replied, simultaneously drawing a large, blue in color, large-caliber semiautomatic pistol (probably a Colt Model 1911 or 1911A1.45-caliber service pistol) and pointing it at Red Monahan.

"Hey, you don't really want to do this-" Red Monahan said, whereupon Hussein El Baruca struck him, with a slashing backward motion of his right arm, in the face with the pistol, with sufficient force to knock him down and, it was subsequently learned, to cause a crack in Mr. Monahan's full upper denture.

Then he raised the pistol to a nearly vertical position and fired it three times. One of the bullets struck a fluorescent lighting fixture on the ceiling, smashing a bulb, which caused broken glass and then a cloud of powder, from the interior coating of the bulb, to float down from the ceiling. Then, the fixture itself tore loose at one end, causing a short-circuit in the wiring. There was a flash of light, and then that entire line of lighting fixtures, one of two running from the front of the store to the rear, went off, reducing the light on the ground floor by half.

"On your fucking bellies or I'll blow your fucking heads off!" Hussein El Baruca ordered.

The three salespeople, two men and a woman, waiting for customers in the living-room suite, and Red Monahan complied with the order. The woman crossed herself, and her lips moved in prayer as she got onto her knees and then laid on the floor.

Hussein El Baruca then turned back to the double doors and closed the Venetian blinds on them. There was a large display window on either side of the entrance. A complete bedroom set was on display in one window, and a complete bedroom set in the other. The "walls" behind the furniture in each window blocked the view of the interior of the store to passersby, and with the blinds on the doors now closed, there was no way anyone on South Street could look into Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc.

The sound of the three pistol shots fired by Hussein El Baruca was muffled somewhat by the upholstered furniture on the ground floor, and because the store was open from the front to the rear, where the Credit Department was located. But it was loud enough to be heard on the second floor, where it was correctly interpreted by Hector Carlos Estivez as the signal he had been expecting.

He took what was probably a Smith amp; Wesson Military amp; Police.38 Special caliber revolver from where he had concealed it in the small of his back, held it in both hands at arm's length, and fired two shots at the glass viewing port of a Hotpoint drier that was sitting on the floor approximately six feet from him, and two feet to the left of Mrs. Emily Watkins.

Mrs. Watkins yelped and covered her mouth with both hands.

Hector Carlos Estivez when he saw that he missed the glass viewing port with one of his shots, and that the second had cracked but not smashed or penetrated the glass, said, "Shit!" and fired a third time. This time the thick, tempered glass of the viewing port broke.

"On the floor, bitch!" Hector Carlos Estivez said, and Mrs. Watkins, now whimpering, dropped to her knees and then spread herself on the floor.

The shots from Estivez's revolver were audible to Abu Ben Mohammed on the third floor, where Phil Katz was explaining to him that trying to get by with bottom-of-the-line cheap carpet was really not economy at all.

"It's just like tires," Mr. Katz was saying, "what you're really buying is wear. You- What the hell was that?"

"You're being robbed, motherfucker, that's what it is," Abu Ben Mohammed said, taking a large-caliber, single-action, Western-style revolver with plastic "pearl" grips from beneath his dashiki. He pushed the hammer back, cocking the pistol, and then fired at a threefoot-tall, stainless-steel cigarette receptacle that had been placed beside the elevator door.

A hole appeared near the top of the receptacle, which then slowly tilted to one side, as if in a slow-motion picture, and then fell, dislodging a sand-filled glass tray, which shattered upon striking the metal elevator threshold.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Phil Katz said.

"Lay down on the floor," Abu Ben Mohammed ordered.

"What?"

"On the fucking floor, you heard me."

"Yes, sir."

The executive offices of Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc., those of Mr. Samuel Goldblatt, Jr., and Mr. Harold Goldblatt, the secretary, and their secretary, Mrs. Blanche Steiner, forty-four, were at the right rear of the building. Mr. Joshua Goldblatt, the treasurer, maintained his office in the Credit Department on the ground floor.

The sound of Abu Ben Mohammed's pistol shot attracted the attention of Mr. Samuel Goldblatt, Jr., who looked up from the work on his desk, and then stood up. When the executive offices had been built, one-way glass panels providing a view of the third-floor showroom had been installed. But they had never really worked, and eventually had been almost entirely covered up by a row of filing cabinets. The only way to see what was going on on the floor was to open the door and look.

Mr. Goldblatt did so, and found himself looking into the barrel of Abu Ben Mohammed's revolver.

"Hands up, honky!"

"Yes, sir," Mr. Goldblatt said.

"Oh, myGod!" Mrs. Steiner said, thereby attracting Abu Ben Mohammed's attention.

"Out here, bitch!"

"Do what he says, Blanche," Mr. Goldblatt said.

Abu Ben Mohammed then took careful aim at Mrs. Steiner's IBM typewriter and fired. The machine seemed to lift slightly off the desk and then settled back. There was a faint screeching noise, and then, a short-circuit within the typewriter having caused a fuse to blow, the overhead lights in the executive office went out. Desk lamps on Mr. Goldblatt's and Mrs. Steiner's desks continued to burn and produced sufficient light to see.

"Oh, myGod!" Mrs. Steiner wailed.

"Please don't hurt anyone," Mr. Goldblatt pleaded. "We'll do whatever you want us to do."

Abu Ben Mohammed then struck Mr. Goldblatt on the head, with a downward slashing motion of his pistol, causing him to fall to his knees and also causing a small cut on the (bald) top of his head.

"Get the money and some rope," Abu Ben Mohammed ordered.

"What?" Mrs. Steiner asked.

"There's no money up here," Mr. Goldblatt said. "Honest to God there isn't!"

"Bullshit!" Abu Ben Mohammed said. "Get the fucking money!"

Mr. Goldblatt reached into the hip pocket of his trousers and came out with his wallet that he handed to Abu Ben Mohammed.

"Take this," he said.

Abu Ben Mohammed took the wallet, and from it not less than one hundred twenty dollars and not more than two hundred dollars and put the bills in a pocket of his dashiki. Then he threw the wallet at Mr. Goldblatt.

"Give him your purse, Blanche," Mr. Goldblatt said.

"Go get it," Abu Ben Mohammed said to Mrs. Steiner, and then added to Mr. Goldblatt, "If you're lying to me, if we find any money in that office, I'm going to blow your fucking honky head off."

"I swear to God, believe me, we don't keep any money up here."

"Then what's that fucking safe for?"

"Business papers. Look for yourself."

"Don't you tell me what to do, you honky motherfucker!" Abu Ben Mohammed said, and swung his pistol at Mr. Goldblatt's head again. Mr. Goldblatt was able to ward off most of the force of this blow with his hands, suffering only a minor bruise to his left hand.

Mrs. Steiner took her purse from a desk drawer and offered it to Abu Ben Mohammed. A coin purse contained approximately sixteen dollars in bills, and there was approximately sixty dollars in her wallet. Abu Ben Mohammed removed these monies and placed them in a pocket of his dashiki.

On the second floor, meanwhile, Hector Carlos Estivez had startled Mrs. Emily Watkins by ordering her to remove her shoes and stockings. When she had done so, he used one of the stockings to bind her hands behind her back. He then told her to lie down again, on her stomach, and when she failed to so quickly enough to satisfy him, he pushed her so that she fell.