Miami police officer Monica Ramirez could feel the pout vibes radiating from her partner, Walter Kramitz, as they patrolled westbound on Grand Avenue in their police cruiser. Walter was pouting because of what had happened forty-five minutes earlier, when they were eating dinner at the Burger King on 27th Avenue.
What happened was, Walter finally made his move. Monica knew he was getting ready, because he'd been displaying his biceps even more than usual, which was a lot. Walter had very large biceps; he kept them inflated by doing hundreds of curls per day. He rolled up the already short sleeves of his uniform shirt so their whole studly bulging masculine vastness was on display. At the Burger King, he was giving Monica a good view of them, flexing them when he raised his Whopper to his mouth, as though it weighed fifty pounds.
"So," he said, with elaborate casualness, "I was thinking maybe you and me could get together sometime?"
"Walter," she said, "we're together all the time. We're together now."
"You know what I mean," he said.
Of course she knew what he meant. He meant let's have sex. Monica had discovered that's what guys always meant when they said, Maybe we could get together. Their other favorite way of putting it was, Maybe we could get to know each other better. What they'd like to get to know was how you looked with no clothes on. But they could never just say it, just come right out and say, Hey, let's have sex.
"No," said Monica, "I don't know what you mean. What do you mean?"
"I mean, we're, like, in the car all the time, and I been thinkin' maybe we could get to know each other better."
Monica sighed. "Walter," she said, "do you want to have sex with me?"
Walter stopped in mid-chew and stared at Monica, trying to figure out if this was really happening, if Monica was going to let him take the shortcut straight to paradise, if he had somehow found the wormhole in the universe that guys had been seeking for aeons, the wormhole that would enable him to bypass all the talking talking talking and just do it. He thought hard about exactly how he would phrase his response to Monica's question.
Finally, he said, "Yeah."
"Well," said Monica, "I don't want to have sex with you."
Walter stared at her. It had been a trick!
"It's not personal," Monica said. "You're a good partner, a good police officer. But you're married."
"The thing is, me and my wife…»
"Walter, I don't want to hear about you and your wife. I don't care if you and your wife are having problems. I don't care if she doesn't understand you. I don't care if you've been thinking seriously about a separation. All I care about is, you're married, and I'm not going to get involved with you." Monica was glad Walter was married, so she didn't have to go into any of the other reasons she didn't want to get involved with him, such as the fact that he had the intellectual depth of mayonnaise.
"You know," said Walter, "there's plenty a women think I look pretty good." It was true. A police officer like him, good shape, tight uniform, big arms, did not have trouble finding women willing to meet him somewhere at the end of the shift; or, if he had an understanding partner, during the shift.
"I know that, Walter," said Monica. "You're an attractive man" — even though your head is shaped like an anvil and you wear enough Brut to kill small birds — "but with you being married, and us having to work together professionally, I just think it's a bad idea. But we're still partners, right? And we can be friends, OK?"
"OK," said Walter, though in fact this was devastating news. Walter had spent over two months in the cruiser next to this woman, who he could tell had an excellent body, which he wanted desperately to see without a uniform on it. That possibility, that vision, had given him a sense of purpose, a goal, a reason to look forward to the working day. And now it was gone. Yet he was still going to be in the car with this woman hour after hour, day after day. What was he supposed to do now? Just talk to her? Get to know her? Jesus, what a waste.
So it was not a happy cruiser that was patrolling westbound on Grand Avenue. Neither Monica nor Walter had said a word since they'd left the Burger King.
It was Monica, at the wheel, who spotted Andrew up ahead, running out of the alley next to the five-and-dime, carrying a pistol.
"Man with a gun, your side," Monica said, stomping the accelerator. "Call it in." As the cruiser surged forward, Walter grabbed the radio microphone. Ahead, Andrew raced straight out of the alley, across the sidewalk and into Grand Avenue. He turned left, heading directly toward the cruiser. Monica slammed on the brakes, jammed the gearshift into park, opened her door and slid out onto the street, crouching behind the door as she unholstered her Glock 40 semiautomatic pistol. Walter, having radioed for backup, slid out on his side. Both officers rose up partway behind their doors with their guns aimed at Andrew.
"Police!" shouted Monica. "Stop and put down the gun right now."
"FREEZE!" shouted Walter.
Andrew stopped, blinking into the cruiser headlights.
"FREEZE!" shouted Walter, again.
"Put down the gun," said Monica.
"It's not my gun," said Andrew. "Some guy was…»
"Put down the gun," said Monica.
Andrew bent down and set the pistol on the street, then stood. By the time he'd straightened up, Walter was on him, pulling his arms behind him and slamming his face onto the hood of the cruiser. Monica carefully picked up the pistol — a cheap.38 revolver; a classic Saturday night special — and put it inside the patrol car. She radioed in that the subject was in custody.
Walter undipped the handcuffs from his belt. He yanked Andrew's arms up high behind the back.
"Ow!" said Andrew. "Listen, please! I'm not the…»
"Shut up, punk," said Walter, yanking Andrew's arms higher.
"Ow!" said Andrew. "Please, I'm not…»
"I TOLD YOU SHUT UP," said Walter.
Andrew shut up. He was wearing khaki pants and a knit polo shirt. His nose was bleeding, and he was obviously terrified. To Monica, he looked about as menacing as Kermit the Frog.
"Officer Kramitz," she said, "maybe we don't need to cuff him right now, OK?"
Walter looked at Monica. "We're supposed to cuff him," he said. He was dying to try out his handcuffs. In his apartment, when his wife was out, he sometimes practiced handcuffing a chair to the dinette table, but he had never cuffed anybody for real.
"Let me just talk to him for a minute, OK?" Monica said.
Walter thought about arguing with her. He was feeling much less inclined to agree with her on police procedure, now that he knew he wasn't going to get to see her naked. Reluctantly, he said, "OK."
With Walter standing close, ready to pounce if necessary, Monica advised Andrew of his rights and asked him if he understood them. Andrew nodded. Monica asked him his name.
"Andrew Ryan," he said.
"OK, Andrew," said Monica. "What were you doing with the gun?"
"I picked it up back there," Andrew said, gesturing toward the alley. "Some guy was shooting at us, and he dropped it, and I picked it up and ran."
Walter snorted, to indicate that he, for one, was not buying this load of bullshit.
"Who was shooting at you, Andrew?" asked Monica.
"I don't know. Some weird fat guy, he kept yelling 'Freeze' and shooting at us."
"Who was with you?"
"My friends Matt and Jenny."
A synapse fired in Monica's brain. Andrew, Matt, and Jenny. She couldn't quite remember where she'd heard those names, but she knew she had.
"What were you doing back there?"
"Matt was gonna kill Jenny," said Andrew.
"He was gonna what?"
"With a squirt gun," said Andrew. "It's just a game."
"Oh Jesus," said Monica, remembering now who Andrew, Matt, and Jenny were. "Are you talking about that, whaddyacallit, Killer?"
"Yeah!" said Andrew. "That's it! Killer!"
Monica sighed, wondering why these kids couldn't settle for the innocent diversions of her youth, such as drinking beer and groping each other.
A backup police cruiser arrived, siren yelping. Monica took Walter aside and said, "Let's leave the kid with these officers and check behind the five-and-dime, see if there's a shooter back there."
Walter snorted again. "You believe this punk?" he asked.
"I just wanna look, OK?" said Monica.
"OK," said Walter, "but all you're gonna find back there is…»
"POLICE! HELP POLICE!"
The hoarse shout came from the thick figure of Jack Pendick, Crime Fighter, stumbling out of the alley. Seeing the police cruiser, he lurched toward it.
"POLICE!" he shouted. "POLICE!" He kept shouting it as he approached, until he was shouting it directly into Monica's face, thus giving her a strong whiff of rum fumes.
"POLICE!" he shouted, yet again.
"That's correct," said Monica, putting her hand on his chest and gently pushing him back a step, which nearly caused him to fall down. "We are the police. And who might you be?"
"They were gonna shoot her!" said Pendick.
"Who was?" asked Monica.
"Perpetrators!" explained Pendick. "They took her back there with a gun and… Hey! That's one a them!"
Pendick was squinting at Andrew.
"That's one a the perpetrators!" he said.
"It was a squirt gun, dork," said Andrew.
"And so you… what's your name, please?" said Monica.
"Jack Pendick," he said.
"So, Mr. Pendick," said Monica, "you saw these people with the gun, and then what?"
"I tailed 'em," said Pendick, proudly. "I was gonna be in lawn forcement."
"Good for you," said Monica. "Did you have a gun with you?"
"I got a gun," said Pendick. "Need it for my line a work."
"And that is?" asked Monica.
"Sunglasses," said Pendick.
"Sunglasses?" asked Monica.
"I got fired," explained Pendick.
"I see," said Monica, rubbing her temple. "And where is your gun now?"
"I lost it back there," said Pendick, gesturing toward the alley and almost falling down as a result.
Monica got the.38 out of the cruiser and showed it to him.
"Is this your gun?" she asked.
Pendick squinted at it.
" 'At's it!" he said. "Can I have it back? I need it for my line a work."
"Not right now," said Monica. "So, so you followed the perpetrators into the alley, and then what?"
"He was gonna shoot her!" said Pendick. "The perpetrooter! He was pointin' his gun at her!"
"His squirt gun," said Andrew.
"An' so I, I yelled, 'FREEZE! " said Pendick.
"And then what?" asked Monica.
"And then… " Pendick paused. For the first time, in his small, alcohol-drenched brain, he began to sense that perhaps he should be careful about what he said.
"And then what?" asked Monica.
"I don't remember," Pendick said.
"You don't remember?" asked Monica.
"No," said Pendick, shaking his head hard enough to make himself stagger. "No no no no."
A dozen or so tourists, lured by the flashing lights of the police cruiser, had drifted over from Coco Walk to watch the action. One was shooting video. Cops, criminals, guns — this was the Miami they had heard so much about. This would be something to tell them about, back home.
A Human Barbie Doll with long legs, tight shorts, and a tiny halter top being overwhelmed by exuberant, 94 percent silicone breasts came up to Walter and said, "Officer, what's going on?"
"We had a little shooting," said Walter, in a tone of voice intended to convey that he could not count the number of times he had been around shootings. "But we got it under control."
"Is that the one who did it?" the Human Barbie Doll asked, pointing to Pendick.
"We're trying to ascertain that now," said Walter.
He made his biceps as big as possible without audibly grunting. The Human Barbie Doll gave him a look that clearly indicated that she understood and appreciated the effort he was making. She thrust her twin balloons at him. Love was in the air.
"Officer Kramitz," said Monica.
"What?" he said, reluctantly tearing his eyeballs away from the HBD.
"Do you think you can keep things under control here while I take a look in the alley?" asked Monica.
"I can handle it," said Walter, his eyes back on the balloons.
Monica and two other officers went through the alley and spent ten minutes looking around the parking lot. They found one fractured car windshield with a bullet-sized hole in it; they found another car with what looked like a bullet hole in the door panel. They found no people.
By the time they returned to Grand Avenue, the tourist crowd had grown to around one hundred. A dozen Hare Krishnas had shown up and were expressing their spirituality by beating drums and jumping up and down. The HBD was still standing close to Walter, whose face had reddened from the effort of keeping his biceps at full flex for such an extended period. Several more police cruisers had arrived. So had Miami police detective Harvey Baker, for whom Monica summarized the situation.
"So," said Baker, "what you're saying is, for the second time, these three kids are playing this squirt-gun game, and for the second time, a real shooter shows up?"
"That's what it looks like," said Monica. "Except this shooter" — she nodded toward Pendick — "couldn't hit the planet he's standing on."
"Still," said Baker, "it's quite a coincidence, don't you think? A real shooter showing up both times?"
"This is Miami," noted Monica.
"Good point," agreed Baker. "OK, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take him" — he pointed at Pendick — "and him" — he pointed at Andrew — "downtown to get this straightened out."
"Can I call my mom?" asked Andrew.
"Yes," said Baker.
"I wanna call whashisname," said Pendick, picturing a lawyer he'd seen on a local TV commercial, standing in front of a shelf full of law books and basically suggesting that anybody who had ever fallen down was entitled to compensation.
"Who?" asked Baker.
"I don't remember," said Pendick.
"Absolutely, you can call him," said Baker.
"Good," said Pendick, " 'cause I got rights."
"You surely do," agreed Baker. To Andrew, he said, "I also want to talk to your two friends. Any idea where they are?"
"They ran when he started shooting," said Andrew.
"Any idea where they ran to?"
Andrew thought about it. "Probably they got Mart's car and went to… I guess either his dad's apartment or Jenny's house."
"Jenny's house," said Monica. "That's where somebody shot the TV, right? And you were in the backyard, with Matt?"
"Yeah," said Andrew. "I mean, no."
"The imaginary Mend," said Monica, nodding. To Detective Baker, she said, "How about I swing over to Jenny's house, see if the kids went there?"
"Sounds good," said Baker.
Monica looked over at Walter, who was in Deep Lust Eyeball Lock with the HBD.
"Officer Kramitz," she said, "you ready to roll?"
"Yeah," said Walter. He told the HBD, "We gotta take care of somethin'. See you in a while." Walter had determined, through investigative techniques, that the HBD was staying in the Doubletree Hotel, room 312, and that she had two girlfriends with her, but they would not be a problem because they planned to spend the evening at a South Beach nightclub called Orgasm.
"Be careful," said the HBD, resting her hand on his forearm.
"Don't worry," he said, shifting his flex effort from biceps to triceps. "We're professionals." He turned and strode in a professional manner toward the cruiser. As he reached Monica, he whispered, "Lemme drive, OK?"
Monica, rolling her eyes, handed him the keys and got into the passenger seat. Walter gave the HBD one last view of his arm muscles, swung into the driver's seat, started the cruiser, and gunned the engine. He fired up the siren and, with a totally unnecessary squeal of the tires, roared off down Grand Avenue.
After a minute, Monica said, "Walter, turn off the damn siren."
Glancing into the rearview to make sure they were far enough from the HBD, he switched it off. "Hey," he said, "where 're we goin'?"
"The house over on Garbanzo Street that we went to the other night, where the kid had the squirt gun and somebody shot the TV."
"Why the hell 're we going there?" he asked.
'To see if the other two kids are there, Matt and Jenny," said Monica. "The detective wants to talk to them."
"What, we're a school bus now?" said Walter. "Jesus."
Walter could not believe he was being pulled away from an actual crime scene, featuring a hot babe, to be sent on this lame errand. Walter did not get into police work to fart around with kids and squirt guns. Walter wanted action.
Matt punched in the code Jenny had given him, and the electronic gate blocking the Herk driveway — which had just been repaired after having been broken open by the police — slid open. Matt pulled into the parking area in front of the garage, and he and Jenny got out and went to the front door. Jenny, who had held it together pretty well on the ride over, was shaking badly now, fumbling with her key. She finally got the lock open and burst into the foyer.
"Mom!" she shouted. "Mom where are you?"
"Jenny?" Anna's voice came from the living room. "Are you OK, honey?"
"Mom!" said Jenny, running to Anna. "Somebody shot at us! He kept shooting and shooting!" She wrapped her arms around Anna, sobbing violently.
"Who?" said Anna, hugging her. "Who was shooting at you, honey? Where?"
Jenny was sobbing too hard into Anna's shoulder to answer. Matt entered the living room. "What happened?" Anna asked him. "What's going on?
"We were in the Grove?" said Matt. "Playing Killer? And I was gonna shoot Jenny? But somebody started shooting at us."
"You mean with a squirt gun?" asked Anna.
"No," said Matt. "It was a gun gun. With bullets."
"Oh my God!" said Anna, horrified. "Who?"
"We don't know," said Matt. "He was, like, this crazy person."
"Oh my God!" said Anna, hugging Jenny tighter.
"So we ran away, and we don't know where Andrew is," said Matt. "We came here to call the police."
"OK, right," said Anna, fighting to calm herself. "We'll call the police."
"Can I call my dad first?" asked Matt.
"Right," said Anna, "call your dad, let him know you're here, then we'll call the police."
"Mom," sobbed Jenny, "I was so scared."
"It's OK, honey," said Anna, stroking her daughter's hair. "It's OK. You're home now. You're safe here."
On the street outside, in the front seat of the Lexus, Snake looked in Arthur Herk's wallet to make sure the address on the driver's license — 238 Garbanzo — was the house Herk had driven to.
Satisfied, he said, "OK, open it."
Herk punched in the code and the driveway gate slid open. Snake said, "OK, chief, who're we gonna find at home?"
"Nobody," said Arthur. "I mean, just my wife and her kid."
"That's all? Just women?" Snake knew that a lot of these drug kingpins had henchmen around.
"Far as I know," said Arthur.
"Well, you better be right," said Snake, " 'cause when we go in, I'm gonna have this gun pointin' right at your head. Anybody tries to fuck with me, your brains is spaghetti on the fuckin' wall."
"Look," said Arthur, "you don't need to shoot me. You can have whatever you want, OK? Just take it. Anything."
Snake thought about that.
"Your wife," he said. "She good-lookin'?"
Arthur turned and looked right at Snake.
"Very," he said. "And so is her kid."
Buffy moved cautiously through the dark and dripping underground passageway, gripping a wooden stake, knowing she had to destroy the hideous creature before it destroyed her. The creature was close by; she could feel it.
Eliot could feel it, too. In the excruciating tension of the moment, he had suspended, temporarily, the chewing of his Cheez-It. The small damp orange square rested uneasily on his tongue.
Buffy saw an opening just ahead to her right, a low, dark hole in the wall. She stopped in front of the opening, peering inside, her eyes unable to penetrate the gloom. But she knew the thing was in there. And she knew she had to go in there after it. Crouching, holding the stake in front of her, she began to edge forward into the darkness, when suddenly…
BRINNNGG!
Eliot started, spewing a Cheez-It glob onto his shorts.
"Damn," he said, reaching for the phone. "Hello?"
"Dad, somebody shot at us and we gotta call the police," said Matt.
"Matt?" said Eliot. "Are you OK?"
"Yeah but we gotta call the police."
"Where are you?"
"Jenny's house. We drove the Kia here."
"What do you mean, somebody shot at you? You mean with a squirt gun?"
"No! With a gun!"
"Who?"
"Some guy. Andrew ran away and we don't know where he is and I gotta hang up and call the police."
"OK, you call the police and I'll get a cab over there right now."
Eliot hung up, grabbed his wallet, stuck his feet into his flip-flops, and ran out the door, not taking the time to turn off the TV.
The creature lunged out of the darkness and sent Buffy sprawling backward onto the ground. The stake flew from her hand, landing just out of her reach. The creature stood over her, snarling, its gaping, fanged mouth twisted into a grotesque grin of triumph. Things looked very bad for Buffy.
Matt hung up the phone and looked over at Anna and Jenny, who were sitting on the sofa. Anna had her arm around Jenny, who was still crying, but calming down.
"My dad's on his way over," Matt said. "I'll call the police now."
Anna nodded. Matt picked up the phone to dial 911. He had pressed 9 when the front door opened hard, whacking into the wall, the sudden noise causing Jenny to scream. Matt put down the phone to go see who it was.