Hard Revolution

a worker inside. The young man came forward and positioned himself near the entrance, his hands out in a “stop” position, warning customers who were attempting to leave to stay back. Peters put his back against the exterior wall of the supermarket and cautiously edged his way in the direction of the bank.

Strange got out on the passenger side of the squad car, drew his.38, rested his gun arm on the roof of the car, straightened it, and aimed the gun at the bank. He moved his aim to the windshield of the Nova. He shouted at the man behind the wheel, who he recognized as Dominic Martini, to get out of the vehicle and lie down on the pavement. Martini looked at him blankly and did not move.

Strange heard the cry of tires and the whoop of a siren. Behind him, Frank Vaughn’s unmarked entered the lot.

BUZZ STEWART’S PLAN was for him and Shorty to show the guns immediately, state their intent to use them, and make a lot of noise, scaring the tellers and security guard into instant submission. Because it was a simple plan, he knew it was one Hess could follow.

Hess entered first and cross-drew his.38s. Stewart pulled the shotgun from its harness before the door closed behind him, locking both hammers back.

“Eyes on me!” shouted Hess.

“This is a robbery!” shouted Stewart. “Hands up!”

Stewart put one hand around the shortened barrel, the other inside the guard, his forefinger grazing the dual triggers. He pointed the shotgun in the general direction of the tellers, their heads, shoulders, and torsos visible through the bars of their cages, their mouths open, their faces gone pale, and the two customers, a middle-aged man and a young woman, standing before them.

“Don’t nobody move or touch no buttons!” shouted Hess, pointing one.38 at the white- haired security guard and the other at the bank manager, a thin, balding man behind a desk.

All did as instructed. All put their hands up, and none moved or spoke.

“Keep ’em up, grandpa,” said Hess, stepping to the old man in the dark blue uniform, as he holstered one of the.38s and pointed the other at the man’s face. The old man’s spotted hands, raised in the air, shook, and his mouth worked at words without sound. Hess unsnapped the old man’s holster strap and pulled his.45. Hess slipped it, butt leaned to the right, into the waistband of his jeans. He redrew the second.38. “Now lie on your belly and put your face to the floor.”

The old security guard did as he was told. He grunted as he went to his knees and then his stomach.

The bank was small, with a marble floor and three teller cages behind a marble counter and brass bars. Behind the tellers was the vault, the door of which was closed. To one side of the lobby was the business and reception area, carpeted in green, where the balding manager now sat, his hands up, behind a cherrywood desk. In the center of the lobby was a marble island holding black pens on chains and topped with a slotted wooden rack housing deposit slips, withdrawal slips, and envelopes.

A customer stood at the island with his hands up. His name was Alex Koutris. Koutris was an American citizen born on Naxos, an island off the coast of Greece. He was a medium-height, medium-build forty-six-year-old man with a dark mustache who co-owned a small diner in a rough neighborhood downtown. He came on at five o’clock for the night shift and worked until closing, leaving his place with the day’s cash at three a.m., when he walked through an unlit alley to his car. He carried a gun for protection. He had survived Guadalcanal and other fierce campaigns in the Second World War and was comfortable with the weapon. He was here to make his daily deposit before going into work. An envelope holding three hundred dollars was on the island before him. He had stood ten hours behind a counter to earn it, which made the money real. His gun, a snub- nosed.38, lay free in the side pocket of his yellow Peters jacket.

“Cash in the bags!” shouted Stewart, stepping around the wall, kicking open a swinging gate hinged in the middle of a fence. He stood behind the tellers, moving the shotgun from one to another, one woman and two men, all young.

They worked quickly, pulling the folding money from their cash drawers and placing it in white cloth bags they drew from under the counter.

“Thirty seconds!” shouted Stewart. “I will use this shotgun.”

The female teller stopped working, stood straight, and staggered. She lost her feet and fell to the marble floor. Her head made a hollow sound as it hit the floor. A circle of urine darkened her spring green skirt, fanned around her legs where she lay.

“What’s goin’ on?” said Hess, moving his guns catlike from the guard to the manager to the calm-looking man at the island, who was staring at him with no fear or expression at all on his face.

“Girl fainted, is all,” said Stewart. He pointed the shotgun at one of the two remaining tellers and swept the barrel to the fallen woman. “Finish what she was doin’,” he said. “Move!”

The young man went to her station and hand-shoveled cash into her bag.

Hess noticed the fat envelope on the island in front of the man with the mustache and calm eyes. He walked toward him, keeping his guns moving from the customers to the manager to the security guard lying on the floor. The female customer began to sob.

“What you got there?” said Hess, ugly beneath the mask, his mouth dry and frozen in something that was more grimace than smile. “What’s in that envelope?”

Koutris didn’t answer.

“I asked you a question.”

“It’s mine.”

“Step away from that table,” said Hess, and when the man didn’t move, he clicked back the hammer on one of his guns and put it to the man’s face. Koutris moved back two full steps, his eyes unwavering, and Hess snatched the envelope off the island top and slipped it into the pocket of his raincoat.

“I got the gun,” said Hess. “That makes it mine.”

“Koritsi mou,” said Koutris. It meant “my little girl.”

“What’d you call me?”

Koutris looked him over with contempt.

“What’d you call me?” said Hess, moving forward.

Koutris said nothing. Hess laughed and flipped one of the guns so that its barrel was in his hand. He swung the butt violently into the man’s nose. His nose shifted and caved, and his hands dropped to cover his face. Blood seeped through his fingers.

“Hey, Buzz,” said Hess with a witch’s cackle, looking for his friend through the bars. “I just fucked this greaseball up.”

Hess turned his head to look back at the man. The man held a snub-nosed revolver in his hand and there was blood on his smile. The man squeezed the trigger, and as Hess heard the shot he felt his throat tear open and saw blood dot his stocking mask. He fell backward and felt the sting and shock of the second shot as it entered his groin and he said “Buzz” and was on his back watching the pressed-tin ceiling of the bank spin and double.

Alex Koutris began to turn toward the tellers’ cages, seeing movement from the side of his eye, and was lifted off his feet by the blast of a shotgun. The copper load tore flesh off his face and peppered his neck. He tumbled and came to rest on his side, his cheek and shoulders slick with blood. His ears rang against the scream of a woman, and he thought, I survived the Japanese to die like this for a lousy three hundred bucks. He spit something pink and thick to the floor.

Koutris looked up and saw the big white man pointing the shotgun down at his face and saw the man’s finger press one of the two triggers inside the guard and closed his eyes and saw fire and his mother and nothing at all.

Stewart stepped away from the body, broke open the shotgun, held it vertical, and let the hulls of both shells drop to the floor. He leaned the barrels on his forearm, found two shells in his pocket, thumbed them into both chambers, and snapped the barrels shut. Stewart didn’t bother looking at the customers or tellers or the old security guard, now praying aloud, and he didn’t try to quiet the female customer, alternately screaming and crying, completely out of control. None of them would try anything now.