“Who asked you for anything?” the man said, turning to him. “You just shut up, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” the manager said.
“You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m talking to the ladies here, not you, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So shut up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You!” the man said, and turned to the woman with the baby strapped to her back, jerking the gun at her, moving erratically, almost dancing across the floor of the Laundromat, turning this way and that as though playing to an audience from a stage. Each time he turned, the woman with the baby on her back turned with him, so that she was always facing him, her body forming a barricade between him and the baby. She doesn’t know, Eileen thought, that a slug from that gun can go clear through her and the baby and the wall behind them, too.
“Your money!” the man said. “Hurry up! Your rings, too, give me your rings!”
“Just don’t shoot,” the woman said.
“Shut up! Give me your panties!”
“What?”
“Your panties, take off your panties, give them to me!”
The woman stared at him.
“Are you deaf?” he said, and danced toward her, and jabbed the gun at her. The woman already had a wad of dollar bills clutched in one fist and her wedding ring and engagement ring in the other, and she stood there uncertainly, knowing she had heard him say he wanted her panties, but not knowing whether he wanted her to give him the money and the jewelry first or—
“Hurry up!” he said. “Take them off! Hurry up!”
The woman quickly handed him the bills and the rings and then reached up under her skirt and lowered her panties over her thighs and down to her ankles. She stepped out of them, picked them up, handed them to him, and quickly backed away from him as he stuffed them into his pocket.
“All of you!” he said, his voice higher now. “I want all of you to take off your panties! Give me your money! Give me all your money! And your rings! And your panties, take them off, hurry up!”
The black woman sitting on the chair alongside Eileen kept staring at the man as though he had popped out of a bottle, following his every move around the room, her eyes wide, disbelieving his demands, disbelieving the gun in his hand, disbelieving his very existence. She just kept staring at him and shaking her head in disbelief.
“You!” he said, dancing over to her. “Give me that necklace! Hurry up!”
“Ain’t but costume jewelry,” the woman said calmly.
“Give me your money!”
“Ain’t got but a dollar an’ a quarter in change,” the woman said.
“Give it to me!” he said, and held out his left hand.
The woman rummaged in her handbag. She took out a change purse. Ignoring the man, ignoring the gun not a foot from her nose, she unsnapped the purse, and reached into it, and took out coin after coin, transferring the coins from her right hand to the palm of her left hand, three quarters and five dimes, and then closing her fist on the coins, and bringing her fist to his open palm, and opening the fist and letting the coins fall (disdainfully, it seemed to Eileen) onto his palm.
“Now your panties,” he said.
“Nossir.”
“Take off your panties,” he said.
“Won’t do no such thing,” the woman said.
“What?”
“Won’t do no such thing. Ain’t just a matter of reachin’ up under m’skirt way that lady with the baby did, nossir. I’d have to take off fust m’galoshes and then m’jeans, an’ there ain’t no way I plan to stan’ here naked in front of two men I never seen in my life, nossir.”
The man waved the gun.
“Do what I tell you,” he said.
“Nossir,” the woman said.
Eileen tensed.
She wondered if she should make her move now, a bad situation could only get worse, she’d been taught that at the academy and it was a rule she’d lived by and survived by all the years she’d been on the force, but a rule she’d somehow neglected tonight when this silly little son of a bitch walked through the door and pulled the cannon from his pocket, a bad situation can only get worse, make your move now, do it now, go for the money, go for broke, but now, now! And she wondered, too, if he would bother turning to fire at her once she pulled the gun from her handbag or would he instead fire at the black woman who was willing to risk getting shot and maybe killed rather than take off her jeans and then her panties in a room containing a trembling night man and an armed robber who maybe was or maybe wasn’t bonkers, make your move, stop thinking, stop wondering — but what if the baby gets shot?
It occurred to her that maybe the black woman would actually succeed in staring down the little man with the penchant for panties, get him to turn away in defeat, run for the door, out into the cold and into the waiting arms of Detective Hal Willis— which reminds me, where the hell are you, Willis? It would not hurt to have my backup come in behind this guy right now, it would not hurt to have his attention diverted from me to you, two guns against one, the good guys against the bad guys, where the hell are you? The little man was trembling violently now, the struggle inside him so intense that it seemed he would rattle himself to pieces, crumble into a pile of broken pink chalk around a huge weapon — he’s a closet rapist, she thought suddenly, the man’s a closet rapist!
The thought was blinding in its clarity. She knew now, or felt she knew, why he was running around town holding up Laundromats. He was holding up Laundromats because there were women in Laundromats and he wanted to see those women taking off their panties. The holdups had nothing at all to do with money or jewelry, the man was after panties! The rings and the bracelets and the cash were all his cover, his beard, his smoke screen, the man wanted ladies’ panties, the man wanted the aroma of women on his loot, the man probably had a garageful of panties wherever he lived, the man was a closet rapist and she knew how to deal with rapists, she had certainly dealt with enough rapists in her lifetime, but that was her alone in a park, that was when the only life at stake had been her own, make your move, she thought, make it now!
“You!” she said sharply.
The man turned toward her. The gun turned at the same time.
“Take mine,” she said.
“What?” he said.
“Leave her alone. Take my panties.”
“What?”
“Reach under my skirt,” she whispered. “Rip off my panties.”
She thought for a terrifying moment that she’d made a costly mistake. His face contorted in what appeared to be rage, and the gun began shaking even more violently in his fist. Oh, God, she thought, I’ve forced him out of the closet, I’ve forced him to see himself for what he is, that gun is his cock as sure as I’m sitting here, and he’s going to jerk it off into my face in the next ten seconds! And then a strange thing happened to his face, a strange smile replaced the anger, a strange secret smile touched the corners of his mouth, a secret communication flashed in his eyes, his eyes to her eyes, their secret, a secret to share, he lowered the gun, he moved toward her.
“Police!” she shouted, and the .38 came up out of the bag in the same instant that she came up off the plastic chair, and she rammed the muzzle of the gun into the hollow of his throat and said so quietly that only he could hear it, “Don’t even think it or I’ll shoot you dead!” And she would remember later and remember always the way the shouted word “Police!” had shattered the secret in his eyes, their shared secret, and she would always wonder if the way she’d disarmed him hadn’t been particularly cruel and unjust.