Jeff Sherratt - Detour to Murder

I lightly touched my face and it stung. Pulling my hand away I glanced at it: blood! I took a quick look at my lap, and to my shock I saw fresh blood there too. I began to feel nauseous and the pain from the cut in my arm intensified. I reached over and felt that wound, then pulled my hand away. More blood.

My vision started to blur. I blinked several times. The red taillights of the cars in front of me pulsated in and out of focus. The headlights from the cars on the other side of the freeway converged into a hazy white ball. I drove erratically and couldn’t keep the Buick between the lines. My head spun, but I kept going, not knowing if I’d make it home without killing myself.

A couple miles later my hands slipped from the wheel, and my head dropped. I fell into a black void.

An air horn blasted. I snapped up just in time, shook my head and glanced up. The Buick was out of control, moving fast, heading straight for an overpass pillar.

I jerked the car to the right, bounced back into the fast lane, and just missed the semi that had blown its horn. The driver must’ve thought I was another drunk heading home plastered out of my mind.

With difficulty, I maneuvered the car into the slow lane and drifted off the freeway at Carson St., the next ramp. I pulled into an all-night Union Oil station sitting on a corner. When I stopped under the canopy, an attendant rushed out.

“Jesus, mister, what happened to you?” the kid in a white uniform asked.

“Cut… myself shaving. Where… am I, anyway?” My words came out in labored spurts.

“Hawaiian Gardens, corner of Carson and Pioneer Blvd. Do you need help?”

“You got a… phone?”

“Yeah, in the office. Can you make it?”

I opened the door and somehow managed to stumble into the small office. “It’s a local call,” I told the kid.

“I don’t give a damn. Call anyone you want. It ain’t my phone.”

I dialed Rita’s home number. “Rita… it’s me.”

“Oh my God! Jimmy where have you been? Everyone’s frantic.”

“Come get me… I’m at the corner… Carson and Pioneer. Gas station… Hawaiian Gardens.”

“Jimmy, what’s the matter? You sound terrible. What-”

“Just… come get me… please.” I hung up.

I waited, slouching in the desk chair. The kid brought me a large glass of water, I gulped it down and he brought another. Then he went to move the Buick. While he was gone I tried not to think about the pain, the rats, or the bodies in the warehouse. I thought about still being alive.

The kid returned. “Car’s in the back. Here’s the keys, mister.”

“Thanks.” I shoved the keys in my pocket. Want… some money?”

“Nah, I’ve been in trouble before. I know what it feels like.”

“Why do they… call this town… Hawaiian Gardens? Doesn’t look… like Hawaii.” I tried making small talk in an effort not to pass out again.

He nodded toward the street. “There’s a bamboo shack down the road, sells hamburgers. Been there forever. Supposed to look like Hawaii.”

“That… explains it.”

Ten minutes later, Rita’s yellow Datsun swung into the station and slammed to a stop next to the office. She saw me through the window and jumped out of the car still wearing her bathrobe, a fuzzy pink thing that had seen better days. Without saying a word she helped me into her car and we pulled out of the lot. Screw the Buick.

We headed north on the 605. While Rita drove, I gave her the lowdown and this time I didn’t hold back. I told her about Danny and Rollo, how they took me by surprise at gunpoint, tied me to a post, worked me over. How they demanded that I turn over Mrs. Hathaway’s papers. Papers I didn’t have. I told her how I’d hung on that post in the abandoned warehouse for hours on end until I almost lost my mind.

Then I explained why I’d had to kill them. I left out the part about the rats.

She took her eyes off the road for a moment and stared at me in horror, but she didn’t say a word about what I had just told her. Still, her knuckles were white as she gripped the wheel tighter.

“Rita, I was scared, really scared. I didn’t… have a choice. They came back to kill me-”

“You’ve been gone for almost forty hours. I’m taking you to the emergency room, right now!” she snapped in a firm voice reminiscent of my grade school principal.

“No, just take me home… I’ve got to call Sol. He’s got… an envelope… I have to find out about Roberts.”

She glanced at me again. “No! Look at you. Your face is a mess. You’ll get an infection… and you’re dehydrated and exhausted.”

“Rita, if we go to the… hospital… they’ll file a police report… I’ll go to jail.”

“Okay, then we’ll go to my place. I have some penicillin pills and a first aid kit. I’ll try to patch you up, but if you get a fever or anything I’m taking you to the emergency room at Downey Memorial,” she said. “Agreed?”

I nodded as she spoke, my mind running in slow motion. Images came and went. Hazy thoughts flickered like an old movie. Christ, I needed food and sleep.

“Do you know… there’s a bamboo shack… in Hawaiian Gardens?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t worry about Al Roberts. He’s doing better. He’s still at the hospital and they won’t allow the police to move him for at least a few more days.”

“I’ve got to… call… Sol…”

“We’ll call him when we get to my place.”

As soon as we entered Rita’s apartment, I went to the phone and dialed Sol’s private home number. “Sol…” I said when he answered.

“Gott in Himmel! Where are you?”

“At Rita’s-”

Rita snatched the phone away from me. “Sol, he’s not well. I know you want to see him as soon as possible. But it’ll have to wait until the morning. He’ll be staying here tonight.” She paused for a moment. “I know how important it is, but he’s been through a lot and he’s in no condition to talk to anyone.”

While I sat on the sofa, Rita brought Sol up to speed on what had happened. She was brief and concise. “Goodbye, Sol,” she finally said and hung up.

“I really need to see him, Rita…” My voice trailed off in exhaustion. It was becoming harder to speak, to stay focused, and even to breathe. I had a massive headache and my body felt like a two-hundred-pound pile of pain.

She gave me a look. “It can wait until tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As much as I wanted to talk to Sol, I couldn’t argue with Rita. I hadn’t slept in God knows how long and I was dead on my feet.

Light filtered in through Rita’s lace-covered windows. I checked the alarm clock on the night table: 10:38. I’d slept almost eleven hours and my stomach growled in hunger. New clothes were folded neatly on a wingback chair in the corner of the room. My body was stiff and sore and it hurt to move, but I managed to sit up on the edge of the bed. I lightly touched my face, felt the bandages Rita had applied the night before, and winced.

Muffled voices drifted in from the other side of the door. One of them belonged to Sol, another to Rita. I didn’t recognize the third voice. Gradually I got up, used the adjoining bathroom, took two more penicillin pills, and dressed as best I could.

Rita, Sol, and a guy I didn’t know stood when I entered the living room.

“Jimmy, you look like shit warmed over,” Sol said.

“Good morning to you, too, Sol.”

The man, in his mid-fifties, was big, broad in the shoulders, and hefty with a thick neck. Thirty years ago, he could’ve been a linebacker for the Rams. Now he was just a middle-aged guy with a paunch. He wore a rumpled brown suit with a white dress shirt, open at the collar and no tie. He had thinning blond hair and hooded, questioning eyes that shifted from me to Sol, then back to me again.