“You did give me a start, officer.”
He touched his generous belly. “Over anxious. Got me a bad case of the trots.”
As he was closing himself inside the john, trots or not, he paused to ask, “When’s the little one due?”
“Couple months.”
“God bless you both. Shit!” He clutched his belly, shut the door, and, presumably, was as good as his word.
I smiled, shook my head, and coming around the counter asked Peter why he hadn’t told the cop the john was in use.
“I was busy with a customer,” Peter said, and indeed a guy in a down-filled jacket and plaid hunter’s cap was hunkered over the counter, scratching his lottery tickets with the edge of a quarter. “Cops around here don’t bother asking — they just go around and help themselves.”
“No harm done,” I muttered, and headed down one of the four aisles to find my can of sardines.
I was plucking it off the shelf when a harried woman of thirty or so in a tan London Fog raincoat and heels rushed in with a young girl of perhaps seven at her side in a tutu, white leggings and Reebox, a light jacket over the girl’s shoulders. The mother’s heels clicked as she went over to a cooler for some milk. The child, blond, stood looking at my pregnancy with wide prairie-sky blue eyes in the midst of an angelic countenance.
“You’re going to be a mommy,” the little girl said.
“That’s right, honey. Recital?”
She nodded. “I’m a ballerina.”
The mother, with a jug of 2 % milk in hand, was at the counter, speaking to Peter, crossly, even though Peter was in the process of paying off an instant win to the guy in the plaid hat.
“No butter? No eggs?”
“We’re out of both, ma’am. Till Monday.”
“That’s ridiculous! How am I supposed to make breakfast in the morning? Do you have any breakfast rolls?”
The guy in the plaid cap was giving the five bucks he’d won back to Peter in exchange for five more tickets.
“No, and we’re out of bread, too. There’s some muffin mix in aisle two.”
“How do I make that without eggs? You oughta call this an inconvenience store!”
I was at the counter now, with my can of sardines; the woman was between me and the plastic-lidded tray of baklava.
“There’s a big mini-mart on Southport,” I said. “They have everything.”
She glanced over her shoulder at me and pursed her lips in contempt; she was blonde but not as pretty as her daughter — not frowning, anyway. “That’s out of my way, thank you very much.”
I shrugged. “You’re welcome.”
“Mommy!” the little girl called, from a nearby aisle. “They have Pop Tarts! Let’s have Pop Tarts for breakfast.”
Her mother sighed. “Amy, put those down.”
Amy, delighted with her Pop Tart discovery (Strawberry), twirled in the aisle, a ballerina in Reebox. “No, Mommy, I love Pop Tarts! Let’s have Pop Tarts!”
The mother joined the daughter and began scolding her, though the little girl didn’t seem to be paying much attention. Nor did she seem to be putting the Pop Tarts back.
Peter grinned, teeth white in his dark face; he was a handsome devil. “Two baklava tonight, Ms. Tree?”
The guy in the hunter’s cap sighed — none of his five lottery tickets had been worth ten million dollars, or five dollars, either. He trudged out wearily.
“Just one,” I said, lifting the lid, helping myself to one of the pastries in its paper shell. “Don’t want me to get fat, now, do you?”
Peter laughed and handed me a small brown paper sack, which I was placing the baklava in when two white boys in ski masks came in, one of them holding a garbage bag open, the other waving a big revolver.
“All your money in the bag, greaseball,” the one with the revolver said to Peter.
“Now!” added the other one.
They were skinny, wearing Cubs jackets over heavy metal T-shirts; they had on worn, torn jeans, and Nike pumps that looked like spaceman shoes. The one with the gun was taller — or maybe the gun just made him seem taller.
“Take it easy,” Peter said, as he opened his register.
“We’ll take it easy, all right!” the one holding the bag said, horse-laughing at his own remarkable wit. His voice was thin, whiny.
I thought about the gun inside the purse over my shoulder, but then I thought about the mother and her daughter a few feet away, and I thought about the child in my belly, and I just stood there while Peter piled cash on the counter and the shorter of the pair used his whole arm to push it into the garbage bag.
Then I heard the sound of a flushing toilet and thought, Oh shit, but Halloran was pushing the stockroom door open and coming out and the smile on his mottled Irish face had only barely dissolved into a scowl when the three bullets slammed into his blue shirt and sent him back through the swinging door, on his back.
“You fuckin’ killed him, man!” the one holding the bag said.
“Shit,” the one with the smoking gun said.
The other one dropped the garbage bag to the slatted-wood floor, where money spilled as easily as blood just had, and he pulled a small nickel-plated revolver out of his waistband; he held it in an unsteady fist.
“A cop,” he said, brandishing the gun at his taller partner. “You fuckin’ killed a fuckin’ cop!”
The swinging door waved at us half-heartedly; it was only a three-quarter affair, with space at top, and bottom, with Halloran’s dead feet sticking out below.
The two faced each other, guns in hand. For a moment I thought they were going to save society the trouble; then movement behind him caught the corner of the taller one’s eye.
“Jesus!” he said, turning, and he fired again, at a blue shape at the door of the mini-mart, and glass made brittle thunder as it shattered and rained to the pavement, and somebody out there yelled, “Judas Priest!” and Peter ducked down behind his counter, and I did the same on the other side, and the ski-masked pair took cover in an aisle.
Cool evening air and street sounds rushed in from where the glass of the door used to be. “Who the hell was that?” the smaller one said, as they cowered in the aisle next to where I stood.
“Must be the dead pig’s partner! Shit...”
My fingers unclasped my handbag. To my left, down the next aisle, the mother and her little ballerina cowered together, sitting half-sprawled on the wood floor, the mother looking nearer tears and hysteria than the oddly placid little girl.
From outside a gruff male voice yelled: “Throw out your guns! Walk out slow — hands high!”
“It is another cop — what do we do?” the smaller one asked desperately.
“Grab that pregnant bitch!” the taller one said.
The little guy came at me, fast, and I pushed my purse behind the ILLINOIS LOTTERY sign on Peter’s counter, back down behind which Peter was looking up with wide-eyed terror.
A gun was in my back and the smaller guy was behind me, as if hiding there; he had room. Still hunkered down in the aisle, his partner yelled out, “We got people in here!”
“We got police out here!” the gruff voice shouted.
I could see, through the window, between neon beer signs and homemade butcher-paper sale signs, the head of the cop bobbing up behind a car he was using as a barrier; a glint winked off his revolver, as it caught street lights. Sirens were faint cries that were turning into screams; Halloran’s partner would not be alone, long.
The little one pulled me by the arm into the aisle with his partner, and down, into a crouching position. I almost fell, but managed to keep my balance.
“Why the fuck did that other cop take so long to come in? If they’re partners... Jesus!” The taller one remained hunkered down, the gun in his hand steadier than that in his pal’s.