The Stick Up-
A Short Story
By M M-Stewart
Copyright 2011 M M-Stewart
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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The Stick Up
In 1977…
Park Hannigan was too tall and gangly for his nine year old frame. His hair was dirty blonde and unkempt, a bowl cut too long over his hardly there blue eyes. His skin was tanned and freckled from his young years basking in the harsh Palm Desert sun. His shorts were tight around his waist and hung way above his bony knees; his shirt was the same, tinged with dirt. His worn down flip flops, however, were too big- no doubt his father’s. He trudged along the outskirts of his very small town of Palm Desert, one step at a time, counting, remembering, feeling his way.
Park Hannigan was blind.
And sometimes, people thought, deaf and just plain stupid from his lack of words. He trudged along with his hands outstretched, feeling, touching, mumbling to himself, always counting, never saying an intelligent word. So people stayed away, and Park went on about his business.
He wasn’t stupid- just blind. And he spoke just fine- he just chose not to. Why waste words if no one is listening? one of his favourite poets once quoted, and Park readily agreed. He was very well read; his fingers feeling against the rutted Braille in the old books he found in the back of his trailer, was a thought that put his tense little body at ease. But numbers were his friends. Words never changed and numbers stayed the same, he thought. Always so meticulous, always calculating, always counting…
Seven miles up the main road in the middle of nowhere was Barry’s Gas and Pit Stop. Barry Domiguccio might as well have been the only Italian left in the heart of the desert. His little store was the last pit stop before any other major cities in California. Sometimes Park wished that he could go on trudging along past Barry’s store. Just a little farther outside his dark world until he happened upon an adventure or two, much like the characters in his books.
“What’s the difference? It’s not like you’ll be able to see it no way,” he remembered his mother spitting at him.
It didn’t matter to Park- an adventure was an adventure.
He felt his foot stumble along something, step number twelve thousand, five hundred and sixty four, which meant the beginning of Barry’s driveway. He walked, still counting, hearing the busy buzzing of the store. The gas pumps were to his left, he could sense two cars filling up, could hear the voice of a woman yell orders at a younger girl, and he could hear an oldie station playing in the other car. He trudged along, still counting, until he felt the front door. Felt the handle. He pulled.
At the peak of the day, it was close to one hundred and four degrees. When Park opened the doors to the Pit Stop, he imagined the flapping of an angel’s wings cooling him with a sixty eight degree gust of air conditioning. He stepped inside, heard the bell above the door announce his arrival. He took notice of Barry behind the register. “Hiya, kid. Seen anything green?” He heard him laugh at his own joke. Park scooted along, remembering his way to the candy aisle.
Darryl Hannigan, Park’s father, was a truck driver and was hardly ever home, which was probably the reason why his mother was so spiteful and angry. “Betcha he’s out right now, doing God knows what. Getting drunk, getting sucked, getting fucked by how many other whores he meets along the way,” Park remembered his mother saying sometimes, but Park didn’t mind her. She never complained very long when his father did come home, which was Park’s time to escape before both of his parents locked themselves in their bedroom. Before too long, Park would hear the rhythmic squeaking on the old bed, and the bedpost banging on the wall, and know that they weren’t fighting anymore. He always thought his daddy gave him hush money when he came home, as if everything his mother ever muttered was the truth, and the twenty dollar bill his father gave him upon his arrival was an apology to his son, and the squeaking of their bed and the rhythmic banging on the walls was his apology to his wife. To Park, it was enough for him, the twenty dollar bill. To his mother, it was probably never enough.
That’s what he was doing at Barry’s Gas and Pit Stop: escaping to the candy aisle. He always stocked up on his favourites: Twizzlers, Sweet Tarts, Twix, Charleston Chew, Bottle Caps, Sugar Daddies, lollipops and gum. With the way he ate candy, one would think that he would be wobbling back and forth in the desert, sweating his fat ass off, but that wasn’t the case. Park was tall and scrawny for his age, and if one got the chance to look into his bright dead eyes, one would see how much more mature he seemed.
There wasn’t any Braille for him to weed his fingers along, so Park felt for his candy by hand. Nothing ever felt the same, and none of the boxes and packages were wrapped the same way. It took some time, but he could tell where the Twizzlers were and which were the M & M’s.
Bells rang, announcing new arrivals in the store. The woman from the pump and her younger friend came inside giggling. He could tell it was them- distinguishable L.A pompous laughter. No, they weren’t from ‘round these parts. Just passin’ through. Park wished that he too, was just passin’ through.
The shuffling of their wedged heels, and the smell of their expensive L.A perfume drifted up and down the aisles. One had an older smell, like a sophisticated teacher Park could remember from his elementary school. She was probably short because of the wedged heels, he imagined, but not as short as him; she probably had thick curly blonde hair, he imagined because of the way her shampoo clung to the thickness of her strands, as if she had just driven from where she had came from with the soapy suds still attached to her scalp. With all of his enlightened senses, he couldn’t tell if this were a nice woman or not; he never had much luck with women as it was. His mother seemed to hate his very existence, and the little girls at school scolded at him for staring, as if he could really see up their skirts at recess rather than just imagine the white cotton that lingered underneath. He could tell, however, that the woman was older by her laughter. The younger one smelled lighter, as if she drifted into the store three inches off the ground. She seemed weightless in her footsteps, the way her wedged heels never hit the linoleum, Park imagined her as a dancer. He imagined her legs were longer than the older ones. He could smell the sticky, wet gloss that covered her lips; a strawberry mixture with banana and that “older girl smell” that he sometimes caught whiffs of when Judy Brown babysat for him. The smell made his groin ache for some reason, and his body stiffened where he stood. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of his surroundings, trying to concentrate on why he was there and what he had come for. He tried to shake his imagination before it started to gnaw at his insides, before it began to make him want, and before it made him start to pity himself and his dull eyes. He sighed, having succeeded. He traced his fingers along the aisles and counted.
Like clockwork.
Michael Defter and Charlie Hock sat inside their stolen gray car just off the road from the store. Michael watched as Park Hannigan stumbled into the store. An older man followed a few moments later and disappeared inside. According to Michael’s knowledge of the store, six people were inside: an elderly man, maybe around his sixties, probably on a vacation from the cities nearby; a young woman with her teenage daughter, a little boy, the older man, and Barry Domiguccio.
Charlie snorted and spat outside the window. Charlie was always snorting, Michael realized. “I like the fact that in the desert, no one can hear you scream,” Charlie said as he cleaned underneath his dirty nails with his six inch blade. A brash and demented grin was left on his sweaty face as he scratched himself a moment later. Michael tried not to listen to his partner’s diluted conceptions of a hunter’s theory. “I like the fact that Palm Desert is spaced out and all its major cities are on the inlet, while crappy stores like these are easy pickings on the outskirts.”
He was right, Michael silently agreed. Barry’s place was the only place for miles and the greatest place to stick someone up for some easy cash. This was their plan: two newly released prisoners from High Desert State Prison in Susanville, California, on an all out quest to rob as many of these little gas joints in the state, before hopping the border to Mexico to live out the rest of their lives in peace. But Michael got the feeling that his partner wanted to do more than just grab some cash, what with the way he played with his blade. They had been blessed enough to have not added murder to their list of offenses, but they had come prepared just in case. An accomplice back in Susanville had supplied them with a few handguns and ammo and a swift kick to the ass; a hint to get out of town before others knew that their terms were up and that they were out. They left their three year jail sentence behind and decided that American soil was not the best place to be within the next few years because of their offenses and the people they had royally pissed off. Both had decided that doing a little armed robbery to get out of the country would be the best way to lay low for awhile. Michael didn’t want to leave, however, and Charlie was thoroughly upset that they were being cast out. His anger had begun to grow day by day, and his hands had begun to twitch at his sides near his sidearm sometimes when they stood in the middle of a stick up, Michael realized, as if he missed it. As if he missed the fire of his weapon and its bullet ripping through human flesh. He looked as if he missed the carnage of the life that had been taken from him, and Michael was afraid that he would begin to miss it, too. They couldn’t afford to go back to that life, however; the price was their heads on a platter if they were ever caught, and Michael was not prepared to pay that hefty penalty. From the driver’s seat of their stolen 1971 Dodge Dart sedan, he cleared his throat and turned to his partner. “I want you to stay here.”
Charlie snorted in disbelief. “You’re kidding.”
Michael nodded and wiped the sweat from his face. “I’m dead serious.”
Charlie began to believe him. Michael rarely kidded. Every store they had robbed, they had both gone in and left together with a little over four or five hundred dollars. The money grew and grew daily in its hiding place in the trunk. “I think you’re crazy, Mike.” He put his blade back at his side, taking his leg and sticking it out of the window. “You got six people in there, twelve eyes more than what you can handle.”
“Yeah, and what makes you think that I can’t handle it?”
Charlie snorted and scratched himself again. “You wouldn’t be having trust issues, would you?”
Michael pounded the steering wheel, making his partner snort again. “I’m not having trust issues, Charlie. Just cut me a break. If anything starts to look hairy, then come on in, but until then, just sit tight and keep a look out.”
Before Charlie could protest, Michael was already out of the car. Red dirt and sand kicked around the ankles of his boots. His gun stuck to his back from its position underneath his white shirt and his jeans. Michael’s adrenaline began to rise with each step closer to the gas station. Sometimes, throwing his weapon around and demanding people to get down on their knees as their lives flashed before their eyes was quite the rush for the ex-hit man. Civilians were funny in the way they gushed and cried with a gun aimed at the back of their heads and their hearts pounding in their ears. It was a horrible thing to be smirking about if one were a normal, everyday, nine- to- five kind of guy with a wife and two point two kids waiting at home for him. But he was not that person; had never been that person because of the life he had chosen. His heavily tanned and chiseled face carried a smirk as he stepped into the store, heard the chime above the door and was greeted with the frosted wave of air conditioner. The smirk would’ve become a full on smile if he hadn’t felt the twitch in his hand. The twitch that he had begun to see several times in his partner and the longing of the twitch made him stop in the center of the store, nearly afraid to move anymore. He knew what he was capable of, and the twitch scared him even more. He wasn’t supposed to be that person anymore, he scolded himself. The twitch wasn’t supposed to be a reminder of what he could do, and what deep down inside he wanted to do. To kill, he was afraid to admit, was creeping into his subconscious as a want, and he couldn’t afford that. His partner and he had been doing a good job of staying under the radar; the cops had not been able to keep up with them as they paraded the small cities throughout California on their quest to early retirement in Mexico. Michael silently prayed that the twitch would go away. The people that surrounded him in the store were not the people he had been trained to kill. Killing civilians was not his calling card, but he did not think that the twitch cared about who or what he killed and that, Michael knew, was not a good thing. He silently willed the twitch away and tried to wrap his brain around the idea of where he was, and what he had come to do. He was going to go in, flash his gun, grab the money and get the hell out of Palm Desert with out so much as a glance backwards.
Like clockwork.
Emory Sutton strained to peer over the shelf of loaves of bread as the man entered the store. Even with the wedged heels, her sixteen year old daughter’s idea, she only managed three more inches to her 5’3 height. She couldn’t help but notice any man at this point in her life, however; especially this man, as he stood in the center of the store with his eyes shut, and his physical attributes commanding her attention. She admired the way his body appeared hard against the clothes that fit him, and the way his body seemed to cast off the heat from outside. His face was rugged and boyishly good looking. His chest was bulging with muscles, along with his arms that were sleek and tanned with sun and sweat. She concluded that he was standing still for as long as he was because of the blast of air conditioning from the entrance of the store. She watched as a moment later, he seemed to come to and opened his eyes. His eyes, from the fractions of seconds she could look at them before retracting back to her original height from behind the bread aisle, were a deep dark green. She gasped and tried to hold in a massive giggle attack that was bubbling around in her solar plexus. She felt like a feverish teenager, having darted behind the shelves before the stranger had realized that she had been gawking at him, and blamed her daughter for this. Katherine stood in front of her with her long arms crossed across her blossoming chest, staring at the freezers that contained a wall of various carbonated drinks. Katherine turned and her thin lips curved into a mischievous grin as she noticed her mother with her back against the bread. The grin turned to a smile, and Emory braced herself for humiliation.
“Mom,” Katherine started, her voice too deep and sultry for a sixteen year old, Emory realized, but it didn’t matter. Katherine did not have to stand on her toes to look over the shelves to see the man that had taken her mother’s breath away. She approved her mother’s selection by smiling full on and baring all of her beautiful teeth, and nodding her head, before placing her back against the bread aisle mirroring her Mother. “Very nice,” she said and Emory burst into a feverish fit of giggles.
It had been years since Katherine had seen her Mother truly happy and doused in pure joy. After her father had died last year from a fatal car accident, her Mother had been even more miserable than when they had been married. Katherine had known her Father had wanted a divorce, and she’d known that her Father had been dabbling in other women before his untimely death. Even in life, she had not liked her Father for the unhappiness he had imposed upon his family. Katherine adored her Mother, and pitied her for the sad life she lived. It had been Katherine’s idea to take the road trip into the desert this past month to try to clear her Mother’s unhappiness, and her Mother had timidly agreed. Her Mother was classically beautiful with big doe eyes and a full mouth. Katherine believed in second chances at happiness. And even if there weren’t second chances at that, Katherine believed that there was nothing wrong with the act of trying to get there and the fits of unabashed bliss along the way.
“Mom, you should go talk to him,” Katherine egged her Mother on with a small push of her Mother’s shoulders. Emory’s face nearly drained of its entire colour. “I most certainly will not. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. I don’t even know that man.”
“That’s the point. We’re here to have fun and that man has ‘fun’ written all over him.” Katherine felt like she was encouraging one of her high school friends who was idling between talking to one of their homeroom crushes. Katherine was not one to linger into the unknown for long; a trait she was sure she had earned from her late Father. She was not fearful much of uncertainties, and did not understand indecisiveness. It irritated her when she missed an opportunity to discover something new. She tried to teach this to her Mother, but in the month that they had packed up their little Pontiac GTO and left Los Angeles, she had only started helping her creep out of her protective and timorous shell.
Emory nodded, taking another look over the shelf to catch a look at the mystery man. Katherine snorted as she shuffled close to her Mother again. “He’s very cute,” she promoted.
“He is quite remarkable, isn’t he?” Emory couldn’t help but agree. The words felt silly escaping her mouth, and she smiled at the uneasiness. “But what do you plan on me saying to him? ‘Hi, would you like to accompany me to the backseat of my Pontiac? Oh, her? Don’t mind my teenage daughter.’ That’s silliness, Katherine. I am forty-three years old.”
“You’re quite an attractive forty-three year old with quite an attractive teenage daughter,” Katherine retorted. Her Mother bent over to adjust the wedged heels on her small feet before sitting up with a sigh. Katherine cut her off before she could begin. “Not to mention, you have the body of a very athletic twenty-eight year old.”
Emory shook her head and her long, blonde and curly hair shook. “You’re a real sweetheart, you know that?” She grabbed her daughter’s arm and turned her toward the freezer doors so they could decide which drinks they wanted before they retired to the register to pay and leave. “We’re not here for me to discover my sexual side, Kat. This is our Mother and Daughter time, and I’m quite fine with that.”
Katherine smiled and bared all of her teeth again. “I wouldn’t mind if it became a new discovery of your sexual side.”
“Katherine Sutton!” Emory screeched at her daughter’s frankness, but couldn’t hide another attack of her giggles.
It took a lot to embarrass the teenager, and discussing sex with her Mother was not one of those things. She shrugged her shoulders and picked a drink from behind the freezer doors, and turned back to her Mother who stood with her cheeks beginning to redden. “He is cute, Mom,” she added, pleased that she had finally gotten more out of her mother than a wayward adult response. She was beginning to become irritated, and wanted more than ever for her Mother to just put aside her bashfulness, and to quit wasting their time
Emory had not caught on to her daughter’s exasperation. She had returned to peering over the shelves again and eyeing the man across the way. “Yes, but he’s probably half my age.”
“What makes you say that?”
She shrugged her head, completely over the shelf now, looking for the Mystery Man. Perhaps he had left without her having realized because she could not find him in the store. A feel of regret began to seep into her gut this time, instead of her fit of giggles. “Just something to say, I suppose.”
“Excuse me, ladies.”
The Mother and Daughter turned to meet Michael Defter, who stared back at the older woman with the coolest grin he could muster. “May I get by?” he asked. He reached between them, so close to the woman that he could smell the botanical shampoo that she used on her curly blonde hair. He grabbed for a bag of animal crackers, a random thing from the shelf, then stopped and turned his face towards her. He realized that she was much more beautiful up close than he could’ve ever imagined. It had been closer to a year since he had even been in the vicinity of a woman as stunning as Emory Sutton. And it was too much of a shame that he could do nothing more than leer.
Like clockwork.
Barry Domiguccio scratched at his chubby chin. He hadn’t shaved in about a week, scared that he would be shaking so badly that he would slit his own throat. He had reason to be shaking. Every man in their last few hours should be allowed to shake.
He watched as Park Hannigan laid down the only thing Barry ever saw him eat: shit tons of candy. The boy was crazy to travel halfway across the boiling hot desert to my store for candy that should’ve been melted and sticking to the bottom of the plastic bag he carried it in by the time he got home, he thought with a lazy leer. Of course, he was even crazier for staying in that lunatic of a trailer with his sickly old mother who was closer than a hop, skip and a jump away from knocking on heaven’s door. But Barry hardly paid the boy any mind. He was only nine- a boy like Park had his whole life ahead of him. A boy like him deserved a few pieces of candy in a hell town like this.
“This is it for you?” Barry asked the boy, his sneer turning into a legitimate smile. The boy looked up at the bull of a man from across the counter seeing nothing, and nodded his head. His shaggy brown hair followed his movements. Park was so happy, so content with getting his candy that for a minute he didn’t sense the growing shadows on the countertop. How could he, his eyes were as useless as tits on a dog, he could remember his father saying once. The two shadows grew longer against the high sun and Park unknowingly just licked his lips, and gripped the twenty dollar bill tighter as it burned in his hand. He handed it to Barry, who dropped it at the sight of the growing shadows. Barry’s eyes doubled in size at the two men who cast them. The chiming of the bells as they entered the store nearly knocked Barry onto his back, and he imagined for a second that he was having a heart attack.
From behind the shelves, Michael could see the two men and the long barreled weapons they carried under their coats. Just as they began to open the doors to the store, he grabbed a hold of Emory and her daughter’s shoulders and dragged them down, hiding behind the shelves.
Like clockwork.
Rafael Mateo tossed the toothpick he had been chewing on into a shopping cart just as he and Sal Lucero entered Barry’s Gas and Pit Stop. Rafael heard his partner sustain a low chuckle as he switched his M16 to his other hand. He laughed a little, too. The usual red and sweat that covered Barry Domiguccio’s face had disappeared and was replaced with surprise and dismay.
“Hi, Barito,” Rafael offered, his accent dripping in Spanish decent. “Did you miss us?”
Sal’s attention was taken away from the stuttering Barry to the kid that stood in front of the counter as white a bleached bed sheet. “You scared, niño?” he asked him, and the boy’s eyes grew wider as Sal stepped closer to him. They were almost nose to nose now, and the only thing that separated them was the nozzle of Sal’s M16. “I said, es usted asusto, cabrito?” he tried again. Rafael burst into laughter when there wasn’t a reply.
“He’s bl-blind,” Barry stuttered.
“Oh, now you wanna talk?” Rafael said as he tapped the counter with his gun.
“That don’t mean he can’t speak,” Sal said, drawing closer to the kid. They locked eyes. The boy’s were a frigid blue trapped inside the assailant’s dark brown that bore no happy place for a child. Suddenly, Sal jumped forward and gave a ferocious bark that nearly scared the kid shitless as he fell to the linoleum floor. Sal continued to laugh as he stood up, eyeing all of the remaining people that were trapped in the store. He turned back to Barry, his finger now on the trigger of his gun. “You got Carlito’s money?”
Barry blinked. Shaking was out now. All he was trying to do was keep from pissing himself. “I have some of it. I’ll have the rest of it by the end of the week…”
Rafael shook his head and Sal tsked. “You are twenty three thousand dollars in Carlito’s debt, mi amigo. You hear that?” Sal asked. “Twenty three thousand is chump change to Carlito Sanchez, and usually he would let this thing slide”-
“But you disrespected him,” Rafael concluded. “And no one disrespects Carlito Sanchez.”
Barry was near tears. “Give me another week; I swear I’ll have it by then”-
“No trabaja como ese, Barito,” Rafael interjected. “We already gave you a week.”
“And the week before that.”
“And the week before”-
“Please…” Barry bellowed while his double chins were quivering as he began to cry. “I swear on my mother’s grave”-
“Oh, please,” Sal replied as he pushed Barry into the counter behind him. Before Barry could stop pouting, Sal let a round off into his tubby body, the bullets pelting his permeable skin with a sickening burst of gun powder and blood. After he emptied his clip, Sal let go of the trigger and Barry slumped to the floor, his eyes vacant, his shaking discontinued. With a solid grin from Sal, he turned away his gun, the gun barrel piping hot and smoking. Rafael spoke first: “Barry Domiguccio couldn’t pay his debt to Carlito Sanchez, but we’re still going to get what we came for.”
Sal snorted, replacing his gun with a second clip. “All right, hijos de putas. This is a stick- up.”
Michael could’ve been a rich man with all the many nickels he would’ve received from all the times his luck had run out. And of all the people to rob the same store as him, it had to be the people of Carlito Sanchez’s drug estate. Sanchez had been the very reason Michael had gone to jail. It just seemed as if bad luck followed him around like his bad dreams.
“What do we do?” Katherine whispered frantically, grabbing a hold of Michael’s shirt. She was no longer showing the beautiful teeth he had seen from across the store, and somehow that saddened him. His mind raced. Things were not going according to his plan. They were, in fact, crumbling at his feet at that very second.
Emory covered her mouth a little to keep herself from shrieking. “I- um, he said that he wants us in front”-
Michael turned to see that her gray eyes were wide and scared. He didn’t understand why both of their fright was making him so sad. If things had been different and he had been the one robbing the store, he wouldn’t have cared what they felt, so long as he had gotten what he’d come for. He cursed himself for having been drawn to both Mother and Daughter’s beauty from across the store. It had been so long since he had been with anyone… “I think we should do as he says”-
“Are you crazy?” Katherine whispered. “They’ll kill us like they killed the store guy!”
But before they could decide on anything, Rafael leaned over the shelves with his gun pointed down at the three of them. “Excuse me, I don’t mean to break up this meeting, but could the three of you get your asses up?!”
Five minutes later, the six of the store inhabitants stood scared and shaking in a row in front of the store, as Rafael and Sal stood before them with smirks. “Empty your pockets,” Sal commanded, and immediately, everyone began to empty their pants and pockets, purses and wallets, dropping them all to the floor except for Michael, who Sal took notice of immediately. “You don’t talk either?” he asked.
Michael and Sal had never worked together, and silently Michael thanked his former boss for this small favour. He had heard of Sal and Rafael before as being two of Carlito Sanchez’s collection men, excluding Michael and Charlie who had been in categories all on their own. Sal and Rafael were accused of running all over southern California as if it were their own personal piggy banks. They robbed and stole in Carlito’s honour, and kept the drug runs free from law enforcement interference from a private location in Mexico into America, but when they weren’t on their boss’s time, they looked out for themselves.
All in the same, having been put away in jail because of Carlito, Michael tried averting his eyes, hoping that he wouldn’t be recognizable. “I don’t have anything on me,” he said quietly.
Sal chuckled. “Real funny, pinchazo.” He took a step forward, too close, and Michael finally did look up. He wasn’t afraid of the gun in the man’s hand, or the man himself. But the twitch in his hand again began to make him nervous.
“Hey,” Sal said, looking at him closely. “You look awfully familiar.”
Michael’s heart sank, but he tried to keep a cool head. “No, I don’t think I would.”
But Sal kept on, pulling his strapped gun over his shoulder and reaching over to Michael’s pockets, pulling out his wallet. Silently, he groaned, and Emory shivered next to him. “Mr. Alan, Defter, Michael, of Palm Desert, California; born November 11, 1950”-
Michael wasn’t listening as his identity was being given away. He had turned his attention to Sal, who was grabbing at Katherine and Emory all in the wrong places. “Hey,” he shouted, startling Sal for just a minute. Rafael shoved him and Michael almost went for his gun still sitting snuggly at his back. “¿Cuál es tu problema, perra?” Rafael asked, but Sal held a hand to him as he continued to eye Michael. “Rafael, do you know who this is?”
Rafael spat and frowned. “I don’t give a fuck”-
“This is the hijo de puta who kidnapped Carlito Sanchez three years ago.”
Rafael’s face loosened up as he began to leer at Michael Defter. “This scrawny cabron? What a coincidence.” He clapped Michael on his shoulder and that made Michael’s finger twitch. He wondered how much faster he had to be to whip out his gun and deliver two swift head shots to the center of Sal and Rafael’s foreheads before they had the chance to pull their automatic weapons on him. He knew that he was fast on the draw, but there were two of them, and they weren’t dense when it came to guns.
“The boss will be happy to see you out and about”-
“I don’t really think I want to go back, boys,” Michael replied, taking a step back.
From outside the store, he had caught a glimpse of something that made him smile. His eyes darted back to the triggers of their guns, but Michael already knew their fates.
With one swift move, he jerked his gun out from its hold and released the safety just as the window exploded behind Rafael and Sal. Shots rang out and everyone hit the linoleum floor, except for Michael who finished both of the boys off with two headshots. A moment later, two bodies hit the floor.
Like clockwork.
Charlie Hock entered the store through the shattered glass door holding his smoking gun in his hands, and a crazy smile on his face. Michael saw that his partner’s hand no longer twitched and he was glad. “ ‘Stay in the car’, you say,” his partner mocked. “ ‘It’s safer if you do.’ What are you, my mother?”
“Shut up,” Michael replied with a smile. He looked up and saw that no one else had been hurt. The small boy was standing and gripping his bag of candy and his twenty dollar bill as he gaped in Michael’s direction near the register. He waved his hands in front of the child’s face, but the boy did not move. He imagined that he was in shock and frowned. “Hey, kid,” Michael said, and the boy blinked. “You’re all right?”
“Yes,” the boy said. “Are they dead?”
Michael returned to the newly deceased Sal and Rafael and kicked at the dead bodies that lay on the ground amongst the scattered broken glass, and the pool of gushing blood from their wounds. “Very much so.” The boy was satisfied with that answer because he blinked and said nothing more.
Charlie made his way across the room, his boots collecting glass under the soles and making scrunching noises along the way. “What the hell happened here?”
“An almost reunion with Carlito Sanchez. These were his boys.”
Charlie froze, and Michael could almost feel his partner’s blood running cold through his veins from across the store. “Not the same Carlito Sanchez who sent us to jail for three years?”
“The very same.”
The store was quiet a minute longer as everyone began to gather themselves up from off the floor. Emory leaned up against the counter, trying to catch her breath. She nearly lost that and her lunch as she caught a glimpse of Barry Domigucci’s newly rotting corpse still slumped up next to the register.
“Hey.”
She opened her eyes to see the mystery man standing in front of her. His shirt was speckled with blood, and his chest was rising up and down as if one could become out of breath from shooting two people point blank in the head. He looked down at her, his mind racing for things smart enough to say. “We’re not here to hurt you. We’re just robbing the store.”
She nodded, not fearful of the man, and not understanding why either. She’d just watched him murder two people, and she couldn’t understand why the gun in his hand wasn’t frightening her, but turning her on instead. “How do I know you won’t hurt anyone? You just killed those two people.”
His glance did not falter. “They had it coming.”
She knew that he would not go any deeper than that, and she found it odd that she accepted it. Her dark, mysterious man had a past, and she let it be without another word.
“Thank you for saving us,” Katherine said, her optimism never faltering, and Michael nodded, but he didn’t move from in front of the beautiful woman. Of all the things he found himself wanting to say, nothing would escape his mouth and this worried him. His vision was skewed and the reason was because of the woman in front of him.
“Let’s go,” his partner called as he slammed shut the now empty register. The remaining occupants of Barry’s Gas and Sip were standing around unsure of how to move with Charlie and Michael lingering around with their guns unholstered. Only Emory and Katherine seemed at ease. Charlie grew restless as he threw the four hundred and eighty six dollars in his sack over his shoulders. He was beginning to grow impatient. “We have things to do, partner, and I know the cops have got to be coming from some direction pretty soon.”
Michael heard Charlie’s pleads but couldn’t will his feet to step away. “I have to go.”
“I would imagine,” Emory surprised herself with her amusing response. She had never imagined playing hard-to-get with a wanted fugitive, and that made her giggle a little.
“I think I want to kidnap you, ma’am, if that’s okay with you.”
Emory almost exploded with laughter, but caught herself at the last moment. “You most certainly will not”-
“Where are you going?” Katherine intervened; her eyes had grown huge from excitement. Michael replied but never took his eyes off Emory, “Mexico. We have a few more stops to make.”
Charlie tripped over Barry’s stinking corpse and crashed onto the linoleum floor. He jarred himself back to his feet, cursing at the glass he had collected on his hands and the pools of blood that were beginning to amass into his palms. “Goddammit, are you crazy? Don’t tell them where we’re going. Let’s get the fuck out of here before”-
Gunshots began to parade inside of Barry’s Gas and Sip, and everyone darted back to the floor. A batch of rifle fire ripped through the glass windows in the back of the store, and new glass fell to the floor raining in deadly sharp sheets. Contents of chips and sodas decorated the floor, and Michael heard Emory screaming and he could not blame her. He looked up just in time to yank the little boy down to the floor and covered him with his body. He counted the seconds before the bullets stopped and calculated that there were four shooters this time, and that they were not police. The police would’ve announced themselves; the hit men of Carlito Sanchez’s would not.
When the bullets stopped, Michael listened for advancing footsteps. He estimated that they were at least six or seven feet away from the entrance of the store and could not see inside yet. He acted quickly, and rushed Emory to take the boy and her daughter behind the aisle behind them so that they would not be seen and she responded well. He stayed low and ducked beside the bodies of Sal and Rafael on the floor in front of the entrance of the store just in time to watch two of the hit men advancing, both of Spanish decent and not speaking a lick of English. Michael gripped the butt of his handgun and waited until the first of the four could walk into the store. From the corner of his eye as he pretended to play dead from the floor, he saw Charlie doing the same from underneath the glass windows he had shot out earlier. He was closer to the entrance and waiting patiently like a venomous snake ready to strike at the right moment.
When all four had entered the store and had stood cluttered in front of the entrance analyzing their damage, Michael lifted his weapon and delivered the first two headshots to the two hit men in the front. Milliseconds later, the third hit men hit the floor with a bullet in between his eyebrows, and Charlie took the fourth hit man’s weapon away by shooting him in the hand that held his weapon, and shooting him once more in his knees. The fourth hit man was crying in Spanish on his knees as he knelt on the floor bleeding and surrounded by his three dead pals. Everything had happened so fast, he didn’t even realize who had attacked him until Michael and Charlie had picked themselves up from the floor.
“Is this our lucky day or what?” Charlie asked as he holstered his weapon. Michael stood in front of the hit man ready to start his investigation when he began to hear sirens in the back ground. Had better make this quick, he thought. “Who sent you?”
“I no tiene que decirle nada, imbecile,” he spat back. Michael grew impatient as the sirens grew louder. “We don’t have time for this. I know you can understand me. Who sent you?”
Charlie put the barrel of his gun near the hit man’s temple and clicked the hammer back. “You’re going to kill me anyway,” the hit man sputtered.
“You’re right,” Charlie said, “so what does it matter if you tell us or not?”
“Please don’t kill me, senior. Carlito Sanchez sent us. We were here to collect some money from Barry. We were sent as back up”- Charlie pulled his trigger and the hit man’s brain exploded all over the floor beside Michael. His body made a soft thud as it landed on one of the other dead bodies. “That was easy. Let’s get the fuck out of here. I’ll get the car.”
He was out of the store before his partner could say another word. Michael turned and found Emory, Katherine and Park standing huddled together, as if waiting for his orders. Their faces pleaded with him, it seemed and he felt something pulling at his heartstrings. He did not think that it was possible for an ex-hit man and an ex-convict to have heart strings. “The boy has been hit in his arm,” Emory said. “It doesn’t seem bad but he’s bleeding and he’s scared.”
The sirens seemed to be just down the dusty road now. Michael ran and scooped up the boy and his bag of candy. “Come on,” he said, and Katherine and Emory did not hesitate to follow. They jumped over dead bodies and scrunched glass under their wedged heels as they escaped the store. Charlie was waiting impatiently in the Dart in front of the store with his eyes in the rearview mirror. “They’re coming, and we can’t be here,” he said. He barely had a moment to realize what his partner was doing before Michael had plopped the boy into the seat next to him. The girls from the store were jumping into the backseat, and that made Charlie very upset. “What the fuck is this, kidnapping? We don’t have time for this”-
“It’s not kidnapping if we willingly come with you, is it?” Katherine asked as she fell into the backseat. Charlie wanted to hit her, he was so annoyed, but he decided against it since she did not seem afraid of him and that made him uneasy. Michael jumped in and slammed his door shut. “Let’s go.”
“Feeling generous today?” Charlie asked, as he threw the Dart into gear, and made the tires spin, a cloud of red dirt and sand expanding in their hastened escape as they sped away from Barry’s Gas and Sip.
Chances were the media would arrive a few moments after the law enforcement showed up, having just nearly missed Charlie and Michael and their posse as they escaped into the next city. The news of a gas station owner and a parade of Mexican hit men’s murders would reach the offices of Carlito Sanchez as he puffed on his Cuban cigar- but Charlie Hock and Michael Defter would be long gone in Tijuana by then.
Like clockwork.
***
***
About the author
M M-Stewart lives in Portsmouth, Virginia. She enjoys reviewing and watching movies for pleasure. She receives her best ideas while listening to her favourite bands and playing air guitar in the shower. She has a huge Boxer/Labrador puppy mix named Buddy who likes to help her edit her stories. Currently, she is married to her high school sweetheart, David.
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