Small Apartments by Chris Millis

violet eyes. What is this kid screaming? The thief’s voice was coming through to Tommy’s ears like gibberish being screamed into a metal drum. Tommy banged opened the register. He grabbed cash in fistfuls and dumped it on the counter. He yanked the plastic organizer out of the drawer and pulled out the cheques and twenty-dollar bills. The thief scooped it all off the counter with his free hand and stuffed it in his jeans pocket.
    The short one at the door said something. The tall one turned his head towards the door then looked back at Tommy. Tommy stared into the void—the black circles at the centre of the thief’s violet eyes. He recognized the reflection of his own orange goatee and crooked teeth. Oh no! thought Tommy. Oh God!
    THERE IS NO REASON for it, thought Tommy as he lay dying behind the counter of the 2-4 store with two bullets in his chest. It doesn’t make any sense for me to die. There is just no reason for it.
    Little fish might never eat the big fish, thought Tommy as the darkness settled in around him, but little fish are always eating other little fish.

CHAPTER
16

    “ W ELL, WHAT’S THE VERDICT?” Burt Walnut asked Fred McNally from a telephone booth in front of Lorenzo’s Pizza on West Delavan Avenue in Buffalo.
    “You were right,” said Fred. “Olivetti was dead before that fire ever started. The coroner said he found no smoke in the lungs. By his best estimate, Olivetti was dead seven hours, maybe more, before he burned in that barn fire.”
    Burt took a bite of his pepperoni pizza. “What else did he say?”
    “He said Olivetti’s spinal cord was severed. He broke his neck at the base of his skull, or had it broken for him. Bob also found several broken teeth in his mouth and part of his tongue was bit clean through. His guess for cause of death was some sort of violent, blunt trauma delivered from beneath his chin.”
    “Ouch,” said Burt. “He learned all that from that crispy critter?”
    “Bob Fields is good at what he does,” said Fred. “We also got a call from the Buffalo PD on the victim’s missing Chevy pickup. They found it on the eastside, stripped down and burned out. The plates were gone, but the VIN number matches up. What’d ya find out on your trip to the ice cream parlour?”
    “Truth be told, Fred, I think I got our guy right here. He’s a tenant in the property at 100 Garner. His name is Franklin Franklin, if you can buy that. I got it off his mail. I got witness reports from the other tenants of him acting suspicious yesterday—banging around his apartment in the morning, not wanting the neighbour to look inside his doorway, packing his car after ten o’clock—stuff like that. I snooped around his apartment a bit, too.”
    “Aw geez, Burt,” groaned Fred.
    “Relax, I put everything back where it was. Listen, this fella had a T -shirt and a pair of shorts that smelled like smoke and what was probably turpentine.”
    “Where are you now?” asked Fred.
    “Eatin’ my lunch in front of a pizza parlour about four blocks south of the building.”
    “Go sit on the house in case he comes back. I’ll call Buffalo PD and have them meet you with a warrant,” said Fred. “What’s this fella look like?”
    “White, fat, and dopey by all accounts.”
    BURT DROVE WEST on West Delavan and turned north onto Grant Street. He heard police sirens wailing from what sounded like all directions. In his rearview he saw two Buffalo Police cruisers closing in on his tailgate. He pulled off to the shoulder as they sped by, lights flashing, sirens screaming. Burt got back on the road and tuned his cb radio to the police band. He learned that the Open 24 Hours store on the corner of Grant and Forest had been robbed and that the twenty-four-year-old male clerk was DOA .
    “Damn waste,” muttered Burt, shaking his head.
    He parked a few houses down from 100 Garner on the opposite side of the street and killed the engine. He belched. That pizza wasn’t half bad, he