All Due Respect Issue #2 Read Online Free Page A

His Circle K name tag identified him as Manager Mitch.
    “You gonna pay for the cigarettes?”
    “I got papes. That’s it.”
    “I watched you on the camera. I saw you. You done this before. Call the police, Russell. You ain’t stealing from here no more.”
    Tommy threw Russell a look that stopped him bitch still.
    “Do it, Russell,” Mitch said. Russell wagged his tail in indecision and then started moving again. Tommy stepped toward the door and Mitch stepped up to meet him. “I’m warning you, Sonny.”
    And then Mitch was on the floor. His nose was a busted faucet from a hard strike of the crown of Tommy’s head. He rolled and moaned on the floor, triggering and retriggering the door sensor. Tommy faced Russell and pulled the .38 from his pocket. “Hang it up,” he said. Russell obeyed. Tommy looked over his shoulder. No one in the lot. Manager Mitch was still down. Tommy forced the gun steady in his hand. “Empty the drawer,” he said as he rushed the counter. Russell looked up and caught Tommy’s eye. Tommy adjusted his sweaty grip on the gun. A flash. Ringing ears. Empty space where Russell had been. The cash was speckled with blood and skull and brain. Tommy stepped backward, stumbling over Mitch and nearly losing his feet. He didn’t look back.
    The lot was clear and when Tommy got around the side of the store he ran hard for the eight-foot wall separating the Circle K from the neighbors. He took a last look over his shoulder and licked the salty sweat from his lip as he scaled the wall with the ease of a guilty man.
    “Shit!” he said as he landed. He had a deep cut in the web of flesh between his thumb and index finger. Tommy put the bleeding skin to his mouth and looked at the wall like he was ready to stomp an apology out of it. He caught his breath and pulled his shirt from his waistband. He pulled the shirt over his head and began slapping a pack of cigarettes against his palm. He ripped the cellophane and foil and wiped away the loose tobacco with a quick, calm efficiency. He leaned against the wall and listened for any sound on the other side that indicated discovery of the scene. He closed his eyes tight and felt the breeze on his face and he used the respite to consider just how fucked he was. He was on camera, that was a given. Mitch would be able to identify him. The kid was dead, probably. Tommy slapped at his pockets; and he’d left the fucking gun behind. He was going away this time, no doubt. No three months in juvenile DOC neither. His eyes teared up. But before the little bitches could leap, Tommy took his burning cigarette and stubbed it out on his calf, and when he opened his eyes again things looked better. He saw the old woman staring at him from the overgrown yard.
    “Clarence? That you?” the woman called out. Tommy looked through the patchy garden of mesquite and alien-looking succulents with their curving tentacles, dotted with spiny hooks and waving home. Through the plants he saw the old woman, leaning herself into position to see beyond her side of the trees. “I see you back there. I knew you was out here!”
    “I just hopped the wall,” Tommy said.
    “Mama and Daddy just left, Clarence. But they’ll be back. Mama’s going to get her hair done. They said I was to wait for you and make sure you get your supper. You want me to fix you a plate? I got meatloaf and carrots and the biggest pear you ever seen for dessert!”
    The woman was dressed in a housecoat and pink slippers stained brown. The property was unkempt, overgrown weeds awash with trash, some of it blown in from the alley, but much of it her own it seemed. There were cardboard boxes scattered throughout, various sizes in various states of weathered decay, another pile of windblown trash collected in a mound at the far corner of the house, and everywhere were white bags of trash up and secured with their own red plastic handles. Many of the bags had been ripped open by a dog or maybe a coyote, each of