No Beast So Fierce

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No Beast So Fierce Page 23

by Edward Bunker


  Wilshire Boulevard’s traffic was even lighter than we’d anticipated.

  “Smell anything?” Aaron asked.

  “Money,” Jerry said.

  The stop, the look, the conversation, took only seconds. Jerry opened the door and stepped out. Right behind him, I moved the seat forward and followed, careful to touch nothing with my bare fingertips.

  “See you in fifteen minutes,” I said to Aaron.

  “Or on the handball court in Folsom.”

  “Or in the morgue.”

  “Let’s settle for fifteen minutes.”

  “Right on.”

  The truck crossed the boulevard, moved pertly down the street between shops and offices.

  “I’m gone,” Jerry said, moving left. He would saunter down the sidewalk, cross over at the next corner, and double back to Gregory’s front entrance. His stroll was relaxed. The flower box under his arm appeared natural.

  From my vantage point, I could see both Jerry and the truck. Aaron went a block and a half and pulled to the curb, the line of parked cars hiding him from sight. Through the earplug, I heard him, “Here I go, brother.” Down the street he appeared, carrying the barricade in one hand and lantern in the other. He placed them to detour traffic, kneeled beside the manhole cover, and pulled it up with a tool. Who’d pay attention to a Negro in coveralls with a tool kit strapped around his waist?

  Minutes ticked away. He took longer than expected. Jerry was lounging at the next corner and I was beginning to fret, puffing a cigar that had no taste because my mouth was dry.

  Aaron raised himself out of the manhole, replaced the cover, removed the barricade and went out of sight. I was already moving across the boulevard in anticipation of his signal. It came seconds later. “Everything’s cool. Make your move. I’m pulling around to my spot.”

  Jerry had seen me cross the street and he was moving toward the front entrance. I turned into the parking lot, tension sucking at my stomach. I wanted to piss and the thought made me smile. My movements felt jerky.

  As I came near the doors, the old woman came out. I stopped, turned my head and bent over, as if examining something stuck to the heel of my shoe—actually hiding my face from later identification.

  The automatic doors opened as I stepped on the rubber mat. Cool air conditioning made me aware of my sweaty face. The thick carpet was silent underfoot.

  A young couple, accompanied by an older man, were examining a tray of rings placed before them by a salesman. No other customers were in sight. The second salesman was talking with a secretary; she held a sheaf of papers in hand.

  The scene was ideal; nobody even looked toward me.

  Jerry’s silhouette darkened the front door. It started to swing inward. I turned my back, raised the hat and pulled down the mask, adjusting it with one hand while I pulled the automatic with the other, slipping off the safety catch with my thumb. Its weight and the checkered butt were comforting, filling me with a sense of power. I turned back.

  Jerry looked frightening in the Frankenstein mask. More frightening was the awesome weapon he held. He hadn’t been seen.

  “This is a robbery!” he bellowed. “Don’t nobody move!” He swung the automatic rifle in an arc that swept over everyone, threatening each one with instant death. He stepped to the side of the door. Nobody on the sidewalk could see him without entering.

  While he yelled, while their agape faces were registering awareness, I was running from the side behind the counter, my pistol extended at full arm’s length. “Turn around,” I snapped at the salesman who’d been talking to the young secretary, arriving next to him as I spoke. I spun him around. The girl had been walking away, was near the office door. She’d frozen momentarily, hand outstretched. She wanted to duck through the door, slam it, and give warning. The idea was etched in her face.

  I came up behind her as she was about to touch the knob. She heard me—she’d only seen Jerry until that moment—and turned her head as I grabbed her arm. The mask startled her, but it was less than real fear. My fingers squeezed viciously into her arm, deliberately hurting her. Those who lack experience with violence are unafraid of its threat—but they shatter completely when hurt by its reality. “Be a nice girl and you won’t get hurt,” I said.

  Jerry was herding the others into a corner, ordering them to sit down with their hands over their heads. It was going smoothly.

  I shoved the girl through the door. Jules Neissen was seated at his desk; he started to jump up as the girl stumbled across the carpet. He stopped and turned pale as I pointed the pistol at his chest from eight feet away. One squeeze would blow him through the wall—and he knew it.

  “Hold it, right there, baby,” I said. “Keep your hands in sight.”

  “Don’t give him anything,” the girl said. Before the words had crossed the room I backhanded her full force across the cheek and dropped her to her knees. The manager’s color, such as it was, flooded back to his cheeks. He gathered his courage, shook his head with the stubbornness of a child. “Go jump,” he said.

  It was ludicrous, the words of refusal were prissy.

  “You’ll open that vault, punk! Don’t be a dead hero. The insurance company pays, not you. They don’t give a fuck about a dead fool.”

  “You won’t get it by shooting me—and I’m not going to open it.”

  Five minutes would change his mind—and a bullet through his kneecap would certainly do it. But there was a better way. I pressed the pistol to the girl’s ear. “I’m not killing you—not first. But her brains are going to fuck up the wallpaper.” The threat was a bluff. I wouldn’t kill the girl—but if it failed to work I was certainly going to kill him, or at least cripple him.

  The girl was limp, eyes glazed. The true horror of the situation had seeped through. She believed herself about to die if the manager failed to cooperate. She began to whimper. I wondered if her panties were wet.

  Neissen started to speak, but no words issued. He nodded. The resistance had lasted twenty seconds. “Get moving,” I said, ushering them toward the door, still holding the girl, the pistol at Neissen’s back.

  Jerry had everyone gathered along one wall. Another couple had straggled in from the street and been captured. I shoved the girl toward the others. “Watch this one,” I yelled to Jerry.

  Neissen was moving reluctantly. I rammed the gun barrel into his spine, bringing a gasp of pain. “Hurry up, motherfucker.” I shoved him toward the vault. As he opened it, I told him I wanted unset diamonds first; then diamond brooches (because they had multiple jewels), and finally diamond rings.

  The vast steel door swung open. A steel-barred grill gate was opened with a key. “You’ve got sixty seconds to fill this,” I said, handing him a shopping bag. “One … two … three …”

  It took precious seconds for the meaning of the threat to penetrate; then he whispered in terror and became a man possessed as he dumped diamonds from trays, scraping them as if they were garbage on dishes. When a brooch stuck in a tray, he became frantic. Each motion of his hand was several thousand dollars. “Twenty … twenty-one … twenty-two …”

  The earplug receiver crackled with Aaron’s voice. “We’ve got heat. Prowl car’s making a turn.”

  I was already running, having ripped the bag from Neissen’s hand. Aaron’s voice continued calmly: “They went by, looked me over, made a U turn—probably want to know about a colored man in Beverly Hills.”

  Aaron was calm—calmer than me. I tripped over a chair behind the display cases, stumbled, and kept going. “Cover the door,” I called to Jerry. “Aaron’s got steam.”

  Jerry flipped the M16 to full automatic fire and kneeled, facing the door from an angle.

  Aaron’s voice came again. “There’s a robbery call on the radio for this address, Code Three.”

  The M16 calmed me. There’d never been fear, just a moment’s confusion. I’d gone beyond fear; my commitment included the possibility of dying, and after accepting that there is nothing to be afrai
d of.

  The hostages began to swivel their heads, whispered in fright, bunched together like chickens. They were a thousand times more frightened than I was. “Get down on your stomachs,” I yelled, wanting to shoot over their heads for emphasis—but that would have surrendered surprise in the street.

  I crouched beside Jerry. “They know there’s a heist going down, but there’s only two. Get ready. We’re going out.”

  “Cocksucker!” Jerry whispered.

  “They haven’t got a chance against that thing,” I said.

  I’d already thought of using the prisoners as hostages and rejected the idea. The police would surround us and wait. The M16 would shred a police car. We had the firepower to get away—or create carnage in the attempt.

  My shoulder was against the door. “When I kick it open, break to the left and run right across the street. I’ll cover the right.”

  From outside there were two gunshots, the sound muffled by the doors, but clear nonetheless. “Two more cars coming,” Aaron said. “I’m going to split, draw them off you.”

  “Wait, goddammit,” I called—but there was no transmitter for my words. I pulled Jerry back from the door. “Out the side,” I said, grabbing his sleeve.

  A shotgun went off outside. A siren wailed. Another shotgun blast. Pistol shots.

  We sprinted for the side entrance. As Jerry burst through the door there was a fusillade of shots from the boulevard; then the screech of tires and the rip of metal. I knew Aaron wasn’t getting away.

  I ran bent over through the sunlit parking lot, using the few cars for cover. I had the pistol in one hand the sack of jewelry in the other. Jerry was on my heels. Moments before the odds were in our favor; now they were a hundred to one against us.

  I dropped to one knee behind a car, Jerry next to me. The gunfight on the boulevard had kept the police from even glancing elsewhere. We hadn’t been seen so far. But ahead was a three-foot box hedge, and the sidewalk to the sidestreet. Automobiles went by, none realizing that they traversed a battlefield. Across the street was a medical building. We couldn’t cross; we’d certainly be seen. The only way to run was down this side of the street, turning in at the first opening. We’d be exposed to anyone looking down from Wilshire, but we had no choice in the matter.

  From around a tire, I saw a prowl car, red light spinning wildly, hurtle across the intersection and swerve into the parking lot behind us. Another swung in and stopped behind the first. Four policemen in black uniforms and white helmets bailed out, crouching behind their cars, pistols raised. They were covering Gregory’s side door, believing we were still inside. Their backs were to us.

  Jerry tore off his mask and threw it under the parked car. “Where can I put this?” he asked, gesturing with the automatic rifle.

  “Hold the motherfucker. We might need it.” I rolled the bag into a bundle and tucked it beneath my arm like a football. “Follow me.”

  I sucked in a breath, hurdled the hedge, and started running. The empty sidewalk stretched before me. Jerry began one step behind, but I quickly pulled away. There was no outcry, no shots from behind us. We were near the middle of the block.

  I reached the driveway at the same moment that a black and white prowl car turned the corner ahead. I leaped through, feet skidding from beneath me as I hit gravel. I crashed on hip and elbow without dropping anything, came back on my feet scarcely losing a stride. The siren’s scream spurred me onward.

  The driveway opened into a loading yard. Behind me brakes were screeching as the police car turned in. I leaped left. Crates and boxes were filed against the walls. I looked for a drainpipe to climb to the roof. No time. I drove into the recess of a door, crouched behind a steel drum filled with trash. As I faced out, pistol raised, Jerry appeared. He ran blindly in a line toward a vine-covered storm fence twenty feet away.

  The car braked, skidded, and threw up a billow of dust, but only the grill protruded beyond the building.

  Jerry had thrown the M16 over the fence, had sprung to the top, one leg hooked over, fingers dug into the wire.

  “Hold it!” a voice yelled—the body was hidden by the building.

  Jerry stopped, remained hanging—captured. Seconds ticked away.

  The policeman’s shot made me jump. Jerry dropped, arching in a convulsion, his spine shattered. He lay writhing in the dirt like a dog with a broken back. I was sick to my stomach, waiting for the command to surrender, tensing to charge out shooting. “Chip time,” I muttered.

  The unbelievable happened. The policeman sauntered from the alleyway, pistol dangling beside his hip, a twisted smile on his face. He walked toward the wriggling body. He’d seen only Jerry. He didn’t know there were two of us.

  The black uniform had white sergeant’s chevrons. The short-cropped blond hair shone in the sunlight. He was fifteen feet away. Dire necessity guided my actions, but there was joy, too, and joy of hate expressed.

  He went down, leg blown out from under him. Blood darkened over hip and thigh. I leaped forward looking for his service revolver. It was in the dust five feet away. His trim uniform became filthy the moment he landed. Pain and shock marred the boyish face. He would beg, plead for mercy, mention wife and children. Policemen never admit begging for mercy, but they do it more often than criminals. Begging would make no difference. Even if he hadn’t shot Jerry he was going to die.

  He didn’t beg. He glared. “You haven’t got the guts,” he said. “They’ll get you and you know it.”

  It was amazing to view a man confronting mortality who believed that retribution is divinely ordained, that righteousness would protect him. “It doesn’t make any difference to you,” I said. I put my foot on his neck, forced him down, and put two bullets through his heart. The hollow-point ammunition blew his life out his back. In the last instant, already dead, his eyes registered that he saw the truth.

  Jerry still flopped weakly, like a fish expiring on a ship’s deck. His eyes were sightless and glassy. Formless sounds mingled with blood from his mouth. Dark arterial blood thickened the dust, turned it into a rich mud. I thought of dragging him to the prowl car and using it for a getaway. I thought of putting him out of his misery.

  I could do neither.

  Sirens screamed. Cars were careening nearby like a nest of aroused hornets. I pitched the bag of diamonds over the fence and leaped after it. In three seconds I was gathering the sack in one hand and the M16 in the other.

  I ran through a back yard of flower beds and trees and a wrought iron bird bath. I had to get off the block before it was surrounded, had to cross one street in seconds. Existence was reduced to that of the beast fleeing blindly before the baying hounds. The future ended seconds away.

  As I ran, my eyes scanned the house, looking for a fluttered curtain or other movement indicating that someone had been aroused by the shots, was looking out. All remained still as I tramped through a flower bed, skirted a garage, hurtled pell-mell down a driveway, hitting the street full stride, and pounded across and up another driveway. I hurdled a wooden gate on the run, one that I would have had to scramble over under other conditions—and might not have been able to encumbered by rifle and shopping bag. I was in another back yard. A small dog scampered beside me, yipping and nipping at my heels until I went over another fence.

  I was in an alley, confronting a giant concrete wall: the side of a movie theater. The wall forced me to detour to the right, away from Wilshire. At the end of the wall was a narrow passageway. I ducked into it, slowed down, my lungs on fire. Suddenly I stopped, realizing the mask was still on my face and the rifle was dangling in my hand. Anyone who saw me would know what I was. For the first time the paralysis of fear crept into me. My pants were frayed and dusty from where I’d skidded on the gravel, my face was drenched with sweat beneath the mask. It was miraculous that I’d come this far without being spotted. Yet I couldn’t stay here for many seconds. Any moment a police car would cruise down the alley behind or the street ahead and the battle would be on. />
  I moved forward. The fence had a gate and the gate was unlocked. I slipped through into an incinerator and trash area in the back yard of a large, expensive home. The area where I stood was separated from trees and lawn and rosebushes by a lattice fence. A garage wall was ahead of me. Stacked against it were boxes of cans and bottles. I shut the gate and flopped behind the incinerator, out of sight of the house.

  The sound of an automobile going down the alley rose and receded. Was it a police car?

  I couldn’t stay where I was for more than a few seconds. I thought of hiding, going to earth like a fox. It has proven successful in other chases—but none were like this was going to be. They knew I was on foot. Fifty police cars would be in the area in a few minutes. Hundreds of policemen would begin searching.

  My only hope was to get away before they collected themselves—if they hadn’t already. They’d draw a demarcation line on Wilshire Boulevard because they knew I was south of there. If I could cross it the Saturday crowds would give me some cover.

  I dragged a trash box behind the incinerator and dumped it on the ground. I dropped the rifle in, put the shopping bag of diamonds on top. I tore off my dirty coat and tie, stuffed them in. The Browning was too big to hide in my clothes. I dropped it on top and refilled the box with trash.

  Refusing to think of the danger, I went out the gate, walked along the passageway and turned up the sidewalk toward Wilshire. It was forty yards away. I began sprinting. An automobile motor sounded behind me. I expected a hail of bullets. The vehicle passed.

  Near the end of the building I slowed down, trying to gauge the traffic light so that I would arrive as it changed to green. I’d walk across Wilshire—and for thirty seconds I’d be in sight from the sidewalk outside Gregory’s.

  The light turned green. I stepped toward the curb. To the left a wonderful sight appeared: a bus was pulling up ten feet away, doors whooshing open—doors of escape. I went to it, momentarily able to glimpse down the sidewalk two blocks away where half a dozen figures were bunched in front of Gregory’s. The bus blocked the other side of the street where the panel truck was wrecked. I waited while a graying Negro woman climbed off, grunting and holding dearly to the handrail.

 

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