“Those fools across the street are shooting!” someone shouted.
“Henry, you old fool! Get out of that chair!” G-Baby yelled. The older man, lathered up for a shave, hadn’t moved.
Several of Cheese’s bullets found the front of G-Baby’s barber shop —POP-POP-CRACK-POP-POP— one made a small hole in the picture window, and a larger hole in G-Baby’s arm.
Scooting around his barber chair, G-Baby used his good arm to yank on Henry’s leg. Finally, Henry woke up to the situation and flew off landing on the floor.
The shooting stopped. No one said anything.
Someone inside the shop moved, and G-Baby shouted, “Stay down! This isn’t over yet.” His younger years in the gangs told him this was reload time. A few seconds later, a steady-paced BLAM, BLAM, BLAM reported he was right.
“Somebody call nine-one-one for an ambulance,” G-Baby said with a wince. “Those muthafuckas done shot me.”
Henry rolled over looking at G-Baby cradling his arm. “Anybody else hurt?”
The wail of sirens grew close.
.
Ten: Little Sister
LIL TAYE, NIKKY’S YOUNGER SISTER, headed to school with her lifelong best friend JJ. Comfortable in the arrogance of high school girls from the hood they believed in their ability to handle just about anything that came their way.
BLAM!-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
“Where’s that coming from?” JJ spun around to find the danger. “Sounds close!” Nothing but a plain white van came up the street.
Lil Taye swiveled her head, searching the street. “It’s close, but I can’t tell for sure. It’s not here, and I’m not moving until I know everything’s over.” She yanked on JJ’s arm, pulling her over to the grass strip between the sidewalk and the curb. They stood next to a large, old tree. Putting it between them and the sound of the shots.
The white van stopped next to the young women, and the sliding side door burst open. Four men jumped out, grabbed them, and hurled them into the empty cargo space. They landed with a loud thud. One guy slammed the door while another scrambled up into the driver’s seat. The van pulled out quickly, moving fast, but not fast enough to draw attention.
On her back, JJ punched and kicked wildly at the two men attacking her. A fist crashed into her face. A heavy shoe thudded into her side. She slumped back to the floor.
Lil Taye got up onto one knee and, in a flurry of action, she swung both fists. She rained bruising but ineffectual blows onto the arms of her attacker. A savage fist knocked her back hard, slamming her head against the steel rib on the side-wall of the van. Out cold, she slid to the floor. Blood quickly pooled.
Both men attacking JJ backed off. “Did you kill her?” one asked.
“Don’t know. Bitch tried to get up. I had to knock her ass down.”
“Holy fuck! I ain’t gonna — I didn’t — You’re crazy to hit her like that. Let me the fuck out of here”! the same guys yelled.
“Oh God!” JJ crawled across the van to Lil Taye. “Taye! Taye! Taye!” she screamed.
Lil Taye lay sprawled out on her back, the blood spreading wider.
The man who’d hit Lil Taye shouted at the driver, “Pull over now!”
“Now? Here?”
“Yes now, you stupid fuck!”
The leader turned to the back of the van and yelled at the other man. “You ain’t going nowhere.”
Pointing at JJ holding on to Taye. “What about them?” the man yelled.
“Fuck! Fuck! Um, we gotta get rid of them,” the leader said.
The van jerked to a stop.
“Throw these bitches out!” the leader yelled as he flung open the side door. He grabbed JJ and, violently twisting her arm, dragged her out of the van.
The other two picked up the unconscious Taye and half-dropped, half-tossed her into the gutter next to JJ. The van sped off.
Hands shaking, JJ dialed for help.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“We’ve been jacked. Taye’s bleeding bad. She might be dead,” JJ cried into the phone, voice trembling.
“Where are you?” the female voice asked.
“We’re in the gutter on the fucking street!” JJ shrieked.
“What street are you on?”
“Hurry! We need a goddamned ambulance, here, now, you stupid cunt!”
“Yes, ma’am, what street are you on?” The officer talked in low, calm, direct words to counteract JJ’s near-hysteria.
“Ma’am, I need to know what street you’re on. Can you tell me the name of the street you’re on?”
“Walnut Street. Hurry the fuck up! Oh God, please hurry. My friend’s hurt bad.”
“Where on Walnut Street?”
“Um, um, across from the Lotus Nails.”
“An ambulance is on the way.”
JJ dropped the phone and clutched her friend and cried. “Please, Taye, don’t you die. Don’t you even think about it. You hear me? Don’t you die.”
The wail of sirens grew close.
.
Eleven: Chaos
THE 911 DUTY OFFICER, Sergeant Warnock, called the headquarters’ morning shift officer-in-charge.
“Lieutenant Torres.” The bald middle aged lieutenant answered his phone.
“Hey, Lou, this is Warnock, you better call the captain. This is big. It’s gonna be a bad one.”
A seasoned police officer, Torres responded with professional calm. “Yeah? How bad?”
“Every line’s full. Calls are still coming in from two major gun battles. Nine units are arriving at the park, and four more are responding to a drive-by street shooting three blocks south. My guess is they’re related.”
Torres’ calm disappeared. “Holy crap. What do we know?”
“Best I can tell, two gangs are trying to wipe each other out. Several people are shot, possibly dead at both locations.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“The Unit Commander is Lieutenant Murphy. She’s with the first responding cars at the park.”
“Bystanders?”
“Don’t know yet.”
The lieutenant hung up and dialed.
“Captain Thomas speaking.”
“Hello, Captain, this is Lieutenant Torres . . .”
* * *
Chaos reigned at the Centinela Hospital Emergency Room — the phones and radios exploded with calls for eight incoming gunshot wounds, or GSWs as they were called in the emergency room. At the same time, an ambulance brought in two badly beaten women.
Heavy, meaty odors of blood, plasma, and vomit hung heavy in the air overpowering the normal antiseptic tang of the sterile air.
“No way. No. Absolutely not. Not another person. There’s no room!” The emergency room’s head nurse’s voice rose notched up above her normal calm. “Every operating room is full. Every bay in the whole ER has a critical situation. Christ, people with gunshot wounds are out in the waiting room, lined up for help.”
“Emily! Focus,” the dispatcher shot back. “You have to do something. Three more ambulances with GSWs are on the way.”
Another nurse stuck her head through the emergency room bay door, voiced raised in command. “Doctor Palasoto, we’re losing this guy. We need you in here now.”
“You! Yes, you. Take this patient—”
“You a doctor?” a man interrupted, clamping his hand on the doctor’s shoulder. He pulled back his jacket, showing the gun tucked into his belt.
“Yes.” The doctor eyed the gun. “And I don’t have time to mess with you.”
Leaning in close, face to face with the doctor, the man said, “Yes, you do. That man” —he pointed at the one being frantically worked on— “he’s my dog. You don’t let him die. He dies, you die.”
“Get out of my ER with your shit. I can’t waste time with you and save your friend’s life. One or the other — I talk to you or I save him. It’s up to you.” The doctor stared into the man’s eyes.
“Fix my friend.”
<
br /> “Good. Now get the hell out of my ER.”
The attending physician placed his hand on the charge nurse’s arm. “Three more GSWs?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Still clutching her arm, he surveyed the ER. It mimicked a bad movie with blood, misery, and injured men filling every bed.
In rapid succession, he let his focus dance from station to station.
“Clamp here . . .”
“Get a line . . .”
“He’s Bradying down . . .”
“Cut those clothes . . .”
“On my count . . .”
Each one is a managed crisis . . . everyone’s in place . . . we’re good here . . .
The attending doctor and charge nurse, both absorbed information for about fifteen seconds. “Anyone not been through triage?”
A man’s moaning stopped briefly, and a woman’s soft crying broke through.
“Dr. Sanghvi has assigned everyone.”
“Anyone critical not being seen?” he asked.
“No.”
“The GSWs?”
“All but two are in care and those two are non-critical. They’re out in the waiting room.”
Outside the double-wide doors, an ambulance’s backup beeper marginally filled the space the siren vacated moments before, while the emergency lights continued to flash a red-and-blue tattoo on the door’s windows.
The doctor dropped his hand from her arm. “You go with Dr. Sanghvi. I’ll take the next one.”
The ER was a smooth-running machine compared to the craziness of the waiting room. The noise and visual bedlam was multiplied by the smell of blood and sweat pungent with pain, anger, and fear, mixed with stale coffee and antiseptic. Pure chaos!
Over at the reception counter, two harried receptionists fended off a dozen panicked family members. The counter was all that separated the waiting room in front from the emergency room behind it.
“Jerome, Jerome Henderson! Where the fuck is he?” shouted a woman at the front of the counter.
The man jostling to keep his spot next to her said in a firm, loud voice, “I don’t got no insurance. I need to know if my boy, Darius Wilson, is gonna make it. They said he was shot and brought here in an ambulance.”
A short, heavy-set woman tried to push her way in between the man and woman.
“Hey!” someone shouted behind the man. “Fuck you, bitch. You ain’t crowding in front of me.”
Another woman off to the side leaned over and pulled on one receptionist’s wrist. “Is my fiancé here?”
The receptionist held up her free hand in front of the first woman to stop her from talking, then she slowly turned her head to level a dead-eyed stare at the woman clutching her wrist. “Let go.”
“Is my fiancé here?” the woman repeated. “His name is Robert Roberts.”
“Let go. Now.”
The first woman interrupted, “Goddammit, Myisha, let her go. She won’t talk to nobody as long as you’re holding her like that. Now wait your damned turn.”
Just a few feet away, a teenaged boy tried to sidestep around the guard to the ER doors. The guard moved in front of him. “No you don’t,” he said. While they stared at each other, a young woman tried to slip past. “You neither.” The guard grabbed her sleeve halting her, then let go. “Please, don’t try. Both of you, go sit down.”
“Fuck that. I ain’t sitting down,” the teenager said, glaring at the security guard.
“It’s the smart thing to do,” the guard replied. “I can’t let you. You can’t do no good in there. Do us all a favor: be smart and stop trying to push past me.”
The woman stepped between the two, “Come on, Bones, let’s go.” She put an arm on the teen’s shoulder, a hand on his chest to move him away from the guard.
Scared children with snotty noses and tear-streaked faces wailed at their moms’ knees, while eighteen future gangsters between the ages of six and eleven lined either side of the waiting room — ten on one wall, eight on the other — glaring at each other. Yesterday, they played hoops together. Not today.
The two men with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds lay on gurneys in separate corners.
Tucked into one corner, BamBam, who’d been shot in the leg, lay cuffed to a gurney. A cop stood close by, while another cop posted-up inside the front doors and a third took a position next to the hospital security staff by the ER entrance.
In the other corner, G-Baby, shot in the arm, relaxed on his gurney, eyes closed. A younger woman fussed over him.
The good news — nobody had died in the ER. Not yet, anyway.
A man, gut-shot, showed up in his own car, pissed, strapped, hurting, and holding a blood-soaked rag to his stomach.
He passed the cop at the front door and staggered into the waiting room. The cop responded to the gun handle sticking out of the man’s jacket pocket. He yanked out his own gun, aimed it at the man. “Freeze! Not another step!”
The man kept staggering toward the ER doors.
The other two cops drew their guns, shouting, “Freeze!” The man stopped. He looked up at the two officers pointing guns at him. He slowly raised his hands — but not very high.
“What the fuck?” His voice was low and pain-filled. “I’m shot. I need a doctor.” He swayed on his feet for a few seconds, then sagged to his knees, and in slow motion, folded over, pitching forward onto the floor. The cop standing by BamBam moved in, grabbed the gun out of his pocket.
“Get a doctor in here now!” another cop yelled at the receptionists.
Four more police swarmed in, trying to hold a lid on the wild scene.
Two male orderlies burst through the double doors with a gurney.
Shonna, BamBam’s girlfriend, rushed through the entry doors as the gut-shot man fell on his face. Spotting BamBam, she ran over to where he rested and, hugging him during the confusion, slipped an old-fashioned snub-nosed .38 revolver into his free hand.
The cop returned to BamBam. “Ma’am, you need to step back.” She ignored him. “Ma’am, step back — now,” he ordered.
BamBam hid the .38 under his blanket.
“Huh, yeah, all right,” Shonna said, straightening and stepping back a half-step.
“Step all the way back from this man. He’s a prisoner.”
“I know that, you moron.” And she stepped back another step. “Jeeze, brain-dead po-po. Go fuck yourself.”
While Shonna argued with the cop, D’andre walked through the front door of the waiting room.
“D’andre, you muthafucka!” BamBam yelled, and he pulled out the .38 revolver, fired one shot —BLAM!
He missed.
Officer Mitchell reacted first and faster than anyone thought was possible, putting three rounds into BamBam in less than a single heartbeat —BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
BamBam’s gun dropped to the floor.
“Don’t!” Officer Mitchell commanded, his Glock aimed directly at Shonna when she came up with BamBam’s dropped gun. He stood to the side and slightly behind her.
After Officer Mitchell’s command, Shonna brought up the .38 and spun toward D’andre, firing wide —BLAM!
She didn’t make it all the way around. Officer Mitchell shot her with a perfect, police-trained double tap, center mass —BLAM! BLAM! She crumpled to her knees, sat back, then fell sideways to the floor, dying before anyone could reach her.
For a split second, everyone froze. In the quiet that commanded the room, gunpowder smoke mixed with the echoes of the shots.
Then pandemonium erupted.
“Don’t move! Freeze! Don’t move!” seven wild-eyed police shouted, brandishing their guns.
Everyone ignored them — over half of the people in the room dove for the floor while others bodily covered their loved ones. Two women ran out the front entrance.
More cops came on the run.
* * *
The explosive gunfire cut through the pandemonium of the ER.
“What the hell?” An orderly, passing behi
nd the counter, dropped to the floor.
The doctor in ER Bay One yelled, “Shit, they’re shooting out there!”
“Focus, people!” the nurse in Bay Three shouted. At the sound of the shots, everyone but the doctor looked up and stopped working.
“Jesus H. Christ! They’re bringing their war in here,” said an intern in Bay Four.
“People, stay with the patient,” the doctor in Bay Two said. “I need suction here . . .”
“All right, she’s stabilized for now,” said the doctor in Bay One. “This type of concussion always causes too much swelling in the brain. She’ll need her skull opened to relieve the pressure. Call Dr. Boyd. Tell her the patient’s on her way up to the operating room.”
The doctor in Bay Five checked the time on the large wall clock. “Time of death is 18:43. Unhook him, move him out. Make room for Charlie’s team. And someone find out what those shots were.” Not waiting for an answer, the doctor rushed to assist with another patient.
“Tom, take this guy down to the morgue,” an ER nurse told the orderly. “Don’t park him anywhere close to the ER or in the halls. Move fast. Go out the back way so nobody in the waiting room notices you leave. For God’s sake, keep him covered, no matter what. Don’t let anyone lift the sheet. All hell could break loose if the wrong person sees him.”
In less than fifteen seconds, the ER death count went from zero to three.
* * *
Upstairs in the scrub room for operating room C, a team prepared for surgery.
“What do we have?” Dr. Stephanie Boyd asked as she read Taye’s chart.
“Her name is Taye Harris.” The OR room nurse replied. “Female, eighteen years old. Dr. Tobias down in ER induced a coma.”
“Do we know any of the circumstances for the injury?” the doctor asked.
“She’s been beat. In addition to her skull fracture, she has contusions on her face and arms.”
“Family consent?” the doctor asked.
“Yes. Her older sister, Miss Nikky Harris, came in a couple minutes ago. She signed the releases.” The nurse shook her head. “One hell of a mess down there.”
“Was this part of that mess?” the doctor asked.
Hard Betrayal (Michelle Angelique Avenging Angel Series 2) Page 6
