MDA PressRed Lines, Part 4
By Chris McCarthy
Leo drives the van out of the small parking lot and from this vantage point sees why Jack and his team chose it. It’s well hidden and poorly lit. You could look from the main road and see the hill up to the freeway and think it was a dead end, without seeing the driveway into the small parking lot just before the hill.
Leo edges out past a stop sign on Main Street and takes a left, following the GPS, on his way to the freeway to head north back to Los Angeles. He wonders why Jack was in Manhattan Beach earlier today. Was he following the man that Leo had killed? What was this larger plan Jack had referenced? And who was the man in the van who ran into another vehicle at the top of the hill? Jack had been sparing in details, but was clear that the only way for Leo to get his life back is to trust Jack and his associates. But still the thought lingered… Should he have run? But then what would happen to his passengers?
Leo notices he’s gripping the wheel tightly and catching his reflection in the mirror, he looks like he’s aged five years in half a day.
Leo looks past his face in the rearview and catches the eye of the girl who looks a year or two older, the mother hen.
“Where are you from?” He asks.
She nods at the road ahead. “LA.” She says then drops her eyes. Leo nods. “Are you taking us home?” She asks, looking up again.
Leo says “I don’t know exactly.” Forcing certainty, he adds, “But I know you’ll be safe there. I’m Leo by the way. What’s your name?”
“Emily.”
The girl in the seat next to her has brown hair cut into a short bob and large brown eyes. She looks to be about thirteen.
“How do we know you’re not taking us to Mexico.” The girls with the large brown eyes says.
Emily, who has decided to trust Leo, turns to the girl and says, “We’re going the opposite direction,” Then she calmly looks out the window.
Leo drives on the 405 freeway. A radio buzzes then a channel opens, scratchy and loud, startling Leo. “Get off the freeway.” Leo pulls the black receiver off its hook on the dashboard. He looks at it for a moment then pushes a red button on the side.
“What? Who is this?” Leo asks.
“I want you to get off at the next exit. There’s an accident near Hawthorne. I need you to get off the freeway.” The voice says.
Leo feels goosebumps raise on his arms, again feeling the seriousness of his situation. He looks in the rearview for anything suspicious. Nothing catches his eye.
A crackle from the radio. Leo pushes the speech button and says, “I’m here. I’m here.”
“I said get off at Artesia.”
“I’m getting over. I’ll get off right now. Then what do I do?” Leo asks.
Leo looks behind him and sees a car with a busted headlight. It doesn’t follow him into the far right lane so he relaxes then sees the girl with the brown eyes staring at him in the mirror. She looks scared now for some reason maybe thinking their destination is nearby. He still doesn’t understand how these girls had gotten here. Maybe he’d learn soon. Or if he was lucky maybe he’d be able to leave all of this behind after he finishes this drive. He’d had two chances to get out of this but took neither, not that they were decent options. Once at the house in Santa Ana. And another chance when he could have booked it and gotten lost in the shadows of the back alleys and closed mechanic shops instead of getting into the driver’s seat of this van.
Self-sabotage is in his DNA he remembers Celia saying.
“Are you there? I said what do I do then?” Leo says into the radio.
“I’m here, sorry I was checking with our other car to see if our path is clear. Just focus on driving. This will all be over soon.”
“Ok…”
“Take a right on Aviation in just over a mile and keep going until I tell you different.”
“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”
“Just be patient Leo. And don’t speed.”
“Yeah, I got it. Don’t speed.” Leo says, shaking his head.
Leo turns right on Aviation Blvd, a seven mile thoroughfare stretching north to south from the city Westchester to the South Bay Area of Los Angeles, which includes Hermosa and Redondo beach.
After following a few more directions from the man on the radio, Leo turns left on Manchester street right after the airport. He drives through the middle class neighborhood and, following the man’s instructions, pulls into a small parking lot between a cul-de-sac of small one-story homes and before a large warehouse. There are about five small storage units with sliding steel doors. He pulls in and one of the storage unit doors opens and a man holding a walkie-talkie ducks his head under the opening sliding door and walks out. He waves Leo inside, his eyes scanning everywhere but the van.
One of the girls in the back seat sniffles and the mother hen comforts her. The brown eyed girl has her head raised looking out the windows trying to gather any information she can about their location. She’s not getting much. Leo hears murmurs from the other four girls further back in the van.
“It’s ok.” Leo says. “I think you’re safe now.”
“But you don’t know,” Emily, the mother hen, says as she reaches over and combs her fingers through the brown-eyed girl’s hair.
The headlights blast against the back wall of the small twenty square foot storage unit, which is empty except for random scraps of things presumably stored by people over the years. A piece of coiled rope. A few cardboard boxes broken down and set against the right side of the unit. An old tire with a gash in it leaning against the wall. A single light bulb hangs down from the center of the ceiling. Leo pulls to a stop three feet in front of the back wall, the light bulb just grazing the top of the van, causing light to bounce around the unit.
The man with the radio walks up along the driver’s side of the van and taps the door. Leo searches his face for what he’s trying to get across but the man is looking at the back wall. Leo follows his eyes and watches as the concrete wall slides open with the ease of a metal gate on wheels fencing off a driveway. Only he sees no wheels or other apparatus. The illusion is seamless. It just looks like a concrete slab sliding over to expose an opening in the wall.
The man taps the door again and this time looks at Leo and points at the window. It takes Leo a moment to find the window button to roll it down.
“Drive,” the man says.
Leo recognizes the voice as the one he heard over the radio. The man waves him forward and Leo pulls the steering wheel lever down a notch, putting the car back in drive. He drives down a small ramp then at the bottom turns left into a large well-lit…facility would be the best way to describe it.
Two men walk out from either side. One of them carries a pistol in his hand, held low at his side, presumably to not spook anyone. The other holds a hand up, indicating he wants Leo to stop. Leo stops the car, the only sound in the car his breathing and assorted sniffles and movements from the girls behind him. The low hum of the motor has an eerily reassuring quality to it.
The unarmed man walks to the side of the van and opens the sliding door. Leo looks over his shoulder and sees that two women have appeared from somewhere behind the van. They talk to the girls in hushed, reassuring tones.
The armed man’s eyes are alert, searching every inch of the van. Leo hears a slight thud and realizes the wall up the ramp has closed. The man with the radio jogs down it and joins the women at the open van door.
He looks in, scanning each the girl’s faces as the women help them out. One of the women moves her eyes over the faces and bodies of the girls with the searching eyes of a physician then leads the girls over to one corner of the room where there are some chairs, iPads, blankets, cots and a tent. The man with the radio looks at the woman. She nods her head.
He turns away from the van and speaks into his radio with an air of military efficiency. “She’s here. We have her.”
The armed man nods to Leo to get out of the car just as the man with the radio walks around to the driver’s side and opens Leo’s door.
“So who the fuck are you?” He asks. Leo looks around the large sterile room, which resembles an empty floor of a parking structure, and sees three more capable-looking men, most likely armed discreetly.
A man dressed in business casual attire walks up at a fast clip, looking down at a phone laying flat in his palm. He gets to the two men and holds it out.
The man with the radio puts his radio on his belt, an annoyed look on his face.
“It’s for you.” He says. After another second, he takes the phone out of the other man’s hand and holds it out for Leo to see. Leo looks at the phone. It’s a video call.
“Leo? Are you Leo?” The man in the video says.
“Yes. I’m Leo.”
“Thank you for your help.” The man says, sincerely. Behind him Leo notices a painting on the wall and a bureau. Leo can just see the tops of photo frames and imagines the man sitting in the dining room of an expensive home.
“You’re welcome. Who are you?”
“Just a guy trying to help. Like you. I just wanted to say thank you. We don’t have a lot of time. Mike will tell you next steps. I have to go. Thank you, Leo.”
Leo looks over and sees the two women are helping the girls, now clad in clean sweatshirts and blankets, get into two small odd-looking cars. It takes him a second to realize they’re the carts baggage handlers drive on the tarmac as they load and unload bags into planes.
Leo feels a deep chill in the air.
“Are we…under the airport?” Leo asks.
Mike takes back his phone and nods. “We’ll have time to talk on the flight.”
Mike takes in the look on Leo’s face and says, “There’s nowhere else for you to go. You need to stay with us for your own safety.”
“What do you mean? Can’t I go back home now? I thought everything was…cleaned. Like the scene and everything…Jack told me…”
“Jack?” Mike says.
The man takes a deep breath and looks closely at Leo. Too closely Leo thinks, as if he recognizes him. Mike types into his phone.
“This came out six minutes ago. You’re on the news.” Mike says, holding out the phone for Leo to see.
Leo looks at the ABC News article and sees his face staring back at him. He recognizes the photo from an Instagram post from six months ago.
He watches the first cart drive away. The second one idles.
“We have to go,” Mike says, indicating the cart. He holds his hands out.
Leo looks around the room and realizes everyone else has left. He looks at the cart idling on one side of the room and now realizes there’s an opening on the far side. It was so quiet opening that Leo didn’t realize that’s where the sudden burst of cold originated.
“Where are we going? When are we coming back?” Leo asks.
“Coming back? Leo, you’re wanted for murder.” Mike says.
A BRRRAT-A-TAT in the distance. BRRRAT-A-TAT. Mike looks to the ramp. Leo takes a millisecond longer. It’s a burst of gunfire.
Then a SCREECH of tires echoes across the room.
“Shit! Get in the cart!” Mike yells. He runs toward the cart. Leo freezes as he sees the blacked out late-model suburban tear down the ramp and make a hairpin turn, tires screaming, into the room. It takes a moment for the large vehicle to orient itself correctly, but Leo sees a large weapon hanging out the passenger side window. He runs toward the cart just as Mike falls to the ground, face-first, his head bouncing off the concrete. It’s then that he hears the BRRRAT of the semiautomatic weapon. Leo does a one-eighty and dives behind a concrete pillar supporting the ramp entrance.
The cart drives away and Leo feels all hope leave his body. But then it slams grate-first into the wall and the driver slips out of the front seat, the back part of his skull imploded from a well-aimed round, and his torso oozing blood. He was dead before he even turned back to look at the suburban.
Pushing himself as far as he will go into the concrete and shaking uncontrollably, Leo pulls out his phone to dial…someone. 911? But isn’t he being hunted by the police? His mom? But what can she do from San Jose?
As he looks at his phone, a text pops up from Celia. I saw you ON THE NEWS! I think it’s my fault!
Then another one. I’m so sorry. But please turn yourself in, Leo!
The phone drops out of his hand and falls on the concrete. He reaches to the back of his waistband, but the pistol Jack had given him is still in the van.
He hears the suburban doors open.
Copyright Chris McCarthy and MDA Press, 2024, Graphics by Chris McCarthy with Imagen3.
MDA Press