LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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