The Killing Game. J. Kerley A.

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      “Don’t even think about it, lady,” I yelled. She scowled and set the bottle back in the cooler. A seventyish black man in a blue porkpie hat was at the grill station, nodding at wrinkled brown hot dogs spinning on heated rollers.

      “How long these weenies been cookin’?” he said.

      I feigned uncertainty. “What year was the Crimean War?”

      “The hell’s that mean?”

      “Carson,” said the voice in my head. “Be nice.”

      “About four hours,” I said.

      “Can I get a discount cuz they’re so old?”

      It was my second Saturday as a clerk working the midnight-to-morning shift. In the past six weeks there had been three Saturday-night convenience-store robberies, two ending in deaths. The third clerk was comatose, likely to remain that way. The C-stores had been just off I-10 on Mobile’s southwest side. This was the only one in the quadrant that hadn’t been robbed. My partner, Harry Nautilus, and I had judged it ripe for a hit.

      “What about these weenies?” the porkpie-hat guy bayed. “They too old to be full price.”

      I checked the outside monitors, seeing a gray van slide into the rear of the lot and disappear until it was picked up on the second outside camera. It rolled into the shadows beside the dumpster.

      “Gray van,” said the voice in my head. “Get cautious.” A gray van had been spotted near two of the three hold-ups. Whenever one pulled in, the voice in my head alerted me to be careful.

      “You got ten seconds to get out the door,” I told the old man. “But all the hot dogs you can grab in that time are free.”

      The guy gave me two beats of are-you-for-real? then started jamming hot dogs in his pockets.

      “Hey,” the hooker whined. “How ’bout me?”

      “We’re having a special on malt liquor, ma’am. Two for the price of none.” I nodded toward the old guy. “But you gotta beat him out the door or the deal’s off.”

      She grabbed the forties and booked, the old guy in her wake, two hot dogs in his mouth like pink cigars, four in each hand, a box of buns beneath his arm. Before the door closed it was caught in the hand of a petite brunette in her thirties: brown cargo pants, pink blouse, white running shoes. She saw me watching, waved and smiled and headed toward the snack aisle. She’d exited the gray van but my glance hadn’t picked up any threat. There were a lot of gray vans on the road.

      “Check the customers,” the voice whispered. I did a head count. Exactly two people inside, me and the woman. The lot was empty. The woman came to the register with a bag of chips in one hand, flipping open a cheap cell with the other.

      “Be a buck-eighty-seven,” I said.

      She pressed a button on her phone and opened a brown leather purse. Though the woman had looked fine from afar, up close I saw hair days from a washing. Half-moons of grit under chewed fingernails. Pupils so dilated I couldn’t discern an eye color. I was moving my hand toward the weapon in the small of my back, beneath my uniform jacket, when I heard a shotgun rack behind me.

      “Move and you’re dead,” a male voice said.

      I froze as the woman across the counter pulled a black automatic from her purse. I knew the model: cheap Eastern-European manufacture with a trigger-pull so congenitally light it might fire if a mouse sneezed in the parking lot.

      “Open the register,” she said, pointing the weapon at my throat. “Now.”

      I nodded acquiescence and started tapping keys on the machine.

      “Hold on,” the voice behind me whispered. “Some asshole comin’ in the door.”

      I looked up and saw Ham Neck returning, straight-arming the door open. “You gave me the wrong goddamn cigarettes,” he snarled, waving the pack. “I told you menthol.”

      The woman slid her purse up to cover the pistol and stepped to the side. The guy at my back whispered, “Get the fucker gone or you’re dead.” The gunman slipped to the end of the counter and I grimaced. It was the guy in the dirty denim jacket I’d noticed not five minutes ago. He must have waited in the restroom until the woman’s cell-phone signal told him the store was empty of customers.

      My first job was getting the big buffoon out the door. I grabbed as many packs of smokes as I could hold, threw them Ham Neck’s way, one bouncing off his chin.

      “They’re free,” I said. “Compensation for my mistake. Sorry. Goodbye.”

      “You trying to be a wise-ass?”

      “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “My mistake. Please, take your smokes and go.”

      But Ham Neck was one of those guys who look for slights. He strode toward me, one hand in a fist, the other thrust out and showing me the finger.

      “Throw stuff at me? I oughta kick your goddamn—”

      The man at the end of the counter whipped up a sawed-off twelve-gauge and fired. It sounded like a cannon. Ham Neck’s finger and hand disappeared in a red mist. He fell to the floor screaming, arterial blood spurting from his stump. The woman pulled the Czech weapon for the kill-shot. I stepped between them.

      “I can open the safe,” I said, hands in the air. “There’s maybe three hundred bucks in the register. There’s at least six grand in the safe.”

      She looked to Shotgun Man and he must have assented. Her eyes were unhinged, one fixed on me, the other on some hellish inner vision.

      “Do it,” she said.

      I nodded down at the moaning Ham Neck. “I gotta fix his arm.”

      “I’ll kill you.”

      “It’ll cost you over six thousand dollars.”

      Her knuckles whitened on the gun, the chemicals in her head about to reach full boil.

      “I can cut the lights and close down,” I reasoned. “We’ll be alone.”

      Her eyes flicked to Shotgun Man. He thought about how many drugs six grand would buy and followed me to a panel behind the counter. I turned off every light outside and inside, leaving the glow from the coolers. Ham Neck was rolled in a ball and grunting as his stump painted the floor red. I could feel my gun against my back, but had two weapons trained on my head. No way to pull my piece.

      I yanked a bungee cord from a display and snapped a tourniquet around Ham Neck’s forearm. He was slipping into shock. Move them to the front, the voice in my head said. I spun and walked to the front door.

      “Stop right there.” The woman pointed the pistol at my forehead. It was shaking in her hand like a trapped bird.

      “I have to lock the door,” I said, pulling my car keys. “The safe won’t open unless the front door is locked. You ever hear of an entry-securified СКАЧАТЬ