Murder — His and Hers

Inconvenience Store a Ms. Tree story

My pregnancy was pretty much uneventful, with the exception of the hostage situation.

I was in my seventh month and still going into my office in the Loop — Tree Investigations, Inc. — and had been working more like the CEO I was supposed to be, rather than field agent I preferred to be.

“You know, Michael,” Dan Green said, one hand leaning against my desk, “you don’t have to be here. You can go home and relax... put your feet up...”

“Not without help,” I said, smiling a little.

Dan, a slender handsome blonde in his late twenties, had a hook for his left hand and one of his eyes was glass — souvenirs of a dispute with the crime family responsible for the death of my husband, whose name was also Michael Tree. When Mike died and I took over the agency, I didn’t even have to change the lettering on the office door.

“I may be big as a horse,” I said, “but I feel great. It’s this desk work that’s getting me down... all this damn peace and quiet.”

His slightly scarred face broke into a grin and he shook his head, saying, “You’re incorrigible.”

“Did you scope out the Bandag account?”

He nodded. “It’s a plumb. We can sub-contract the day-to-day security and still get rich off the deal.”

“What does Roger think?”

Roger Freemont was the third partner in Tree Investigations. My late husband’s partner on the force, Roger — balding, brawny, bespectacled, pushing fifty — was the company conservative, our voice of reason.

“I think,” Roger said, sticking his shiny head in my door, “we should add staff. Hell with sub-contracting. Let’s make all the money.”

“Spoken like a true Republican,” Dan said.

“When we do have to give Bandag our bid?” I asked.

“Monday.”

It was Friday.

“You want to hit the computer over the weekend, Roger,” I asked, “and make some money comparisons?”

“Sure,” he said, sounding almost eager.

“You are a Republican,” Dan smirked.

“Do it, then,” I said. It was four-thirty. “Me, I’m going home... well, first I’m going to pee and then I’m going home.”

“Thanks for sharing,” Roger said.

I bid a pleasant weekend to my secretary Effie and to our receptionist Diane, walking through our modern glass-and-ferns office area on surprisingly springy steps. I may have looked like I was trying to smuggle a marijuana-stuffed beach ball across the border, but I felt lighter than air.

That evening, in the masculine-looking apartment that had been my husband’s, as I sat on the couch watching a rental video of “Basic Instinct,” wondering how anything could be so supremely stupid, chewing on the crust of a Tombstone pizza courtesy of my microwave, I felt an ache in the small of my back (and my back was the only part of me that was small, these days) that might have been a bullet.

“You need exercise, lady,” I said to myself (not to Sharon Stone, who was changing her clothes for the umpteenth time on the TV screen), and hauled my butt off the cushions, and stood and held my back with my hands. And groaned.

I glanced toward a window. It was a cool, fall evening out there; even with my baggy woolen blue sweater and stretch pants, I’d need a jacket. I ran a brush through the mop of my brunette hair, and had lipstick poised for application when I sneered at myself in the mirror, slung my purse on its strap over my shoulder, and said, “Fuck it.”

When my late husband moved into this side-street two-flat a dozen years ago, Lakeview was a blue-collar neighborhood; now it was Yuppies and gays — safe, as Chicago neighborhoods go. Last year there were only nine murders.

Nonetheless, I was, of course, packing. I’m always reading that “real-life private eyes” don’t really carry a weapon. Considering that the mob murdered my husband ten years ago, and that I’ve lived through perhaps half a dozen attempts on my own life, I’m content to be armed and imaginary.

If you’re wondering how I could be pregnant when my husband died a decade ago, I assure you the conception was not immaculate. Suffice to say an old flame flared up, some satisfying if unsafe sex followed, but the relationship didn’t last. At an age closer to forty than thirty, however, my biological clock ticking like a time bomb, I decided to keep the child. Ultrasound said a girl was on the way.

The cool breeze whispering through the trees lining the narrow parked-car choked street was soothing, and Friday night or not, the world seemed deserted. It was just after ten, and too late for people to be leaving, and too early for them to be getting home. I walked quickly, getting the spring back in my step, and the kink out of my low back.

Then I had to pee.

It was closer to walk to the Ashland Mini-Mart than back home. Besides, I could use some of Jon’s baklava and maybe a can of sardines. Yeah — that sounded great...

A corner storefront on Ashland and an east-west side street, the Mini-Mart was evenly divided between groceries (including fresh fruits and vegetables — typical for Greek proprietors) and liquor. Three of their four coolers were beer and wine.

The well-lighted mart didn’t have the modern look of a 7-11; the floor was waxy wooden slats, the ceiling high with rococo trim. You could still squint and imagine the mom-and-pop corner grocery this had been in the 1950s.

“Hey, Ms. Tree,” Jon’s son Peter said; the dark young skinny handsome kid, in his early twenties, white shirt, black pants, frequently took the all-night shift in this family business. “Pop’ll be sorry he missed you. You come for your baklava and sardines fix again?”

“You bet. But can I use your employees-only john? If not, the world’s gonna think my water broke.”

He grinned and shook his head. “You’re a riot, Ms. Tree. Go for it — you know where it is.”

I walked back around the counter, saying, “Busy night?”

“So-so. Friday, you always sell plenty of beer and wine coolers. And lots of lottery tickets. Payday, and everybody wants that ten-million jackpot.”

“Me too. I never buy lottery tickets, but I figure my odds of winning are about the same.”

Then I pushed through the swinging stockroom door and shut myself in the bathroom — the lock was broken, but niceties were not a priority — and enjoyed my twelfth or maybe twentieth urination of the day. Impending motherhood is such a spiritual, uplifting experience.

I was still sitting there when the door opened and I looked up, startled, to see my wide-eyed expression reflected in the shiny badge of a potbellied blue-uniformed policeman. His metallic nametag said HALLORAN.

“Sorry, lady,” he said, and flashed a pleasant if yellow grin, and shut the door.

A minute or so later, I eased the door open and he was standing right there, staring right in my face — a patrolman in his fifties with the yellow-white hair and red-splotchy complexion of an aging Irish beat cop.

He backed up a step, chuckled gruffly. “Hey, I’m awful sorry. Didn’t mean to embarrass you, mother.”

“You did give me a start, officer.”

He touched his generous belly. “Over anxious. Got me a bad case of the trots.”

As he was closing himself inside the john, trots or not, he paused to ask, “When’s the little one due?”

“Couple months.”

“God bless you both. Shit!” He clutched his belly, shut the door, and, presumably, was as good as his word.

I smiled, shook my head, and coming around the counter asked Peter why he hadn’t told the cop the john was in use.

“I was busy with a customer,” Peter said, and indeed a guy in a down-filled jacket and plaid hunter’s cap was hunkered over the counter, scratching his lottery tickets with the edge of a quarter. “Cops around here don’t bother asking — they just go around and help themselves.”

“No harm done,” I muttered, and headed down one of the four aisles to find my can of sardines.

I was plucking it off the shelf when a harried woman of thirty or so in a tan London Fog raincoat and heels rushed in with a young girl of perhaps seven at her side in a tutu, white leggings and Reebox, a light jacket over the girl’s shoulders. The mother’s heels clicked as she went over to a cooler for some milk. The child, blond, stood looking at my pregnancy with wide prairie-sky blue eyes in the midst of an angelic countenance.

“You’re going to be a mommy,” the little girl said.

“That’s right, honey. Recital?”

She nodded. “I’m a ballerina.”

The mother, with a jug of 2 % milk in hand, was at the counter, speaking to Peter, crossly, even though Peter was in the process of paying off an instant win to the guy in the plaid hat.

“No butter? No eggs?”

“We’re out of both, ma’am. Till Monday.”

“That’s ridiculous! How am I supposed to make breakfast in the morning? Do you have any breakfast rolls?”

The guy in the plaid cap was giving the five bucks he’d won back to Peter in exchange for five more tickets.

“No, and we’re out of bread, too. There’s some muffin mix in aisle two.”

“How do I make that without eggs? You oughta call this an inconvenience store!”

I was at the counter now, with my can of sardines; the woman was between me and the plastic-lidded tray of baklava.

“There’s a big mini-mart on Southport,” I said. “They have everything.”

She glanced over her shoulder at me and pursed her lips in contempt; she was blonde but not as pretty as her daughter — not frowning, anyway. “That’s out of my way, thank you very much.”

I shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

“Mommy!” the little girl called, from a nearby aisle. “They have Pop Tarts! Let’s have Pop Tarts for breakfast.”

Her mother sighed. “Amy, put those down.”

Amy, delighted with her Pop Tart discovery (Strawberry), twirled in the aisle, a ballerina in Reebox. “No, Mommy, I love Pop Tarts! Let’s have Pop Tarts!”

The mother joined the daughter and began scolding her, though the little girl didn’t seem to be paying much attention. Nor did she seem to be putting the Pop Tarts back.

Peter grinned, teeth white in his dark face; he was a handsome devil. “Two baklava tonight, Ms. Tree?”

The guy in the hunter’s cap sighed — none of his five lottery tickets had been worth ten million dollars, or five dollars, either. He trudged out wearily.

“Just one,” I said, lifting the lid, helping myself to one of the pastries in its paper shell. “Don’t want me to get fat, now, do you?”

Peter laughed and handed me a small brown paper sack, which I was placing the baklava in when two white boys in ski masks came in, one of them holding a garbage bag open, the other waving a big revolver.

“All your money in the bag, greaseball,” the one with the revolver said to Peter.

“Now!” added the other one.

They were skinny, wearing Cubs jackets over heavy metal T-shirts; they had on worn, torn jeans, and Nike pumps that looked like spaceman shoes. The one with the gun was taller — or maybe the gun just made him seem taller.

“Take it easy,” Peter said, as he opened his register.

“We’ll take it easy, all right!” the one holding the bag said, horse-laughing at his own remarkable wit. His voice was thin, whiny.

I thought about the gun inside the purse over my shoulder, but then I thought about the mother and her daughter a few feet away, and I thought about the child in my belly, and I just stood there while Peter piled cash on the counter and the shorter of the pair used his whole arm to push it into the garbage bag.

Then I heard the sound of a flushing toilet and thought, Oh shit, but Halloran was pushing the stockroom door open and coming out and the smile on his mottled Irish face had only barely dissolved into a scowl when the three bullets slammed into his blue shirt and sent him back through the swinging door, on his back.

“You fuckin’ killed him, man!” the one holding the bag said.

“Shit,” the one with the smoking gun said.

The other one dropped the garbage bag to the slatted-wood floor, where money spilled as easily as blood just had, and he pulled a small nickel-plated revolver out of his waistband; he held it in an unsteady fist.

“A cop,” he said, brandishing the gun at his taller partner. “You fuckin’ killed a fuckin’ cop!”

The swinging door waved at us half-heartedly; it was only a three-quarter affair, with space at top, and bottom, with Halloran’s dead feet sticking out below.

The two faced each other, guns in hand. For a moment I thought they were going to save society the trouble; then movement behind him caught the corner of the taller one’s eye.

“Jesus!” he said, turning, and he fired again, at a blue shape at the door of the mini-mart, and glass made brittle thunder as it shattered and rained to the pavement, and somebody out there yelled, “Judas Priest!” and Peter ducked down behind his counter, and I did the same on the other side, and the ski-masked pair took cover in an aisle.

Cool evening air and street sounds rushed in from where the glass of the door used to be. “Who the hell was that?” the smaller one said, as they cowered in the aisle next to where I stood.

“Must be the dead pig’s partner! Shit...”

My fingers unclasped my handbag. To my left, down the next aisle, the mother and her little ballerina cowered together, sitting half-sprawled on the wood floor, the mother looking nearer tears and hysteria than the oddly placid little girl.

From outside a gruff male voice yelled: “Throw out your guns! Walk out slow — hands high!”

“It is another cop — what do we do?” the smaller one asked desperately.

“Grab that pregnant bitch!” the taller one said.

The little guy came at me, fast, and I pushed my purse behind the ILLINOIS LOTTERY sign on Peter’s counter, back down behind which Peter was looking up with wide-eyed terror.

A gun was in my back and the smaller guy was behind me, as if hiding there; he had room. Still hunkered down in the aisle, his partner yelled out, “We got people in here!”

“We got police out here!” the gruff voice shouted.

I could see, through the window, between neon beer signs and homemade butcher-paper sale signs, the head of the cop bobbing up behind a car he was using as a barrier; a glint winked off his revolver, as it caught street lights. Sirens were faint cries that were turning into screams; Halloran’s partner would not be alone, long.

The little one pulled me by the arm into the aisle with his partner, and down, into a crouching position. I almost fell, but managed to keep my balance.

“Why the fuck did that other cop take so long to come in? If they’re partners... Jesus!” The taller one remained hunkered down, the gun in his hand steadier than that in his pal’s.

Peter’s voice, as if a ventriloquist’s, came from behind the counter: “They always park in the alley but usually come in together. I don’t know why he dropped Halloran off, first.”

“He had the trots,” I said.

“What?” the little guy behind me asked, as if surprised I could talk.

“The runs. Diarrhea.”

“Ain’t that the shits,” the hunkered-down leader said, with no irony. Then thought glimmered in his eyes. “Go check the back, Bud.”

“I thought you said no names, Frank,” Bud said contemptuously. “Duh!”

Frank pulled off his ski mask; he was hatchet-faced, pockmarked, with dead gray eyes and wheat-color hair that covered his ears.

“They got us pinned in here,” Frank said glumly. “We’re gonna have a hostage situation soon. They’ll know who we are, all right.”

“I told you we shoulda stole a car,” Bud said, shaking his head even as he pulled off his ski mask.

He was round-faced, an odd shape to top such a skinny frame. His head was almost shaved — black five o’clock shadow covering his skull, skinhead style. His acne hadn’t turned to pockmarks yet, and his brown eyes were alive, in a stupid sort of way, under heavy eyebrows.

They were kids — just kids, maybe seventeen, eighteen at most. But for street kids, into drugs, as I assumed they were, that was plenty old. Ancient, in some circles.

Frank pointed his gun at Bud, gesturing as if it were a finger. “Check out the back door. If it looks clear, maybe we can make a break for it, ’fore those other cops get dug in.”

The loudness of the sirens made that unlikely, but Bud scrambled off to the backroom, pushing open the door, stepping around Halloran; then the door swung shut, swaying as Halloran’s feet disappeared, Bud pulling him out of the way.

“You left your car running?” I asked Frank. “Out front?”

“Yeah,” Frank said, wincing with irritation. Hostages weren’t supposed to talk: they were supposed to be quiet and scared.

I said, “You thought it’d still be waiting for you? In Chicago?”

“We left it locked.”

“You left your car out front, locked, with the motor running? No wonder you gave up on keeping your identities from the cops.”

“Shut up, lady.”

“Can I sit?”

“Huh?”

“Can I sit? Pregnant women can’t crouch long, you know.”

“Sit. Sit! And shut the fuck up!”

I sat, my swollen, stretch-pants-covered legs angling out before me like I was inviting somebody to make a wish. I could hear whimpering in the adjacent aisle, but I couldn’t tell if it was the mother or the little ballerina. My purse, nestled behind the ILLINOIS LOTTERY display, beckoned me; but I couldn’t come.

Two explosions echoed from the backroom — gunshots — following by a clanging sound, and Bud saying, “Shit!” again and again, at varying volumes, with varying inflections.

Frank sat up, neck straining like a turtle having a look around; the sound of scraping, wood against concrete, sang from the back room.

Cueball Bud came running out, saying, “Cops back there already!”

And, eyes wild in his round face, he crawled on his hands and knees over to join his partner and me in the nearby aisle, the shiny little revolver in one hand, like a child’s toy.

“Cops everywhere,” he said breathlessly.

“Can they get in?”

“No. Windows are barred back there and the door’s steel; I bolted it up, and blocked it with some crates just to make sure. They ain’t gettin’ in.”

“Like you’re not getting out,” I said.

Round-faced Bud looked at me astounded. “Who the fuck asked you, fatso?”

I shrugged. “Just thought you better face facts.”

Hatchet-faced Frank said, “Such as?”

“Such as you’re in the midst of a full-blown hostage crisis.” I leaned out in the aisle, nodded toward the street, where the blue revolving lights of several cop cars cut surrealistic paths in the night, and a big Winnebago-style vehicle was rolling in. “Take a look.”

Frank and Bud glanced above a row of corn flakes boxes to have a peek. “What the hell’s that?” Frank asked.

“That,” I said, “is a Mobile Command Unit. Before long they’ll be calling you on the phone from there — to start negotiations.”

“Negotiations,” Bud said stupidly, eyes tight.

I nodded. “So you fellas better decide what you want.”

“I just want outa here, Frank!” Bud said.

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

“What do you know, you fat cow!” Bud shouted, waving his shiny gun at me.

“Play your cards right,” I said, “you can trade us for your freedom.”

“She’s right,” Frank said thoughtfully.

“Well, I’m sicka hearin’ her voice!” Bud said.

Frank thought about that, too, but his expression turned darker. “You know... me, too. Get up and go into the next aisle, mommy — keep that brat and her old lady company.”

“You mind if I take a bathroom break first?” I asked.

“You gotta be kidding,” Frank said.

“I’m pregnant. I pee a lot. Excuse me for living.”

“I can do somethin’ about that,” Bud said with a sneer.

I smirked, then gestured with two open hands. “What say, boys? To pee or not to pee? That is the question.”

They just looked at me stupidly. I’m so frequently too hip for the room.

“Go ahead,” Frank said.

“But keep your fat ass away from that back door!” Bud blurted. “If I hear ya movin’ those crates, I’ll put a bullet in that belly and kill the both of you!”

I hauled myself up. “And here I was thinking of asking you to be the godfather.”

In the backroom, I could see that the pile of crates and boxes blocking the door were indeed something I couldn’t move without getting caught at it — even if I hadn’t been pregnant. Kneeling, I checked Halloran; he was dead, all right — on his back, an angled smeary stripe of red on the concrete indicating how he’d been dragged. Three bloody scorched wounds on his chest, poor bastard — I closed his eyes for him. Wished him God speed. His holster was empty; apparently Bud had taken Halloran’s piece, though I hadn’t noticed him having it — probably stuck under his Cubby coat. The officer’s nightstick, however, was still there. I plucked it from his belt, took it with me into the bathroom, where I again urinated (I hadn’t been lying about the need), even as I stuck the baton up my sweater sleeve, holding its tip in the heel of my hand.

Peter was sitting behind the counter; he gave me a pitiful look, and I whispered from the doorway, “Don’t you have a gun back there?”

And he shook his head no, looking ashamed.

He shouldn’t have, really: half the merchants who trade shots with stick-up men wind up dead. A fascinating statistic that didn’t mean diddly right now.

I came out of the backroom, and around the counter; near the LOTTERY sign, where my purse was tucked, I paused. Frank noticed me.

“Get back over in that other aisle,” he said, “and keep your big fat trap shut.”

I shrugged a response and left my purse where it was. Just didn’t want to take the chance.

I joined the mother in their aisle; it smelled of chemicals there and I glanced at the shelves and smiled. Then I sat next to the woman, who was huddled with her daughter, who clung to her mutely. The mother’s eyes were brimming with tears. She was stroking her daughter’s hair.

I sat. Legs stretched out before me.

The woman whispered harshly. “How can you talk to them?”

I shrugged.

“Just leave them alone!” the woman whispered. “Don’t say anything to them — you just make them mad!”

Frank’s voice called, “Shut up over there!”

As if in response, a grating loud voice, courtesy of a bullhorn, said, “Send the people out!”

“Fuck you!” Bud called.

I withdrew the late Halloran’s nightstick from my sweater sleeve. The mother look at me, and it, startled.

“What are you...”

I shushed her with a finger to my lips as I placed the baton on a shelf behind me, amid some bathroom supplies.

The bullhorn was barking: “You boys are going to have a world of trouble if you harm those people. Now, send them out, slowly...”

Frank didn’t bother to reply. But to Bud he said, bitterly, “World of trouble. We shot a cop. How the fuck can you get in more trouble than that?”

“You shot a cop,” Bud reminded him.

“You’re as dirty as me. Felony murder. We’ll both go down.”

“You gotta deal us outa here, Frank!”

I lifted a bottle of liquid drain cleaner off the shelf. Read the directions; savored the poetry of its warnings... “poison”... “burns on contact”... “harmful to eyes”...

The woman touched my arm; squeezed hard. She looked at me with wet, hard eyes and shook her head no, furiously.

“Don’t you risk my child’s life,” she whispered.

“I have a child at stake, too,” I whispered back.

“I said, shut-up over there!” Frank almost screamed.

The phone rang and everybody jumped. Me, too. Even Peter — I saw his head bob up.

On his hands and knees, the big revolver in hand, Frank scrambled over behind the counter, as the phone rang and rang, and he plucked the receiver off and was down behind the counter, where Peter was, as he answered.

“How many? I’ll tell you how many. We got a greaseball clerk, a mommy and her little girl, and a pregnant woman. How do you like our little party?”

I unscrewed the cap of the liquid drain cleaner; sniffed its harsh bouquet...

“What do we want? We want a jet! We want a car, and a police escort to O’Hare...”

I could guarantee them the police escort.

“...and then we want the biggest goddamn jet they got!... Where?” Frank paused, apparently thinking, then his voice called to Bud: “Where do you want to go?”

Bud seemed to think for a while, then his voice called: “Vegas?”

“You moron! Somewhere foreign! Some other country!”

“Alaska?”

I would have laughed, except the frozen little ballerina whose head was in her mother’s lap was looking at me with eyes that could not widen enough to express her fear.

Frank was saying into the phone, “Never mind where. Just have plenty of fuckin’ fuel onboard. We’ll tell the pilot where to take us... and we want money, too!... How much?”

Frank, despite the lousy luck of his last attempt, called out to Bud for an opinion. “How much dough should we ask for?”

Bud didn’t hesitate; he knew just the amount. “Ten million bucks!”

“Get real,” Frank snorted. Back on the phone, he said, “A million in cash. Small unmarked bills — nothin’ bigger than a fifty.”

Shrewd boy, this Frank.

“Okay,” he was saying. “Call back when you got an answer for me.”

Frank’s hand reached up and slammed the receiver on the hook.

I figured drugs were why this skinny pair was after the money — all but forgotten in the garbage bag, bills spilled out on the floor over by the counter, like discarded lottery winnings. But like a lot of addicts, for whom stealing was a job, they had apparently planned ahead, not waiting till they needed a fix, not wanting to go out on a heist in that condition.

Still, sometimes it pays to needle a junkie.

“You boys might be here a while,” I said to Frank as he crawled by. “Lining up that jet’s gonna take time. Getting the mayor to approve all that dough — and hauling some banker out of his country club dance to unlock a vault. We could be here for hours.”

Bud, from the next aisle, said, “Frank — I’m gonna need a shot before that!”

“Shut up, Bud,” Frank said; but he was frozen on his hands and knees, looking at me, thinking over what I said. “You got a point, lady?”

“Frank!” Bud yelled. “We can’t wait that long. I’m gonna need a shot! Ask for less money. Get fifty K or something.”

“Shut up! Lady — what’s your fuckin’ point?”

“Let this mother and her daughter go,” I said. “It’ll buy you some good will, and show the authorities you’re reasonable guys. Besides... you got me — a pregnant woman — what better hostage could you ask for? Nobody’s going to shoot at you guys if you’re walking behind a pregnant woman.”

Frank’s eyes were turning to slits as he smiled. “You could be right about that last part. I don’t know about giving up no hostages, though...”

“You’ll have the cashier,” I said, nodding toward the counter, where my purse sat, a million miles away, “and me. One hostage for you, one for your friend. You can take us with you in the car to O’Hare — which you can’t do with mommy and her ballerina, here. Let ’em go. You’ll be popular.”

“Don’t listen to her, Frank!” Bud whined. “I don’t trust her!”

Frank was studying me, like a lab tech studying a slide. “Who are you, lady? Why do you know so much? Why are you so fuckin’ chilled out?”

I shrugged. “My late husband was a cop.”

That seemed to satisfy him.

“Let the mother and her kid go,” I said. “You don’t need them. You didn’t mean for this to happen, did you, Frank? This is just something that got out of hand... let ’em go.”

Bud was sticking his head around the aisle to watch this conversation. He was on the floor on his stomach. He looked like a bug with a big head.

He said, “Don’t do it, Frank.”

Frank was thinking it over. Something had flickered in his eyes — traces of humanity, maybe? — as I’d spoken. Was he looking past me at the woman hugging her child? Was there something human or humane in this lost teenager’s white trash past?

He swallowed and said, “She’s right.”

“Frank...”

“Shut the fuck up, Bud. There’s only two of us... we can manage better with just her and the guy back of the counter.”

“O... okay, Frank,” Bud said, half-sticking out in the aisle on his belly. “But let’s shake it... I’m gonna need a fuckin’ shot before long!”

Bud did seem to be getting the shakes, and it wasn’t fear alone. The little hop-head, by his own admission, slammed his drugs — injected them — as opposed to smoking or snorting, which meant time was going to catch up with him.

Suddenly Frank yelled; it startled the mother, and the child, and me, too. Peter probably peed his pants.

“Hold your fire!” Frank was calling to the cops outside. “We’re sendin’ out some hostages!”

Frank crawled back around the counter, so he could get a better vantage point I guess — and it did give him an angle where the cops outside couldn’t see him, or get a bead on him — and he said to the mother, “Okay, you and your little girl get up and walk out. Real slow.”

The mother allowed herself the briefest smile, and glanced at me with an expression that might have been of thanks, as she helped her child up. She could spare me any gratitude, now or later: I hadn’t done this for her.

The little ballerina hung onto her mother’s waist as they slowly walked out of the aisle and past the counter where Frank held a gun on them. They walked by the aisle where Bud was taking cover, up to the front of the mini-mart where the mother gingerly opened the metal framework of the shot-out glass door and they were outside.

With a sigh of relief, I watched from my aisle, where I sat leaning back against the shelf of bathroom supplies; I could see the mother and daughter as two cops rushed to help them past the parked cars toward the street filled with squads, moving them toward the Winnebago command center.

“That was the right thing to do,” I told Frank.

“Shut up,” he said, and he moved out from around the counter.

As he walked past me, I hurled Halloran’s nightstick under his feet, and Frank’s Nikes hit the baton and he did a crazy, log-rolling dance, and as the kid was twisting around, I splashed the liquid drain cleaner in his face and he screamed and I splashed it again and he screamed again.

“Frank!” Bud yelled. “Jesus, Frank!”

He landed hard, on his back, his hands clawing his face and eyes, the big revolver dropping to the slick wood floor and spinning, like a top, till it came to a rest at my feet. I scooped it up, as Frank continued to scream and Bud yelled incoherently.

Before the little hop-head could get his wits about him, I came around the other side, up the other end of the aisle, behind him, where he continued to crouch, and cower, the nickel-plated revolver in hand, watching his pal wriggle and writhe like an insect under a pin.

Bud’s incoherent yelling stopped when I put the nose of Frank’s revolver in the back of his stubbly head and told him to stand up.

“You bitch! What did you do to Frank?”

Frank was still screaming.

“Cleaned his drain.” I reached my left hand past his left ear; held the hand open, palm up. “Let’s have the gun, Bud. Give it to Mommy...”

He placed the shiny revolver in my palm; swore at me some more.

“March up by the counter. By where your friend Frank is. By the way, we ought to hurry — if he doesn’t get some first-aid soon, he’s going to need a cane and a guide dog.”

“You’re evil!”

“I guess you’d know. Move it.”

He did.

The phone was ringing. The cops were wondering was going on in here; through the neon beer-ad and butcher-paper sign cluttered window, vision was only so-so.

“Get that, would you, Peter?” I asked.

Peter’s dark face with its wide eye peered over the edge and the fingers of both hands were pressed against the countertop. He looked like Kilroy Was Here.

“Stand up,” I said. “Situation’s under control.”

I placed Bud’s shiny nickel-plated revolver on the counter. Frank was on the floor, on his side, in fetal position, his hands covering his face, and he wasn’t screaming now, whimpering instead, saying something about “burning.” Bud was standing next to him, looking down like he wished he could help.

Peter, who had answered the phone, covered the receiver and said to me, “They want to know what’s going on.”

“Tell them to come in and see for themselves,” I said, and then I thought about the reporters who’d soon be swarming, and I was rustling around in my purse for my lipstick when Bud pulled Halloran’s gun out from under his Cubs jacket.

“I’m going to kill you, you fat bitch,” the round-faced little junkie said, his saliva making a mist in the air.

I shot him through the bottom of my handbag and the top of his head.

He flew back, flopping next to Frank, leaving a mist of blood this time, and his body made a squishing sound when he landed on the brain matter he’d spilled. They were both on their backs, but Frank didn’t seem to notice the company. He was busy.

The garbage bag of spilled money was nearby — a cheap irony, but it couldn’t be helped.

Peter’s mouth had dropped open.

I shrugged. “He said he needed a shot.”

One of the first cops on the scene, in the aftermath, was Lt. Valer, a thirty-something black good-looking homicide detective I’d known for years.

“How did you manage to be here when all this happened?” he asked. His smile was a wry dimple in one cheek.

“Baby needs baklava,” I said, and put two in my little paper sack. Not to mention sardines.

Peter wasn’t behind the counter anymore; he’d gone somewhere to have a minor nervous breakdown, I guess. I thought about leaving him some money for the pastries, then decided I’d earned them.

“Excuse me a moment, Rafe? I have to use the john.”

Halloran’s body had already been moved; lab techs were at work back there.

“You aren’t going to touch anything, are you?” one of them said, a snotty redheaded woman in her twenties.

“Well, I might,” I said, and closed myself in the john.

When I came out from the backroom, Rafe said, “That punk... Frank?... he’s going to be all right. Suffered some burns, but his eyesight won’t be permanently affected.”

“Swell,” I said.

“Those two got rap sheets from here to Wilmette. But they’re just kids. Both of ’em under eighteen.”

“Pity.”

His smile disappeared; his eyes narrowed judgmentally. “You don’t care? It doesn’t bother you, killing a kid like that?”

“He was pointing a murdered cop’s gun at me, Rafe. What would you have done? Burp him?”

He sighed. “You got a point. But you better brace yourself — you’re going to take some heat.”

I laughed. “It’s not politically correct for a hostage to fight back?”

Rafe’s wry dimple reappeared in the other cheek. “You’re not the average hostage. This won’t be the first time you’ve made the papers.”

“It won’t be the last, either.”

“Yeah?”

“Watch the birth announcements,” I said, and took my bag of baklava, and sardines, and walked home.