Hostage

Mars was watching. Dennis felt himself flush, and wondered if Mars was judging him. Mars was a boulder of a guy; dense and quiet, watchful, with the patience of a rock. Dennis had noticed that about Mars on the job site; Mars considered people. He would watch a conversation, say, like when two of the Mexicans hammered a third to throw in with them on buying some tamales. Mars would watch, not really part of it but above it, as if he could see all the way back to when they were born, see them wetting the bed when they were five or jerking off when they thought they were alone. Then he would make a vacant smile like he knew everything they might do now or in the future, even about the goddamned tamales. It was creepy, sometimes, that expression on his face, but Mars thought that Dennis had good ideas and usually went along. First time they met, four days ago, Dennis felt that his destiny was finally at hand. Here was Mars, charged with some dangerous electrical potential that crackled under his skin, and he did whatever Dennis told him.

'Mars, we're gonna do this. We're robbing this fuckin' store.'

Mars climbed out of the truck, so cool that even heat like this couldn't melt him.

'Let's do it.'

Kevin didn't move. The two kids pedaled away.

'No one's here, Kevin! All you have to do is stand by the door and watch. This fat fuck will cough right up with the cash. They're insured, so they just hand over the cash. They get fired if they don't.'

Dennis grabbed his brother's T-shirt. The Lemonheads, for chrissake. His fucking brother was a lemonhead. Mars was already halfway to the door.

'Get out of the truck, you turd. You're making us look bad.'

Kevin wilted and slid out like a fuckin' baby.

JUNIOR KIM, JR.

KIM'S MINIMART

Junior Kim, Jr., knew a cheese dip when he saw one.

Junior, a second-generation Korean-American, had put in sixteen years behind a minimart counter in the Newton area of Los Angeles. Down in Shootin' Newton (as the LAPD called it), Junior had been beaten, mugged, stabbed, shot at, clubbed, and robbed forty-three times. Enough was enough. After sixteen years of that, Junior, his wife, their six children, and all four grandparents had bailed on the multicultural melting pot of greater LA, and moved north to the far less dangerous demographic of bedroom suburbia.

Junior was not naïve. A minimart, by its nature, draws cheese dips like bad meat draws flies. Even here in Bristo Camino, you had your shoplifters (mostly teenagers, but often men in business suits), your paperhangers (mostly women), your hookers passing counterfeit currency (driven up from LA by their pimps), and your drunks (mostly belligerent white men sprouting gin blossoms). Lightweight stuff compared to LA, but Junior believed in being prepared. After sixteen years of hard-won inner-city lessons, Junior kept 'a little something' under the counter for anyone who got out of hand.

When three cheese dips walked in that Friday afternoon, Junior leaned forward so that his chest touched the counter and his hands were hidden.

'May I help you?'

A skinny kid in a Lemonheads T-shirt stayed by the door. An older kid in a faded black wife-beater and a large man with a shaved head walked toward him, the older kid raising his shirt to show the ugly black grip of a pistol. 'Two packs of Marlboros for my friend here and all the cash you got in that box, you gook motherfucker.'

Junior Kim could read a cheese dip a mile away.

His face impassive, Junior fished under the counter for his 9mm Glock. He found it just as the cheese dip launched himself over the counter. Junior lurched to his feet, bringing up the Glock as the black-shirted dip crashed into him. Junior hadn't expected this asshole to jump over the counter, and hadn't been able to thumb off the safety.

The larger man shouted, 'He's got a gun!'

Everything happened so quickly that Junior wasn't sure whose hands were where. The black shirt forgot about his own gun and tried to twist away Junior's. The big guy reached across the counter, also grabbing for the gun. Junior was more scared now than any of the other times he had pulled his weapon. If he couldn't release the safety before this kid pulled his own gun, or wrestled away Junior's, Junior knew that he would be fucked. Junior Kim was in a fight for his life.

Then the safety slipped free, and Junior Kim, Jr., knew that he had won.

He said, 'I gotcha, you dips.'

The Glock went off, a heavy 9mm explosion that made the cheese dip's eyes bulge with a terrible surprise.

Junior smiled, victorious.

'Fuck you.'

Then Junior felt the most incredible pain in his chest. It filled him as if he were having a heart attack. He stumbled back into the Slurpee machine as the blood spilled out of his chest and spread across his shirt. Then he slid to the floor.

The last thing Junior heard was the cheese dip by the door, shouting, 'Dennis! Hurry up! Somebody's outside!'

MARGARET HAMMOND,

WITNESS