Frank's Independence Day (+audio)

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Frank Adams had his boys slide up around the metallic-blue late-model BMW at the stop light on Amsterdam Ave. One stood by the passenger door, one ahead, one behind, and he took the driver’s window himself as usual.
It was only the third time they’d done this, but Frank saw, without really watching, that they made it look smooth. They’d split the thousand that the chop shop had paid for the Ford Taurus they’d jacked and two grand for the Camry. But a new Beemer? That was a serious score. What it was doing so far uptown this late on a hot, New York night was the driver’s own damn fault.
He started it like any standard windshield scam. Spray the windshield to blind the driver, then shake them down for five bucks to clean it so they can see to drive away. The bright bite of ammonia almost reassuring to New Yorkers who had come to expect the scam. He’d long since learned to flick the windshield wiper up so that the driver couldn’t clean their own damn window. It was when the driver’s window rolled down, and the person at the wheel started griping, that the real action would begin.
A glance to the sides showed not much traffic. Lot of folks gone down by the water to watch the fireworks, or off with family for July Fourth picnics at the park, or on their fire escapes in the sweltering summer heat. The acrid sting of burnt cordite hung like a haze over the city from a million firecrackers, bottle rockets, M-80s, cherry bombs, and everything else legal or not. Hell, Chinatown would be sounding like they were tossing around sticks of dynamite.
Night had settled on the roads out of Columbia University and into his end of Manhattan, and as much darkness as could ever be happening beneath the New York City lights had done gone and happened.
Frank’s boys were doing good. At the front and back, they’d leaned casually on the hood and trunk of the car not facing the prize, but instead watching lookout up and down the length of Amsterdam Ave. They’d shout if any cops surfaced.
And no self-respecting BMW driver would run over someone they didn’t know just to get away, especially ones who weren’t even looking at them threateningly.
Other drivers were accelerating sharply and running the red light so they weren’t a part of whatever was going down at the corner of Amsterdam and midnight.
Three minutes. That meant they had about three minutes until someone nerved down enough to find a pay phone and call the cops and he and his boys had to be gone.
They’d only need about one.
The Beemer jerked back about two feet with little more than a hiss and a throb from that smooth, cool engine.
His boys were on the pavement before Frank could even blink.
Japs had been sitting on the trunk but was now sprawled on his face and Hale sat abruptly on his butt when the car’s hood pulled out from underneath him. It was almost funny, the two of them unhurt but looking so damn surprised.
Then he was facing the rolled-down window, exactly as he’d planned. He could taste the new-car fine-leather smell as it wafted out.
What he hadn’t planned was to be staring straight down the barrel of a .357. Abruptly, all he could taste was the metal sting of adrenaline and the stink of his own sweat.
He’d seen enough guns to know that the Smith & Wesson 66 was not some normal bad-ass revolver.
He was facing death right between the eyes.
His body froze so hard he didn’t even drop the knife nestled out of sight in his palm.
The woman who looked at him, right hand aiming the gun across her body, left hand still on the wheel, had the blackest eyes he’d ever seen. So dark that no light came back from them, like looking down twin barrels of death even more dangerous than the gun’s.

Initial Publication: May 4, 2013
Print Pages: 182
Audio length: 4:21
Narrator: Read by Author