Lynne Heitman - First Class Killing

My head snapped back, I lost my balance, and careened back against the railing. The base of my flashlight hit an iron strut and flipped over the side.

A man’s face had materialized directly in the beam of my flashlight, our noses separated by little more than the thickness of the glass. At least I thought it had. It was gone, and now so was my flashlight. It hit the pavement below with a heavy, muted pop. I looked down. I heard tapping. I looked back. The face was there, back in the window, looking even more ghostly in the reflected light from the neighboring building. A cadaverous smile formed and I knew what he was tapping with even before my eyes could register the image. I knew it was a gun. I knew he was tapping the glass with the barrel of his gun.

I lurched toward the stairs and stumbled down. I tried to yell, but anything that took energy away from getting down the stairs was taking too much. Halfway down, I heard the ghoul’s footsteps on the landing. I felt the structure shake. He had climbed through the window. He was coming down the fire escape behind me.

Holding tight to the railing, I took the last set of stairs in two giant leaps. When I hit the ground, I wanted to go right, to head for my car, but he was too close. I could never get to the Durango, get it unlocked, get in, start it…try something else.

I turned left. All I knew of the North End was a few Italian restaurants, the Old North Church, and endless narrow, winding streets and alleys. It would be easy to get lost, or maybe lose him. When I emerged from the alley, I turned toward the sound of cars moving, toward where I thought there would be restaurants and liquor stores and people on the sidewalks.

I heard the scratchy sound of a walkie-talkie. It was in front of me…no, behind. I looked back. The ghoul had made the corner. He was still coming, holding a device, shouting into it. But his voice was coming out…somewhere else. I twisted back around, searched the street, and spotted him. A second man stepped out of a doorway half a block down and looked around until he caught sight of me. He wore a suit, a pinstriped blue suit with a vest, which struck me in that moment of absolute adrenaline overload as weird. He was also squeezing a walkie-talkie, and I realized he’d been standing in front of Monica’s building. I had made a loop back to her front door.

Now he was coming, too, and I took off. He had turned me around, away from the lights, and I was going the other way along a dark and narrow sidewalk, up and down on the curb, around parked cars and parking meters until I came to an opening. It was a yard, a way to get off the street and out of their sight. Then I was through it and into an open field, and I was running flat out again. It was a relief to have the space to move, and at the same time I was thinking if I could see ahead, they could see me. I thought I was going toward the harbor, toward the water, because of the vast stretch of darkness ahead. But a chain-link fence with orange reflector signs came up fast and I knew I was completely off course. It wasn’t the water I had run to. It was a construction zone, a massive construction zone. I had stumbled upon the Big Dig, the world’s biggest road project. With no one around, it looked a lot like the far side of the moon. Only instead of craters and mountains, there were backhoes and wheelbarrows, cement pillars and exposed cables and large mud basins where rainwater had collected.

I didn’t want to go in there, but they were coming. The ghoul, tall and bony, was out front. The other one lagged behind, his suit coat flapping behind him.

I looked for any sign of life. Security guard. Police cruiser. Someone armed would be good, because now they were shooting at me. A round pinged against a metal container a few feet away. I resisted the urge to drop to the ground and roll into a fetal position and went instead up and over the fence. I couldn’t tell where the second round hit, but it got me moving. I crawled on my belly around a thicket of Do Not Enter signs, got to my feet, and lurched down a ramp and into a tunnel.

At first there was enough light for me to make my way. I could see to move easily among the piles of wood and the bags of cement. But very quickly, it got dark, and soon I was tripping over coils of cable and stumbling into bags of cement. I had to move more and more slowly until I was stopped.

“…dark…motherfucker…crazy bitch…”

“Keep…down here…spread out…”

They were in the tunnel with me.

I couldn’t find the direction of their voices. They seemed to be coming from all around. I reached out with both arms and shuffled along until my fingers connected with…machinery…a machine. Cold steel. Solid. I grabbed onto it and felt my way along until I found one of its tires. Okay, a tire I could visualize. I crouched beside it and listened. They were closer. How would they approach? One on each side? Both up the middle? If I could figure that out, I could go the other way…but what if I…what if they…wait.Where was the middle?

I no longer knew where the walls were. I had turned to listen to them and lost my bearings, and now I didn’t know which way to go, and my heart was flapping around my chest, and I seemed to be taking in more air than I could let out. My lungs were about to burst, and it had been a terrible mistake to come down here, because now I was trapped, and they had at least one gun, and I had to calm down.

I turned away and closed my eyes and made myself breathe. Listening to them was causing the panic. I had to make my own plan and that plan had to get me out. I was too scared in the dark. I leaned over with my hands on my knees and eyes closed and listened closely. I pointed myself to where I thought the voices were coming from. When I figured out where that was, I decided they were still behind me, which meant I had to find a way to get behind them.

I got down on my knees and felt along the ground. Nails? Too light. Gravel. Too small. Something hard. Heavy. A brick. A stack of bricks. Too heavy for what I needed.

A crash not far away. “Son of abitch.”

“Shut up. I can’t hear.”

“Like we’re going to find her in here.”

I crawled along the ground, using their noise for cover, feeling with my hands. There was something cold…aluminum or metal…cylindrical with a label. It was a can. Maybe a paint can. Two cans, each with a handle. Perfect.

I grabbed one, but when I reached for the other, I tipped it over and made it clatter. When I tried to catch it, I only managed to make it roll farther. They shouted to each other, and one of them began to drift in my direction. His footfall sounded like leather soles on pavement and I thought it might be the one in the suit. I stabbed at the darkness around me, trying to touch something, to find something to flatten against. I was out in the open, exposed. For all I knew, he would walk right into me.

He stopped. I had to stop. My muscles cramped. The paint can smelled of chemicals-solvent, maybe-and I wished I were a smoker with a lighter. I listened, but there was nothing, which meant that he was listening, too. I began to shake.

Then I heard him wheezing. Even though he was very close by, I felt a small relief that he was the one closer to me. He was struggling to breathe the heavy air and I knew, of the two, he was the one I could outrun, if only I could see where to run.

He stood for a long time. When he finally moved past, my whole body unclenched, and I nearly fell over. I waited for a good long time, until I couldn’t hear him anymore. When I straightened up, I hoped that my bones wouldn’t audibly creak. I took a deep breath and counted to myself.One… I wrapped my hand around the handle of the paint can…two…whirled around, which was not easy in total darkness, and…three…let it fly.