“I know.”
“You should be proud. Your mother told me she is. Especially now, after Dante’s death. .”
At the mention of his cousin, Daquan looked over his shoulder and at Payne.
Payne saw deep sadness in his eyes. They glistened, and it was obvious that he was fighting back the tears.
“I can’t get past that, Matt. We were real close, you know, going way back. Now he’s gone and I’m here.” He looked down and rubbed his eyes. “But I’m really not here. I’m just a shell, walking around.”
Daquan lifted his head, looked at Payne-then his eyes immediately looked past Payne, out the window.
Payne saw the sadness in Daquan’s face suddenly replaced with fear.
“Shit!” Daquan said. “They’re back!”
He grabbed the busboy cart and started pushing it quickly to the back of the diner.
Just then, as Payne turned and looked out the window, the glass front door swung open.
Two teenaged black males wearing thick dark parkas marched in, the first one, tall and burly, raising a black semiautomatic pistol in his right fist.
Payne dropped the newspaper and quickly reached behind his back to pull his.45 out from under his sweatshirt.
Daquan shoved the busboy cart at the pair and then jumped behind the back counter as the tall, burly teenager fired three shots.
The sound of gunfire in the small diner was deafening.
Payne leveled his pistol at the shooter as he shouted, “Stop! Police! Don’t move!”
The ringing in Payne’s ears caused his words to sound odd.
The tall, burly teenager turned and tried to aim at Payne.
Payne instinctively responded by squeezing off two rounds in rapid succession.
The copper-jacketed lead hollow points, as designed, on impact mushroomed and then fragmented, the pieces ripping through the teen’s upper torso.
The shooter staggered backward to the wall, dropping the gun when he struck the wooden counter there.
The second teenager, who had frozen in place at the firing of the first shots, immediately turned and bolted back out the glass door.
The shooter slid to the floor.
As Payne rushed for the door, he kicked the shooter’s gun toward the back counter. The two customers there were lying on the floor in front of it. The one to the left was curled up in the corner with his back to Payne and, almost comically, shielding his head by holding a white plate over it. The one on the right was facedown and still. Blood soaked the back of his shirt.
The enormous cook, who had ducked below the counter, now peered wide-eyed over its top.
Payne shouted, “Call nine-one-one!” then threw open the door and ran out.
Daquan, blood on his right hand as he gripped his left upper arm, crawled out from beneath the cash register.
He hesitated a moment before moving toward the shooter, who was motionless. He picked up the small-frame semiautomatic pistol from the floor.
The cook stood and shouted, “Daquan, don’t!”
Daquan went out the door.
He turned right and took off down the sidewalk, following Payne.
—
The storefronts along Erie Avenue gave way to a decaying neighborhood of older row houses. Daquan Williams watched the teenager dart out into traffic and dodge vehicles as he ran across Erie, headed in the direction of a series of three or four overgrown vacant lots where houses had once stood.
He saw that Matt Payne, arms and legs pumping as he picked up speed, was beginning to close the distance between them.
“Police! Stop!” Payne yelled again.
The teenager made it to the first lot off Thirteenth Street, then disappeared into an overgrowth of bushes at the back of it.
Payne, moments later, reached the bushes, cautiously pushed aside limbs, swept the space with his pistol, and then entered.
Daquan started to cross Erie but heard a squeal of brakes and then a truck horn begin blaring. He slid to a stop, narrowly missing being hit by a delivery truck. It roared past, its huge tires splashing his pants and shoes with slush from a huge pothole. A car and a small pickup closely following the truck honked as they splashed past.
Daquan finally found a gap in traffic and made his way across.
He ran to the bushes, then went quickly into them, limbs wet with snow slapping at him. One knocked his cap off. The dim light made it hard to see. After a long moment, he came out the other side, to another open lot. He saw Payne, who had run across another street, just as he disappeared into another clump of overgrowth at the back of another vacant lot between row houses.
While Daquan ran across that street to follow, a dirty-brown four-door Ford Taurus pulled to the curb in front of the house bordering the lot. Daquan dodged the sedan, running behind it, then started across the lot.
Ahead, from somewhere in the overgrowth, he heard Matt Payne once again shouting, “Stop! Police!”
This time, though, was different.
Almost immediately there came a rapid series of shots-the first three sounding not quite as loud as the final two.
Daquan heard nothing more as he reached the overgrowth and then, while trying to control his heavy breathing, entered it slowly. He raised the pistol and gripped it tightly with both hands.
More snow fell from limbs onto his soaked T-shirt and jeans. He shivered as he stepped carefully in the dim light, listening for sounds but hearing only his labored breath. He finally reached the far side.
He wiped snow from his eyes.
And then his stomach dropped.
Oh, shit!
Matt Payne was laying facedown in the snow.
The teenager, ten feet farther into the vacant lot, was making a blood-streaked path in the snow as he tried to crawl away.
Then he stopped moving.
“Matt!” Daquan called as he ran to him.
Payne turned his head and, clearly in pain, looked up at Daquan.
“Call nine-one-one,” he said. “Say, ‘Officer down. . Police officer shot.’”
Daquan, now kneeling, saw the blood on the snow beneath Payne.
His mind raced. He looked at the street ahead.
There ain’t time to wait for help.
I’ve gotta get him to it. .
“Hang on, Matt.”
Daquan then bolted back through the bushes. As he came out the far side, he saw the driver of the Ford sedan, a heavyset black woman in her late fifties, leaning over the open trunk, looking over her shoulder as she rushed to remove bulging white plastic grocery bags.
He ran toward her and loudly called, “Hey! I need your car. .”
The woman, the heavy bags swinging from her hands, turned and saw Daquan quickly approaching.
Then she saw that he held a pistol.
She dropped the bags, then went to her knees, quivering as she covered her gray hair with her hands.