A Constant Reminder (6 page)

Adam glanced out the glass-walled window and then at the cashier’s head smashed on the countertop.

“Listen kid.” Adam leaned down and spoke into the cashier’s ear. “You’re going to get up slowly and open that cash register real slow. If not, my friend with the gun is going to blow your brains out and all over the fucking lottery machine. You hear me!”

“Yeah, yeah.” The cashier sniveled.

“If you make one move he doesn’t like, you’re going to die tonight. You got that?”

“Yeah, yeah I, I got it.”

“Slowly. Open the register.” Adam ordered. “Get up. Slow”

The cashier rose slowly and moved to stand in front of the register. The frightened young man punched four keys on the register keypad. The register drawer swung open.

Adam reached over the counter and snatched all the bills from the separation compartments. He raised the bottom drawer of the register and removed the larger bills. Adam began to quickly count the money.

Adam and Tony thrived in the heat of the moment. They didn’t notice the door at the rear of the store. The rear door was slightly ajar.

While Tony and Adam weren’t in a full-on disguise, their baseball caps seemed to be enough to shield their descriptions from the video cameras stationed throughout the store.

There was a small cramped room behind the door that was ajar. The room was the storage area and the break room for the employees that worked in the convenience store. There were boxes of overstocked merchandise, a small file cabinet, a desk, a cheap office chair, a small table with three folding chairs and the steel safe. Tony and Adam still hadn’t noticed the door.

In the entryway of the small room stood the store manager. He was a tall slender white man of about forty or fifty years old. He stood silently behind the pushed open door. He listened quietly. He had no desire to show his face. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He had no desire to be a hero. He was laid off from his job and had to take this one to feed his family. He hated this place and clearly he had a good reason.

“How much?” Tony asked Adam.

“Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy and about eleven singles.”

“That ain’t shit! Hell, where’s the safe?” Tony yelled to the trembling cashier. “Hey punk where’s the safe?” He asked again.

“The safe, it’s in the back.” The cashier pointed at the break room door just as the store manager slowly moved away from the door and out of sight.

“In that room back there?” Adam asked although the answer was obvious. Adam pointed to the door that the store manager was hiding behind.

“Yeah but I don’t have the combination. I’m just a clerk. They don’t tell me nothing around here.”

Tony chuckled. “Do you think we’re stupid? I know you got the combination, the key, whatever.”

“Maybe he really doesn’t know it.” Adam said his thoughts aloud. This wasn’t their normal routine. This time it seemed to be taking longer than normal. What happened to in and out?

“No way bro, he’s fucking lying. I know he’s lying.”

“Dude, I’m not lying.” The cashier assured them.

“You shut up! Let’s go look at it.” Tony demanded. “Hurry up!”

Tony palmed the cashier’s neck in his hand and led him backwards toward the break room door. He held on to the cashier to insure he wouldn’t run off. He thought he was being cautious.

Adam was on the opposite side of the counter. He followed them and glanced out the window a few times. He had to make sure the police or other customers weren’t coming into the store. At this time of night, the streets were mostly quiet and devoid of people.

Before they could make it to the break room, suddenly the door swung open. The store manager was standing only a few feet away from them. He was directly in front of the cashier, Tony and Adam.

The manager was holding a handgun. The older man’s trembling hands were straight out in front of him. The barrel was pointed at Tony and the cashier.

“Put your gun down!” The manager yelled with a shaky bravado.

“If you shoot me, you shoot him!” Tony barked.

Tony had sluggish reflexes but he wasn’t able to keep hold of the cashier’s neck. Tony held the cashier in a tight headlock instead. He placed the nozzle of the gun to the bewildered young man’s temple. Things were happening at a high rate of speed all around Tony. He felt like he was moving in slow motion. He felt like his perception was off.

“Listen kid, you put the gun down!” The manager powerfully protested.

“No, you put your fucking gun down!” Tony shouted, startling Adam out of his utter shock. This had never happened to them. This was new. They never rehearsed this part of the play.

Adam began to gradually back away from the commotion. He had the urge to bolt. The manager nervously pointed the gun at Adam then back at Tony.

“I called the police! You better let him go and get out of here!”

“No old man you better put your goddamn gun down before I blow his brains all over the goddamn doughnuts!”

“T, dude, let’s get outta here!” Adam’s fear was apparent and palpable. Things had never gotten so out of hand. It was time to flee the scene.

“So he can shoot us in the back when we’re making our getaway! No way!” Tony’s distrust was evident. “You better put the goddamn gun down!” Tony screamed at the manager like his screams held mystical powers. Tony pressed his handgun firmly into the side of the teary-eyed cashier’s head.

The manager took one step forward. He was brave in the face of the stress and chaos. He had been robbed before. One of the reasons he hated that job so much. But he was tired of these thieves running amuck in the streets. He was tired of these low-life punks doing whatever they wanted no matter the cost.

Tony quickly removed the gun from the cashier’s face and pointed it at the manager. He somehow thought this brazen action would get his point across. His underlying fear and his unsteady hands betrayed him. Tony pulled the trigger.

BAM!!!

The gunshot echoed in the quiet of the night. Adam dropped all the cash bills from his hands. The impact of the gunshot pushed the manager backwards onto a display of potato chips.

The various dollar bills floated down onto the floor and landed a few seconds after the body of the manager bounced off the display rack and smacked the floor.

The center of the manager’s dingy white button up shirt was covered with an almost perfect red circle of blood. Miscellaneous bags of chips were scattered about.

Somewhere in the clutter laid the gun the manager once courageously held. Tony’s panic hit hard and steadfast. He released the young cashier from his grip. The cashier crumpled.

Tony tapped the butt of his gun against his own head multiple times. He followed the action with pacing back and forth.

Adam rushed around the counter to get a closer view of the manager sprawled out on the floor. Adam’s face was covered in sweat.

“Oh man what, what, why did you go and do that?” Adam asked under duress.

Tony’s eyes were fixated on the lifeless store manager. His hand was still firmly holding the gun at his side.

“I had to. I had to.” He was pointing it at me. He was pointing the gun at me. He was going to shoot me.” Tony wasn’t sure if he had accidentally pulled the trigger or if he thought the manager was really going to shoot him. Tony stopped moving to stand like a statue.

Adam began to frantically pace up and down the narrow aisle. The store manager lay there dead. At least that’s what they thought. They never checked to see otherwise.

The terrified cashier was quiet. He was shaking and perspiring more than Adam and Tony. He was the only witness and therefore dispensable. He just knew they were going to kill him.

“Goddamn I think he’s dead. He’s not fucking moving!” Adam looked down at the manager’s motionless body.

Tony raised his gun and pointed it at the cashier that was cowering on the floor at his feet. “I can’t leave any witnesses.”

“Tony, no, Tony are you fucking crazy!”

“Why did you say my fucking name?” Tony lowered his pistol and took a few steps backwards drawing the pistol up in the air. “Adam! Adam! There I said your fucking name.”

Adam snapped out of the disbelief and looked over at Tony. “I don’t care if you say my fucking name. We’re screwed. We got to get the fuck out of here! Someone heard that gunshot.”

“Maybe he’s not dead.” Tony voiced his wishful thinking.

Adam took a few steps in the direction of the front door. Tony pointed his gun at the scared cashier. “You stay down on the ground. Don’t get up!”

The cashier obeyed. He was already down on the ground. He prayed they would leave him alive. Tony gave Adam an urgent look. He bolted out the front door with Adam on his heels. As soon as they reached the sidewalk they noticed the flashes of red and blue lights in the night sky.

The manager had really called the police. Adam thought it was a threat. The sirens proved that theory wrong.

They were only a few feet away from the van. But the van wasn’t an option. They heard the police sirens in the distance growing louder. Tony led the desperate run down the sidewalk en route to any place other than where they were.

Adam could hear the beat of his heart over the hard patter of his feet slamming into the pavement with every long distressed stride.

They had only run a quarter of the block when Adam looked back and saw the first squad car round the corner. Then the second squad car turned the corner. Did Adam think he could outrun a car? Somehow he knew he couldn’t. He was hell-bent on trying. He felt ill and he would probably die of a heart attack if he didn’t get apprehended.

A third police sports utility vehicle turned in front of them blocking their path. They both took off in opposite directions hoping to get away from their doomed fates.

CHAPTER 5

Time was a Band-Aid for some and an open festering wound for others. Adam’s luck had run out. Tony was never lucky so he was back where he had been so many times before, police custody.

Adam sauntered over in his bright orange jumpsuit. He never thought he would end up here in the County Jail. He hadn’t really been thinking at all. For years he was in a self-induced drug fog. It was much like his actions weren’t even his own. It was like he was possessed. The time in jail was one of the first times, in a long time that his mind was sharp. Sharp enough to understand the deeds and mishaps that landed him behind bars.

He knew in advance who was coming to visit him in jail. It was a routine at this point. He had been here awhile and his mother visited with him twice a week. Everyone was held in the county lock up before trial and sentencing.

Adam sat on one side of the glass partition. His mother Jane sat on the other. She would never be comfortable in this environment but she had to see her son. It didn’t help that this had made the local papers. Adam knew he was an embarrassment to the good upstanding Hardwick name. If only he could flip the hourglass over and start anew.

He picked up the phone receiver and motioned for his mother to do the same. They had to talk into the phones to communicate. Jane hated the distance the phones created. She hated the situation in its entirety.

“Adam.” Every time she came to see him she said his name. It was her first word to him every single time.

Adam had time to notice things like this. He was lucid now and didn’t have many things to preoccupy his mind.

Jane hated being in this filthy place. She tried to act otherwise but Adam could see through her tough exterior. His mother loathed coming here. He loathed that he had put her in such a predicament.

“Mother, I’m sorry.” Adam apologized every time he saw her. He would never have enough apologies. He had done so many terrible things to her when he should have been comforting her.

Jane took a breath. “Did you know the store manager died?”

“Vincent told me he died in the hospital a few days ago. He also said the District Attorney’s office is going to add to the armed robbery charge.”

“What does that mean?” Worry creased the lines around her eyes that her plastic surgeon had missed.

“They’re charging me with murder.”

“You didn’t shoot that man. It was that creep Tony Demarco. Everybody knows that.”

“It doesn’t matter. Illinois law is clear. There’s this thing called the Felony/Murder rule. If you are committing a felony and anyone dies during the commission of the felony, for any reason you can be charged with first degree murder.”

“Murder, you were just there.” A white privileged outrage spewed from her painted lips.

“I’m going to be charged with murder mother. You have to accept that. It’s within the law and they are really strict with this law. I’ve been reading up on this. I already know my fate.”

“I just don’t want to believe this.” Jane covered her mouth.

“Mother I swear to you. I had no idea Tony was going to shoot that guy. I don’t want to be in here. But I know why I’m here and I just have to accept it. Armed Robbery is a Class X felony.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can get a mandatory six to thirty year sentence.”