Crescent City Connection

stepped up her pace, and when she could see in the window of Judy’s, she ducked out of sight, grabbed her radio, and called for backup.
    It looked like a holdup in progress. One man, evidently a lookout, faced the door. Another faced the counter, pointing a gun at two people behind it. One of them was a black man with dreads, the other a nearly bald woman.
    The man facing the door was white, wearing a blue shirt, khakis, a Saints cap pulled low, and a pair of shades. The other one, also wearing a cap—a blue one of some sort—was speaking in a voice too low for Skip to hear. She heard part of the woman’s answer: “You’re crazy,” and her heart sank. Resisting a holdup was as likely as not to be fatal.
    She crossed the street, planning to pose as a passerby and get a better look in the window. By the time she had a view, the man in the blue cap was behind the counter, fighting with the black man, who was evidently Anthony Earls. The other joined him, laying Earls out with one blow. Blue-cap grabbed the woman, but she pulled back.
    She heard one of the men say, “Lovelace, for Christ’s sake,” and she made a hard, dangerous decision not to wait for backup. This had to be Daniel: Surely the man wouldn’t shoot his own daughter; and there was no time.
    Dodging cars, she ran across the street, hearing as she ran the blessed sound of a siren. She pulled her gun. “Police! Drop it.”
    The man shot at her and she returned fire. He fell. The other one slipped into what looked like a kitchen. The bald woman shouted, “Daddy!”
    Behind the counter, there was blood everywhere. Blue-cap was lying slumped against the wall. Skip’s head whirled, a side effect, she knew, of that other shooting, the one the year before. She heard the woman say, “Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot my daddy!” and she turned toward the woman, her mind’s eye full of a little girl in pink shorts, crawling toward her mother.
    She couldn’t have looked away more than a split second, but by the time she turned back, officers with drawn guns were pouring through the door. She said, “He’s in there,” and gave her attention to the girl, mouthing the obligatory lies. “Lovelace. It’s okay. It’s okay now.” She bent over the fallen man, and saw that the wound was in his head. She felt bile in her throat, so strong she thought there was a good chance of disgracing herself. She swallowed, but more saliva flowed. She turned away. “Give me a cloth, quick.”
    The girl handed her something, possibly an apron or a dishcloth, and she pressed it to the wound, though there was barely any blood. With action, her nausea was starting to pass.
    She heard a quick movement behind, and fearing Lovelace meant to run, she whirled, but another officer had caught the girl, and was holding her tight, murmuring that it was all right: the all-purpose lie in emergencies.
    * * *
    The Monk cursed himself for failing at first to recognize his own brother. He saw the two men go into the juice bar, and saw the one with the blue cap pull a gun, the other one turn to face the outside. Daniel? he thought, and saw that it was. He ran for the phone on the corner. He never stopped to consider whether or not to talk. He was giving his location to the 911 operator when he saw the woman, the big cop, threading her way through traffic. He hung up and went back to watch, from the safe side of the street. As he ran, he heard a siren, getting louder.
    He was nearly there, nearly directly across from the juice bar, when the street exploded. He took cover in the nearest shop. Pedestrians screamed and scattered. Three more ran into The Monk’s shop. By then, the shooting had stopped.
    People were screaming, shouting, one woman was crying. But from across the street came a huge bubble of silence, a void of noise so oppressive it felt like a thunderstorm. A police car hurtled into view and stopped with a squeal of brakes. A uniformed officer leapt out, and another car hurtled, braked, and squealed. Another officer, gun drawn.
    Silence.
    Silence.
    Oh, Christ, is she alive or dead? I have to get over there
.
    People were clustered at the door of the shop. He tried to break through the cluster, not even stopping to consider whether or not to speak. “Excuse me,” he said, as if he did it every day.
    No one moved. A woman said, “You can’t go out there.”
    He could have explained. He could have said, “My niece is over there,” and the crowd would probably have