Schaefer grinned. “No way,” he replied, doing his best impression of a happy-go-lucky kid. “Coke sticks to the Teflon when you cook it down.”
The woman smiled back. “No problem. I’ll toss in a couple of cans of Pam.”
In the truck one of the cops muttered, “Asshole. Coke doesn’t stick to Teflon.”
”C’mon, Schaef,” Rawlings said, knowing Schaefer couldn’t hear him. “Don’t swap dumb jokes with the broad, just make the damn buy!”
In the back, one of the techs glanced up from the equipment, then nudged his neighbor and pointed out the back window. “Oh, great,” he said. “We’ve got company.”
A man in a ragged trench coat was approaching the van unsteadily, standing on tiptoe as if trying to peer in through the windows in the rear doors. The windows were covered with one-way foil, so he wouldn’t see anything, but still, no one involved with the operation wanted anything to draw any attention to the van.
”Some homeless geek looking for a smash and grab,” the cop nearest the door said. “Want me to get out there and shoo him away?”
Rawlings shook his head. “Not when we’re in Baby’s line of sight,” he said. “Just keep an eye on him.”
”Got it,” the man by the rear door said. He turned to look out the back window again just in time to see the derelict pull a. 357 from under his trench coat.
”Oh, my God…” the cop said, just before the bum pulled the trigger and the plastic window shattered. Half a second later, before anyone could react, a second shot took the top off the cop’s head.
The third shot punched through another cop’s throat; the fourth missed, and Rawlings actually got off a shot of his own before a slug went through his right eye.
Rawlings’s shot missed the “derelict” completely and ricocheted off the second story of an office building half a block away.
The last cop, a technician who’d never fired his gun outside the department shooting range before, was still fumbling with the flap on his holster when the “derelict’s” sixth bullet took him down.
”What the hell?” Schaefer said, whirling at the sound of gunfire.
Something had gone wrong; he knew that much instantly. He didn’t know yet what had gone wrong, but it had to be bad. He’d heard six shots, one after another, from a high-caliber handgun not anything his backup was carrying. For a moment he completely forgot about the woman he’d been trying to bust.
That was a mistake.
”You should have gone for the pans, sweetheart,” Baby said, pulling a. 45 from under the counter. As she did, a big man with a shaved head, tattoos, and a pump-action shotgun stepped out of the back room. The shotgun was aimed directly at Schaefer’s head.
”Don’t you think so, Detective Schaefer?” Baby said. “If you’d just come in for a nice set of aluminum ware we might’ve avoided a whole shit load of trouble.”
Schaefer stared at Baby for a moment, considering the automatic in her hand, then turned and looked over the punk with the shotgun.
The gun was held nice and steady, not wavering at all, and Schaefer could see that finger crooked on the trigger, ready to pull. Baby’s hand was steady, too.
Reluctantly Schaefer raised his hands. He might have tried jumping one opponent, but the combination of the two was too much.
He wanted to know what the hell had just happened outside, where his backup was, whether he still had any backup, but it didn’t look as if anyone was going to answer his questions just now. He had a sneaking suspicion that if he headed for the door, he’d catch a bullet in the back.
Baby strolled around the counter, showing off those fishnets and her blood-red spike heels. She stepped up to Schaefer and shoved the. 45 under his chin. “When are you cops going to learn?” she said. “Nothing goes down around here that Baby doesn’t know about.” She reached out and ran the fingers of her left hand under the leather coat and across Schaefer’s shirt while her right held the gun in place. The gesture was a mockery of eroticism; Schaefer knew she wasn’t fondling him. She was looking for something.
She found it. Her fingertips brushed the wire under Schaefer’s shirt, and she ripped the shirt open, exposing the tiny microphone.
”Cute little thing,” she said.
”You like it?” Schaefer said. “Keep going-you might find a CD player strapped to-”
”Shut up!” she said, slapping the. 45 across his face. It stung, but Schaefer didn’t feel anything broken or bleeding-Baby had just been making a point. If she wanted to, he didn’t doubt she could do far worse, so he knew she hadn’t been trying to hurt him.
Not yet, anyway.
Just then, before Schaefer could reply or Baby could comment further, the ripping sound of nearby full-auto gunfire interrupted the conversation.
The three in the shop froze.
”What the fuck…” the man with the shotgun said-the first words Schaefer had heard him speak. He had a squeaky tenor that didn’t match his broad shoulders. He kept the shotgun trained on Schaefer, glancing uneasily back and forth, as he headed for the shop’s display window.
He didn’t reach it; instead, the window reached him, bursting in a shower of shattered glass as the old man in the trench coat came flying through it amid another burst of machine-gun fire.
”Son of a bitch!” Baby said. She turned and ran for the back door, the. 45 still in her hand.
Schaefer didn’t worry about that; he’d stationed a man out back, just in case, and if that cop couldn’t handle Baby, then the department was in worse shape than Schaefer thought.
The shotgunner, unaware of his boss’s sudden exit, picked himself up from the welter of broken glass and pumped two rounds into the street at random.
”Fuck!” he screamed. “Baby, it’s fucked somehow! They got Arturo!”
”What do you know, Einstein,” Schaefer said. “So they did!” He had no weapon, since he’d thought they might check him out before closing the buy, and the other man still had the shotgun, but Schaefer didn’t hesitate before launching himself in a flying tackle.
The two men landed in a clatter of kitchenware; the shotgun put another round through the shop ceiling before flying from its owner’s hands.
The man turned over in Schaefer’s grip, though, and locked his hands around the detective’s throat.
”Die, motherfucker!” he said. He squeezed.
Those shoulders weren’t just for looks, Schaefer realized. “Potty-mouth,” he grunted, forcing the words out in a harsh whisper. “And speaking of pots…” He picked up a heavy-duty frying pan from the store’s scattered stock and slammed it down on his opponent’s head.
The grip on his neck suddenly loosened.
”Take a look,” Schaefer said as he pulled free. He held up the pan. “Drugs,” he said. Then he slammed it down on the other man’s head again, just to be sure. “That’s drugs on your brain. Your brain on drugs. Whatever.”
He climbed to his feet, tossed the pan aside, then asked his unconscious foe, “Any questions?”
”Yeah, I got a question,” Baby said from the back-room doorway. “You gonna run, or you gonna die?”
She was holding an M-16, Schaefer realized. What’s more, she was pointing it directly at him. She hadn’t been fleeing at all when she’d left; she’d just been going back for more firepower.
He dove for cover behind a rack of flour and sugar canisters as she opened fire, and then he began crawling, looking for something he could use as shelter.
Baby continued to spray bullets into the merchandise for another few seconds, until the click of an empty chamber told her she’d used up her ammunition.
”Damn it!” she shouted as she realized she had missed him. She yanked the spent clip and fumbled with a new one. “Where are you, big boy? Come out, come out wherever you are!”