The Platinum Ice Pick

The slumped pile of camel hair was still lying outside the office when Lew walked from the backroom to assess the damage. Suddenly, he heard the squealing of tires as the Rolls Royce came roaring up the street. Lew jumped through the inner office doorway and began running down the hall toward the garage. He took cover by diving to the hallway floor when machine guns began firing. The guns continued blasting with varying degrees of intensity due to the magazine of one being changed while the other was active as to maintain constant fire power. Glass was breaking, wood was splintering and bullets were bouncing around as though they were falling from the ceilings. One 9mm slug came to rest within inches of Lew’s face. The mayhem persisted to an unconscionable amount of overkill. There was a momentary pause as Lew could hear the car pulling away. One final spray of bullets came crashing through both garage doors causing damage to Lew’s vehicles.

After standing, Lew looked himself over and found that he was not injured. He leaned against the wall and slid to the floor again. He stayed in a seated position for a moment thinking—pondering how many more close calls he might endure before his final trip to the morgue. He began hearing a police siren approaching. He was surprised the police were coming at all.

Lew climbed to his feet and looked into his garage. Both the windshield and the rear window had been shattered in his Barracuda. The Pontiac had no windshield to start with, but the hood, which had been leaning against the back wall, had a hole the size of a .45 slug at near dead center.

Not realizing he was carrying the shotgun, Lew walked back to his office. Everything was lying in waste except for a .50 caliber magnum, semi-automatic pistol that was on the floor inside the door. He picked it up and carried it along with the shotgun to the garage where he stashed them behind some loose boards in the wall.

The police siren reached its peak noise level and went silent directly outside the office.

“Hello. Is anyone in there?” came a shout from the street.

With dust still heavy in the air, Lew came through the door facing the flashing lights of the police cruiser.

“You okay?” asked a police officer.

“I’m fine, just a little shook up. That’s all.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“I’m the only one here. I hope no one got hurt on the street or in any of the other buildings.”

“Someone got hurt. There’s a pool of blood here on this step.”

“Yeah, his finger’s layin’ around somewhere.”