Detour

by James Siegel

  Just a goal. To make it out of there alive.

  He could sense Moshe still there in the hall. Watching him.

  He went through the bathroom door.

  It had a sink, a dirty urinal, and two narrow stalls.

  What now?

  His phone.

  He could call the police. He’d tell them he’d been threatened, that he was trapped, in physical danger.

  He went into the first stall and locked the door. He sat down on the toilet seat.

  Paul pulled out his phone and dialed 911—a number that was now and forever associated with the date of the same number.

  Nothing. That grating three-note announcement heralding that he’d done something wrong. That his party has moved or changed numbers.

  He checked the number in the display window: 811.

  Okay, nerves. He dialed again—wondering if his cell phone was on vibrate and ringing, since it seemed to be shaking in his hand. Even as he asked himself this, he knew perfectly well it wasn’t his phone that was shaking.

  This time he got through.

  “Emergency. How can we help you?” A female voice that sounded vaguely automated.

  “I’m in danger,” Paul whispered. “Please send the police.”

  “What’s the problem, sir?”

  Hadn’t he just told her what the problem was?

  “These men . . . they’re trying to kill me.”

  “Is this a break-in, sir?”

  “No. I’m somewhere . . . in an office. Not an office . . . a warehouse.”

  “Have you been attacked, sir?”

  “No. Yes. They’re about to attack me.”

  “Where are you located?”

  “Uh . . . in Little Odessa.”

  “Little Odessa. That’s in Brooklyn, sir?”

  “Yes, Brooklyn.”

  “What’s the exact address, sir?”

  “I don’t . . . Somewhere by the . . .” There were footsteps coming down the hall. Paul stopped talking.

  “Give me your name, sir.”

  The footsteps stopped just outside the door. The door opened. Two men walked in, one of them whistling “Night Fever.” The faucet turned on, one of the men began washing his hands.

  “Sir? Your name, sir?”

  Someone coughed up phlegm, spit it into the sink. The men began talking. They spoke in a haphazard mixture of Russian and English, switching from one to the other seemingly at random.

  The man washing his hands said something in Russian, then asked if someone named Wenzel made the vig?

  The whistler stopped. “What?”

  “Wenzel. He pay vig or not?”

  “Oh, sure thing.”

  “Fucking GNP of Slovakia, right?”

  The other man answered in Russian, and they both laughed.

  Then some back-and-forth, mostly in English—you see Yuri around, tell that motherfucker he eat me—interrupted by the sound of one of the men urinating.

  “Sir . . . are you still . . . ?”

  Paul clicked the phone off. He suddenly realized that he’d been holding his breath ever since the men walked in. When he let it out, it sounded like the whoosh of a just-turned-on air conditioner.

  Both men turned around and faced the stall. That embarrassing moment when you realize someone’s there, has been there the whole time you’ve been speaking.

  Paul could just make out their feet underneath the stall door. Those hybrid sneaker-shoes, felt with garish nylon racing stripes.

  One of the men said something in Russian.

  When Paul didn’t answer, he switched languages.

  “You whacking off in there, Sammy?”

  “No.”

  Silence. They didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Okay,” one of the men said. “Just checking—we’re with whack-off patrol.” They laughed, then turned and walked out.

  Paul was about to press send again, but he could hear them through the closing door. Someone was out there speaking to them—Moshe?

  He’d be asking them if Paul was in there.

  Yes, they’d say. There was someone whacking off in the stall.

  Okay, that gave him maybe five minutes. Less, before Moshe himself walked in or sent one of his men back. To do what?

  Pull Paul out of the stall and finish him off.

  The emergency operator had asked him for the address, but he didn’t know it. They should hold seminars on this: If you’re going to be killed somewhere, note address. Note name too; he’d forgotten the name on the warehouse roof.

  He stood up and pushed the stall door open. There was one small window. He lifted it open. Almost. Halfway up it stuck tight. It looked like it hadn’t been opened in years, at least not from inside—dead spiders were littered between the window and rusty screen.

  And one not-dead spider. Black, fat, and stubbornly sticking to its fly-littered web. Spiders—stuck alphabetically between retroviruses and ticks on Paul’s long list of things to be frightened of.

  Paul flushed the urinal to cover the noise, then gave the window a monumental push. It flew open.

  First things first. The spider.

  He attempted to crush it against the screen with a wad of rolled-up toilet tissue, but the screen was so rusted it fell off.

  Good. Double good—the spider disappeared with it.

  Paul stepped onto the sink and, using it for leverage, began to push himself through the window. He was facing the back lot. Miles was long gone. Only that maroon Buick remained; the man with CCCP tattooed on his arm was leaning against the driver’s side door, smoking a cigarette.

  If the man turned just a little to his right, to scratch his arm or spit or just stretch his neck, he’d have a perfect view of a terrified man squeezing himself through a window.

  It didn’t matter. Going back wasn’t an option.

  It was a tight fit. The window was about the size of the window in the Bogotá house, the one he’d put his arms through in an effort to make that bewildered schoolgirl understand they were crying out for help. He was still crying help, but if the smoker saw him, he wouldn’t get it.

  Keep worming.

  The window frame seemed to be scraping off layers of skin; he thought he might be bleeding. He remembered a startling scene from Animal Planet, an enormous python actually coming out of its skin. If only he could do that—leave his burned and battered self behind for something fresh and new.

  The smoker threw his cigarette to the ground and watched it for a moment, seemingly hypnotized by the little wisp of smoke undulating in front of him.

  Paul was down to his lower half, but there was nothing to hold on to. His upper thighs were taking the entire weight of his body. It felt as if he were literally going to break in half.

  He felt a tickle on the small of his back. He twisted his head back.

  The spider.

  Black, hairy, and back. It was taking a constitutional across his naked skin where his shirt had ridden up.

  He pushed and strained with renewed vigor, keeping one jittery eye on the spider.

  He should’ve been looking the other way.

  When he finally turned around to check on the man with the CCCP tattoo, he was staring right at him.

  He’d straightened up off the car; he’d begun to amble over as if he were trying to get a better look. What an odd sight—a grown man crawling out of a window.

  Or not crawling. Paul was pretty much stuck. He could feel the individual prickly hairs on each of the spider’s eight legs.

  “The fuck you doing?” The man had stopped about ten feet from him. A Russian bear. He had serpentine stretch marks on his arm where his muscles bulged enough to give the tattooed letters an odd lilt. He looked like a poster child for steroid use.

  “There’s a spider on me,” Paul said. It was the first thing that flashed into his mind, probably because other than the giant standing in front of him, it was the first thing on his mind.

  “Spider?”

  “Yes.
I panicked,” Paul said.

  “Huh?”

  “I jumped through the window.”

  “Spider?” He began laughing. Real, gut-wrenching, roll-in-the-aisle laughter, like a laugh track on the WB. Any minute, tears were going to start copiously flowing down his cheeks.

  “Scared of spider?” he said. “Ha, ha, ha.”

  Okay, at least he believed him.

  “Can you get me out of here?” Paul asked.

  The Russian sluggishly stepped forward and grabbed Paul by his arms.

  Paul could feel the enormous strength in the man’s muscles—like something inhuman, even mechanical. When he pulled, Paul thought either he was going to come flying through the window or his arms were going to come flying out of their sockets. Fifty-fifty.

  Suddenly, he was on the ground, arms intact.

  That might not have been a good thing.

  The man had walked over to his left, where he made a show of picking up a large chunk of cement, which had broken off the base of a parking meter that for some reason was lying there in the yard. He weighed it in his hands, then looked at Paul with an odd smile.

  Paul stepped back.

  The man lifted the ragged chunk up over his head and began advancing toward Paul.

  “Wait . . .”

  But he didn’t wait.

  The Russian brought the cement block down with full force. About six inches from Paul’s right shoe.

  He smiled, lifted it up, admired the ugly starburst of brown blood. Some of the spider’s legs were detached but still twitching.

  “No more,” he said.

  Before Paul could move, there was a sudden sound from inside the bathroom. Moshe’s face was staring at them from the open window.

  No one said anything.

  Moshe looked confused. Paul had evidently just crawled out his bathroom window—how else could he have gotten outside the warehouse?—but he must’ve been wondering whether Paul actually knew. He had to be undecided as to which Moshe he should be playing here. The concerned friend of a friend, out to help Paul save his wife and daughter?

  Or the man who’d been asked to murder him?

  “He was scared of spider,” Paul’s benefactor said, still looking amused by the whole thing.

  Moshe didn’t share his amusement. He looked at Paul and said, “What spider?”

  “On my back,” Paul said. “I was standing at the sink and the spider landed on me. I have a kind of phobia. I panicked.”

  “Phobia?” He evidently wasn’t familiar with the term. He was probably very familiar with lying. He was staring straight into Paul’s eyes—the way the gamblers on Celebrity Poker lock onto their competitors’ faces in order to know whether they’re bluffing. It felt physical, like an actual pat-down.

  Moshe said something in Russian, out of the corner of his mouth.

  What?

  Paul decided not to wait to weigh its nuances.

  The man with the tattoo on his arm could’ve easily moved, flattened Paul with one lazy punch, or simply knocked the cement block out of his hands. The one he’d discarded in the dirt but Paul had picked up. It must’ve been a complete and utter shock that someone scared of spiders was capable of committing a physical assault. The man didn’t actually move until the cement block made contact with the top of his head. He went down with a sickening thud.

  Paul ran.

  “Paul!” Moshe shouted behind him.

  He’d never make it out of the yard. He’d gotten rid of the steroid user, sure, but in a minute there’d be others. Lots and lots of others.

  He heard shouting, the sound of the loading door sliding open.

  He didn’t have enough of a lead. It was hopeless.

  Sometimes you get lucky.

  As any good actuary could tell you, sometimes the odds are just that. Odds. Numbers. They don’t matter. You can be absolutely certain that if you live long enough, one day they’ll rise up and bite you in the ass.

  Or kiss you on the mouth.

  His path to the open gate took him right past the parked Buick. Even in a full-out sprint—okay, not much by Carl Lewis standards, but okay by your average weekend warrior’s—he was able to glance inside.

  The keys were dangling from the ignition.

  He stopped short, pulled the front door open, and slid in. He turned the key and put the pedal to the metal.

  He whooshed out of the gate. Just as three men came running after him.

  But their cars weren’t in the lot.

  They were parked on Ocean or Rostow so they wouldn’t block the loading door.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  In the early-morning light Miles’ Brooklyn brownstone looked darker, even forbidding.

  The black tower of fairy tales.

  Paul had spent the night in his car, parked in a deserted lot underneath the Verrazano Bridge. He’d ruled out going back to his apartment—he was afraid someone might be there waiting for him. He’d woken to a street bum rapping on his window, staring at what must’ve been a mirror image of himself.

  Paul peeked in the rearview mirror to check. Yes—a worthy candidate for bumhood. His skin was pasty. His eyes were rheumy and bloodshot. His head hurt.

  He kept asking himself why?

  It felt like he’d entered the bizarro world of the Superman comics he used to read as a kid. Where everything was upside down, inside out. Where people who looked like your friends, weren’t. Where you didn’t have a clue.

  A piece of his rational brain kept asking if he could’ve been mistaken. About everything. If he might’ve misunderstood what María said on the phone. If he’d put two and two together and come up with five.

  Maybe Miles had hired Pablo. Maybe Miles’ Wednesday night call had simply slipped her mind.

  And Moshe? Maybe what he’d whispered to the steroid user had been an innocent crack. Something about the spider—about actuaries with silly phobias.

  And those men running after him? Why not, if he’d just clobbered one of their coworkers over the head.

  Maybe.

  Only he couldn’t forget the way Moshe looked at him through the office door—that smile dripping with chilling insincerity. The way Moshe watched him walk down the hall to the bathroom, as if sighting his prey.

  And something else. Miles had gone to move his car but never came back.

  Things were beginning to stir in the neighborhood.

  People were trickling out of their houses—young, old, even ancient. Unlike Miles, these were people who didn’t dare offend God, even if he did scare off a client or two. The men wore long corkscrew sideburns falling down to their shoulders like Victorian ringlets. They all wore black skullcaps. They must be headed to worship, Paul guessed, suddenly realizing it was Saturday.

  Eighteen hours and four days. Dread seized him and refused to let go.

  Miles’ house remained conspicuously quiet.

  Paul waited twenty minutes—eight o’clock, a reasonable hour to be awake and functioning.

  He got out of the car and walked up to the brownstone steps.

  He thought he saw a flash of movement through the living room window, slight and insubstantial, like the shadow of a butterfly.

  When he knocked on the door, he only had to wait ten seconds before Rachel opened it.

  She was dressed in her Saturday best, wig firmly in place under a black wide-brimmed hat, evidently ready to join the throng making its way to prayer. She peered at him quizzically, giving a phantom glance at her watchless wrist.

  Yes, it was kind of early for visitors.

  “Hello,“ Paul said as normally as he could muster. “Is Miles here?”

  It was an obvious question, Rachel’s face seemed to say. Where else would Miles be at eight on a Saturday morning but in his home?

  “He’s not feeling well. I was about to take the children to shul, Mr. Breidbart. Was he expecting you?”

  Good question, Paul thought.

  When Miles asked Rachel who’s there? from behind
the door and groggily walked into view without waiting for a response, Paul decided the answer was no.

  He wasn’t expecting him.

  Miles looked surprised, even shocked. It wouldn’t be amiss to trot out an overused cliché and say he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. He didn’t look like he was feeling well, but the sight of Paul had evidently made him feel worse.

  Miles recovered. Maybe his lawyerly instincts took over, reverting to the kind of expression he’d be expected to maintain if one of his clients had just confessed to murder on the stand. Of course Miles didn’t practice trial law—he’d gone into foreign adoptions. And a few other things you maybe didn’t need a license for.

  “Paul,” he said, a quasi smile plastered to his face. “I said I’m always available, but this is ridiculous, no?”

  Okay, Paul thought, give him credit for grace under fire.

  Something was bothering Paul—besides the obvious.

  Think.

  Miles brought him to Little Odessa to have him killed. Paul had assaulted someone, hijacked a car, and escaped. Moshe would’ve called Miles with that piece of news.

  So why was he so shocked at seeing Paul in the flesh and still standing?

  “I ran into a little trouble,” Paul said.

  Rachel was standing between them like a referee who doesn’t understand the bout’s begun. “You should go upstairs and rest,” she said to Miles with just enough wifely edge to make her point. Business was business, but this was his day off.

  “Trouble?” Miles responded, ignoring his wife. “By the way, sorry I was called away yesterday. Did Moshe tell you?”

  More to the point, Paul thought, did Moshe tell you? And if not, why? For the fiftieth time that morning, Paul asked himself if it was possible he’d gotten it wrong. He would’ve given anything for that to be the case.

  Rachel cleared her throat.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Miles said. “I promise that after I talk to Paul here, I’ll take a nice long rest.”

  Miles looked like he could use it. He appeared feverish and tired, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  That made two of them.

  Rachel clearly wasn’t happy about Paul’s intrusion, but she silently acquiesced. She called her sons.

  They slipped through the front door and trooped down the brownstone steps behind their mother with no great enthusiasm.