Dead Bang

by Robert Bailey

  “Doesn’t look like Manny plans to sue,” I said.

  5

  I SHOOK HANDS WITH my empty holster and really, really, really wished my Detonics wasn’t in Kentwood in an evidence bag. Wendy had six rounds in her .380. She probably hadn’t oiled it recently, and she never carried a spare magazine. I lurched to my feet and asked, “Karen, where do you keep the shotgun?”

  “I don’t like guns,” said Karen. “The police have to protect us.”

  “We gotta get outta this cheese box,” I said.

  “This cheese box is my home,” said Karen, pecking out 911 on the kitchen wall phone.

  “And a lovely home it is,” said Wendy, as she snapped down the window shade. “Out the back, dear.” Wendy peeled the telephone out of Karen’s hand and flopped it onto the counter.

  I scooped up the money Karen had sorted into stacks and tossed it in the air. “Are you nuts?” asked Karen as she snatched at the bills fluttering down around her.

  “I’m hoping they’d rather pick up the money than chase us.”

  “Let’s just wait for the police,” said Karen.

  “Time to go,” said Wendy, taking Karen by the elbow.

  I grabbed a double handful of bundled money from the suitcase and exited the kitchen just a step behind the ladies. Someone tried the front door. I pulled the rubber band off a bundle and threw the cash at the door. The bundle blossomed into a cloud that drizzled green up the short hallway. Thuds buckled the front door. The doorjamb exploded, but the sofa bed only gave up an inch or two.

  Wendy took two bundles and loosed them in the living room. I tossed two wrapped bundles toward the bedroom. Wendy snatched the folding chair loose from the side door, and I jerked the door open.

  I met a tall, dark stranger with a full beard and a Kalashnikov rifle. He stepped in and swung up the muzzle. I pushed the barrel to my right and dropped to a squat. Bullets sprayed through the front walls of the house. Wendy clobbered the man in the door with the folding chair.

  Stunned, the man went slack on the trigger. I moved my left hand onto the rifle stock, stood, and smashed the weapon upward at the same time. The butt of the weapon plowed into the man’s jaw, and he crumpled into a pile. I kept the rifle.

  Loud, anguished yelling came from the front of the house. Then silence, followed by a burst of rifle fire that atomized the kitchen window. I could hear china and glassware explode in the cupboards. Windows at the back of the house shattered.

  The color drained from Karen’s face and she said, “That son of a bitch! That was my mom’s stuff!”

  I snatched a peek out the door. A man with a full beard, one continuous eyebrow, and an assault rifle inched his way up the side of the house with his back to the siding. I pushed the stunned gunman clear of the opening with my foot and shouldered the door closed. Wendy wedged the chair under the door handle.

  “Bedroom,” I said. I looked up the hall and saw a man’s arm and shoulder in a long-sleeved white shirt wedged through the front door. I put my backside against the sofa and shoved with my legs. The door crackled. The man screamed, and I let up until he struggled free of the door. I pushed the door closed with the sofa and followed Karen and Wendy into the bedroom.

  The carpet squished underfoot as Karen’s waterbed emptied itself onto the floor. Her window, now reduced to a few dangling shards, looked out onto the backyard. I pushed up on the sash but it didn’t move.

  “Locked,” said Karen. She reached under the shade and released the lock. “The screen is painted shut.”

  I threw up the sash and rammed out the screen with the butt of the rifle. The yard stretched back a hundred feet and opened into the yard behind without a fence. I took Karen’s makeup mirror off the dresser, stuck it out the window, and found no one peeping around the corners.

  “I’m going halfway down the yard so I can cover both sides of the house,” I said to Wendy. “I’ll wave if it’s clear.”

  I handed Wendy the rifle and climbed out the window. Karen’s house had been built on a slab without a basement, so it was only about four feet to the ground. Wendy handed out the rifle. I hustled backwards until I had a good angle on both sides of the house. The woody stubble of last year’s weeds—lawn maintenance was blessedly low on Karen’s priority list—provided some concealment as I took a prone position with the rifle. The sides of the house remained clear of gunmen. I beckoned with my hand and mouthed, “Ladies, if you please.”

  Wendy slid out feet first with her pistol in her hand and ran to lie beside me. A staccato burst of rifle fire broke out from the front of the house. Karen did not come out the window. We waited. Nothing. Then a second burst of rifle fire.

  “I have to go back in,” I said.

  “I told her to come out first,” said Wendy. “She said she’d be right behind me.”

  “I don’t see her,” I said. I heard the first police siren in the distance.

  “Maybe she decided to wait for the police.”

  “I don’t think she’ll last that long,” I said.

  “Oh, honey,” said Wendy. “I don’t know.”

  “In the yard behind us there’s a boat on a trailer. I’ll cover here until you get back there. You’ll have to cover us when I get Karen out of the house.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Wendy.

  I gave Wendy the rifle and took her pistol. “That’s the safety,” I said. “Hose ‘em like a dry garden, doll. Whistle when you’re ready.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Wendy.

  “Maybe she’ll come out while you’re on your way to the boat,” I said.

  Wendy climbed to her feet, and I heard fast footfalls race toward the back of the yard, but Karen didn’t come to the window. I heard Wendy whistle like she was calling the boys in from the lake for lunch—two fingers in the mouth. Her dad taught her how. I pushed up and ran for the back of the house. At the window I stuck the .380 in my belt.

  The front door had been ventilated like a cheese grater, and the leather sofa bed had been slaughtered for the second time. Someone had his shoulder to the door. A clatter of automatic rifle fire roared in the kitchen. I spied over the half wall and saw the muzzle of the blazing weapon stuck in through the window. The suitcase had been upset, spilling bundles of money over the table. On the floor lay Karen with her back to the wall in a fetal ball with her face buried in her hands.

  I drew the .380, but the firing stopped and an arm in a white sleeve snaked in the window to grapple with the suitcase, causing bundles of money to cascade from the table. Karen bounded off the floor, grabbed an iron skillet from the stove, and bludgeoned the arm.

  “You fucking asshole!” Karen yelled. “You shot up my house!”

  The arm snapped back out of the window like an anteater’s tongue with a termite in tow. “We want the money!” yelled Manny, with a growl in his voice.

  Karen said, “Come up to the window, and I’ll give you the money.” She lobbed out several bundles.

  The person battering the door quit. I shoved the sofa and took back the four or five inches they’d gained.

  “I am out here,” said Manny.

  Karen grabbed the teakettle and poured it out the window.

  Manny screamed, and Karen launched out of the kitchen at a dead run for the back of the house. I didn’t interfere. In the bedroom I said, “Go! Run for the boat in the yard behind yours. Wendy’s there.”

  Karen slid out. The front door gave it up. I locked the bedroom door and climbed out the window. I could hear panicked voices arguing. Over the din, Manny yelled crisp, individual words that I did not understand.

  Karen ran, eating ground with long strides and pumping sharp elbows. I scrambled backwards, watching the bedroom window over the sights of the .380. Police sirens filled the air from all directions.

  Wendy yelled, “They’re coming down the side of the house!”

  I turned and ran until I found Karen and Wendy crouched and peeping around the boat. Wendy held the rifle out to me. />
  “Too heavy,” she said. We traded weapons.

  The porch light at the side of the house with the boat blinked on. A man with bulldog jowls and more belly than T-shirt stepped out of the side door.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” he asked, uncorking the charred stump of a fat cigar from the corner of his mouth. A burst of AKR fire hosed an arc into the side of the house. The porch light exploded and tinkled down the asbestos siding. Ducking back into the door, he said, “I’m calling the police!” From inside the house, he added, “Jesus Christ, my fish tank!”

  We ran out along the dirt-rut drive and crossed the street.

  Six or seven houses closer to Division Avenue, we took cover behind a large blue spruce tree on the lawn of a Dutch Colonial. Icicle Christmas lights dangled, belatedly, from the eaves. A dog in the house raised a racket, but no lights came on.

  “Karen?” I said, and realized that I didn’t have the air to finish the question—time to cut down on the cigars and lay off the donuts. I took off my suit jacket.

  “What on earth?” gasped Wendy, leaning her shoulder against me with her pistol dangling in her hand.

  “Were you doing?” I finished, loosening the sling on the rifle.

  “I had to go back to the kitchen,” Karen said, not winded.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I had to get my shoes,” said Karen.

  “They could have killed you,” I said. I slung the rifle over my right shoulder, muzzle down, magazine to the rear, and with the butt just under my armpit.

  “They could have killed Art,” said Wendy, shaking a finger.

  “Art didn’t have to come back,” said Karen. “Manny wouldn’t have hurt me.”

  “You don’t seem to mind hurting him,” I said.

  Wendy looked from Karen to me and said, “What?”

  “I poured the teakettle out the window on Manny,” she said.

  “You should have just thrown out the money like you told him,” I said as I pulled my suit coat on over the rifle.

  “You told him you’d hand the money out?” asked Wendy.

  “Well, yeah,” said Karen, wringing her hands.

  “Why?” asked Wendy, throwing up her hands, her right hand still grasping her pistol.

  “I threw some bundles out,” said Karen, scuffing a foot while she looked at the ground.

  “So they would quit shooting?” asked Wendy.

  Karen rolled her eyes up to Wendy. Chin down and face evil, she said, “So they would come up to the window.”

  “Jesus Kay-rhyst,” I said, surprised that Karen’s head didn’t spin around and spew green vomit.

  “They wrecked my stuff,” said Karen, her voice squeaking tight in her throat. Her face pinched, and tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s all I had from my mom.” Her knees started to shake.

  Wendy threw her arms around Karen and patted with the pistol-free hand. Karen sobbed and then squeaked out, “I didn’t care if they killed me.”

  “We care,” said Wendy. Looking at me over Karen’s shoulder with an accusing face, she added, “You should give Karen your coat—she’s freezing.”

  I adjusted the sling so that I had enough slack to swing the weapon up to my shoulder. “I have to keep this thing covered,” I said. “I don’t want to start a panic.”

  “The barrel hangs down to your knees, and the magazine makes a big lump in the back,” said Wendy.

  “It’s dark,” I said. I looked down the street. Nobody was coming out after us. On Division Avenue, a marked City of Wyoming police car screamed by with the rollers on.

  “I think the panic has already started,” said Wendy.

  “We should keep moving,” I said. “We need to find a safe place while the police sort out Manny and his pals.”

  Wendy rubbed Karen’s back. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go before the people who live here get involved in this mess.”

  As we walked west, the houses gave way to an acre of blacktopped parking lot for a church on Division Avenue. Light glowed from the windows in a one-story wing that stretched back from the main church building. Sirens screamed louder and closer. Cars pulled onto the lot. Folks who had already parked stood around their cars and wondered aloud what was going on.

  Another marked police car roared down the street. I stretched my right hand down to cover as much of the rifle as I could. Wendy dropped her pistol into her handbag. The sign on the door announced the Lady’s Altar Club quilt sale.

  A minivan, definitely dark green under the street light, nosed into the lot and stopped just past the apron. The man with the white shirt and the unibrow sat at the wheel, gripping his right shoulder. Manny sat in the passenger seat holding the side of his face with both hands.

  6

  “WHY DID YOU BRING that weapon to our church?” a man asked from behind me, his voice calm and resonant. I didn’t turn around. I kept my eyes on the van driver, whose glower remained fixed on me and seemed to gather heat as he rubbed his right shoulder with his left hand.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Reverend Douglas Rhinehardt,” he said. “I’m the pastor.”

  “How did the police miss them?” asked Wendy.

  “They should have taken the money and split,” I said. “Take Karen into the building.”

  “I’m calling the police,” said Rhinehardt, his voice calm.

  “Please,” I said. “And tell them the people they’re looking for are in that green van right there.”

  Rhinehardt said, “Maybe they’re looking for you.”

  “Either way, call the police.” I said.

  I felt a firm hand on my right forearm. “Give me the gun.”

  “Just make you a target, Father Rhinehardt,” I said. The van driver’s lips curled to reveal a line of clenched teeth. Rhinehardt let go of my arm. “And standing next to me is not an idea with a long or happy future.”

  “I think you should leave,” he said.

  “If I stand relatively still, Reverend,” I said, “we all have time to think. If I make a significant move, the thinking will stop, and the doing will start.”

  “Doing what?”

  “They shot up a house over on Montebello. We ran. The neighbors must have called the police.”

  “You have the rifle,” said Rhinehardt.

  “One of their guys dropped it. I took it so they couldn’t use it.”

  “Why did they come here?” he asked.

  “May have wanted to hide in the crowd,” I said. “I don’t think they knew this was a church. From the look on the driver’s face, I don’t think they expected to find us here either.”

  Rhinehardt stepped around me and said, “Richard, Carla,” beckoning to an elderly couple. Rhinehardt stood about five feet, ten inches tall—all black suit and silver hair from behind. “Hurry inside,” he said, his voice now cheerful. “Ralph. Yes, you too. I need some help.”

  A light mist filtered from a mostly cloudless sky—Michigan weather. The cold ground would turn the mist into a coat of ice.

  I waited for the padre to work his way to my left so I had a clear background behind the van. The van driver spoke slowly, his single eyebrow bent into a chevron. I pulled my coat aside to reveal a clear view of the rifle.

  Manny took his hands from his face to make frantic gestures while he spoke rapidly to the driver. The right side of Manny’s face radiated bright red from the hairline to the neck.

  The driver wagged a single digit at me and jerked the shift lever down, and the van lurched into reverse. Backing up earned him some polite horn toots from entering traffic. A fifteen-foot church van, white with black letters—“St. Michael’s”—stopped cold behind Manny and his crew. If they decided to start a war, I wouldn’t be able to return fire without hosing the church van.

  I sidestepped to my right, trying for a workable angle of fire. The green van cut a hard U-turn, driving over the curb to get to the street. I hustled through a gap in the parking lot fence and r
an along the side of the church toward Division Avenue. The van roared by before I got to the street.

  At the corner of Forty-fourth and Division, the signal blinked red. No fewer than three dark-colored minivans idled in the gaggle of traffic at the light. I focused on the minivan in the left turn lane because the expressway on-ramp veered off Forty-fourth Street in less than a quarter mile. Mist collecting on my glasses turned the van’s taillights into big, red, four-pointed stars. I couldn’t read the license plate.

  The green arrow blinked on, and the minivan rocketed left around the corner. I dodged through the stopped traffic in the northbound lanes and dashed into the vacant—and now slick—southbound side of the highway. When the main signal went green, the bumpers of the cars stopped at the light rose in unison like an offensive line coming out of a crouch after the snap.

  A white Oldsmobile sedan cranked a tire-spinning right into the southbound lane before I could get to the curb, nailed the brakes, and came at me sideways. The driver, a blond lady with her hair in large rollers, screamed, “Holy shit!” loud enough for me to hear it through the closed window. I pegged a hand onto the left front fender above the headlight and, with a small hop, leapt onto the curb as the Olds slid into a one-eighty.

  The on-ramp traffic moved at a crawl. I ran diagonally across the Walgreen’s parking lot. Manny’s van crept along, third from the end. Just at my back an auto horn honked—loud and close enough that I could feel the sound on my back. I ran to the edge of the aisle to let traffic pass. Whipping off my glasses, I was able to squint out the first three numbers on the license plate, but I couldn’t make out whether the first of three letters was a “C” or a “G.” The horn sounded again. A car nudged me from behind and I stumbled. From the ground I pondered the ravenous grill of the white Oldsmobile.

  The driver clanked the shifter into park, and the Olds raised its silver lip, the whirring fan threatening from behind grillwork teeth. I heard the driver’s door open and hauled myself to my feet using the bumper. A woman stood in the open door and glared at me over the muzzle of a large black pistol. She didn’t shoot, so I put my glasses on. The woman wore a pink sweatshirt. The hair on the left side of her head was wound onto a montage of large pink, blue, and mint-green rollers. On the right, her hair hung disheveled down to her shoulder. The face belonged to my favorite federal femme fatale, Special Agent Matty Svenson.