George Pelecanos - Hard Revolution

“What’d you hear?” said Vaughn.

“Gunshots and a shotgun,” said Strange.

“What exactly? ”

“Two gunshots, evenly spaced. A shotgun blast right after that, and then another, ten, fifteen seconds later.”

“Sounds like we got some dead.”

“Shouldn’t we rush the place?”

“Hell, no,” said Vaughn. “The thing to do is save the ones still alive. You don’t want them killin’ hostages. Wait for Stewart and Hess to come out. Don’t let ’em get in that car.”

“What about Martini?” said Strange, one eye shut, sighting him down the barrel of the.38.

“We don’t have to take him now,” said Vaughn.

“Okay,” said Strange.

“Can you hit his tires from here?”

“I can try.”

“Because you gotta disable that car. I’m gonna be busy with Stewart and Hess.”

“I’ll try.”

“Look at your partner,” said Vaughn, admiration in his voice. “That’s a smart young man right there.”

“Troy Peters,” said Strange.

“You both did good.”

Strange blinked sweat from his eye. He steadied his hand.

MARTINI, HIS EYES on the sideview mirror, had witnessed the violence inside the bank. He’d seen Buzz standing over the body of Shorty. He’d seen Buzz take the gun off Shorty’s body and take the cloth bags in his hand. And now Buzz was coming for the door. Buzz had heard the sirens, most likely, and knew that the police had arrived. He didn’t know that the big homicide cop, the one who got his gas at the station, had his gun trained on the front of the bank. He didn’t know that Strange, the black cop Martini had known as a kid, had his gun on the Nova. He didn’t know that the blond policeman was edging his way along the fronts of stores toward the bank.

Martini had not touched the gun resting between his legs. He wasn’t going to touch it. He’d never told Buzz that he would. Buzz had ordered him to wait, and that’s what he was doing. That’s all he would do. He wasn’t going to shoot at these men in uniform, who served like he’d served, like his friends had served, in the war.

Dominic Martini depressed the clutch and put the Hurst in gear. He thought of the men in uniform and found another gear. He revved the gas against the clutch. The needle swerved toward the red line on the tach.

Buzz Stewart pushed on the front door, opened it, and walked quickly out onto the sidewalk, directly behind the Nova. He heard a cop shouting from his right and, without turning, blind-fired his gun.

STRANGE HEARD TROY Peters’s command and saw his hesitation as the big man shot blind. He saw Peters take a bullet, drop his weapon to the side, and fall.

Vaughn fired at the big man and hit him high. Strange, as he had been ordered to do, shot at the tires of the Nova, hitting the grille and fender instead. The big man fired back at them, sending him and Vaughn down for cover as the rounds took a beacon light out and some paint off the roof of the squad car.

“We gonna go up together, young man,” said Vaughn to Strange with calm and assurance. “Now.”

Strange stood with Vaughn, ready to fire. They cleared the roof with their gun arms. They saw the Nova’s tires screaming on the asphalt, and the big man standing behind the car.

STEWART CHARGED OUT of the bank and saw two cops leaning over the roof of a squad car, pointing their guns at him. From his right he heard a man shout, “Police, drop your weapon!” and Stewart fired the automatic in that direction without turning his head. In his side vision he saw the cop go down. Stewart heard shouts from the lot and turned his gun that way and saw smoke and felt a slug hit him like a sharp punch. He stumbled back, firing wildly at the squad car, seeing a cherry light pulverized and rounds spark off the roof and the cops dropping behind its far side. He stood behind the Nova, hearing the clutch pop off the gas, seeing smoke pouring out from under the rear tires as they sought purchase, thinking, Those wheels are turning the wrong way.

The Nova caught asphalt and roared toward him. It jumped the sidewalk and lifted him up off his feet, taking him back through the window of the bank. Glass exploded sonically around him.

I been hit by Dominic’s car. I have been shot.

His legs were pinned between the rear bumper of the Nova and the edge of the marble wall that fronted the bank. A.38 slug had shattered his clavicle, tumbled, and lodged in his deltoid. He felt little pain.

That boy Dominic was born to fuck up. God, I am cold.

Stewart’s torso hung backward over the lip of the wall. He had dropped the bags of money. He had dropped the.45. The shotgun was harnessed, and he did not have the strength to pull it free. He heard men shouting and their footsteps as they ran toward him.

I’ve murdered a man and maybe a cop and they are going to kill me for what I’ve done. Well, I will take one of them with me. They’ll talk about me in bars forever if I do that last thing. I still have my derringer. It’s here in my boot.

He reached for his right boot and felt slime and cloth. He looked down. There was no boot or anything else below his right knee. A portion of his left leg hung there, smashed flat, connected only by nerves and muscle and the shredded fabric of his jeans. Most of it was gone. What wasn’t gone was red and wet.

Stewart screamed.

TROY PETERS HAD been shot in the right thigh. The bullet had exited cleanly, missing his femoral artery. The paramedics were able to stanch the flow of blood before loading him onto a gurney and into the van. The ambulance took Peters to the Washington Sanitarium, the Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Maryland, not far from the Capitol Savings and Loan. Strange decided to ride with him and told Vaughn that he’d see him at the Sixth Precinct station, where he would give his official statement on the events.

A doctor who had been shopping at the A amp;P attempted to stabilize Buzz Stewart, who had gone into convulsions, as a second ambulance arrived. Stewart’s blood ran from the sidewalk down to the street.

Dominic Martini sat in the cage of a squad car, his hands cuffed behind him, a bruise darkening his swelling jaw. He had been tackled to the pavement as he got out of the Nova, his arms raised in surrender, by one of the young policemen who had been blocking the exit of the lot, who then punched him repeatedly in the face. The young policeman’s partner, a thirty-year-old army veteran, went into the bank and tried to calm the survivors, keeping them away from the corpses of the shotgun victim and Walter Hess.

Strange sat on a bench beside Peters’s gurney as the ambulance sped down Eastern Avenue, heading into Takoma Park. Against the orders of the paramedic, Peters removed the oxygen mask that had been covering his nose and mouth.

“Call Patty,” said Peters.

“Vaughn’s gonna do it,” said Strange.

“I want you to tell her what’s goin’ on. Tell her it’s not serious.”

Strange motioned to the oxygen mask, lying loosely around Peters’s neck. “You better put that back on.”

“I don’t need it,” said Peters. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look so fine to me. You got no color in your face.”

“That again.”

Strange chuckled and looked down at his friend. “Badass.”

“Go on, man.”

“Had to be the hero.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“You did okay.”

Peters shook his head. “I should have shot that sonofabitch where he stood. Instead, I hesitated. I didn’t have the guts.”

“Doesn’t take any courage to kill a man. What you’re talkin’ about, that ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed,” said Peters. “But if that guy had shot you because I didn’t shoot him first…”