Kill Whitey

Our eyes adjusted to the gloom. The warehouse was a hollow, empty shell—just a massive room with miscellaneous debris scattered about. Rows of steel girders, spaced apart about every ten feet, ran from the floor to the ceiling. The concrete floor was cracked and pitted. Murky sunlight filtered down through dirty skylights and dust motes floated in the beams. Spider webs and grime coated everything. The air smelled stale and musty, but beneath it I could smell us—me and Sondra’s sweat, Yul’s vomit-stained clothes. Fear. And something else, bitter like ammonia.

I sniffed. “Yul, did you piss yourself?”

“Leave me alone.” He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open.

“Who are you calling?” I asked.

“Kim. I need to let her know that I’m okay. You know this shit is gonna be on the news.” He glanced at the phone, and then snapped it shut in frustration. “Damn it! There’s no signal in here.”

“Come on,” I urged. “We can’t just stand here next to the window. Whitey or the cops will hear us. We need to hide.”

“But don’t we want the cops to find us?”

“No,” Sondra and I said at the same time.

Yul flinched. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“Look,” I said. “You’re not in trouble. You can always say we took you hostage. But Sondra doesn’t need any cops right now—and in truth, I probably don’t either.”

We ventured farther into the building. Rats squealed in the dark corners. Flies crawled over the skylights and boarded-up windows, and gnats flitted about. Sondra jumped when a cockroach crunched under her shoeless foot. We listened for sounds of pursuit, but if Whitey was out there, he was keeping quiet. None of us were wearing watches. I asked Yul to check the time on his cell phone, but the building was still blocking the signal.

“You know,” I said, “you could have bought a better cell phone—one that would show us the time without having to be logged onto the network. I don’t know why you have that cheap piece of shit.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t know we were going to be hiding from the Russian mob. Next time, I’ll buy a better one.”

Despite our fears, we both grinned. Sondra shivered. It was cold inside the structure. Damp. I put my arm around her shoulder and she smiled.

Maybe I hadn’t lied to Yul. Maybe we would be okay after all.

At the far end of the warehouse was an open door, big enough to allow forklifts to pass by each other with full loads. There was another empty storage room on the other side of it. A concrete stairway led up to a second floor in the rear of the building, and a service ramp on the side headed down into a basement level. It was too dark down there to explore.

“Let’s head down there,” I suggested. “It’s dark enough to hide us.”

“No,” Sondra said. “Is too much like ship. I no like the dark now.”

Yul reached for a light switch but I stopped him, keeping my voice low.

“Even if there is power, we don’t want the lights on. Might as well just shout, ‘Here we are’ until they come running.”

“True that. Sorry. I’m just…look, somebody needs to tell me what’s going on. From the beginning.”

So I did just that. As we searched the second room, looking for a place to hide, I filled Yul in on everything that had happened. All the shit. I left nothing out. He took it pretty well, all things considered. Maybe he was in shock, or maybe it was exhaustion, but he seemed to accept it all—the murder of our friends, the news that the mob was after us, the fact that I’d killed some people and now the cops were after us, too, and the damage to his car—with resigned, sullen acceptance.

In the rear of the empty bay was an assortment of broken skids and cardboard shipping containers, the kind used to package refrigerators, dish washers, and other big appliances. Loops of plastic and metal strapping lay scattered around the pile. We hid behind the stack, crouching against the wall. By the time I’d finished telling Yul about the fucked up series of events that had landed us in this situation, we’d finally had a chance to catch our breath.

“So this Whitey guy wants to force Sondra to have an abortion,” Yul said. “And she’s on the run. And you shot him at your apartment, but when he showed up at GPS, he didn’t seem too fazed by it.”

“No,” I agreed. “He sure as hell didn’t. And I shot him again. You saw me. You both did. I shot the fucker in the head. His fucking ear was hanging off. But he still managed to follow us. Got the stamina of a bull. Or a pro wrestler.”

“Sounds like he’s the Soviet version of Jason Voorhees.”

I grinned. “There ain’t no more Soviets, Yul. Just gangsters.”

“What is this Jason?” Sondra asked.

“He’s the villain in a series of horror movies,” I explained. “Friday the 13th? You never saw those in Russia?”

“They have Jennifer Aniston in these Friday movies?”

“No.” I stifled another grin. “She wasn’t in them. But Jason was. You must have seen him before. Played by Kane Hodder and some other guy.”

“I met Kane Hodder once,” Yul said. “He was at a convention. Wanted thirty bucks for an autographed picture.”