“How about the rest of you? Anybody see my .357? And the duct tape?”
Benjy looked like he was ready to cry, and Sheila wouldn’t meet my stare. Neither would Sharon, Kim, or Oscar. Roy found something interesting to look at on the floor and Martha continued to pray. Only Dugan looked at me, and the sneer on his face disturbed me.
“Yo, Tommy! Come out here a minute.”
It was Sherm, and it sounded like he was right outside the door. I froze, wondering how much he’d overheard. I motioned to Benjy to stick his arms behind his back.
“What’s up, man?” I called.
“Check this shit out. The cops have got a—well shit! Never mind. The fucking thing is gone now.”
Footsteps, then he entered the vault.
Quickly, Benjy folded his arms behind him. If Sherm noticed, he gave no sign. Instead, he took a gulp from the soda can he’d brought me, set it on a shelf, and proceeded to polish his pistol on his shirt. He leaned against the heavy steel door with one leg cocked behind him, and grinned.
“Hey, look who’s up and about. Damn, I’m surprised to see you awake. Must hurt like hell. How you feeling, Carpet Dick?”
John tried to smile. “I’m okay, Sherm. How are you?”
“Ready to party. Ready to get it on. Ain’t that right, Tommy?”
“Whatever you say, Sherm.”
His laughter sounded like a barking dog.
“Whatever I say? Well shit, that leaves us with all kinds of possibilities, don’t it? Hear that, Kim baby? Whatever I say.”
Kim didn’t reply. She glanced anxiously at Dugan, and that bad feeling in my stomach came back again.
“Some of us need to use the restroom,” Roy spoke up, “and unless you want it getting messy in here, you’ll have to come up with a place for us to do that.”
“Just sit tight,” Sherm said. “Nobody is leaving this room right now. I just caught the cops trying to send a little robot through the front door—one of those NASA-looking motherfuckers with the spy scope and shit. That’s what I wanted you to come look at, Tommy. It scurried back out before I could smash the fucker. Rolled right overtop of Kelvin.”
“They probably just want to make sure we’re gonna keep our end of the bargain,” I said.
“What bargain?” Roy asked.
I looked directly at Sherm when I answered him.
“Sherm says he’s gonna let you guys go in fifteen minutes. Right, Sherm?”
“Yeah, but the fucking robot still pisses me off. I told them not to do any shit like that. Wonder what they saw on the spy cam? What do you say, Kim? Maybe we should give them a live sex show to watch!”
Kim opened her mouth, started to reply, and seemed to think better of it. She glanced at Dugan, then quickly turned away.
“Come on, now,” Sherm scolded her, “you better be nice to me. I’m about to set you all free. I promise that after the next fifteen minutes, none of you will have to worry about this shit anymore. Hell, I guarantee it.”
I realized then, with a sinking feeling of finality, that there was no way Sherm was going to let them walk out of there.
I ran through the rest of it in my head. Benjy had told John to shut his eyes. Benjy had acted afraid of me when I came back in, as if he thought I might be mad at him. Dugan’s whole Stockholm Syndrome attitude had changed. The duct tape was missing and so was my handgun. The gun was missing.
The gun…
“Let’s start with you, Kim. And no sense in fighting me.”
Sherm crossed the floor, reached down, and stroked Kim’s long blond hair with his dirty fingers. She closed her eyes and shuddered in revulsion. At the same time, Dugan brought his arms out from behind his back. The duct tape around his wrists was gone, his hands were free, and my .357 was in them.
“Don’t you fucking move, you white trash piece of shit!” he spat. I yanked the .38 from beneath my shirt and pointed it at Dugan. Sherm whirled, raising his own gun. He clutched Kim’s hair in his other hand, yanking it hard. Her head jerked upward and she moaned.
“Drop the gun,” Dugan ordered, “and let her go, or so help me God I’ll shoot you where you stand, you son of a bitch. I mean it!”
“You might,” Sherm answered calmly, “but I goddamned guarantee you that I’ll shoot back. And if I’ve got time left before I die, I’ll fucking shoot Sharon too.”
As if to make his point, he aimed the gun in Sharon’s direction, still keeping his eyes on Dugan and Kim’s hair firmly clenched in his fist.
I inched closer to them. John was breathing heavily next to me.
“Drop it, Dugan,” I shouted. “Come on, man. It’s two against one. There’s no way this is gonna work, and you know it.”
His eyes didn’t leave Sherm’s as he spoke to me. “You’re not shooting anybody, Tommy. You don’t have it in you. Trust me, I know. I’ve killed before, in ’Nam.”
“Try me, you stupid motherfucker. I mean it, Dugan. Put down the gun, now.”
Dugan’s eyes flashed from Sherm to me and back to Sherm again. His hands were shaking, and the pistol barrel wobbled up and down.
“Hard to hit anything with your hand shaking like that,” John chipped in.
“Shut up!” Dugan hissed, but I heard the doubt creeping into his voice.
“Your choice, Dugan.” Sherm kept his gun aimed at Sharon. “Go ahead and shoot me. Maybe you’ll hit me or maybe you’ll hit Kim or maybe you’ll hit the wall and the ricochet will kill somebody else. No matter how it goes down, though, I’m gonna take out your piece of ass before I die.”
“Shoot him,” Sharon moaned, “I love you, Dugan. Now shoot him.”
“Shut up, bitch!”
“Oh shit…” Oscar breathed.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” Martha recited over and over, her eyes still closed.
“I…” Dugan’s finger tightened on the trigger.
My palms were sweating and the .38 slipped. I tried to hold it steady again. Sweat ran into my eyes too, stinging them, making me half-blind.
“Dugan, I mean it. I’m not fucking around here, and neither is Sherm. Think about Sharon, man. Do you really want to see her get shot? Sherm said he’d let you guys go.”
Even as I said it, a part of me deep down inside wished Dugan would do it, wished he’d squeeze the trigger and shoot and end all of our misery by taking Sherm down. But friendship won out. I don’t know why, but it did. Maybe it was because I felt like Dugan had betrayed my trust, betrayed my good intentions. Maybe all of them had. They’d pretended to be nice and concerned, but all the while they were just playing me.
“I mean it, Dugan,” I warned him a final time. “Drop that pistol or I will shoot you.”
“Don’t listen to them, baby,” Sharon pleaded, closing her eyes. “Tommy won’t do it. And don’t worry about me. Just do it.”
“I said shut your mouth, bitch.” Sherm’s own grip on his pistol tightened. I inched closer, keeping the cop’s .38 centered on Dugan. My chest was pounding so hard that I thought I might be having a heart attack. My throat felt constricted and I needed to cough, but I knew if I did it was going to be a bad one, leaving me helpless to do anything else. I fought it off and tried to ignore the bloody phlegm building at the back of my mouth.
“Last chance. This thing ain’t got no safety, so…” Sherm smiled, and his knuckle popped as he gently squeezed the trigger.
“No,” Dugan cried out, “don’t! I’ll drop it. Don’t shoot Sharon. Look, I’m putting it down. I’m putting it down, you son of a bitch.”
He laid my pistol down in front of him. Letting go of Kim’s hair, Sherm kicked the weapon out of Dugan’s reach and told John to pick it up. John got up from the floor and obeyed without a word.
“Lie down on the floor, Dugan. I want you fucking kissing it. Do you understand me? You’re gonna lick that floor like it was Sharon’s pussy.”