Grundish & Askew (26 page)

“Give me the gun. I’m not going to shoot at them. I’m just going to make them listen to us.”

The whirring dot in the sky grows larger. Grundish looks out at the officers, and it seems as if some of them may have moved a few feet closer to the front of the gate. He hands the gun to Askew.

“Work with me here,” says Askew. “Tell them we’re gonna kill the Mexican if they don’t back off and turn the chopper around.” Askew stands up, his left arm wrapped around Chancho’s chest and his right hand holding a gun to the dangling bloody meatball that used to be his head. Askew drags the corpse around the side of the oil drums so that the officers can see it.

“We said to back off and turn the helicopter around,” says Grundish into the megaphone. “See? We’re gonna cap the Mexican if you don’t. See?”

“You don’t want to do that, Mr. Grundish. I don’t have any control over the helicopter. That’s Detective Carter’s call.”

“Back the fuck off, now!” screams Askew. The helicopter looms large and loud in the sky, homing in on them. “Back the fuck off!”

“Don’t make us do it!” yells Grundish into the megaphone.

“Back the fuck off!” screams Askew again. The helicopter continues its approach and the officers remain in position. Askew puts the gun up to the side of Chancho’s head and pulls the trigger twice, blowing off what is left of the front portion of Chancho’s face, leaving a gooping crescent-of-a-head and a ragged, ghastly scoop of negative space. Askew throws the body down on the roof. It lands with a flat thud.

“Now, turn the helicopter around and back off or we snuff the old lady next,” shouts Grundish into the bullhorn.

The officers all step back from their positions. The helicopter turns and retreats.

“Keep stalling them,” says Askew to his friend. He hooks his hands under Chancho’s arms and drags him away. “Jerry’s working on something for us. You just gotta stonewall ’em a little longer. Make up some crazy demands or something.” Askew lifts the roof hatch that leads back down into the building. He tosses Chancho’s body down the hole and turns back to Grundish. “Just hold ’em off a little longer. I promise we won’t leave you hanging in
lingo
up here.”

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Gimme a smoke before you go back down.”

“I’m out.”

“What?” Grundish asks. “Out? How can you be out? You brought a month’s worth of butts along.”

“I said, I’m out. O-U-T. Out. I guess this looks like a good time for us to quit.” And Askew disappears into the building.

“Your friend shouldn’t have done that,” says Mojado, his voice lacking inflection. He looks around at the blank, shocked faces on the men surrounding him. To lose a hostage like that, right in front of them and not be able to do anything about it is more than most of the men could have imagined. “I’m afraid that we’re not going to be able to negotiate with you if that’s how it’s going to be.” Mojado puts the handset back in its holder and barks out orders, unintelligible to Grundish but perfectly understood by the assault team. SWAT members check their belts, communicate with hand signals and move along the fence walls, spreading in both directions away from the gate.

“Wait a minute,” says Grundish. “Wait. We’re not going to hurt anybody else as long as you stay where you are and don’t try to bring the helicopter back. You and your men stay where you are and I give you my word, we won’t hurt anybody else.”

“I need you to show me that we can cooperate.” Mojado grasps the handset and speaks in a tense, clipped tone. The men in black stop and look back toward him. “We wanted you to send out Mr. Chancho as an act of good will. Now I’m going to have to ask you to give us another one of your hostages. How about one of the elderly folks that you have in there?”

“What’s in it for us? I don’t need your pork chops and apple sauce. How about you provide us with a plane and a pilot and let us go and we’ll give you all of the hostages as soon as we’re safe.”

“I’ll check with Detective Carter and see if that’s something we can arrange. Can you just send out one of the hostages? You show me your sincerity here, and I’ll go up through the chain of command to see what we can do for you.”

Grundish pats his pockets, searching for one last cigarette. “Son of a whore,” he says to himself, “it looks like I picked the wrong day to quit smoking.”

The SWAT team members check the extra clips for their guns. One stoops down and ties a boot as tight as he can manage, almost breaking the sturdy laces. A collective itch courses through the men, an itch to launch an all out assault, firing teargas canisters and flash bangs into the building, pumping shots into the hostage-takers as they skitter from the building like naked mole rats from a welding torch. They itch to be the hard rain that washes away the scum. Several canine unit guys have their German Shepherds leashed and frothing for bad guys to gnaw on like rawhides. An electricity arcs through the air from deputy to SWAT team member to canine unit.

“Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll give you an answer.” Grundish counts the men by the gate and along the wall, nineteen
^[44]
of them that he can see, including Mojado. “I’m keeping track of how many of you are out there. I’m going inside for just a minute. When I come back, you all better be there or the old lady gets it next. You be straight with me and we’ll do the same with you.”

“Everybody pull in,” orders Mojado. “Everybody in now.” The men resume their positions just outside the gate. “You have fifteen minutes to give us a hostage. If we don’t have one of them out here, the negotiations are off. We will come at you with extreme prejudice, and we will do anything we can to stop you from harming the others.”

•  •  •

Grundish runs from the oil drums and makes such a clatter. He throws open the roof hatch and slides down the ladder. His hands glide on the rails, and his feet do not touch the rungs on the way down. “Askew...Jerry...” he shouts. The names echo back at him from the metal walls and ceiling. “I need you guys here, now.”

“They’re trying to get things all set up, they are.” Turleen hobbles around the corner of a stack of storage boxes. She holds an almost-spent Sordes Pilosus to her lips and takes one last hard drag on it.

“Where’d you get that?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, you wouldn’t.”

“Well, you ain’t supposed to be smoking. You only got one little burnt up lung left, and you can’t afford to fry that one.”

“Aw, honey, I appreciate the concern, I do,” she says. “But you don’t need to worry about me. I’m a staunch character, I am.
s-t-a-u-n-c-h
. And, I don’t know that I’m gonna need that lung much longer the way things are looking. If those blue-boys out there come in, I think we’re all done for, I do.” She touches her hair as she speaks to him and adjusts something on her leg under her red dress.

“Well, uh, do you have any more smokes?”

“That was the last one, it was.”

“Fuck!” His left eye throbs, shooting pain through to the back of his head each time it pulses. “Where are Jerry and Askew?”

“I’m right here,” Jerry’s voice says from around the corner, irritated. “What’s going on? I told you to stay up there and stall them.”

Grundish rounds the corner. Askew is holding Chancho’s corpse steady on top of Alf the Sacred Burro while Jerry lashes the body to the donkey with duct tape. The jackass’s legs tremble, and he hocks up bits and pieces of some previous meal. Grundish stares at the bizarre scene, unsure what to think. Alf tucks his ears back and hangs his head low. He dredges up a ripe throat turd and drops it on the floor in protest.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” says Jerry. “For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled. What’s so important that you had to come down here and leave your post?”

“They want a hostage. If we don’t give one of you guys over to them, they’re gonna storm the place.”

“Then give ’em Dora and make some sort of lame request in exchange for her, like maybe ask for twenty supreme pizzas or something,” says Jerry. Objections form on Askew’s lips like a nascent cold sore but are not given the opportunity to fester and spread. “I know, Askew, you don’t want to lose her. But if you let her go now, she can hook up with you once you’re safe. Trust me on this if you want to get out of here alive. Plus, she’s better off getting out of here. Do you really want her caught in the crossfire from those thugs out there?”

Askew shuts his slackened jaw and nods his concurrence.

“Okay,” says Grundish. But, instead of moving he just stands and stares at the dead Mexican taped to his donkey friend.

“What are you waiting for, Boy? You don’t get up there and talk to them now, they’ll be shaking our windows and rattling our walls,” barks Jerry. “Get moving. Now! You better start swimming, or you’ll sink like a stone.”

“All right, I’m moving,” says Grundish as he turns. “But, that’s a hell of a way to treat a donkey.”

•  •  •

Crouched again behind the oil drums, Grundish counts the men near the front gate. Nineteen in all. “Okay,” says Grundish into the bullhorn. “Mojado?”

“I’m here. And you can call me Piso.”

“Mojado. We’re gonna send out the whore. We got her ready to go. But I need you to do something for us.”

“Give me your demands, and I’ll run them up the chain of command.”

“I’m gonna need two cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon (cold), a carton of Blue Llamas, a box of surgical gloves, and twenty supreme pizzas from Hungry Howie’s – hold the olives.”

Mojado looks over the top of his car to Detective Carter. Carter nods to him and points at his watch. “Okay,” says Mojado, “it’s going to take us a little while to get all of that together. Now, are you going to want any bread sticks or chicken wings with the pizza? Or maybe a couple of 2-liters of cola? They usually have pretty good package deals, and we might be able to scrounge up a couple of coupons.”

“Just the pizza,” answers Grundish.

“All right, then. You go ahead and send out the girl,” says Mojado. “What’s her name?”

“Her name is Dora. And I ain’t sending her out until we have everything I just demanded.” Grundish knows that he is risking blowing the deal but holds out to stall just a little longer, hopefully long enough to allow Jerry to orchestrate their escape.

Carter nods again at Mojado. Mojado calls a deputy over and puts his hand on the man’s shoulder. After briefly conferring, the deputy gets in his cruiser and drives away. “Deputy Ceñal is on his way to the In-n-Out Mart, and we’re phoning in the order to Hungry Howie’s right now. It looks like we’re gonna try to work together on this, right? I mean, we’re going to give you what you want, and you’re going to stay cool in there. Nobody else gets hurt. Right?”

“We don’t want to hurt anybody,” says Grundish. “We’re cool. Just get us the stuff I asked for, and we’ll send out the whore.”

•  •  •

Forty-two minutes later:
Deputy Ceñal returns, hauling an armful of cheap beer and a carton of Blue Llamas from his back seat. Ceñal sets everything down on the hood of Mojado’s car.

“All right, Mr. Grundish,” says Mojado into his handset, “we have your beer and cigarettes. The pizza is on the way. Can you come out and get your stuff?”

Grundish eyes the men at the gate. It still looks like the same amount of people. Everybody holding their position. “I’m going to send the whore out to bring the beer and smokes back to us. I want you to carry everything through the gate, and put it on the ground about twenty feet away from the building. Go back to your position, and I will send the whore out to pick everything up for us.”

Detective Carter nods his approval at Mojado. The mustachioed, bottom-heavy man hefts the beer and cigarettes and carries them past the gate, setting them twenty feet out from the building. He backs away again, his eyes fixed on the steel cans that conceal Grundish. A SWAT team sniper sets his sight one inch above the top of the oil drum that hides Grundish, ready to explode his skull with a burst of lead slugs in the event of any shenanigans or skullduggery.

•  •  •

Dora emerges from the front door of the building. Several of the officers with their sights trained on the door pull their guns down when they see that the young, sickly-skinny girl is not accompanied by either of her abductors. She reaches the beer and smokes and bends over, her rump facing the police, the bottom of her ass cheeks hanging just below the high cut fringed edges of her hiked-up jean shorts, showing a sweet crease of flesh where the rounded parts meet the thighs. Emaciated and clearly worn down by her short years, Dora’s presentation still manages to draw curious glances from most of the posse.

Just inside the building, Askew opens the door for Dora, careful not to expose himself to the police. Once inside she sets down the goods and embraces her man. “I don’t wanna leave you, Baby,” she says, her eyes welling up with tears. “If they’re gonna shoot you, I want to be here with you. Don’t make me go out there.” Her arms wrap around his body, fiercely gripping him, holding him tight to the moment.

“Baby Doll, you gotta do this,” says Askew, reciprocating with a firm embrace, not wanting to let go. “There’s two ways this can turn out for me. Either I get away and you join up with us later, or they put me in the marble orchard. ‘Cuz they ain’t takin’ me alive. I can’t spend the rest of my days in some prison, staring out at the real world through some
bob wire
fences.” He kisses her forehead. “I think Jerry just may be able to get us out of here safely. But you gotta go along with the program. Otherwise we’re both dead meat. And I can’t have that. So give me one last kiss before you walk out the door. Give me something to hold as a
momento
until we see each other again.”

The amplified voice of Detective Mojado, muffled by the building, interrupts them. “Mr. Grundish. We now have the pizza sitting just outside of the building for you. Please send the girl out to get the pizza. And then I trust that you will release her to us.”

“Go get those pizzas, Baby.” Askew peels Dora from his body. “I need you to go along with the plan. You understand?”