Crossfire

by Dale Lucas

  Dolph Storms didn't mind fighting tooth and nail, down to the last little spark of life in his body and the last drop of blood—hell, he'd always figured he'd go out that way—but he just didn't plan on going out that way tonight. He didn't care to die in Harlem on a rainy April evening, and he sure as shit wasn't eager to be aired out by a bunch of Sambos strapped with Army surplus. It struck him as akin to a big, tough bull terrier getting torn to shreds by a bevy of rats.

  He wouldn't lay down for rats.

  The fat man as the center of the broad line, Debbs, spoke, his voice low and booming like a preacher on Sunday. "What's your business here?" he demanded, having to shout to be heard about the rattle of the falling rain.

  "Just out for a drive," Dolph answered. "Picking up my associate here." He suggested Monk with his bloody and broken face.

  "And what's your associate's business uptown?" the fat man asked.

  "Last I checked, it's a free country," Storms countered. "This fella wants to come up to Jigtown, chase darkie tail and swill nigger booze… well, it ain't for you and yours to tell him otherwise. But, apparently, somebody hereabouts didn't like him and made it known. Brought it to fisticuffs. Uncivilized, you ask me."

  The fat man smiled a little. He wasn't buying the story, but he could appreciate that Storms was trying to defuse the situation.

  Truth was, Dolph didn't think he could defuse the situation. At the very least, he just thought he could unravel that fuse and keep it from finally reaching the powder keg just a few minutes longer, until he could formulate a plan.

  The pharmacy, he suddenly thought. I could duck back in there. It's a nigger business. These assholes won't go blood simple on one of their own. They might try to box us in and storm the place, but they won't just blast away.

  Will they?

  If I can make them hesitate… force them to reformulate… shit, I could slip out the back, skin out through the alleys, and grab a train over on Lenox. The boys can hold these assholes off long enough for me to get away.

  It occurred to him that the boys probably wouldn't make it out along with him—but that's what he paid them for, right?

  And wasn't the price of doing business in Harlem rising? If he lost these guys tonight, in addition to the half dozen lost so far… shit, Harlem would owe him a whole new crew. Dolph Storms didn't think he could let an insult like that pass. He thought if he made it out of Harlem alive tonight, he just might have to come back up here at a later time and level the place. A little Old Testament blood and thunder was just what the doctor ordered.

  "I know who you are," the fat man suddenly said.

  "Yeah?" Dolph asked. "And who is that?"

  "You're the one called Storms. You're a beer baron and a killer. You're not welcome here. Ever."

  "Well, isn't that something," Storms countered. He felt a rage rising in him. "My reputation precedes me. Tell me, Sambo—if I make it my personal mission to stalk Harlem after dark and fuck every jungle bunny dame who crosses my path and bust every nigger melon head that looks at me sideways, just what the fuck do you think you're gonna do about it?"

  "Boss?" Irving asked.

  "Get ready to skin it," Dolph whispered.

  "Gentlemen!" the fat man shouted in answer to Dolph's taunt, addressing his fellow vigilantes, "Take aim!"

  All those hungry black gun muzzles swung up and gaped for Dolph and his crew. For just a moment, Dolph's rage was cut through by a cold, hard spike of fear.

  "Back inside!" Dolph barked, and ducked for the pharmacy door. The boys followed.

  The guns roared.

  Dolph dove through the pharmacy door first, followed by Benji and Irving. Dolph threw himself down onto the linoleum floor and went scurrying into the aisles as Benji and Irving flanked either side of the door. Outside, the night lit up with muzzle flashes and the thundering music of thirty or forty guns all roaring at once. Bullets and buckshot tore through the Bentley, shattering its windshield and headlamps, peeling off coins of paint and punching deep, dark holes in the steel body. Stuffing wafted out of the open windows as hot lead ripped through the seat cushions. The tires popped and the whole car rocked back and forth on its empty tubes.

  Dolph watched as his favorite car was blasted apart, right there in the street. Benji and Irving had their pieces out, but they were still cowering under the forward wall of the pharmacy, trying to keep their heads below the big picture windows that fronted the place. Monk dove for safety too soon and landed half in and half out the door, head in the pharmacy, feet in the street. He had both hands clamped over his melon head and he lay flat as could be, face down, trembling as slugs cris-crossed the air above him.

  Dolph reached into his coat and pulled out his Webley. He cracked it, checked the cylinder. He only had five shots. He wasn't carrying any more.

  The gunfire subsided. Rain beat down on Dolph's ruined touring car. Dark bodies in wet coats started to fan out in front of the pharmacy, taking up safe positions behind parked cars, trashcans, fire hydrants and mail boxes. They moved with almost military speed and precision.

  Meanwhile, Dolph's men cowered, not sure whether they should lift their heads and risk a shot.

  Something moved off to the right. It was the old pharmacist, hurrying toward the front door. He was stripped down to his undershirt and bracers, waving his white smock like a flag of truce. When he reached the front door, he stepped right on Monk and kept going out into the rainy night.

  "Hold up!" the old pharmacist shouted. "If you're gonna air these fellas out, you're gonna do it when I'm good and clear!"

  "What about us?" one of the unlucky Negro customers cowering beneath the soda counter called.

  Dolph heard a shotgun rack a new shell into its chamber. The old pharmacist stopped where he stood on the sidewalk. He wasn't waving the smock anymore.

  "Get back inside with your wicked associates, sir!" the fat man boomed. "Any man that would take a Hebe gangster's coin is no friend to the good people of this Negro Metropolis!"

  "They just came in!" the pharmacist countered. "I didn't even know what for—"

  The shotgun barked. Buckshot shattered one of the front windows. The pharmacist turned and dove right back through the front door, landing on top of the sprawled Monk and scurrying over him. He crawled all the way back to the soda counter and cowered beside his customers.

  "Is that Debbs?" one of the customers hissed. "That gum-flapper from Liberty Hall?"

  "Think so," the pharmacist growled. "He's off his nut."

  "Hey," Dolph hissed at the pharmacist. "You packin', old man?"

  "A plague on both your houses," the pharmacist answered.

  "Listen here!" Debbs said from the street. "I have it on good authority that this pharmacy fronts for a bolito bank, and makes illicit coin from the trade of bathtub gin and soul-stealing narcotics! So far as this vigilance committee is concerned, the proprietor and customers present in such a den of vice are no better than the gangsters they serve! Therefore, I decree—"

  "He decrees," Storms muttered. "Get a load of this guy…"

  "—that all persons on the premises are hereby named enemies of the good people of Harlem, and subject to prosecution! You have ten seconds to throw out your guns, raise your hands, and surrender yourselves for manumission to the authorities, elsewise we open fire!"

  Dolph looked to the pharmacist. "There a back way out?"

  The pharmacist nodded.

  Dolph looked to his men. "Cover me, boys."

  They didn't look too happy about that order.

  Just as Dolph scrambled up onto his feet and went dashing down the aisle, bent double to keep his head low, the guns started barking again. The whole pharmacy seemed to come crashing down around him. Cotton wadding and bottles of iodine exploded on their shelves and filled the air with whirling clouds of thread and the tang of disinfectant. Newspapers leapt up from their racks like gray ghosts covered in tiny printed tattoos and were shredded in the air by flying lead. Behind the soda foun
tain, fluted glasses and syrup bottles shattered and made crystalline music amid the gun-song.

  Dolph kept running. The back door that led (he presumed) to the storeroom and the rear entrance was less than ten feet away. He heard the buzz of slugs passing uncomfortably close to him; felt the warm wind of bullets that just might have had his name on them; caught more than a few flying shards of glass on his face and uplifted hands; but no matter—he kept running.

  When he finally made it through the door, and plowed right into a big desk and shelf unit, placed smack-dab in the center of the room. The desk blocked his path and he bent right over it, almost doing a full somersault and landing on the floor on its far side. Although it was quieter back here, he could still here the chatter and thunder of gunfire from out front, and more than once hot lead punched right through the back wall of the pharmacy and cut the air of the storeroom. He wasn't out of the woods yet.

  So, still bent double, he rounded the big desk and shelf unit, searched the darkness, and found the door that he presumed would lead him into the alley. He made for it, desperate to feel the open air on his face again and get out of the line of fire. When he got there, he had to struggle to open the two dead bolts that held the door shut. A couple more slugs punched into the doorframe, throwing splinters in his face.

  Finally, he had it. Dolph tripped the dead bolts and threw open the door. For just a moment, he saw a broad empty alley veiled by falling rain, deep puddles, some trashcans. The gunfire seemed far away now, all the way on the far side of the building, fronting the street. Dolph stepped out into the night, not even caring that he'd be soaked by the rain in seconds.

  "There's one!" somebody yelled.

  Dolph turned toward the voice.

  There were men at each end of the alley. The vigilance committee had outmaneuvered him. The minute he stepped out the back door, they opened fire. Holes appeared in the swinging door and splinters skirled off the doorframe as it caught stray shots. He cursed and ducked back inside.

  Dolph wanted to lock the door again, but they were still blasting away and it was out of his hands. He quickly backed into the darkened storeroom, readying his Webley six shooter in his right hand. He ran into the shelves behind the big desk. Outside in the alley, the gunfire stopped. He heard the click of shoes on pavement, nearing. The two parties of men guarding each end of the alley were converging on the back door.

  "Go on in!" someone shouted. "We'll cover you!"

  "The hell with that!" another answered. "You go first! We'll cover you!"

  Son of a bitch. The assholes were going to storm Dolph's little back room redoubt. He swung around behind the big shelf, putting it between himself and the back door. Although the shelves were littered with all sorts of junk and old jars and bottles of retired pharmaceutical powders and chemicals, there was no back on it; it was just a wooden framework subdivided into cells. Dolph realized it wouldn't provide much cover, so he rounded the desk, then lurched against it and slid it right up against the shelves. That might at least give him some shielding over the lower half of his body, not to mention clearing his retreat path to the door that led back into the pharmacy.

  The back door was thrown aside. Three men crowded into the doorway, one after the other, weapons raised. Before Dolph could even study them or figure out just what they were packing, the first man through the door blasted away with his shotgun. Dolph dove down behind the desk as one, two, three shotgun shells filled the air about him with a storm of buckshot that shattered the bottles and jars on the shelves and sent the loose papers and invoices on the desk flying like oversized confetti. A moment later, someone else joined in. Dolph could tell from the way the thunder of gunfire spread wide across the room, by the flight of the junk on the shelves and desk, that the gunmen were spreading out right and left, flanking him.

  He didn't have much time.

  Without raising his head, Dolph lifted his pistol above the desk. He fired first off to his left, then off to his right. The gunman on the left cried out in surprise and stumbled for cover, making an enormous racket. The gunman on the right cried out and fell with a thump.

  Dolph had hit him.

  "Son of a bitch!" the right-hand gunman cried. "That kike piece of shit shot me, Fergie!"

  The third gunman in the doorway must have ducked toward his wounded friend to check on him, because no gunfire answered. Dolph saw his chance. He dove back through the door into the pharmacy. Just as he cleared the swinging door in the portal, his assailants recovered from their shock and started shooting again.

  He found the boys where he left them, cowering down below the front windows amid a litter of shattered glass and shredded magazines. The pharmacist and his customers still hid beneath the soda counter, covered in flavored syrups. His boys and the goons in the street still traded lead, but the rate of fire had slowed, now more of a tennis match instead of a full tilt firestorm.

  "Thought you were makin' a break?" Benji asked as Dolph crawled up to him.

  "Jigs out the back, boys," Dolph said. "They're gonna be coming through that door any minute."

  What happened next happened very fast, so fast that Dolph almost didn't realize what was happening until it had played out.

  Out in the street, he heard a series of incredulous cries. For just a moment, the gunfire stopped and silence reigned, broken only by the sound of the falling rain.

  Then, he heard the voice of the fat man, the leader of the vigilante band: "And just who is this, crashing our party in his spook show raiment?"

  Dolph dared a peak above the lip of the front window. Someone stood out in the middle of the street, between his own ruined Bentley and the brood semi-circle of gunmen that surrounded the pharmacy's main entrance.

  It was that Halloween spook—the Cemetery Man.

  Dolph didn't even think. He rose up on his knees, leveled his Webley, and started pulling the trigger. He'd never have a better chance. He roared like an angry bull as three shots blasted out of his six shooter, aimed right at the Cemetery Man's back.

  Every shot hit home.

  Dolph's hammer clicked on dead slugs. He was dry.

  The Cemetery Man didn't fall. He just turned to glare at Dolph, as though annoyed by the slugs that now lived in his broad, strong shoulders.

  Then the door from the pharmacy storeroom burst open and the raiding party from the alley rushed through. They had their shotguns up, they gave rebel yells as they came, and they managed to pop off one shot apiece as they fanned out on the ruined pharmacy aisles for a final charge.

  The Cemetery Man whirled and opened fire with his twin pistols. The slugs tore the air right over Dolph's head, sought each of the three raiders from the back room, and downed them where they stood.

  "Boys!" the fat man in the street shouted. "Air this demon out!"

  Dolph heard bolts being drawn and ammo being reloaded on all sides. The Cemetery Man whirled again, sweeping his gaze—and his guns—over the gathered throng. "This stops now!" he roared. "Every one of you, drop your weapons and throw up your hands!"

  The fat man stepped forward, leveling an accusatory finger. "You're outnumbered, friend, and outgunned. What say you throw down your weapons and throw up your hands?"

  The Cemetery Man leveled one of his automatics at the fat man, Debbs. He thumbed back the hammer. "Try me," he said.

  "Boss," Irving said beside Dolph, "what the hell is all this? What'd we stumble into?"

  "A swamp of shit," Dolph grumbled, then looked to Monk, with his wide eyes and slack jaw and ruined face. "Thanks a heap, you dumb lummox."

  Monk's lip trembled. "Sorry, boss. How could I know?"

  Dolph turned back to Irving. "Irving, you got shots left?"

  "A couple," Irving said.

  "Gimme," Dolph ordered.

  Irving put his automatic in Dolph's hand.

  Dolph shot Monk in the face.

  Out in the street, someone heard that shot and thought it was the Cemetery Man; or the Cemetery Man thought it was o
ne of the vigilantes. Regardless, Dolph's single shot, putting down one of his own men, set off a fierce volley of gunfire. Irving and Benji took cover. Dolph threw his own head down and waited.

  It seemed to go on forever: a deafening, rattling, roaring storm of chilly rain and damp air cris-crossed by hot slugs spraying every which way in an apocalyptic storm. Dolph heard men take fire and fall, the not-quite-dead ones crying out as they did. Little by little, the gunfire subsided, slowly replaced by the sound of men exhorting their comrades to lam it, then by the beating of feet in all directions, usually accompanied by the clatter of weapons thrown down before said retreat was made.

  Then, finally, it was all quiet. There was only the sound of the falling rain and the wail of police sirens drawing near.

  Dolph cautiously raised his head above the lip of the front pharmacy window. At least a half-dozen dead men lay in the street, along with twice as many wounded. The rest of Debbs's vigilantes had made a run for it.

  The Cemetery Man stood where he had before, smack dab in the middle of the street, a big, blue .45 in each hand trailing ribbons of smoke. He surveyed the carnage. Dolph couldn't see his face, so he couldn't really tell if the spook was pleased with his bloody handiwork or not.

  On the far side of the street, someone moved. It was one of the vigilantes, bleeding but still kicking. He was trying to crawl away.

  The Cemetery Man marched up to him. He kicked the crawler onto his back, planted one boot on the guy's chest, and leveled one of his pistol's right into the scared jig's face.

  "Who's in charge here?" the Cemetery Man snarled. Dolph heard it clearly, even though he was a good thirty feet away. His voice was like two pieces of broken concrete heaving up on one another.