The newspapers later said that they were high on meth or crack or some other drug with a name that sounded like a line from a movie. But none of that mattered. When Franco Herrera and Ricky Bazzel took over Sam’s Speedy Mart they were just two crazed gunmen waving assault rifles and screaming orders.
“Give me the money!”
“Don’t look at me!”
“Nobody move!”
“Open the safe!”
Franco thought that the woman in the red sweater was moving around too much so he sent a burst of fire into the shelf of dish soap a few inches above her head. Green, orange and purple goo splattered like greasy rain. Franco smiled and fired off an extra couple of shots just to see more stuff blow up.
Barely a hundred yards from the store, Detectives Greg Kane and Ralph Amoroso were on their way back to Robbery-Homicide when the All-Units call came in. Ralph glanced left just as the Speedy Mart’s front window exploded under another burst from Franco’s AR-15. Theoretically, the guns should have been restricted to single-shots but Ricky had paid an extra hundred each to convert them to fully automatic. The fifty shot clips had cost another hundred on top of that but as he watched the glass fly across the parking lot Ricky figured that it was all worth it. He loved the AR-15. It made exactly the right statement: Nobody better fuck with me.
Amoroso mashed on the brakes and the detectives’ Crown Vic screamed as it went into a sideways slide. Both men jumped out and turned toward the building before the car had stopped bouncing on its shocks. The store’s front door shattered to another burst and a second later Franco jumped through the empty frame. He paused for an instant at the edge of the parking lot and, wild-eyed, stared at the two cops in cheap suits who were aiming pistols at him in apparent slow motion.
“Fuck!” Franco screamed and pulled the trigger before he had even raised the muzzle. A stream of slugs skipped off the asphalt like stones across the pond. At the same instant Kane and Amoroso opened fire. With a bewildered look Franco suddenly paused then tumbled backward, emptying the rest of his clip into the sky.
“Ralphie, are you hurt?” Kane shouted.
A trickle of blood ran down Amoroso’s cheek. The detective ran his hand across his face and stared at his palm.
“No, it’s just a scratch,” Ralph said then looked up into the face of death.
As if by magic Ricky Bazzel had materialized on the sidewalk, rifle raised. He held the trigger down and a line of slugs marched across Ralph Amoroso’s chest then crunched through the Crown Vic’s windshield toward Kane. From the corner of his eye, living in some odd universe where time had slowed down, Kane saw Amoroso fall and the bullets walk their way toward him – THUMP - THUMP - THUMP . . . .
In an instant Kane stopped thinking about ducking or running or curling into a ball underneath the car. Rage flared inside him like a spark hitting a mist of gasoline. Kane raised his gun straight out in front of him and ran toward his partner’s murderer, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. As if buffeted by a sudden wind Bazzel staggered back, half turned, and fired one more round before collapsing. The last bullet hit the top of a cement parking-stop, skipped upward at a shallow angle and smashed into the side of Greg Kane’s head.
Kane stared at Bazzel’s body and the growing red-black pool creeping away from it then everything started spinning. While he was still trying to figure out what had gone wrong Greg Kane fell over and, with sirens screaming from someplace far away, he watched the world go black.