by G. M. Ford
I pulled my jacket tighter around me and walked back up the alley to the office. The sticker on the steel door declared that the building was protected by a Brinks Security System and that trespassers would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. In the window, a hand-lettered sign said: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY CALL 624-7765.1 pulled out my notebook and wrote the number down.
I crossed the alley to the big sliding door on the side of the building and found it fastened with a serious new lock and chain. I started making my way around to the front, trying to stay close to the building and out of the rain, keeping my inside hand on the rough metal siding. I kept my eyes on my feet, stepping carefully over and around the dangerous collection of shattered pallets, twisted rebar and discarded metal banding material which the years had deposited along the sides of the structure.
I slid along the front of the building, walking past a huge pair of electronically operated roll-up doors, all the way to the far end, where I peeked around the corner. Right in front of my face was a small concrete landing leading to a blue metal door. Just for fun I reached out and tried the knob. It wasn't locked. I swiveled my head around to make sure I was alone in the yard, took several deep breaths, pulled open the door and casually stepped inside.
High in the ceiling, a double line of fluorescent lights ran down the length of the warehouse, bathing the center of the room in a murky green glow, while leaving the periphery in near darkness. The room was filled with shipping containers about half the size of those out in the yard. Blue, with TRIAD TRADING stenciled on the side. In the narrow central aisle, a pair of yellow Hyster forklifts were parked back-to-back.
Against the back wall, what I imagined to be the warehouse supervisor's office had been built high up off the floor above a pair of restrooms. The interesting part was that the lights were on upstairs. I stood still, my hand resting on the doorknob. At the far end, inside the office, the light wavered once and then a moment later, moved again. Unless I was mistaken, somebody was moving around in there. I eased the door closed behind me and started for the light.
I slipped between the forklifts and walked all the way down to the far end. On the right, a rickety-looking set of stairs rose in two sections to the office above. I fished the Prudential card out from my jacket pocket and started up. I figured I'd make like I was lost. Tell whoever was up there that I was looking for their neighbor Western Cold Storage. Maybe have me a little look around while I was at it. Us private dicks are real tricky that way.
It wasn't like I was tiptoeing or anything, and it's sure not as if the stairs didn't make any noise. On the contrary, the ancient risers creaked and groaned with my every step. I definitely wasn't looking to surprise anybody. Folks can get downright dangerous if you scare the hell out of them. I figured for sure whoever was up there was going to hear me coming from a mile away. That's because I figured whoever was up there probably had ears. Silly me.
He was sitting at a yellow Formica table reading the newspaper, following the lines with his finger, his lips moving as he read his way down the page. He was tall for a Chinese. Maybe six foot five or so. His narrow eyes were set close to a bumpy red nose. The area around his mouth was chapped and dry, and he had a serious split in his lower lip. About sixty, he'd grown his salt and pepper hair unusually long, into what I believe used to be called a pageboy hairdo. Kind of looked like Sonny Bono back in the heyday of Sonny and Cher. Back when Sonny still had hair and Cher still had a nose.
I was ruminating on his retro look when he reached up to scratch the back of his neck. In the process, his hand moved the thick curl of hair hiding the side of his head, and I could see that he didn't have an ear on this side. Just a scabrous black hole in the side of his head, red and puckered, pulling at the surrounding skin, creating the sense that the whole side of his face was about to disappear down the hole. Unsure now, I shuddered and stepped back out of the puddle of fight at the top of the stairs.
I looked to my left, and thought about backing all the way down the stairs. And I might have done it, too, but in that instant, some primitive inner sense alerted him. Suddenly, his eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open. He looked up from the paper, directly at me, and our eyes locked. I smiled and held up the business card. Never fails. A piece of the rock. Well . . . almost never.
He recoiled in terror. Throwing himself over backward in the chair and then crabbing down the narrow hall on all fours and sliding the accordion door closed behind him.
I pushed open the office door and stepped partially inside. I went for the understated approach.
"Sorry if I scared you," I said.
I could hear things being thrown around in the next room.
"I'm from—" I started.
The door slid back and he burst back into the room. He wore a long knit cap pulled down over his head nearly to the line of his lower jaw. He brandished a large rubber mallet, the kind they use in auto body shops to pound out dents. Up close, I could see that he had the scarlet cheeks of a rummy and I could tell from the way the hat lay on his head that he didn't have an ear on the other side either. I showed him my empty hands.
"Whoa," I said. "Sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"You come here to spy on me," he screamed. A string of white spittle escaped from the corner of his mouth.
I cursed myself for being unarmed. After weeks of walking around armed to the teeth, waiting for the judge's shooters to have a go at me, I'd been relishing not carrying anything heavier than a pen. Bad move.
"No," I said. "I'm looking for Western Cold Storage."
He began to shift from foot to foot and wave the hammer around. "You get a good look? You happy now? You get a good look?"
As a matter of fact, I didn't like the look of it at all. This guy was out there. Whatever smoldered inside him wasn't something I wanted to deal with right now. If I wasn't careful, he'd scramble my brains. I showed him my palms again. "I'm going to go," I said. "I'm going to leave this card ..." I waved it at him. "... right here on the table, and then I'm going to go. Sorry."
"You happy now?" he screamed again. His eyes were wet and filled with a look of horror usually only seen in war photos. For a moment, I thought he might cry.
I kept my eyes glued on the hammer as I leaned over and placed the card on the edge of the table. I groped behind my back and found the knob. "Sorry," I said again as I backed out of the room. I did the first set of stairs backward keeping my eyes locked on the door and then, when I got to the landing, turned and hustled down to ground level.
When I turned and looked back up at the office, he was standing in the middle of the room with my business card in his hand, his lips moving as he read. When he finished, he walked over to the window and glared down at me; the expression on his face sent a shiver trickling down my spine. I'd seen its like before, but only on cornered animals. Cue the Twilight Zone theme. I turned on my heel and started double-timing it for the door.
I got about halfway to the Hysters when the lights went out.
I stood still in the velvet black, keeping my breath steady and even. Behind and above me, I heard the office door scrape open.
"Come on, man," I said to the darkness. "No need for this."
I waited for my eyes to adjust and listened to the creaking and groaning that meant he was coming down the stairs. The building was tight. No strips of fight along the roofline or around the doors.
I felt my throat tighten. No way I was playing blind-man's bluff with this guy. I could hear the slide of his feet on the floor somewhere behind me and the hair rose on the back of my neck. Now a low grunt.
I opted for speed instead of stealth, walking quickly forward with my hands thrust out in front of me like feelers, figuring as long as I stayed in the middle, I was bound to run into the Hysters before long.
Then I heard the noise. He was walking on top of the containers, jumping the gaps as he hopped progressively closer. I stood still and held my breath, hoping to get a bearing on him, but suddenly, he wa
s silent, too. I had the eerie feeling that he could see me in the dark whereas I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.
I moved quickly to my right, walking at a normal rate with my hands thrust out before me until I collided with a container. I put my back to the cold metal and listened. Nothing. I figured I'd stay put and wait for my eyes to adjust to the inky darkness. With the container at my back, he either had to come at me from the front or over the top. I kept my eyes glued to the front. I figured I'd feel the vibrations in the metal if he walked along the top of the box. I waited.
My neck stiffened as I heard his feet slap the concrete floor. I could now make out the outlines of the containers lining the other side of the aisle. Inside my head, my breathing sounded like a fire siren.
I worked at long silent breaths of the same length, in and out, one to ten, one nostril and then the other, one to ten, focusing, taming my metabolism, until I could feel my heartbeat returning to normal.
I took one measured step at a time, carefully placing my foot and then bringing the rest of my weight over, trying to prevent the slap of a sole or the rustle of clothing. Using this method, I slowly sidestepped to the far end of the container. More breathing.
Satisfied that I was under control, I hopped silently across the dark empty space and rested my back along the next row of boxes. The ribbed metal felt cold and gritty against my shoulders. I estimated I was three or four containers from the forklifts. The way I remembered it, the front half of the warehouse was virtually empty. If I could get on the other side of the Hyster blockade, I could make an all-out sprint for the door. He knew the place better than I did, but was twenty years my senior. The way I saw it, my best chance was to make it a footrace instead of a game of hide-and-seek in the dark. Even if he was waiting for me at the door, I'd be moving his way at full speed, which is pretty much what you want to do when the other guy has a club. You want to get inside the power arc as quickly as possible, like a baseball pitcher coming inside with his hard stuff, trying to get you to hit the ball off the handle. Secret was to keep your head off the sweet spot in the bat.
Turned out it wasn't a problem. He quick-pitched me. As I sidled to the edge of the metal box and groped around the comer with my hand, some vestigial sense within me felt a whisper of air and I knew beyond doubt that he was close. Instinctively, I twisted to my left. As I turned toward the whisper, I had the oddest notion that I heard a sob.
I think I may have even raised my arm and said, "No."
AND THEN I was back in the upstairs hall, wearing slipper-socks and that stupid plaid bathrobe, staying off the carpet runner and its three squeaky boards, creeping all the way past my mother's room to the back stairs, where the rumble of the voices drew me downward toward the kitchen below, to the men who sat sipping whiskey and smoking cigars, to the talk of votes and variances and to that last dark stair, where, after everyone had gone and the glasses were rinsed, my father would find me sleeping and carry me back to my room.
IN MY BUSINESS it's pretty much an occupational hazard, but I've always hated getting hit in the face. In retrospect, the aversion probably saved my life. The impact must have thrown me face-first into the steering wheel. I awoke from my dream with hot blood running down my face and cold water running up my legs. For a second, I was giddy. I thought I'd fallen asleep at the wheel and was having one of those terror-filled "holy guacamole, I'm doing seventy, and don't remember the last five miles" moments, but no ... it was my nose . . . something was emptying out over my upper lip and running down my chin, and I couldn't stand it. I pawed at my face and then held my hand out in front of my eyes for inspection. In the darkness, the blood gleamed nearly black. For some odd reason, I brought the stained hand to my face and licked it. Yup. It was official. I was bleeding. I staged a search for my other hand and located it over on the left, locked to the steering wheel. I blinked in wonder and then raised my eyes to the windshield just in time to see the side of the ferry and then a wave breaking over the hood.
Instinctively, I brought both hands to the wheel and tried to steer, but the little car merely rotated slowly in a circle. The numbing cold had rolled up and over my waist, nearly paralyzing me. My teeth chattered, and I began to shake violently.
At that moment, the extra weight of the engine in the front of the car stood the Fiat on its nose. Straight up and down, that ass-in-the-air, last-moment-of-the-7i"faw'c pose. I was hanging from my seat belt harness, steering straight down into oblivion when the cold came rolling down my neck. I shuddered violently and gasped just as the car sank beneath the surface, and as I swung gently to the left in the wet blackness, steering happily away, it came to me that I was drowning.
I'd like to tell you how I remained calm. How I held my breath there in the darkness, coolly analyzed my options and realized that if I merely allowed the car to fill with water, the pressure inside would soon equalize with the pressure outside, allowing me to open the doors and waltz out. I'd like to tell you that, but it wouldn't be true.
I lost it. Completely. The only thing going through my head was music. I had this tune running through my head, and it wouldn't stop. Not a song really, more like a fanfare that I kept humming over and over, louder and louder as if to remind myself that I was still alive.
I popped my seat belt and began to thrash about in the narrow confines of the car, punching and kicking, trying desperately to break out a window or push open a door. The air in my chest was on fire, and my limbs were cold and clumsy. I put my back against the steering wheel and kicked hard at the passenger side window. Nothing. A second wild kick went off course, and I put my foot completely through the convertible top. I grabbed my leg with both hands and pulled it back through the fabric, then righted myself, grabbed the hole and tugged for all I was worth.
The top split right along the rip I'd fixed this afternoon. I got my feet under me, stuck one arm up through the hole and then used my legs to force my shoulders up and through. The music was screaming as I shook free of the car and began to float slowly upward.
The sound stopped abruptly a moment later when I couldn't help but open my mouth and replace the burning air in my lungs with sweet cool water. I remember my chest convulsing once and then again and then the twin rivers of sparks. The rest, as they say, was strictly fade to black.
Chapter 13
"Are you satisfied now?" Rebecca asked.
Let's face it, when you're lying in a hospital bed, from whence a team of seemingly competent doctors has decreed thou shall not rise for several days, and you got there by doing precisely what everyone on the planet has been telling you not to do, this is not a fair question.
If my throat hadn't been raw from the collection of tubes they'd been running up and down it all night, I'd have defended myself. As it was, I had bigger problems. She'd brought visual aids. I pointed at the folded newspaper she carried beneath her arm and shook my head. The movement nearly rendered me unconscious.
"You don't want to see it?"
"No," I croaked.
"Oh, I really think you should see this." "Uh-uh."
"You sound like Scooby Doo."
She unfolded the paper twice, but kept the front page facing in her direction. She tried to look disgusted but only managed to smirk.
"There's good news and bad news, Leo."
It's a truly loathsome woman who'll hit a guy when he's down. She didn't even wait for me to do my end of the good-news-bad-news joke. "The good news is that the pictures of your dad and Peerless Price are much smaller this morning."
I groaned and tried to turn away, but even the slightest movement of my head sent my vision swirling. My head felt as if it were stuffed with steel wool. They'd given me enough Tylenol for a vasectomy, but it was barely keeping the brain-rumor headache at bay.
"The bad news is that the other two pictures are of you on a stretcher and your car on a hook." She turned the front page my way, holding it before her like a banner. "See."
She was right. There I was in living
color being wheeled to the wagon by a couple of EMTs. Thank God for the oxygen mask. The Fiat wasn't so lucky. In the picture, it hung on a hook like a dead fish, streaming water from its every pore, its once-rakish ragtop peeled back like a cheap toupee. A sad sight indeed.
"Where's the car?" I whispered.
"I had them tow it to Mario's. Bobby says it's a goner."
I shook my head and immediately wished I hadn't. "No way."
I figured I could get her off on the old "why in God's name do you keep that car" tangent. That one always works. Would have worked this time too, except at that moment the door opened and Trujillo and Wessels came blowing into the room.
Wessels took one look at Duvall and headed for the far wall, over by the John. Trujillo strode over to the side of the bed.
"Dr. Duvall."
"Detective Trujillo."
"You guys catch him yet?" I whispered.
Trujillo made a dismissive noise with "his lips.
"You should count yourself lucky, Waterman. The owner doesn't want to drop a trespassing charge on you."
I cleared my throat. My head was pounding. "What about speeding? I'll bet the car was going like hell on its way down to the river."
He walked over and handed Rebecca a piece of paper.
"That's a bill from the Matson Crane Company. Eleven hundred bucks for pulling the car out of the waterway."
"Wouldn't that be littering?" she inquired.
"No. With that car it would be more like toxic dumping. But we've been thinking about maybe charging him with filing a false police report, haven't we, Frank."
Wessels grinned but kept his mouth shut.
"Oh, I get it," I said. "You bozos can't even come up with a lead on a guy with no ears?"
