Blau raised his hands.
When the men were six or seven feet away, Blau said, “I’m not armed. I’ll give you whatever you want. Just don’t hurt me.”
“OK, man. We don’t want to hurt anyone,” said one of the robbers. He seemed to be in charge. And he seemed to be a youngish man. His voice was young.
Blau tried to take in everything about him so he could give a good report of the robbery after it was over. He thought the guy who had talked to him was about five ten. And Blau saw from his hands that he was white. He couldn’t describe the man’s build because of the boxy shape of the Windbreaker, but he thought he might be able to recognize the guy’s voice if he ever heard it again.
Blau said, “What do you want? My wallet is in my back pocket. Take it. I’ve got a few hundred in cash in there. And my watch is pretty new. Take that, too.”
Blau was still holding the keys in his hand. There was nothing he could do about that.
A different one of the three men said, “Let’s go into your store, OK, Mr. Blau?”
They knew him. They knew who he was. Blau felt faint. He’d never had a gun pointed at him before. He almost said, “Do I know you?” but shut the thought down.
If the guy thought Blau knew him … He thought of Donna. He prayed she wouldn’t show up now. She wouldn’t be able to handle this.
Blau said, “OK. I’m going to open the door now, and let’s do this fast before customers come in.”
“Lead the way, Mr. Blau,” said one of the masked men. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 32
BLAU FIDDLED WITH the gates and the keys and the double locks. His hands were shaking and he could smell his own sweat. He thought there was every chance he could be living his last minutes on this earth. He got the front door locks open, and then the door creaked and swung wide, and then he hit the lights so that when his wife showed up, she could see through the plate glass window. See that this was a holdup.
Please, Donna, don’t come into the store.
One of the fucking armed robbers complained, “Hey. We don’t need no steenking light, man.”
“I have to see so I can open the safe,” Blau said. “Believe me, I want you out fast. I’m happy to give you the money, all right? Just trust me, OK? I’m working with you.”
Blau didn’t wait for a reply. He walked deliberately and quickly past the block of folding chairs, all the way to the back of the store where the lines were painted on the floor, delineating aisles leading to the teller windows. Next to the windows, on the far right side of the wall, was the security door that divided the store into the public space and the office area behind it.
The safe was in the office. Blau turned his back to the robbers to open the door, telling those shits, “After I give you the money, you can go out the back door. Be safer for you.”
The men, maybe they were boys, the way they were all jumpy, were crowding into the office area with him. One of them, the smallest pig, was getting anxious, looking around, saying “Let’s go let’s go let’s go.”
Blau turned his eyes away from the credenza where he kept the shotgun and pointed out the wooden cabinet below the counter.
“The safe’s in here,” he said.
The one who had been saying “Let’s go” was now saying “Come on come on come on.”
Blau’s hands were out of control. He could barely hold a key, and both the key and the cabinet lock were small. He poked at the lock until he finally got the key into it, turned it, and opened the lower cabinet where he kept the old cast-iron safe. Taking no chances, he angled his body so they could see the safe and said to one of the boys, “You’re in my light.”
He tried not to look at the kid, give him any sense whatsoever that he knew who he was, but his mind was running through the faces of all the kids, white, black, Latino, who came into this place to cash checks. His tellers talked to them. The transactions were brief. The only time he ever talked to a customer was when there was a problem.
“Step on it, Daddy,” said a guy with a gun.
Blau said, “I am stepping on it.”
He went for the safe with both hands, but at the last minute, he pressed the silent alarm, a button right under the lip of the cabinet. Then he turned the knurled knob of the safe. He knew the combination as well as he knew his own birthday, but he accidentally went past the second number and had to start over.
The kid standing closest to him put the muzzle of his gun right next to Blau’s temple and said, “You have till the count of three.
“One …”
That was when a lot of things happened at once.
The combination lock clicked into place and Blau swung the safe door open. The guys in the police Windbreakers focused on the envelopes of money inside the safe. And the front door of the shop was kicked open.
Cops swarmed in, yelling “Everyone freeze! Hands in the air!”
Blau crouched behind the counter and covered his head. He jerked with the sound of every cracking gunshot. And there were a lot of them.
“Please, God,” he prayed, “make this all stop.”
CHAPTER 33
BY THE TIME Conklin and I arrived at the Cash ’n’ Go, Market Street looked like Red Hot Sales Day at a used-car lot. I counted a dozen cruisers with every grille and cherry light flashing, two ambulances parked down the block on Sixteenth, the ME’s van pulling in, and the CSU mobile blocking the view of the store.
That must’ve been a disappointment to the many bystanders behind the barrier tape, crowding the sidewalks on both sides of the narrow street. But then a chopper appeared overhead, guaranteeing live pictures on Eyewitness News.
Windbreaker Cops Strike Again.
My partner and I left our car up on the curb between a Jilly’s Gym and the Third Hand Rose Consignment Shoppe and walked toward Swanson and Vasquez, our superstar Robbery squad partners also working this case.
They were standing outside the Cash ’n’ Go. After a couple of days canvassing the area around Mercado de Maya with them, I’d found Swanson both efficient and kind. Vasquez was easygoing, and the pair of them were very professional.
I had to admit that Brady had made a good call putting them and their four men on the Windbreaker cop detail.
Vasquez smiled, relief written all over his face, saying, “I got my witnesses in the car. Taking the Blaus back to the house to take their statements. Then I’m gonna go out with my lady and celebrate.”
After some fancy wheel work, Vasquez peeled off, and Swanson said to us, “Three John Does are down inside the store, all wearing Windbreakers, none of them breathing.”
Conklin and I followed Swanson under the tape and through the door. The interior of the Cash ’n’ Go was lined with pressed-wood paneling; counters ran at elbow height around two sides so people could sign their checks and fill out paperwork. There were a dozen metal folding chairs in the center of the store, all of which had been knocked out of line; white strips on the floor leading to three teller windows; and an open security door at the end of the room.
Two bodies lay sprawled on the floor between the chairs, blood pooling on the lino. I could see the body of a third where he had fallen across the threshold of the security door. Bullets had punched holes in the paneling, and shell casings were all over the floor.
Conklin said to Swanson, “Quite the shooting gallery. What happened exactly?”
Swanson called over one of the men on his team, Tommy Calhoun, a young guy, going bald at the back of his head, a cigarette smoker to judge by the nicotine stains on his fingers.
Calhoun gave us an animated summary of the Windbreaker cops’ attack on the check-cashing store, including the owner tapping the silent alarm.
At about the same time Blau hit the alarm, his wife was seeing the robbery in progress through the plate glass. She called it in, then flagged down a cruiser for good measure.