From behind their protected positions, the chief and his men fired. Then Rocco blasted back from the warehouse. The police let loose again. As the dust settled, Rocco was still alive and fighting. The warehouse was a disaster, at least the ground floor, its windows shattered, its walls pockmarked by bullet holes.
“Throw down your weapons and come out.” That was the chief.
“You’ll never take me alive.” Rocco was defiant.
“I can’t hear you.”
“ALIVE. I SAID, YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME.”
Lying among the glass shards on the concrete floor, Rocco fired twice through the window.
“Come out with your hands up.”
“I TOLD YOU. YOU’RE NOT TAKING ME ALIVE.”
Although struck in the left shoulder and right ankle, he was defiant.
“Who said anything about alive?”
For a moment, it seemed like any other day at the warehouse on N. Fruman St., except for the dust, the debris, the discarded bullet casings, and police squatting behind cars, dumpsters, and other protection. Some days, there was actually more debris and dust. Why so many felons like Rocco chose to shoot it out on N. Fruman was something the chief could never figure.
“Enough. Come out.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” Rocco was confused.
“You don’t have to scream. I can hear you better now. Just keep your hands above your head as you go through the door.”
“I told you, you’re not taking me alive.”
“I heard you. And we’re not going to, Rocco. Just make it easier all around so we can plug you as you come out with your hands up.”
“Huh?”
“The men are sick of taking in guys like you.”
“You’re supposed to do that.”
“They’re tired of it, week after week, standoff after standoff. So they took a vote and decided to just shoot you as you come out. You said yourself you won’t be taken alive.”
Rocco was more confused. He had said that. He had almost no ammunition left. Also, a ham sandwich, the only food he had, was full of glass and bits of warehouse siding.
“Does Judge O’Neill, who sent me to prison for five years, know about this?”
“Judge O’Neill? It was his idea that we vote on it, Rocco.”
David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record)