James Siegel - Detour

He was still smiling, but Paul understood that it was like Galina’s smile when she’d opened her front door and welcomed them into her home.

“Is there a bathroom?” Paul asked. “I need to use the bathroom.”

It’s amazing how the survival instinct takes over.

How you can be frozen to the spot, your body positively numb with fear, and you can still move your mouth and ask for the bathroom—ask for anything that will prevent you from walking into that office. Because you know with absolute certainty that if you walk in, you won’t be walking out.

Moshe seemed to contemplate this request for a moment.

“Back there,” he said, pointing with his thumb. “Out the door to the left.”

Paul stood up. His legs felt like they had back in María’s office, like soft jelly. He was trying not to let Moshe know that he was in on the big secret, that he understood he was the only actor in this charade who hadn’t been given his lines.

“Down the hall,” Moshe said, but Paul noticed that he’d stopped smiling.

“Okay. Be right back.” He turned to go.

Moshe put his hand on his shoulder. Paul could feel sharp fingernails digging into his flesh.

“Hurry,” he said. His teeth were yellow and misshapen, something that hadn’t been evident from a distance. Now that Paul was close enough to smell him, he could see the physical legacy of what must’ve been an impoverished Russian childhood.

“Sure. I just need to use the bathroom. Then I’ll come right back.” It sounded like bad exposition—he was giving too much information.

“Good,” Moshe said, seemingly unawares. “We got lots to do, huh?”

“Yes. Lots to do.”

Paul walked through the door, resisting the overpowering urge to run. It’s what you do in the face of mortal danger, isn’t it? It’s wired into your system—this need to churn your legs and take off like a bat out of hell.

He could hear Moshe stepping out into the hall behind him, evidently making sure Paul was going where he said he was.

The bathroom was about ten yards down the hall. Hombres, the door said—perhaps it came with the El Presidente model in the Spaghetti Western Collection.

He didn’t have a plan when he said he needed to go to the bathroom. He didn’t have a plan now.

Just a goal. To make it out of there alive.

He could sense Moshe still there in the hall. Watching him.

He went through the bathroom door.

It had a sink, a dirty urinal, and two narrow stalls.

What now?

His phone.

He could call the police. He’d tell them he’d been threatened, that he was trapped, in physical danger.

He went into the first stall and locked the door. He sat down on the toilet seat.

Paul pulled out his phone and dialed 911—a number that was now and forever associated with the date of the same number.

Nothing. That grating three-note announcement heralding that he’d done something wrong. That his party has moved or changed numbers.

He checked the number in the display window: 811.

Okay, nerves. He dialed again—wondering if his cell phone was on vibrate and ringing, since it seemed to be shaking in his hand. Even as he asked himself this, he knew perfectly well it wasn’t his phone that was shaking.

This time he got through.

“Emergency. How can we help you?” A female voice that sounded vaguely automated.

“I’m in danger,” Paul whispered. “Please send the police.”

“What’s the problem, sir?”

Hadn’t he just told her what the problem was?

“These men . . . they’re trying to kill me.”

“Is this a break-in, sir?”

“No. I’m somewhere . . . in an office. Not an office . . . a warehouse.”

“Have you been attacked, sir?”

“No. Yes. They’re about to attack me.”

“Where are you located?”

“Uh . . . in Little Odessa.”

“Little Odessa. That’s in Brooklyn, sir?”

“Yes, Brooklyn.”

“What’s the exact address, sir?”

“I don’t . . . Somewhere by the . . .” There were footsteps coming down the hall. Paul stopped talking.

“Give me your name, sir.”

The footsteps stopped just outside the door. The door opened. Two men walked in, one of them whistling “Night Fever.” The faucet turned on, one of the men began washing his hands.

“Sir? Your name, sir?”

Someone coughed up phlegm, spit it into the sink. The men began talking. They spoke in a haphazard mixture of Russian and English, switching from one to the other seemingly at random.

The man washing his hands said something in Russian, then asked if someone named Wenzel made the vig?

The whistler stopped. “What?”

“Wenzel. He pay vig or not?”

“Oh, sure thing.”

“Fucking GNP of Slovakia, right?”

The other man answered in Russian, and they both laughed.

Then some back-and-forth, mostly in English— you see Yuri around, tell that motherfucker he eat me —interrupted by the sound of one of the men urinating.

“Sir . . . are you still . . . ?”

Paul clicked the phone off. He suddenly realized that he’d been holding his breath ever since the men walked in. When he let it out, it sounded like the whoosh of a just-turned-on air conditioner.

Both men turned around and faced the stall. That embarrassing moment when you realize someone’s there, has been there the whole time you’ve been speaking.

Paul could just make out their feet underneath the stall door. Those hybrid sneaker-shoes, felt with garish nylon racing stripes.

One of the men said something in Russian.

When Paul didn’t answer, he switched languages.

“You whacking off in there, Sammy?”

“No.”

Silence. They didn’t recognize the voice.

“Okay,” one of the men said. “Just checking—we’re with whack-off patrol.” They laughed, then turned and walked out.

Paul was about to press send again, but he could hear them through the closing door. Someone was out there speaking to them—Moshe?

He’d be asking them if Paul was in there.

Yes, they’d say. There was someone whacking off in the stall.

Okay, that gave him maybe five minutes. Less, before Moshe himself walked in or sent one of his men back. To do what?

Pull Paul out of the stall and finish him off.

The emergency operator had asked him for the address, but he didn’t know it. They should hold seminars on this: If you’re going to be killed somewhere, note address. Note name too; he’d forgotten the name on the warehouse roof.

He stood up and pushed the stall door open. There was one small window. He lifted it open. Almost. Halfway up it stuck tight. It looked like it hadn’t been opened in years, at least not from inside—dead spiders were littered between the window and rusty screen.

And one not-dead spider. Black, fat, and stubbornly sticking to its fly-littered web. Spiders —stuck alphabetically between retroviruses and ticks on Paul’s long list of things to be frightened of.

Paul flushed the urinal to cover the noise, then gave the window a monumental push. It flew open.

First things first. The spider.

He attempted to crush it against the screen with a wad of rolled-up toilet tissue, but the screen was so rusted it fell off.

Good. Double good—the spider disappeared with it.

Paul stepped onto the sink and, using it for leverage, began to push himself through the window. He was facing the back lot. Miles was long gone. Only that maroon Buick remained; the man with CCCP tattooed on his arm was leaning against the driver’s side door, smoking a cigarette.

If the man turned just a little to his right, to scratch his arm or spit or just stretch his neck, he’d have a perfect view of a terrified man squeezing himself through a window.