seymoure

The Locker Plan

“Chaos is a name for any order
that produces confusion in our minds.”
-George Santayana

It was like setting up bottles in a shooting gallery without being told the place was open. The sound was terrifying and confusing and without any parallel event in my experience.

We huddled behind my car wordlessly. Both the females, I noticed, were hunched down with their eyes closed. Then I noticed that Hugo’s eyes were filled with Rayleen.

Then we heard the delivery van chug around the corner of the building and head to the exit. Explosions of handguns came from the windows and were answered by rifle and machine gun fire from all sides.

When the vehicle vanished into the distance, the ringing of guns didn’t stop. It might have lessened somewhat because a third of the warring parties had escaped the battlefield. But it was a good two or three minutes before the last shot was fired.

It was another minute or so before the police joined us in front of the pizza restaurant to tell us that we were safe.

“Damn,” Cooper exclaimed. “What the hell did they do to you?”

“This,” I told him, “is not from MacPherson, but from those worthies you have just corralled. By the way, you did get them all, right?”

“We got thirteen,” he said, looking at his notebook. “We think a couple got away in the early fighting. How many did you count?”

“They said 16, but I haven’t gotten any proof.”

“Well, we’ll get the rest soon,” he said, “and then we’re going to pick up the rest at the storage locker.”

Did I mention that MacPherson was the second person that I gave the location of the money to? I had called my friend on the force before I had left Cavano’s to come here. They would be waiting with an equally well-armed battalion.

I am sure that this monster had done much of his terrorism with the idea that no one would ever have the nerve to turn him in. I know that this was a possibility since I had found myself considering just that myself before I did the right thing.

I also knew that if any of his crew escaped the locker, I was a dead man.