With a sigh of relief, I watched from my aisle, where I sat leaning back against the shelf of bathroom supplies; I could see the mother and daughter as two cops rushed to help them past the parked cars toward the street filled with squads, moving them toward the Winnebago command center.
“That was the right thing to do,” I told Frank.
“Shut up,” he said, and he moved out from around the counter.
As he walked past me, I hurled Halloran’s nightstick under his feet, and Frank’s Nikes hit the baton and he did a crazy, log-rolling dance, and as the kid was twisting around, I splashed the liquid drain cleaner in his face and he screamed and I splashed it again and he screamed again.
“Frank!” Bud yelled. “Jesus, Frank!”
He landed hard, on his back, his hands clawing his face and eyes, the big revolver dropping to the slick wood floor and spinning, like a top, till it came to a rest at my feet. I scooped it up, as Frank continued to scream and Bud yelled incoherently.
Before the little hop-head could get his wits about him, I came around the other side, up the other end of the aisle, behind him, where he continued to crouch, and cower, the nickel-plated revolver in hand, watching his pal wriggle and writhe like an insect under a pin.
Bud’s incoherent yelling stopped when I put the nose of Frank’s revolver in the back of his stubbly head and told him to stand up.
“You bitch! What did you do to Frank?”
Frank was still screaming.
“Cleaned his drain.” I reached my left hand past his left ear; held the hand open, palm up. “Let’s have the gun, Bud. Give it to Mommy...”
He placed the shiny revolver in my palm; swore at me some more.
“March up by the counter. By where your friend Frank is. By the way, we ought to hurry — if he doesn’t get some first-aid soon, he’s going to need a cane and a guide dog.”
“You’re evil!”
“I guess you’d know. Move it.”
He did.
The phone was ringing. The cops were wondering was going on in here; through the neon beer-ad and butcher-paper sign cluttered window, vision was only so-so.
“Get that, would you, Peter?” I asked.
Peter’s dark face with its wide eye peered over the edge and the fingers of both hands were pressed against the countertop. He looked like Kilroy Was Here.
“Stand up,” I said. “Situation’s under control.”
I placed Bud’s shiny nickel-plated revolver on the counter. Frank was on the floor, on his side, in fetal position, his hands covering his face, and he wasn’t screaming now, whimpering instead, saying something about “burning.” Bud was standing next to him, looking down like he wished he could help.
Peter, who had answered the phone, covered the receiver and said to me, “They want to know what’s going on.”
“Tell them to come in and see for themselves,” I said, and then I thought about the reporters who’d soon be swarming, and I was rustling around in my purse for my lipstick when Bud pulled Halloran’s gun out from under his Cubs jacket.
“I’m going to kill you, you fat bitch,” the round-faced little junkie said, his saliva making a mist in the air.
I shot him through the bottom of my handbag and the top of his head.
He flew back, flopping next to Frank, leaving a mist of blood this time, and his body made a squishing sound when he landed on the brain matter he’d spilled. They were both on their backs, but Frank didn’t seem to notice the company. He was busy.
The garbage bag of spilled money was nearby — a cheap irony, but it couldn’t be helped.
Peter’s mouth had dropped open.
I shrugged. “He said he needed a shot.”
One of the first cops on the scene, in the aftermath, was Lt. Valer, a thirty-something black good-looking homicide detective I’d known for years.
“How did you manage to be here when all this happened?” he asked. His smile was a wry dimple in one cheek.
“Baby needs baklava,” I said, and put two in my little paper sack. Not to mention sardines.
Peter wasn’t behind the counter anymore; he’d gone somewhere to have a minor nervous breakdown, I guess. I thought about leaving him some money for the pastries, then decided I’d earned them.
“Excuse me a moment, Rafe? I have to use the john.”
Halloran’s body had already been moved; lab techs were at work back there.
“You aren’t going to touch anything, are you?” one of them said, a snotty redheaded woman in her twenties.
“Well, I might,” I said, and closed myself in the john.
When I came out from the backroom, Rafe said, “That punk... Frank?... he’s going to be all right. Suffered some burns, but his eyesight won’t be permanently affected.”
“Swell,” I said.
“Those two got rap sheets from here to Wilmette. But they’re just kids. Both of ’em under eighteen.”
“Pity.”
His smile disappeared; his eyes narrowed judgmentally. “You don’t care? It doesn’t bother you, killing a kid like that?”
“He was pointing a murdered cop’s gun at me, Rafe. What would you have done? Burp him?”
He sighed. “You got a point. But you better brace yourself — you’re going to take some heat.”
I laughed. “It’s not politically correct for a hostage to fight back?”
Rafe’s wry dimple reappeared in the other cheek. “You’re not the average hostage. This won’t be the first time you’ve made the papers.”
“It won’t be the last, either.”
“Yeah?”
“Watch the birth announcements,” I said, and took my bag of baklava, and sardines, and walked home.
Seeing Red
It seemed to Deborah that every cell in her bloated body was about to burst. If her period didn’t start soon, she was going to kill somebody!
She sat back in the leather chair and tugged viciously through her red silk dress at the tight elastic waistband on her pantyhose. Then she leaned forward and opened the top right drawer of her mahogany desk and pulled out a pair of long, silver scissors, which she dropped into her open purse on the floor by her feet. She got up from the desk, taking the purse, and walked briskly, tensely, to the closed office door. But as soon as she opened it, she forced her body to relax, and changed her cross expression to one of pleasantry.
“I’ll be back in a minute, Shirley,” she said sweetly to the secretary who sat behind a desk in the outer room.
The secretary, a rather homely woman with short hair and big, round glasses, looked up briefly from what she was doing. “Yes, Ms. Nova,” she said, then returned to her work.
Deborah walked down the plush-carpeted corridor toward the executive’s washroom, nodding and smiling at a few people along the way... but once inside the bathroom, behind its thick bronze-colored door, her expression changed back to one of annoyance as she marched across the marble floor, her high-heeled shoes click, click, clicking.
She threw open a stall, entered, then slammed it shut.
She got out the scissors and yanked up her dress.
“I’d like to get my hands on the son-of-a-bitch that designed these pantyhose,” she snarled, sliding one of the silver blades down between her stomach and the hose, cutting away savagely at the binding band. “You can bet it wasn’t a woman!”
Her discomfort somewhat relieved, she held up the scissors in front of her face. Snip! snip! went the blades, glinting in the overhead light. “I’d take this to his...”
Water ran in a sink.
Composing herself, Deborah exited the stall.
A younger woman in a dark tailored suit stood at one of the shell-shaped basins washing her hands. Her blonde hair was pulled back from an attractive face and held at the nape of her neck by an ornate barrette. Expensive earrings clung to delicate ears.