Читать книгу Ghosts In the Heart - Michael J.D. Keller - Страница 8

Mckenzie was not alone in failing to recognize the catastrophic effect that could result from the collision of unguided fates. Lurking behind the Asian Market, Donny Scarborough, a gritty and ill-kempt street hustler, sometime petty thief, and full time druggie was preparing to up his game to armed robbery. The cheap nickle plated Saturday night special pistol in his jacket pocket reflected his novice stature in his newly chosen trade. A more experienced gunman would have carried a better weapon.

Donnie had realized, however dimly, that he would need some assistance in carrying out his newest project. Back up, accomplice, stooge, whatever you called it, he wanted another gun, someone to watch his back in case his easy score proved not to be as easy as he expected. Piotor “Petey” Strelkski, a second generation Russian immigrant, was not his first pick. The hulking Russian was tough, violent, and dumb enough to take orders from someone like Donnie. Unfortunately, he was also a spaceman, susceptible to wild rages, and, when he lost his temper, crazier than a sack of cracked peanuts. Still Petey had a gun, a stolen Glock, of which he was obsessively proud, and he was willing to work with Scarborough. That was the deciding point.

As the two men slipped along the darkened side of the market, Donnie mentally reviewed his master plan. It was cool. All crazy Petey had to do was keep his gun on the clerk who should be alone at this time of night. Make sure he didn’t get too antsy and did exactly what he was told, empty the register and the safe behind the counter. Three - four minutes at most. They would have the money and be gone. The only real problem involved figuring the best way to stiff Petey out of as much of his share as possible.

Walking around the corner and spotting the grey Escalante in the parking lot, Donnie sourly realized that his plan would have to be changed. The clerk wasn’t alone; there was a customer. Shit Donnie thought. Who buys chink food at 2:00 in the morning?

He took a quick breath. Ok, he thought as he reviewed his options. It would still work. He couldn’t let Petey think he was bothered. Looking at the SUV at almost the precise moment that Alex was fumbling on the floor for the dropped cell phone, Scarborough decided that the car was empty. He turned back toward Strelkski and tried to present an image of undisturbed confidence. “Ok man” he said, unable to suppress the squeak of excitement in his voice. “There is a customer and the clerk in there. We do just what I said. Keep everyone under control and grab the money.” He swallowed then asked “You ready?”

Strelkski towered above Scarborough. Dark, greasy hair hanging loose over his forehead, once hard muscles now covered by a thick outer level of fat, and an expression of emotional indifference completed the portrait. Pulling back his faded blue jacket to reveal the Glock jammed into his waistband, Strelkski actually flashed a quick smile before the curtain of bland stupidity fell back into place. “Piotor is always ready.”

Donny nodded silently and then pushed open the poster-encrusted door into the market. As he stepped inside, he pulled the cheap pistol from his pocket, trying with only partial success to keep his hand from shaking. Behind him he heard the comforting thump of the big Russian’s footsteps and from the front of the store the light tinkle of a woman’s voice. Scarborough took a deep breath as he edged toward the money.

After a few seconds of futile fumbling in the darkened automobile, Mckenzie’s hand tightened around his cell phone. With a sigh of released frustration, he raised back up into his seat just as Strelkski followed Scarborough into the store. Some skills cannot be quantified. The interplay of observation, intuition , and finely developed instincts gave Mckenzie the solution before someone else would have even grasped the problem. In the instant that he saw the man in the worn jeans and cheap jacket go through the door, he knew something was terribly wrong. The man’s body language, his aura of menace, and the sense of danger were as visible to Mckenzie as the big man’s physical form. Then he saw the Glock as it was pulled from under the man’s jacket.

For the briefest of instances, a millisecond or less, Alex Mckenzie felt a nauseating wave of despair surge through him. Then he drove it away, banished it to a distant world where it could no longer touch him. He required absolute clarity of thought; he would tolerate nothing else. Once again, he extracted his cell phone from his jacket pocket and punched in the speed dial code. The answering voice sounded tired and perhaps a little bored. “Detective Del Rio.” Mckenzie’s authority crackled into the air. “This is Mckenzie - Major Crimes Unit.” At the other end of the conversation a barely audible gulp preceded a response that was now devoid of any tint of boredom.

“Yes Lieutenant Mckenzie.”

“I am outside the Asian Market on Webster Street. There is an armed robbery in progress - at least one, probably two perpetrators.”

“We will roll back-up immediately, Lieutenant.”

“Inform all units that Prosecuting Attorney Peter Stewart and his wife are in the store. Back up needs to come hard, quick, and quiet. I’m going in now.”

Detective Del Rio, obviously thought Mckenzie’s last statement was ill-considered but the Iceman’s reputation prevented direct opposition.

“Lieutenant, you might want to wait until . . .” Mckenzie cut him off.

“You just tell the uniforms that there is a plainclothes officer on scene. Now move.”

Mckenzie snapped off the phone without waiting for Del Rio’s response. Bending forward, he pulled the snub nose 38 from his ankle holster. It wasn’t a particularly accurate weapon so he would have to get close. He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with air and wrapping himself in the cloak of measured poise that had always carried him through moments of danger. For some reason, he could not quite achieve the serene self confidence that he sought. What had Brenda said? “We don’t give up our friends without a fight.” Well neither do I, Mckenzie thought with an unexpected sense of surprise. When had he ever had friends?

Ready now, he thought. Quick and quiet. The interior lights of the car would come on when he opened the door. It wasn’t likely that the perps inside would be looking outside at that moment but he still needed to minimize the chance of being seen. With one fluid motion, he lifted the door latch and rolled foward. His momentum carried him out of the car and onto his knees on the pavement. With the faintest of clicks, he pushed the door closed. The light inside the vehicle flickered off.

The door to the market posed the next challenge. Did it have a chime, a bell, or a buzzer to alert the clerk that someone had entered? Mckenzie fervently hoped not. If the big man with the gun he had last seen had any warning of his approach, this would all get very interesting ,very quickly. Still he had no choice, the only way to find out was to open the door.

Extending his right arm, holding the 38 at the ready, Mckenzie took carefully measured steps. Careful, he reminded himself. No errant sound from a heedless stumble. With his left hand he pressed firmly on the glass door feeling it swing open. He strained his ears for a betraying chime or a metallic ring, but there were none. Unannounced, he crept into the store.

The market was basically a simple rectangle. Long shelves ran the length of the store, stacked almost to overflowing with boxes, cans and wildly colorful bags all bearing labels in a variety of languages other than English. The well-worn faded gray linoleum floor reflected the passage of a multitude of customers. One of the overhead fluorescent lights flickered intermitedly as if undecided whether to give up the struggle and burn out entirely.

Mckenzie could hear the loud, harsh male voices coming from his right, out of sight beyond the long shelf running toward the front of the store. He could not quite make out the words but he could clearly discern an angry demanding tone that was growing in intensity. His first impulse was to move toward the voices. No, he thought, you don’t know where Peter and Brenda are. You have to be sure they are not in the line of fire. Reversing his direction, he moved with a feline grace toward the rear of the store. Circle around, he told himself. Come up the far aisle, approach from a direction the robbers wouldn’t expect.

At the end of the long shelf, he peered carefully down the aisle. Peter and Brenda were standing almost squarely at the end of the corridor formed by the grocery laden shelves. Peter was holding his hands up, palms out in front of his chest. It looked less like an expression of surrender than an attempt to placate the angry voice coming unseen from Mckenzie’s left while shielding Brenda who was standing only slightly behind him. Mckenzie could clearly grasp what Peter Stewart was doing. He was trying to edge further to his side, to place his body entirely in front of his wife. Amazingly enough, Brenda was not letting him do it. She was moving with him, unwilling to let her husband surrender his life for hers.

Mckenzie crossed the aisle in one quick stride. The Stewarts must not see him. They might react involuntarily and alert their still unseen captors. He had to get much closer before this drama played out. Peering down the next aisle, Mckenzie saw the remaining participants. Behind the counter, near a large cash register, a young man, perhaps Vietnamese or Korean, stood, pale and trembling with fright, his hands clasping and unclasping in front of him. To one side a shabbily dressed, skinny man, not much older than the clerk, was pointing or waving a small pistol at the store employee. From his expression and the high pitched tone of his voice, he appeared as nervous as the clerk.

The big man Mckenzie had first seen as he entered the store stood with his back to the aisle. Unlike his companion, he did not appear nervous. He was angry and becoming angrier with each passing second. Something was not going well. In his right hand a pistol was pointed in the direction where Peter and Brenda were standing and the weapon did not tremble or waver. With his other hand, he was gesticulating toward the clerk, toward his companion, toward a situation that seemed to be fueling a building rage.

There was a benefit in the big man’s fury. It kept the attention of everyone in the little tableau of terror focused on the front of the store. Once again, Mckenzie crossed an aisle unseen and began to move down the last corridor.

Mckenzie’s read of the situation was correct. Things were not going well. Or at least they were not going to Petey Strelkski’s satisfaction. Scarborough had promised him that there would be a cash register and a safe. It was going to be a nice easy score - enough money to hold him for a few days - maybe even longer if he beat Scarborough’s share out of him. Now the punk at the register claimed that he couldn’t open the safe and there was only a couple of bucks in the register. He could have done better snatching purses down at the wharf.

If it needed to get worse, these customers that Scarborough had said wouldn’t be here had accomplished that. From the moment Strelkski looked at Peter Stewart, he recognized him, and he was sure that Stewart had recognized him. This guy was a fucking prosecutor for Christ’s sake. He had been in the court room when Petey appeared on a probation violation charge. They had looked right at each other. Donnie dumbass had gotten him into a situation where an eyewitness could conclusively ID him. He was looking at a strike three rap, a life sentence, on a score that wouldn’t pay his liquor bill for one night. As his fury escalated, the curses snarled in his heavily accented English became louder and louder still.

Creeping silently down the aisle between the grocery shelves on his right and an aged faded white freezer on his left, Mckenzie neared the front of the store. All the voices were clearly audible now. He could hear Peter trying to calm the situation, the high pitched whine of the Russian’s accomplice denying that anything was his fault, and over it all, the mounting rage in the big man’s accented rant. He was psyching himself up. Mckenzie had heard this type of escalating fury before. The man was letting his emotions push him toward some desperate resolution, convincing himself that he couldn’t leave a witness behind. Mckenzie suddenly remembered Carl Delanty, an instructor at the policy academy, a sour and cynical old street cop delaying retirement for at least one more year. Delanty once told his fresh faced probationary candidates that when they got out into the real world they would experience violent situations where the available alternatives were bad, very bad, and “Oh my God, I’m going to die.” Carl had smiled humorlessly when he said “I recommend that you try to avoid the last one.”

I may not have that luxury, Mckenzie thought. Looking to his right, he picked up a glass jar of some kind of vegetables. Holding it in his left hand and his 38 grasped firmly in his right, he took one last step toward the front of the store, stopping just short of the end of the aisle. His next move would bring him into full view of everyone caught in this twisted sequence of mindless coincidence.

Now, he thought as he hurled the jar at a large faced electric clock hanging on the wall just beyond the counter. The impact shattered both the jar and the front of the clock. The thunderous burst of explosive force coming from a completely unexpected direction momentarily stilled the voices and drew all eyes toward the shards of glass raining down to the floor.

Mckenzie knew that he had only bought a second or two in which to act. He stepped around the corner exposing himself to full view. The whiner was just to his side, the cheap pistol in his hand actually pointed toward the floor. Instinctively, Mckenzie knew that this one was not the main threat. The man with the roaring, heavily accented voice was almost fifteen feet away, standing between Mckenzie and the Stewarts. His weapon had been aimed at them but the crash of breaking glass had distracted him, causing him to half turn and point his gun off into space.

“Peter!!” Mckenzie shouted. “Get her down, now!!”

Existence went into slow motion. Peter wrapped his arms around Brenda as he pulled her to the floor and rolled until his body covered hers. Behind the counter a terrified young man also dove toward the fragile security of the floor. Donnie Scarborough stared in amazement at this latest shock to his master criminal scheme, while Strelkski turned to face the unexpected threat.

“San Francisco Police” Alex shouted. “Drop your weapons.” What had a second before been slow motion switched to fast forward. Donnie Scarborough completely forgot the gun in his own hand and ran past Mckenzie toward the door. His panicked dash produced a collision with Strelkski just as the big Russian tried to fire a shot. The bullet sailed off harmlessly into space as Strelkski furiously pushed Scarborough away. The force of the shove threw Donnie crashing into the far wall where he slid stunned to the floor.

This looks like the third option, Mckenzie thought. He and the big man were the only ones still standing and from the madness gleaming in his eyes, Mckenzie knew that the Russian was not going to surrender. The Stewarts were temporarily out of the line of fire, but they would only be safe if he could bring his opponent down.