The Bialy Pimps (56 page)

“Down!” the man in front shouted. “Down on the floor! Everyone!”

Many of the people in the front room were drunk, and simply fell as they tried to get into a prone position. Beckie, who was leading the crew around the counter and out onto the stage, froze short of the half door and dropped behind it. Everyone else followed suit.

“They’re hiding!” A second policeman yelled. “Behind that counter! Take cover! Take cover! They’ve dug in!”

The three policemen dove behind tables and crouched, weapons drawn and ready.

“Hands up!” the first officer yelled. “We saw you dive for cover back there! Don’t try to get a jump on us!
Hands up!”

After a pause, the second officer tried. “He said, ‘Hands up!’”

Another pause, then a voice behind the counter said, “They
are
up.”

“What was that back there?”

Mike’s voice was muffled by the floor, which he had his mouth to. “I said that our hands
are
up.”

“No screwing around!”

“I swear. You just can’t see it because we’re behind this wall.”

“Don’t try me! We saw you dive behind that wall for cover!”

“You told us to lie down.”

“Oh. Right,” said the first officer. “Then stand up, and do it slow!”

The employees stood, and that was when the second officer saw Philip’s gun.

“Gun!”
he yelled, and then there were two staccato gunshots from the policemen’s firearms. Several of the prone guests shrieked. The first shot struck the photo of Vanilla Ice at the Grammys dead between the eyes. The second struck the gun and sent it whirling from Philip’s hand like a propeller, making him gasp.

“Hands
up!
Keep ‘em where we can see ‘em!”

“We make bagels!” Rich yelled. “No need to be alarmed!”

“Hands
up!
Don’t move!”

“Their hands are up, sir,” said the third officer.

“Shut up, Greene,” said the first officer, who wore a sergeant’s insignia. “Jenkins, get that gun.”

Jenkins walked over to the weapon and inspected it. “Sir? It’s a spatula, sir.”

“Just look for the gun, Jenkins.”

“I did, sir. The gun is a spatula.”

“It is?”

“Yes, sir. And you
fucked
it
up
, sir.” He held the thing up. The bullet had twisted the stainless steel into something that looked like an oversized corkscrew.

The sergeant swore. “Greene!” he said. “Cuff them.”

“Sir?”

“Dammit, Greene, you’re on thin ice with the captain as it is, after you brought in that dumbass kid who was running through the streets in a frenzy last night. So get on it and don’t give me any lip.”

“The dumbass kid was this gentleman here, sir,” Greene informed him, gesturing to Captain Dipshit.

The sergeant turned to Captain Dipshit. “That was you?
You
were the one everyone was talking about?
You
were the one yelling about rats and Satan and Mickey Mouse and some singing assailant and some evil bagel place that you said had to...” The sergeant trailed off, looking around, taking in the make area and the steamers and the giant chalk menu. “Oh, hell, this had better not be...”

“I tried to tell the captain,” said Greene. “I told him that we should consider this kid an unreliable source, that he...”

“You’re on thin fucking ice, Greene.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will address me as
‘sir’!”

“I did, sir.”

“Dammit, just help your idiot partner over there cuff these drug lords.”

The Anarchist tried to protest. “We needed that Alka-Seltzer! We had colds!”

“Cuff that one first. He looks high right now. And Greene, you find the drugs.”
 

Greene had advanced to the counter and was poking around with his baton. “Looks like a deli, sir,” he reported.

“See any crack? Heroin? Pot?”

“Mostly poultry and beef. I’ll bet they could make a mean Reuben.”

“What about coke?”

Roger, who had remained seated and uninterested during the siege, announced, “Diet Coke! Medium!”

“Cuff that one, too. He looks like a pimp to me,” ordered the sergeant.

Roger began to whistle and headed for the bathroom.

Officer Greene holstered his baton. Jenkins was already putting handcuffs on the employees while the sergeant kept his gun trained on those whose hands were still free.
 

“Okay, kids,” said Greene, “where’s the coke?”

“Right back there,” said Rich, nodding to the soda machine. “The syrup boxes are in back, though.”

Greene was surveying the scene. “I don’t see anything here, sir. It just looks like a New Year’s Party.”

“And you’re going to make us miss midnight!” Angela shrieked from the floor.

Jenkins had finally noticed the cameras. The cameramen, ever the vigilant journalists, had crept back to their posts and were aiming the cameras at the officers.

“Sir?” he said.

“Yes, Jenkins, what... Are those TV cameras?” He looked again at Captain Dipshit, and the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “Oh, Christ. This isn’t that new big New Year’s show, is it? At that crazy place that serves the ba...” He turned to one of the suits. “MTV?”

The suit nodded, still frightened.

“Are the cameras still on? Live?”

He nodded again.

The sergeant swiveled to Captait Dipshit and the two lawyers. They all stood at the entrance and were watching the scene with interest.
 

“What is this?” the sergeant asked.
 

Captain Dipshit answered. ”I’d like you to arrest these people for assault. They have committed endless criminal acts, and they have a serious rat infestation.”
 

“And the drug warehouse? The kilos and kilos of cocaine? The guns?”

“An exaggeration. It seemed to be the only way to get anyone’s attention down at the station last night.”

The sergeant threw his head back and looked at the ceiling. “Jeeee-
sus!”

“Sir?” said Jenkins. “What do you want us to...”

“Uncuff them. All of them.”

Captain Dipshit began to blubber, losing the thin veneer of cool he’d managed to paste over his disintegrating mental state. “But... but you’re
here now!
I want to file a report! My lawyers are on the case, and they’re going to collect signatures for a huge class action suit! You’ve got to take them in now, so they can’t do any more harm! You already have them cuffed! Keep the cuffs on!”

The sergeant looked at the employees, then the live television cameras, then the employees again. Now
his
ass was on thin ice.

“It doesn’t work that way, kid.”
 

Captain Dipshit raised his voice and shouted to the party guests. “Tell them!” he shouted. “How many of you have been assaulted by these people? How many have been beaten by one of their machines! How many have been hit and lost teeth?”

One of the men that Philip had hit during the bagel-slicer barrage sat up. He looked at Captain Dipshit and said, “Pith off, kit.” It was hard to understand him. He’d been hit and had lost too many teeth.

The sergeant turned to the other officers. “Uncuff them. Now.”

“But...!”

“And
you
are in some serious shit of your own,” he snapped at Captain Dipshit. “We damn near sent a S.W.A.T. team on this little errand, because there actually
have
been reports of a pretty big drug operation in this area.
You
might be the one who gets arrested at the end of the day.”

The employees were all uncuffed and were rubbing their wrists. Greene was apologizing to them. Jenkins had abandoned all policemanlike pretense and was smiling and waving at the cameras.

The sergeant turned to Captain Dipshit and the lawyers. The lawyers, eager to squeeze more money out of their client, began protesting the situation, saying that even though their client had made a false report, that assault charges were in fact being filed against Bingham’s Bagel Deli and that arrests should still be made.
 

The sergeant pursed his lips in thought, uninterested in doing anything Captain Dipshit wanted him to do.
 

“You’ve filed a formal report of assault with the department?” he said.
 

“Not yet,” said Captain Dipshit.
 

“We’ll need one on record before we can take anyone in, but I’m telling you right now that these people are going to get to finish their show no matter what you claim they did. This is already a serious public disaster.”

Captain Dipshit and the lawyers nodded, mollified.
 

“I have a form on a clipboard in my squad car. I’ll get it.” Then he craned his neck and spoke to his men. “Jenkins, run out to your car and radio this in. Greene, you stay and keep an eye on things while I call my wife. She thought I was going to be home at ten, and I need to tell her that thanks to some asshole’s false alarm, I’m obviously not going to be home for midnight.”
 

Greene nodded, understanding that their work at Bingham’s wasn’t quite over for the night.
 

The police sergeant walked out the front door. Officer Jenkins followed shortly thereafter, and the crowd began to stir to its feet. Captain Dipshit sat in one of the high chairs, smiling with satisfaction.

It was 11:49. From that point on, things happened very quickly.

Anywhere else, Dicky would have looked odd with a nylon stocking pulled over his head to blur his features. In the midst of the media event of the century, however, he fit right in. There was a man not far from him dressed in duct tape and a dunce hat. Earlier, he’d seen a woman wrapped in fiberglass insulation. They were all freaks, every one of them.
 

And that was good, really. Dicky himself was ready to die, but looking around made him feel much better about his mission. Killing any of the rest of these people would be doing a public service.

He was sitting in a corner, trying to blend in. In the inside pocket of his coat was a small electronic device about the size of a pocket calculator. As he waited, watching the reappearance of Captain Dipshit and the ensuing police standoff, he caressed the box and reminded himself not to worry. Police or no police, soapbox or no soapbox, he could blow the entire place into a pile of rubble in a second, and nobody could stop him.

Unless, of course, Bingham’s dark protective spell stopped him.

But that was ridiculous. He could still see the light glowing on the trigger, even now. It was live. The show was still on. The guardian angels were no-shows. And that was good because all in all, he’d prefer to mount the soapbox before ending this monstrosity.

Being here meant that Dicky would die too, of course, but that was fine. It made sense, really. You couldn’t just commit an act of atrocity/cleansing and expect the world to read the situation correctly. The world was filled with idiots. They’d assume it was terrorism. They wouldn’t understand the real meaning unless it was spelled out for them.

Originally, the idea had been to blow the bomb from a block away. But even in the alley, Dicky found that he could barely get a signal, just as Tony had been unable to get a good signal from his camera. The walls were too thick. Unless he wanted to cancel his plans and work out a new way to trigger the thing from a distance – a notion that was unacceptable; this was the only time he could do it with the world watching – then this was the way it would have to be. And it was okay. Really it was.

The police left just in time to allow Dicky to take the stage for the turning of the new year. Only one officer had remained, and his gun was holstered. Luckily, his back was also turned.

After the door had swung shut, Dicky leapt to his feet and grabbed one of the small, wooden chairs by the back. In one smooth motion, he raised it above his head in a circle and brought it down on the neck of Officer Greene, who collapsed into unconsciousness. None of the partygoers reacted. They assumed it was part of the show.

Dicky reached over and swatted a button on the alarm panel. Deadbolts clanked into place. The lights next to the front door toggled from green to red, just as they’d done when Ted had been run down. There was a single loud chirp as the alarm activated that fell perfectly into a silent spot in the music.
 

At the sound, which was familiar but out of place, the employees looked over. The crowd, watching them, followed their gaze. Knowledge swept through the room like something deep and instinctual. Someone screamed. And this, finally, was a genuine and rational reaction.
 

Outside, the other two officers were plastered against the huge front windows. Bricker, who had been out front checking invitations, was with them. The three men hadn’t quite worked out what was going on inside, but the sergeant tried the door and found it locked. It was only a matter of time before they drew their guns or started throwing things against the windows, but it didn’t matter. The glass was entirely bulletproof.
 

Dicky waved his arm to cut a circle around him. He reached to the side, pulled a low table close, and climbed carefully atop it.
 

Finally, the soapbox he’d deserved for so long.

But then, as it became apparent that the man meant trouble, something happened that the Anarchist would have been proud of. A realization percolated through the crowd. They saw that whatever bad juju this stocking-clad man had in mind, he didn’t seem to have a gun and they thought:
This is only one man, and there are over a hundred of us.

Tracy had been in the lobby. He was edging toward Dicky, still unsure what to think but wary of what might be happening.
 

“Easy,” said Dicky, eyeing Tracy. “I’ve got a secret.”

He reached inside his coat and pulled the trigger from its inner pocket. With a flick of his thumb, a plastic panel popped up and revealed a single red button. It was too much of a cliché to be anything but trouble.