June 13th; 10:49 p.m.
New York City
Salvadore’s Diner
The door swung open, and a bell chimed overhead. Of the half a dozen patrons, all but one eyed the newcomer. The odd person out, seated at the counter, her back to the door, Amanda maintained a death stare with her phone.
Hearing the ‘tap—tap—tap’ of leather-soled shoes on hard flooring drawing closer, she positioned her cell, so the black screen could catch a reflection of the latest customer over her shoulder; a blacked out silhouette got bigger and bigger.
Feeling a presence over her left shoulder, she lifted her eyes toward the glass partition that separated the area behind the counter from the darkened kitchen. A second later, she was fixated on her mobile again; however, her mind was elsewhere.
She slid a finger down the screen. Six-two, two hundred…give or take an inch or ten pounds. Black suit. Gray dress shirt. Banded collar—buttoned to the top. Is he one of them? No. He’s too…refined. The men from the alley were dressed like bangers. Inwardly, she scoffed. Refined. When was the last time I used that word? Have I ever?
The man claimed the swivel stool to Amanda’s left.
Her head down, the sixteen-year-old stole a peek out of the corner of her eye. Black slip-ons. She noticed metal across the tops. Dad had a pair of those. Bit loafers he called them.
A server approached and stood across the counter from the man. “We close in ten minutes. Not sure what we can make you at this late hour.”
“I understand…” he eyed the woman’s name, embroidered on her light blue shirt, and smiled, “Gwen. I’ll just have a cup of coffee—cream with two sugars please.”
With Gwen occupying the stranger’s attention, Amanda risked a longer look at his face; short and straight jet black hair—swept to the side, broad face, and gray eyes that matched his shirt. Wide shoulders…he must’ve been a jock in high school. The mid-thirties man showed the server a full set of straight and white teeth, his black, full beard making them pop even more. Amanda went back to her device.
Putting an elbow on the counter, the man pivoted a few degrees to the right. “Hi.”
She heard the greeting above the music playing through her black earbuds. She tapped the screen and found a new song.
“In my day,” his second elbow mirroring the first, Jock clasped hands, “when someone said ‘hello,’ it was customary to answer in kind.”
Gwen banged a white mug on the counter, spilling the black liquid. “One cup of coffee with cream.” She slid a container of sugar packets closer, which nearly collided with the cup, “Take as many as you like,” before going back to tallying her tips for the day.
Picking up two sugars, he tore the paper, emptied them into his coffee and addressed the back of Gwen’s head. “Thank you.” He leaned closer to the young girl. “I don’t know why,” he whispered, “they say New Yorkers are rude.” He jerked a thumb toward the server. “She’s a real peach.”
Amanda stifled the urge to giggle. Nothing good can come from striking up a conversation with a stranger at eleven o’clock at night in New York City. She saw the time in the upper right corner of the screen. Twenty minutes more and I’ll be on the bus and out of here, away from this effed-up mess I’ve gotten myself into.
Stirring the coffee, Jock cranked his head around to the left when chairs scraped across the floor. A young couple left the establishment fifteen seconds later. Facing forward, he noticed two men in a corner booth, fold newspapers and make ready to follow the couple’s lead.
Gwen walked by and rapped her knuckles on the surface in front of Amanda. When the girl jumped and looked up, the server made eye contact with her and Jock, “We close in five minutes,” before saying the same words to a man at the end of the counter. The man—several seats away from Amanda—stood, withdrew a pocketbook and loitered over his bill.
Stirring his coffee, Jock stared straight ahead at the glass partition, his peripheral vision watching the reflections of the three men. The one on the other side of the girl went back and forth from his bill to his wallet. You had a coffee. It doesn’t take that long to… He held up a finger on Gwen’s return trip. “Excuse me, but I’d like a fresh cup please.”
She pivoted toward him, a scowl on her face. “Didn’t you hear me? We close—”
“Yes I heard you…in five minutes.” He slid the mug toward the woman. “I want a fresh cup…now.”
“Listen, buddy—”
“I’m not your buddy. I’m a paying customer. And as such, I’m always right. Now be a dear and,” he thrust a forefinger toward the out-of-sight kitchen, “get me a fresh cup from the back. I don’t want the stale crap you keep in the pot out here.”
Amanda faced the disgruntled buyer, eyes wide.
“I’m not—” Gwen paused, shut her mouth and shot daggers at the man before snatching the cup and storming into the kitchen through a swinging door.
“Talk about being rude.” Amanda never looked away from her phone. “You didn’t have to be so mean to her.”
Resuming the staring contest with the partition, Jock unbuttoned his suit coat. “Yes I did.”
“She’s just tired and probably wants to go home to her kids.”
Swiveling to face Amanda, he slipped his right hand inside his jacket. “That’s exactly what I want for her…to see her kids tonight. Now get down, Amanda, and cover your head.”
The petite, blonde-haired girl yanked out her earbuds and glared at the man. His gentle eyes were now steely slits. “How do you know my—”
Jock leapt to his feet and drew a pistol from under his left armpit. “Get,” he pushed her under the counter, “down,” while extending the 1911 handgun over her falling body. He got off two shots. The man at the end of the counter took one in the chest—his gun fell from his hand—before a second bullet fractured his skull.
Jock whirled around, covered the nose of one of the two men from the booth with the 1911’s front sight and squeezed the trigger. A deafening boom eclipsed the reports of the other man’s nine millimeter.
Assuming a combat grip on his weapon, Jock moved left, away from the counter, away from Amanda, hoping to draw the second man’s fire away from her. Advancing down a row of booths near the front windows, he fired the gun’s remaining five cartridges. Producing a fresh seven-rounder from under his coat, he slammed the magazine into the beveled magwell. Running the slide forward, he never lost a step, while watching his adversary take cover at the corner of the counter.
Jock leveled the pistol at where the man’s head would appear. He moved his aim to the right and down, and fired three rounds. The crouching man leaned to his right and fell onto his butt, holding his upper chest. The 158-grain jacketed bullets had passed through the counter’s wooden panels.
His weapon trained on the fallen man’s nose, Jock closed the distance and towered over the would-be killer. “Who do you work for?”
His grip on the Sig Sauer P229 relaxing, the prone man looked at his wound before he slowly lowered his head.
“Who do you work for?”
A second later, the hand covering a sucking chest wound flopped to the floor. A growing pool of blood stained the white tiles under the dead man’s torso.
Jock holstered his firearm and looked back at Amanda. She was gone. He whipped his head toward the body. He needed to search him, all of the men. He went back to where the girl should have been. Amanda’s my top priority. He glanced out the street-facing windows. She didn’t have enough time to make it out the front. He noticed an ‘exit’ sign beyond the counter. Must’ve gone out the back. He took off on a dead run toward the red neon sign.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
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