Джеффри Дивер - Ninth and Nowhere

Brett looked outside into the street. Deserted.

Let’s do this.

He opened the alligator attaché case — such a sweet present from his sweet wife, a woman who in her bubbling innocence knew nothing about his real job. He withdrew the Glock pistol, a silencer screwed into the tapped barrel. He stepped forward, aiming the gun toward the person he’d been hired by Ed Weatherby — his potential new boss — to kill, Lanie Stone.

After her, he’d take out the clerk and the flower man, poor sucker... wrong time, wrong place. Then he’d rip out the video-cam drive, clean out the register and leave.

Just another convenience-store heist gone bad. Nobody’d know the truth.

Brett stepped through the aisle of packaged candies and crackers and raised the gun to the back of Lanie’s head.

Behind the counter of the Quik Mart, Jamal Davis was fixing up a latte for the nice woman with the short blond hair. She’d been coming in regular every day, this time, for the past week.

He turned from the espresso machine and froze.

The businessman in the blue coat — Jamal had seen him here earlier in the week too — was walking up on her with a gun!

Breathing hard, his heart pounding so loud everybody in here had to hear it, he reached beneath the counter and grabbed the gun he’d bought from Lester just an hour ago. The businessman was concentrating on the lady and didn’t see him.

Jamal had never fired a gun in his life. All he knew from movies and TV was that to fire one, you aimed and pulled the trigger.

So he aimed and he pulled the trigger.

The roar was astonishing, shaking cups and napkins and the lottery cards and straws. The kick stung his hand and he winced in pain.

The businessman blinked in shock and touched the side of his chest, where the bullet had struck him. Jamal could see a tiny hole in the side of his coat. No blood. Just a hole.

The woman screamed and dove for the floor. The man at the flower stand dropped into a crouch and covered his head with both arms.

The businessman pointed the gun toward Jamal but he ducked and the two shots hit the wall. Then the businessman fired toward where the lady had been. The guy was staggering around in pain, though, and couldn’t aim very well. Jars and glass cases and bags of chips exploded. Jamal thought she screamed. But he was pretty deaf at this point.

Now more angry than scared, Jamal rose to his feet and aimed and pulled the trigger again, twice. Damn, his hand stung. He hit the man at least once more, because he winced and, looking dazed, turned toward the door and pushed outside.

It was then that Jamal realized he’d forgotten Lester’s advice. He’d been so frightened.

It’s pop, pop. Two. The head...

The man was alive and he still had a gun. He could still kill somebody outside.

He scrabbled clumsily over the counter and ran toward the front door.

Carlos Sanchez rolled to his feet.

He felt damp. Maybe rose water, maybe lily water. He might also have peed his pants, probably did. He didn’t care.

He was watching the man in the overcoat out in front of the Quik Mart, the man who’d been going to shoot the pretty blond woman. He was on the ground, hurt but still holding his gun. The clerk, a pudgy African American kid in orange shoes, had just scrabbled over the counter and, holding a gun of his own, flung the door open and stepped outside.

Carlos glanced out the window, across the street.

Then back to the clerk.

No, no...

Carlos, too, ran to the front door, then pushed outside.

With a stain of fried egg on his police department uniform slacks, Patrolman Arthur Fromm was standing in front of the Ninth Street Diner.

In front of the Quik Mart, a businessman, white, about six feet tall, dropped to his knees, shot, his back to Fromm.

Running from the store was a black kid in a sweatshirt. And before Fromm could react, the kid pointed the gun at the businessman and double tapped him in the head. He went down hard.

Jesus! No!

The kid had been knocking over the place, and the white guy had tried to stop it.

Fromm drew his Glock and aimed. “Freeze! Drop the weapon.”

The boy stared. He did freeze but he didn’t drop the weapon, an old-style.38. It was pointed toward the sky but wavering.

Shoot, Fromm told himself.

“Drop it, or I will fire.”

The boy was numb. Wide rabbit eyes. His arm was quivering, the muzzle going everywhere.

Oh, how Arthur Fromm didn’t want to do this. He’d never shot anyone in all his years on the force.

Goddamn Nowhere District...

He aimed at the boy’s chest and began to squeeze the trigger.

Then he stopped, as someone else, a Latino, about thirty-five, in a basketball jacket, ran from the Quik Mart and stepped in front of the boy. His hands were up, his eyes were wide.

“No, no, don’t shoot him! Don’t!”

“Get down. I will fire!”

It was a team, Fromm thought. He’d read a report about that, Latino and black joining up. The older guy was an OG, the younger one was part of the crew. Maybe it was an initiation. They’d knocked over the store together.

Just shoot Basketball Man, Fromm raged to himself. The kid working with him still had the piece in his hand.

But: You nail an unarmed person of color, that’s seven ways of bad. Even if the Latino was in the worst crew in the city, Fromm’d pay.

If he didn’t shoot and the boy nailed someone else...

Crouching, chest tight as a knot, Fromm stepped to the side, looking for a clear shot at the boy.

The kid still seemed paralyzed. Which didn’t mean his trigger finger was.

Take him out. One dead already. No more.

But just as he was about to aim and shoot, the Latino covered the kid again.

“Get down. I will shoot!”

If the kid’s muzzle moves one inch toward me, they’re both going down.

Then: “He’s the one!” Basketball Man yelled, pointing at the dead businessman, blood circling out from his head. “He’s a fucking hit man, he tried to kill this lady inside.”

Now, that was a bullshit story if Fromm had ever heard one.

The door of the Quik Mart opened and a blond woman, a stunned look on her face, stepped out. She was spattered with flecks of food and bits of paper and dust. She gazed about and then spoke to Basketball Man.

Motion of some kind... What... What was happening?

Basketball Man, hands still raised, stepped away. The gangbanger kid was lying on the ground with his arms outstretched. The woman was holding the gun. She carried it in two fingers to the curb and set it down, not near either of them.

“You,” Fromm snapped to Basketball Man. “Down too.”

He complied.

It was then that Fromm realized he hadn’t called the incident in yet. He reached for the transmit button of the Motorola, then recalled that, while he remembered how to work the radio, he didn’t recall the code for shots fired.

He decided to go with 10–13, the universal code that meant “officer needs assistance.”

Because, Lord knew, he did.

Arthur Fromm was slowly piecing together the facts.

Eight official vehicles were present. Six squad cars from Central. And two unmarked. Ambulance, of course. Ten officers. But no detectives yet. Given his seniority, Fromm discovered that he was in charge. He tried to recall procedure as the younger cops looked his way.

He tried, “Secure the scene, canvass witnesses.”

Which apparently were the magic words. The others scattered to do just that.

Fromm almost smiled.

So what do we have? Fromm considered the cast:

A man with a silenced Glock, Brett Abbott, a resident of a nearby suburb.

An advertising executive, Lanie Stone, whose interest in the whole big tsunami wasn’t yet known, aside from the fact Abbott had tried to kill her.