Jeff Sherratt - Detour to Murder

A couple of seconds later the same black Buick that’d haunted my nightmares pulled up to the curb. The back door flew open. My assailant shoved me into the seat and climbed in after me.

The car sped away and quickly merged with the traffic.

In addition to the driver, another guy sat in front. He turned and faced me, his gun pointed at my head. I glanced at the asshole next to me: one of the goons that had worked me over after smashing my car. The bastard in front was the other one. They were fat ugly guys, hardboiled and rotten to the core.

“Hey! What’s this all about?”

“Shut up. You’ll find out soon enough,” the guy in front said.

“You’re the same sons-of-bitches that-”

The heavyweight reached over the seat and pistol-whipped the side of my head with his revolver. I slumped back in the seat as pinpoints of light danced in front of my eyes.

“I told you to shut the hell up!”

The guy next to me wrapped tape around my wrists. My shoulders hurt like hell when he yanked my arms up tight behind my back. I decided I’d better calm down before I got myself killed.

The driver said nothing. He kept his eyes on the road as we traveled west on Seventh. A few minutes later we cruised south on the Harbor Freeway. Transitioning to the 405, we headed toward Long Beach. We got off the freeway at Cherry, drove a few miles, and entered Signal Hill, a small area of decrepit oil derricks and rusty tanks just north of Long Beach.

We turned right onto a winding dirt road, climbed a small rise, and came to an oil field at the top of the hill. I could almost taste the petroleum fumes and methane gas that hung in the air as we splashed through oily mud puddles and wound around numerous pumpjacks, all nodding slowly, up and down, up and down.

We finally stopped in front of a dilapidated brick building designed in the classic Eyesore Style of Architecture. A faded sign painted on the wall of the abandoned structure read Signal Oil Tool Warehouse .

The driver got out of the car, came around and opened my door. Without saying a word, he reached in and jerked me out. The other two thugs grabbed my arms and half dragged me across the dark, slimy dirt toward the warehouse door. The driver unlocked and opened it, then stood off to the side while the other guys shoved me through and followed me in.

The driver locked the door after us.

I stood in semidarkness-the only light filtering in from a row of dirty windows running along one wall, located close to the ceiling fifteen feet above the cracked and buckled concrete floor. Upright wooden beams supporting the roof were laid out in a grid pattern and spaced about twenty feet apart. At the far end, a small office with broken windows and a missing door looked as if it were about to collapse under its own weight.

My original abductor gave me another hard shove in the direction of the upright beams. I stumbled, but caught myself before I fell. “Keep your goddamn hands off of me,” I snapped.

Lightning fast, he slapped my face… hard. I tried to kick him. He stepped aside and I missed. He clobbered me again, this time with the butt of the gun. I went down. “I told you to shut the fuck up,” he shouted.

“Hey, Danny, cool it,” the driver said. “Let’s get him tied to the post first.”

He grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me up and hauled me over to one of the beams. He undid the tape on my wrists as the goon from the front seat kept his gun trained on me.

“Don’t be an asshole, O’Brien,” Danny said. “Don’t make it hard. We’re just going to tie you up, ask you a few questions, then we’ll be outta here.”

I felt my face. It hurt like hell and I knew I’d been cut. The sticky metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I felt woozy, nauseated. Blood mixed with sweat dripped to the floor. The building was like a huge hothouse with heat waves radiating from below. Maybe I should’ve tried to fight, but I was too weak, and they might’ve killed me anyway. I just looked at the floor, wondering why they were doing this to me.

The driver took hold of my arms and wrapped them around the support beam behind me. “Toss me the duct tape and the rope,” he ordered.

With my arms secured behind the post, he looped a piece of rope tied in a slip knot around my neck and jerked me up until I had to stand practically on my toes. Then he fastened the other end to a spike nailed high in the beam. If I tried to slide down into a sitting position I’d hang myself.

“Hey, Morelli,” the thug named Danny said to the driver, “we’ll handle this guy. Find a phone booth. Call the Tower and tell the boss we got him. Use that phone number I gave you. Hurry back; this won’t take long.”

“Okay, I’m on my way,” The driver left, and the door slammed behind him.

With my arms and legs bound to the wooden support beam, Danny and the other jerk started in on me. Danny backhanded me across the face. His gaudy ring sliced my skin. “Listen up. We can make this easy or hard. Tell us what we want to know and we’re gone.”

My face must’ve looked like hamburger. It throbbed and burned; I felt like it’d been mauled by a junkyard dog. “What do you want, for chrissakes?” I mumbled.

“Where’s the paper?”

“What are you talking about-” The guy hit me again. I started to get woozy. My head nearly hit my chest, but as soon as it fell an inch, the rope around my neck tightened, cutting into my windpipe. I had to keep my head up, or I’d be strangled.

Danny grabbed my hair and pulled my head back. He moved in close, eyeball to eyeball. His breath could peel paint. “You know what we want: the old lady’s paper. We know you got it.”

My God! These guys were after Mrs. Hathaway’s blackmail documents. They killed her but didn’t find what they were looking for. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let me at ’im, Danny,” the other guy said as he whipped out a switchblade. The six-inch blade snapped open. “I’ll make this bastard talk. I’ll have a good time cutting up the prick.” He laughed and moved closer to me.

“Back off, Rollo. I don’t want him dead.”

“Maybe, I’ll cut him a little, he’ll bleed, maybe he’ll live…for a while.”

“Look, damn it, I don’t have her papers. She didn’t give me anything, just some old phone numbers. That’s all.”

“C’mon, man, let me cut ’im,” Rollo said again.

“Not now.” Danny turned back to me. “Tell us where you hid the paper and we’ll let you go.”

“I figure you guys had found the papers… when you searched her shed… before you killed her.” I felt weak. My eyelids weighed a ton, but by a force of will I kept them open. I couldn’t let my head drop.

Rollo moved in close, waving the knife back and forth in front of my face.

Danny held him back. “Look, Rollo, let’s just do what we we’re told. We’re in no hurry. C’mon, let’s go. Let the asshole stew here for a while. He’ll tell us all about the paper when we come back in the morning.”

“In the morning? Hey, you can’t leave me here like this all night! I won’t make it,” I shouted.

Ignoring his cohort, Rollo moved in even closer. Our noses almost touched and I felt his hot breath on my face. “I’ll cut you, man. You’ll bleed red, man. Your stinkin’ blood will gush.”

He raised his knife slowly. I felt the sharp pressure of the tip of the blade pressing against my jugular. One more millimeter and I’d die.

“Rollo, let’s go! Morelli will be back by now.”

“Then I’ll cut ’im? When we come back?”

“Yeah, Rollo. If he don’t talk, you can cut him up. You can cut him in as many pieces as you want.”