True Allegiance

Still, he could feel the sweat popping on his brow. This wasn’t his first robbery, but it was his first solo response. No senior partner to help out this time. Short-staffing and budget cuts.

The gas station looked empty when he pulled up. Grass had pushed its way through the cement of the lot. Graffiti marked the station—illiterate bubble letters; O’Sullivan had given up on trying to decode that shit long ago—and the lights on the street flickered eerily. Rows of broken-down townhouses marked the surrounding side streets. Across the Earle Memorial Highway, there was an abandoned church, covered in graffiti, a couple boarded-up brick buildings. An open field bordered the gas station to the east.

He didn’t see anybody on the street as he pulled up next to the quick mart. A couple of those windows were boarded up, too. He peeked through the window—nobody was behind the counter. The place looked closed. But he couldn’t be sure from the car.

The car door creaked as he pushed it open with his foot. O’Sullivan reached out for the secure feeling of the gun on his hip—it was warm to the touch, comforting. He took his hand off the butt of the pistol and pulled his flashlight from his belt, turned it on.

Nothing. Just dark and quiet.

He looked through the glass door, saw the racks of Funyuns and Doritos. The cashier’s counter lay behind a thick pane of double-plexiglass. Nobody sat behind it.

Then he heard the voice.

“Hey, pig,” it said. The voice wasn’t deep. It was the voice of a child. And the kid stood outside the door of the quick mart, legs spread, arms hanging down by his sides. A cute black kid, wearing a Simpsons T-shirt and somebody’s old Converse sneakers and baggy jeans.

On his hip, stuck in those baggy jeans, was a pistol.

It looked like a pistol, anyway. But O’Sullivan couldn’t see clearly. The light wasn’t right. He could see the bulge, but not the object.

O’Sullivan put his flashlight back in his belt and put his hand back on his pistol, the greasy handle still warm to the touch.

“Stop right there, pig,” the kid said. His hand began to creep down toward his waistband.

O’Sullivan pulled the gun out of its holster, leveling it at the kid. “Put your hands above your head. Do it now!”

“Fuck you, honky,” the kid shot back. “Get the fuck out of my neighborhood.” Then he laughed, a cute kid’s laugh. O’Sullivan looked for sympathy behind those eyes, found none.

Oh, shit, O’Sullivan thought. Then he said, “Hands up. Right now.”

The kid laughed again, a musical tinkling noise. “You ain’t gonna shoot me, pig. What, you afraid of a kid?”

O’Sullivan could feel every breath as it entered his lungs. “No, kid, I don’t want to shoot you,” he said. “But I need you to cooperate. Put your hands above your head. Right now.”

The kid’s hand shifted to his waistband again. O’Sullivan’s hands began to shake.

“Get the fuck out of my neighborhood,” the kid repeated.

O’Sullivan looked around stealthily. Still nobody on the street. Totally empty. The sweat on his forehead felt cold in the night air. In the retraining sessions at the station, they’d told officers to remember the nasty racial legacy of the department, be aware of the community’s justified suspicion of police. Right now, all O’Sullivan was thinking about was getting this kid with the empty eyes to back the fuck off.

“Go on home,” he said.

“You go home, white boy,” said the kid. His hand moved lower.

Suddenly, O’Sullivan’s head filled with a sudden clarity, his brain with a preternatural energy. He recognized the feel of the adrenaline hitting. He wasn’t going to get shot on the corner of Iowa and Van Dyke outside a shitty convenience store in a shitty town by some eight-year-old, bleed out in the gutter of some city the world left behind. He had a life, too.

The gun felt alive in his hand. The gun was life.

The muzzle was aimed dead at the kid’s chest. No way to miss, with the kid this close, just ten feet away maybe. Still cloaked in the shadow of the gas station overhang.

“Kid, I’m not going to ask you again. I need you to put your hands on top of your head and get on your knees.”

“Fuck you, motherfucker.”

“I’m serious.”

The kid’s hand was nearly inside his waistband now.

“Don’t do that,” O’Sullivan said.

The kid smiled, almost gently.

“Don’t.”

The kid’s smile broadened, the hand moved down into the pants. “Get the fuck out of my hood,” the kid cheerfully repeated. “I’ll cap your ass.”

“Kid, I’m warning you,” O’Sullivan yelled. “Put your hands above your head! Do it now…”

The roar shattered the night air, a sonic boom in the blackness. The shot blew the kid off his feet completely, knocked him onto his back.

O’Sullivan reached for his radio, mechanically reported it: “Shots fired, officer needs help at the gas station on Iowa and Van Dyke.”