can hear it even if their radio is turned down. It’s kind of like the Emergency Broadcast System. In a town like Hanover, they’re required to have a minimum of two units respond. One unit takes the rear and the other takes the front, so each cop is diagonal from the other. But here’s the thing, dog. When they do this, there are no lights and no sirens. Five-oh doesn’t want to alert the bank robber that they’re on the way.”
“But we heard sirens.”
“Damn straight we did. We heard a shitload of sirens, which tells me they were responding to the shots fired in the back alley, when Kelvin shot John, then followed him around to the front. If they’d known it was a bank robbery they were rolling up on, they’d have done this whole thing differently. They were looking for Kelvin. They found us instead.”
“You’re pretty smart for a white trash hood,” Keith observed. Sherm ignored the comment, but I saw him flinch. Worse, he was starting to twitch again, and that was never a good sign when you were dealing with Sherm. When Sherm began to twitch, bad things happened.
“So what about us?” I asked. “What’s next?”
My mind raced. All I could think of was Michelle and T. J. She was at work, ringing up cigarettes and lottery tickets and maybe thinking of me too. He’d be at day care, maybe having a snack or drawing a picture of the three of us as stick figures.
“Well, you bought us some time, shooting out the door like that and talking smack to the cops. You surprised me, dog. That was some smart thinking, man. They don’t know what the fuck is going on now, except that they’ve got an unknown number of hostages and gunmen up in here. They’ll pull back, set up shop, and let their dispatcher know what’s going on. Pretty soon, dispatch will call here for the bank contact and have them walk outside with a predesignated signal that everything is cool and it was a false alarm, or that the bad guys are gone.”
He turned to Keith.
“Who’s the bank contact?”
“I am.”
“There ya go.” Sherm grinned at me. “Easy enough to find that out, right?”
“So we’re sending him out when they call?” I asked.
“Oh hell no. Even if he gave them the all clear, there’s no way we could get out of here now. They’d have to come in and double-check. So when Keith here doesn’t respond, they’ll hunker down outside, try to contain us. They’ve probably already got us surrounded, so stay the fuck away from the windows. Hanover doesn’t have a SWAT unit, so they’ll call for York County’s Quick Response Team. Those guys will take at least an hour to respond— maybe more. They’ll want to bring their armored vehicles and their helicopter and shit. Make sure the taxpayers know that their money is being used.
“Meanwhile, they’ll have every available officer here, except for one poor schmuck who’ll be responding to other calls— and I’m betting that even he will creep close to the scene. It’s the day shift, so we’re probably talking five to seven cars, four detectives, a platoon supervisor, probably a captain, and definitely the chief. He’ll want to have his picture on the front page of The Evening Sun tonight. Sooner or later, a police negotiator will try to contact us. When Quick Response shows up, they’ll have a second negotiator trying to deal with us too, if needed. I’ll handle all of that. They might try to break windows or shoot in tear gas and pepper spray grenades, or maybe send in that little surveillance robot, but that should be hours from now.”
“Fuck! What the hell do we do if they fire tear gas?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If we need to, we’ll seal the vault with us inside. I don’t think the gas can get in here. Until then, we chill. We’ve got plenty of time to figure shit out.”
“So we just sit tight? That’s your plan?”
“For now, yeah.”
“But—”
“Once we get the negotiator to play ball with us, we’ll get a ride out of here, a car or maybe a Humvee or something. Take a few of the hostages with us as insurance and let the others go as a good faith gesture.”
“And they’ll give us that?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know, Sherm. Why not just make a break for it now? We could go out the back.”
“That’s no good, yo. They’ve got us surrounded already. Even if we could make it to John’s car, they’d bum rush it as soon as we were inside. You’re just gonna have to trust me on this, Tommy.”
He turned to Keith.
“Your office is across the hall, right?”
“Yes. But there’s no money in there.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the money anymore. What I do give a fuck about is if your office has windows. Are there any windows in it? Don’t lie to me, Keith, because if we get in there and I see a cop peering through the glass at me, I’m gonna cap him, then I’m gonna rape your ass with the barrel of this pistol and cap you too.”
“No,” Keith swallowed, “there aren’t any windows.”
“Good. Okay, this is how it’s gonna be. Keith and I are going to have a chat and wait for the cops’ phone call. You stay here with them, Tommy. And keep that fucking kid under control.”
“What about John, Sherm? What do we do about him?”
He didn’t answer. I don’t know if he didn’t hear or if he was just ignoring me. Instead, he yanked Keith up by his hair and shoved him out the vault door. Then he turned back to me.
“Keep your shit together, Tommy. We’ll get out of here and get John some help and you’ll see Michelle and T. J. again.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
He flashed that grin of his.
“Trust me.”
TWELVE
After Sherm left, my headache swelled, exploding in the space between my eyes. I sat back down, keeping the pressure on John’s wound, and felt like dying with him. You know how in books and movies they sometimes describe pain as being blinding? I’d never really thought it was possible until that moment. For a second, I really was blind. Frustrated, I knocked my head against the steel wall, and that made it worse. I felt completely and utterly helpless. But it was more than just the pain. I tried to breathe and found that I couldn’t. Something welled up inside of me— a sense of sorrow and grief and guilt unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It was like I’d swallowed a balloon, and it was inflating inside my chest. At the same time, my lips began to swell, as if someone had cracked me in the mouth with a baseball bat. I could feel my heartbeat pulsing in them as they grew. That was when the tears started; hot, self-pitying tears that didn’t stop.
“Oh my,” Martha breathed.
“Wow . . .” Oscar whispered.
“Ummm, are you okay?” Kim asked.
I tried to respond but all I could manage was a long, grieving whine. John’s blood coated my arms and hands. It had been warm at first but now it was cold. Cold and sticky. He was dying. I was dying. Mac Davis and Kelvin were dead. Before this was over, there was no telling who else would join them.
“We are so fucked.” I leaned my forehead against John’s and sobbed. I felt like I was going to burst.
“You could give yourself up,” Roy commiserated. “Don’t you understand, son? There’s still time to save your friend, still time to get him to the hospital. Nobody else has to get hurt. The way I see it, you didn’t do any of the shooting. It was your friend, Sherm, that killed those two men.”
“That’s right,” Dugan agreed, sitting up straight. “We can all vouch for that. We could sneak out now, while he’s busy with the manager. Then you surrender and we’ll tell the police that you helped us escape.”
I shook my head and wiped my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt, willing the tears to stop, the pain to go away. The mucus on my sleeve was pink, and I wasn’t sure if it was John’s blood or my own.
“No. That won’t work, man. It’s too late. John’s dying and I may as well be dead and it’s my fault. All this shit is my fault. My wife and my kid . . . I deserve whatever happens next. Everything’s fucked.”
Roy tried again. “I’m sure that your wife and child would want you to do the right thing. You want to see them again, don’t you? They’ll want to see you alive, right?”
“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Kirby. I’m already dead.”
