Charles Willeford - Sideswipe

by Unknown

  Troy hadn't liked it much when he told him he would join them later in Haiti. He could tell, by the way Troy squinted his eyes. He should have worked it around so that Troy could have been the one to make that suggestion, the way Maya had got around him when she wanted to do something. But Troy would get over being mad about it, once he had joined them down there.

  Stanley pushed his cart to the back of the store, passing a pimpled teenage employee who was mopping the floor with a wet mop and whistling tunelessly. The boy wore a black bow tie, a white short-sleeved shirt, and blue jeans. A red plastic tag, with white letters spelling RANDY, was pinned to the pocket of his shirt. Stanley stopped at the meat counters, but the meat had all been collected and put away for the night. The refrigerated bins were bare, and the butchers had left. He went to the gourmet section and began to drop small items into his cart, taking them at random from the shelves--a can of anchovies, a bottle of capers, a flat can of smoked oysters, a jar of cocktail onions, an oval tin of pâté. He felt in his pocket for his car keys; for a panicky moment he thought he had left them in the Honda. But the keys were there..

  Stanley looked at his watch. Ten fifty-five. His cart was filled to the brim; it was so full of canned goods it was hard to push. On the shelf below the basket, he had placed an orange, an apple, a sweet potato, one tomato, one head of cabbage, and a six-pack of Stroh's light beer. Stanley headed for the front of the store. Randy, the boy who had been mopping the floor, now stood beside the locked front doors. The key was in the lock. The night manager, a middle-aged man with a long-sleeved white shirt and a loosened maroon wool tie, was in the open-topped cage behind the service counter with a gray-haired woman employee in a blue-and-white uniform. There was a woman checker at the second checkout counter, and she was ringing up sales for a plump, very pregnant Latin woman who had driven three blocks from home to buy a loaf of Cuban bread, a dozen eggs, a quart of skim milk, and a box of Fruitful Bran. The checker, a young woman with tight yellow curls, purple lipstick and eyeliner, and with too much blusher on her cheeks, was asking the pregnant woman how much longer she had to go when Stanley stopped behind the woman's cart. The checker glanced over at Stanley's overloaded basket and groaned good-naturedly at the sight of all his groceries.

  "At least another week, maybe ten days," the Cuban woman said, with a little laugh, "but it might be sooner"--she picked up her bag of groceries--"if he feels like it."

  Stanley took his cane out of his cart and tucked it under his left armpit. With his right hand he began to take out the items, one at a time, and place them on the counter.

  "'Evening, sir," the girl said cheerfully. "Looks to me like you're starting your own store."

  "Just stocking up a little," Stanley said, not looking up from the cart.

  At the door, Randy tried to take the pregnant woman's bag of groceries from her, but she smiled and shook her head. "I can manage it all right--Randy," she said, glancing at his name plate. "Are you?"

  "Am I what, ma'am?"

  "Randy?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he said, letting her out of the store. He relocked the door.

  "Maybe," Stanley said, "I'd better get this stuff off the bottom first." He bent over and got the six-pack. As he straightened up, he saw Troy at the door. Troy waved the wallet in his hand and grinned wolfishly at Randy through the glass.

  As he had been instructed to do, Stanley patted his empty pockets. His heart was fibrillating slightly, and he found it difficult to breathe. He clutched the handle of the cart for support, and his cane clattered to the floor.

  "That's my son at the door," Stanley said to the checker. "I forgot my wallet at home, and it's got all my money in it."

  The checker, by this time, had run up $28 worth of groceries, and the cart was still two-thirds loaded.

  "For God's sake, Randy," she called to the bag boy, "let him in."

  Randy unlocked the door and let Troy in. Before he could relock the door, Troy kneed the boy in the crotch.

  Randy dropped to the floor, keening and clutching his genitals with both hands. James slipped through the unlocked door, carrying a black, doubled-up Hefty garbage bag in his left hand and his.38 pistol in his right. James had pulled one leg of a pair of Dale's pantyhose over his head and face, and both legs trailed down his back in foxtails. The pistol danced in his gloved hand, and it looked, for a moment, as if he was going to drop it.

  "This is a holdup!" Troy announced, taking the sawedoff shotgun from beneath his jacket. He lifted the hinged top at the service counter to enter the cage.

  James stood midway between Randy, who was still on the floor, and the second checkout counter. First, he would point the pistol at the checker, then he would wheel and point it at Randy. In his fear and excitement James kept pulling the trigger, and the empty pistol clicked away like a cheap alarm clock.

  The safe was open, as James had said it would be. The night manager and his assistant had their arms high above their heads as Troy entered the crowded cage. The manager kicked back with his left foot and hit a buzzer on the wall. Bells clanged all over the store, and a red light began to flash outside, above the entrance door.

  Troy shot the manager in the stomach, and a dark red splotch the size of a grapefruit appeared instantly on his white shirt. The dark blood was a much deeper shade than his maroon tie. As the heavy pellets came out of his back and the blood splattered the woman beside him, the pattern got larger. The gray-haired woman yelped once as the shotgun fired, and her slightly popped eyes rolled back in her head. Her legs gave way, and she fell over sideways in a faint on the manager's dead body. Troy stuck the short barrel against the back of her neck and fired the second round, half severing her head from her body.

  Troy reloaded his shotgun and left the cage, pocketing the used shells. James managed to slip his pistol into his own pocket and came through the opened counter into the cage. He knelt by the two bodies, shuddered, and began to transfer the money from the safe into his Hefty bag.

  At the sound of the first shotgun blast, Stanley had dropped to the floor and crawled over to the next checkout counter. He stretched out on the floor and covered his head with both hands. Something, he thought, has gone wrong. Troy had told them there would be no shooting at all. The manager must have tried to pull a pistol on Troy.

  The checker, except for quivering, hadn't moved from the moment Troy announced the holdup. Her face had a greenish pallor beneath her heavy makeup, and there was a thin ring of white encircling her purple lips. She began to urinate, couldn't stop, and a large puddle formed around her feet. Her lips quivered, but she couldn't make any sound come out of her dry throat as Troy walked toward her with the shotgun extended in his right hand. When he was about two feet away, Troy shot her in the face, and blood and brains erupted from her blonde head. She fell backward and slid to the floor. With his left hand, Troy scooped the bills from her register and jammed them into the pocket of his windbreaker. As he turned back toward the cage, Randy, crouched low, was on his feet again, hobbling as fast as he could toward the dairy section at the back of the store.

  Running lightly in his Nikes, Troy overtook the boy and shot him in the back of the head. The boy's body fell forward and slid across the clean floor into a six-foot pyramid of canned peaches. The stack toppled, and the heavy cans bounced and gurgled on the brown linoleum.

  Stanley lifted his head above the counter, high enough to see Troy shoot Randy. As the pyramid collapsed, Stanley dropped to his hands and knees and crept as rapidly as he could to the square U that made up the produce section. There was no place to hide, but he wedged his body as close as he could against a large bin of White Rose potatoes.

  "Be sure you get the change, too, James!" Troy called out above the clanging bells as he reloaded his shotgun.

  "I got it! I got it -all-, man!" James shouted. He came out of the cage and slipped sideways through the passway at the service counter. There were stacks of banded bills in the bag, but the rolls of halves, quarters, dimes, and ni
ckels made the bag heavier than he had expected it to be. Troy raised the shotgun, put the muzzle against James's chest, and fired. Troy picked up the bag and jumped up on the nearest counter, surveying the store.

  "A change in plans, Pop!" he shouted. "Instead of staying here, you'd better come with me now. I mean it, Pop! Those bells are ringing in the police station, too, and I can't hang around here while you make up your mind!"

  There was no movement anywhere.

  "Pop, let's shake it. Come -on!-" Troy jumped down and took a step toward the closest aisle, cereals, but then he stopped. There were altogether at least a dozen aisles in the store. In the back, there were two open service doors leading to the stockrooms. "Shit," he said under his breath.

  Troy turned around and walked to the door, carrying the bag slung over his left shoulder.

  "Okay, Pop, see you in Haiti, and thanks for the help!"

  Awkwardly, with his shotgun hand, Troy unlocked the door. He pushed it open and stepped into the humid night.

  Ellita Sanchez had reached her car and unlocked the door when the first shotgun round was fired. She dumped her groceries behind the seat as the second round was fired, and took her.38 Chief's Special out of her purse. She did it all automatically, without thinking about it, but now, with her pistol in her hand, she hesitated and stared at the brightly lighted supermarket and the flashing red light. She was on a maternity leave, so technically she was not even an offduty cop. She had no radio. Perhaps she should drive away, find a pay phone, and call 911? No one could blame her for that. On the other hand, if someone was shooting a shotgun inside the store--and the sound was unmistakably that of a shotgun--there was no way after nine years on the force that she could just jump in her car and drive away without investigating what was going on. The clanging bells were insistent. She could at least try to get a look inside.

  Ellita took her badge out of her purse. She held the badge in her left hand and the pistol in her right as she lumbered heavily toward the lighted glass doors of the store. As two more shotgun rounds were fired, she gripped her pistol tighter. She hesitated, looking around for suitable cover as the shotgun went off for the fifth time. She knelt behind a newly planted palm tree, a few yards away from a brown Honda with a roof rack on it, where she could watch the door. A tallish man, carrying a Hefty bag and a sawed-off shotgun, came bursting out of the store. He was silhouetted against the lights inside, his features in such dark shadow that Ellita couldn't see what he looked like. The flashing red light made his movements seem jerky.

  "Freeze! Police!" Ellita yelled, trying to keep her large body behind the tree. She fired a warning shot into the sign above the doors.

  The robber fired once in her general direction and dropped into a crouching position. Then he fired again. The double-aught pellets scattered all over the lot at this distance, but one of them hit Ellita in the face, and another tore into her right shoulder. She could hear some of the buckshot hitting and ricocheting off the Honda. Ellita dropped to the asphalt and tried to wedge her pregnant body under the Honda, without success. Her face and shoulder seemed to be on fire. Her right arm was numb, so she fired the rest of her rounds blindly toward the store, trying to steady the pistol with her left hand.

  Dale Forrest, who had been parked around the corner of the building with the engine running, pulled up in front of the double doorway and stopped while Ellita was still firing. One of Ellita's bullets hit the right front fender of the Lincoln town car. Troy threw the Hefty into the back seat through the open window and told Dale to move over so he could get in and drive. Dale shot him in the face with her.25, and Troy fell sideways onto the pavement, dropping his shotgun and clutching his face with both hands. Dale drove away, flooring the gas pedal so hard she almost killed the engine. She made a wide circle in the parking lot and exited onto State Road 836, heading west.

  Ellita felt the first strong contraction of what she feared was early labor. She rolled over on her back and bit her lower lip as two matching pains gripped her unexpectedly, beginning at the small of her back, encircling her waist, and then meeting in front to interlock. The pain didn't last long, and when it subsided she got onto her knees. She watched an old man come out of the store, leaning heavily on his cane. She crawled backward into the darkness as she realized that the old man was coming toward the brown Honda, but she kept behind his car and he didn't see her. She ducked her head. Her pistol was empty, useless. Where the hell was her purse?

  The old man got into his car without seeing Ellita. He drove up beside the wounded man who was still holding his face and kneeling on the sidewalk. The old guy got out, helped the groaning man get into the car, and then drove away. When he reached the State Road 836 exit, he turned east and disappeared into the traffic.

  Ellita walked unsteadily into the store, surveyed the dead bodies, and leaned against a pay phone while she called Commander Bill Henderson at home. As she explained what happened, another contraction gripped her hard, and her water broke with a rush of fluid down her legs.

  "Everyone's dead, Bill. Everyone. But you'd better have an ambulance sent anyway. I'm slightly wounded, but the pains are getting closer together, and oh Jesus I'm going to have this baby any minute!"

  But Ellita's baby, a nine-and-a-half-pound boy, wasn't born until ten the next morning at Jackson Memorial Hospital. A nerve in Ellita's right shoulder was half-severed, and there was an ugly hole in her face. Her right cheekbone was chipped off cleanly, right below the eye, and there was a jagged two-inch tear in her right cheek.

  The pantyhose robber with the empty gun had died instantly. His partner with the sawed-off shotgun had wounded Ellita Sanchez and murdered four store employees for what was estimated to be less than twenty thousand dollars.

  CHAPTER 17

  The supermarket robbery-massacre got considerable play in the Miami press and on the radio and television stations. Very little information was released to the media by the Homicide Division, but pictures were printed in the papers, and the headline, SUPER-MASSACRE AT SUPERMARKET, frightened everyone who read it, especially old-line Miamians. The story revealed that all of the victims were white, Protestants, and native-born Americans. There had been mini-massacres in Miami before, with four or five men and their women and children killed all at once, but those victims had been Colombians, or other Latins, or blacks; and usually they had been connected in some way with the drug industry or with organized crime. These innocent victims, on the other hand, were not only white, they were respectable middle-class people, and all of them were residents of the predominantly native-born Green Lakes subdivision.

  The night manager, Victor Persons, forty-five, was married, the father of three children, and a paid soloist on Sunday evenings at the Green Lakes Methodist Church.

  His assistant, Ms. Julia Riordan, fifty-eight, was a former schoolteacher who had taught fourth grade in Dade County, at various schools, for twenty-two years. According to one of her Green Lakes neighbors, she had retired under the old Florida Retirement System, before Social Security had been withheld from teachers' pay, and she had taken the night-shift job at the supermarket so she could build up enough credits to obtain a second retirement from the Social Security system when she reached sixty-two. The gruesome photographs of Mr. Persons and Ms. Riordan beside the open safe, which appeared in both Miami papers, though not on television, brought dozens of angry letters to the editors of both papers, protesting their publication.

  Sally Metcalf, twenty-three, the blonde checker, or "scanner-assistant," as her position was called by the supermarket chain (her job, apparently, was to assist the electronic scanner in its task), had been a member of the Miami-Dade Community College's South Campus volleyball team before she graduated, and she was engaged to be married to her high school sweetheart as soon as he finished his first hitch at Fort Benning, Georgia.

  Randolph Perkins, seventeen, the bag boy, a high school student at Miami-Norland, was remembered by his fellow students as "a real good guy who was alwa
ys ready with a joke, and liked to kid around alot (sic)." His principal also told the same reporter that Randy had already passed Florida's 11th Grade Achievement Test, and that he had a "very high C average" in all of his classes. There was a black-and-white photograph of four of Randy's buddies and two crying girls in the paper, all of them wearing black ribbons pinned to their T-shirts, in mourning for their classmate.

  Fred Pickering, twenty-eight, the produce manager, who had rushed through his closing work at the store so he could leave early to watch a tape of Ghostbusters his wife had rented that afternoon, credited his Sony VCR with saving his life. "God," he told the TV reporter, "evidently has other plans for me!" He broke down, then, on camera, and cried. "Here I was," he sobbed, "laughing my head off at home at -Ghostbusters-, while Ms. Riordan was getting her head blown off down to the store! It could've been me. It could've been me!"