“Wow, you look amazing,” she said as she adjusted Lars’s bow tie. “Dad’s going to be impressed.”
“If he even shows up,” the boy muttered.
Elena suppressed a sigh. At least Lars wanted to spend time with his dad, she told herself. Not all eleven-year-old boys did.
As Lars went to grab the car keys from a dish in the kitchen, Elena gave herself one last look in the mirror. Aside from a few wrinkles around her eyes, a few extra pounds, and a single gray hair she’d found just that morning—the occupational hazards of being a mom, she’d concluded—she didn’t look half bad.
Her eyes were a bit red. She felt achy and a bit warm. She was afraid she was coming down with something, though she refused to let it slow her down, especially tonight. She loved the black cocktail dress and black pumps she was wearing. She loved her classic pearl necklace and earrings, the very ones she had bought herself in high school for special occasions. She was pleased that Marcus had cared enough to call her from the airport to give her an update. He hadn’t always done that. But he was thinking about her, about them, and she was grateful.
“It’ll only take a second, Lars,” she assured him. “Don’t worry. We won’t be late.”
After yet another sneezing fit, Elena pulled into a 7-Eleven a few blocks from their apartment to pick up some cold medicine. Lars wanted to stay in the car, but Elena insisted he come with her. It was still light out, but the corner of Eighth and E Streets in the southeast section of D.C. was no place for an eleven-year-old boy to be by himself on a Friday evening.
Lars complained all the way into the convenience store and then all the way up one aisle and down the other. He reminded her how heavy traffic would be, as if she hadn’t ever driven in the city before. He reminded her of how hard it would be to find parking if they got to the Kennedy Center late. He couldn’t argue they’d have a hard time getting decent seats, because Elena had already bought the tickets and Lars had chosen exactly where he wanted to sit—in the center, toward the front, of course. But he found other lines of attack and pressed them relentlessly.
Elena did her best to stay calm, if not exactly cheerful. She was feeling worse by the minute. Her eyes were watering. Her head was pounding. Lars’s constant grumbling about almost everything concerning life in Washington was already driving her crazy. Tonight’s riff was not helping. She didn’t want to lose her patience, though. The last thing she wanted was to ruin this special evening. She knew Marcus’s sayings about how stress was “all in her head” and she could “lay it down” at any moment. Blah, blah, blah. Maybe that worked in the Secret Service. She hadn’t exactly found it such great advice when dealing with a preadolescent boy, especially when Dad was on the road. Instead, she said a quick prayer, finished filling her basket, and headed toward the cashier to pay and be gone.
Her heart sank when she saw five other people in line ahead of her, and it sank even further when Lars started saying she should have gone to Walgreens or CVS, which he insisted were “always faster.” Elena started counting silently to fifty. She wasn’t going to lose it. Marcus was constantly telling her to count to slow down her thoughts and steady her nerves. It was advice she never followed, but there was a first time for everything.
Just then, two young men—both in their late teens—entered the store. Both were dressed in dark-blue hoodies and sunglasses that obscured their faces, but to Elena they looked Hispanic. She immediately sensed something was wrong. Before she could figure out what to do, the two drew handguns and demanded that everyone stay where they were and not make any sudden moves.
43
“Fork over all the cash in the drawer, Pops,” one of them shouted at the African American man behind the register, tossing a small duffel bag on the counter.
Elena’s heart was racing. She slowly reached for Lars, who just as slowly took her hand and squeezed it tightly.
“Let’s go, let’s go; we don’t got all night!” the leader demanded, waving a pistol in the face of the terrified clerk.
The man’s hands were trembling. He was trying to open the register, but it was taking too long.
“Look at me, Pops. Look at me!”
The gray-haired gentleman looked up. Elena could see the fear in his eyes and knew she had the same look in her own.
“Now, I’m gonna count to three, and when I get to three, that register better be open, or I’m gonna shoot you in your brain. You got that?”
The man nodded and immediately went back to work. The register finally popped open, and he began stuffing the duffel bag with cash.
“Move, move; come on, let’s go,” barked the leader, who then glanced back at his partner to make sure everything behind him was okay.
Elena glanced at him too. The kid was standing a few feet to her left, near the door. He was aiming his pistol at the line of customers, making sure none of them did anything stupid. At the same time he was constantly looking outside at a rusty green Plymouth Duster idling out front. Elena didn’t have a good view of the driver, but she could tell he, too, was nervous by the way he kept revving the engine every few moments, like he was trying to signal his partners that they’d already been in there way too long.
She glanced at the door. It was less than ten feet away from them, and it was unlocked. Yes, it was being guarded by the kid to her left. But would he really shoot them if they suddenly bolted out of the store to safety? These punks were thieves, but were they cold-blooded murderers? Elena doubted it.
Elena knew exactly what Marcus would be doing if he were there. He’d have been armed, and she had no doubt he would have drawn down on these two and given them a single and clear ultimatum: drop their weapons or die. She also knew what he’d tell her: do whatever these hoodlums told them, stand still, stay calm, and don’t try to be a hero. He was right, of course. It would be foolish to bolt. This would all be over in a moment.
What neither Elena nor the hoodlums had accounted for was the off-duty D.C. cop in the restroom. Hearing all the commotion, he slowly came out of the men’s room and down the aisle behind them with his service weapon drawn.
“Police—hands up and no one dies!” he shouted.
The kid to Elena’s left turned quickly to see who was behind him. The moment his gun came around, the policeman fired three shots in a row. One went wide and blew out the glass door. Another struck the boy in the chest. The third hit him in the throat. The boy flew backward through the shattered glass and landed on the pavement.
The store erupted in gunfire as the leader wheeled around and began firing everything he had and the cop returned fire. When it was all over and the smoke cleared, the driver and the second gunman were gone, and four people lay dead—the kid in the hoodie, sprawled out on the pavement, the off-duty policeman, Lars, and Elena.