by Brett Baker
After scaling the east wall of the building, which was separated from the adjacent building by a narrow three feet breezeway, Mia lifted herself through a window swung open, which Mia assumed was intended to help provide ventilation to the building.
Inside the warehouse, three large industrial pendant lights shone down on the bare concrete floor below. The open space covered at least an acre, and held not so much as one box. Two broken wooden pallets leaned against a far wall, and the three large rolling overhead doors were closed. A pedestrian door on the opposite side of the room separated the open space from the rest of the building, which Mia assumed might contain information she sought.
She hung from a cross beam by her hands, and shimmied twenty feet over the floor below until she reached a support post, to which she clung and lowered herself. A truck passed by outside and she froze, as if the driver could see through walls, or might open an overhead door and pull in. After a few seconds, content that she was safe from discovery, Mia walked to the pedestrian door and smiled in surprise to find it unlocked.
Beyond the door a hallway led straight back, with a series of doors on either side, and terminating at what—even in the darkness resulting from a single light bulb illuminating the long passageway—Mia could tell was a lunch room. Mia opened the first door to find a metal desk inside, with an assortment of office supplies spread out on top. She opened the drawers, but they were all empty. A large map of the United States hung one wall, and she examined it closely for any indication of pin points, drawn lines, or circled locations. It looked brand new though, and she concluded the office useless for her purposes.
Four other offices had the same outcome. She found nothing more interesting in any of the drawers than a hairbrush whose handle was in the shape of a naked lady. She’d just begun to assume that she’d wasted her time by breaking into the warehouse when she approached the last door.
She heard the trademark sniffing noise before she even opened the door, so only one of them was surprised when she threw open the door. With nothing in the warehouse she assumed the man was homeless, and chose the warehouse as a refuge. She wanted to let him know right away that she meant him no harm, but she didn’t know if he had heard her rummaging through the offices, so she chose to confront him so he couldn’t confront her by surprise.
The man snorted the last few granules of coke as the door burst open on its hinges and slammed against the wall. Mia knew she caught the man by surprise, so she didn’t feel as defensive as she would have under different circumstances. The shock of the commotion sent the man backward and he fell into the chair behind the desk. He wiped his nose, looked up at Mia, and started to stand.
“Just sit down,” Mia said. “Don’t do anything crazy. I’m not here for you. I didn’t even know you were here. I’m not going to tell anyone you’re here and you don’t have to leave. I’m just looking around.” Mia put up her hands as if to ease the man’s worries. She took a step into the office, and said again, “Sit down. You can keep doing what you’re doing. I’m about to leave. I just didn’t want you to take me by surprise.”
“It’s okay for you to scare the hell out of me, but you don’t want me to do the same to you?” the man asked. He stood up, and a white substance dripped from his nose.
“Of course I don’t want you to scare me,” Mia said. “I’m sorry that I scared you. I just wanted you to know that I’m not here for you, since I’m the one intruding.”
“Damn right you’re intruding,” said Drippy. He took a step toward Mia and stopped, as if to gauge her reaction.
“Now hold on a minute,” Mia said. “Don’t move. You stay right there. I’m about to leave. No need for you to get up. Just get back to what you were doing and I’ll be on my way.”
Mia turned to walk away, but kept an eye on Drippy. When he moved toward her she turned to face him just in time to see him pull a gun from his waist.
“That’s not necessary,” she said, jumping to the side of the door, using the wall as a barrier between her and the gun, but not at all confident that the wall would stop a bullet. “Just let me get going.”
“Get the fuck over here right now,” Drippy said. “You don’t belong here so you’re going to tell me why you’re here.”
“It’s not to steal any of your coke if that’s what you’re worried about,” Mia said. “I think I’m in the wrong place. There’s nothing here that I’m looking for. I’ll be on my way now, okay. Just hold your fucking horses.”
Mia took a half-step toward the door, peeking around the corner, revealing her shoulder and her head. As soon as she came into view Drippy fired a shot. The echo bounced off every inch of the warehouse and amplified enough to make Mia think her eardrums exploded.
“Golly fuck, what are you doing? I just told you that I’m not here for you and you’re shooting at me? Come on, man. I just got here and this is how you welcome me?”
Mia pressed her back flat against the wall, and slid down the hall toward the lunchroom. She had planned to seek refuge from Drippy inside the lunchroom, but when she saw a support post next to the entrance to the lunchroom she came up with another idea. She scaled the post, using her hands and feet to propel herself up toward a cross beam. At the cross beam she swung her feet up around the beam and hung on with her hands, her body parallel to the floor. She began to shimmy her way across the beam, back down the hallway, and past the office in which Drippy still stood, waiting for her to peek around the corner one more time. At the opposite end of the hallway, near the door that led to the open area of the warehouse, Mia slid back down a support post. Her breath heavy from effort and anticipation, she sauntered back down the hall, approaching Drippy’s office from the direction opposite of which she had disappeared.
She flattened her back against the wall, and heard Drippy’s footsteps as they approached the door. He sniffed almost non-stop, and his breath fell and rose out of his mouth with a speed implying a just-completed foot race. Mia could hear him approaching the door, and she turned her body toward him in anticipation.
As Drippy took a step into the hall, his gun held in both hands, pointing down the hall in the direction he expected to find Mia, she reached around and used her left hand to smash his wrists, as her right hand delivered a pointed jab to his kidneys that would make him pee blood for a week. He let out a scream, dropped the gun, and bent back and toward his right, in the direction of his injured kidney. Mia wrapped her left arm around his neck, and clasped her hands, squeezing her arms to cut off the flow of blood to his brain.
“Why’d you have to bring the gun?” she asked. “You shouldn’t mess with guns. Those things are dangerous!” She dragged him back into the office, maintaining pressure on his throat. He flailed his arms and reached back and grabbed her ear and tried to pull it toward him. “Let go of my fucking ear or I’ll snap your neck right now. If you don’t believe me, let me know how this feels.” She stood on her tip toes and pushed his head to the left by exerting pressure with her right arm, while pushing his neck to the right by exerting pressure with her left biceps. The technique makes the victim feel like his neck is about to snap sideways, and Drippy reacted like Mia had hoped and let go of her ear.
She stood in the middle of the office, her back to the desk, Drippy facing the door through which they’d just come, and she eased the snapping pressure on his neck, but maintained the chokehold.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to tell me why you’re shooting at me. I told you from the beginning that I didn’t care about you. I was about to be on my way, and word of our encounter here would never leave my lips. But then you had to be a fucking fool and start shooting at me. That changes things. Before I had you pegged as a pitiful cokehead. Now I think you’re a murderer and unless you start talking only one of us is leaving this place alive, and it won’t be you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Drippy nodded that he understood and Mia felt the tension ease from hi
s body as if he’d decided to stop resisting. She loosened her grip around his neck, and Drippy gasped for air. He stood almost the same height as her, but outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. Mia thought she could feel his heart beating through his back, and she worried about having to keep him subdued, not knowing how he’d react to the coke he’d just snorted.
“I’m here just for the night,” the man said.
“Why are you here?” Mia asked. “Are you shooting at me because you’re scared or because you have a reason to shoot at me?”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. Right now I’m the woman who has her arm around your neck, so if you piss me off it can spell the end for you. And I’m getting angrier by the minute. So I suggest you start giving me answers.”
Drippy took a few deep breaths, and started to speak. “I just needed a quiet place to go. Things went bad earlier and I knew this place was empty so I came here. I didn’t think anyone knew I was here. How’d you find me?”
“What do you mean things went bad?”
“The guy tried to rip me off. He gave me that shit from Houston instead of the stuff from Miami, which is what we agreed on, and what I paid him for. Motherfucker had it coming.”
“Wait, you’re talking about a drug deal?” Mia asked. She kept choking Drippy, but loosened her grip just a bit.
“Yeah. I need to hide out for the night, and this place is safe, so I came here. I wasn’t expecting to see you. What are you doing here anyway?”
“Never mind what I’m doing here. It’s none of your business.” She tightened her squeeze to remind Drippy who was in charge. “How’d you get in here?”
“The door’s open,” Drippy said. “They don’t lock it.”
“Which door? The overhead doors?” Mia asked, trying to give Drippy the benefit of the doubt.
“No, the main entrance. The little door.”
“Bullshit. I just checked it. It’s locked.” Mia tightened her grip.
Drippy cried out in terror. “I locked it from the inside,” he said. “When I came in.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” Mia said. “You can’t lock that door without a key. How the fuck did you get in here?”
“No, the overhead door,” Drippy said, trying to backtrack. “It was wide-open. Well, not wide-open, but unlocked. I opened it, no problem. Let myself in.”
“I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in right now. You shot at me when I was trying to let you off the hook. You’re lying to me. You’re coked up. I have no idea what to expect from you. You’ve got a minute to convince me not to kill you. Otherwise, this is the end of the line for you. I can’t take any chances.”
In her years in The Summit, Mia had learned that when faced with death even the toughest characters get a little soft, and often confess things they had never planned to confess. Everything being equal, she’d prefer not to kill anyone if she could squeeze information out of them instead. She gained no thrill from killing, but she felt no shame in it either. Often she had no choice, so she did what she had to do, but she never relished it. She intended to give Drippy a chance to talk himself free. Even though he seemed like a coke head just in search of a safe haven, the mystery of how he entered the warehouse gave her pause.
“I’m dying,” Drippy gasped, grabbing Mia’s arms and trying to pull them free. “I can’t breathe. Let me free and I’ll talk.”
“This ain’t my first rodeo,” Mia said. “You’re not the first bad guy I’ve encountered.”
“I’m not a bad guy. I can explain it all. No bullshit. It’s just a misunderstanding. I’m worried you’re going to bust me. You don’t have to let me go. Just loosen your grip for a minute. I feel an asthma attack coming.”
Mia said nothing and didn’t change her grip, but she detected a difference in Drippy’s breathing, and felt his chest heave more with every breath, and she heard more panic in his voice.
“Just a little,” Drippy said. “Let go just a little. I’ve got to get my inhaler.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t snort coke if you need an inhaler. I didn’t go to medical school or anything, but that seems like good advice.”
“Let me get it. It’s right here in my pocket.” He put his hands into the air, as if to show he intended no threat. “I can’t breathe,” he muttered to himself, ignoring that his words expressed the opposite. Mia said nothing, and didn’t loosen her grip around his throat.
Drippy put a hand into the right pocket of the light jacket he wore, and fumbled around for a moment. “Slowly,” Mia said. “Don’t do anything fucking stupid.” She strained her neck past Drippy’s shoulder to get a better view of his pocket, and when she saw him pull out an inhaler, she let out her own sigh of relief.
“I’m not a bad guy,” he said, as he brought the inhaler to his mouth. “I’ve got problems, but I’m a good guy. I just can’t breathe. This smog. They need to do something about this smog. I don’t know how anyone’s supposed to live in a place like this.”
Drippy pressed the inhaler twice and sucked in the lifesaving medicine. He took a few deep breaths, and said, “That’s much better. I have my breath back. Don’t squeeze me any tighter, please. I need all the oxygen I can get. Now, let me explain.”
He put the inhaler back in his pocket, and Mia had just begun to tell him that he better get to the point, when Drippy pulled his hand from his pocket, and instead of holding an inhaler, he held a small handgun, his finger on the trigger.
In one swift action Mia fell backward toward the floor while maintaining her lock around Drippy’s neck. As she fell back she kicked her right leg up toward Drippy’s hand and kicked the gun out of his hand. It flew into the air, away from both of them. She tightened her grip around his neck as they impacted the floor, and he lifted both hands to her forearm in a fruitless attempt to pry it loose. “I told you not to do anything stupid,” Mia said. “Just chill the fuck out and you would have been fine.”
She adjusted her forearm a couple of inches so she squeezed across Drippy’s windpipe rather than beneath his jaw. He began to kick his feet as Mia secured her grip around his neck, and increased the pressure. When he realized that he couldn’t pull her arm loose, he tried to punch her by throwing his hands back toward her face, but her arms blocked every attempt he made. His whole body squirmed as Mia remained still, allowing the technique and strength of her grip to do the work. After close to two full minutes Drippy stopped resisting, his limbs falling flaccid around him.
“What a sorry piece of shit,” Mia said, as she let go of her grip and rolled his body off of her.
She stood above him, checked his pulse, and felt nothing. She rummaged through his jacket pockets and found another small handgun in the other front pocket. “This guy’s got his own arsenal,” she said aloud. She assumed that he armed himself so well because he did business with drug dealers, but since she didn’t believe his story about letting himself into the building she thought he might have another reason for carrying so much firepower.
She turned him over and took his wallet from his back pocket. His driver’s license fell from his wallet as she opened it. She picked it up and examined it. Drippy’s real name was Tony Howe. Not Anthony. Just Tony. The address suggested he lived in Stockton, hundreds of miles away. Mia wondered why he was snorting cocaine in a warehouse in Los Angeles if he lived in Stockton, but seconds later judged it insignificant.
Mia found nothing else in his pockets except for a receipt from In-N-Out Burger on Sunset. She checked his pulse again just to be sure. Still dead.
On the desk she found a folded lottery ticket, the old-school style packaging for the powder that went up Drippy’s nose moments before. She opened each desk drawer, but found nothing, just like every other desk in the building. With no expectation of success she picked up Drippy’s cell phone. When she found no password protecting it she shook her head and said, “Careless,” before realizing that the four-digit code on the phone must
have had significance, since it was the last thing Drippy accessed.
She walked backed down the hallway toward the open area of the warehouse, and then to the main entrance. Next to the door a keypad with a green and yellow display showed a padlock, with the words “Please enter code” beneath. Mia entered the six digits, 363929, and the padlock switched to an unlocked position, with the words, “Entry/exit” beneath. She twisted the doorknob and the door opened.
Drippy hadn’t just wandered over to the warehouse looking for refuge. He had the access code to enter, but hadn’t been there often since he hadn’t memorized the code. He hadn’t been as innocent as he appeared, if a man snorting coke in an empty warehouse could appear innocent.
Mia began searching the phone, looking for any helpful information. She didn’t have to search long. The first text message, saved with the contact name Gabe Portnoy, paid dividends. Hours earlier Drippy had asked Portnoy whether he needed to “man the warehouse” again, to which Portnoy replied, “Yes. They don’t think its clear yet.”
“Paranoid,” Drippy replied.
“Don’t complain. Easy money,” Portnoy said. “If you don’t want to do it I’m sure I can find someone else.”
“I never said that. I’ll be there.”
Drippy let Portnoy know of his arrival, that the door was locked, and nothing seemed disturbed. Mia wondered what could have seemed disturbed in an empty warehouse.
As she scrolled back through text messages, Mia discovered that Drippy had spent ten uneventful nights in the warehouse. He reported each arrival and departure to Portnoy, who always responded with “Thanks,” or “Good.”
The thread began with a message from Portnoy: “Hey Tony. Gabe here. Just heard about a job that even you can’t fuck up. Call me.”