George Pelecanos - Hard Revolution

The old security guard did as he was told. He grunted as he went to his knees and then his stomach.

The bank was small, with a marble floor and three teller cages behind a marble counter and brass bars. Behind the tellers was the vault, the door of which was closed. To one side of the lobby was the business and reception area, carpeted in green, where the balding manager now sat, his hands up, behind a cherrywood desk. In the center of the lobby was a marble island holding black pens on chains and topped with a slotted wooden rack housing deposit slips, withdrawal slips, and envelopes.

A customer stood at the island with his hands up. His name was Alex Koutris. Koutris was an American citizen born on Naxos, an island off the coast of Greece. He was a medium-height, medium-build forty-six-year-old man with a dark mustache who co-owned a small diner in a rough neighborhood downtown. He came on at five o’clock for the night shift and worked until closing, leaving his place with the day’s cash at three a.m., when he walked through an unlit alley to his car. He carried a gun for protection. He had survived Guadalcanal and other fierce campaigns in the Second World War and was comfortable with the weapon. He was here to make his daily deposit before going into work. An envelope holding three hundred dollars was on the island before him. He had stood ten hours behind a counter to earn it, which made the money real. His gun, a snub-nosed.38, lay free in the side pocket of his yellow Peters jacket.

“Cash in the bags!” shouted Stewart, stepping around the wall, kicking open a swinging gate hinged in the middle of a fence. He stood behind the tellers, moving the shotgun from one to another, one woman and two men, all young.

They worked quickly, pulling the folding money from their cash drawers and placing it in white cloth bags they drew from under the counter.

“Thirty seconds!” shouted Stewart. “I will use this shotgun.”

The female teller stopped working, stood straight, and staggered. She lost her feet and fell to the marble floor. Her head made a hollow sound as it hit the floor. A circle of urine darkened her spring green skirt, fanned around her legs where she lay.

“What’s goin’ on?” said Hess, moving his guns catlike from the guard to the manager to the calm-looking man at the island, who was staring at him with no fear or expression at all on his face.

“Girl fainted, is all,” said Stewart. He pointed the shotgun at one of the two remaining tellers and swept the barrel to the fallen woman. “Finish what she was doin’,” he said. “Move!”

The young man went to her station and hand-shoveled cash into her bag.

Hess noticed the fat envelope on the island in front of the man with the mustache and calm eyes. He walked toward him, keeping his guns moving from the customers to the manager to the security guard lying on the floor. The female customer began to sob.

“What you got there?” said Hess, ugly beneath the mask, his mouth dry and frozen in something that was more grimace than smile. “What’s in that envelope?”

Koutris didn’t answer.

“I asked you a question.”

“It’s mine.”

“Step away from that table,” said Hess, and when the man didn’t move, he clicked back the hammer on one of his guns and put it to the man’s face. Koutris moved back two full steps, his eyes unwavering, and Hess snatched the envelope off the island top and slipped it into the pocket of his raincoat.

“I got the gun,” said Hess. “That makes it mine.”

“Koritsi mou,” said Koutris. It meant “my little girl.”

“What’d you call me?”

Koutris looked him over with contempt.

“What’d you call me?” said Hess, moving forward.

Koutris said nothing. Hess laughed and flipped one of the guns so that its barrel was in his hand. He swung the butt violently into the man’s nose. His nose shifted and caved, and his hands dropped to cover his face. Blood seeped through his fingers.

“Hey, Buzz,” said Hess with a witch’s cackle, looking for his friend through the bars. “I just fucked this greaseball up. ”

Hess turned his head to look back at the man. The man held a snub-nosed revolver in his hand and there was blood on his smile. The man squeezed the trigger, and as Hess heard the shot he felt his throat tear open and saw blood dot his stocking mask. He fell backward and felt the sting and shock of the second shot as it entered his groin and he said “Buzz” and was on his back watching the pressed-tin ceiling of the bank spin and double.

Alex Koutris began to turn toward the tellers’ cages, seeing movement from the side of his eye, and was lifted off his feet by the blast of a shotgun. The copper load tore flesh off his face and peppered his neck. He tumbled and came to rest on his side, his cheek and shoulders slick with blood. His ears rang against the scream of a woman, and he thought, I survived the Japanese to die like this for a lousy three hundred bucks. He spit something pink and thick to the floor.

Koutris looked up and saw the big white man pointing the shotgun down at his face and saw the man’s finger press one of the two triggers inside the guard and closed his eyes and saw fire and his mother and nothing at all.

Stewart stepped away from the body, broke open the shotgun, held it vertical, and let the hulls of both shells drop to the floor. He leaned the barrels on his forearm, found two shells in his pocket, thumbed them into both chambers, and snapped the barrels shut. Stewart didn’t bother looking at the customers or tellers or the old security guard, now praying aloud, and he didn’t try to quiet the female customer, alternately screaming and crying, completely out of control. None of them would try anything now.

Stewart walked through smoke to a wheezing Hess, who was leaving a slug’s trail of blood as he back-crabbed convulsively on the marble tiles, still gripping both.38s. He stopped moving and his crossed eyes pinwheeled beneath the mask as he struggled to fix them on his friend. He voided his bowels. He arched his back and fought for breath.

“Shorty,” said Stewart, looking down at Hess. “We gonna get you out of here, son. You gonna be all right.”

Hess died as the words came from Stewart’s mouth.

Stewart looked through the plate-glass window at the Nova, still idling out front. He had heard sirens. He could not see the squad car out in front of the supermarket or the unmarked that had joined it. He could not see the uniformed patrolman, Troy Peters, edging his way along the storefronts toward the bank.

Stewart harnessed the shotgun inside his raincoat. He bent down, drew the security guard’s.45 from Hess’s waistband, released the magazine, palmed it back in the grip, and thumbed off the safety.

“Bring me them bags,” said Stewart dully, talking to the tellers who were still standing.

Stewart jacked a round into the chamber of the Colt. He blinked against the smell of gunsmoke, excrement, and blood.

One of the young men came from behind the tellers’ cages and handed Stewart three cloth bags heavy with cash. Stewart bunched them in his left hand, his right gripping the Colt. He walked slowly to the front door.

VAUGHN AND STRANGE watched Peters move along the drugstore and then the dry cleaners, signaling the occupants of those stores to step back and stay where they were as he kept one eye on the bank, his gun at his side.

Another squad car had come into the lot and blocked the exit. Vaughn had drawn his weapon. He stood with his gun arm on the roof of the Ford, aiming at the bank. Strange’s arm was fixed the same way, his gun sighted on the Nova. They were waiting for a white shirt with a bullhorn from the Sixth, along with more backup and an ambulance. The siren of the ambulance could be heard as it approached.