“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he whined. “What the hell do they want now?”
They rang again. And again.
“Ain’t you gonna pick it up?” I asked.
“No. It’s just that asshole Ramirez, wanting to blow some more smoke up my ass.”
Three more rings.
“I don’t know, Sherm. It might be important.”
Four more.
“Fuck them.”
There was a squawk from outside, then Detective Ramirez’s voice boomed over the still-ringing phones.
“SHADY! SHADY, THIS IS DETECTIVE RAMIREZ! SHADY, I NEED YOU TO PICK
UP THE PHONE! I NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU IMMEDIATELY REGARDING
YOUR REQUESTS. IT’S IMPORTANT. PLEASE PICK UP THE PHONE!”
Two more rings.
“SHADY!”
Sherm gritted his teeth.
“Oh, man, I hope I get a chance to shoot that motherfucker in the face before this is over.”
He grabbed the phone from its cradle and brought it to his ear.
“Yo. This is Shady. What the fuck do you want now, Ramirez?”
He listened quietly, then said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. You been smoking the crack that you have in the evidence locker or something?”
Another pause.
“No man, I told you what my name was.”
A third pause.
“No.”
Slowly, Sherm raised his eyes to me.
“O’Brien? No, I never heard of him either.”
My heart jumped into my throat.
“Yo, I’m telling you Ramirez, I don’t know any Tommy O’Brien or this fucking John dude. Of course I’m being straight with you.”
He started to twitch. It began with a vein in his neck. It throbbed and pulsated like a snake twisting and coiling. Then his eye began to flutter. He sat down on the corner of the desk and his leg began to kick wildly back and forth.
“Well maybe the bitch is crazy. You ever consider that, Detective?”
Oh no . . .
Sherm looked up again. Glaring, he pointed to the chair and pushed it toward me with his foot.
“Let me get this straight, Ramirez. This crazy bitch calls 911, tells the operator that her husband and two of his friends are the ones robbing the bank, and that one of those friends is hurt, and she knows all of this because her husband called her from the inside. Is that what you’re telling me? Sounds like bullshit to me. ’Cause how could somebody have called from in here if you guys are controlling the phone lines? Who you playing?”
Michelle. Michelle had dialed the police after I hung up with her. She’d been worried, frantic, freaked the fuck out. And in that state, she’d told them everything, given them our names, begged them to tell her that it wasn’t true, that her husband who had never lied to her before was lying now because there was no way he could be involved in something like this, no way he could be involved in a bank robbery, could he?
Without even realizing it, my own wife had dropped the dime on us. And now I was fucked. Now we were all fucked. Because Sherm was fucked and as a result, he would fuck the rest of us.
“Portland?” Sherm barked into the phone, “What about it? Never been there in my life. I’m East Coast all the way, dog.”
A pause. Sherm began tapping the handgun against his leg.
“Tampa? No, I ain’t never been to Tampa either. I’m telling you, Ramirez, you’re barking up the wrong tree, dog. Bowwow, yippee-yo, you know what I’m saying?”
A longer pause.
“I don’t care what they’re faxing you! Fax this, motherfucker . . .”
A very long pause. Time seemed to slow.
“San Francisco? Shit. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Ramirez. I’m impressed. How’d you guys find out about that? I didn’t think anybody knew about San Francisco.”
The longest pause yet, and I stopped breathing.
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Look, give me fifteen minutes. I need to talk this over with Tommy and John. No, I ain’t trying to bullshit you, man. I’ve been straight up with you so far, right? Well yeah, of course not about the names and shit, but I ain’t killed anybody. You still got all your hostages, right? Just give us another fifteen minutes. That’s all I’m asking for. Let us arrange how we want to surrender and shit. Then you can slap the cuffs on and be the hero. Get your picture in the paper and on the news.”
My eyes widened in surprise. Sherm turned the pistol toward himself and peered down the barrel.
“No, no, no! No good fucking faith gestures. I ain’t releasing anybody early. Fifteen minutes. I’m hanging up now. You get back on that bullhorn, or call me before the time is up, and it’s on your head. Is that understood? Until we surrender, I’m still in charge inside this bank, motherfucker. Clear?”
He slammed the phone down and stared into the gun.
I closed my eyes and sighed.
“Sherm. I—”
“Shut up, Tommy. Just shut the fuck up.”
His voice was tired, emotionless. Beaten. I’d never heard him sound like this, and I think that scared me more than anything.
He shook his head sadly.
“Goddamn it, Tommy. You just had to call Michelle.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. There was no point in denying it. “I had to.”
“How did you do it?”
“I stuck Lucas’s cell phone in my pocket because I didn’t know what else to do with it. While you were gone, I used it to call her.”
He placed the gun flat on the desktop, but kept his hand on it. I couldn’t help but notice that the barrel was pointing at me. The hole looked very big, bigger than I’d realized. The dead cop’s .38
lay next to it. Both were out of reach.
“Why? That’s all I want to know, dog. Why would you do some stupid shit like that?”
“Because she’s my wife, man. Because I love her. I owed it to her, you know?”
“No, I don’t know. All I know is that it was a dumber move than even Carpet Dick could have come up with.”
I could see on his face that he really didn’t know, and that he never would. Sherm would never understand. How could you explain love to a guy like Sherm? Remember when I said that all the women wanted to fix him because he was broken, but that he didn’t want to be fixed? Well, this was part of it.
“You— you want to tell me why it was so dumb?”
His voice remained flat and emotionless.
“Because now they know, Tommy. Now they fucking know. They know that there’s only the three of us. They know that Carpet Dick is wounded. They know our names, our backgrounds, our . . . They know everything. It gives them a leg up on us. Gives them leverage. We’re fucked.”
“I’m sorry, Sherm. I was just sick of lying to her, man. I’m fucking sorry.”
“I know”— he shrugged—“but that doesn’t exactly help matters now, does it?”
“No, I guess it doesn’t.”
We sat in silence for a moment, then I tried again.
“What was the deal with those cities the negotiator read off to you? Tampa and San Francisco and shit? What was that about?”
“Nothing. Everything. Like I said, now they know. But that ain’t important right now. You still got the cell
